Echoes

by Tempe O'Kun

  Only when Blake squirmed under my gaze did I realize how wanton I’d let it get. As I took another sip of tea, I decided I didn’t mind that terribly either.

  Chapter 7

  I smash it out of the air, splattering it into blue goo.

  I land a boot on Cur Johnson’s muzzle. He spins away, howling.

  The rest of the Pine City Gang close on me, razor grins gleaming.

  Last time I do the lawbat a favor.

  My boots crunch gravel. I spring into the air, twirling cork-screw fashion. My Colts flash like steel lightning in my paws. Dirt explodes below me, driving back the fistful of highwaymen. Two bounces later, I’m standing atop the stolen Wells Fargo stagecoach. The team of ponies neigh and buck, all flustered, ready to bolt. Can’t say as I blame them.

  A masked bandito trains his rifle on me.

  Sheriff Jordan Blake swoops down like the cloak of night, snatching the rifle from the flabbergasted pine marten. He tosses the iron my way.

  Flipping one pistol back into a holster, I catch it— Winchester ‘73, and not well cared for. Pity I don’t have time to steal the bullets. “Good thing ya asked ‘em to surrender, sugarwings.” I wallop a rat with the stock for climbing up toward me. “Workin’ out right well.”

  The lawbat dives behind the stage as Cur Johnson’s men set the air boiling with gunfire. “Hardly the time —huh!— for your irreverence, Six!” His back’s to the varnished wood of the coach.

  The weight of an echo pulls my silver gun down. I drop, bullets screaming by my ears. They nick one of those and this bunny’ll introduce them to all manner of unpleasantness.

  The pistol in my right paw hums again with echo. I fire, without looking, around the front of the wagon.

  Splinters shower my arm. I shake them from my fur, checking for blood. Must have hit part of—

  The stagecoach rumbles under me. Shit. I look up to see the team of ponies racing off with the splintered half of a hitch. I look behind me, down the hill. “Blake...”

  “Still not the time, Six!” He’s reloading that little Schofield pistol, blind to the fact his cover’s leaving.

  The gunfire hangs. Powder smoke hangs in the air, making my nose twitch.

  Cur Johnson and his men watch, slack-muzzled, as their stolen stagecoach departs.

  I could, by rights, plug them all right now, but they let the coach crew go when they stole the thing. What’s more, I got thirty yards before I run outta mesa.

  Blake snaps the cylinder back down into his gun and turns, coming eye to eye with the Pine City Pine Martens. They share a silent moment as I rumble away, rolling fast under the weight of the gold bars in its belly.

  “Stop the coach!” Cur Johnson barks at his gang then unloads at Blake, who’s scrambling behind a rock pile.

  As one, the pine martens give chase after my stage. I’m lying on my belly, reaching for the brake. Whenever I get close, of course, Cur shoots at me again. Gritting back the bunny urge to freeze, I holler: “You figure killin’ me’s gonna stop this thing?!” I get the trigger-happy varmint in my sights, but the coach jolts on a stone and my shot goes wild. “Damnation!”

  The shot spooks him good, though. He dives for cover, letting Blake scamper out from his own and take to wing after me. Dandy— he’ll have a bat’s eye view to my plummet.

  The cliff’s mighty close now. Dust swirls up from the sheer drop off. Arizona heat fingers through my fur.

  I coil back to jump into the clot of bandits. It’ll be a nasty tussle, but—

  A bullet cracks past my ear.

  I tremble, bunny instinct freezing me a moment. Turns out to be a moment I don’t have.

  A stab of plummet, then a crash. My hat slips free of my ears, twisting on the wind.

  The back wheels spin on empty air. I scramble for purchase. The belly of the stage grinds against the cliff edge, pitching backward. As the front end pitches skyward, I glimpse Blake’s wing beating over the heads of the banditos, a desperate glint in his gold-flecked eyes.

  My hat settles on the cliffside, all peaceable.

  I tumble through air, falling with the wagon. The rifle floats up past me. Shame the last thing I’ll ever see’ll be that rusted Winchester. Always figured if I died looking at a gun, a fella’d be holding it, though.

