by David Boop
That’s about when I heard a clatter behind me. When I turned around, the southbound stage was gaining on me. Four overworked drosaws hauled the coach full of folks who didn’t care to use their own hind legs to get where they were going. I might’ve taken it myself if I could’ve paid the fare.
The drosaws rolled their eyes when they got close. They can smell that things like me eat things like them. That’s why hardly anybody rides ’em, you know. They just won’t put up with it. The harnessing keeps ’em far enough away from the coach to get too worked up about it. Most of the time, it does.
Got me a surprise when the coach stopped alongside me. The driver leaned my way and said, “Ha! Thought that was you, Rekek. Had enough of Dodge, have you?”
“Oh, you might say so, Havv,” I answered. “But what’s it to you?” If he wanted to laugh at me because of Sssue, I was gonna climb up there and bite chunks off him. That’d fill my belly, all right.
But he didn’t. He said, “You see, I don’t got nobody riding blunderbuss for me. Gafk, he came down sick this mornin’. You want to ride along in case we run into trouble, you can do that. You’ll get his wages ’til we come to Newtown.”
“Which Newtown?” I asked. I must’ve gone through a dozen places by that name, some of ’em tin pot, others good sized.
“On the Red River,” Havv said. “You know that’s the route we run.”
When I thought about it, I did. I didn’t want to do much thinking, though. I didn’t much want to wash up in that Newtown, either. Not that anybody there wanted me dead or anything, but it wasn’t where I’d aimed for.
But so what? Riding instead of walking, more silver in my pouch afterwards? “I’m your man,” I said, and scrambled up alongside him. Folks always said I was a natural-hatched fool. I reckon they knew what they were talking about. Now I do, too. I was proud of myself then.
Yeah, a fool.
* * *
The blunderbuss Havv handed me had more range and more oomph than an eight-shooter, but not a whole hells of a lot. It’d faze the little raptors or the natives, maybe even the middle raptors. A ranno’d laugh at it. If a ranno came after the stage, we’d’ve all jumped out and run for it. You do that and you hope the ranno goes for the drosaws, not the people. You hope it doesn’t have smaller killers skulking along behind, too. Otherwise, the huzzards will circle down and take care of the raptors’ leavings.
We didn’t see any rannos that day. Hardly any raptors, either, little or middle. The big hornfaces and the drosaws’ wild cousins, they’ve been hunted in those parts till they’re right scarce. You’d almost reckon you was back East.
Almost, but not quite. We didn’t get to Cycadia till most of a daytenth after sundown. One of the drosaws got itself a limp, and Havv had to slow down so it could keep the pace. The passengers grumbled.
They cussed up a storm, to tell the truth.
Havv listened for a while. Then he lost his temper, or made like he did. “I’m doin’ the best I can, dad gum it!” he hollered. “You can shut up in there, or you can git out an’ walk!”
Nobody got out. Havv’s mouth dropped open. The nictitating membrane slid across his left eye, the one toward me. He had the whip on the passengers, same as he did on the drosaws, and he enjoyed it.
He handed me some smoked meat. I gnawed on it. It needed some gnawing. He passed me a flask. I took a good knock. That went down a sight easier’n the meat.
Before the sunlight died altogether, he struck a match against a square of slate and got a paraffin lantern going. The light it threw was thin and orange. “Hard to make like it’s daylight,” I said.
“You do what you can, is all,” Havv said, and he wasn’t wrong.
I hate the dark. Everybody does. Bad things happen then. The nasty, hairy critters sneak out from wherever they hide and make trouble. Or if they don’t, you keep expecting they will, and that’s just as bad.
Something howled, out beyond the lantern’s small circle. The hairy critters don’t see so real good; they make noise to warn others they’re around. The drosaws didn’t like it a bit, especially the half-lame one.
For all their snorting and honking, though, they kept plugging along. One of them let go of the trace with its hand for a spell, but the length of wood was lashed to its forearm, too, so that didn’t do it any good. It got a grip again and soldiered on.
When the dark really slammed down, I said to Havv, “Give me one of your matches, will you?”
“Here you go.” He handed me a match and the slate. “What you want it for?”
