That night, as he often did, Conrad dreamt of fire and shadow. Of malevolent, inhuman eyes and razor-tipped fangs belonging to some ancient, unspeakable force. The rooster’s morning call roused him from the morass of nightmare, awakening him to a cold, clinging sweat soaking through his garments. He yawned and stretched, rousing off his sleep just in time to hear the door creak open, Papa, bleary-eyed, peeking out the threshold.

“Stayed out here all night, did you?” Papa said, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Well, good for you. Now get up and get moving.”

Conrad’s days were filled with the hard labor of farmhand life, stopping only so often to give his raw, sun-beaten neck and arms reprieve in the shade of a leering, overgrown Poplars dominating the western edge of the ranchland.

With the sun at Midday, and at its hottest and most vengeful, this particular respite was broken by the clap of hooves reverberating through the trees. Conrad shuffled to the treeline, overlooking the wide, flat plains under the enormous sky. He watched, a tinge of jealously rattling in his stomach, as Jack tore across the flatland on Ranger, her towering, loyal, chestnut-brown stallion. Dust flew, and as her whoops of excitement trickled across the plains to Conrad’s ears, he felt them growing hot, despite being completely protected from the sun’s angry glare.

He doesn’t remember the first time he tried to ride a horse. Not the ride itself anyway. Or the fall.

He remembers coming up from blackness. Coughing and sputtering like he was under deep, cold water for longer than he could hold his breath.

He remembers the faces. Papa and Jack and Arthur Ellsley, Papa’s drinking buddy from town, crowding over him like vultures as he lay flat on his back, praying for God to pour life back into his lungs.

It was the closest he’d ever felt to death, but if he was honest with himself, which he wasn’t, those moments that felt like an eternity, the wind whipping in his hair, the ground hurtling beneath him, was the closest he’d ever felt to really being alive.

He watched her herd as the sun crawled across the sky, lost in his own thoughts, until the sharp crack of a twig caused him to nearly jump out of his skin. He whipped around to see Papa standing not a few yards from him.

“Daydreaming again?” He scoffed, and Conrad felt his face grow red and hot again, with embarrassment this time, not envy. It worsened as he noticed Papa’s gaze drift, past him and out onto the fields where Jack rode, and watched Papa’s mask of disappointment melt into pride.

“Need y’all to go into town, pick me up a few things.” He said, not bothering to look Conrad in the eye. “You think you can handle that?”

Conrad, as usual, rode in the rickety wagon behind Ranger, wincing as the wheels josteled over hardscrabble terrain. He silently begged for Jack to slow down, and tried to keep from watching the earth underneath blur past through the cracks in the wooden slat floor.

The town of Durant wasn’t much more than an ink-smudge on an otherwise vast beige canvas of sun-caked dirt and wiry, skeletal underbrush. “But don’t let the size mislead you,” Papa would always say “Durant has just as many crooks, liars and lowlifes as all those big cities.”

Anything you need, you can find on that main drag: a long, wide dirt road bordered on both sides by stores, saloons, brothels, and more saloons. A lonely church lurks off the main drag, staying just as full of sinners as the sheriff’s station jail cells. Conrad’s heart sinks into his gut as he watches the dark blot on the landscape loom larger. Not being one for commotion and crowds, the thought of being in Durant makes Conrad’s palms slick with sweat.

The noise was always the first thing Conrad noticed as they entered the confines of the town: raucous laughter pouring from the saloons and hotels, hollered curses and threats from the gambling houses, cryers hawking news, merchants hawking wares.

Conrad kept his eyes low, careful not to make eye contact with anyone that might mean him ill will. He trusted Jack and her proficiency with Papa’s rifle, and tough as she was, she was just a girl. Lurking around every corner, in the shadow of every alley were men. Grown men. Bad men.

Jack hitched Ranger to a post, lending a hand to help Conrad down from the wagon. Just as he was preparing to hop down, his focus was shattered by abrasive laughter from the porch of the nearby saloon. He knew he shouldn’t look, he already knew what they were laughing at: a boy needing help from a girl, a girl who rode the stallion into town while the boy kept huddled in the back of the car, but he couldn’t help himself from finding the source of the derision.

Three roughnecks, dirt-caked and whiskey-soaked, their bloated bellies vibrating with malicious glee. Conrad could see the rot in their yellowed teeth, the blood trails gripping their pale eyes. The sight of them was all it took to break his concentration, and before he knew it, his foot was slipping off the wood rail and he was hurtling facefirst into the dirt.

The hooting crescendoed, and Conrad could feel his blood bubbling and hot as he felt the grit on his teeth and tongue, forcing himself to his hands and knees. He felt a hand, familiar and calming, grab him by the sleeve and try to help him up.

“Get the hell off me!” Conrad spat, looking up to see Jack, mouth open in shock, as she released him to struggle to his feet. “I’m don’t need your damn help.” Conrad lied.

“Where’s your skirt?” Came a call from the most rotund member, and coincidentally the leader, of the crew of mocking boozehounds.  

Amos Underhill, his stance wide and uneasy as he hefted his barrell-gut forward. His teeth, yellowed like an old hounds, appeared in a crooked grin from behind the scraggly, oily beard reaching down to his Adam’s apple. A known card hustler, woman-beater, and general ne’er-do-well, you could call him Durant’s “model” citizen and you wouldn’t be wrong. Flanking him were the Lawry brothers, two bucktoothed cornstalks of flesh with small, deep-set eyes. Almost identical, you could only tell Elmer apart from Denton based on the trail of drool perpetually leaking from the corner of Elmer’s slack-jaw, and the way his left eye perpetually drifted towards the crook of his jagged nose. Talk around town is he was kicked in the back of the head by a mule when he was just knee-high and had never been quite right since.

