As the stars spread overhead, business at the River Snake began to heat up. The more popular of the two saloons, it had three card tables in the back and a shotgun behind the bar.

The barkeep, a large man with balding head, wiped the worn counter with the same dirty rag he used to wipe the whiskey glasses.

His real name was Harvey, but folks in Misery called him Pete. There must have been a reason once, but the memory of it was lost even to him.

Near the back of the bar sat five folk at one of the card tables. A man leaning on the wall behind the table made six.

"Be careful with that money, Bruno," the standing man said, "you won't be able to buy a girl later the way you've been losing."

He was a burly man, with a head of thick brown curls and a heavy five o'clock shadow. He'd been toying with the idea of growing a mustache, but he wasn't sure he wanted to put the effort in.

"I can get me a girl for free, Anders," Bruno replied.

Anders snorted and took another sip of his whiskey.

Two of the men at the table had arrived with him from Chicago and after the better part of a week in their company, Anders would have enjoyed a quiet bath to himself, but business was business and he couldn't abandon a lead.

He also couldn't trust Bruno not to get himself killed in a bar fight. He was a fair hand with a pistol, but he couldn't outgun every cowboy in the River Snake, and if anyone was capable of ticking off a whole room of gunslingers, it was Bruno.

Lean and fair skinned, Bruno didn't look particularly like a weasel, but it was what Anders thought of whenever he looked at him. The man was all bullshit and bravado.

Reg, his other man, was every thing Bruno was not. Stocky and dark, he had the easy charm of a man who was used to people liking him. Anders found it perplexing that he had chosen to join the Pinkerton Agency. Reg wasn't afraid of a little hard work, but he had the lacksadaisical air of a man who was never in a rush.

The three other people at the table were local to Misery, and strangers to him, but folk were always eager to talk if you were willing to listen.

Aron tapped his pipe on the soul of his boot, loosening the old tobacco so he could fill it anew. He folded more than he played and Anders had the impression he was less interested in money than he was in flapping his gums.

"You ever eaten rattlesnake?" Aron asked.

"Can't say that I have," Reg replied.

Aron chuckled. "Don't know what you're missing. I tell you, rattlesnake, if you cook it up right, is a damn fine meal. You see, the trick is-"

"It's your bet," Fanny interrupted.

Aron looked around the table, surprised. "Is it?"

Fanny flashed him her teeth in a way that was more snarl than smile and Anders didn't miss the way her fingers tightened against the edge the table.

She was pretty enough for a woman in trousers, but Pete had warned him off. Plenty of men had tried, he said, but he'd never known one to succeed.

Fanny had been one Jin's girls once, but the third time she broke a man's finger Jin had been forced to let her go. She collected bounties now, and both she and menfolk of Misery were all the happier for it.

Aron, unphased by Fanny, scratched absently at a spot below his ear, then knocked on the table. "Call. What was I saying then? About rattlesnake, wasn't it?"

"You gotta put another two bits in if you want stay in the game," Reg said. "Bruno raised."

"Did he, now," Aron said, thoughtfully chewing the stem of his unlit pipe. "Well, I fold then."

He tossed his cards down and patted at his shirt pocket. "Say, any of you fine folk gotta light?"

Ma, the fifth and final player at the table, removed a match from her matchbox and lit the end of a tightly rolled cigarette before holding the flame out for Aron to light his pipe.

She was a small woman of Asian descent, probably the daughter of a railroader. Memme, the piano player, had told Anders she'd shown up in Misery some thirty years back with nothing but one saddle bag, a fistful of coins and the devil's own luck at cards.

She tossed a quarter into the pot, then flipped the next card.

"Call," Fanny said.

Reg sucked his teeth for a moment, then knocked once. Bruno tossed another two bits into the pot, and Ma matched him. Fanny hesitated only a moment before pushing her coin in, but Reg tossed his cards down.

"Too rich for me," he said.

Reg rose from the table and made his way to the bar, pausing briefly to speak with the piano player.

Memme, his plum bowler cap tilted at a jaunty angle atop a mop of dark curls, made a reply, but the words were lost in the din of the saloon.

When he wasn't playing the piano, Memme was a talker. He spoke often of other great musicians who had inspired him, and of the many things he knew.

For instance, he knew he was the best pianist in town. He also knew the best way to please a lady, and consequently, he knew which windows to crawl out of when the husbands came home.

Memme had also previously been associated with a disreputable group of people, and knew quite a few disreputable things, but that was a tidbit of information he generally kept to himself.

In fact, Memme would have been surprised to learn that one other person in the room was aware of his past.

It was the reason Anders was in Misery. He had not picked the River Snake for it's popularity.

Memme was the key to finding the Jack Cadence Gang.

Unfortunately for Anders, what he didn't know was that he would have found the Jack Candence Gang a lot faster if he had just gone to the other Saloon.