SMOKE OF A .95

by Tom Galusha

TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD TO SMOKE OF A .95

by Egbert E. Grosbeak, Ph.D. etc.

After languishing for more than one hundred and thirty years in a trunk in the attic of the Grosbeak Manse, the manuscripts left by Godwulf J. Youngblood were discovered in 2010. A windfall of both Western and two families’ history, Godwulf’s--or "Wolf’s"--writings focused on his many adventures with the beautiful and redoubtable Sheriff Moby Grosbeak. Wolf’s manuscript proved, alas, illegible. Not alone due to the inevitable fading of the penciled writing on inexpensive paper after so many years, but also due to the eccentricities caused by Wolf’s refusal to surrender to the dictates of grammar, spelling and punctuation.

The head of the Grosbeak Clan (Western Division), Marvin Grosbeak’s command of grammar, spelling and punctuation is itself not without endearing eccentricities. When his and Wolf’s eccentricities butted heads, I soon received a phone call from the frustrated-but-dashing Marvin:

"Black sheep and embarrassment of the family," he greeted me. " ’Zat you?" (His zany sense of humor never wearies of twitting me good-naturedly for not only graduating from high school, but going on to earn an advanced degree here at Montucky’s Hogg’s Wash University.)

"Marvin! My Lord, it’s been years! How delightful to hear your voice!" I shouted in unrestrained enthusiasm to be remembered by so important and famous a Grosbeak. And it wasn’t even a holiday!

"Oh, pipe down, Bert, you chucklehead!" he joshed. "I got me a problem and--" he must have been eating at the time and swallowed wrong, for he choked for several minutes before continuing "--and, damn it all to hell, I need--kak! cough! kak-kak! gag!--your--oog--help."

And me a mere Eastern Division Grosbeak! I nearly fainted from astonishment and joy.

As I fanned myself, he explained the problem, ending, ". . . so I need (cough! cough!) you to toddle on over here and see if you can untangle the mess that damn fool Wolf Youngblood dropped on us."

"I hasten to obey!" I screamed happily and, as Wolf Youngblood would say, I "lit a shuck," racing from Hogg’s Wash to Pepper Flats that very afternoon, much to the delight of my student.

"Translating" Wolf’s numerous manuscript into legibility proved more challenging than I had expected, not only due to its age and his eccentric but engaging writing style. After five years’ labors, it remains a mystifying paradox. So many things he wrote in those papers are clearly impossible--while history and the newspapers of the 1880s, notably the Fretscrabble Stentorian, support some of his claims, other farfetched (not to say barefaced) excesses were unnoted by the fine journalists who manned that and other hallowed bastions of the fourth estate.

For instance, records show that Fretscrabble, New Braskas did witness a large battle that included the cavalry under the command of General Bigelow "Freight Wagon" Von Dombe, but not that any "foreigners" were involved. Though Wolf maintains that all involved were sworn to secrecy about creatures that from his description would now be regarded as space aliens, he also writes that newpaper publisher Clyde Fricassee detailed the events in both the Stentorian and in a dime novel. The newspaper account is obviously an invention, meant to arouse mirth. Diligent searching by myself and my student has never discovered the dime novel, which, if it ever existed, is now lost. However, one is certain that it would similarly be a case of a "stretcher" written for purposes of humorous entertainment.

Yet that Sheriff Moby Grosbeak owned and wielded her famed .95-caliber pepper box pistols is indisputable; in fact, the heirlooms reside today in a place of honor over the tumble-down fireplace in the Grosbeak Manse. (Once I asked Marvin if the renowned firearms could be displayed at my university; his refusal was emphatic but gentle--my nosebleed dwindling to a mere trickle after only two days.)

If not manufactured by visitants from another star, as Wolf implies, who did make the deadly firearms? In this instance, I theorize that the blacksmith Buffalo Blitzkrieg must have made them. One can only wonder why he never patented them nor made any others, for per Marvin, who all too frequently finds himself in circumstances that dictate the handling of weapons, the problems that one would expect to arise from such pistols, for instance slower muzzle velocity and less penetrating power, are somehow compensated for, and the recoil, although painful, is far less than Marvin had expected.

And it is known that Moby and Wolf (her undersherrif) feuded with the much-dreaded "Lordy’s Leatherslappers" gang and--but I will let Wolf relate that, a part of his story that for once facts support.

Is Wolf’’s ignorance about the world outside of the Montucky-New Braskas territories as profound as it seems? He appears provincial enough to consider "Ewerope" a country rather than a continent, and wonders why "furriners" persist on speaking "in furrin," rather than American. Yet, in his many tall tales he correctly quotes literary giants of bygone times. And when quoting foreigners’ speech, he spells it flawlessly--in contrast to his massacre of Engish. Also, he populates New Braskas with vast and deadly deserts and rugged mountains, when in fact New Braskas consists of farmlands and prairie so flat that when its citizens come upon its lone, low hill, surprised travelers have been known to faint. (The miniscule knob is called Fenderbender Mountain due to the numerous automobile accidents in its vicinity.)

Nevertheless, his raw, crudely-written tales are not without interest, and add color and personality to historical characters such as Moby herself, Mayor "Rattlesnake" Jerry Fricassee, Stentorian editor Clyde Fricassee, General Von Dombe, the Spigot brothers and many another otherwise known only as footnotes in dry histories. Taken with a grain (or barrelful) of salt, Wolf’s grand "extravagations" offer the reader excitement and mirth. Therefore I have faithfully preserved every word exactly as Wolf penciled it (even when it blatantly contradicts my exhaustively-researched A Concise History of Montucky in Forty-Nine Volumes, $595.00, from The Intelligencer Press), and have merely modernized the spelling and punctuation, except in cases where the meaning is obvious.

I think that you will find it "a good read."

Egbert E. Grosbeak, Ph.D.

Chapter One

First time I clapped eyes on them furriners which raised such a big foofaraw in Fretscrabble was the day me and Sheriff Moby Grosbeak chased the Lordy’s Leatherslappers into the Jornado de los Esqueletos. But them saloon-burning, convert-or-die belly-blasters had laid in wait and bushwhacked us.

Moby flinched when their first shot whistled past her ear to spin off a sandstone boulder.

We jumped out of our saddles and laid tracks for cover. The second shot kicked up a puff of dust betwixt my flying feet. Then thunderation commenced as all them other blue whistlers whizzed in from everwhichway. We was surrounded.

The boulder we’d both elected to scurry to was cleft right acrost the middle. Moby jumped into the angled crack betwixt its two halves without no trouble, but it was barely big enough for me to squoosh into behind her.

The Leatherslappers’ slugs couldn’t get at us in there. Some essayed zinging ricochets off the cleft’s walls, but the angle was wrong, which spared us from that predicament.

