Mansfield was looking at the various shelves, inspecting the items available, but within hearing distance if Sky Dog should call him.

Anthony set to work on wrapping up the various goods that Sky Dog had asked for as he thought about the answer. "Them folks as got bitten by wolves that are still alive all are at the dentist's place. He ain't have much luck curin' em, but he can suture up some wounds and just hope for the best. We ain't got much of a doctor beyond him."

He quoted Sky Dog a dime for the cabbage, offering to package that up as well if the Siberian wanted it.

"Ah, no, do not pack this cabbage...a dime is a quarter-dollar, yes?" Sky Dog slid one of his ten-dollar notes across the counter.

"You have given me a lot of dollars, Jared," he grinned at the horse-trader, offering the same his pick of sugar mice and sundries. "I will think of cursing you when we are pursued by bandits - ha! but then I will bless you for the horse, so it is well."

He glanced across at Anthony, then watched the shopkeep's hands rolling brown paper. "I will try to cure the bitten people, but first I will look at them to see how strong the disease is in them. It would not be well that I wear myself out in fighting many large wolf-spirits then fail at hunting the quick dead ones, who after come to kill us all. Where does the dentist live?"

It was a small town, and between Anthony and Jared, they were able to provide Sky Dog with sufficient directions and landmarks that he would have no trouble finding the Dentist himself were he to go there.

"Myself, I gotta get back to my horses. And my post," he said, patting the rifle at the latter and looking suddenly in a rush to leave.

"You have my thanks," Sky Dog told the departing horse trader, and eventually set out to find the dentist after claiming his change and making sure Mansfield had enough dollars to keep himself fed, luring Igor along with the cabbage.

In the street outside the dentist's, Sky Dog set the cabbage down for his deer and pretended to eat a candy by way of establishing dominance before offering one to his pony. He glanced at the house and frowned into the shadows before offering the bag of sweets to Mansfield, still fasting himself.

"It sounds like strong rabies, this kind," he remarked, then mounted the steps and called for the owner. "Dentist! Are you in the building here?"

"Uh, yeah I'm here," answered the man, opening the door just a bit and peering out through the crack at the strange Siberian and his animals, but looked a little reassured upon seeing Mansfield nearby. "Is something the matter?" He held a rifle in one hand, though he didn't seem ready to use it.

Sky Dog flicked down his hood to appear less bandit-like if no less peculiar, his tin animals glittering with the movement. "You have the matter here, I was told by the people - there are the still-living ones that were bitten by wolves in the house, yes? The white doctors, they do not know how it is done to cure the wolf disease, but Mansfield would learn," he nodded over at the same lingering in the street. "-so he is here as well as myself."

He listened to Sky Dog, and looked over at Mansfield, who merely gave him a nod. "Well, I don't suppose it'll hurt, lettin' you have a go at it." He beckoned them both in.

"I'll be the first to admit, I don't have a clue as to how to treat these folks. If you can help 'em before we have to put 'em down, then that's for the best." Inviting Sky Dog and Mansfield in, he lead them back to a sick room. There were three beds, in which patients lay, visibly sick but also bound with leather straps and manacles.

"Gotta keep 'em bound up. The progression of the disease is such that when they reach a certain point, they start going crazy. They will kill people, and then try to eat their flesh. I've never seen its like before."

"It is the kind of rabies from when a wolf dies a long death from metal shot or eats something that has been touched by the Lower World," Sky Dog said, narrowing his eyes at the room's corners before padding across to the nearest patient and dropping to a crouch beside their cot.

"Their onnir - the living-spirit of them that is in their spit and their body, it becomes corrupt, trying to spread the same rottenness to what it touches. So the spirits of these, they are trying to become wolves...ah yes, you would bite me if you could," this last was to the patient, watching to see whether the American could track the movement of pale fingers through the space above the bed.

"These are too far to cure by sacrificing a steed, I think," the shaman told Mansfield, frowning. "I will have to fight the sick-wolf part of them...probably after our hunting, though I do not like to see the pain here."

"This is something more than the ordinary rabies, I fear," said the doctor, in a weak but clear voice. "I don't know about this special form of wolf rabies, though. I have not had to treat it previously."

"Doctor..." he paused, addressing the dentist.

