The Turbulent Tub

Kate leaned on the railings of the deck as dusk overtook the ship. The thick clouds overhead, which had made the dusk especially early and especially dark, promised a storm; Kate didn’t think she’d mind if this particular promise was broken. The water has been mostly still for the journey so far, in so far as sea water was ever still, but as the evening had dragged on, and dragged it certainly had, the waves had started to take out their repressed frustrations on the small ship. Served it right for barging straight through the waves’ home.
                Alone on the deck, Kate looked out distrustfully at the ocean, fixing it with a gaze which told it she wouldn’t be trifled with. The ocean returned the sentiment; neither one of them held much affection for the other. Kate tried to keep an eye on all of the water, but it was a lost battle from the start. There was just so much of it to keep a watch over and some of it was always creeping up behind you, or sloshing into the gap behind the washing machine to make some mould that you don't want.
                Kate flicked the butt of her cigarette into the sea, which the sea definitely didn’t appreciate. Littering was bad enough, but flicking the litter onto something else’s face was just antagonistic. As punishment, the sea rolled the ship gently to port, which was the exact wrong direction for Kate to be able to support herself properly. Instead, she took herself off for a slow stagger and tripped, only to be caught by one of the life rings. Kate didn’t feel very grateful towards it. Granted, it had broken her fall, but it also felt like it had broken her hip.
                The rolling ship plunged to its apex, indulging itself in a momentary stillness before a dramatic U-turn in roll-direction policy, complete with a spray of cold, salty water. Kate felt that a soggy and agonising hip was all the wrong kings of fun, and so took her chances with the unsteady footing of the ship’s deck. Gingerly she staggered her way back indoors with her black shawl wrapped tight around herself.
                She slammed the door behind herself and span the locking wheel to keep it shut. Shivering, Kate pulled her damp shawl off herself and shook the loose water off like a deconstructed dog; she supposed that’s how they would do it if they could unbutton their jackets. Rain began to splatter against the small porthole window in the door as the clearly honourable clouds kept their word and unleashed torrential precipitation on the ship – as if there needed to be even more water around.
                Kate just didn’t understand it - why did the water go to all the effort of evaporating into the sky, forming clouds and moving over to the mountains to rain on them, when all it ever wanted to do was run down to the bottom again as quickly as possible. It would have been much simpler just to say ‘No, I shall stay down here thank you very much’ and cut out the middle man with all that river and waterfall nonsense. Clouds which rained over the sea were twice as bad, because it was effectively just water walking in and out of the front door whilst an already late postman was desperately trying to get to the letterbox.
                Thankfully it was the last night of the voyage. She could soon separate the necessity of travelling from the dangers of drowning in fathomless icy waters, replacing it with good old fashioned road-accident peril. Much less soggy, and only turbulent for a few short seconds rather than this endless rocking and swaying. After tonight she’d never again need to get drenched in a salty spray just to have a smoke, unless she stayed at a really cheap hotel of course.
                Out of the corner of her eye, all the way at the end of the corridor, Kate saw movement. She turned her head just in time to see a pair of exquisite leather boots disappear around the corner. He was back – the mysterious cowboy!