Still, the dozen or so of them had us slap pinned down. On one side, the slope of the mesa where half of them’d lay waiting fogged up with blue-gray gun smoke. Likewise on the other side, smoke billowed from the desert where the rest of them holed up behind rocks and in a gully. That, mixed with the dry autumn sage and alkali prairie dust, was enough to give sneezing fits to a courthouse statue.

I’d been unenthused about us two chasing all them into the Jornado de los Esqueletos. Many a seasoned vacquero has rode into them waterless badlands, whose name means "Journey of the Skeletons," and never emerged on the other side. But I buttoned up my concerns, it being the undersheriff’s job to string along with what she said.

The Jornado sprawled out in a wild, cactus-smudged country with cliff-faced hills and boulders heaped about in the most obstructful way. Dry gullies and finger canyons twisted down from Wagonbroke Mesa to snaketrack the landscape and further thwart progress. Ever’ five or ten minutes, we’d disturbed the siesta of another pestiferous rattler which kept buzzing long after we’d passed it; any hombres listening knowed where we was, which way we was headed, and how fast.

Like Wilder Maurice Spigot who was the prophet and pooh-bah of the Church of the Lordy’s Latter-Day Leatherslappers, and his brother Xavier, and Mudbottom O’Houlagan, who was both church bishops, and their eight or ten parishioners who was doling out an offering of cold lead so promiscuous. Even though they’d never bothered theirselves with constructing an actual church.

Ever’ so often, one of us snaked a fist over the boulder’s top and let a shot or two fly blind. Maybe that worried them, though we never hit nothing that way but scenery. So mostly, we conserved our ammo.

Ol’ Mudbottom O’Houlagan, he taunted us, like as if anything he yelled would provoke us to jump out into a lead fest.

"The Lordy is gunnin’ fer Fretscrabble!" he hollered. "It is a Gommorer an’ a Babblin’ On!"

"Onliest gomer babblin’ hereabouts is you, Mudbottom!" I hollered back. "You pustulous drygulcher!"

"Why, you badge-totin’ bastard! The Lordy done guv us a mission to roust ever’ saloon and cathouse and cast all them sinnin’ bastards into the desert places like this here!"

"O’Houlagan fer mayor!" Wilder Maurice shouted. "He will surely quench that God damn prairie fire of lascivious goin’s on!"

"Hell, yeah, he will," Preacher Littlebright bellowed. He hailed from them Littlebrights down round Dilemma City and took up as much territory as three of anybody else. "Ain’t gonna stand fer no more by-God lasciviatin’!"

"If you numbskulls keep burnin’ down cathouses," Moby yelled, "whose windows are ya gonna sneak through late at night next time you hanker to pay attention to lewd women?"

Wilder Maurice hollered that was a damn lie, and called Moby the disrespecfulest kind of names. That was a foolish and dangerous thing to do. Being the youngest, prettiest, and the onliest female star packer in New Braskas Territory, Moby tended to become dismayed when she judged jaspers wasn’t taking her serious. To more readily express that dismay, Moby’d filed the trigger guards off the two short-barreled Merwin and Hulbert .44-40s that rode on her slim hips. Which led to her also getting knowed as the fire-eatingest sheriff in the territory.

"You sons of bitches are surrounded by the Lordy’s appointed posse!" Maurice yelled. I pictured his mouth foaming and spraying spittle, like it always done when his religiousness got roused.

"We are surrounded by the Lordy’s appointed idjits!" Moby flung back.

Her guns spit out a few rounds and she yelled, "I reckon as how real Gospel-lovers probably don’t dabble in gore like you O’Houlagans and Spigots." Fast as she could, she jammed new shells into her six-shooters. "The genuine article, I have took note, don’t shout out the Lordy’s name as their excuse fer feloniously robbin’, molestin’ and back-shootin’ folks to death. Carrying on about the Old Grandpap when you don’t really mean it, except as an excuse for your bad actions, I always reckon that’s what the Big Feller meant ’bout not taking his name in vain." She lifted up her boomers and let them do her talking for awhile.

Maurice spluttered without producing any actual words for a spell. Finally, he bellowed, "Give up, Sheriff!"

"Yes, Moby, do give up," Xavier Spigot horned in. "On account of the tender sentiments we once’t shared, I do not desire to see ya bucked out in gore, even if you are a dirty, heathen Grosbeak. Throw out yer hardware an’ we’ll let ya go peaceable."

"I ain’t neither dirty! I bathes twice’t a month, need it or not, ya lyin’, two-timin’ Xavier Spigot, ya!" Moby yelled, her face red.

Mudbottom gave her the horselaugh. "Not two whole times? Every month?"

"Y’all fling down your hardware, an’ I just might refrain from turnin’ the whole of ya into a batch of perforated corpses," Moby said.

"Moby," I said, quiet-like, "puttin’ it that way might not inspire Wilder Maurice and them to discard their arsenal and render theirselves defenseless."

Moby pursed her lips, which weren’t never a good sign. "No, huh?" she said, reloading.

"Last chance, Mobe!" Xavier said. "Fer ol’ time’s sake."

It was sickeningly true. Not long back, Moby and Xavier’d been twitterpated over one another. But she wouldn’t convert to his brother’s church, nor abstain from sheriffing, nor distance herself from fallen doves such as worked in her ma’s place. Specially since in place of all that he desired her to trade in her tight blue jeans for skirts, and take up kitchen-work, and pop out a sprat or two ever’ year. And then there was the niggling fact that due to the feud betwixt Spigots and Grosbeaks, his whole family’d offered to fill him full of holes if he continued "tarryhooting around with that bilious, damned Grosbeak woman."

"Shet yer God damn yap, Brother Xavier," Wilder Maurice said. "We finally got them heathens pinned down an’ it is our Christian duty to ensure that neither of ’em get out alive!"

"I see what ya mean, Wolf," Moby said to me. "Well, I gave ’em their chance, and cain’t be held accountable. They went an’ opened this jug theirselves."

Her .44-40s at the ready, she started to rise up right into all them bullets buzzing around our rock like a swarm of het-up yellowjackets. I essayed to wriggle around to where I could grasp her and endeavor to hold her back, but I was crowded in so tight I could hardly move.

It didn’t make no difference. First, ’cause I probably couldn’t of held her anyways. I was maybe two and a half times Moby’s size, but like all them Grosbeaks, she was unnatural strong.

And second, on account of our horses, and the Leatherslappers’ nags where they had them down in the gully, distracted ever’ one by screaming and rearing. Moby’s Cinders and my Cactus Rose tore off for parts unknown. The Leatherslappers was luckier, having their mounts where they could get at them and hold them.

I heard the Leatherslappers yelling to one another, but couldn’t make out what they was saying. That was account of what had terrorized them animals--a big metal disc that came shrieking bloody murder across the sky, glowing white and trailing flame and smoke. It came to a sudden stop right overhead. It hung there in the air, wobbledy-like, then it turned on edge and tried to shoot upwards.

