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Ah, now we get to the nitty gritty. The Grand High Sultan of the Stock Growers Association, shrouded in smoke addresses the band of thugs. He’d previously claimed that the Governor was on board for his Hungarian murder scheme, why is he meeting them in such a shady, dramatic setting? Maybe the civic centre was already booked.
The price is announced – bounty hunters will be paid five dollars a day, plus expenses and fifty dollars for “every anarchist shot or hung”. Pictures are hung; people are hanged, actor from Law and Order. It’s possible that he is commissioning a team of very shabby and seedy looking artists to create portraits of the cattle thieves for display in a community centric exhibition and his sinister tone is the result of nerves from speaking in a dark, villainous locale. But more likely grammar is not a prerequisite for Emperors of the Stock Growers Association.
Meanwhile, “plus expenses”? What expenses would these goons be racking up to complete their work shooting people? Are they having business lunches? Claiming travel, postage, stationery and gifts under twenty dollars? And are they required to hang on to the receipts to claim back from the Stock Growers Association? How will the SGA explain that book-keeping anomaly to the tax office? “$6500? That’s just for miscellaneous mercenary expenses.”
