Sky Dog looked completely perplexed at Daniel, apparently taking the statement for a random truisim. "...and ginger is hot in the mouth?"

Daniel shrugged, "Depends entirely on th' ginger. Most of 'em are insane crazy. But th' ones that're hot might be worth it."

Gabby laughs for the first time in a few days. "Naw, Sky Dog, it's one o' them idiom things. You know, things folk say that are like metaphors fer somethin' else? What he means is he don't think Quantrill might have gone that far from the places he's sacked. This stand o' oaks might be somewhere in the vicinity o' Hays, and if'n there was a trail, we might be able to pick it up there."

Sky Dog gamely tried to work out what in the Worlds Dalix just said, but turned his attention to Uncle at the laughter with some relief. "He is slow now his horse is died, yes...but I would like much better go before Quanterill and warn the people, than after him and be making sure the dead ones do not take to running."

"I think you're right. I think I should use the days I've been given back to help folk. And if you're talking about finding a murderer, I'll come along. I can still fire a gun, though most of what I did during the war was stitch folks up. So I can do that too for you, when the time comes. Now...are you talking about Bill Quantrill? I thought he was dead. At least, that's what I heard," he said.

Daniel nodded at Gabby's interpretation of his attempt to speak Sky Dog's language. Maybe best to stick to the English Daniel was used to speaking. "Yup, gettin' ahead o' Quantrill'd be nice. Jock is up fer some runnin', if we knew where ta warn folk."

He nodded at Clayton's response. "That's what folk've said, sure. But then you just been holdin' a scalpel what sews together body parts into movin monsters."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:45, Thu 04 July 2013.

"He made a pact with a demon, which is foolish, so that he does not die when he is killed...he has been buried, yes, nine years, and is pretty crazy for that, but also he gives the demon-"

"Avakhi," Korpi clarified, perking a little now the fireworks were nearly gone.

"-the use of his skin to walk in the Middle World, or it takes the body from him when he is weakened, as the vampire knife was doing to you. The demon has bound the no-mind running dead in pact to follow the skin, so Quanterill-the-man is wasting time when he has use of his re-made body: he sees the dead ones, runs, they run, he does run more, and such and forth, like a dog with the tin boxes tied to his tail."

"If we could find a murderer of buffalo near to an oak-place, we would know he was east of that place, for my cousin gave me to know Quanterill-the-demon would run westward to attack. Jock?"

"A buffalo hunter yah say? Weren't Miss Hawthorne talkin' ta one of 'em at some point? Course it seems there's no shortage of buffalo hunters, ya know?" Daniel closed his eyes briefly to think, but then seemed to interrupt his own thought process with another stray thought.

"Speakin' o' Miss Hawthorne, whaddya fellas thinka her?"

Gabby shrugs. "I try not to. Her tongue is too sharp by half and she plays with forces better left alone. I reckon she's tryin' to do right with 'em, though. From what I gathered, she's the reason Mansfield here was separated from the knife without losin' a hand in the process. That don't stop her from bein' a shrew, and I'll be glad when we part company with her."

"Many in Alhambra, yes. I am not certain it was hunting the white man from the vision did." The shaman shook his head. "Who could eat so much, when they shoot four, five buffalo, even to send pieces to the govenor?"

Korpi muttered something and tucked her head under her wing.

Sky Dog made the slight away-from-body gesture that seemed to be a shrug. "I had thought she was a terrible person only, but it is sense for a witch to be so: if she did not treat other people badly, she would be devoured whilst living by the hungry little ones from the Lower World. I have pity for her, that the Lower World knows the spirit-scent of her blood, and that she thinks badly of herself also, but it is how the world is, that if there are those who deal only with the Upper World, there will be also the...shadows, they leave. The witches."

"There's a witch in town?" Mansfield said, looking alarmed.

"Oh, Lord, but there must be. There was that big ball of whatever that struck my hand...his hand. Knocked that scalpel straight out! Do you think...oh, musta been that woman. Do you think she's dangerous? Is she gonna come after all of us?"

Sky Dog recovered some of his humour and started laughing.

"I think most o' the meat gets shipped Back East. Beef's gotten a mite pricy with the Fever that hit the herds in Texas. But the skins are where the money is at, so I think a lot o' buffalo might just be left to rot." Gabby says with a frown.

At Mansfield's comment, Gabby laughs as well. "I reckon if'n she was gonna do that, she'd have hit you with somethin' a mite more powerful. She could have used her power to blow your hand apart, but she didn't. I reckon that speaks to her character in that regard. Shew she may be, but she saved your life, an' mine too once. Ain't no one perfect in this world, but I reckon she ain't a problem for you."

Daniel nodded at the responses to his question, but grimaced at how easily his uncle threw around the term witch. "See, I ask 'cuz yappin' 'bout somebody doin' witchin' ain't a good way ta keep that person livin', ya know? Might also make 'em mighty mad. Now Gabby, I know ya like ta yap, but mebbe this be a good time ta shut yer trap, ya know?" He arched an eyebrow at his uncle, then turned it toward the others.

"You fellas mebbe should follow that just as well. Don't know if I trust those two Eastern folk, but I don't know that they ain't trustworthy, neither. Let's tread careful."