I struck it, then took the last cigar out of my pouch and stuck it in my jaws. It was so dark even with the lamp, the match’s flare near blinded me for a bit. I puffed, got the cigar going, and sucked in smoke. It eased the nighttime jitters a bit. If I coughed, then I coughed, is all.
I thought so, anyways. Havv said, “Nasty habit you got there, Rekek. Stinks—and it’s bad for your wind, too.”
“How about you let me fuss over all that?” I said.
He clucked like a broody hen, tear my tail off if he didn’t. “I’d’ve known you’d went native, like, I would’ve let you keep walking back there.”
Yeah, the natives’ve been smoking burnweed forever and a day. It’s always grown here, far as anybody knows. But I never saw anything wrong with it, really. I like the smell, no matter how Havv grumbled. I like the way it relaxes you. And they say burnweed’ll kill you if you use it long enough, but how long is that? Chances are something else’ll get you first.
Something out of the prairie wanted to get us. Out at the edge of the lanternlight, out where I couldn’t see much but a shape skulking along on all fours, two eyes glowed green, not red like people’s eyes and raptors’ and drosaws’. Horrible and unnatural, I thought. Way it seemed to me was, the nasty fur thing wanted to make a run at a drosaw, likely the lame one, who was on that side. But it didn’t have the size or the nerve. It yowled and disappeared into the black, one more ghost I hoped I never saw again.
“Reckon it’s gone?” Havv wasn’t griping about the cigar any more.
“Hope so,” I said. “If it’d hung around much longer, I was gonna let fly with the old blunderbuss.”
“If you didn’t do it on your own, I’d’ve told you to. I hate them things.”
“Who doesn’t? They make the feathers stand up all down my backbone and my tail,” I said. “Whatever god hatched ’em from the World Egg must’ve been havin’ herself a bad day.”
Havv looked at me. “A World Egger, are you? Me, I’ve always leaned towards Out of the Sky.”
We knocked the gods back and forth like smashpins till the drosaws finally hauled us into Cycadia. The town has a spring that never fails. Explorers and trappers and hornface herders liked that. The cycads growing all around the spring gave the place its name. It’s smaller than Dodge, but it’s more peaceful. Not a bad town at all.
People stumbled out of the stage and staggered toward the hotel. They’d been cooped up as long as anybody could stand. Havv and me, we got the drosaws to the stable and made sure they were seen to. Then we made for the hotel our own selves.
Naturally, it was full up by the time we walked in. The old lady behind the counter said she’d push tables together in the dining room and find us blankets, but she’d have to charge us for a regular room. I hefted the blunderbuss. Havv took out his eight-shooter and looked at it. Didn’t point it anywhere near the old lady. Made her thoughtful just the same.
All of a sudden, price came down by half. “I’ll see what’s in the kitchen, too,” she said. “On the house.” So we got a place to sleep and fried chicken—pretty good even if it had gone cold—for cheap. Havv shelled out for everything, and got hisself a receipt from the old lady. Sooner or later, the stage company’d pay him back.
“Later, I bet,” he said as we wrapped ourselves up in the blankets and tried to get comfy on the tabletops. “They’re so tight, they don’t even shit.”
“That’s how yo
u get to run a company,” I said, not that I knew the first thing about it.
Not far from us, a lantern burned low. Nobody likes true dark. True dark still belongs to the little hairy things. Some rustles and scrabbles said they might come out in spite of the lantern. I was too worn to care. I closed my eyes. Unless a varmint walked over me, I aimed to sleep till sunup.
And what I aimed at, I hit.
* * *
Havv got even with the passengers for snaffling all the rooms ahead of us. He banged on their doors as soon as the sun woke him and me, most of a daytenth before we were supposed to head out of Cycadia. Some of ’em cussed him, but he didn’t care a bit. They had to be awake to cuss him, and awake was how he got ’em.
The stablehands gave us a fresh drosaw team. Some papers for Havv to sign, on account of ours that hurt its foot—they couldn’t use that one for a replacement till it healed up. He signed. Why not? He was doing it for the company.