  My gut and the horizon do flips. My heart drums above a taut nausea. Ground’s coming at me in a hurry. I close my eyes and breathe: “Jordan, I love you—”

  A painful grip crushes on my boot.

  I’m yanked upward.

  “What in blue blazes?!” I open tear-stung eyes to see my leg dangling in the lawbat’s hind paws. “Jordan, you sonovabitch!”

  “You’re welcome.” He flaps like a poster in a cyclone. The stagecoach crashes against the cliff face.

  My guts jockey for position. My ears dangle into the nothing. “Ahh!” I curl upward, grabbing at his ankles. “Don’t go droppin’ me!”

  “I won’t.” The fruit bat’s steel grasp tightens. He eases into a glide, sailing us around the corner of the mesa. “You’re madder than the March hare, you know that?”

  I watch across the gulf as the gang scatters like shed fur into the desert. “That’s a trifle unfair, lawbat.” Chasing my breath, I cough half a desert’s worth of dust. “It bein’ June an’ all.” I glance back at the cliff, catching little glimmers down its side. My tail twitches. “So that reward’s for those pretty gold bars, right?”

    

  Gold bar’s a weighty thing.

  Sunset simmers at the lip of the canyon high above. Shadows grow fast and deep around my boots. One of the shreds of sunlight slithers across another bar, standing half-buried in dry earth. I pull it out and heft it. It’s almost too smooth to grip, even with gloves over my fluffy hands. Dirt trails off, a thin whisper in the shadows.

  The valley floor is peppered with deep little gullies. I’ve seen saloon floors with fewer holes, though the lawbat has asked me to stop blasting new holes in the ones in his town. My ears rise at a slight crackle in the air. Can’t find a source for it, though. Canyon like this does funny things to the sound of Blake building a fire. Air chilling fast, and fruit bats don’t have the thick fur us hares do.

  I watch the lawbat toss another section of wagon wheel onto the hungry flames. The ruined wagon slumps behind him, though parts of it lay scattered up the cliffside and around us. Pity the strongbox broke open—I wouldn’t have spent the last hour picking up loose change. “Ah’ve never missed so much in all my life, havin’ only one of mah daddy’s guns.”

  “I wasn’t going to bring it up.” He scans the lip of the cliffside again, ears perked for a return by the bandits. “Guess you’ll have to practice like the rest of us.” His smile is consolation for the sass, badge glimmering in the firelight.

  I check my replacement gun with only a little resentment, then look to the lawbat. “You don’t regret letting those bandits go?”

  He shakes his muzzle. “They haven’t killed anybody, as far as I’m aware. We don’t have the manpower to detain them and it strikes me as unjust to fly ahead and wait in deadly ambush.”

  I smirk. Charitable for crooks who were trying to plug us an hour ago. “He’d have liked you.” I stand beside him, watching the fire. “My daddy, that is.”

  That foxish muzzle tilts up at me. “Is that so?”

  “Yer upright and ya don’t lord it over folk.” Ears down, I catch him looking from the corner of my eye. “He liked that.”

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever been paid so high a compliment.” His wing fingers take my paw.

  Blushing, I hold his grasp for a moment. I mull over telling him more, but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t seem mawkish. Instead, in the dying light, I polish the bar up a bit with the side of my paw, then reflect on my reflection. A trifle dented up, but still pure gold. Walking ba
ck to him, I strike a pose with the gold, waggling it up by my nose so it shines in the firelight. “You sure there’s no way ah could convince you to fly me and the gold outta here?”

  He pokes the fire with a section of broken spoke. “Much as I’d enjoy the convincing, I can’t fly carrying both you and a hundred pounds of gold.”

  I set the newest bar into a satchel with three others, close the bag with care, then strain to lift it. Rips straight through. The bars stay exactly where they are. “Ah! Ya may have a point.” I sigh and straighten to meet his fire-lit eyes. “Suppose we ought to leave directly.”

  The lawbat smirks. “I can fly and see in the dark. Can you keep from falling down one of these gullies? Or the cliff again?”

