Does this work as an introduction?
Joe Grushnark-Baxter shook his head as the last gunman tumbled down the hill. Damned fool should have known when to leave well enough alone. Him and his friends.
He looked down, saw that the aforementioned damned fool was still kicking from the bullet in his head, and aimed down the barrel — and then stopped. Bullets weren’t cheap. Besides… Joe looked back over his shoulder and asked, “These all of the point-ears?”
One of the halflings now crowded up against the bars of their jail-cart snorted. There were five of them, all looking more than a little battered, but this one had a spectacular shiner. “And just why should I tell you, tusk-mouth?”
Joe thought about getting mad for a moment, before conceding it was a fair question. He stooped, shucked a hoop of keys off of one dead elf’s belt, and tossed the hoop at Shiner. The halfling might have only one eye working at the moment, but he still snapped it out of the air like a frog snagging a fly.
“Because I said please?” Joe said, taking pains to be polite.
Shiner had already somehow gotten the right key in the door lock. “I’m sorry to say you did not, good sir,” he said as the door popped open. That just left his and the other halflings’ neck chains, but Shiner was working on that as he talked. “Say please, I mean.”
“You’re right, I didn’t. Fine. These all of the point-ears, please?”
It was amazing, how fast short halfling fingers could move. “All in this slaver party, sure.” Shiner grinned at him. “There’s another five outriders, scouting out for trouble and more folks to grab. I figure they’ll be coming back hells for leather, now that they heard the shots.”
“Well, damn.” Joe had been reloading his revolvers and checking his rifle; they looked fine, but you always checked. “Shame they’re not four. I don’t care about their guns, or the mules. You want ‘em, take ‘em. But get somebody to put that poor bastard down there out of his misery.”
“Oh, I figure one of the boys is taking care of that,” Shiner said as there was a sudden, if brief, commotion at the bottom of the hill. “But you ain’t gonna ask us to stick around?”
“Nope,” Joe said. “Skedaddling’s smart, even if it’s on a mule. And if there’s five outriders here, then there’s probably a damn regiment or two of the point-ears real close by. They’re not gonna get any happier about what happened here.”
“Sure. So why ain’t you running? This an orc thing?”
“Nope.” Joe wished he had some tobacco to chew, so that he could spit it. “This all started when these sons of bitches shot my horse.”