"Zach Ross. I can do some surgery, and I am primarily a dentist, but I've done what I could for these men based on general medical principles. I have a book somewhere with instructions as to how to treat rabies, but it doesn't address some of the things we've seen."

"I'm Doctor Clayton Mansfield, originally of South Carolina, and this is Sky Dog. We'd like to help if we can in the tending of the wounded. Sky Dog might know about this...wolf disease. He seems familiar with it. Would you accept our assistance?"

"I'll take all the help I can get," he said as he watched Sky Dog.

"Sky Dog, I think this is far worse than anything I've seen," said the doctor after conducting an examination of one of the patients.

"It will infect their bird-soul also, at the end...I would think they have this night, and four hours again after." The shaman pushed his unruly hair back, thinking. "Can they still drink what is not blood, Zachross?"

He sighed and rose, pacing to inspect the middle cot and then the man that Mansfield was looking over. "Hm. This one, it might not be so long, and this settlement has no want for more angry ghosts..." he looked to Mansfield for his opinion.

"Perhaps I should not go to hunt Quanterill, if the Americans are well to handle him in the daytime, when he is weak, and only ask my sister to go scout for them..." The youth looked to the floorboards, frowning. "Ah, but I do not trust Hawthorn, why she has come here, nor that they will know well what they are doing...yet these..." He took in a deep breath and rubbed at the frown line between his brows, trying to weigh up lives and time in a manner Mansfield had seen long before, among officers and medics, in tents and under fire.

"They're takin' broth, but that's about it. None of them have had the fits yet, where they try to start killin' and eatin' folk. But it's comin', sure as eggs is eggs," he pronounced.

"Why don't you trust Miss Hawthorne?" the doctor asked the Siberian curiously.

Sky Dog laughed at the question from one who had been so alarmed to hear they travelled with a witch at all. "Ah...why is she here? She did not take interest in the people before, with the killing at Hays - it was for dollars she worked as a deputy in Dodge, also: I lost my temper and criticised her, she worked so badly for the people there. Yet she comes here...I will not criticise her again that she does not anger me so badly, nor speak where she is not accepted, but I saw, at the camp, her first action for seeing the pumpkin-men was to shield the belly, not the head," he raised an eyebrow at Mansfield. "So. She risks much to be here, for why, I do not know. My sister says I trust iron devils too well, and that one...I do not trust."

"I suppose that's fair," he said, understanding about half of it. "Especially with the...whatever you call it."

Mansfield got a small nod in response.

"What is your thought?" the youth asked both doctors. "I am not so happy to leave the Americans to themselves for a day hunting the quick dead, but Morgan at least knows what he does..."

"Well," he said, pushing his spectacles a bit higher on his nose as he considered the matter. "You came here as part of a posse to warn the town about the bandits and try to put up some resistance against them. We arrived to find the townsfolk were already putting up some resistance, but not against the bandits. I suggest you speak with the others and figure out where you'd best fit in. Healing the sick is important work, to be sure, and a worthy goal. But I can't help but think that, well after hearing your story about the bear, I guess you'd be crafty on a hunting trip - no matter what's being hunted."

"That will give me some time to hang back here and conduct a more detailed medical examination on these patients, and assist Doctor Ross here in figuring out what the hell is wrong with them."
This message was last updated by the player at 22:47, Thu 03 Apr 2014.

The shaman gave a small snort. "It would be well to believe me, what is wrong with them - they are ones that are not wolves, whose spirits have taken in a sickness from wolves that tries to make them wolves also...it is why the biting, yes?" He considered. "I will go to ask the Americans what they are planning. For these...if you boil up the water for them with silver - give them no raw water, always to boil it and make cool, or it will encourage the disease - and set salt around them, it will keep them calm longer. I do not like to see them hurt, but ah, it would not be well that I cured these and they were killed after. Yes."

The decision clearly did not sit lightly on the youth's shoulders. "I have spoken it, Zachross. So, I will do," this slightly obscure pledge given, Sky Dog headed back outside.

"Uh, alright," he said. After the shaman left, he asked Mansfield, "What's his deal?"

"Siberian," Mansfield replied.

"Ah," he said knowingly, as if that had answered anything at all.

"You think we oughta try that salt and silver-water thing?"