by Logan Jacobs
Sheriff Alford looked at me with a grimace, as if to ask silently whether he was seriously expected to address a horse that way, but I didn’t let a single muscle twitch in my face.
“Paul, we are very grateful to you for your protection last night,” Edmond Fairfax cut in.
“Aw, it was nothing,” he replied. “Just sat in the kitchen a few hours is all. Never had to raise my sword.”
“Well, I’m sure your presence made Lucinda feel much safer,” Edmond said. “Did it not, my dear?”
“Ever so much,” she replied boredly.
“If you don’t mind my asking-- have you finished sewing your trousseau yet?” Alford asked her meekly.
“Very nearly, my dear,” she said as she drew out a fan and fanned herself without meeting his eyes. “I have never toiled more industriously at anything in all my life, Papa will tell you it is so.”
I caught sight of Silas’ dimpled grin and slipped away through the crowd to join him and leave Lucinda at the mercy of her fiancé and her father. Or to be more accurate, leave them at her mercy. Theo tried to slip away with me, but he was only about as stealthy as you would expect a sixteen hand tall, thirteen hundred pound Friesian to be.
“You did a beautiful thing for Richcreek,” Silas told me.
“Didn’t do it for Richcreek,” I replied as I jingled my pockets. I’d already traded most of my fee in for vials of potencium so that it wouldn’t break Theo’s back, but I still had more coin on my person and in my saddlebags than a typical miner would make in a year.
“Who gives a damn, you still did it,” Silas replied.
“So did you,” I said.
“I meant what I said before, about wanting to take up your trade,” Silas said. “Do you think you could… er… use an assistant?”
“Sorry kid,” I said. “I work alone.” It wasn’t just romantic commitments that I avoided. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s welfare or happiness but my own. And Theo’s-- but Theo had always sort of been his own creature anyway, and didn’t place the same kind of emotional demands on me that humans always did in one way or another, man or woman.
“Well, I guess I knew you’d say that,” Silas said with a shrug. “Just couldn’t let you ride off without asking. Well, maybe we’ll cross paths again someday, anyhow.”
“I hope that’s so,” I said, “and when we do, you’d better be the second meanest son of a bitch in the West, with the second bloodiest sword.”
Theo snorted snidely.
Silas laughed. “Count on it, Mister.”
And then we fell silent and just watched as the townsfolk piled the werewolf bodies onto the completed pyre and lit the whole thing. It went up beautifully. The flames flickered like delicate veils and seemed to lick the corpses gently at first. Then we could smell the burning fur, and when that was seared off the vague shapes visible within the by then roaring fire turned red and raw, and gradually crumpled into withered blackened things like ancient mummies.
There had been a lot of clamor and jokes while the town was engaged in building the fire, but as they watched their enemies reduced to ash, a sort of solemn awe seemed to overtake them, and the crowd fell silent, even though it was only for a few minutes.
Then finally someone yelled out into the hazy, stifling, golden silence, “Drinks all around!” and a huge cheer of almost two hundred voices broke the mood.
“Drinks all around” wasn’t an exaggeration, either. I didn’t know exactly how the payment had been arranged, perhaps Mayor Montague had decided to dip into the town’s coffers again or perhaps some wealthier citizens had made a gift of it, but all three of Richcreek’s saloon owners had provided kegs of beer and whiskey that were rolled out into the town square for everyone to fill their cups from.
It really was a remarkable and heartwarming sight to see how the events of the previous night, when the very existence of the town had been at stake, brought everyone together the next day, even though I knew very well that this mood of newfound unity was bound to be short-lived. Elderly gentlemen of good standing, whom I recognized from that impromptu town council that had been called to decide whether to hire me, rubbed elbows and made toasts with whores. And even more shockingly, so did their wives. Which is not to say that “respectable” folk didn’t usually interact with ladies of the night. It just didn’t usually happen in broad daylight.
“Mr. Hale?” a female voice came from behind my shoulder, and at first I assumed that Lucinda had found me again in the crowd, but then I realized the voice was slightly different, and it also had a shy quality that Lucinda’s didn’t.