                It had been a few days into the journey that Kate had first seen him – he had been standing at the aft of the ship, looking wistfully out to sea as the gentle breeze whipped his long, intricately embroidered suede coat. Propped up on the railings at the edge of the deck, he looked like someone had dressed a mannequin in a fancy dress costume and abandoned it on a budget ferry for reasons that no-one would dare to consider. At first, Kate thought her eyes were just deceiving her, and maybe it was simply a normal man in a long coat, gloriously decadent boots, and a muddy-brown Stetson. But then she saw that he even had spurs on, glinting in the sunlight like boot-mounted pizza cutters. They were the final straw. Spurs were only worn if someone was a cowboy or if they were riding a horse, and there weren't any horses on board; Kate would definitely have noticed them and the ferry company's tag-line was "Horse-free voyages since '97'”, in a feat of specificity so great that there must have been a life-changing story behind it.
                The crowd of people between Kate and the mysterious cowboy had been thick, enough so to make reaching him difficult. By the time she was close he had moved away unseen – for such an unusual fellow he was deft at disappearing into the background. From then on she had dedicated her free time to tracking him down. It can be surmised from that resolution, based on nothing more than a glimpse across the deck, that she had been desperately looking for something to do.
                The next time she saw him was at breakfast the following day, across the dining room and a bowl of muesli. He was nearby to the fresh fruit, and making a bee-line for the pastries. Kate didn’t think it was very good form to abandon a bowl of oats and fruit in pursuit of an unexplained gunslinger, and so wolfed down the remainder of her breakfast, trying to keep an eye on him the whole time. This course of action led to an unsatisfactory amount of spoon-face and was swiftly abandoned. By the time she’d gulped down the last of her suspiciously pale and milky ‘black’ coffee, the cowboy was nowhere to be seen. She scanned the length of the buffet from the bacon through to the toaster and right up to the croissants, but there was no sign of him. He’d done the breakfast dash.
                Later on that same day, Kate had been watching a film in the ferry’s ‘theatre’; even the sign above the door had quotation marks around it. It was a modest sized room with free-standing chairs arranged in 6 rows, all facing towards a projection screen. The film being shown, rather than a cowardly safe-bet blockbuster, was an independent foreign film in a language that Kate didn’t recognise. Even the subtitles had been rendered unintelligible as the film was being shown out of focus, for what Kate hoped were artistic reasons. It was about half-way through the film, and as far as Kate could make out there was some kind of commotion going on regarding an upturned wagon, although it may also have been a watermill. A group of black and white smudges were trying to enter the mill, or perhaps flip the wagon, but another group of smudges seemed intent on stopping them, or perhaps blurring into them. Either way, there was a small amount of indeterminate action going on and it was marginally more exciting than watching the other 3 walls of the room. That soon changed when the mysterious cowboy appeared at the doorway and took an empty seat in the front row. Kate was in the back, and her view was now obscured by the Stetson that he’d refused to remove indoors. Her enjoyment of the blurry blob adventure was inhibited somewhat, but it meant that for the remaining hour of the film Kate was able to keep her eye on the cowboy, via the silhouette of his wide-brimmed hat, and felt assured that she would be able to catch him as everyone stood to leave during the credits. As fate would have it, however, her own escape was delayed by a slow-moving old couple in the seats next to her. By the time she had managed to shuffle past, the cowboy was gone again. That was the last time she’d seen him, until now.

                Kate gave chase down the corridor. It was quiet in the halls of the ship, so it would be much more difficult for him to slip away this time. Trying to muffle her footsteps as much as high heels on a linoleum floor would allow, she jogged along the length of the hallway in a slight squat. Anyone who saw her might understandably reach the conclusion that she had soiled herself and was performing the scurry-of-shame back to her cabin, but that was a risk she was just going to have to take.
                Pausing at the corner and peeking round, Kate saw nothing; he was gone again. It was far too long of a corridor for him to have reached the other end unless he’d broken into a sprint, and even if he’d gone into one of the rooms branching off the hallway it would have taken him a good while to actually unlock the door – Kate rarely managed it in under a minute. Like the enigma he had always proven himself to be, the cowboy had mysteriously disappeared yet again.
                Dejected, Kate stood back up to full height, taking some small solace in relieving the back-ache that stooping was giving her. However, stretching her back out pulled her cold, wet clothing close against her body, making her flinch just in time to lose balance when the ship rolled again. The sea was not even close to being done with its grudge.