It never got far in that direction and it started to come down, edge-on, straight for Moby and me in our cleft rock. I hollered, for the thing was huge and I dreaded lest we be crushed, and Moby, she let fly six slugs, which it took no more notice of than a rock notices a mosquiter.

Not twelve foot overhead it leveled itself out again moved leftwards. That close, it radiated more heat than the lake of fire that Wilder Maurice likes to holler about. It moved just a little bit and then wobbled down and slapped into the ground like a flipped flapjack hitting the pan. Only, a lot louder and hotter. Our rock shelter jumped at the impact.

Right away, everything got hotter’n the devil’s frying pan.

Me and Moby emigrated out of that crack with considerable more haste than we’d employed to stuff ourselves in there, when mere bullets was our chief concern.

The disc’s downfall had so discouraged the Leatherslappers that they’d stampeded and I reckoned they was probably halfway to the Montucky border already. So as we departed, we wasn’t in jeopardy of them blasting our bellies open.

A considerable distance later the air cooled off enough for us to stagger to a halt and look wondering-like behind us. I leaned over, hands on my knees. "Whoo, boy!" Moby said and sagged backwards against my side.

Heat shimmied around the plate-thing like a mirage on a broiling desert, and a pungent metal stink filled the air. Around it, the singed and withered grass, and the sagebrush and junipers had caught a little bit afire.

Moby straightened up, looked at me and giggled. "Wolf," she gasped, "yer mustache is smolderin’!"

"Well," I said as I patted it out, "yer curls is singed, and yer outfit is leakin’ smoke, Mobe." We both laughed real hearty, till we come up weak and helpless. Then the mirth faded away and I wondered what we’d found so godawful amusing.

"Doggies," Moby said. "Few feet back, that thing’d of squooshed us like ants. What the hell d’ya figure it is, Wolf?"

I’d been chewing on that my own self.

The big shiny object looked like a picture I once seen in book about olden times. Seems in a place called Greece a naked gent used to spin around in circles till he got dizzy enough, and then fling a plate as far as he could.

Except this plate was a sight too enormous for an hombre to fling, naked or not--you could of squoze a dozen boxcars into her, no trouble. It looked kind of scrounched up, and cracks spiderwebbed it. Scattered scorches and burns pockmarked it, and half-melted bits, like it might of been afire, metal or not.

"We are fortunate that we did not dilly-dally," Moby said, "but employed alacrity and dusted the hell out of there."

I doffed my sombrero and fanned myself. She tugged the red bandanna from her neck and mopped her brow. Far off as we’d scurried, it still weren’t Eskimo weather.

"Sorta reckon it might be one of them there meteor jobs," I said.

"Nope," she said. "I seen one once’t in a fair. Jus’ a rock that’d got all charred and black and pitted, and sorta melted-like. This thing’s metal; somebody musta made it."

"Fair enough," I said. "But who?"

"Hell, Wolf, you know as much as me. C’mon. We best collect our mounts before them Leatherslappers slope back and bushwhack us again."

I allowed them gunnies had run so far we’d be wrangling porch rockers before that transpired. But she was correct about them horses. Doubtless they was putting more scenery betwixt us and them ever’ minute.

"C’mon, Wolf." She started off and I, as usual, strung along after her, like I been doing since we was shirt-tail young’uns.

"Wolf" was sawed off from Godwulf J. Youngblood, which was too much of a mouthful for most folks, me included. Once in a while, some jocular gomer’ll try chopping off the other end, calling me "God," like it’s a big joke. I don’t laugh. I figure it’s sorta blasphemous, so I wallop the jasper. Not that I’m a sky pilot or nothing. Way I see it, if there is a Big Grandpap in the sky, maybe he’ll overlook my other shortcomings if he knows I always stuck up for him and defended his good name. And if there ain’t no Grandpap, well, no harm done. Fellers with senses of humor like that, they just naturally make ever’body miserable, and whaling on them’s a community service. I always was civic-minded like that, that’s one reason I become a John law.

Other reason being I’m a heap bigger and stronger’n most folks, which is how come Moby asked me. Us Youngbloods and the Grosbeaks has always stuck together, going back hundreds of years, according to Grandpap Gunther-John, and since star-toting ain’t as hard on the setting down bones as bronc stomping, I took up her offer. Mostly, I hardly ever been sorry.

It consumed the remainder of the morning to collect Cinders and Cactus Rose--them horses was that vexed by that plate.

Once we’d forked leather, I desired nothing more than to slope back to Fretscrabble and wash the day’s dust from my hide with a bath and its events from my brains with a bottle of coffin varnish.

But nothing would satisfy Moby except we ride back and give that plate one more look-see.

I suffered from concerns that the little fires the plate’d set in the dried-out shrubbery had growed up into a helliferocious prairie fire. Further, I weren’t anxious to be handy if another plate whumped down, this time maybe on my sombrero. And the big, white cloud of metally-smelling smoke raring over the top of Wagonbroke Mesa did little to comfort my troubled mind.

Chapter Two

Almost all them fires was out by the time we got there. We witnessed the finale of their extinguishment as we reined up, and patted our unhappy mounts, and tried to soothe them.

Some little holes had opened up all around the rim of the plate, which was sitting off-kilter with the near edge of it angled upwards, and nozzles was poked out of them. Them nozzles sprayed out blue foam, something in texture betwixt snow and sea-lather, that drownded the flames before they rampaged into a wildfire. That caused all the white smoke that had distressed me. That concoction continued gushing all over the plate itself.

But the little fountains wasn’t a patch on the britches of peculiar next to the little red-furred critters that swarmed out soon as the blue stuff cooled the plate off some. The nozzles sucked back inside and all the holes closed but one in the near edge of the plate. It gaped wider until them varmints jumped out and scampered all over the thing, busier’n ants in a tromped-on ant heap.

The cigareet I’d just rolled dropped from my lips before I could light her.

I took them for a pack of newfangled red wolves and pulled. But Moby knocked my shooting arm aside before I could squeeze off a round. My .44 went flying, ’cause, like I said previous, Moby had that unhuman Grosbeak strength--even if she wasn’t more’n five foot four, including her boots and the Stetson riding high on her black curls. She never meant me no hurt, I knowed, but still she left a bruise on my forearm that in the next week turned a whole rainbow of interesting colors, a few of which I had never before beheld.

"I don’t reckon them’s varmints, Wolf," Moby said. "I reckon they’s some kinda people."

I set there on Cactus Rose and gazed at Moby in what the penny dreadful scribes call "a mild surmise."

"Wolf," she said. "Ya oughta close yer yap before a grasshopper plunks in there."

"Moby," I said, "they’re all furry. And look how they scamper around on all fours."

"Well, they’re carryin’ tools, ain’t they?"

I squinted and sure enough, them wolves was carrying some sort of metal implements in their front paws--odd-shaped dojiggers that I couldn’t deduct the use of.

