[[Some musical accompaniment]]
The little knot of men follow the priest's light down an increasingly dark path as it starts to rain. It's a cold and apathetic pour, pluviating upon the just and unjust alike and pashing the soft soil to a sticky mud.
The coyote skulls nailed trophied to the arch marking the steading proper give the travellers dead half-grins, dripping. Pierce's finely-honed sense of danger starts to itch as soon as they're within fifty yards of the place, but nothing stirs, nothing moves until some small black bat or bird whirs off a corral post into the roping rain, its wings a brief flicker through the priest's lantern light, then gone.
A door is banging somewhere. The wind blows rain into the posse's faces, licking cold down coat collars and raised cuffs. As they edge past the corral, a stray gust
slams Pierce's senses with the reek of horse blood: horse blood acid with horse terror, horse blood trampled with horse shit and horse sweat, enough to bathe in the stuff if one were so minded. Enough to swim in it. Yet no horses.
The wind switches direction like a backhand blow and continues to howl around the ranch. The door bangs its irritatingly eccentric rhythm, off in the dark.
The priest turns, about to speak, when the first figure becomes visible, stumbling out of the rain.
"Father!"
The man lurches hastily closer, hatless and propping himself on the bunkhouse wall as though wounded, looking around like a hunted beast.
"Father, it's Hell out here, there's some sorta-" he catches sight of the readied weapons.
"Aw, shit, don't shoot me!" He stops, straightening. It's Alistair Milburn, swaying a little and apparently unarmed.
"Howdy, Soggy Man!" chirps the clank.
