Later…

The sun was high overhead, shadows clinging to their owners like frightened dogs. The tall trees around the mine groaned in the light wind.

The man in white lowered his hand to the well-oiled holster of his Colt revolver. “You’re not one of the miners.”

She pushed back her leather hat with her left hand, revealing thick blue-black hair in tight braids and steely black eyes. “Nope. My mother was a Navajo. My father was from the island of Japan.” She rested her other hand on a pair of swords in black sheaths, their hilts wrapped with cord.

The man nodded to the pistol at her other hip. “That gun is a brand. When you put that on, you’re wearing your own death.”

Her luminous eyes were ringed with black, constrasting the colorful beadwork in her form-fitting leathers. “Gotta make a living somehow. The way I see it, you and me are already dead.”

“You and I,” he corrected, red lips curling into a smile. He added in an ironic undertone, “Savage.”

They both laughed, and took their hands off the guns.