Django Durango

“What about this job?” Dixie said, holding her phone up for Cleo to see across the table. “Codename Braum. Doing an art gallery in Topeka.”

“Why would we subject ourselves to driving through Kansas?” Cleo asked, not looking up from her smash burger combo. She was not helping to search because a hamburger required two hands to eat and she didn’t want to get grease on her phone’s screen.

“Wait, Topeka is in Kansas?” Dixie asked. frowning.

“It’s the capital of Kansas, honey,” Cleo confirmed patiently. Then, curious, she asked, “Where did you think it was?”

“I don’t know.” Dixie’s face scrunched up, wondering that too. “Not Kansas. How valuable could the art from Kansas be?”
Read on…

The Soldier was grandstanding. Again. This happened at almost every meal. They would all sit around the camp fire, eat their rations, and Soldier would tell them all about fighting battles in the Mexican-American War. They generally just let him speak, but today…

“Every conflict has its causalities,” Soldier said in conclusion of today’s tale of patriotic heroism. “I lost a boot that day. I kicked Santa Anna’s ass so hard it got stuck in there so he got to keep it.” He put on a look of great solemnity and gave his lost boot a moment of silence.

Spy, though certainly disciplined enough to have contained his disbelief like any other day, chose not to on this one. It escaped him in the form of a skeptic snort.

“Oh yeah?” Soldier said, glaring across the fire at him. “And what would a Chinaman know about fighting wars, Chopsticks?”

Spy sneered and said, “The Chinese wrote the book on war.”