Get Stitched Or Lie Dying

Bear Claws for Jackanapes

Val sat side-saddle on her Steeldust, the right powerful mare standing tan and undaunted beside an identical horse waiting for Colby. A wind had picked up coming in from the southwest, carrying the scent of cooked meals from a half dozen houses in Lower Lakeside. Pork and beans. Strips of beef sizzling with wild onions. A hearty stew. Biscuits in a black iron pan.

Behind Val sat the Settler Group on a row of healthy maple brown Missouri Fox Trotters, horses that were a dime a dozen in the Rail. A solid Ozark breed for hard work and hard riders. On them were Bryce, Fear, Mister Twist, a brutish wall of a man named Pluck (no other information given to Bryce during the interview), and farther back, a chuckwagon with an elderly driver in a weathered straw hat.

"Are we to but watch ath the thun doth fall away, madam?" Mister Twist asked.

Val barely gave the well-adorned 'gentleman' a head turn. "I done told you already. We go when the trail boss, Mister Settler, gets here, and not a minute sooner. You hear me?"

"Yeth, madam." He tipped his top hat.

Land sakes, what in the world made Bryce choose this dude? Only when Val realized her thoughts had caused her to turn more and give Bryce the evil eye did she right herself. Leg over the saddle. Straight back. Looking ahead.

"You all gettin' along?"

The wind brought the boss.

Colby came up from behind Pluck's horse, observing the man who was as wide as he was tall. No neck, pasty skin, lifeless face and hands like the business ends of hammers. Colby was glad, and uneasy, that htis man had been recruited.

"Col--!" Val faked a cough and tightened hands on the reins. "Boss. We ready."

The horses reacted with unease, trotting away from their boss. Xolby reassured them by caressing their muzzles, feeding them pieces of apple.

"Come on now, it's still me. Same ol' an, just a bit of adjustment." He reached his Steeldust and climbed on. "Here." He tossed a purse to Val. "Divvy that up between the men. Reckon we won't have to run head now. Would only slow us down anyway. You..."

"Already turned it down. We ain't catching Voss if we gotta crawl beside even as little as a dozen beeves, Colby."

"That's my lady. Always one step ahead of me." He looked about."Why ain't the horses any different?" He asked as he squinted back at the old man on the wagon.

"Some were, Boss. We got some new ones."

"And new men," Val cut her eyes.

"Good day to you, fine thir! Allow me to introduthe mythelf. I am the renowned Mithter Twith, and I thay--"

"Hold that thought, Mister," Colby raised a gloved finger and nudged his horse back toward the wagon. "Well, I'll be a son of a gun. That you, Smitty?"

The old man grinned to show off his last three remaining teeth. "Boy, you know it is." He erupted in laughter, slapping the reins, stomping on the buckboard. "Hot dang, Colby, it's been what? Seven years if it ain't a decade! Not since we was in Abilene! How you been?"

Colby raised his arms, put the accouterments on full display. "You see here a man reborn, though into what I can't exactly say for the time being. Some rather eccentric gentlemen helped me into this, paraphernalia, so's I can interact with the public without turning things into the siege of Vicksburg." He wondered what old, hunched over Smitty thought of the ridiculous mask that amplified exhalations, the prodigious goggles that blotted out the windows to Colby's soul.

"Well, so long as you don't blow up on these feeble bones, then the gang here gets to keep eatin' ever mornin' and evenin'. But boy, it is good to see a friendly face, even when it's covered up like so."