Bill Lawson growled and picked up the pace. Sheriff Bailey had finally given up his crusade to keep him alive and taken off for the sanctuary of his own bed.

About Goddamn time.

Crows called each other names over the tops of the buildings along Serenity High-Street. Bill's feet shuffled up blooms of dust while he kept his watery eyes on the prize.

At the end of the street. Stuck back a few feet from the main thoroughfare, there waited his only other love.

Home.

Sure, others sniggered and called him a fool for spending his hard earned money on the shack, but he owned it. That was the whole point. He owned it. No matter what happened in the shit-heel world of gold, power and bad, bad men, Bill had a place to call home.

Hickey had understood. He'd appreciated the place.

After finding the man facedown in the mud of a night's worth of rain, Hickey Harrison had been oh so grateful for Bill's ramshackled property.

They'd sat together in silence, watching the sparks of woodchips flicker in the small fireplace.

Fall brought the rain in Serenity. Sixteen years of seasons for Bill. The last two without work. He'd sold his lease on his Claim and put his nose permanently in the bottom of a glass. Although nothing could drown out the sound of the coal miners singing back in Wales.

He'd been sent there to learn more about new mining technology by his previous employer. A faceless conglomerate of wealthy mine owners. However, the trip of a lifetime proved to be far more than an experience for work.

Strangers had become friends. Those friends had died.

Upon his return to America, his exaggerated alcohol consumption caused bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea took their toll on Bill's ailing liver. The shock of it made him lighten up the drinking for a spell. Not quite ready to give up the ghost of his life at that point.

Hickey had been a blessing. And a curse.

Bill kicked at the ground and swore under his breath. The reassuring odours of horse and hay wafted over him as he got closer to the stables on the left side of the road. To the right the town died. A broken down line of cheap wire fencing gave up its credibility and left the open wasteland of the parched valley to blow its way in.

How did he get here? At what stupid moment in his dumb young youth had he actually thought that coming here would be a good idea? He'd long since lost the reason.

Hickey had made all that fade away. Having a friend out here really was the true treasure. Gold be hanged.

He still spoke to him sometimes. Good old Hickey had a habit of showing up at the strangest of times. Middle of the night even. Laying passed out on his own doorway, Bill had met him again. Four weeks and two days after his disappearance and supposed death, Hickey Harrison's apparition came.

Crouching down, his brown, faded leather chaps had creaked with the strain. Hickey snapped back the tip of his stained hat and grinned through his ginger stubble.
"Oh, shit, Billy Boy. You look like you had a real turd of a day."

Bill's head throbbed to a far-off drum beat. His swollen tongue and rebel limbs refused to cooperate with the tiny section of his inebriated brain that could remember.

He had loved that man. With every inch of his worn-out soul.

Bill's eyes misted over as hot tears threatened their way free on his final steps home. The image that Miss Molly had described, that morning after Hickey's apparent murder, seared a hot branding iron line straight into Bill's memories.

Blood red blood.

Splattered about the bedroom of said Lady and no recollection as to the actual damn cause of it.

Shit.

If Sheriff Bailey had left him alone for a couple of minutes, Bill could have gotten the real story outta Miss Molly Stockholme.

That woman acted all high 'n' mighty but he knew she had a weak spot alright.

Bill smirked to himself as he fiddled with the rusty door latch to his front entrance. Normally, he took the sideway in, but not today. Well, what the heck. It wasn't everyday a man got shot at. No matter what them hell hounds at New York presses would say. No. Today, he wanted to get into his home in the same way every other human being in the civilised world could do. Through the fucking front door.

Bill's clumsy fingers found the correct angle of lift and pressure and the door latch sprang free.

His eyes could hardly keep open. He'd been fighting sleep all morning and now, with a belly full of Frank's crappy excuse for bacon and eggs, he longed for the comfort of his bed.

Once through the doorway, every footstep on his narrow, spindly staircase made the timbers wobble and creak. Who the hell was he worried about bothering anyway? A couple of mangy ponies in the stable next door?

Bill sniffed and threw open the door to his bedroom at the top of the stairs.

The only bedroom.

Hickey had always slept downstairs. His snoring soaring up the stairway and into Bill's welcome ears. He missed the sound.

Blinking hard, Bill stumbled into his room and tore off his jacket. He dropped it on the dirty floor and kicked off his boots. The bed loomed with open arms from across the room.

Bill smiled to himself. As if welcoming a long forgotten lover.

Man, that bed looked good.

Leaning forwards, he steadied himself for one second more. In that split second before he allowed his body to fall onto the bed, Old Bill heard a cry. No, more of a whimper. Coming from the back door. At the bottom of the stairs.

Bill swallowed hard. His dry throat ached for the lubricant of liquor. Or maybe his soul wanted it more than his body. A doorway out of this all too real world. He stumbled over to the bed and tore back the blanket with a rough, angry hand.

Why the hell did the memories of the men in the mine always come and bother him? He'd paid his dues. He'd spent half a damn lifetime crawling his ass up and down these hills. Raking in gristles of gold, trying to make the pictures of the dead men's faces disappear. Life had passed him by. All that time he'd spent a'waisting on fool's gold, be it that or not, he'd still lost his time.

