Injun Jack served up grits, bacon, and biscuits. The hungry survivors took plates and cups and filed past the counter helping themselves before finding seats. Danni and Miss Fifi went from table to table pouring coffee. There wasn’t much conversation, as the annihilation of Gray Gulch had left them in a shocked state. There was a party of five seated around two conjoined tables. Apparently during the night the three late-arriving strangers had made the acquaintance of the McNutt brothers, Shane and Edgar, who now shared their table. The McNutts were reputed to have been involved in a very nasty bit of business in Cincinnati.

When everyone was served, Miss Fifi took a seat between Dwayne and Bloody Jim, the latter of whom rose and held her chair for her.

"Morning Miss Fifi." said Dwayne and Mona as one.

"Morning Dwayne, Mona."

They ate in silence, but with good appetite, all things considered. Bloody Jim found the grits, bacon, and biscuits reasonably palatable, but nearly choked on the coffee. Drifting through Missouri and the Dakota badlands, he had occasion to drink some pretty wretched coffee, but the Gilded Lily served the vilest, bitterest stuff he had ever encountered. It tasted as though it had been brewed in a boot. He normally drank his coffee black, but even cream and sugar were of no avail. He produced a flask from his coat, and cleansed his palate with a slug of rotgut. They each took a shot in their coffee, discovering that each masked, to some degree, the taste of the other. Dwayne twisted up a smoke.

"What a mess out there." said Mona finally.

"Yep, they're all gone," said Dwayne,"Steve, Ernie, Fat Jack, Gimpy, Jeff, Malachi, the sheriff and his wife…all of 'em." He shook his head in disbelief.

"When it clears up a bit, we can assess the damage." he said.

The sun rose, the day grew warmer, the fog thinned to a leaden sky. Moisture evaporated from the drenched earth. Randy retraced his steps, slogging through the mud. He averted his eyes as he passed the bent scrub oak where Jethro was beginning to attract crows. Near his collapsed tent was the dead horse stream. The stream ran clear, and among the pebbles that lay at its bottom, he noticed another glint of gold. He picked up a nugget almost as big as the one that had stuck to his boot. He looked up the stream. It flowed from the foothills to the north. He pulled a pair of brown trousers and a flannel shirt from the folds of his tent. His hat and his gunbelt too. He looked back toward the Gilded Lily. Apparently no one had noticed his absence. Good.

There was a tin of hard biscuits and some buffalo jerky among the scattered debris near Randy's campsite. And a case of rotgut that must have come from the general store. One bottle had survived the twister's fury. He stuffed it in his pack.

In a short time Randy was ready. He stood in the shallow water at the edge of the stream and let it wash the mud from his boots. The gully was not very deep, though perhaps twenty feet wide. Scattered rocks of varying sizes were strewn about, giving him a solid, if uneven footing. Using a tent pole as a walking stick, he headed upstream. He hurried up the gully toward the foreboding hills until he was out of sight of the Gilded Lily. Before an hour had passed, he found another nugget of a similar size to the two he had previously acquired. He dropped it in a leather pouch he had hanging from his belt. He took a drink of rotgut, and continued on his way.

By mid morning it was business as usual at the Gilded Lily. Injun Jack played an uninspired version of Camptown Racetrack on the scorched upright piano. Virgil and Mona were dancing. Earl was cleaning glasses. It wasn't until Brewster attempted to pay for a drink, that he noticed his pockets were turned out. Then he realized his boots were missing. He made quite a fuss, but no one paid the slightest attention. He took the seat that Jeff had occupied the previous day at the bar, and eventually persuaded Earl to let him have a bottle on credit. The three strangers were playing cards with the McNutts. Velvet and Dannie sat at a table with Tom Dinglebury, Lefty, and a kid named Kevin. Darrel and Lance sat together as usual, sharing their private jokes. Bloody Jim poured Miss Fifi a glass of rotgut. Brandi walked up to them as they sat at the bar.

"Anybody seen Randy?" she asked.

"Can't say I have Sweetie" Miss Fifi replied.

"Nor I," concurred Bloody Jim, "The last time I saw him, he was sitting on the steps scraping his boots."

"Okay, thanks." Brandi left them, and continued her inquiry elsewhere.

