a little S A L V A G E_{monty}

[Jayne Cobb]

It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was starting to go down, finally. Jayne was sweating like a hog about to become Sunday bacon and he was sure that what he smelled on himself was not nearly as bad as what everyone else was smelling. Perhaps that's why Mal had sent him off to deliver a mule full of the goods they had just salvaged to a designated drop point. Monty and his crew would meet Jayne there while Mal and the ship went up into orbit and lie low until Jayne sent the signal to come and get the goods that Monty was leaving in turn. Smuggling was such an odd business, trusting those who helped you out but still not turning your back, even if they were old war buddies with the captain.

The mule was kicking up dust behind her as she rode along the hot, scrubby desert, and Jayne hummed a little tune to himself as he went along. Tiny beads of sweat were forming on his brow and pooled together and dripped down his face - he let them. He would be glad of getting into a town and selling the goods, and then taking leave to go to a bathhouse and be bathed by beautiful women in next-to-nothing, covered in fine silks and oils and massaged... his eyes darted up quickly and he straightened out the Mule. It was getting to be dark now and he couldn't just let the mule wander all over, it would be careless. While he was sometimes careless, he couldn't be on the job, he had to focus.

Jayne's eyes peered out and the mule's coordinates were starting to be the numbers that Mal had given him. He slowed and eventually stopped, right on the spot. Now all he had to do was wait, and then Monty would arrive, the crew would unload their own goods and then put on the stuff from the salvage that Mal had sent Kaylee on earlier. That girl had found some good stuff, some pretty expensive equipment, anyway, that was either in moderate condition or just needed a quick repair job to get it going. There were no lawmen out this way, and none of them would care a single fig about a few missing parts - they never seemed to in the past, anyway.

The sun finally wavered and winked behind the horizon and Janye kicked his feet up, leaning back and staring up at the stars coming out. That's where he wanted to be, back in the black on Serenity moving on to another job. But first, this one.

[Monty Walters]

Monty had to squint his eyes slightly as the dust flew up around him. Though Teresa settled down smoother than many of the ships that Monty had served on, she did kick up a powerful amount of dust when she came in for a landing. Of course, that sort of problem could easily be solved by not standing in the cargo bay with the door slightly open during landings. But Monty liked being ready to get business started almost immediately. Several of the places that he did his business weren't exactly safe to linger in. Of course, he trusted Mal, but there was always the chance that a third party would have gotten a whiff of the deal and might try to interfere.

Speaking of whiffs...as Monty stepped up to the man on the mule, he caught a scent that didn't agree too well with his nose. Still, it probably wasn't a good idea to comment. After all, Monty doubted that he'd smell much better after loading all the cargo onto that mule in this heat. Plus, the man sitting in the mule, though not quite as large as Monty, was still big enough to make a man want to be careful what he said. Monty strode up to the mule and extended a hand, having to reach up slightly to reach the man in the driver's seat.

"Howdy there, you must be Jayne. I'm Monty, and this here's my crew." He gestured towards the men who were still in the cargo bay of the ship. "If you don't mind, they'll go ahead and get started on unloadin' all our cargo, while I take a look at what Mal's got for us."

[Jayne Cobb]

oc- I think Jayne and Monty already know each other from previous jobs, Silver... it's implied by Kaylee 'Do we not like Monty anymore? He was so nice!'

The ship came quicker than Jayne realized and he swung his feet off the mule, just in case he had to get up and run somewhere quick, since you never could know nowadays. It set off a nice wind as the propulsion slowed in the vertical descent, and Jayne was glad for the breeze that threatened to knock him over. Dust kicked up and he knew that he would be pretty filthy for those girls to wash - focus Jayne! The hatch opened and the crew of the Teresa scrambled out, eager to load the cargo from the mule. They unloaded what was on the mule quickly and quietly, something that Jayne would have done with talking to his fellow shipmates, and then started unloading their own goods.

"Monty!" Jayne roared with glee as the burly man came toward him. Jayne jumped off the mule and reached for the hand outstretched to him, giving it a vigorous pump and also patted the man's shoulder. "Has it been so long that we need to be reintroduced, really?"

Jayne let his laughter peel out over the empty desert and slapped his thigh. The man had always been funny, taking jokes out even on Mal, his old war buddy. Jayne had to respect a guy like that, and even though he'd fought in the war, Monty was still a good man. he took good care of his crew, gave 'em plenty of work and still found it within him to include Mal on some of his jobs. The running ones especially, when you'd need four or five ships to get a cargo safely across borders. It was tricky, but when you had an ounce of trust in the other captains, Jayne knew that it had to be easy.

"All the cargo's there and accounted for," Jayne said plainly, indicating the boxes he had carried in with the mule. "Good parts too, Kaylee looked over the majority of them and said that they'd fetch a fair price."

[Monty Walters]

((oc--ah...right...yeah, probably should have thought of that. *headdesk*))

Monty grinned, his charade having been exhausted. For a second, he had thought that he had Jayne going for a second--but no, the near-mercenary had seen right through it. Monty didn't know Jayne as well as he knew Mal (in fact, there were few people still alive in the 'Verse that he knew better than Mal) but he could tell that the big man was a lot more insightful than most of Serenity's crew gave him credit for. Sure, he would never be the brightest bulb on the tree--but then again, neither would Monty. Neither of the men took too much stock in what might be called book learning, but Monty could see that more was going on in Jayne's often thick skull than met the eye.

Monty hadn't been quite sure what to make of Jayne when he first met the man. At first, he seemed deceptively simple. He was there on the ship because Mal was paying him more than he'd be making otherwise. Of course, that implied that Jayne would just as quickly leave Mal if someone offered to pay him more. For a while, that stumped Monty--would Mal really trust the safety of his crew to a man who would go with the highest bidder? As he got to know the man better, he began to see a sort of twisted code of ethics in Jayne. While he was not what almost anyone would consider morally scrupulous, or even honorable in Mal's slightly skewed version of the word, there were certain codes that Jayne seemed to go by--occasionally. It was hard to tell how he would react to certain situations, but he was certainly trustworthy enough to get by with.

Plus, he was one hell of a drinking buddy.

"Don't know if we need to be introduced again, but you sure look different. Last time I saw you, you were wearing that hat your ma made you like you were never going to take it off." He laughed heartily, and took a look at the cargo. "If little Kaylee says the parts are good, that's good enough for me. I ain't seen many girls--or men, for that matter--what know parts as well as her. Tell me, how are things on that old rustbucket you call a ship?"