                Kate decided to make her way back to the dining room to have something to eat – dinner always cheered her up. The trip through the hallways was made somewhat more difficult than usual, however, by the choppy and boisterous waters throwing the ship around. With the inescapably unsure footing, Kate was really regretting wearing heels. If it kept going this way then she might start to regret having ankles.
                The heavily tabled dining space was dimly lit by yellowed electric chandeliers and furnished with what a budget ferry business mistakenly thought would pass for elegant décor. At the very least, the bar was well stocked and well attended by the ship’s barman; Kate felt like she had been leaning more and more on the gentle support of wine to get her through the journey as the days had passed, especially since most solid surfaces had started to move away underneath her.
                The barman was a nice chap but rather unfortunate of face. His nose was large and curved, as if someone had snapped a protractor in half and jammed it into his head, and his top lip protruded forwards to meet it. His sunken lower jaw added to the effect and gave him the overall appearance of a bird trying desperately to disguise itself as a human. To make things worse, the barman’s name was Finchus.
                “Hi Finchus.” Kate said, pulling up a stool at the bar.
                “Hello Kate.” He replied politely, using her forename on Kate’s insistence. She had never liked being called Miss Nomer; it just sounded wrong. “The usual?” he asked with a welcoming smile under his impressive beak.
                “Yes please.” She answered “And a packet of peanuts too, please.”
                “No problem at all.” Finchus replied jovially. “You’re looking a bit soggy this evening, if you don’t mind me saying. Did you try to get off and walk again?”
                “What? Oh, no. I was on deck and the water splashed over me.”
                “Ah, it’ll do that if you let it. Still, it’s better that the sea got you and not the rain - otherwise you would have been under the weather.” He said with a wry smile and a wink whilst he set her glass of ruby-red wine in front of her. Kate said thank you and tried not to encourage him.
                “And one packet of peanuts. £5.60 please.” He added, placing a packet on the bar in front of her.
                Kate fished around in her pockets and handed the money over, then dived into her nuts. She was starving all of a sudden and dinner wouldn’t be served for another half-an-hour.
                “Would you like one?” she said, holding her hand out flat towards him with a few nuts in her palm. Finchus moved his head towards her and she recoiled, thinking for a second that he was about to unleash a devastating peck at her hand with his powerful beak. She was sure that it would be able to crush small mammals without any trouble.
                “Um, no I’m OK thanks.” Finchus replied, not entirely sure of why Kate was flinching. Her face changed colour to match her wine. To escape the circumstances into which she’d thrown herself, Kate tried to change the subject.
                “Finchus, have you seen a man on board dressed like a cowboy?”
                “A cowboy? As a matter of fact I have. He’s been in here a couple of nights to drown himself in whisky. It seems like a rather expensive way to do it when there’s a whole ocean out there to use for free, but it’s his choice.”
                “You’ve seen him! What on earth is going on with that guy? Why is he dressed like that?” Kate asked, hoping that the stereotypical barman and heavy-drinker relationship would hold, and that the cowboy would have bared his soul to Finchus.
                “I don’t know.” Finchus told her, shattering all the illusions she’d built up over the last couple of seconds. “He mostly just keeps to himself and looks like a storm made manifest as a person to be honest.”
                “Oh well.” Kate said with a shrug. “He’ll have to remain a mystery I guess.” She sipped her wine.
                “So what are you planning to do when you get to shore?” Finchus asked whilst wiping a glass.
                “I’m going to an auction.”
                “Very nice. Buying or selling?”
                “Selling. I deal in antiques, and I’ve got an opal pyramid to put up. It looks promising for a good return.”
                “Opal pyramid, eh. Well, good luck with that. Remember me if you make your millions won’t you.” He said with a wink.
                “Hey, Oyster!” came an unnecessarily loud voice in Kate’s ear, brushing Finchus’ words aside. She grimaced; the voice belonged to man named Curtis, who had taken to calling her ‘the oyster from the cloister’ by a series of leaps of ‘logic’ which only he could follow. It related to her being closed up, like only an oyster could be, and being dressed in black a lot, like only a nun could be. Conveniently ignoring the fact that molluscs are famously averse to organised religion, the nickname stuck, but only with him. Kate felt that it wasn’t a fair thing to be called - she just liked black clothing, and didn’t like opening up to the kind of man who would call her the oyster from the cloister.
                Kate tried her best to ignore Curtis wherever possible. They'd been at sea for a week and it had taken far less time than that to establish that she didn't want to be around him. Unfortunately he didn't seem to be picking up on the not-so-subtle hints she dropped about that. Having just sat down next to her at the bar like that, she didn’t feel like she had much choice but to speak to him for a little while. Her stomach still sank though, because a while, however short, would always be too long when it came to speaking to Curtis.
                Reluctantly, Kate turned and smiled at Curtis as if she didn’t want to beat him around the head with a bedpan. She struggled to believe that she had fooled him, but it was worth trying to keep up appearances for one last night. Curtis was leaning back with one elbow resting on the bar, showing off a pudgy beer-belly. The two halves of his waistcoat seemed to be locked in an irreconcilable feud, each side straining to distance itself from the other as far as the buttons would allow. If Curtis didn’t take action soon there might be a permanent rift in his wardrobe.
                “Lager.” He said simply to Finchus. The barman diligently acquiesced.
                Kate noticed a small chain running from one of the higher buttons on Curtis’ waistcoat into his breast pocket. ‘On anyone else’, Kate thought, ‘that would be attached to a pocket watch. On Curtis it’s probably attached to a pork pie’. She surprised even herself and snorted with poorly stifled laughter.
                “Something up your nose, Oyster?”
                “Oh, er, no I-“ Kate started, but Curtis ignored her, as he so often did when talking to her.
                “What’s this ‘Oval Pyramid’ then?” he asked directly, not seeming to be embarrassed at listening in to someone else’s conversation.
                Kate couldn’t be bothered to correct or chastise him. She only had to keep it together for one more night. “It’s just a gemstone.”
                “Big? Heavy?”
                “Not really no.”
                “Hm. In that case I’d be careful around that cowboy if I were you.”
                Kate worried that if Curtis were her then her existence would have been marred by life choices much poorer than talking to a cowboy.
                “Why do you say that?” she asked, curious to find out more but feeling a little protective of the cowboy, since that was the natural opposition to Curtis’ stance. There was something unshakably untrustworthy about him which made Kate instinctively disagree with anything he said, to the point that if he showed her where to find the ladies room she would have proudly marched into the gents.
                Curtis leaned forwards. “He tried to steal some money from me. Threatened me. Do me a favour, since you’re so interested in him – if you do manage to catch up with him, which I would certainly advise against, steer him away from me would you?” He stood up again, as Finchus placed a pint glass in front of him on the bar. Curtis picked the glass up and dropped a handful of change where it had just been, ignoring Finchus’ outstretched hand.
                “See you later, Oyster.” He said, then clapped her on the shoulder. “Ugh.” He moaned, feeling how wet her shawl was. “Seems like the oyster from the cloister’s got a bit moister!” he said, walking away laughing to himself. Kate rolled her eyes. Finding that to be an insufficient display of her distaste, she tried desperately to roll her ears, nose and teeth too.
                “I can’t wait to never see him again.” She told Finchus once Curtis was out of earshot.
                “He’s not my favourite guest either, but he does know the price of his drinks. Even if he chooses to pay for them like an inconsiderate baboon.” The barman replied. This was a largely unfair statement, since no baboon had ever shown poor etiquette to Finchus before.
                “What do you make of that stuff about the cowboy trying to steal money from him?”
                “I don’t know I’m afraid. But he did seem serious about keeping your distance. Not that you’ve found that to be hard so far, of course.”
                “Hmm. If I had to put money on someone stealing something on this ship, Curtis would be my bet as the perpetrator, not the victim.”
                Finchus laughed, then moved down the bar to tend to another customer. Kate sipped at her wine, and the boat kept rocking.

