Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Better Bets

tuesday morning. with the man what wants.

A lake sits at the foot of the mountains, and as Jude directs Hickory to the water's edge, dawn spills across the sky and steals into the lake's face. The reflection is still and sheer, like the surface of a mirror, but Hickory lowers his head to drink from the water, and the black wolfdog what's invited himself along ventures out into the lake.

Parts of the sky ripple and break into pieces what can't be made sense of, and Jude looks up and peers across the lake. Something sits over there at the other end. Something what a man has made. A dock? A homestead?

Jude narrows his eyes.

Folks what the outlaws could've run into, or a place where they might try hiding.

He tugs on Hickory's reins, and the stallion lifts his head, swishes his tail, and snorts, but Hickory starts turning, and Jude glances back at the wolfdog, whistles to the critter, and then calls out, real sharp, "Jet! C'mere, boy."

The wolfdog is up to his belly in water, but he perks up at the sound of his name and starts turning and peering back at the bounty hunter. Jet-Black is what Jude's been calling it whenever it's eating time, and the wolfdog's mighty smart—started picking up the meaning of the name around the second or third time Jude had ever used it—so now Jet sees Jude, pads right on out of the water, and shakes himself dry before trotting along just a couple feet behind Hickory.

They follow the lake, but when they get near the homestead, Jude has Hickory stop. The trees have thinned, and he can peer past them, to the space what the homesteaders had fenced in and made their own. He spies a shed and a house and some pens what must've housed animals, but they're empty, now, and the chickens what Jude can spy are just mulling about in the open, free and unbothered. He can't spy no other horses, and he'd come up on the place quiet enough—ain't no way nobody heard him, if there was anybody around what could.

He frowns and prompts Hickory forward, and when he's close enough he dismounts and loops the reins about the branches of a tree, and then he grabs his rifle and loads it with a coupla bullets before quietly stalking toward the homestead. He tosses Jet a look as he moves to head along, but the dog must've been trained to keep quiet without much more than a glance, because he slinks right after Jude with his tail low and his ears perked.

The homestead's quiet—too quiet. The only things what make any sort of noise at all are the chickens and rabbits what mull about, but there's a coop and hutch for each respectively. Were they let out? Must've been. Why?

The fence gate has been left open, and there are tracks what lead out from it. Three animals. Two were horses, but the third was a mule. Might've taken it for Ms. Little to ride.

Jude creeps along with the barrel of his rifle pointed down, and he comes up on the shed what he spied earlier. It's a sturdy thing, all wood, but when he rounds the front, he finds a hole in the door. It's jagged and splintered, but there're no marks from an ax. Must've been shot at, then. The shells ripped right through the wood, but when he glances inside to check around for a body or something else, the only thing what he finds is a mess of splinters on the ground.

He pulls his head back out, scrutinizes the door a little more, and then looks down. There's a spot of dirt near the shed what's a little darker, and the nearby blades of grass have spots of rusted brown on them.

Jet sniffs at the dark spot, and then he puts his nose to the ground and starts following along like he's found something, but Jude spares the homesteaders' house a glance before following. The sky's clear and the sun's bright, but the shutters are all closed. Nobody home? Or is somebody hiding? So Jude keeps glaring, but the shutters don't move.