"Folks looks and comports theirselves peculiar in them old timey countries, Pa always says," Moby said.

"Not this all-fired peculiar, I garn’tee," I said.

Melville Grosbeak, Moby’s Pa, used to be captain of a big ship, which is sorta like mayor or judge in a town. So he throwed down his bedroll in a lot of furrin parts of call, which is how come folks regard him as a expert on all things furrin. When Goldie O’Contraire got spliced to him, she drug Melville clear to New Braskas. Out here on the prairies, she reasoned, he wouldn’t get the itch to go whale fishing for years on end no more. Whether the itch come to him sometimes or not, I don’t know, but he never again went down to the sea in ships, as the psalmist sung. Instead, ever’ day you’d hear him clumping around on his wooden leg, helping out Goldie in her place, the Unreadable Bullet-Riddled Sign Social Club.

Course, that Derringer Goldie kept tucked betwixt her womanly attributes and that bayonet in her garter (in case some hapless lowlife got rambunctious with one of her gals) offered pretty effective rebuttals against most every argument Melville might of put forth.

Anyways, we nudged our nags on over for a better look at the strangers.

They spotted us coming and took alarm. That round door opened up again--I call it a door though it didn’t have no swinging parts, it just started out as a hole that kept on getting wider all around until the fellers could scuttle through it. They fled inside, most on all fours like varmints, but some, I now seen, rared up on their hind legs like folks. Only a handful of them stood their ground and watched us a-coming.

"Hey, you pilgrims!" Moby called out, friendly-like. "No need to show your heels. We be peace officers; just want to ask ya some questions, is all."

They gave no sign they understood her any more than a jackrabbit understands Latin.

I leaned over in my saddle and scooped up my .44 as we went, but Moby scrounged her pretty face in a scowl, so I holstered it. We rode in easy-like, our hands a good distance from our irons, to show we wasn’t fixing to wreak no mischief on them.

They didn’t appear much convinced. If they didn’t seem to like the looks of us, our cayuses made it clear to a fault that they wasn’t favorably impressed with them strangers. They sidled to and fro, fighting their bits, snorting and whickering, with their nostrils all gaped out and their eyes rolling.

Well, when we was about twelve horse’s lengths from the plate, we reined up, it being clear we wasn’t going to push our mounts no closer without violence. We still kept our mitts a long way from our weapons. Which I was sorry for soon enough.

About fifteen of these little furriners popped back out through the round door, two of them packing.

Their guns, as I guessed them to be (I learned later that my guess was correct and then some), looked sort of comical, like li’l three-pronged pitchforks that sported a variety of bulbs and knobs and curlicues, and little see-through tubes with some vile looking green lights flickering through them. Another occasion I’d of laughed at the fool things, but the humorousness evaporated when they drew beads on me and Moby.

No way we could of unlimbered our irons before they drilled us. Not even Moby, who’s about the fastest I ever seen.

"Wolf, ya let them get the drop on ya," Moby said. "Ain’t I always told ya never to let that happen?"

"I shore am embarrassed," I said, deciding no good would come from mentioning that she was the one which had bruisingly prevented me from opening up on them. I got out the fixings and started to roll another cigareet, to show the furriners that I entertained no plans to move against them.

"Second time we been drygulched today," she said. "It’s gittin’ a mite wearisome." Seeing her off hand drift lower, I suspicioned she was gonna grab a smoke wagon. What with them already having us in their sights I didn’t figure that’d turn out to our advantage.

So, quick, I said, "How d’ya reckon to say ’We come peaceable’ in furrin, Mobe?"

"Don’t know no furrin."

"Well, ya think hand talk would work? ’Cause I can say it in Indian usin’ hand lingo."

Her hand hesitated, just a fingerwidth from the use-polished handle. "Oh, what the hell," she said. "Give her a try."

I stuck the cigareet in my mouth and done so.

Well, this raised quite a stir amongst the furriners. But they didn’t right off open fire, which I regarded as a hopeful sign.

So I ventured some more big waves this direction and that, and chops, and claps and stuck in plenty of finger-wiggling and suchlike gestures. Tried conveying that if they was like-minded we druther be friends than get into any arguments, specially the kind that’d involve loud noises and high-velocity lead. And if they required any assistance with their plate, we’d be pleasured to lend a hand.

They stared at me for a period, with their hound-shaped heads tilting from side to side. Then a lot of discussion erupted amongst the furriners, some of it mighty animated and enthusiastic--they plainly wasn’t all of one mind regarding us.

Whilst they’re busy arguing among themselves, I’ll describe them a little bit, because they was pretty near the oddest ducks I ever did see.

First off, they sported two arms and two legs, and only one head apiece, just like normal Americans. But those was the only normal things about them.

They stood nigh on four foot tall, and covered with reddish-gray fur, which with their long, upright, pointy ears, muzzly faces, and inclination to sometimes lope around on all fours, was what had made them look wolf-like to me at a distance. But I hadn’t seen the white spikes two-three inches long sprouting from their skulls, a li’l bit like the spikes on pronghorns’ heads when they shed the forked horns that grow up from them. Their black eyes looked eerie what with no whites in them.

Instead of the regular issue five fingers and toes on their hands and feet, they only had four, arranged so that on each hand and foot two digits opposed the other two--a little like the toes on Moby’s Pa’s ol’ parrot that only knows swear words.

From shoulder straps made of some shiny stuff I’d never seen before, they carried pouches at their sides. Except for them pokes they went buck naked, yet I couldn’t make out which ones was gents and which ladies--none of them showed any sign of intimate parts a-tall.

The top strangest thing was how they moseyed around four-footed on the underside of the angled plate-thing like ants, heads downwards, just as nonchalant and natural as the ones strolling upright and normal on the topside.

That kinda sucked the breath out of me.

"How’d they git that contraption h’isted up high enough to fall?" Moby said.

I tried not to consider that myself; it made for a crawly feeling in my belly.

"Reckon them things they’re holdin’ are some sorta guns?" she said. "How you figure they work?"

"If they are guns, I ain’t anxious for no demonstrations."

"Not while they got the drop on us, anyways."

Round then, they fell silent and turned our way. I couldn’t nohow read their expressions. I wondered if we looked as cattywhumpus to them as they did to us. Reckoned we must of.

The tallest one took a step forward and beckoned.

Me and Moby looked at each other.

She shrugged. "Anyways . . ." Ginger-like, she swung down from her saddle. I guessed she figured we’d seem less threatening afoot.

Instead, great consternation arose amongst the plate fellers.

"What’s bitin’ them now?" she said, handing Cinders’ reins up to me.

"I don’t know, Mobe. Unless they hadn’t realized that us and our cayuses ain’t all one piece."

"That’d be slap stupid of ’em."

"Well, Mobe, you said furriners is different. I expect we look by-God uncanny to them."