                The dining room quickly filled itself with ferry-goers as dinner-time approached, each one of them eager to receive the disappointment that their evening meal would bring, and Kate moved from the bar to one of the large round tables. She kept her eyes open in case the mysterious cowboy appeared, but also so that she didn’t look like she was trying to sleep at her table – two birds with one stone indeed. Maintaining vigilance had the added bonus of allowing her to watch the other guests, as they attempted to conduct themselves in a respectable manner whilst the whole ship swayed and plunged underneath them. This was doubly entertaining when they had a new, full drink from the bar. Many a smart garment was lost to unnecessary staining that night.
                Once dinner had been served, the room was filled with valiant battles against the unruly ship. Gravy flowed like a river over tablecloths, wine spilled onto legs without discrimination, and even roast potatoes fell to the ground, defeated. One by one, the warrior diners laid down their arms and made their exit. Kate was one of the strongest, holding on to her gravy-slickened meat with the stubbornness of a starved wolf hanging on to a scrap of rabbit flesh. As she forced the last chunk of meat onto her fork, the ship took a particularly heavy roll forwards. Thinking quickly, Kate lifted the fork from the plate to prevent a catastrophic swiping of her peas onto the table. But, as the cruel fates of the sea would not be cheated, the ship then rolled back, swinging her arm back towards herself. Kate was powerless to intervene as she smeared a large gravy streak across her chest with her forkful of beef.
                That was it – she was beaten. Dropping her now fluffy beef back onto her plate, she swallowed the rest of her wine, reasoning that she was already failing to balance so getting tipsy was irrelevant, and left the dining room.