I turned around to see two young ladies standing there together linked arm and arm, and they were staring at me like I was the first man they had ever laid eyes upon. One was a slim brunette who reminded me of a gazelle, dressed in ivory silk, and the other was a pale blonde with a very small and slightly upturned nose wearing lavender ruffles. Neither of them were as stunningly beautiful as Lucinda, but they were both quite pretty, nonetheless.
I tipped my hat to them.
“May I pet your horse?” the blonde one asked me with an impish smile.
“You’d better ask him that,” I replied.
“May I?” she asked Theo.
He blinked at her and lowered his head obligingly. She started to pet his forehead.
“No, stroke my nose,” he commanded. The girl giggled and complied.
“You accomplished in two days what the men of Richcreek could not in six months,” the brunette told me.
“It was more like one and a half,” I said.
“I see that humility is one of your virtues too,” she laughed.
“I have skills and strengths, I don’t have virtues, so don’t expect them in me,” I corrected her.
“Well, do you like virtuous girls?” she cooed.
“Sure, I like some of them, but I wouldn’t say they’re my favorite kind,” I replied.
“I think your horse likes me,” the blonde girl interjected as she continued to pet Theo’s nose.
“Whoa there, Miss, we barely met,” Theo said.
“… Your horse is rude,” she complained to me as she took her hand away.
“Undoubtedly, but in the present instance, he was simply stating a matter of fact,” I said.
“How do you get away with talking to people like that?” the brunette asked, in a tone of genuine curiosity rather than hostility.
“I do my job well and leave town quickly afterward,” I answered. “I also tend not to give a fuck about what anyone else thinks.”
“Well, what lucky town full of virtuous girls are you headed for next?” she purred.
“Whatever town is unlucky enough to be in need of my help,” I replied. I didn’t have a specific town in mind, but I did have a patch of werewolf pelt with a trackable scent on it. And an inkling that the monthly potencium raids on Richcreek had just been a nugget of trouble, and the motherlode of trouble was still waiting somewhere upstream. And where there was trouble, there were helpless people willing to pay to make it go away.
“You know, you’re not like anyone I’ve ever met, Mr. Hale,” the brunette said. There was a faint smile on her lips, and her dark eyes glimmered.
At first I was amused by the way she delivered that remark, as though she thought it had any great meaning. She was young enough that she’d probably been born on the frontier, or at least been brought west by her parents as a small child, which meant that she had probably met fewer than a thousand people at the most in her entire life. But then again, the remark still would have held true even if she’d had ten times as much experience of the world.
“I choose to take that remark kindly, Miss,” I replied.
“Well, that’s how it was meant, Mr. Hale,” she said.
“There you are.” For the second time in that brief time span, I heard a female voice behind me, and this time it definitely was Lucinda’s. I turned to look at the beautiful redhead, whose posture was as imperious as a queen’s
and whose expression was faintly irritated.
“Good afternoon, Lucinda,” the brunette said in a not particularly friendly tone. “I’m not surprised to see you here.”
“In the town where I live?” Lucinda inquired sarcastically. “Well, I’m glad that doesn’t shock you, Genevieve.”
“You think you’re entitled to first pick of everything,” Genevieve scoffed.
“Gen, do you want to go bob for apples?” her shorter blonde companion asked nervously as she pointed at a group of townspeople gathered around a row of tubs. “Or… er… shoot apples off each other’s heads?” Her eyes widened as she stared at a different group of townspeople.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucinda said icily.
“Like Sheriff Alford for instance,” Genevieve said. “You only wanted him because all the girls did. And now that you’ve got him--”
“It’s tragic how jealous you’ve always been of me,” Lucinda drawled. “I know you’ve always compared yourself to me ever since we were children. Well, if you really want to know the truth, you’ll never measure up.”
“On second thought, never mind about the shooting,” Genevieve’s blonde friend whose name I still didn’t know muttered to herself as she observed the way the other two girls were glaring at each other.
