Gunlaw

Gunlaw 44

Mikeos thought of the woodkin doctor back in Ansos, his wide green eyes, the touch of his fingers ... like roots. "Kin are past helping us now. Know we're coming. Know what we're after. Could have laid a train on for us if helping was on the list of what kin want."

"James Purbright will have arrived there already." Hemar came across, holding his belly as if remembering Bright's knife. "We'll find nothing good there." The dogman spasmed, just one quick convulsion of his muscles. Mikeos' Grandpa Ray used to say that was the last sign of the thirst, the claws of it being torn out of drunk gave them spasms. He saw it time and again did Grandpa Ray, whenever a proper boozer ended up in his cells for more than a week. "It hurts them something rotten," he'd told Mikeos. "And then they're free of it?" Mikeos asked. "Hell no. But it stops beating on them every minute of the day after that. Stops shouting at them and starts a-whispering. The whispering is what brings them all back to the bottle in the end. Whiskey never lets go once it's got a hold. No siree!"

"We'll have to hope," Mikeos focused back on Hemar, pushing memories aside. He tried to imagine it. A town built of a boy's imagination. Or the ruins of it, and Jim Bright standing over Eben Lostchild's corpse. He wouldn't wait though. More likely they'd meet him coming back along the tracks, the deed done. "Just have to hope."

"You don't have to hope," Hemar snapped, yellow teeth clashing close enough to Mikeos's face to feel the dogman's breath. "You're here for Bright and you'll get him. One way or the other. You couldn't give two beans for Eben, could you?"

"I went down that pit hunting Walker for miners that I didn't know from the first man." Mikeos wiped his sweating face and realised that the mythical 'first man' people swore and cursed by was actually Sykes Bannon. First man off the first train. A good man twisted into something wicked by the years that wouldn't let him die. Mikeos straightened up, wincing at the tenderness around his left side. He didn't feel dying would prove particularly difficult in his case. Catching sight of Hemar again he tried to reel in the strand of conversation that had escaped him. "I'd go out of my way to protect Eben Lostchild whoever threatened him. The fact that it's Jim Bright is just a bonus."

Hemar licked his teeth. It wasn't just whiskey he was short of, their water had gone and the next tower lay ten miles off, maybe more. How the dogman had managed the first time without a canteen Mikeos couldn't begin to understand. What he did understand was that he was slowing the others down, letting the Dry in under their skins, letting it desiccate them.

"You think—" Hemar shook as another spasm ran through him. "You think Jim Bright shot your father? You don't know much about hunska, do you?"

"What have hunska got to do with anything?" Mikeos wondered if the heat had got to Hemar, or was it fear of the pursuing sect, so close now the wind carried their taint whenever it blew from the south. Even a human nose could smell it. What horrors it might speak to Hemar Mikeos couldn't say.

Scent pulls you back through the years, takes you to a moment, puts all those emotions right back in your lap. The tracks might mute the sect-mind, reducing its screams to whispers, but their stink would be shouting at Hemar, dragging him back to the slaughter of his pack. Mikeos sniffed and tried to remember what they were talking about.

"Hunska? You're not making sense, Hemar." Terror makes a man talk crazy. Perhaps it was terror. Either way Hemar had a sharp edge to him. Grandpa Ray always said the only thing meaner than a mean drunk is a mellow drunk sober. Hemar had always been genial as he eyed the bottom of a bottle but even the friendly ones got vicious when drying out.

"You shot nine men in the street, Mikey, Nine! Quick men among them. Nobody's that fast. No man at least."

"Well this man here is." Mikeos thumped his chest. Hemar was working up to something but he couldn't figure what. Some paranoia that both kinds of thirst had put into him, most likely.