                Kate returned to her cabin to find that the door was still locked, just as she’d left it. This may not seem like a noteworthy occasion, but there was a problem - both the door and the lock were laying on the floor, having been splintered out of the doorframe by an application of great force. They were, therefore, not quite such effective measures for security and privacy as once they had been.
                The room was a scene of carnage. Every drawer had been pulled out and turned upside down, clothing littered the floor, and even the bin had been cast over. Kate regretted leaving the cabin in such a state, since it had now been witnessed by whoever had broken in. On top of that, the intruder had rummaged through everything in sight and added what little was possible to add to the mess.
                Kate stood in the doorway and tried to take stock of everything. Her purse had been with her at the time so that was safe, and it looked like all of her clothes and spare jewellery had been ignored. In fact, Kate couldn’t think of anything which mas missing - whoever had been here had been searching for something specific, most likely her opal pyramid. Shuddering at the invasion of her privacy, as well as her own stupidity for mentioning the gemstone to anyone, Kate patted the inside pocket of her black blazer and felt the reassuringly angular shape of the opal pyramid inside.   Trying not to disturb any of the door detritus or scattered belongings on the floor, Kate entered far enough into the room to reach the phone and called the porters to report the crime. Whilst the porters seeing all of her underwear scattered across the floor would be yet another invasion of her privacy, this was one that she had requested and therefore it didn’t taste as bitter. At least she could pretend the room had been tidy prior to the break-in, and lying to the custodial staff of a ferry was one of the few pleasures available to her at the time.
                Once the porters and the security team arrived, and Kate had explained at great length how the invader must have untucked her neatly made bed, creased all of her clothes and got flecks of toothpaste all over the mirror, she went out to the deck for a smoke. In the proud haze of her deceit, she didn’t notice the shadow emerge around the corner or the footsteps following at a distance behind her.

                A storm was kicking up vast and livid waves, inciting the once peaceful sea to should rise up against its maritime oppressor. This ferry had been dragging itself through the water's delicate surface for far too long. No-one would drag a boat through anyone else's face for even a moment, so doing it for over a week to the sea was a mark of the utmost disrespect. The water’s surface did its best to flip the ship over, tossing and rolling the vessel from one side to the other.
                The sea looked exactly like Kate felt as she leaned over the rails taking a drag- violated, apoplectic, and as vast as the horizon; she had been feeling self-conscious about her weight since eating all the rich ferry food, or at least smearing it across herself.