“I want to go bob for apples,” Theo said and nudged her with his nose to get her attention.
She brightened up, and the two of them walked off. I was tempted to follow and leave Lucinda and Genevieve to sort out their own issues, but then a man’s voice shouted, “Hale!”
All afternoon random strangers had been calling my name, they just wanted to introduce themselves or shake my hand or thank me or even just get a look at my face for themselves. But this voice had a more aggressive tone to it than the others.
I caught sight of Sheriff Alford in his oversized white hat with his silver star pushing his way through the crowd to reach our little trio.
“… That’s my name,” I said.
“Look here,” he said as he reached me and stopped a little closer than was probably comfortable for either of us. He lowered his voice and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops, which he kept tugging at nervously. “I, uh, I’ve tried to be real patient about… uh… I mean, you’ve done Richcreek a great service. At a steep price, to be sure, but a great service nonetheless. That can’t be denied. So I don’t want you to think that I don’t recognize that. But you’ve got to understand, you know, a man’s fiancée is still his fiancée, ain’t she?”
“Whether your engagement is still on or not is between you and Lucinda, I don’t know why you’d expect me to keep track of that,” I said.
Sheriff Alford’s face turned the same shade of red as a sunburn beneath his bristly blond beard. I knew from the darting of his eyes that he was considering punching me in the face. But I also knew from the fact that he hadn’t done it yet that he wasn’t going to.
“It’s disrespectful, chasing her around like you do,” he sputtered finally. “You should have some respect for our pledge.”
By this time the two girls had stopped arguing in order to listen in on our conversation. Lucinda’s eyes flashed with irritation.
“I’m not engaged to either one of you,” I said. “Seems to me the pledge is between the two of you, and if either of you have a complaint, then you should talk to each other.”
“Paul, this is absurd,” Lucinda said.
“What, exactly, is absurd?” he demanded of her through gritted teeth. “The two of you sticking together like a burr on a dog’s paw from the minute he walked into town? Or me putting up with it?”
“I agree with you entirely, Sheriff Alford,” Genevieve announced.
I didn’t know whether her only motive was to take a side against Lucinda, or whether maybe she sensed that there was an opportunity for her in this discord to catch the attention of the man that she claimed “all the girls” in town had wanted until he proposed to Lucinda. And, of course, before I had shown up. But of course I was just passing through. Soon Theo and I would only be a story to the town of Richcreek. “An engaged woman should only entertain the company of her fiancé.”
“Your mother didn’t exactly adhere to that policy, did she?” Lucinda hissed viciously.
I didn’t wait to hear Genevieve’s shrill response, or entertain any more of the sheriff’s pathetic complaints. I was already slipping away through the colorful and drunkenly gleeful crowd to make my way back to Theo’s side. Thankfully, my horse was never hard to find.
The pretty little blonde girl whose name I still didn’t know was standing next to him with her hand resting on his back as Theo dunked his huge, regal head into a tub of floating apples to the cheers of the crowd. As I reached them, Theo raised his head back up with not one but two apples wedged between his long horse teeth, and the surrounding townspeople cheered even louder, almost hysterically, as if it were the most spectacular thing they’d ever seen.
Theo crunched contentedly, and I patted him on the rump to announce my presence. He whipped his head around with narrowed eyes to check whether some presumptuous stranger’s skull required shattering, saw that it was me, and seemed to recognize the unspoken message in my gaze immediately. Time to go. He backed up a few paces from the tub of apples and wheeled around to offer me his back.
As I swung up, the sweet blonde with the pointed little nose stared up at me slightly openmouthed. She, too, seemed to recognize that I was about to ride out of her life. On impulse, I leaned down and kissed her soft rosebud mouth. She kissed me back, passionately, and a tiny little moan escaped her. The spectating townspeople whooped and applauded with just as much fervor as they had done Theo’s successful apple bob. Then I pulled away and raised my hat in the air to wave farewell to everyone watching.