"How come? We ain’t the furriners, they is."

They raised a racket in their funny lingo. If you tried reading all the crisscrossed claw prints in a chicken yard aloud, that might be sort of what it sounded like. Three or four of them reached out and grasped the tall one’s scrawny arms to yank him back, but he had more sand than the others and shook them off.

Moby waited until order was restored. Holding up her hands, palms out, she ventured a couple steps forward.

The tall furriner clumb up to the top of the plate and spread-eagled his arms and legs. Along his sides, a flap of skin stretched from wrists to ankles. Then he hunkered down and gave a leap, and flew, I swear on my life, I never seen no crow fly better. Didn’t he just float on down in a pretty, swooping curve to land a few yards from the plate, just in time to meet Moby face to face?

"Lordy . . ." she whispered. "Sweet hoobie joobus," I said.

The furriner lowered his arms and them flaps of skin--membranes, Doc Finksberry later called them--them membranes folded up and disappeared into what looked like thick white stripes that run down his sides.

Well, the horses hadn’t liked the furriners before, and after beholding that performance, their regard for them drooped even lower. I had a time convincing them not to light a shuck, but eventual, they accepted their lot and grew a little bit calmer. Cactus Rose never settled down till I commenced rubbing her belly. I reckon that hoss’d brave a volcano, a blizzard and a tornado all rolled into one, so long as I kept that treatment up.

Meanwhile, Moby and the furriner found each other an eyeful. They spent a spell taking each other in.

She stood only half a head taller’n him. Intrigued with her costume, slow-like, he fingered her flannel shirt, and chaps and dungarees. He seemed interested in determining which parts was outfit and which Moby. She suffered him poking where no gentleman ought to without her consent, but when he reached towards her hardware she quick clapped hands to the grips and said, "Uh-uh." He took the hint.

For her part, she stroked his fur, which turned out to be silkier and softer’n the skimpiest fripperies them fallen doves down at Goldie’s could boast. He endured her curiosity as stoically as she had his, till she touched his pouch. Gentle-like, he moved her hand away. She nodded. "Fair enough, mister."

Then the furriner, he started waving his hands and arms like he meant to imitate the hand signs I’d recently employed on him. He didn’t do a half-bad job, neither, considering his elbows was fixed close to his shoulders, with long forearms, like a critter’s forelegs, and he only had four fingers on his hands. An arrangement he might of found satisfactory, but they didn’t work like ours which threw his mimicry half a bubble off plumb.

Moby seen what he was up to, but didn’t savvy his version of hand talk.

"Wolf, why don’t ya come on over here?" she said, throwing it over her shoulder without turning.

So I chucked my smoke, and twisted the horses’ reins around a couple clumps of pale, strong-smelling sage. They was well trained, so that would hold them, now they’d calmed down some. If anything wayward occurred, I reckoned that they ought to have the chance to yank free and hightail it.

I knowed Moby wouldn’t light a shuck, no matter what. She never hightailed from nobody in her life.

I moseyed over, wrinkling my nose. Close up the furriner smelt a li’l like rotten eggs. Who knows--maybe I weren’t no rose in his estimation, neither.

So me and Moby commenced waving at the furrin boy, and he hauled a device out of his poke. The box fit inside his palm; with the other hand he jabbed at some buttons with his fingers, real fast. Each button sunk down a li’l when he pressed it. Li’l higher o’glyphs decorated them buttons. Then, right over the box, li’l images of me and Moby jumped into the air, and duplicated the gesticulating we’d just performed, only moving slower than a snail through spilt molasses. They wasn’t flat like photygraph pictures of us; these things was full-colored and went all the way around, any which way you looked at them.

He studied every gesture intent-like, then he yammered some at the li’l box. And doggies, if it didn’t pop out a li’l figure of him, which performed the gestures for what he wanted to say. So he waved at us, and we done likewise at him, and by and by, with the help of his box, we made our simpler ideas understood by one another.

Course it weren’t just our hands communicating. When he couldn’t get an idea across, he talked to that punch-button box and it popped out a picture of what he wanted to say.

Seemed like the big plate was in trouble. As his hands flew, and the pictures flashed from the box, I seen that the thing had gone whizzing around in the night sky, faster’n a racehorse or even a hawk. But there hadn’t been no earth underneath it or anywheres else, just a lot of stars, below as well as above. That made me dizzy, so I looked away quick.

He executed some angry, chopping motions, and another picture growed from the box in which a second vehicle came sailing after the plate. The new shebang wasn’t a plate, but a huge boxy thing. Or more like a hundred monstrous boxes and crates and some sections like overgrowed boxcars, all stuck together sorta ramshackle and catch-as-catch-can, with metal tubes and contraptions linking the whole affair together. Next to it, the plate looked like a fly.

A round window opened in one of the boxes and a jigger like a see-through cannon snout wearing major-general’s decorated jacket poked out. It shot red balls of fire at the plate, which caused the burnt and half-melted look of it. I gathered that the boxy thing had been pursuing the plate a long ways. I asked why the plate hombres didn’t shoot back, and the furriner signed that they had vamoosed that hasty, they hadn’t taken time to pack no artillery.

"They was slaves!" Moby said. "These li’l fellas is runaway slaves, and them others was tryin’ to collect them." Her fists doubled up and her blue eyes flashed. She looked as riled up as I ever seen her, ’cause of the slumgullion these plate furriners had been in.

All the ball lightning had caused the plate to bust down. One blast punched through the egg-smooth shell of the plate, scorched halfway through a kinda doodaded-up axle.

But that ain’t right. Though it revolved, the long gimcrack didn’t really look much like an axle. It was set in the middle of even more mechanical chaos than that Cyrus McCormick had dreamt up for his harvesting machine. And it was all twisted, and had knobs and limbs and tubes and all kinds of dojiggers I can’t even begin to describe. ’Specially since now it’s all kind of faded and jumbled in my mind, and I can’t exactly remember how it looked, even though we seen the thing itself not long afterward. Moby, she says the same. She essayed several attempts to draw it, and she’s a peach with a pencil, but even she couldn’t capture it.

Anyways, the furriners didn’t know their axle-dingus was hit, and they kept swooping and zigzagging like a bat out of hell, finally shaking off their pursuers. Awhile later, the half burnt-through part finally busted in two. Without that shaft, the rest of the machinery didn’t work worth a Continental. Like a steam engine with a throwed rod, but more complicated and ornery. They near lost control and it flopped and wobbled around until it come up on this big blue ball that I knowed was the earth.

I guessed a picture of that plate falling out of the starry field and smacking into the earth was going to flash. So I looked away quick. Just the thought of that made me sick. I cherished no desire to watch it shriek down belly first into the desert. Seeing the real thing had been vexacious enough.

Now they was stuck here, feeling helpless and desperate, ’cause they knowed it was only a matter of time till them slavers showed up in their boxy shebang.