  “For that much gold, ah’d learn to fly.” I spy up the darkened cliff, then check my revolvers. I beat the tar out of the pine marten bandits and Blake swore his deputy carted them all back to town, but luck loves to shortchange me. Could be they have friends. “Don’t suppose ya have more bullets?”

  His sleek little muzzle gets an annoyed look. “You may recall you stole mine before the shootout began.”

  “Ah, right.”

  The bat leans back against the shattered wagon’s side and tosses me my hat, which he kindly recovered from the top of the cliff. “You realize you’ll someday be the death of us.”

  As I tug it over my ears, a dollop of sass heaps onto my words. “We’re still livin’. And ah helped you recover stolen goods.”

  “All of it?” He cocks an eyebrow at me.

  I flash him a charming smile. “Be a crime to give it all back.”

  He groans and kicks a chunk of wagon into the fire. “What else did you pillage from the wreckage?”

  I take on airs and graces, turning my nose up at his suggestion. “Ah shan’t be compelled to testify against mahself.”

  “Fifth Amendment wasn’t intended to help you bamboozle your lover, Six.”

  My ears blaze at the word. I cover my shyness with a low chuckle. “Guess you’ll have to make a thorough search of mah person.”

  The flying fox bites back his shock at my suggestion. He crosses his wings and plays at being unflappable. “I just may.”

  “Don’t make a bun a promise...” I step right up and tip his muzzle to mine. “...if ya don’t plan to keep it.”

  He smiles, eyes shining, and gives me a little kiss. “The reward will have to suffice.”

  I cast a glance to the gold, sitting on that ripped-out bag. “With this much money, a bun wouldn’t have to play outlaw to live however she wants.”

  Taking a seat by the fire, he shakes his head. “As an agent of the law, I can verify it doesn’t work that way.”

  A little snap of anger flares up, charring the sweet little moment we’d been having. “Ah’ve seen it work that way more ‘an a few times.”

  Blake puffs himself up with resolution. “Stealing it would make us no better than the original thieves.”

  “Lucky for me, ah have my own personal lawbat, ready to lock me up.” My muzzle tightens with agitation, teeth clenched.

  “Is there another way to get you to hold still for five minutes?”

  I sit down by the fire and have myself a little sulk. “Could always come along when ah go. Show me you lov—that I matter.” I watch the flames for a moment, waiting for him to answer. “Blake?”

  He looks at darkness with an ears-up silence.

  I listen too, but my ears still haven’t forgiven me for the day’s gunfire. All I hear is the wind through the canyon and the crackle of the fire. A faint tingle traces through my father’s gun, setting me on edge.

  Blake jumps up. A scorpion long as my forearm crawls up on the rock he’d been seated on.

  I draw iron, fan the hammer, and blast the critter in half. Dark blue slime streaks in a fine spray against the rocks. I swing my silver gun skyward with a wisp of powder smoke, watching for more. “Ah think ah know where we are. We need to leave.”

  Fool lawbat kneels to look over the gooey, twitching remains “What was this?”

  I cock my next round, then draw that the blue steel one too. No time to be picky. “King scorpion.”

  The sheriff stands. His lithe little body stiffens with concern. “They always invite themselves to parties?”

  On light paws, I move toward the gold, guns out. “Starved or startled, by mah guess. Not supposed to come after folk.”

  In the cool desert night, we freeze, ears up. Skittering rises all around. Half a dozen scorpions, the same size, scurry toward us from all sides.

  I open up with both guns, shredding the group to dark shiny smears. The sound of each shot whip-cracks down the canyon.

  He squeaks with alarm.

  Hare instincts whisper a chill to my blood, urging me to leave. For once, I agree. “We’d best run.”

  More skitters and scrambles echo beyond the firelight.

  Breathing hard, I swallow and resolve myself to a long, hard run down the canyon. “Take the gold. Ah’ll be fine.”

  With a single flap, he hops onto a rock. He’s almost eye-level with me. “What?!”

  I thumb back the hammers on both my revolvers. “In no mood to debate, lawbat. Fly.”

  A dozen more scorpions, at least as big, scuttle from the darkness. A few small ones too.

