"Don't be ridiculous.  That isn't a disease.  It isn't rabies.  It is undoubtedly a curse of some sort.  And one that he is obviously able to control, else we would have all had our throats ripped out." She let out a long breath, too weary to get worked up over his ignorant assumptions.

Quietly and calmly, she continued, "We keep secrets because we fear how other people might react to them.  People like you.  Caleb doesn't need your criticism.  He needs your support.  Our support.  It can't be easy carrying such a monstrous burden.

"So if you want to rail at him about putting you in danger, do it tomorrow.  Or preferably, not at all.  We've all endured quite enough tonight."

Sky Dog gave a shrugging gesture. "When I have seen this before, it acts as a disease...the fits, they happen when the deformed wolf-nature is fighting what the animal was before. For a man, it drives him to become a cannibal, for a dog, it becomes deformed like the wolf-spirit and crazy; prey-creatures it kills because their nature is too far, yes?"

"If you will come with me to the dentist's house also, and look on the men there, they have this more strongly than Morgan. Those that are not dead I will try to cure tommorrow - will you help me, Dalix?" he looked over at the barber. "I have need of a helper in the middle world for this."

The albino smirked suddenly at the idea of being able to hide one's freakishness for fear of reaction, but was serious the next instant, still speaking swiftly. "This is supporting: to give him time to be sad, to bring him clothing and yes to tell him he must amend himself."

He gestured out at the dark beyond the firelit street. "If he goes on as he is, he will become alone and die, either as the wolf nature is forced again and again into conflict with his first self and tears his spirit apart, or when he gives the disease to another and the people believe he is a cannibal also. Many deaths for this civilised lying. What for? To act like he is one alone, an outside creature without responsability to the people, one that can be no better...it is to give him to the wolf." Sky Dog gave Cora an empty-handed gesture, watching her face.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:55, Sat 29 Aug 2015.

Cora just looked tired.  Tired of fighting, tired of arguing, and tired of having to repeat herself.  "Yes, yes, and you can tell him all of that and more... tomorrow.  Go help some people, season some corpses, or whatever makes you feel useful and wanted.  Tonight is not the time for you to push your views on others and criticize their decisions."  She glanced at Abaddon with a look that clearly said 'see what I have to put up with'.  "Doctor Whateley, I would like to talk to you for a moment.  Would you mind taking a walk with me?" 

The shaman dipped his head to this critisism as though it had been offered in honest exchange, if clearly confused as to whether Cora was joking or badly damaged in her outlook. He translated relevant details in response to a croak from Korpi, then scrubbed a hand over his face and addressed the reporter.

"...Darling, a last thing here - do you know if Morgan took the demon's heart?"

In reply to Sky Dog (msg # 111):

Darling lsitens to the interchange between Coraline and the Siberian. He agrees with the hexslinger that Caleb needs understanding tonight, though the shaman has a point, too -- he'll need clothes when he reverts to his human form, presuming he does revert.

The question brings him out of his reverie. Randolph shakes his head: "I couldn't say, Sky Dog. I got here just as he was running out, I'll help you examine the corpse, if you like."

Sky Dog bit his lip and looked over at his equally smoke-smudged friend. "Ah...are you still bleeding, Dalix?"

Daniel nodded in agreement with Cora's wisdom concerning Caleb. He looked at Sky Dog and added, "Not only ever'thin she said, but ya'd be wastin' yer breath now. I suspect ya gotta let him cool down a bit. Ya wanna talk ta him when he's rational. An' I'll be happy ta be parta that conversation."

He looked down at the gash in his leg and the wound in his stomach. He felt for where flesh and hair above his left ear had been torn, hair matted down by dried blood. "Yeah, still bleedin' a bit. I can try ta patch it up, but if ya know how ta take care of it, I'd sure appreciate it."