Moby said, "They can’t fix that whosis. They didn’t have no blacksmithing tools when they vamoosed." Her smooth brow puckered. "Only, they ain’t exactly blacksmith’s tools."

I nodded.

These fellas was away more furrin than we’d ever suspicioned. But neither Moby nor I ever talked about that, then or yet. There’s some things just too enormous to wrap your head around.

"Ol’ Buffalo Blitzkrieg, he might could help ’em," I said. "Course what with them bein’ furriners and not talking no American, he’ll likely try an’ fleece ’em a mite."

"He’d pauper ’em, give him half a chance. But I don’t reckon to let that happen." She rested one hand on a pistol grip. "Buffalo knows better’n to try an’ skin me."

Buffalo Blitzkrieg worked as Fretscrabble’s liveryman and blacksmith. A furriner hisself, he hailed from one of them countries over there by Ewerope. So he talked peculiar, but otherwise looked as American as you ’n’ me. Buffalo possessed a knack with machinery, and he’d studied up on steam engines, which I reckoned might be handy.

So we worked it all out with our boy. We’d rig a travois so’s to tote the "axle," and fetch him and one of his amigos with us into Fretscrabble. I grinned. That sight’d be worth screaming headlines on the front page of the Stentorian, for sure.

Seemed like a good idea till one of the furriners put his weapon in his poke and started towards my mare. Big as she was, to tote a fella my size, ol’ Cactus Rose was usually a daisy. But that furriner riled her something fierce. Yep, when it come down to just how much she’d tolerate, he was a huckleberry over the persimmon, and no mistake. I dreaded that she’d stomp us both before I finally quieted her. I held my sombrero over her eyes to get her to stand still long enough for my furriner to climb aboard.

That was another precarious moment. Cactus Rose skairt him as much as he skairt her. He couldn’t get the hang of stirrups, partly on account of them parrot feet, but mostly because as he tried to get on, he simultaneous tried to hold as much of hisself as possible as far away from Rose as he could.

Rose’s backflesh twitched and rippled, and her tail slapped his face, further dismaying the furriner. Finally, Moby grabbed him around the waist, and h’isted him aboard. She damn near hove him over the other side, which so startled her that she uttered a phrase which she’d of generally punched a feller for employing.

"Son of a bitch, but that li’l jasper don’t weigh no more’n a hummin’bird!" she said. Later on, Doc Finksberry enlightened us that the furriners probably had hollow bones, and maybe other peculiarities that made critters as big as them light enough to fly like they did. He also told us that they didn’t really fly so much as glide. Maybe, but whilst they glided, they looked as acrobatic as bats.

I’d figured on him riding behind me, but he looked about to be flung off even with Rose standing still. So I swung up behind him, where I could hold him down whilst we loped out of there.

Moby said, "C’mon, you big ol’ coyote," to the leader. She forked leather and gestured for him to mount Cinders. That gray stallion made more of a fuss than Cactus Rose had done. The leader, who we knowed thereafter as Big Coyote, maybe he was as skairt as his pardner (soon christened Li’l Coyote) had been, but he never showed it. Somehow, for all Cinders’ crow-hopping and screaming, he managed to scramble up in front of Moby without requiring to be h’isted.

We’d already rigged the travois behind Cinders, with the "axle" strapped to it. Me being hugely bigger’n Moby, we figured the stallion would stand the extra work better than Cactus Rose.

The dust rucked up by the horses and travois had both them little fellers coughing and wheezing like lungers. Moby suggested we fix our bandannas around their muzzles outlaw-fashion, and that gave them a lot of relief. ’Cept when I rolled me a cigareet and lit up. My passenger about coughed his head off, so I chucked it after only a couple of puffs. Didn’t get to smoke none the whole way back to town, dadgummit.

By mid-afternoon, we hit Fretscrabble.

A heavy stink of smoke and smolder greeted us.

Ol’ Clyde Fricassee, he come tearing out of the Fretscrabble Stentorian office when he seen us.

"Sheriff! You’re alive!" he yelped. Clyde served as the weekly’s editor and whole staff. A shock of early-onset white hair flopped loose over his bespectacled face. He wore a string tie, a printer’s apron, ink-stained cuff protectors, and garters on his striped shirtsleeves on his upper arms.

" ’Course we are," Moby said. "Don’t rewrite next week’s front page to print that intelligence."

"As Mawk Train had it," I said, "reports on our deaths is previous."

"Oh, Wolf," Moby said. Then she looked at Clyde. "But what in tunket’s burnin’?"

Clyde looked discomfited. "I hate to tell you, Sheriff, but I fear it’s the jail." He gaped at our passengers. Obviously, he was slap full of questions about them, but he knowed better than to change this subject. He was a scrawny fella, all pointy knees and elbows, and a Adam’s apple like a bouncing cantaloupe. Right then, it bobbed in his throat like a sinker with a big, pissed-off he-bass yanking on the line.

Moby pursed her bow-shaped lips. Which discomfited Clyde even more. Me too, ’cause that’s the way she looks right before her smoke wagons jump into her fists and folks start dropping.

"The jail gone?" she said.

"No, no, Sheriff! That’s the good news! HUNGRY FLAMES QUENCHED BY FRETSCRABBLE’S FEARLESS VOLUNTEER FIRE BRIGADE." Sometimes ol’ Clyde talked in headlines. Then he couldn’t hold back no longer. "What have you got there, Sheriff?"

"How’d the hungry flames git started?" She glared at me, lips still pursed. "Somebody leave a cigareet smolderin’ on his desk again?"

"Honest, Mobe, I never," I begun.

Clyde interrupted. "Moby, it was those ornery rascals, the Lordy’s Leatherslappers, damn their eyes."

Now Moby looked discomfited. Her lips came unpursed and kinda drooped.

I could guess why. After she and Xavier had parted ways, she’d run him and Wilder Maurice out of town. Them Spigots had backed Hiram "Mudbottom" O’Houlagan for mayor on his anti-reform ticket. ’Course that was their right, but their idea of campaigning involved flinging lead at them which espoused the more liberal-minded Rattlesnake Jerry Fricassee for the office, or whomping them upside the skull with ax handles and such. But mostly on account of she favored Jerry, in support of whom she’d flung lead and whomped skulls her own self. "What’s the good of bein’ sheriff if ya cain’t exercise a li’l political persuasion?" she had said. Once she learned how star-packing made it legal to blaze away at miscreants, she commenced to like it so much that she had a second star made up and wore ’em both real conspicuous on her conspicuous boozums.

