Al is awake in his bed, looking dangerous even when he's half-asleep. He rolls over, looking puzzled, when he hears a boozy voice in the street. A drunk is staggering around the hustings, taking advantage of the platform to speechify to no one. "I am not the fine man you take me for," he says. Al no doubt agrees as the guy continues, disturbing his attempts to fall back to sleep. His eyes shoot open as the dude goes on, giving his personal testimony of his time in Deadwood. He came there, he says, to sell a string of horses and try his luck at panning. "What I got for the stock," he says, "I lost at the wheel, and the flake I washed up, I drank the fuck away."

Al's face is impassive as he listens. The man says he doesn't know if he'll ever get home. "I sold my boots," he slurs. "I owe nine dollars to a whore..." With this, he passes out and, like a true hoople, manages to kill himself when he falls from the hustings and breaks his neck. What better way to illustrate the lesson Al's been trying to get us to understand for all this time? Democracy leads only to worry and death.

When the sun finally rises, Al goes to join Dan and Johnny who are out in the thoroughfare, pretty much in their underwear, checking out the dead guy. Dan is...barefoot, if you can even imagine it, and shirtless which...was just not necessary. I don't like to think of Dan in such a vulnerable state. W. Earl Brown is just my hero in so many ways. I don't want to see him looking vulnerable.

Johnny, on the other hand, is hanging out in his union suit. Guns drawn, they look over their shoulders, on the lookout for trouble. "It's just a brokeneck hoople, Al," Dan says, shrugging. Al's pissed anyway. No matter that they guy was no threat, he's mad that no one was on watch to protect the interests of the Gem. "Turns on watch, Johnny," Dan says, "'til this goddamned Hearst bidness settles out." Al, still looking rumpled and sleepy, scoffs a little. "Not that we lack options," he says. "Like the sleep from which none awaken." They turn to walk back inside and we see that Johnny is, shall we say, catching a breeze on the backside. "Will you close your flap," Al says, disgusted, "that I don't forgo my boiled eggs?"

In his rooms, Hearst studiously prepares a document, seals it with wax and hands it off to Captain Turner for delivery.