Evening, Sheriff. It’s been a quiet day in our sleepy little town.

[laugh] That’s a nice change of pace, ain’t it? A couple of years ago, you had rustlers and bandits and all kinds of varmints running wild here. The town had grown fast what with everyone looking for gold these days.

You’d already been through several deputies, and now no one wanted the job because it was a good way to end up on cemetery hill. Or under it, at least.

And as for me? I’d come out from back East trying to strike it rich by panning for gold too. Except I found myself dead broke by the time the wagon rolled into town. I needed money to stake my little operation.

Ain’t many jobs for a woman these days, here or back east. Either you’re married, or maybe you’re a school marm or something. I guess maybe here in the west there’s another option. Saloon girl. I don’t really know nothing ‘bout dancing, but… well, I wasn’t naive enough to know I was going to be doing most of that job on my feet anyway. I could probably get good money my first day as a virgin, and then work a while until I had enough money to put me back on track.

I almost walked into the saloon too. Had my hand on the doors there, and was about to go in.

But then I looked across the street, to your office here. I saw the sign posted for a deputy alongside all the wanted posters. So I turned my back on the saloon and it’s loud piano music and roughhousing inside, and walked right into your office.

To your credit, you didn’t laugh right in my face when I declared I was you next deputy. Back then, I think you hadn’t laughed at anything for a long time. You’d seen too many good men die as deputies, and no one else wanted the job now. And you told me that.

But you let me show you I could shoot. Oh, I never shot at anything bigger than a rabbit back home to help feed the family. But I pretty much never missed. I hit every bottle you lined up for me, and a few you tossed in the air.

Somehow I ended up with a badge. I think you were just as surprised as me. Maybe you were expecting me to give up as soon as things turned bad. But I showed I could handle myself breaking up a bar fight. It was wrasslin’ with my big brothers when I was younger, or dragging them home from the bar Sunday morning so they’d be ready for church.

And when the time came, I showed I could hit things a good bit bigger than a rabbit, and put them down just as well.

And somehow, we managed to clean this town up. Killed us some bad guys. Sent even more to jail. Other ones just decided there were easier pickings out there than our town, and moved on.

So these days it’s mainly just the occasional bar fight we have to break up, or someone passing through and causing trouble that didn’t know who they was messing with.

I had a meal brought over from the saloon by one of the girls. They don’t have to worry about the more unsavory types now thanks to us, so the saloon likes to send us over food as a sign of their gratitude.

But as I saw the girl today, I had to wonder.

What if I had walked into the saloon that day?

I’d probably still be there. It would have taken me a long time to make the money I needed. Long enough where I might have just decided that rather than breaking my back out looking for gold, I could just keep earning money lying on it.

And then I wondered if you and me would’ve… well, I know you go over to the saloon now and then, and not just to check how things are doing, or for their watered-down whiskey. You’ve got needs, same as every other man. I ain’t judging none, especially knowing what you’ve been through for this town. From what I hear, you tip the girls there well and are their favorite customer when you do go. So sure as shootin’ we’d have done it if I’d taken a job there.

Which got me thinkin'. Why should things be any different, just because I'm working on this side of the street instead?

Full Script Here

I actually did some research for this one, or tried to. There's just so much information out there, but also a lot of stuff that Hollywood and writers just made up. I tried to sprinkle in in some slang from the time, but knowing how accurate it was or the right context is hard. Some of the stuff used as slang then is still slang now, kept alive perhaps by the ongoing popularity of westerns. "Pirooting" for example is slang for sex, although it sounds a but weird to our ears. Anyone wanting to record this should feel free to change the slang to something more contemporary.

The deputy has an optional accent that could be either Old West or even Southern US, as that's where I see her as having come from. I tried to write the accent into the script, but if anyone wants to record it, they can feel free to ignore it if they want and just perform it without my poor attempts at getting an accent right. Any changes can be made to this script actually.

Also, the idea didn't escape me that this could also be a scene from Westworld, which changes things up quite a bit. That would allow me to explain away the many inconsistencies and slang issues, but raises other questions. But let's leave that undefined for now, and call it a Wild West story.

Thanks for reading this wall of text, and for reading the script itself, if you got that far. I hope you enjoyed it :)