Boyd grunted slightly as Ronnie made her presence known to him. The rest of the bar had gone out of auditory focus before and her words had yanked him back to clarity and the realization that he was not the center of the universe. He often relied on his hearing more than his eyes this way, but it had yet to fail him. "Might be one of our last." He spoke in reply to her with almost an ominous air. Before he could pull his thoughts together and distill them into another sentence, Noella had also arrived on the scene. Boyd watched on for a brief moment as she handed over the bag of healing herbs. He could trust such things, even if Ronnie could not yet do the same. Noella's knowledge of medicinal herbs had made more than one of Boyd's past wounds wholly bearable.

Noella had disappeared to the other end of the room as quickly as she had appeared, and even though he would have liked to speak with her as well on an important matter, she was occupied with her own work and he was far too focused elsewhere. As if failing to miss a beat after his previous statement, Boyd tapped his forefinger on a piece of paper sitting under his glass. Raising his eyebrows slightly at Ronnie, as if she could read his mind, he inhaled deeply. "They killed Olyphant. The old guy... Just..." Boyd's fingers formed the shape of a gun as he aimed downward into an imaginary skull and pulled the trigger gently. "...Right in the middle of testifyin', and some thug walks in with a magnum and blows him away." Removing his glass from atop the piece of paper and sliding it across the table toward Ronnie, he sipped the murky alcohol with a bit more haste as if confirming that he wouldn't be staying too long. 

The paper was a message from a PMC courier addressed to Boyd's father. It was clear by Boyd IV's possession of it that it had not reached its intended recipient. The message was written in neat cursive and red:

[center][i]On this morning 1-11-58, Marcus Raymond Olyphant, under protection from Peace Keeper Riley Goodloe by the order of PMC Impi, was killed by a disguised assassin. One round (thought to be from a semi-automatic magnum handgun of some type) to the left temple ended his life, interrupting his testimony of events before the cleansing. As Riley Goodloe has found himself unable to maintain security within his own guild, PMC Impi would like to commission two or more members of your (Boyd Devereaux III) mercenaries to bring this assassin into custody before turning him over to the Fort Sakapo in Dallas, Texas. Your cooperation will bring you favor in our organization as well as the sum of $5,000. A member of our regiment has been posted in Nashville at the Indigo Memorial should you need further details. Please give him your reply so that he may return to us swiftly.[/i][/center]

The message had been previously sealed in ink by the official seal of PMC Impi, though Boyd's pen knife had made easy work of it. He watched Ronnie's face for some sort of response. He could trust anyone he had personally recruited, otherwise he wouldn't have done so. Most any other Peacer here would have been all too eager to let his father know of the message's interception simply to further the gap between the two men. "It could be the kick start I need to get Coyote back on its feet." Boyd referred to his private crew, previously raider shamed and slain.