The shrug-gesture was repeated. "It is time, whilst I attend to the people and finding of clothing, maybe cooking also...it would be well to take him a potato, I think, as he will be very hungry from the fit and changing his shape. It is hard for a wolf to eat a potato!" Sky Dog pulled his bandanna entirely across his skull and corraled his hair with it in anticipation of delicate work.

"...but it should be soon and not tommorrow, or he may be thinking 'because I lied to them like a civilised person, I have scared them to see that I have rabies; so they do not come...so I shall go away into the wilderness' -and with the fit, yes, he may become lost. Lost and naked, unless he keeps his fur-skin on him, and with it the wolf-thinking that is corrupted...it is a bad choice for living, no?"

"I think maybe Hawthorn thinks I would criticise him with bad temper, as I spoke to her when she did insult my work and the long ways of my people to my face...ha! The hungry little ones that hunt her are pleased, for that, but no: I would give him two knowledges - stories, yes? - and give him to know he had acted badly. So," Sky Dog pronounced, looking Daniel over and frowning.

"Korpi-" some back-and forth followed, Korpi's greater ranger of vision aiding the assessment before the shaman recommenced talking to Darling, throwing him a twist of salt: "I think I should tend to Dalix first, as he has many holes in himself, but it would be well if you would see that Quanterill's head and heart are destroyed, so that the demon has no more, ah, holding, to this world, that he can come back to torment the people. Perhaps Wyatterp will help also," he nodded that way, unwinding the strip of sheet from his hand.

"Dalix, do we go to the dentist - there is better for mending there."

Whateley quietly nodded at Coraline's request, and went off for a walk with her.

Earp separated himself from the rest of the group, that seemed for the moment to be working successfully to extinguish the general store fire and prevent it from spreading.

He approached Daniel, Sky Dog, and Darling in the undertaker's place, and looked at the decapitated body. "So...what happened over here?"

Daniel nodded at Sky Dog's suggestion. "The dentist or barber. Barber'd prolly have watcha need too. An keep Korpi close an not flyin' too much fer the next hour or so. She may look good, but she's weaker'n she thinks right now."

In reply to Wyatt Earp (msg # 117):

"Well, Mr. Earp, a band of courageous volunteers engaged an outlaw calling himself Quantrill and his desperate band in the saloon there. They finished off his followers. When the arch-fiend himself tried to flee, they pursued and put a finish to the name that terrorized Kansas.

"That's certainly the way I'll write it for my publisher back East."

"That sounds like a good way to write it in a newspaper," he said, looking over at the body.

"I'm guessing there's part of that story that won't be making it into publication. Long as Quantrill's dead, that's all I need to know. Sounds like we can get things wrapped up and head back to Dodge soon."

He scratched his chin for a moment, and ran a hand over his mustache. "If you need to quote me on it, Mr. Darling, feel free. While you were taking down Quantrill, the boys and I were engaged in a firefight with what I originally thought were a buncha bushwhackers. I still don't rightly know who they were, but they wore all black uniforms - looked like both Union and Confederate outfits but dyed black. Also, they didn't have any boots on. And they were all deaders, though I'm not sure you'll have much credibility with your readers if you publish that part, unless you send this down to the Tombstone Epitaph. You can go take a look at 'em if you like, but Vernon says he's gonna burn those as he already hasn't set alight. In any case, we put paid to 'em."

"Destroy the skull and his heart also," Sky Dog reminded the reporter, then started heading off down the street. He beckoned Daniel after.

"I do not know where their barber is, but I did tell the dentist I would try to cure the ones there that have the rabies from a wolf-spirit shot with iron, in the morning: I wish to see if they are all still alive. I think it was the disease the other shaman called, with his wickedness," Sky Dog looked grim, then grinned at Daniel's advice and translated it for the raven in his hood.

Korpi made vague grumbly noises and snuggled down lower.

"Ah, she says that if she cannot move from my hood, you are the only one that can reach for head-scratching," Sky Dog semi-translated, looking over Daniel with a somewhat appraising glance. Korpi just turned her head and fluffed her neckfeathers in invitation to scritch.