                “Hello Oyster” came Curtis’ voice from behind her, interrupting her wallowing. Kate didn’t understand how or why he kept creeping up on her, but she wasn’t a fan of it.
                “Curtis, please. I just want to be left alone for a while.”

                “I want exactly the same thing! So why don’t you hand over the Oval Pyramid and we’ll be about our business separately.”
                Kate turned around to face him, finally wearing an honest expression of revulsion. “What are you talking about?”
                “The gemstone you’re selling. I’ll be taking it.” He said, with an unnerving degree of certainty.
                “No you won’t. It was you who broke into my room, wasn’t it?” Super-sleuth Kate was on the case tonight.

                “Look, Oyster” Curtis said, ignoring her question as ever but paradoxically trying to sound friendly. Calling her Oyster was probably the wrong way to go about it. “I don’t want to hurt you, honestly, but you need to give me the pyramid don’t you? Otherwise I’ll have to hurt you, and then neither of us will be happy.”
                “Well please forgive me if I don’t cry for you, Curtis, it’s just that you’re being a thieving slime ball. You’re not getting it.”
                Curtis’ veneer of false-sympathy melted away like new carpet underneath a hot iron and the result was a similarly twisted mess. He stepped towards Kate and she couldn’t move away; backed against the railings, she felt rather foolish.
                “This is your last chance, Oyster. I'll crack you open and take your pearl if you make me.” Curtis was barely an arm’s length away and still closing the gap. Kate shook at the look in his eyes.
                “I won’t be bullied.” She said defiantly, still shivering but pretending to be brave. She was doing a very good job of it, which unfortunately only made things worse; rather than continuing to try to intimidate her, Curtis grabbed the front of her coat with one hand. He slammed the other first into Kate’s screaming face as her bravery proved to be fleeting.
                Kate’s eye began to swell around the graze Curtis’ blow had left. It would have been peculiar to swell anywhere else, and the time for whimsy was long past.
                “Hand it over! Now!” he screamed in her face. She spat at him, apparently channelling her inner llama. Curtis was not a trained llama handler however, so he took the unorthodox disciplinary technique of lifting her off the ground and pushing her torso over the railings. The majority of frightened animals will begin to misbehave even more when subjected to this particular treatment.
                Kate shrieked as she looked at the black, frothing water below. The storm still raged and the ship still rolled unpredictably – Curtis wouldn’t be able to hold onto her for long.
                “If you drop me then the pyramid is gone, you cretin!” Kate screamed at him, hoping that he’d try to win her approval if she insulted him. It was an outside shot, but all she really had to work with.
                “I get it or you die, Oyster. It’d be a great shame if I saw you slip overboard during the storm, but maybe I can save you for a price! Better be quick though, I’m already tired from smashing your door down, and I’m already pissed off from hiding while I waited for you to stop talking to the porters, you lying cow. Your room was a tip!” The rain was falling hard, soaking them both through. With every passing second, Curtis’ grip came closer to slipping. If pushed to describe the situation, then between the impending death and the embarrassment of lying about her bedroom tidiness Kate would have called it ‘a right git’.
                Above the crashing of the waves and the beating of the rain, Kate heard a metallic jingling coming from the deck, as if a set of keys had taken themselves for a stroll in the evening rain. Knowing that keys much prefer hiding to running away, Kate could only assume it was the mysterious cowboy.
                “Now I admit that most sea-dwelling molluscs enjoy life more when they’re beneath the surface,” came a southern drawl which flowed like molasses over the sounds of the ship “but that oyster don't wanna be in the sea. She's a mighty peculiar one who likes the feel of dry land or solid ground beneath her feet. Why don't you go ahead and put her back on the deck like a good little boy, and then we'll have a nice chat about whatever grievance it is you have with the lady?”
                “Stay out of this, yank. When I sell the oyster’s oval pyramid I’ll have enough to pay you double.” Curtis shouted back.
                “I’m not so damn interested in her money, I want mine you thieving rat. Now put her back on the deck!” Kate let out a squeak as she felt Curtis flinch; the mysterious cowboy had produced a pair of shining steel revolvers as if from nowhere. It’s bad enough to be indebted to a cowboy, but when the cowboy is also a magician it pays to settle the account immediately.
                Slowly, Curtis dragged Kate back onto the deck, but then pulled her in front of himself as a human shield. Kate couldn’t help but feel that this wasn’t in the true spirit of the mysterious cowboy’s request, and she was repulsed by the feeling of Curtis’ warm, wet gut pressing against her back. Kate looked down, trying to duck her head away from the barrels pointing towards them, and saw that Curtis was wearing open-toed sandals with disturbingly off-white socks. She felt sick, it was just one more crime in a long history of offences.
                “Come on, boy! If that ain’t just the most yellow thing I’ve seen you do yet.” The cowboy was staring in disbelief at Curtis.
                “Put the guns down and kick them over, yank. Then walk away.”

