They drank their beer in silence for some time until Frank excused himself and left the taproom for the privy in the backyard.
When he had failed to return after a solid ten minutes, Amanda began to be slightly worried, but Steve seemed relaxed and unperturbed, so she just toyed with her empty bottle. After five minutes more, Steve was just about to cast a look to the door when it opened and in came Frank, an expression of grim satisfaction on his face.

“You got stuck in the John, man?”
Frank sat down, lit a smoke, exhaled a long, bluish cloud, and leaned back. Just as he was about to open his mouth, Amanda noticed that his knuckles were scraped and slightly swollen.
“What the fuck happened to your hands?”
Frank looked at his right hand with raised eyebrows and shrugged. “There’s men who can’t leave another man to have a piss in peace and quiet.”
Amanda felt her eyebrows rise.
Frank chuckled. “Well, he stared at my dick like it was a brahmin on display and asked if you were paying us in caps or in kind.”
“In kind...?” It took Amanda a few seconds to get the implication of this and her face suddenly burned. “And what... what did you say?”
“Say?” Frank took another drag of his smoke. “I didn’t say anything, girl. What the fuck should I say to something like that?”
Steve leaned forward and folded his elbows onto the table. “But...”

The door opened and someone stumbled in. Steve, who was sitting with his back to the wall and faced the door, suddenly snorted and upon hearing that, Amanda followed his look, noticing a man heading for the bar with heavy steps. He had a black eye, a split lip and by the look of him, had very recently been bleeding from his nose. He also walked slightly doubled over. Upon spotting Frank sitting at the table in the corner he shot him a venomous look, but simply ordered a drink and vanished upstairs.
Amanda looked very slowly back at Frank who was smoking with a slightly amused expression as if thinking about some private joke.

“You... you didn’t by chance have anything to do with that shiner, did you?”
“Some insults are best answered without words, girl”, Frank gave back with a small smirk on his face.
Amanda shook her head with a self-conscious smile and leaned back as well. “Thanks for defending my honour, Frank.”
The contents of the ashtray suddenly seemed very fascinating to Frank who just replied: “Yeah, whatever, girl.”

After a few moments of silence, Amanda sighed. “I think we’d best hit the road tomorrow morning again. I don’t know... I don’t like this town.” Then she looked back and forth between her guards. “I was almost never harassed while travelling with my parents. Is it because my father isn’t here to glare at anyone giving me a look?”
“Could be”, Steve replied cautiously. “Back then, you were a merchant’s daughter. Now, you stand up for yourself. To most men, that spells out an invitation to at least try.”
“I see.” Amanda crossed her arms. “I guess it doesn’t really matter whether I’m ugly or not if I’m a piece of free meat.” With that she got up and avoided both their eyes. “I’m gonna hit the sack. See you tomorrow, guys.”

Both men watched her disappear up the stairs and only after she was safely out of sight and earshot did they dare to look at each other again.
“She doesn’t honestly think she’s ugly, does she?”, Steve asked, shaking his head.
Frank tapped off his ash. “Wouldn’t put it past her old man to make her believe that, so he’d have less of a job keeping her under control.”
“But... I mean, surely she’s had a look in the mirror every now and then?”
“I guess she only saw what she expected to see. What she’d been told to see.”
“But...” Steve broke off with a huff of frustration.
Frank shrugged. “I guess she’s gotta deal with a lot of things from that time of her life.”
“I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Neither do I.”

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