Ignition: Day 5

Word Count: 30,108

Summary of Events:

Dr. Carrigan came by to check on Keiller and Rebekka's wounds, and despite Keiller's feeling much better, Dr. Carrigan still advised caution, as he was concerned about any damage that might've been suffered internally from Keiller's gunshot wound. Since Keiller didn't accompany Dr. Carrigan as he checked on Rebekka, she willingly confessed to him that she was feeling cold, seeing as her dress had no sleeves, and he told her that he'd ask his wife if she had any spare dresses. Mrs. Carrigan came by later and told Keiller that she wanted to measure Rebekka to know what size of dress Rebekka wore, and Keiller obligingly showed her down to the cell . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Arriving at the cell, Keiller gestured to his prisoner, who was, as usual, looking at him indignantly. Mrs. Carrigan arrived and looked toward the prisoner, an immediate expression of appall coming over her face.

“Why hasn’t she gotten clean clothes?” Mrs. Carrigan asked. “Or a hairbrush? Her hair could be in horrible mats! It’s undignified!”

“I don’t recall it being on my list of duties as Marshal to ensure my prisoners look presentable,” Keiller replied bitterly.

“It needn’t be,” Mrs. Carrigan replied. “It ought to be common sense to afford to others we ourselves enjoy.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” Keiller asked. “I didn’t cause her to look like this.”

“Yes you did,” the prisoner spat, startling Keiller. “You took my hair ribbon and bound me up with it.”

“Well if you hadn’t taken my handcuffs I wouldn’t have had to,” Keiller retorted, recovering from his shock at her utterance with the aid of indignation.

“I left them beside you, if you would only have noticed,” the prisoner returned, standing up suddenly.

“If you hadn’t cocked my gun at me, maybe I would’ve felt about my surroundings before confronting the threat and getting shot,” Keiller spat.

“I didn’t mean to shoot you!” the prisoner exclaimed.

“Passing off blame isn’t going to do any good,” Mrs. Carrigan intervened, putting a hand on Keiller’s chest and — despite her being shorter than him — looking at him with the sort of look he could imagine her children having received when they were still under her roof. “The fact of the matter is that things need to be made right.”

As if Keiller wasn’t feeling indignant enough toward the prisoner for her remarks, now Mrs. Carrigan had to go and suggest that things were still his fault? Keiller couldn’t say he appreciated that at all.

He swore at them both and swept past Mrs. Carrigan, stalking to and up the stairs, then to his desk, where he sat down heavily on his chair and seethed. How dare Mrs. Carrigan suggest that he was in the wrong for not giving clean clothes and a hairbrush to a woman who had shot him — and bit him, and thrown a spoon at him that had left a more significant purple bruise than he’d expected — on top of robbing him, even if he had recovered all that she’d stolen, unless he’d had a couple cents more, but he wasn’t really going to worry about that much.

Where was he supposed to find clean clothes for the prisoner anyways? He didn’t have any dresses, nor did Cyril, and he knew for a fact that Mrs. Wharton would rather go about in public completely without clothes than lend even one of her dresses to the prisoner, and he hadn’t really seen anyone else outside of Dr. and Mrs. Carrigan since she’d come into his care.

Additionally, he didn’t have a hairbrush because his hair was short enough he could get away with combing it every morning, and again, Mrs. Wharton wouldn’t go lending her hairbrush any more than her dress.