Fill Your Hand, You Son of a Bitch - A Cowpoke Quest

You take a deep breath and push your hat back on your head. Explaining this in broken English, Inde, and sign language is going to take some doing. You're going to damn well try, though, because the alternative is watching them ride off without you. Or worse. You wet your (very dry) lips with your tongue and then launch into your explanation. It isn't particularly thorough, unfortunately, or very detailed, because this is really meant to be used for trade or for brief trail communications. You manage, though.

"Bad man-" You indicate with your fingers, jerking a thumb over your shoulder, back in the direction you came from.

"Sneak. Attack me."

Which is the short version, really. It's more complicated than that. You press on, trying to spin a tale of woe and hardship that might actually sway them to give you a helping hand.

"Left me to die. Didn't even kill me properly, see?"

You hope she sees because yikes, you don't want to end up actualy dying out here. The Inde leader regards you for a long moment, brow furrowed as she considers your rather unimpressive words. Can't be helped, really. It's the way of trying to break a language barrier. Her eyes sweep over you and you have the unenviable feeling of being sized up. Like a cattle or something. Then, without warning, she swings down off of her horse and holds her rifle up to one of her followers, who takes it, and she stalks over to you, giving you another, closer examination.

This close, you can smell sweat and dust and tobacco. She circles you and you wait. She finally comes to a stop in front of you and she's wearing a broad, bright grin, teeth gleaming white. She gestures at your feet, signing rapidly and speaking in broken Albian.

"We take you a ride to white-eye town."

Relief floods through you. You're not going to die miserably. She's not finished though and there's laughter in her voice as she continues.

"You switch boots with me."

Oh. She's wearing some rather worn-down moccasins and leg wraps and apparently she's decided she'd rather have your high leather riding boots. She, at least, seems happy with the idea of such a trade.

What now?

[ ] Agree to the trade.
[ ] Refuse.
[ ] Write-in (subject to QM veto).

[X] Agree to the trade

Well, you can't really object too much. And you don't think she's going to ditch you - it'd be just as easy to gun you down and take your boots off of your corpse. After a long moment, your throat works in a dry swallow and you nod in agreement. Your erstwhile savior claps her hands together and grins, gesturing to one of her men to bring over a canteen. She pointedly doesn't offer it quite yet. Her three followers are chatting back and forth in their own language, a smattering of laughter rising in the hot air; you can only catch a few words, but you think they're pleased at how this is turning out.

You settle onto the ground, your duster splayed out behind you as you tug off one boot and then the other. Meanwhile, she's undone her leg wrappings and slipped out of her low shoes. She drops both alongside you and then eagerly starts fitting herself into her new boots. You take a much more time to try and get the moccasins on correctly. Never done this before, not with leg-wraps. They keep slipping or loosening (and that seems to make them even more amused, at your expense).

In the meantime, she's strutting around in your (well, her) boots, making a show of it. There's a few woops and some applause and she finally turns back to where you're sitting on the ground and offers you the canteen with a laugh. You leave off adjusting your new footwear for a moment to accept the canteen and you take a long, long drink from it. The water is warm and tepid and tastes a bit tinny, but it's probably the best drink you've ever had in your whole life. Reluctantly, you hand it back, knowing that she probably won't be happy if you drain it dry.

She's still grinning at you, all young and bright - and a bit pretty, actually, now that you're not worried about being killed. She slaps herself in the chest and says a name: "Onawa!"

She points at the three men with her in turn, "Goyathlay. Dasodaha. Bimisi."

"Uh, thanks," you reply after a long moment, "I'm Kate."

She nods at you and then dashes back to her horse and remounts it, gesturing for you to follow. She throws in the sign for far and you realize that she probably means that you have at least a few hours journey ahead of you. So you better get riding. She swings up onto the back of her own horse and then kicks it into a walk, turning the horse back in a north-west direction. Not the way they were going before you flagged them down - they'll be going out of their way, apparently.

The ride takes a few hours and there's a lot of talking in their own language that you can't exactly follow, but Onawa seems friendly enough and the rest of her band seems to follow her lead. You also spend most of it sidled up behind her on a horse, which is hot and sweaty and a part of you wonders if she notices how close the two of you are as much you are. Because you're definitely noticing.

You put that thought out of mind, though. You'd much rather have a bath and as much water as you can drink and maybe a good square meal. The ride continues for much of the day and the sun is starting to cast long shadows by the time you see a collection of buildings rising up from the desert against the western mountains. You've never been so grateful to see that in your life and you straighten up, peering over Onawa's shoulder (you've got a couple inches on her, honestly) and she notices, turning her head to laugh at you again.

They do that a lot, but you think that at this point you'd let them all laugh at you for hours on end and even throw in a few jokes, considering where they're bringing you.

"Onawa, I could kiss you," you say with a wry shake of your head as the town comes closer. She recognizes her name and maybe some of the words and shoots you a bemused glance over her shoulder. The four of them turn onto a more well-traveled trail that seems to wind its way up into the town and you can see other outbuildings on the horizon - ranches, maybe, or other settlers. You're about a mile outside of town when she draws to a halt and motions you off of the horse.

You slide off into the dust and glance up at her. She shrugs - going into town probably isn't safe for her, considering that more than a few the New Alleghenian settlers (and some of the Taxcoco transplants) would shoot an Inde dead on sight. Then she raises her hand in a mock salute and turns her horse away to angle towards the southwest and the mountains (which are much closer now, actually - you're practically in the foothills) and calls out in accented Albian, "Goodbye, Kate! Thank you for the boots!"

Then she and her companions kick their horses into a gallop and they're gone in a cloud of dust, their figures dwindling into the distance with a few cheerful woops of laughter trailing in the air behind them. You watch them go and when they're finally, truly gone, you turn to walk into town. It seems prosperous enough, although it's dusty and a bit dirty, like most frontier towns. You can see people coming and going and a general buzz of late afternoon activity on the main street.

Unfortunately, you're flat broke right now. Where do you go first?

[ ] Find a boarding house. See if you can convince them to take you in on credit.
[ ] The sheriff's office. You need work.
[ ] One of the local saloons. You need a drink and a meal.
[ ] General store. Maybe you can sell something.
[ ] Write-in.