Some of the passengers were still sore at him when they got back on the coach. Some were sore at me, too. Did I help with the door banging? Oh, maybe a bit. I didn’t fancy sleeping on tables, neither. All that grumpy rolled off us like water off your scales. Nothing much they could do about it ’cept haul their own baggage while they walked.
Off we rolled. The drosaws started kicking up dust right away. I hissed and snorted. My nictitating membranes did what they could, flicking bits of grit out of my eyes. Say what you will, dust is better than mud. Slogging through mud up to your cloaca? If you’ve ever done it—and who hasn’t?—you know how awful that is.
Flies buzzed around. The drosaws’ hides twitched. They didn’t have feathers to flick bugs away. Mine started working double time. Scales are tough, sure, but some of those bloodsuckers have mouths that’ll punch through iron thick as your thumbclaw. Sure feels that way when they punch into you, anyhow.
We kept on south across the plains. A small herd of wild hornfaces grazed off in the distance. We left them alone, and we were lucky enough that they did the same with us. They were more worried about some middle raptors prowling around. They started to go into a horn circle to stand ’em off. You always wonder how they know to do that. Not like they could learn it in school or anything.
More huzzards spiraled overhead. These were way higher up than the ones I’d seen the day before. The white of their underwings looked small against the blue. Any time a huzzard’s wings seem small, you know it’s a long ways off.
They slid across the sky toward the hornfaces and the raptors. Huzzards aren’t stupid. Matter of fact, they’re pretty damn smart, especially when it comes to vittles. They saw there might be some dead meat left over for ’em in a little while.
We went on rolling along. Every so often, a drosaw or two would pause to graze a bit, pulling up some trailside grass and grinding it in that battery of teeth they have. Long as they didn’t linger, Havv let ’em do it. He knew you get more out of critters in good shape than from peaked beasts you whipped along till they dropped.
Farther south we went, warmer and muggier the weather got. More and more cycads and palms sprouted alongside streams. Thunderheads started piling up. Havv’s tongue flicked in and out—he didn’t like that one bit better’n I did.
“Rain, rain, go away,” I said. Yeah, if there’s anything worse than plowing through mud in a heavy stage on narrow wheels, fry me if I know what it might be.
The huzzards liked the weather fine. They ride the winds around those clouds like you wouldn’t believe. I swear by the gods, when they get winds like that they reckon they’re overgrown buzzbirds. You’d pay money to watch ’em, but I didn’t have to. They were just up there for free.
“Ain’t that somethin’, Havv?” I pointed up to them cavorting.
“Somethin’. Yeah.” But he didn’t hardly look. He paid attention to the trail and to the drosaws and to whatever spots ahead might be dangerous. That was as much as he had room for inside himself. What I’m telling you is, he made a damn fine driver, old Havv did.
Sharp as his brainclaws were, though, I spotted trouble first. I mean, the huzzards did. One heartbeat, they were flinging themselves around in the sky the way they had been, gallivanting all around for the sport of it. The next, they all started winging off to the east fast as they could go—and huzzards go pretty good, let me tell you.
They don’t spook like that on a whim. They don’t go after food that hard, either—not like they have to chase it. No, something they saw wasn’t right. I clicked the blunderbuss to half-cock, just in case. “Maybe you should get your eight-shooter handy, Havv,” I said. “Something wrong off to westward.”
He’d been minding the drosaws, the way a driver should. But his pupils went from slits to big black circles when he saw the huzzards flying off. “Shove a stick up my cloaca if you ain‘t right,” he said, and shifted the reins to his right hand so he could shoot with his left.
He tried to get more speed from the team without picking up the whip. He didn’t have three hands, any more than anyone else does. Even with the whip, I don’t reckon he could’ve done enough. Robbers or natives were going to do what they could any which way.
I worried about the natives more than robbers. Robbers’d take what they wanted and then leave us alone unless our fightback riled ’em too much. Natives wouldn’t leave us anything. They were after what we had, and they were after our meat. They hate us even more than they fear us.
Look at it through their eyes and you can’t hardly blame ’em. Over the past few hundred years, we’ve pushed ’em back from the coast almost all the way to the Rockies. They had bronze and crossbows when we got here, but not iron and gunpowder. They fought again and again. They lost again and again. And they sickened and died like nobody’s business. That thinned out big tracts of land.
