Arthur Morgan yawned slightly, covering his mouth, and looked around. The streets of Valentine lay before him, a small, dusty town waking to the soft light of the early morning sun. Its golden rays glided gently across the tiled roofs, refracting in the dewdrops on the wooden shutters, touching the dusty windows of the shops and emphasizing the light haze still lingering from the cold night.

It was as if the world had fallen silent for a while, with occasional sounds interrupting the silence: the clatter of a horse's hooves, whose neighing echoed in the empty alleys, the creak of a door opening at the butcher's shop where a local had started the day by buying game. The vapor from human and animal breath rose slowly into the air, dissolving into the light of the new day. Smoke from the chimneys slowly rose above the rooftops, reminding us that somewhere beyond these wooden walls, water was already boiling for coffee and a pan of bacon sizzling.

Arthur stood at the porch of the saloon, lazily playing his fingers along the edge of his cartridge case. He was in no hurry. It was that rare morning when nothing required hasty decisions, blood or steel words. Everything around him was imbued with a warm silence, that special silence that comes between two moments-when the past has let go and the future has not yet arrived. Even his faithful horse, tethered at the post, seemed relaxed, chewing slowly on a bundle of hay, as if it, too, realized that this morning deserved a leisurely pace.

The sun continued to rise, casting golden light on Arthur's face, outlining the jagged features of his tanned, slightly tired, but in its own way beautiful face. There was something more than sleepy laziness in his gaze, an echo of reflection, a shadow of memory. Here, amidst the peaceful routine of Valentine, he felt for a moment like an ordinary man, not a criminal, not a fugitive, but just a man greeting the morning in a city that did not yet know that a storm was on its way.