---

Working with the rather visible flaming general store as a landmark, Sky Dog found their way up to the dentist's. "Dentist Zachross! I have one wounded here, and need of the water," he called.

Randolph watches the shaman walk away with a rather dazed expression on his face. Then he turns to regard the corpse and its companion head on the floor.

Glancing at Earp, he says, "Been a while since I dressed an antelope. I don't even carry a knife these days. How about you? Don't I recall you once hunted bison? Perhaps one of your men might assist with at least procuring the offending heart. Then we can try to figure out how to destroy it. And the skull."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:45, Wed 02 Sept 2015.

"I don't know that all that is necessary, Mr. Darling. I can go ahead and put Quantrill's body to the torch, that way we can make sure he's done for good and all. You want to get a picture for your paper first?" he asked the reporter.

In reply to Vernon Price (msg # 123):

Darling shakes his head: "If I could draw, I'd sketch it from memory. As things stand, I'll have to just 'paint a picture in prose.'

"Do you want it dragged outside? I can go scare up a rope."

"I'll take care of it," Price said, slinging his flamethrower into a thong strapped on his back and walking into the undertaker's place. He emerged a few minutes later dragging the corpse and the head out a few feet away from the building, and then brought his weapon out to begin the torching again.

In reply to Vernon Price (msg # 125):

Randolph stands well clear and upwind.

Belatedly recalling the twist of paper in his hand, Randolph gestures for Price to wait. He stands beside the renegade's corpse and sprinkles the salt over the remains, not neglecting the head. Then he steps away again.

Price gives the reporter a strange look as he seasons the corpse. "I hope you're not planning to eat that," he said, before cranking on the fire. "It's gonna be well done."

Coraline came strolling from the darkness surrounding the town, not with Abaddon, but arm in arm with Caleb.  As they once again reentered civilization, she gave his hand a soft squeeze, offering her silent and steady support as he returned to face the judgment of others.  The night was full of life-altering changes and decisions.  Coraline was still thinking about them as she caught sight of Randolph and Price.  Nudging Caleb in that direction, she ambled over to watch Price's strange contraption spew its cleansing flame.  It was cathartic to watch Quantrill's corpse collapse upon itself in the face of the fire that rendered it to naught but smoke and ash.

A hand shielding his face from the heat of the burning, coughing a bit at the noxious stench that arose, Randolph sees Coraline approach the illuminated circle and raises a hand in greeting. Then he spots Caleb still keeping to the shadows and strides to him, hand extended and smiling.

Clasping the lawman's hand, he looks steadily into his eyes as he speaks.

"Well, Marshall, Looks like we did it and I can't wait to write it up. What a yarn!

"My readers will certainly thrill to the part where the unknown creature with the shape of a beast and the heart of a knight errant takes down the ultimate foe and then vanishes mysteriously back into the night.

"Did you see it? I wonder what -- or who -- it might have been."
This message was last edited by the player at 12:20, Thu 10 Sept 2015.

The sight of Darling and the warmth of his greeting brought a smile to Morgan's face. As he listened to the reporter, he was suddenly doubly thankful for his friendship and understanding. Despite the fact that they had only known one another for a few short weeks, it seemed to Morgan that Darling had become one of his closest friends.

Shaking Darling's extended hand, Morgan cleared his throat. "Yes, Randolph, we did it. I honestly can't wait to read your story."

He looked at the reporter meaningfully. "This creature...I can't help but think that perhaps, while it would be pleased to have its accomplishment retold, maybe it would prefer that its identity remain unknown." He shrugged. "That might make it easier for it provide its help again, if more trouble came to pass later down the line."

He smiled and shook his head. "I'm certainly no writer, but don't most folks love a little mystery?"

In reply to Caleb Morgan (msg # 131):

"I haven't any idea what the creature was. Or Who," he says firmly, "And I haven't any time to waste chasing some will o' the wisp. That'll just have to remain one of the... Mysteries of the Weird West."