Her fingers hover over the painting, a figure of a man with a top hat, and freezes.
She jumps, her heart leaping into her throat.
Slowly, she turns, but not in the direction of the voice. She looks into the mirror at her side and stares at the man through the reflection. Tall. Elegant. Calm.
“That’s quite a name you’ve created for yourself.”
Dolores tries to swallow the lump forming in her throat.
“You have me at a disadvantage, sir.” She starts. Her voice shakes, and she's certain that her body will soon follow. Still, she meets his gaze. "You know who I am, but I have not yet been acquainted with you."
"Yes, you have." He says matter-of-factly, like he's correcting her about the weather forecast instead of her memory. "In a similar sense as you are, right now: staring through a glass, through the company you keep. Your friends are my friends. Or at least, will be."
He folds his hands on top of one another as he continues, "You've come a long way to stop them from meeting me."
It should have been chastising, but it is far from it. The Strange Man held the tone of a school teacher, trying to get his student to learn why they had done wrong in the first place, rather than just explain it outright. It does nothing to soothe her.
Dolores tries to smile, but she can see from her own reflection that it's just a painful, quivering thing. "Not stop. Just delaying it for a long while."
The Strange Man laughs. "Many have tried. Do you think you can do it? Your friend Arthur is already much closer to his meeting date than you realize."
Dolores' blood stops. "But-but I stopped him from getting TB--"
"And thus, stopped him from changing his ways. This is the frontier, my darling. The Wild West, as you call it. There are more ways to doom a man than just meeting me."
Dolores searches his expression, her eyes frantically bouncing all around trying to find some shade of deception on his face. She finds none.
"What do I need to do? How can I make this right?"
He shrugs. "My dear, I do not know. But if there's one person who can create a better ending for these damned men, it's the woman willing to walk through worlds to save them." He walks closer to her, to the mirror. She swears that she feels something brushing against her shoulder, but she doesn't dare look behind her to check. She doesn't want to know.
He leans down closer to her, to the glass, and she is staring straight into the darkest brown eyes that go on forever and ever. "But whatever it is you do," he says, "I suggest you start moving quickly."
She draws back, feet stumbling and eyes closed as she gasps for breath. Her heart is hammering like a jackrabbits and sweat drips down her skin. She doesn't remember walking towards the mirror, or when she started to hold her breath.
By the time Dolores opens her eyes, she finds herself alone in the cabin, with no one else to talk to but herself.