Anyways, naturally, she had herded them tom fools out of town and chased them clean to the Montucky border. I reckon she was on the right side, ’cause ever’body knowed how Jerry Fricassee, Clyde’s brother, had promised to reform Fretscrabble with a lot more free enterprise, specially enterprises which offered more booze, cards and gals. Whereas O’Houlagan, as a bishop in Maurice’s church, wanted to keep saloons and cathouses and even gambling outlawed. Clyde made them issues real clear in the Fretscrabble Stentorian. Which was when Clyde learned that, though the pen might be mightier’n the sword, it weren’t shucks against blue whistlers propelled by thirty-eight grains of black powder. He discovered the best defense versus such was to let fly a fusillade of blue whistlers at the loyal opposition first.

When Mayor Rattlesnake Jerry won, he backed Moby in knocking down Fretscrabble’s cruel anti-whiskey ordinances in her usual blazing, two-gunned way. Then her and Jerry encouraged them worthwhile enterprises to get built up. Wisely, they hatched a passel of laws making temperance reform a hoosegowable offense. Which disgruntled the Ladies Temperamental League something fierce.

Later, when them Spigots snuck back into Fretscrabble, they was considered outlaws, on account of them starting in again to administer shootings and beatings upon those which favored Mayor Jerry and all the harmless enjoyments a gent naturally craves. They burnt down the Blazing Colt saloon, put up placards, and with the Temperamental League organized shameless temperance marches on Main Street, right out in the open, where children and all was exposed to them. Which made Moby’s blood boil, I’m here to tell you. They just could not see how closing them amusements would of dismayed the citizenry and left Moby’s ma and pa without no livelihood. Worse yet, them fanatics advocated building churches and schools and hospitals, and suchlike institutes that just naturally spoil the tarnation out of a free and easy, fun-loving town like Moby and Jerry had turned Fretscrabble into.

She could of arrested Xavier several times right there in Fretscrabble, but she’d always let the little shrog go.

It pains my hand to write the words, but ol’ Mobe, she was still sweet on that scoundrel Xavier.

She chewed the thing over awhile. "Them Spigots must of mooched back here whilst we palavered with the furriners," she said.

She looked down at Clyde. "Xavier, too?" she said.

Clyde nodded.

"Them Spigots!" Moby set straight up in her saddle and showed considerable surprise, which I felt too. None of the Spigots possessed what you’d call motivated characters. Except for things which makes other folks miserable, like closing down saloons and throwing up tabernacles and such, most was layabouts of the first water. But that Maurice boasted a sight more git-up-’n’-git, and he was the ringleader, and the root and source of our current troubles.

"How’d it happen?" she said.

"Those brethren rode in with a crowd of their cousins, the whole no-account flock of O’Houlagans, and those dirty, red-handed cow wrestlers, the Supperbagger bunch, and a passel of low-down Littlebrights," Clyde said. "Firing their pistols every which way, they shouted that the Lordy’s terrible swift sword had done you in, and that Rattlesnake Jerry’s days were numbered, for divine retribution had a bead on him."

"They must of thunk that plate kilt us," I said to Moby.

"Plate?" Clyde said.

"Never mind that," Moby said. "Musta been Maurice bullied Xavier and them into it," she mused. Most of us pronounced the name X-avyer, like it’s spelt, but she would always have it Hav-eeyay, like his ma did. Another sign she felt that way about him. ’Course Clyde, he pronounced it her way, too. But I never suspicioned Clyde cherished no tender regard for Xavier; for a writer fella, he mispronounces a heap of the language. Most ever’body has took note and remarked on that.

"Well," Clyde said, prudently not arguing with her, "however that may be, they were almighty pleased with themselves, claiming to have enjoyed the Divine’s help in resolving their dispute with you to your disadvantage. Wilder Maurice flung lead around the streets promiscuously, and ordered his band to tree the town until all the saloons and brothels were closed down."

"That Xavier go along with that?" Moby said.

Clyde’s Adam’s apple gave a leap. "As for Xavier, he controlled himself admirably."

"Good," Moby said, relieved.

"He only wounded three or four citizens," Clyde said. Moby’s face drooped, so he added quick, "None of them prominent! And he maintains that setting the jail afire was practically unintentional."

"What?" Moby busted out. "He set the jail afire?" Clyde nodded.

By now, seeing that Moby hadn’t skinned her smoke wagons and commenced blasting, folks had inched out from under cover and collected into a crowd that gawked and pointed, and remarked to one another about our passengers.

"He still in town?" she said.

"Oh, yeah," Soapy Sam MacDammual spoke up, with a pawky grin at the prospect of maybe seeing some fireworks.

"Where is he?" Moby said. "Them, I mean."

While Moby’s eyes was averted towards Soapy, Clyde made pushing down gestures with his hands to quiet the fool. But Soapy streamed a deck of cards from hand to hand, blithe as could be. "The whole of ’em is down in front of the Social Club," he said. "Marchin’ back ’n’ forth an’ wavin’ placards about impeachin’ Mayor Jerry with a rope, and other sentiments, like doin’ away with drinkin’ and whorin’. An’ drivin’ off any soul who’s inclined to wander inside that, uh, ’nefarious hellhole of wanton iniquity’ by firin’ at their boots."

Whilst Moby sat her mount getting redder and redder, Soapy gave his yaller handlebar mustache a twirl. He wore a fancy black broadcloth coat, under which his clean white shirt frothed in a boiled front, and frilly lace cuffs flared out from his coat sleeves. The card wizard probably wanted Moby to drive them off because them keeping him outside had him late for work and he was losing money by the minute. Which was probably how come he stood in an even bigger puddle of his own sweat than usual.

"Whatcha gonna do about it, Sheriff?" Fremont Gooper yelled taunting-like. That darned ol’ Fremont, he never went heeled, nor never busted a knuckle on anybody’s jawbone, but he sure loved to encourage others into dustups, whilst he stood by, thumbs hooked in his suspenders, chawing tobacco, and casting aspersions on their fistic technique.

"First off, gotta check out the hoosegow," Moby said. "Any objections?"

If anybody’d had any, her tone of voice discouraged making them known.

But I noted that ol’ Fremont tore off towards the cross street that led to the Unreadable Bullet-Riddled Sign Social Club.

As we urged our mounts forwards, Clyde couldn’t stand it no more. "Sheriff! Are those your prisoners?"

"Nope," she said, not looking back.

"Some critters you’re fixing to fry up for supper?" He yelled. No answer. "Circus freaks, maybe?"

I reckoned maybe she’d spin around in her saddle and fling a round betwixt his boots to discourage his inquisitiveness. But she appeared consumed with some sort of inward communion. I ain’t even sure she heard ol’ Clyde.

But I heard her. "Xavier--Xavier," she muttered, soft-like, two or three times.

We rounded the corner and paced up Boondoggle Street, past the vacant lots and sawmill to the jailhouse.

The jail being mostly brick and the Fire Brigade having drownded the hungry flames before they sprung to other buildings, the damage was less than I’d imagined. The bricks looked a bit charred and through the windows and door drifted the smoke we’d smelt before. Them curly wolves had also burnt down the permanent twelve man gallows, which Moby’d had erected in the middle of the street, right in front of the jail where it was handy-like. Seemed Clyde hadn’t had the gumption to deliver that intelligence to Moby. Or perhaps perspicuity had prevented him, for he knew Moby.

