Sixes Wild: Manifest Destiny by Tempe O'Kun Read Free Book Online

thing.” Morris is still here. “Folks saw some bunny riding in with Sheriff Blake.”
    “Rabbits don’t concern me.”
    He responds with a chittering mutter.
    “Now leave— I have a headache.”
    “Of course, bossman.” The marmot gets one of his thoughtful looks and leaves to do whatever he does when he’s not a flea in my mane, meeting up with some old rabbit at the door. The rabbit’s face sticks in my mind a moment, like I know him. But then, all meat looks the same.
     

 
     
    Steal one fella’s trousers, while I’m in heat no less, and all of a sudden I start figuring my plans around him?
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
     
    Just me, the moon, and Blake’s pony.
    I stare into my little campfire. Always helps me think, having a fire. Something about the way it never dances quite the same way twice, the smoke, the hiss and crackle, the heat in my fur.
    My first notion is getting the hell out of Dodge. Of course, that’d mean leaving Blake too. Plus, Hayes is liable to catch me. My second notion is to shoot him. That lion though— he’s more of a power than I’m accustomed to. No, regular ways of dealing with folk are liable to fetch me a bullet.
    Damn me. Steal one fella’s trousers, while I’m in heat no less, and all of a sudden I start figuring my plans around him? If that don’t sound like a heap of trouble, I’m an Angoran Long-Hair.
    Fishing my little pot from my satchel, I rig it up over the fire. Half a canteen’s worth of water, plenty of beans, and a few choice roots I dug up along the trail— I’m on my way to decent chow. The smell reminds me of home. Never cared the twitch of a nose for cooking, it being too womanly for me, but long nights along in the desert make a bunny miss strange things.
    After dinner, I tap out tobacco and roll a cigarette, lighting it with a twig from the fire. Smoke it clear to the end. I singe my paw fur then flick it into the fire outta spite at my own woolgathering. Sucking my fingers, I lie back on my bedroll and stare at the moon. I get lost tracing the shapes and shadows there, calling to mind old tales I heard as a wide-eared fluffball.
    Dreams go drifting over me like clouds across the moon, traced on the edges by velvet wings.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Though the haze of a dream I see my paws, but they ain’t mine. I’m perched up on a ledge, overlooking some manner of mine entrance.
    Arriving like a gust of wind, a whole mess of ‘yotes appear around me. Colorful beads clatter in their fur, bright against the brown of their stern muzzles.
    A tilt of the world later, the mine rushes up past us. We fly into its depths. Picks, shovels, carts: at first it’s all you’d expect. But then there’s a shining that ain’t the shine of gold and pictures all around that jumble into bunkum then into nothing.
    A voice from the nothing speaks a word I never expected to hear again: “Clarabelle.” It’s my father’s voice.
    All the world goes grey, and I get buried into the depths of sleep like a thick blanket.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Morning tills up wakefulness in me and, not long after, a plan. Foolish, I reckon, but I’d better have a look-see into Hayes’ affairs, to know how far his paws reach. Fella like that has power, connections; can’t hurt to have a little blackmail on him if I can. And if in so doing I see more of Blake, well that’s just silver on gold.
    I break camp and saddle up. The guns pull me south, away from any of the lion’s shady dealings up in Scoria Grove and White Rock. Seems I recall something about him running a mine, though I’m not sure from where...
     

 
     
    I think patience is the way of it.
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
     
    Folk say we bats don’t notice the dark, but I daresay I’ve started to since Six left. I’m sure there’s some manner of metaphor in there about her being my sun, but I’ll leave it to the Homers and Emersons of the world.
    I have no business feeling this way over a woman, mind you. I’m a professional, a lawman, not some