continued from x
@yellowkclly
Kelly was in trouble. Sat at a sticky table, several rounds deep, holding cards worried soft and round-edged with all the hands they’d been through. He thumbed at the dog-eared corner of his eight, contemplating his pair and his empty pockets and the sizable pool of coins clumsily gathered in the centre of the table... The last of his cash, incidentally. At least, the last that hadn’t been spent on the glasses of shit passed off as whiskey currently working its way through his system, mellowing what should have rightly been panic at the rather unfortunate situation he was slowly edging himself into.
He was almost glad to be interrupted, hearing him before he saw him. That low familiar click of a hammer cocking back into place, somehow clear even above the background thrum of drunken chatter filling the bar. He spared a glance over his shoulder and was met with an unfamiliar face. The man’s gun, however, was bared with a very familiar sense of purpose.
“You want somethin’?” Kelly grunted, turning in his seat. Casual, for all intents and purposes, as if unaware of how easily an overeager finger could twitch and send a bullet flying home. A small mercy perhaps given how his evening was currently going. “Kinda in the middle of somethin’.”
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The man’s got grit, he’ll give him that, certainly seems more concerned about losing what little money he has left staked on this game than he is about Sam suddenly deciding the man would be easier to bring in as a corpse, however heavy he may look.
A glance is all it takes to convince the other men sat around the table to lay down their cards and pay some attention.
“He folds.” Samuel instructs, pushing the cold muzzle of his colt against the outlaw’s neck with insistence.
“James Kelly…” At this point it is a name that feels common on Samuel’s tongue, given how many times he’s uttered it during this past week, in search of the man who has amassed quite an attractive bounty, the kind worth sleeping rough and getting rain soaked, the latter being the thing that is responsible for Samuel’s surly mood. He’s been riding out in the pissing rain all night, while this big son of a bitch has been sitting drinking whiskey and playing cards.
“Here, ain’t you Samuel Silas? You…you ’s a lawman right?”
The squirrely looking man sat at James’ table chooses to address Sam directly, but the bounty hunter does not entertain his question with a glance, let alone an answer.
“I got your writ Kelly, now we can do this one of two ways…”
Roughly he grasps James’ shoulder and is instantly served a reminder that the outlaw is much larger and taller than he himself is and so must be handled carefully.
The iron cuffs in his hand are thrown down on the table with a loud clatter, a clear invitation for Kelly to cuff himself, if he wants to leave this place walking.
“I can clasp you in irons and lead you out of here, quiet like, or I put some iron in you and drag you out. Writ says dead or alive Kelly, your choice.”