Harrison had been a proud man. Way too proud to admit to the failings of his flesh and heart's ambition. Bill had comforted that man. He had taken him in and made his home a safe haven for them both. Many storms of immense electrical power had roared their way over the beat up shack, next to the stables in Serenity, but nothing touched the two men within.

Life had breezed on by.

*****

Morning struck Bill Lawson. Hard. He'd slept through the entire day of Monday and now at eight am Tuesday June 1875, the day his tired head right between the eyes.

Random thoughts brought on by his vivid dreams scratched at his brain. Images of children playing beside a lake. Maybe he could have been a father?

He sank down, halfway down the stairs. He dropped the old worn out boots he'd gathered from the bedroom floor, scattering them down the hardwood staircase to clank against the foot of his front door.

Bill drew in a deep breath. He traced his shaky fingers across the ridged lines of the embellished wallpaper that covered the entire narrow stairway. 'Fiore di Lis'. That was the name of the pretty pictures on the paper. Soft, pastel blue shapes against a chalky white background.

Smiling, Bill smoothed down his remnants of hair and smacked his dry lips together.

Whisky.

The one thought that could get his ass moving in the morning.

He half-slid half-fell down the stairs to collect his boots. The base of his back spasmed like bone upon bone with every movement he made. He sucked the dry air through his clenched teeth and set his footwear right. After straightening up, a shiver of pain under his right ribs warned him to take it easy at the bar that day. Something he always intended to do but never managed to uphold.

He waited a few seconds for the pulsating sensation in his chest to cease. Once his liver had resolved its argument, he set out back into the world.

Pulling the front door shut behind him, he glanced up at the ridge of mountains that horse-shoed Serenity. The bright morning scolded him, but the wild brown peaks held a majestic, fearsome beauty. So much more powerful than anything a mere man could do.

Those Natives understood better than he could imagine. He had an inkling of the kind of power they had, but he'd always be a long way off from their kind of understanding. He respected that. Unlike men such as Zimmerman. That type never considered anyone else's connections to the world other than his own. Even when the unexplained proved too strong to deny.

Bill scuffed the toe of his boot into the dust and increased his pace.

Halfway down the High Street, he recognised the tall figure of Mister Sheriff Bailey coming out of his office to meet him.

Bill's top lip curled up briefly on the right. He sighed deeply. That man was gonna get himself killed.

They met in the middle of the street riders and pedestrians manoeuvring their way around them.

"When you gonna quit babysitting me?"

Bill wished the young man would take the hint. But, maybe he was as stubborn as Bailey's father had been.

The Sheriff cleared his throat and tipped his head up from under his brown hat. His dark eyes proved unreadable in the glare of the sunshine.
"I'd say that I would, but not on a day like today, Bill. You haven't heard nothing about the happenings of last night I take it?"

Bill snorted and tugged on his ear.
"What do you reckon?"

Mister Bailey glanced around at the upper windows facing down on the street. His head nodded as he acknowledged every single building. Until his eyes fixed on a certain window, across from the bank. He spoke to Bill without lifting his attention from that window.
"The owner of the bank is dead."

Bill stepped closer, his voice soft.
"Old misery guts, Ashbury?"

The Sheriff nodded abruptly, then tore his stare from the window to fix Bill with a steady gaze. His voice wavered slightly.
"Yeah. That's the man. Apparently he wound up with his throat slit in the lady's bathtub at the 'Spirit of the West'. No witnesses."

Bill raised his left eyebrow. A motion immediately reciprocated by the Sheriff as he tipped his head with a nod.
"Now, there's a surprise."

The two men stood lost for a moment. Neither knowing quite what to do or say.

Bill broke the stalemate.
"You think it's something connected with Hickey?"

The Sheriff turned his face to the ground. The dirty brim of his hat shielded his expression from Bill.

Bill had never been more sober. This could be the break he'd been hoping for in his friend's murder. Only one name had come to mind when the Sheriff had brought up the details of Hickey's blood left on Miss Molly's floor. And it was this name he spat out now, venom dripped on every syllable he uttered.

"Zimmerman."

Sheriff Bailey raised his head slowly, a sly wrinkle of a smile edged its way on his top lip. When he spoke it floated across as breezy as the warm ebbs of wind that spun through the valley the town had been built in.
"Now, that's not something we can make conclusions on so easily there, Bill. There's certain proceedings and routes we have to take before naming names."

Bailey's smirk dropped along with the volume of his words, just for a second.
"My money would be on that front runner, as you suspect, but there's a lot we have to prove."

Bill sniffed and stamped his scruffy boot into the dust.
"Yeah," he scowled. "I guessed as much."

Bailey reached out a hand to grasp hold of Bill's faded shirt-sleeve. His clear, dark eyes glared out from under the shadow of his hat. He growled low to Bill, before scanning the town windows again.
"We need proof this time. We need Molly to implicate him in Hickey's murder too, but she won't trust the law with that. Get her to open up, Bill. She'll talk to you I know. We can't do nothing without her help. You got that?"

Bill snatched his arm away from the Sheriff. He ran a hand over the stubble of his unshaven face and grumbled to himself while pushing past Bailey and continued his walk along to the Saloon.
"Damn, rich Townies."