Daniel looked curious himself, but felt it helpful to add what he thought he heard from Sky Dog. "A demon, I think. Somethin' 'long those lines. Don' matter whether New World Demon er Old World Demon er Middle World Demon. Gotta be taken care of whatever World. Right Padre?"

"If there are demons among us, then from whatever world their origin, we must exorcise them from our presence," he said, agreeing with the young barber.

"Avakhi," Korpi agreed, whetting her beak against the pew.

"Yes bait," Sky Dog said. The shaman's movements were sharpened by an anxiety that reached neither his face nor his voice save for the rapidity of his speech. "The demon he does not ride calling 'I am Quanterill, I am Quanterill!' to tell himself or the hostages he is driving before him, a woman who cannot tell she sees a hostage when there, he has the husband's best bullets in...she does not survive by luck. These people, they had no chance. No chance. They knew nothing." Sky Dog shook his head at such waste of life as though something were biting at his face, pained. "No, I see this with the plague demons-"

"Üthpa," Korpi clarified.

"-They come on the sledge with the white traders, very fast and invisible to men...but if a shaman sees one, and fights them, it can take three, five days...and if the demon wins, it kills everyone but three people, so that they lead it to the next band." Sky Dog paused, swallowed, and stepped backwards towards the door, ready to answer anything asked of him but clearly keen on heading off somewhere.

"So you're sayin' them three were let go?" Gabby says, trying to follow Sky Dog's reasoning. "That they was spared, so that they could tell their story as to bait in those who wanted to hunt Quantrill down? That makes sense. Quantrill's supposed to be dead, shot down nigh on to eleven years ago in a Union ambush. So unless Quantrill faked his death or got raised from the dead, whoever it is runnin' around claimin' to be him probably ain't. But it sounds like whoever it is also managed to get his hands on some pretty nasty mad science. The prisoner we brought in, he done found a way to make dead bodies rise again and attack the livin'. I wouldn't be surprised if he sold that bit o' technology to some low-down bandit."

Sky Dog stared a moment, then suddenly barked out laughter. "Ha! That does explain how the avakhi is walking like a man...the sorcerer that was killed, ha! He is almost like a hostage himself, even if his bird-soul is still in his chest!" Without further explanation Sky Dog stalked back towards Gabby a few paces, distracted.

"...I do not know if the avakhi wishes only to kill the shamans and brave people, or simply to have more...here-being. Fearing him, yes? Speaking his name, giving him thoughts, tearing a space in the world for himself where himself should not be so that he can hold on, become powerful."

The shaman stopped. "The man Radcliffe can make hostages?" he asked, incredulous. "I do not know how he thinks any thought, with his brain full of worms...but he is not needing to sell this thing: so close to the wound in the world I am finding many...bad places. If the ground it goes bad, that can also bring up hostages, Wyitterp knows this. Ha! It is all this burying in the ground, all together...it would be a good thing if they were more often blessed, these burying-places."

Somewhere along the way, Sky Dog lost Daniel, so he turned his face toward some of the depictions of Christ. Not as many at a unified Church as there would be in a proper Catholic place of worship, but enough for him to offer a quick, silent prayer to the Lord for the continued health of the small band with which he traveled, and assistance for the few survivors of Hays. Though he was quiet, his lips moved slightly as he offered prayer.

When he was finished he quietly addressed the others, "I don' think it's no trap. Folk've already been there an' buried the remains o'th'dead. An' if 'twere a trap, it's one I'ma spring an' see what waits. Quantrill risin' or imposter, don' matter. They gotta be put down."

He looked around, "Now, I think we took 'nuff o'th'padre's time, we should git along. Thanks fer yer help, Padre Iglesias."

Morgan nodded in agreement with Daniel. "Back from the grave or not, whoever it is has to be stopped. If they're trying to lay a trap, that just means we need to be more clever than they are.

He tipped his hat to the father. "Thank you for your help, Father."

Morgan glanced up at the cross at the head of church and breathed a silent prayer for wisdom before turning to leave.

Gabby looked a bit puzzled at Sky Dog's ramble. "Hostages? Wat do ya'll mean by that?"

Korpi launched herself up to recaim her reserved seat on the Marshal Morgan express, her krrok krok krok echoing from the corners as though there were no church at all, but forest.

"I think it is brave people, who would go to a trap laid by an avakhi," Sky Dog said, backing up. "...and I think it is a happy avakhi, whose enemies are leaving the biggest settlement for him without a warning or defense."

He turned and strode into the sunlight, flinching a little at the glare. Even with his eyes narrowed to slits he could see very little in the range that was clear to him, but called out in case she was playing nearby. "Laura!"

Catching Uncle's question, Sky Dog paused. "One taken, held but not truly dead, so that the captor can draw use from the kin...perhaps it is not the word." The shaman threw a question back to his sister in Evenki.

