Wild West

No More Jawing - Karen

"A man's got to have a code, a creed to live by, no matter his job." — John Wayne.

There was a low howl among the trees. The storm blew the window of this small shack open. The fitting for us all was tight, but warmer than the outside. It, however, wasn't made for four people. A table, a chair, a latty, and a tiny kitchen area were all that remained inside. They looked past their time and had seen far better days. The shack creaked and reeked of an old house smell. Despite that, no morsel of prog or sign that the other owner would ever return.

There was no outhouse on the outside. Mark had joked a few times that the man we had spotted died from the cold trying to find one. That wasn't the truth of the matter, from the scant clothes and the smell in the hut. Two men had lived here, and it seemed more than a friendly visit. The one we found was left to the elements. He couldn't be over twenty summers old. The man's pale body laid face down, entrenched in the snow under the lodge pine, a small trek away from the house. When we flipped him over, it was easy to tell that the man was a Southerner, from jet black hair to brown eyes. He was sick, scrawny, and frozen. He wore foreign brown dirty trousers and a white long sleeve with no mule-ears — the poor bastard. Mark had picked him clean for his last remaining worth. Who knows what happened to the other? He was dead if he had gone dressed as scant as the former. The two couldn't have spent much time up here. They would have known from the beginning that clothes like those weren't good. Without a thick coat, it wasn't enough in these parts of Yurikit Mountain. Judging from the empty prog cans on the floor, they had chewed through all their supplies — what a tragic end to a pair of runaway lovers. The hunger was something, at least for the moment, we had in common.

Our stomachs were empty for days now, as the hunt had endured, and this blistering cold continued. We had been filling what remained of those inbred Bull Prosecutors with lead plumbs. Now on this mountain bordering New Merico was the final one.

Weak bloods, Saul had called us for letting the last one get away. He always had something to say. The inbred was crafty, though I gave him that — something Saul wouldn't admit. My stomach growled a complaint, and the horses, almost on cue, neighed outside. They hadn't been fed today, but that wasn't the real reason they complained. They knew us by smell now for what we were in these half forms, but there was no other way to keep warm. Don't kill the horses. Saul had said before he left. His eyes had lingered the longest on Mark and not that lickfinger Richard. My hand flicked my hair from my face. Like, if I would ever do that or allow someone to do it to my prized horse.

Still, maybe Saul was right. I had never once hunted my own prog or the others like he did. To him, despite our age, we were still nothing but pups. A life in constant civilization had given us the idea that we were something else. Half breeds now, maybe?

We relied on our barking irons more than anything else, to a fanatical degree. It kept our true senses dull. Saul had scolded us, saying we had forgotten our way. Forsaking the old ways of the Aniwahya clan, keepers of order, or so my father would say.

Saul was always a traditionalist, though he never outright expressed his views. Maybe it was the fact that the geezer was four hundred years older than us. Still, he wasn't even close to being the oldest in the clan.

To Saul, I was nothing but a young whippersnapper with a rebellious flair. Who could blame him? I enjoyed following my path, the thrill of riding my horse with the wind on my back and shooting my barking irons, drinking, and watching the ocean with its vast depths calling me. Maybe it was luck that I got a job as a deputy. No one then drew as quickly as me. I dread what I would have had to do to survive otherwise. House cleaning, waitress, or I dare not to think of becoming a lady of the line? To go back home to Pa to hear what? I told you so. That was not an option.