Conrad could see Jack’s calloused hands clench into fists. “Ain’t all girls gotta dress like porcelain dolls!” She spat back, fire in her voice.

“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to him!” Amos retorted to resounding cackles from his henchmen. Conrad had to fight the urge to shrink back. All he wanted to do was disappear.

“What do you even need the pants for? You ain’t got much to fill ‘em” Jack responded, drawing even more laughter from Amos’ gang, although this time at his expense. “Although what would you know, belly so fat you wouldn’t be able to see what you got down there anyway, even if you had a magnifying glass!” And now even passerby were joining in the laughter. You could almost see the steam rising from Amos’ head, even in the shimmering heat.

“Come on.” Jack said, and as she pulled Conrad away, he kept his eyes to the ground, not having the courage to face his tormentors. If he had looked, he might have caught the glimmer of violence flash across the oaf’s glassy, bloodshot eyes as he spat through clenched teeth.

Mr.Odgen’s General Store was an impossibility, in Conrad’s mind. How the small, low-slung wood building, barely noticeable in the shade of the bright and laquered Fairley Hotel, could be so full of every item you could possibly imagine, always astounded him. It seemed five times larger in the inside than it did outside, like every time you stepped in it took a mammoth breath, holding it until you were out the door to deflate once more. In fact, Conrad always did have this sense that the store was somehow alive. There was an energy to it, as folks came hustling in and out, bartering and bickering. A whirlwind of chaos that did nothing to calm Conrad’s nerves.

Jack grabbed Conrad’s hand and pulled him inside, her strength easily overpowering the inertia of his reluctance. In spite of the brutal, beating sun outside, the store’s interior was gloomy and dim. No windows adorned the walls, so the only illumination came thanks to a few feeble oil lamps and thiun blades of light streaming through the door. Conrad took in the dizzying array of wares: ropes, horse harnesses, whips and buckets hung from the crowded ceiling. Along the wall, past the clerk’s counter were large oak barrels full of beans and nuts.Shelves were jam-packed with drab fabric, salves and ointments, soap and clothes, all stacked neatly but with no seeming rhyme or reason.

“Wait here, I gotta go get these mailed off.” Jack said, pulling a carefully creased, unadorned tan envelope from her satchel.

“Who’s it for?” Conrad asked, searching the envelope for a name or address, but there wasn’t a single mark on it. Jack just shrugged. “Papa said Mr.Odgen’ll know who it’s for, and to quit asking questions I don’t need to know the answers to.”

Conrad smiled, that sounded like Papa. “Don’t go getting lost.” Jack said as she hustled to the counter, letting loose a loud whistle through her teeth to get the clerk’s, along with every other patron’s, attention.

Conrad meandered the shop, scanning the wares without purpose of motive, until his eyes came to rest on monstrous sight, causing his blood to run cold. His heart was pounding through his chest for a brief, churning moment before he realized the great, looming Grizzy was dead, stuffed, and long dormant. The bear dominated a tucked-away corner of the shop, joined by an old rusted-out wood stove and satchels of moth-eaten tableclothes. Cobwebs settled in between the beast’s outstretched, ebony claws. At night, in the dark, Conrad trembles at the thought of these beasts out there, in wait for him. And to have one right in front of him, here and now, and powerless. He reached his hand out, ever so gently, cautiously even still, to feel the razor tip of the animal’s cruel talon.

“Astounding, isn’t it?” A voice from behind, so close it sounded like it was inside his skul, made Conrad’s heart stampede up into his throat. He swallowed a yelp and whirled around, almost tripping over the sack of tattered cloths at this feet, to come face to face with a man as peculiar looking as the clipped, accented way he spoke. He reminded Conrad of a spider at first, thin and angular. Pale, grey eyes sat behind sharp features, his mustache and goatee thin, waves into points in a manner Conrad had never seen. His clothes too, looked like they were out of some fever dream. A ruffled white shirt underneath a dusk-purple jacket. Conrad caught the glint of gold trailing from the man’s pocket to his belt loop. Conrad had only ever seen clothes like that a few years back, when the oil men came to town, and left as quickly as they arrived. “Ain’t even worth it to dig a ditch out here.” Papa had said, in a way that was almost prideful.

“Ferocity. Nobility. Power.” The strange man continued, gazing at the stuffed creature with reverence. “We lead ourselves to believe we are rightful owners of world. Great creatures have been around long before us. Will be long after mankind is no more.” In the flickering torchlight, Conrad could make out a scowl crease the man’s face.

“This one deserved to die with his honor. Not become some...decoration. For some man who has no courage to face him in wild. We hunt them, treat them like enemy. Shameful, no?” He turned to Conrad, his eyes reflecting the flickering lamplight. Conrad stammered, unsure what to say, when a commotion cut through the silence.

All eyes turned to Jack, hollering, clearly in some heated bout of bartering with the clerk. The strange man chuckled.

“Fiery, that one is. Strong spirit.” He turned back to Conrad. “Your sister, yes?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to strange folk.” Conrad replied, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

“I am just friend you don’t yet know.” The man replied coolly, reaching out a muscular hand. “I am called Vasilli. And you?”

On the man’s hand was a brilliant gold ring, it’s stone was even more unusual than his purple jacket, the deepness and blackness within seemingly endless, like the night sky. Conrad found himself getting lose in the depths of it, his transixion only broken by Jack’s sharp whistle.

“Conrad! C’mon, let’s git.” She called, and without another look at the interloper, Conrad pushed past him, hastening to put as much distance between himself and Vasilli as possible..

“Fare you well, young Conrad.” Vasilli’s parting words crept into Conrad’s ears and snaked down his spine with a chill. He didn’t dare look back.