The raven looked down at Gabby and gave him the Russian: "Vampir."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:41, Thu 14 Feb 2013.

Daniel shook his head, slightly, at Sky Dog's insinuation. "This town don't fit the profile. Not pro-union 'nuff. And likely too big ta be hit. No, I'ma thinkin' th'nex target's elsewhere. Jus' not sure where that do be yet."

At Sky Dog's call to her, the little girl ran up to where he was and waved to the priest, who she could see was walking further into the church to tidy up the area.

"What is it Mister Sky Dog, from the top of the world?"
This message was last edited by the player at 22:43, Thu 14 Feb 2013.

Sky Dog held up his hand to Daniel for a moment's space.

"A small thing, Laura," the shaman crouched, yanking one of his creatures free as he did so. He held the sinuous, stylised shape out to the girl, deadly serious.

"This is Chi-shishika, she is a sable, yes?" Given a child's natural understanding of things that could be at once inanimate objects and living creatures with intense inner lives in realms invisible to the everyday - most children had some form of doll, after all - Sky Dog felt no need to explain as he would to an adult.

"If you will look after her a while, I will give you a pretty bead. Do not worry if you lose her! She will find her way back to me...but let her sleep by your door when you are also sleeping, or by your hearth, she will be happy there. Is it a trade?"

Laura looked truly excited, and took it from him, the small piece of metal. "Chee-sheeka?" she asked, struggling to pronounce it. She listened to his strange request and after a moment, nodded, as if it all made sense. "I'll take care of her for you. Won't you miss her? What's a sable?"

Sky Dog grinned and fished out a dark wooden bead about the size of the first joint of Laura's thumb from a pouch hung near his knife, inlay of some dark-whorled blue shell irridescing in the sun. "Done."

"Probably," he agreed, "-but I need to do some things without her, and you see I have other spirit helpers." He nudged the tin animals sewn lightly to his shirt and set a deer glinting against some kind of butterfly. "A sable is like...hmm, polecat. But dark and soft, very soft, yes...and not bad-smelling. You will probably dream her right shape, then you will know what a sable is."

Sky Dog smiled, then let it slip back to a grin, leaving whatever melacholy had brushed him behind. "Thank you."

"Thank you," she said excitedly, and ran off with her bead and tin animal to show Mrs. Johnson and Xavier.
This message was last updated by the player at 17:06, Fri 15 Feb 2013.

Sky Dog stayed crouched a moment, taking the jade god from his hood and pulling the thin hide up to protect his head and face from the sun. "...I will ask my blood-cousin his thoughts," he said, at last looking over at Daniel.

"-maybe while you shave my steed, I will go to the Upper World and ask him. For 'too large'...if many, many caribou, they are in a pen, all a crowd together," Sky Dog gestured at the streets further out from the church and the brown-grey-pale flashes of milling humans, standing up. "If there is no sentry, and no dog, how many wolves does it take to make a slaughter?"

The shaman's hand described a jerky, uncertain circle in the air, letting Daniel picture the circling, terrified animals: the panicked trampling of hooves, antlers goring others' shoulders, flanks, deer ripped into shreds of bone of hair attempting to leave the ring of death. His tone remained careful, persuasive.

"The hostages alone, they are only a threat to those who cannot tell what they are. With an avakhi near, they are fast, their flesh is strong and they work...together. Like the wolves. It would be unwise, I think, to say already we know what they will not do." Sky Dog paused for the others' opinion, his gaze raised to Daniel's.

Daniel chuckled at Sky Dog's response. "I don' think these here folk in Dodge be prey, Sky Dog. Purty sure we ain't the toughest folk in this town, neither. Any wolves descend here, and they be findin' some bears in their trap. And it don't matter much fer the nex' few days, as we done signed on to keep Dodge safe from herself. Huntin' down what done that ta the folks o' Hays gotta wait a few days."

Daniel's certainty got a strange grin in response.

"Igor was called Snow-That-Stays-In-Shadows-At-The-First-Spring-Thaw until he killed a Russian," the shaman said, with the casual pride of a Sioux pointing out that one of the pretty tassels on his shirt was blond, then laughed. "Ha! They will not come in the day...I give it two, three days the demon wants the...rumour to stir here, then he comes - Ha! ha! Perhaps he comes for the festival, in his most pretty clothes, yes? The festival with much yelling and shooting. No-one would notice!" Sky Dog's smirk bordered laughter, then vanished.

"Morgan, perhaps it would be good for Wyitterp to warn other settlements - the demon may want more terror or more hostages, and it is best to hunt things from the Lower World in daylight, when they are weak. Uncle, is it the right word, hostages?" Sky Dog rubbed sweat from the back of his neck, suffering in the noon heat. He caught Daniel's eye and nodded over towards the stables, expression pleading.