The shaman's laughter cut off sharply on the in-breath as though he'd been stabbed. "You...believe this is done often, Uncle? For what, for dollars?"

After a few seconds' silence, he elaborated to Mansfield: "Of many things that may wish yourself or our-selves harm, the one who has done well for you and did a-mend her ways when Uncle told her she did badly for the law is not the worst."

Sky Dog looked at Daniel some moments more. "I will not speak where she is not accepted, it is not my buisness. As for her cursing to my back - ha! I have my kujjai. Let her fight me, if she would fight any with this knowing." He struck the riding-pole against the ground in passing, causing Igor to turn his ears to the rattle. "But hear me, Dalix. If I took up this civilised lying, I would break meaning. I will not that." Colour was back in the shaman's cheeks, the scalpel-score oozing a thin line from where he'd rubbed at it.

Daniel shook his head, "Ain't askin' ya ta do no civilized lyin'. Jus' don't volunteer no information, ya know?"

In reply to Sky Dog (msg # 95):

"Shit, I know it's done often. I seen it." Gabby says with a sigh. "It's a damn waste, is what it is. Worst of it is, I think it might be bein' done to starve the Indians. Thin out their food sources so they's have to be moved on to their reservations. I reckon that's part o' what made 'em up and form their own nations."

Sky Dog went quiet, seemingly biting back a range of emotions. He swiped at his cheek, smearing the blood, then looked at the silvery shimmer of keys in his palm a time. When he did speak, it was quiet but with a rapidity the deputies might recognise as passion.

"I think that the white people - the first white people - something must have hurt them terribly at the start of the world...that it goes on down their blood, that they are acting always like drunken crazy people, shouting at each other, cursing God, decieving even their own families...it is like the wolf disease, I think, that the corruption drives you out to give this pain to others."

He shook his head. "It is my thinking the wound in the world has made worse this first fault - even the Russians, though they may kill and harm when they want to eat a band's own deer, they do not do this. It is too much for one shamán to heal. Already I am aching, just to be in the settlement. I have learnt harshly not to trust, although I do like you Uncle, and you, Dalix." The shaman sighed. "I am harmed in spirit. It makes me want alcohols such as killed my learning-master, so that I would sink in with it, cease to be a shamán, with duty to heal and be protecting whether I am waking or sleeping or dead; you see it is corruption. Maybe things will be better when the hole in the world is fixed. I hope it." His words exhausted, Sky Dog lapsed into a troubled silence.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 18:22, Tue 09 July 2013.

"What's the wolf disease?" he asked, touching on the one topic that he seemed to get from Sky Dog's long ramble. He didn't know about healing wounds in the world, but he did know about healing wounds in people. Of course, lately, he'd been more up to causing them than healing them, but that was another matter.

"Is it like rabies?"

The shaman raised his hand palm-up to show he did not know the word. "A wolf visits the person or their animals and bites them, or eats their food like a man, and the person's soul changes shape, becoming like a wolf. They die snarling and biting at others, with much of the," he gestured around his mouth "-spittle? If a woman is pregnant it will go to the child also."

"That's rabies, alright! It's got nothing to do with wolves, though. Well, it might, but it doesn't have to. Really, any mammal can get it. Dogs, skunks, coyotes, raccoons, you name it. Hell...your animal right there, whatever kinda deer you got there, it can get rabies too," he said.

Sky Dog carefully leant forward a little, looking for the light-shape of their destination, then down at the medicine drunkard. "Sometimes they do turn into wolves."

"Maybe you see it rarely, and have not fought a sickened wolf-spirit for a human soul." He shrugged, a tense gesture of white fingers. "The wolf disease - the rabies - would kill a prey animal, yes, but they cannot become wolves. It is for this the wolf disease can be cured sometimes."

Korpi shifted just slightly as her brother straightened and drifted out of wakefulness. Soft raven snores could just be made out between the jingle of shaman bells and the click of reindeer feet.

*ko...zizzz...ko....zizzz...*

Not far ahead of them was the city jail, where it seemed like ages ago they had been gathered by Wyatt Earp to serve as temporary deputies till the Independence festivities had come to an end. Using the keys given them, they managed to open up the building and secured Clayton Mansfield in a cell. Mansfield seemed old and weak, and went into a cell without protest. He was a very different man than the man he had been half an hour ago.

"So tell me the truth," he said once he was locked up. "What's next for me? You think they're gonna hang me?"

While Sky Dog was waxing philosophically, Daniel's face grew somewhat dark. He didn't think the man had the right of it on many counts, but didn't think this was the time and place to start an argument. He filed it away for future conversations, though.

Daniel shook his head at Mansfield's question, "I don't think so, Doc. Not if those in the know gots anythin' ta say 'bout it."

"I reckon bein' possessed by a demon blade counts as 'extenuatin' circumstances.'" Gabby opines. "The real trick will be to keep Simpkins from findin' out you had anythin' to do with this. I reckon I can give him enough of a song and dance to keep him off you, but you probably should avoid the Dog Eye. McNary saw those things in your room, same as us. I'm going to have enough trouble convincin' him you weren't the suspect we were suspectin'." He props up his aching foot on a chair, now that they've reached their destination.