Archie Downes // {RDR2}

Cramped and crowded, the Annesburg Saloon was bustling with life tonight. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of oil; it felt like wading through a bottle of molasses. Archie was posted up at the bar with a glass in hand. He didn't know what it was, only that it burned his throat like any other alcohol. He'd just asked the bartender for the lightest alcohol they had.

His job at the local mine wasn't making him a fortune, but it was enough to get him and his mother by. He's taken the torture and humiliation that came with working alongside the other workers like a soldier. Always making rude jabs at him for his mother's choice of work. Prostitution. He'd been begging his mother to quit, to let him make the money so she didn't have to give herself away to greedy men... But she never listens.

Now Archie was here, in this bar with the other scum of the world, watching men gamble their lives away and women give themselves freely to drunkards and abusers for a couple of bucks. Despite his predicament, he can't help but dream of something better, a way out of this way of life.

The silence of the saloon fills Archie's ears and snaps him out of his thoughts. His eyes are drawn towards the saloon entrance where an unfamiliar figure stands in the door, hat covering their face as they walk through the saloon. The current patrons part like the Red Sea around the stranger.

"Must be an outlaw," Archie thought to himself as his eyes wandered to the stranger's gun holster. His hands shook as he picked up his glass and took a long sip of the remaining liquid. He started to sweat bullets as the Outlaw approached the bar. The alcohol slipped down Archie's throat like mud. The stranger sits just a seat away from him.

Once the stranger was seated, the saloon exploded back to its loud and obnoxious activities. Though the saloon had an air of caution and hesitance. "What's so important about this stranger that has people freezing like statues..?" Archie asked himself.