Being alone with an armed Curtis was not something that Kate was going to allow. As quickly as she could, she lifted one foot and stamped hard onto Curtis’ toe with one of her hitherto impractical heels, feeling something crunch underneath it. He yelped in pain, and as his grip weakened she shook herself free, dropping into a ball and rolling to one side to get away. She scrabbled desperately to her feet, slipping on the wet deck and struggling with the turbulence. Curtis was crouched over his foot, blood soaking into his sock and screaming profanity as one might be expected to when losing a toe.
                The mysterious cowboy looked over at Kate and caught her eye, checking that she was OK. When she nodded he shrugged and lowered his guns. Then looked back to Curtis, and casually shot him in the other foot.

                Once again the porters were summoned to deal with a mess that Kate had left and subsequently blamed on someone else. She was certainly unique in the situations she gave them to clean up, but it didn’t really make it much more fun to take a mutilated cockney into custody. The rain and spray from the sea had done a marvellous job of cleaning the deck though – she had at least been considerate with her choice of location for toe removal.
                The mysterious cowboy walked Kate back to the wreckage of her cabin. She sat down on the bed and tried to motivate herself to pack everything away and move to another room – she didn’t much fancy sleeping at the door-less site of a burglary.
                “Y’all gonna be OK if get on my way? I still need to get my money back after all.” He was leaning in the doorway, still dripping wet from the rain.
                “Uh, yeah. Thank you for everything.”
                The cowboy tipped his hat. “Ain’t nothing.”
                “How did you know what was going on? I can’t believe you just stumbled across us.”
                “Well I was at the bar and little birdy told me what had happened, with this, y’know?” he gestured to the lack of a door. “He heard it on the staff radio or some such. And he told me about that precious stone y’all are trying to sell. I headed over to see if it was that snake Curtis, on account of him being a rotten thief, and the porters told me y’all went for a smoke. You know how the rest went down. But tell me, what is an Oval Pyramid? Wouldn’t an oval pyramid just be a cone, on account of ovals being like circles that someone’s sat on a bit?”
                Kate unzipped her pocket and took out the pyramid, twirling it in her fingers to show the cowboy. “It’s an opal pyramid, the precious stone, not an oval. Curtis is just a moron.”
                The cowboy laughed, like a muffled tractor engine struggling to start up. “A moron with a couple less toes than he oughta have. It’ll stop him running from the next person he tries to cheat, I hope.”
                “Yeah… was it really necessary to shoot his other foot? He was already bleeding from one crushed toe and you had him at gunpoint. I’m not convinced he was much of a threat anymore.”
                The cowboy smiled with one side of his mouth. “Well I admit that he wasn’t gonna be going too far too fast, but he needed a good shootin’ as I see it. For one thing, I don’t like a fella that hits a lady. For another, he stole from me and I don’t intend to let him forget it. And in any case, you gave him a perforatin’ with that heel of yours; fair’s only fair if I get to take some revenge too.”
                Kate laughed. It seemed like the mysterious cowboy was a simple kind of man after all.

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