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

the light.
    A snap of my wing thumbs draws him back to the world of the living.
    After an instant of bewilderment, he tips his hat to me and spits an arc of syrupy chaw in a genial manner. I nod back, but don’t let my eyes linger too long on that sickle. Haven’t known Harland to drift off like that. Could be he’s just tired.
    Having never heard so much as a cough from the other world, I put stock in echolocation, not echoes. Of course, it’s far less typical back east than it is here. I’ve heard talk that, because death is so much closer out here on the Frontier, the dead are likewise close at hand.
    My aunt insists to this day that inheriting my uncle’s badge when he died is what drove me to abandon law school and become a sheriff myself. I say it has more to do with reading his diaries when I should have been studying. I’m not one to believe in echoes, but I’d not be opposed to the notion of a good luck charm.
    Something about the old raccoon’s behavior sticks in my mind, though the place runs so rife with swaying ears and deft paws these days that calm thought seems impossible. If only she weren’t so flighty, not to mention a dyed-in-the-wool—
    “Thief! Thief!”
    A masked form tears out of a house and down the street with an armful of glimmering treasures.
    Mrs. Deloris Wiggins scampers out after him in a fit of ferret hysteria, frilly pink dress in disarray. “Get him, Sheriff! He’s done stole mah shinies!”
    I give chase, flapping to beat the band as I catapult myself over a water cart. The thief, another ferret, ducks down an alley. I turn sharp, kicking off a wall and tackling him. As we collide, his horde of pilfered riches flies into the air. We collapse in a heap, long strands of shiny material raining down around us.
    Tinsel.
    I’ve been chasing a tinsel bandit.
    Managing not to resort to profanity, I drag the offender back to Deloris’s, enlisting her young daughter to reclaim the evidence. I keep ahold of the miscreant’s scruff with one hind paw, and he proceeds into an immediate sulk on her steps.
    Her long body swoons over her porch rail at the strain of the ordeal. “I declare, Sheriff! It surely was good of you to return mah shinies. Raymond’s taken a shine to that Slippaws girl more ‘an we thought, makin’ off with mah—”
    “Wait.” I glance between the ferrets. “You know him?”
    “Oh ah most certainly do! He’s mah nephew!”
    She doesn’t press charges, though she invites me in for brunch, which I decline so as to avoid an uncomfortable hour talking about the finer points of sparkle in silverware. She does insist on my taking home some of her famous cricket brittle, which horrifies me only a trifle. No doubt she has confused what kind of bat I am, though it’s a nice thought.
    It then occurs to me that I flew quite successfully, and for the first time since Six saw fit to put lead through my wing. The relief I feel is worth carrying home any amount of cricket brittle.
    The ferret fiasco behind me, I continue on my rounds. The saloon is opening up, taking in a wagon’s worth of spirits. The bardog has an echo item too, he claims, though I suspect it’s just a gimmick to sell more whiskey out of his “lucky” shot jiggers, which he claims have never spilled. He and I are on good terms, though he doesn’t like to spread the fact around. Bad for business, he says. This does not stop him from sending for me every time a fight gets out of paw.
    Odder still, the squirrel running the general store keeps the place immaculate, save one for old sea chest on the middle of an aisle, layered in dust. I offered to move it for him once, but he declined with frantic vehemence. Claims that every time he’s moved it, the windows rattle in the wind all night with such fury that he’s not given a moment’s peace. Even Hayes is unwilling to deal with the squirrel’s crazed chittering and leaves it be. Everyone else in town avoids it like a weasel’s breath.
    Hayes. Last