Bloody Jim and Miss Fifi watched her talking to the three strangers and the McNutts. The McNutts attempted to paw Brandi, but she managed to stay outside their groping hands. The three strangers shook their heads in the negative, and she moved on to the next table.
"Something about those guys I don't much like." Said Miss Fifi.
Bloody Jim snorted with a suppressed laugh. The Brothers McNutt were scum. They were dangerous killers, utterly devoid of redeeming characteristics. But if he was any judge of character, Shane and Edgar were choirboys next to the three strangers. He wondered what had brought them here. Since his arrival in town, events had taken on an almost mythical quality. He felt as though the great cyclone was but a harbinger of things that had yet to occur, and a convergence of forces was coming to bear on Gray Gulch. If not for the release he had found in Miss Fifi's welcome embrace, the tension he felt would have been almost unbearable. Miss Fifi, he was coming to believe, was quite a remarkable woman, even if one were able to disregard her astounding breasts. He tossed off a slug of rotgut.

The stony soil around Gray Gulch does not hold water for long. By noon the sun beat down through the steamy atmosphere, and the mud had firmed up enough for Brewster to recover Jeff's boots. As he pulled them on, Bloody Jim stood looking at Randy's footprints. Two sets of footprints. He said nothing, as others began to assemble on the portico.
"So what now?" Asked Kevin, the kid. There was some mumbling and shuffling about as the uncertainty of their situation became evident.
"Maybe we oughta form some kinda posse or somethin'" Tom Dinglebury suggested.
"Posse? How the fuck can we form a posse if they ain't no sheriff?" Rejoined Lefty.
"That lazy sheriff couldn't find his ass with both hands, much less form a posse." Miss Velvet commented.
Tom pushed his ten-gallon hat back on his head. "Well, technically, a posse can just be a bunch of folks organized to make a search."
There was a pause as that point was considered.
"I ain't joinin' no fuckin' posse." Said Shane contemptuously.
"Me neither." Edgar concurred, spitting in the street to emphasize his point.
"Look, posse shmosse, we are all stuck here." Brandi joined in, "We need to see if there are any survivors, we need to find food, and horses if there are any left. We need to bury the dead."
Unsurprisingly, her comment was ignored, and there continued to be a heated debate over whether they should call themselves a posse.
Bloody Jim stood idly by, watching the discussion with bemused detachment. He observed the three strangers take note among themselves of Randy's tracks in the drying mud. Edgar McNutt pissed in the street as his brother leaned on the portico railing picking his teeth.
"You do what you want," said Earl, I'm staying here to guard the Lily." He turned, and went inside.
"Okay," said Tom, "Who wants to join the posse?"
"I do! Me! Me! Me!" Darrel raised his hand eagerly. "I've always wanted to be in a posse!"
Lance also raised his hand, "Oh, count me in!"
Tom grunted. "Okay Darrel and um…Lance. Kevin?"
"Okay." The kid was game.
"I'm in." Said Velvet.
"Well excuse me Miss Velvet, but you ain't exactly dressed to go traipsin' around out there in that fancy yeller dress and all them feathers." Tom said as diplomatically as he knew how.
"I'll change, you pork barrel!"
Tom, like most of the Nugget's regulars had become accustomed to Miss Velvet's abrasive manner of speaking. "Okay then. Anybody else?"
"If you ask me it's a search party, not a danged posse," but lefty raised his hand.
"Injun Jack," said Brandi, "Danni and me are going to get dressed. Then you can help us see what's salvageable from the general store. C'mon Danni." The two women went to their quarters in the hotel. Injun Jack grunted, and sat on the steps. Brewster sat down next to him, adjusting his new boots.
The posse stood about, waiting for Miss Velvet to return.
"Well Frank?" Asked Miss Fifi. "Whaddya say?"
"I say there are some odd things happening here." Bloody Jim smiled a tight smile. "I'd like to search the north camp." He indicated the direction of Randy's tracks.
Now the interesting thing about Miss Fifi "Tits" La Rue, discounting the obvious, was that while she was everybody's baby, she was nobody's fool. She knew full well that something was happening up in those hills, and since her services were not required at the Nugget, she was determined to be a part of it. "I'm going too." She said. "Wait for me."
"I don't think that's a good idea," said Bloody Jim, "for a number of reasons…"
"Wait for me."
The look in her eyes told Bloody Jim that it would be pointless to argue. He nodded.
"Okay if we join you Frank?" Virgil asked.
Bloody Jim looked at Virgil. He had an impression that the man was both honest and capable. As long as he had agreed to allow Miss Fifi to accompany him, there seemed no point in denying Mona. "Alright," he said, " Ladies, don't be too long." He saw the three strangers and the McNutts checking their guns. Waiting. "Virgil, what do you say to a drink while we wait?"
"Sounds good Frank." Said Virgil. He kissed Mona. "Hurry up Babe."
"We'll be right back." Said Miss Fifi, taking Mona by the arm and heading for their rooms.
Bloody Jim felt the eyes of the mustachioed stranger following as he walked into the saloon with Virgil.

