The Feeding

Part 2: Seasoning

The next few hours were a smoky mix of tobacco, whiskey, and bravado all around inside the saloon. The townsfolk knew their lines and kept them to the letter. Jeb had hardly finished explaining the situation and what the stranger aimed to do before their new guest was swept away in a sea of thank yous and god bless yous and Jesus smiles upon yous. Jeb kept close by and steered the stranger through it all, noticing with a grim little smile that the false praise was starting to get to their new savior. He brushed most of it off with his own quiet modesty, but Jeb saw the cracks. The stranger enjoyed the love and attention and was silently basking in the chance to feel wanted. Jeb had seen people like him drunk with that kind of popularity before, and it never ceased to amaze him. If everyone in Texas would just give in to the Vast One, there would be no need for such newfangled ideas of heroism! But that was all it came down to for men like the stranger, wasn't it? Kill this bandit, stop the cattle rustlers, and you will be accepted by people you met the day before.

He watched as the stranger tried and failed to verbally bat away the mountains of praise Ms. Annie from the shoe shop was piling on him. Amateur cowboy. Jeb reckoned that if the stranger wanted to have a purpose in the town, he was apt to serve one very soon.

The stranger's humbleness was strong. In fact, it only crumbled completely after Jeb had sat him down at the bar with the raucous cheers of the townsfolk at their backs and had proceeded to get him so drunk ("You won't do any killing without some fire in your veins," Jeb had said when he'd protested) that the stranger had even gone so far as to remove his hat, an act of intoxication Jeb had never been so privileged to see among his kind. Jeb had found a kid beneath it, a thin-faced young man hardly out of his mid twenties, and he sent up a silent prayer to the Vast One for being so understanding with what they had to work with. When Jeb left the stranger's side and returned a second later with Betsy, the local seductress, he thought the stranger's eyes just might pop out of his skull. She thanked him quietly with her dark eyes, then led him upstairs to bed even though it was still only late afternoon. The last Jeb had seen of him, he was being taken upstairs by his big belt buckle looking like the happiest man from Dallas to Houston.

Jeb and the other townsfolk watched them leave, still cheering. Then they sat and waited patiently for the steady thumping from upstairs to cease. When, after five long minutes, it finally did, Jeb instructed them to wait another ten minutes in silence. Then he led the way upstairs. The stranger was passed out, naked as the day was born, amid the tangled bedsheets in the first room. Betsy was sitting at the foot of the bed, smoking one of those newfangled cigarettes and looking extremely pleased with herself. Everyone else had formed a neat line snaking around the entire second level; they knew the plan. Jeb sent them in one by one, looking back around to see what each person had brought-- that was always an interesting part of the Pre-Feeding ritual.

Mrs. Eagleton from the bakery came in with a handful of breadcrumbs she carefully lined the stranger's pants pockets with. Mr. Shaw from the coat shop entered bearing a little shred of cow fat, which he proceeded to stuff down the mouth of one of the stranger's leather boots. Mr. Addison's choice was the riskiest; he sprinkled fresh chile powder over the stranger's form as he slept, making sure to intersperse it thinly so as to not arouse suspicion when he awoke. This one was a daring move, but a necessary one; the Vast One liked its Feeding with a touch of spice in it. Jeb had seen Addison's shoulders deflate in relief as he left, and he quietly patted him on the back before conducting the next town resident in.

Jeb was the last. Betsy waited for him outside the door as he went in with his own bit of seasoning. It was a bit of a dilemma, but in the end he decided to put the little silver pentagram in the stranger's breast pocket. Then he left the room without a look back and lay with Betsy until the sun dipped behind the horizon and Mrs. Perkins from the barber shop came to inform them, red-faced, that it was time.