Sheep's Clothing by Elizabeth Einspanier Read Free Book Online Page A

so ya damn well better get used to it. Now come on.”
                  He turned and headed out of the stable. I backed away from Russeau’s horses until I tripped on an unseen object and staggered, but I found my balance again and turned to follow Wolf properly as he left the stable. I saw another of the horses shy away from him as he passed close to its stall, but I chalked this up to their agitation at the red-eyed horses.
                  We rounded to the back of the stable, where we found Russeau’s carriage had been parked. DuPont was still not in immediate evidence, but my nerves were drawn tighter than fiddle-strings by now—not only because going through another man’s belongings seemed wrong, whatever the reason, but also because the chill of the agate had reminded me of that first sight of Russeau the previous night.
                  “Now I need ya to keep an eye out,” Wolf said. “If DuPont comes back, let out a bird call—whatever kind ya know.”
                  “And if anyone else approaches?” I asked.
                  “Make sure they don’t get too curious. He already has his hooks into the mayor’s wife—who knows who else he’s snagged?”
                  I opened my mouth to remark that a stranger, regardless of his prestige, was unlikely to gain such influence so quickly... but then I remembered how giddy May seemed when she talked about him, as though he were a great philanthropist rather than a man with dead eyes who just blew in a few days ago. May was friendly with most, but she seldom fell to celebrity worship.
                  I did end up having to make brief idle small talk with two of the locals while Wolf was digging around in the carriage. While I was commenting on the weather with the second, though, I saw DuPont returning and had to quickly excuse myself to warn Wolf.
                  I let out a couple of whistles in the direction of the stable, in the nearest imitation of a quail I could manage. Wolf raised his head from his task at the signal, and presently drew one of his revolvers and pointed it. For a few hair-raising moments he appeared to be pointing it at me.
                  “Doc, down!” he barked.
                  I threw myself aside and felt a lance of burning pain shoot up the back of my left arm. I landed on my side in the turf and grabbed at the wound; my fingers came away bloody. I looked up and saw DuPont advancing on the carriage, unafraid of the gun being aimed at him. I saw that he was wielding a knife with the last inch or so of its point broken off, and one edge was red with my blood.
                  I don’t know what I was thinking in those next few moments. Thoughts raced past almost too fast to recognize:
                  He’d tried to kill me.
                  That was the knife whose point I’d dug out of Wolf.
                  That meant that he’d intended to kill Wolf.
                  He might still intend to kill Wolf.
                  He might aim to kill me after.
                  What would happen to Salvation if I couldn’t stop him?
                  So it was that, when DuPont stepped over me to get to Wolf, I kicked out at the man’s knee out of sheer instinct.
                  As one of the primary load-bearing joints of the human body, the knee is surprisingly vulnerable to sharp blows. Even if one does not manage to break the joint itself, any number of tendons can be torn with even a weak kick: the hamstring, the illotibial band, the patellal tendon... I could go on, but the results are largely the same regardless.
    DuPont’s knee bent sideways with a visceral crunch, and he fell, mainly on top of me. Within a heartbeat Wolf had pounced on DuPont and wrestled the knife out of his hand. He dropped the weapon