OOM: Buchel Bank & Trust, Cuero, TX -- 1888

[ikissdhimbck]

The plan had been so simple.

Cuero's only about a five hour ride from Yorktown, across the Guadalupe by horseback. While the young Mr. Lehane, Mr. Adler, and Mr. Ferguson made themselves comfortable in Yorktown, Kate afforded two scouting trips. She only ever took Butch and Ace, her right-hand man and the lookout, leaving the other two to their devices. Folk remembered her — the young Mrs. Prudence Evans, whose husband the preacher was hoping to settle her somewhere kinder to her consumption — and Butch and Ace looked enough the part of two gentleman parishioners that nary an eye lingered in suspicion.

Everything was as it should be.

They were so confident.

It should have been easy.




11:17
on the morning of Saturday
JULY 28th


Kate's fine laced boots touch down in a shallow mud puddle. Beaut's skin twitches, and she sidles closer to Arrow, while Salty comes up on her right side. The mud draggles the blue skirts Kate wears on her way to the boardwalk. She's calm, and prim, hands gloved in brown leather, hair up in curls and bonneted. She enters the bank first, on business with Mr. Buchel.

The other boys will follow.

Comments

[theresnodoor]

The grizzly was one of her very first morphs and her preferred go-to for every battle. Over the years, that means hundreds of morphs, hundreds of battles, hundreds of times she’s felt the grizzly in the back of her mind and lifted paws the size of frying pans to brandish three-inch long claws.

And it’s never getting old.

If she needs to, she can taunt the officers with thoughtspeak later - since the one present is soon joined by a handful of others and, Rachel notes, one or two men right off the street who happened to be armed. Gun control is simply appalling here, really.

But if she’s going to do this right, she’ll need to do it in stages. Let them get comfortable before startling them again. So for the moment, Rachel’s content with letting Kate get her men away and continuing to heave all seven hundred pounds of her present shape in a calm walk down the street, toward those armed men.

[i_got_vision]

Butch shoves the Pinkerton’s stolen gun into his pocket as he hurries toward the horses--well, he’s not so worried about needing to shoot at anybody right now; his fellow robbers have shown they’re more than willing to do so, and anyway he needs a hand free for actually getting on his horse and away.

And this is where his training and practice is very handy. His borrowed horse, Salty, isn’t bothered at all as he comes running up and jumps on. The perfect getaway horse, really. Reminds him of the one he’d had when they’d hit Castle Gate--but this isn’t a time for reminiscing. This is a time for getting the hell out of here.

[ikissdhimbck]

"Ferguson! I swear t'god I will put a bullet in your ass if you even think about stoppin' t'shoot at that animal! Git! Git while the gettin's good!"

Butch is already in the saddle and off, and good for him. She knew she could count on him to keep his head, especially since she pulled him aside the night they met up in Yorktown, explained she was bringing in somebody from the bar to help with creating a diversion. He's got half their haul, and once they stop knocking into each other Adler's off with the other half, followed by Ferguson.

Kate laughs as she takes the saddle, even as the first shots ring out. She wouldn't be surprised if they were coming from the boys riding out, two-bit half-breeds.

"Give 'em hell, Rachel!" she calls, once she's the last one left.

[theresnodoor]

And they’re riding off before the best part, even! So far as Rachel’s concerned, anyway, having spent most of the afternoon tucked into an alley going crazy with boredom.

Right now, she’s putting most of her concentration on walking in a straight line toward a huddle of blurry figures she is really hoping are the lawmen she’s meant to be distracting. And her guess work comes in handy.

Because one of them just shot her.

Stinging pain in her shoulder, surprising her into a sharp bark of a cry and oh, for those who think Rachel has an attitude, they should worry more about what happens when Rachel and the grizzly in her head get pissed off.

Rearing up on her back legs, standing seven and a half feet tall, Rachel brandishes huge paws, hopes she’s facing the correct direction, and lets out a roar to rattle the rickety old foundations of that nearby bank.

Try shooting that, folks.

[ikissdhimbck]

Oh, no they didn't just shoot Kate's friend. She hangs back a moment, just to make sure Rachel'd be all right, and even though it looks like that bullet was no worse than a bee sting to the seven-hundred-pound grizzly, Kate still sees red.

She levels her Smith & Wesson .38 at the closest gunman, who's still a good hundred feet off, and tags him in the elbow. His pistol hits the dirt and he grabs his arm with a howl of pain. Sadly, it gets somewhat lost in the booming roar Rachel emits.

Kate blinks.

She watches for another few moments, counting heads — and, most importantly, guns — before a bullet hums by her ear. Beaut whinnies and starts, and Kate knows it's time to go. She trusts Rachel to take care of herself. Even if she has every intention of coming right back here if the girl doesn't meet up at the checkpoint in the next half hour.

With just two men running out of the sheriff's office (and one stopping, turning partially liquid, and running back), three in the street, and a whole lot of innocent women and children running for cover, she doesn't think it'll even take her that long.

She spurs Beaut forward, bonnet flying clean off her head and tumbling in the dirt behind her.

Yep.

That went well.