"If'n he did come here at the height o' the festival, then we'd been in some trouble." Gabby mutters. "Tensions is already runnin' high, from what Earp said. A reborn Quantrill would stir the pot like nobody's business. Hell, I'd reckon there might be more than a few Southerners what might join with him, out o' some misguided notions o' strikin' back against the Yankees, and then we'd all have a real mess on our hands."

He shakes his head. "No, hostages ain't right. Them carcasses are dead as doornails, got some kind o' galvanic force movin' 'em about--they ain't hostages, they're more like puppets. I've seen 'em referred to as zombies or the walkin' dead in the Epitaph."

"Vampir. Dirrrri'gis!" Korpi bobbed her head up and down a few times, possibly for emphasis. "Korp."

Her brother considered Gabby's words. "Ah..."galvanic"? Dead, yes, but not dead also...ha! Un-alive. Or un-dead: they are like little holes. The bad spirits hold the...onnir, life-spirit, in the body when the bird-soul is gone, and hold it and hold it away from the rest - from the Great Spirit, yes? - until it goes bad and grows, like blackness in the meat, and moves the bones."

"They are memory, spirit-knowing, no thought - they will go to places they were before, seek life and try to devour it because there is always the lacking inside, where was a soul...a powerful avakhi can herd them, maybe, but he cannot give them a now, a life, to think. Zombie. Hm." Sky Dog thought a moment.

"But the Church-Czar in Rome, he has not fixed the thinking yet? You know a zombie is un-dead because you see them at Epitath, but the people from Hays, they are all killed for not knowing to throw seeds or use fire."

Morgan nodded at the shaman's suggestion. "I think it would be wise to let Earp know what we've learned here. It's impossible to know where these men might try to strike next, but a brazen strike on Dodge isn't out of the realm of possibility. Like Gabby said, there are likely a few here who might still feel sympathy for Quantrill and his cause. If he, or someone claiming to be him, appeared trying to stir up such feelings, we'd have chaos and a whole lot of bloodshed."

"I think I'm going to head to the telegraph office. I'd like to alert the U.S. Marshal's office about what we've learned. Make certain that they are on alert for these ruffians." Looking to the rest of the group, he asks, "I can meet up with the rest of you after that. Perhaps we should take a look at the area we're patrolling. Make sure we know it well before the festival starts."

"Galvanic. It's, uh...umm...it's like..." Gabby had read the term, but didn't actually know much about what it really meant. He'd only gotten the gist of it from the context. "It's a motive...kind of force. Like...um...lightning and such. Some o' them New Science boys have done stuff with it. Supposed to make machines go and such."

"What is it that we actually know, though?" Gabby said to Caleb, rubbing his jaw. "I hate to play devil's advocate on my own theory, but all we know is that the raiders with the guy callin' himself Quantrill didn't go down when shot. Mrs. Johnson said that they seemed to take delight in their killin'...that don't square with the kind o' mindless deadders we saw. Maybe they was just regular banditos. Or maybe Sky Dog's right and something crawled up into 'em and made 'em go bad. I think we need more information on this if'n we're goin' to put a stop to it."

Clementine, in the meanwhile, was bored with the talking people and want outside to see if she could find the little human girl who had laughed and smiled. Clementine liked it when human people laughed and smiled. It made her happy.

"I think you're absolutely right, Gabby. We don't know what we're dealing with. But I feel obligated to let the Marshals know what we've found out so far. Obviously we don't know how to bring these men to a stop, but if word gets out to the towns here in Kansas, maybe folks will be alert and prepared to make a run for it if these men appear. The Marshals can help make sure that word gets spread."

Morgan paused. "I still think it might be worthwhile to talk to Radcliffe. See if the name Quantrill gets any reaction out of him. It could be that there's much more that can be done with Wilder's inventions than just what Radcliffe accomplished. Maybe not all those who are brought back are mindless monsters. Radcliffe might not know how to accomplish it, but he might know of others who can."

"I'll head over the telegraph office. Would you like to meet back at the Town Marshal's office?"

The raven tapped the Marshal on the crown of the hat to signal that nod was a bit too emphatic for her liking. "Nyet. Spath'ba."

"Delight like this, yes?" Sky Dog pulled his lips back in a rictus grin like the poorly-buried and stared ahead, giving an overall effect similar to 'crazed icepick murderer'. "We also know they go to life without a light to see, and are keeping up with the frightened horse, fast enough to take the village by surprise and catch all the people in their houses - the avakhi makes them like this. It would be better if the people found a place to hold, not run, I think - until dawn when the dead ones are weaker."

"Radcliffe's making may be useful, backwards, yes. We will come there later. Please excuse, I will reclaim my sister-" he spoke to Korpi.

"Kaaaaw," Korpi protested, but after a little persuading took off and circled Daniel to see if he was trustworthy enough to land on, decided against it and took to her brother's upraised arm. "Korp."

"Yeah, I think we can do that." Gabby said at Caleb's suggestion.