The acrid smoke tormented our passengers something awful. They about hacked their snouts off. Would of preferred not subjecting them to it, but we needed to assess the damages.

Much to Li’l Coyote’s chagrin, I slid down and left him aboard Cactus Rose as I went inside to reconnoiter. Big hunks of the roof had burned away, along with most of the fixings inside, such as Moby’s beloved roll-top desk, some chairs, the beds in the cells, and the majority of the floor. Water had ruined any arty facts unconsumed by the blaze. But the cells theirselves survived intact; the fearless volunteers had killed the fire before it warped the bars. The potbellied stove in the middle of the office lay on its side, with the grate open and the cinders and ashes inside spilt out; knocking it over must of started the brief holocaust.

I reported the same as I swung up behind Li’l Coyote, who was so pleased at my return he grabbed aholt of me and hung on for dear life.

I got poised to grab Big Coyote and pull him to safety if Moby took it into her head to gallop off to her ma’s place and explain her dismay over her desk and the rest to Xavier and them with a fusillade of lead.

Instead, she said mildly enough, "Better git these two coyotes over to the stable."

Not a word about that roll-top.

Yeah, she sure was sweet on that Spigot.

We turned back up Boondoggle, this time shortcutting through the wide alley betwixt Cesspooch’s Mercantile and Roachely’s Barbershop and Funeral Emporium, which opened onto Main. On the opposite side of that street, the livery door stood smack across from the alley. A few paces to our left, a big ol’ cottonwood tree stood in the middle of Main, which Mayor Rattlesnake Jerry wouldn’t let no biggety, stuffed-shirt civic improvers cut down.

When we had dismounted and walked into his cottonwood-shaded smithy and stable, Buffalo Blitzkrieg, as usual, gaped at Moby. Even if we hadn’t left the furriners outside, he probably wouldn’t of noticed them for a good two-three minutes.

Hard to blame Buffalo for staring. Moby’s comely face belied the capacity for mayhem behind it, and her generally slim built jutted and curved real generous in all the correct places.

Once Buffalo finished goggling, and running his tongue-tip over his upper lip hungry-like, he optioned on being contrary. Maybe because he knowed he didn’t have no more chance with Moby than a polecat has with a thoroughbred mare. Or maybe because he figured that with Xavier and his gang running around town and burning down jailhouses indiscriminate-like, and her neglecting to put windows in their skulls, the time had turned ripe to stand up to the sheriff.

It hadn’t.

She named a figure for the work we wanted done, low-balling him a mite, but not entirely unfair.

Sounding angry, he fired back a bejabberous amount that, when we’d deciphered it from his thick furrin accent, was flat out of the question. Wearing Army trousers and suspenders with no shirt, and strong as a draught horse, Blitzkrieg was all swole up with muscles. On a face like a notched and hard-used Bowie knife, he sported a thick brown beard, and you couldn’t tell where it left off and his chest hair commenced.

Moby made what book writers call a grim ace, and upped her bid a mite.

Instead of coming down and meeting her halfway like a honest man, ol’ Buffalo dug in his heels, refusing to budge from his price. Ranting and roaring, windmilling his arms and charging back and forth acrost the smithy, he expressed the same in language that, even in furrin, didn’t have no manners to it at all. That made Moby’s eyes flash, sensitive the way she was to anybody but her employing them kind of expressions. And remember, he hadn’t even seen the jigger that still lay outside on the travois; so he couldn’t of had no clear idea of the job.

I turned towards the anvil, figgering to set out Buffalo’s obstreperousness. Or Moby’s patience, whichever come to an end first. Behind me, he stalked in betwixt Moby and the stable door and right at that moment, he sudden-like bawled like a trap-bit bear and hit the floor like a felled cottonwood. At the same moment, I heard a gunshot.

I turned around. Moby’d sprung to the side of the stable door, shooter in her fist. I suspicioned that her patience had already played out.

"Mobe," I said, as gingerly as possible, "how’s Buffalo gonna fix that dofunny now, with that great big hole in his leg?"

She employed one of the selfsame words she’d misliked so powerful a moment before when it had come flying out of Blitzkrieg.

" ’Tweren’t me," she added. "Not that I wasn’t thinkin’ of it." I seen then that her gun wasn’t smoking. "Take cover, ya dumb galoot," she suggested. " ’Fore you git ventilated too." I obeyed, pulling my .44 and jumping behind the other side of the door with some dispatch. I looked around it and peered down the alley between the mercantile and barbershop. Where it opened out onto the prairies, I seen a distant wisp of gun smoke hanging over the sagebrush.

"Shot came from over there," Moby said, holstering. I almost couldn’t understand her on account of how Blitzkrieg raised such a hoorah whilst he rolled around on the floor that way. "Feller jumped on his horse and fogged out. Got behind the sawmill ’fore I could see who he was. Must of been a helluva big rifle, from the sound of it. Why the hell’d anybody wanna bushwhack ol’ Buffalo?"

"Maybe heerd about prices he charges?" I said.

"Doubt it--reckon that’d be a heat of the moment kinda thing; bushwhackin’s more somethin’ ya’d do a spell later, cold-blooded like."

I recollected how Buffalo’s pacing had interposed him betwixt her and the door at the fateful instant. "Maybe nobody wanted to stretch Buff out, Mobe," I said. "Maybe they was gunnin’ for you."

"Ya reckon?" Moby’d sauntered over to Buffalo and held him down with one knee on his chest so’s he couldn’t thrash about so much while she pressed a horse blanket into his wound.

Which inspired a whole new explosion of opinions from that worthy, mostly in furrin, unfortunately, for I am always keen on bettering myself in that regard.

"Best fetch over Doc Finksberry," she said. " ’Fore this fool up and bleeds to death."

"This is not da vay I longed to be lyink down vith you," he said.

She drew back her fist, hesitated, then let it fall. "You wasn’t a casualty," she said, "I’d knock some manners into ya, for sure and for certain!"

So, with Buffalo still squirming around and bellowing about "Schweinhund" and "Gott in Himmel," I run off to get the Doc. The two furriners had been outside, perched on the horses, clinging for dear life to their manes with their hands and the cinch straps with their toes. We’d tried to coax them to slide off, but they’d showed even less enthusiasm about the long drop than they had about climbing up. Well, by now they’d finally scrambled down and, as I bustled past them, they pussyfooted into the smithy to see what all the rumpus had been about. Li’l Coyote held one of their toy guns in his hand, and went in first, like he was Big Coyote’s bodyguard.

Without turning back to look, I could tell when they’d got inside the livery by the holy Ned the horses in there raised once’t they’d eyeballed the furriners.