  I kick the campfire, scattering it in wide arc. Hunks of burning wood bounce through the mess of spines and stingers.

  Dancing around the flames, the scorpions overrun our little campsite.

  Seeing Blake struck dumb, I holster and bounce away with the gold. Scorpion shadows, tall as a man, tangle and twist along the canyon walls, projected by firelight. I waste no time in hightailing it through the burning wood.

  The bat swoops after me. “Drop the gold, you daft bunny!”

  Hugging the gold to my chest, every bounce threatens to knock it from my grasp. My running boots smash down on a few scorpions. “No!”

  A sudden scrape at my feet snags my attention. I glance down to find two latched onto my boots. With a spirited dance, I kick them loose. Those claws leave deep, fresh scratches on the leather.

  Lawbat grabs my shoulders with his feet. Dust whips by me in a desperate flutter. But try as he might, he can’t take off.

  Tightening my grip on the gold bars, I pick off two plate-size scorpions who tried to cut into my path. They fold wrong-way-out, legs flying in all directions. A third one jumps from a rock and latches to my boot. I reward him with a swift kick against the same rock.

  At all once, I make it clear of them. The clicks and scuttles fade to quiet behind me.

  A whole mess of the buggers pop up in front of me, waving sharp claws in the moonlight. I bounce again. The toe of my boot catches on a rock and sends me stumbling. All four gold bars fly from my grasp.

  The gold crunches to the dry dirt and slides under a large rock, just inside a den of more scorpions. Lots more. They scamper right on top of the bars, daring me to reach in with quivering tails.

  Still on hands and knees, I give the bugs a glare with more venom than they could ever hope for. I stand, drawing my second gun. I level both guns at the cave. Both guns click, empty. I flip both around to grip the barrels.

  “Six…” Blake calls my name with such concern that I look up from my fury.

  Hand-size claws rise from the rock. Starlight gleams off its many eyes, glinting through endless rows of hairs. The big scorpion leaps off the top of the den at me.

  I smash it out of the air, splattering it into blue goo.

  Scorpions rush from the den and from all sides. I jump off the top of the den, smashing more of them under my boots. Free from the weight of the gold, I bounce up the side of the cliff. Blake, gripping hard on my shoulders, spreads his wings. We fly off as unending hordes of the creatures slash their claws and tails after us.

&nb
sp;   

  A pretty sunrise lights the next morning, painting the sky and mesas a rich spread of colors. Long, thin clouds catch the sunshine above, adding to the cheery picture. Shaping up to be a dandy day.

  I sulk on the edge of the cliff, empty revolvers in my paws. I swear I can see a faint glimmer of gold at the base of the cliff. Barefoot steps behind me tell of the fruit bat pacing near. I grumble. “I still say ya could swoop in and nab the bars one at a time.”

  He stands beside me, heedless of the edge. Guess wings do that for a fella. “And stick my foot in a nest of scorpions?”

  My ears are down, having not heard a scorpion in hours. Stagecoach tracks lead off the edge beside me, with the smashed coach itself far below. A thin ribbon of smoke rises from our fire beside it. “Ah’m liable to douse the whole mess in kerosene. That’d teach ‘em.”

  Lawbat scoffs. “Once it cooled enough for us to reach the gold, the surviving scorpions could too. Unless you’re planning to burn the whole valley?”

  I look up at him from under the brim of my hat. “Outta principle, you understand.”

  Squatting so his toes dangle off the cliff, he lands a wing-hand on my shoulder. “On the bright side, we’re still living.”

  I’m still irked, but he tricks me into a smile. “That’s rich, lawbat.” I spit off the edge of the cliff. “We’ll get ya a pair of oven mitts—no, you can’t grip the bars like that. Maybe a diving suit...”

  He crosses his wings. “Or we could wait until noon, when the scorpions retreat to their holes, then fish out the gold with a stick.”

  Resigned, I wiggle my whiskers. “Could do that, I suppose.”

  “You realize we have to give the gold back.”

  I perk an ear at him. “What if we didn’t ‘find’ the gold?”