They ain’t like us—the natives, I mean. Oh, some of ’em know our lingo, even if they talk funny. And some of ’em raise their tails in salute to our gods. But they ain’t really like people. Shorter, squatter, feathers in funny places, hides brown instead of green.
Everybody knows that. Not everybody knows or believes they can’t breed with real people, any more than rannos can with raptors. They smell wrong, so you don’t want to cross tails with their womenfolk to begin with. No matter what you hear, they don’t want anything to do with ours, neither. “I’d sooner screw a drosaw,” one of ’em told me once, and I didn’t even bite him, on account of I felt the same way.
And they’re sneaky. By the Eggshell, they’re sneaky! They’ve learned they can’t lick us straight up, so they don’t fight straight up. I looked in the direction the huzzards came from, but I didn’t spy anything out of the way. If I hadn’t had a thing or three to do with natives before, I would’ve wondered if I was imagining things.
Like I said, I didn’t spy anything out of the way—and then I did. Four or five natives popped up out of nowhere all sudden like and rushed the stage. I know—not out of nowhere. The gods-damned rotten eggs must’ve been there all along. They must’ve been, but I didn’t spot ’em. And I have me some practice spottin’ ’em, too. I’d be gnawed bones if I didn’t.
Havv let out a holler, “You passengers with pistols, now’s the time to use ’em! Try not to shoot each other, hear?”
Just then, a crossbow bolt hissed by in front of my snout, too fast for my eyes to cross. Took that native out of the brawl for a bit. A crossbow’ll kill you as dead as an eight-shooter will, but you can’t load it up again near as quick.
One of the natives had an old musket he’d begged or bought or stolen from somebody who should’ve known better than to let him get his scaly fingers on it. He stopped to fire, but he didn’t shoot straight. He stayed stopped, too; a muzzle-loader’s almost as much fun to ready for another shot as a crossbow is. I knew that too well—my blunderbuss worked the same way. I’d likely have one shot, and I’d need to make it count.
Havv started banging away then, and so did two passengers. The drosaws went crazy. They don’t know
what shooting’s all about, but they know they don’t like it. Then one of them crumpled up with a crossbow bold in the short ribs. If the natives got one more, the team wouldn’t be worth turds. They knew it as well as I did, too.
“Oh, gods!” Havv bawled. “There’s more on the other side of us!” He fired that way, once, twice.
The natives on my side were just about to the stage. If they couldn’t shoot us, they’d tear us to pieces with their teeth and claws. I gave ’em the blunderbuss. I hate flintlocks, I purely do. Click, hiss, then bang! half a heartbeat later. If you’re lucky. If you don’t misfire.
I got my bang! I wouldn’t be spinning this yarn if I didn’t. Kick damn near busted my shoulder. You don’t hardly aim a blunderbuss. You put in a charge and fill the barrel half full of shot or junk or whatever you’ve got. The muzzle flares, to make sure the stuff goes every which way when it flies out.
I knocked over two. One took a lot of the charge square in the chest—wasn’t much left of him from the middle up. The other thrashed for a bit before he lay still, but lay still he did. That’s about as much as you can hope for from a blunderbuss.
And fry me if Havv didn’t reach out with another blunderbuss as soon as I let fly with the first. How? I don’t know how, consarn it. Maybe he really did have three hands. I pointed the piece at the natives. They took off running like middle raptors—which they ain’t so far from, you ask me. A passenger winged one with a pistol shot. Only made the stinker run faster.
“Hoped they’d lowtail it,” Havv said, “That one ain’t loaded.”
“Remind me I never should ought to game with you,” I said. His bluff paid off, though, so I couldn’t cuss him the way I wanted to. The natives on his side of the stage had had themselves a bellyful, too, and ran away like their pals. We were safe. Compared to how we’d been a little while before, anyways.
While Havv got the team under control, I borrowed his eight-shooter and went back to make sure the native who hadn’t got all chewed up wasn’t playing mammal and getting ready to do something nasty and sneaky. You got to check every single time.