Theo and I made a quick stop at the Fairfax stables, left unattended since everyone was at the square, to retrieve his saddle and saddlebags. Then, his hooves pounded up dust as we careened off across the plains until Richcreek disappeared over the horizon behind us. Theo slowed to a canter, then to a trot, then to a walk. It was far too hot out for him to maintain a swift pace, but he liked to stretch his legs sometimes. And I guess he understood that I wanted a clean exit. I’d gotten what I came to Richcreek for, and plenty more besides.
Now, it was high time to figure out where those werewolves had come from, why they’d been after the potencium, and how much money I could make out of investigating for the answers.
Chapter 8
In some ways I felt most at peace with the world when it was just me, Theo, and the open road. I felt like as long as I provided ample food and water for him, there was no limit to how many miles we could travel together. No one to tell us when we had to stop or where we had to turn.
And being with Theo was like all the best parts of being alone combined with all the best parts of having a friend.
Yeah, he was an asshole, but so was I, and when neither of us had anything to say, we said nothing, and liked it fine. But we could feel each other’s warm bodies, and that was kind of like an anchor of life and goodness in the middle of the desert when you couldn’t see a single other godforsaken thing worth mentioning. Just brown grass and more brown grass as far as the eye could see. When we talked, even when we argued or bitched at each other, half the time we already knew pretty much what the other one was thinking, and we never mistook each other’s meaning. Theo was the best thing I’d ever gotten out of my old life, and the only reason I was glad I’d been born into it, instead of just being born some trapper’s or rancher’s son without any care beyond the ordinary.
“So, are we going after the werewolves’ commander now?” Theo asked shortly after we left Richcreek behind us.
“Yes,” I said.
“What are your guesses about him?”
“I don’t know anything except that it must be a magic user of some kind, to want all that potencium,” I said. “To be sure, potencium is worth a
pretty penny to ordinary folk too, but the werewolves never took a single coin to hear the people of Richcreek tell it, so the motive can’t have been about money.”
“Why do you think the werewolves came from this way in particular?”
“I don’t, I’m not a tracking dog or a Savajun, and they didn’t leave any trail clear enough for me to follow,” I said. “But I do think that anyone that wanted potencium that bad, wouldn’t have stopped at one little town. I’d bet they’ve been raiding all the towns for miles around. So whatever town we reach next, we’ll ask there about any unwelcome guests they may have been receiving for the past half year or so, and then we’ll know more.”
“What if we don’t come across any other town before we fall off the edge of the world?” asked Theo, with his typical optimism.
“That’s why we’re heading east, not west,” I said. “There’ll be more towns. More people.”
“More Lucindas?” Theo asked wryly.
“There never seems to be a shortage,” I agreed.
“But only one Vera,” Theo said.
“One’s quite enough for me, but I’m sure that there are other powerful and beautiful sorceress types in this big old world.”
“Well, what if she’s the one behind all this?” Theo asked. “Only sorcerers consume the kind of quantities of potencium that were stolen. Any other kind of magic user would overdose and die.”
“Vera’s magical capacity is nowhere near that high,” I said. “And she doesn’t have the beast gift. Werewolves wouldn’t obey her.”
“She’s cunning, maybe she found a way,” Theo mused.
“She’s my ex-lover, not yours, I’m the one who’s supposed to be arbitrarily blaming her for every ill,” I laughed.
“Think you’ll ever see her again?” Theo asked. She was the only one of my lovers he’d ever taken a real interest in as a person, although he was happy enough to be around any girl who stroked his nose, called him a pretty horse, and fed him apples.
“Theo,” I said, “we and our countrymen have yet to reach the edge of this grand continent. If such an edge even exists. And it must be an edge to end all edges, where the water rushes down in a terrible fall to plummet whitely into the abyss. But the land is already mapped to be almost six thousand miles across, at the least. And over a two thousand miles from north to south. It’s a land filled with plains and mountains and canyons where you can wander for a lifetime without ever laying eyes on another soul. And Vera is as free and unpredictable a wanderer as you and I are. So, in short? With my luck, yeah, I probably fucking will.”