Snippet #1937993

Dalton suddenly found himself addressed by a man with a dusty, dry accent. He turned and found that it was a man in a likewise dusty and dry coat, with a dusty, dry face. He faintly recognized him from somewhere, but couldn't quite place it. So many folks like him around here wore the same style of coat, they all got jumbled up in his head. This man could literally be anyone. He looked down at his waist and saw the gun holstered there, then quickly darted his eyes up. He seemed overly stiff and seized up at this point, almost comically like a soldier at attention. He stepped away from the food stand (and the rapidly generating line) before addressing the man.

"Ah... Yes, I suppose you could say I am quite out of my element here..." He raised one hand for a handshake, the other one clutching his massive steamer trunk. "Jacob Dalton, accountant. I'm from the, uh, the East Coast. Um... Massachusetts-Rhode Island-Connecticut Consolidated Republic, to be precise. I was offered a job out this way." Reaching his free hand into his jacket, he produced a letter and almost handed it to the man. It was practically in his hand when he read the postmark in the delicate handwriting of his fiancee.

"Oh, er, wrong letter, sir, I'll just..." He quickly snatched the letter back and stuffed it into his breast pocket, then withdrew another letter, printed on heavier stock. "Here."

It was in a simple font, small letters spelling out the terms of a job position with the Shaded Valley Transit Company. "They offered me a job at a post at the end of the line... Um, I'm an accountant, see, and the job was simply too good to refuse, so I pulled up stakes, and now -- here I am!" He raised his arms about himself and laughed nervously. "Here I am," he said, lower, less enthusiastically.

"What about you, sir? What are you doing here?" Jacob smiled, rocking on his heels. The train was sure taking a long time to offload...