Place: Maddock Stagecoach Office

Time:Late Wednesday Afternoon

A young boy witha prominent Adam's apple and teeth already starting to buck out stands surveying four large crates stacked along the wall inside the stagecoach office. He hollers, "Hey Cletus!!"

Only silence echoes back. "Cletus!?! Hey!?!" The young boy swivels on his bare heels towards the back of the office. "What's all these crates here fer?" he inquires.

A balding man in overalls and displaying a very similar set of teeth pops his head up from behind the counter, "Ed, what the hell are you hollerin' about? Can't ya see I'm busy?" The balding man (Cletus obviously) ducks back behind the counter.

"What's these crates here fer? They gots some writing on the side but I can't read much. What they say?" The young boy, Ed obviously, is full of questions.

"USARMY is what they says and you leave them alone." answers Cletus from behind the counter.

"Why they stacked here in this office and not at the Depot." asks Ed as he kicks the side of one of these crates. He hunkers down and peers through the cracks of the crates and fires off another question, "What they got innim? Guns? Injun scalps?" Young Ed sticks his fingers through the cracks and tries to feel what's inside. He lets out a large War Whoop, "Whatever's inside is soft as a frog's underbelly. I bet its some injun scalps fer sure!"

Cletus's head pops back up, "Ed, I already done told you to leave them crates well enough alone. They sittin there cause that's where the Marshal said their gonna sit. And they don't contain no injun scalps neither, they army blankets that the Marshal brought down from Fort Benton, that's what."

Ed hops up on one of the crates and pulls a slightly moldy piece of bread from his overalls. He begins to pick out moldy parts and throws them on the floor, "Well maybe these blankets are made out of injun scalps... they gotta do somethin' with them after they buy them right? Hey, where's that Marshal? Was he carryin' guns and everything? Boy, I bet he can shoot. I sure would like ta carry a pair of pistols. Bam Bam!"

Cletus just mutters something from behind the counter, having given up on answering any more of the boys tireless questions.

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