A full hour had passed before Miss Fifi and Mona were ready. Bloody Jim whistled long and low when he saw their outfits. Miss Fifi wore tight dungarees tucked into finely crafted leather boots. An unbuttoned green plaid shirt tied beneath her breasts, if anything, actually accentuated their size and shape. Wisps of auburn hair fell free under her green broad-brimmed hat. Her make-up was toned down a bit, and he realized that she was actually rather pretty. Mona was a smaller but equally striking version in red. The little blonde bounced with excitement, eager to do something besides cater to the bums in the Golden Nugget. Virgil grinned in obvious delight at her appearance.
As they stepped off the portico, Injun Bob could be seen carrying two sacks of flour from the ruins of the general store. Danni and Brandi were searching the rubble for sundry supplies. Brewster sat on a keg of black powder, drinking a bottle of reclaimed rotgut and supervising. The others were gone. Bloody Jim saw more prints following the deep impressions that Randy had made.

They searched the campgrounds, and the hills and gullies to the north of town. Crows scattered at their approach, rising with raucous scolding from their grisly feasts, mostly horses with exposed ribs and gaping eye sockets, but occasionally human remains. They found no new survivors. From a rise they looked back and saw the Golden Nugget, relatively pristine amid the ruins of Gray Gulch. On the gradual slope south of town Tom Dinglebury and his "posse" could be seen in the process of bringing some corpses to the burying ground on the back of a mule they had recovered. Scattered about the plain were various items the storm had dispersed at random. The land gradually flattened as it approached the horizon, broken only by the silver streams that flowed in the normally dry creek beds, and the brown snaking desolate trail whose final traces disappeared where they stood. It was a sobering moment. Bloody Jim passed a bottle of rotgut, and they all took a swig.
"Not much we can do here," Said Virgil, wiping his mouth, "If anybody else's alive, they have to be up there." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the hills at his back. Bloody Jim, Miss Fifi, and Mona turned in silence, and gazed at the rising bluffs, and the massive ridge that towered dark, and foreboding. Virgil remained facing southward. He knew only too well what stood behind him. He shuddered. Mona turned, and wordlessly put her hand in his.
"That must be Randy's tent," said Bloody Jim, indicating a pile of canvas near a stream on the western slope of their hill, "only one still attached to the ground." He led the way down to it. The soft ground around Randy's tent held many boot prints, boot prints that could be seen to run from the Golden Nugget, and to the crumbled embankment of the stream. They looked down into the gully at the burbling runoff. Crows circled and landed on the dead horse maybe forty yards downstream. More boot prints could be seen in the red clay where several had climbed down. It didn't take an experienced tracker to see which way they headed.
North.
"Well," said Bloody Jim, "do we follow?"
There was a prolonged silence.
"I've been looking at these fucking mountains every day since I came to Gray Gulch," Miss Fifi finally said, "we all have. Wondering what's up there."
"I dream about them at night." Mona added softly, holding Virgil's arm.
"We need supplies." Virgil said at last.
There was a tacit agreement, and they scoured the area, coming up with dried biscuits, pinto beans, coffee and blankets. Virgil and Bloody Jim inspected their revolvers, and a Remington rifle they found in a crevice among the rocks. There were no extra shells, but a single round was in the chamber. The four of them picked their way down the slippery slope to the rocky streambed. They looked once more at Gray Gulch, just visible above the bank.
Bloody Jim drew a deep breath and led the way up the deepening ravine, and into the shadowed hills.