Thank you White scorpion and shovel 250 for the questions.... Not that any get answered here...but thinking about your comments inspired me. This is a prequal to the start of Marion's story http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131213 Ruby was standing in the back by the tables where she usually stood. The well dressed men would came in across the room through the saloon doors. They had to get by Jake and Will to get to her and the other girls, and the card tables. She always felt the same uneasiness she had the very first time she walked down the stairs and took up her position among the whores. You never knew who'd walk through that door; San Francisco in the Spring of 1849 was a very busy town. She enjoyed sex when it was good but that didn’t happen too often. At best it was usually over quick at the worst men punished her for their troubles. She tried to like them for her own sake; she succeeded some of the time too. She set most of the rules and the men of the wild west conformed to please and have access to her. She had learned not to laugh when she saw them naked. Oh, she did love the lifestyle, pretty closes, plenty to eat, pampered really and fun at night. She wasn’t ready to settle down to a sedate life of church picnics, tilling the soil, minding the children and darning ‘his’ socks. Not just yet. When she wanted that she knew she would have a fine man and hired help for "his" holy socks. Plenty had been through and asked her to leave with them. Not just yet. She was a shrewd and strong woman but getting old at 19. Ruby’s real name was Ruth Anne. She stood 5’ 11” with long flaming red hair, large pert breasts and legs that were only stopped from going on forever by the floor. She had a scar along her right jaw bone, about ½ inch long, discrete. She was a captivating woman. Her line would have to wait two hundred years and travel three thousand three hundred and 32 miles to see another woman like her (author's note this will be Marion's grand daughter). She could read, write, shoot, hide money and fuck. Still, to get out of here, when she was ready, someone would have to buy her contract from Seth; or kill him. Ruby had no way of knowing that she was going to be ready and that "he" would walk in to that saloon tonight.
The thing I love most about this, is that you have created a very believable atmosphere. You have concentrated on the insight of your character, something which many writers neglect. If I was to change something slightly, in an otherwise well written and researched paragraph, it would be the 'mending of his shirt' and replace it with 'mending of his socks', to make the thought of servitude even more degrading to her, and the reader. I'm curious to find out how she got the scar!
I originate from Pluto where it takes 248 earth years to orbit once around the sun, so really I'm zero years old, but the computer doesn't like that figure
