This town sure was a strange one. With folks cut from many different cloths and funny characters who contrasted like night and day. This was only supposed to be a hideaway town for John Ryder. A place he could live in solitude, live anonymously for a few weeks until taking off again, heading further north. Yet the simple town of Solomon had seen three years of the two faced outlaw. To the public, he was a blacksmith. Mostly fixed firearms and equipment. But who could survive on that? When the public eye was turned, John would take to the plains to do his own dirty work. The only thing being in a gang had taught him was that he didn't need one. It was safer to keep a low profile and run solo. 

This is precisely what John was doing that day in the Solomon saloon, amidst the smokey air and drunken gamblers. At a table in the corner, his feet up on the table and a glass in his gloved hand. His eyes shifted from behind the brim of his hat. Observing, intaking, understanding. Nothing escaped this outlaw's eye. The voluntarily naive bar tender, the quiet native by the piano, the group of drunken gamblers near the door. And the stranger who walked through the door. John could tell just by one glance, there was something different about this stranger. He was not threatening nor pleasant. It was some bizarre mixture of the two - something you didn't see a lot of in Solomon. 

Taking a sip of his drink, John kept his eye on the stranger, trying to read him. It wasn't long before a new set of characters entered the saloon. First it was the posse of infamous outlaws, practically stumbling into the establishment and claiming a table for themselves. John's eyes narrowed at them. They were foolish, clumsy, irresponsible, obnoxious. He had met men like them, he had run with men like them. And he knew they were only going to get themselves killed. Sooner or later, their arrogant demeanor would come back to haunt them. It was men like them who made problems for him; corrupting deals, dishonoring boundaries. They would get theirs. 

Next was the ego in a suit. John didn't even have to hear the man speak to know the kind of man he was. Watching from his corner, he watched as he charmed the gamblers and bartender alike, cleaning the gamblers out of their money and getting them to turn on each other instead of him. All this and more was captured in the outlaw's eye. And then he took another sip of his drink.