Sixes Wild: Manifest Destiny (4 page)

I roll to my back, cough some more.

He pulls a thin rope from his belt. With the same easy motion I saw him throw that bundle of bills, he chucks the wet rope against my gut. “Tie that ‘round your wings, if you’d be so kind.”

I oblige. Having a bat’s hind paws makes the task easier than it sounds. “I don’t suppose you pulled me out of the drink just to put lead in my chest.”

“I reckon neither of us can afford to go makin’ any more assumptions tonight.” He cocks the hammer back. The cuffs dangle from one paw.

I shiver and finish tying up. My breath comes in clouds in front of me.

After checking that I’m properly trussed, the hare tugs on the other end of the rope. “Come on. They’ll be trackin’ down the banks of the creek.”

I have an itch to ask just how well cats would fare at tracking us, but then I remember which of us has the guns. He leads me on a ways. We’re both stumbling, but manage to put some distance between ourselves and Skull Creek. The boulders run bigger on this part of the valley and there’s enough brush to give cover. His hips move kind of funny, but that could just be the gunbelt. After trekking through the night for a good ways, my mind starts to wander. I’m soaked through the fur and can barely keep one paw in front of the other. I bump right into my thief before I realize he’s stopped. The bunny swears under his breath, but holsters his gun, giving me an appraising glance. I am too cold to care. We fruit bats aren’t the most robust of folk and that dunk in a mountain creek wasn’t the best thing for my constitution. I sit down hard, nearly collapsing. The hare’s still eyeing me up. His ears look a touch soft, even wet. After a spell, he sits, bracing against one of the rocks. Paws still on iron, twitching at every breeze.

I do my best to look abiding.

“That was some quick thinking with the cuffs, lawbat.” He squeezes water from the fur of one ear, then the other. “’Course, would’ve been nice had they not got the drop on you in the first place...”

We share an unsteady smile.

Inside a half hour, the outlaws still haven’t shown up to kill us. We’re both shivering something fearsome. Eventually, I speak up. “Say, bunny...”

He jumps, ears trying to rise.

I keep talking, softer. The sound of my own voice had scared me a mite as well. “You never mentioned a name.”

“Don’t reckon I did, Sheriff Jordan Blake.” He puts a bite into each word.

“Care to?”

A pause. One paw twitches on the handle of his gun. “Six.”

“Six?”

“Six.”

“Hell of a name.”

“I’m a hell of a bunny.”

“Can’t argue there.” I laugh just a little. “So I figure fire’s a bad idea, as it’d lead to us being shot by those charming fellas.”

“Suppose I’d have to agree.” He gives me an approving look.

He sits about a yard from me, taking me apart with those big bunny eyes. No movements, except for the slightest twitching of the nose. He is testing me, feeling me out. Finally, he smiles under his drooped and quivering ears. “Tell me, Sheriff. Ya got any ideas about us not freezin’ to death?”

I clear my throat. There’s something to the way he’s looking me over... Something I can’t quite place a paw on... I feel a bit like the candied fruit in a window display at Christmas.

His eyes narrow just a touch, his lips curl a hint upward. “Well, we could see about getting a mite closer...”

I just stare at him. I have a notion, but it could be that rock did me some genuine damage and I just think I have a notion. I try to shrug, but am tied up. “I... Umm...”

He gets up, sets his guns down, and sidles up next to me. Something’s amiss here, and not just the fact that this fellow is getting a trifle too familiar. After a moment of quiet from both of us, he leans in against my shoulder. We’re side by side. His clothes are still wet, even if mine were starting to dry. For once, I’m thankful for my thinner fur. Small blessings, I guess. I start to relax, but he pulls on that rope again and nods to the guns. “You make a move for those pieces and you’ll be spending the night hogtied.”

“Wouldn’t dream of such a thing.”

“See that you don’t.”

We sit that way for a long while. Nothing but the moon and the wind. After a while, he starts to ease up, though the paw holding my rope never relaxes. I lean back against the bunny. Really no time for propriety. The hare shifts, muzzle burying against my neck. I twitch at the cold of his nose pad. Then my own nose catches a hint of something. I’ve smelled this bunny before, of course, but now with most of the grime washed off, he smells softer, warmer, almost like...

I look down to see the hare studying my expression. Looks to be deciding between waiting this out, shooting me right here, or doing something else to me I’d not discuss in mixed company. I bank on it not being the second one and clear my throat. “You—You’re a...”

“...Yeah.” The hare speaks softly, though her voice still holds a grit of smoke, body still, eyes wide.

“Okay. No need for that look, bunny.” I take a breath. “I don’t exactly blame ya.”

No response. She sits with that perfect stillness only hares seem to possess.

“So, I’m guessing the reason Harding couldn’t track you is because... Well, he was expecting a...”

“Yeah.”

“And I can tell now because...”

“Don’t allow the most of men this close to me.”

I put on a theatrical voice. “Not alive, anyhow.”

She squeaks. Almost a laugh. Maybe she won’t shoot me.

She rolls close, laying between my legs.

I give her a questioning look.

She looks up, ears quivering. “Cold.”

I nod. “Fine by me. I wasn’t keen on freezing either, remember?”

She tugs the rope again, putting pressure on my wing bones. “Don’t get ideas.”

“I’m not! I’m just...adjusting to the facts, is all.”

We lie there, her floppy bunny ears all flopped over my shoulder. I try to relax, move to make the rock dig into my back a little less. She is shivering against me. I decide to keep her talking. “So exactly why were those men so bent on doing us in? Or do you just have that effect on folks?”

“They’re workin’ for that overgrown pussycat, Tanner Hayes.” A quick paw flips a pick from her boot and goes to work on the cuff still clamped on her wrist. She works it partway in, but it takes some doing before it clicks, on account of her shivering. “I suspect he meant for them to steal the cash so he could get his paws on the insurance.”

“But you double-crossed them.”

“The hell I did. Never met them ‘til just this evenin’.”

“So how’d you come to know their plan?”

She flips an ear up. It hits me in the muzzle with a wet smack. “How’d ya think?”

I rub my damp nose on my damp shoulder. “And you stole it first.”

“If they didn’t want me to, they coulda picked a room with thicker walls.”

“...Huh.”

“Yep.”

We sit for a moment. “And now they’re coming to kill us.”

“They’re comin’ to kill you, lawbat. They still need me.”

I look her in the eye; this bunny’s set a real burn to my wings. “The hell for?

She groans, hanging her head to the side and letting her ears dangle, sending a telegraph tingle up my spine. “To tell ‘em where the money is.”

“But you were burying the strongbox when I caught you.”

“That ah was.”

My ears tuck back against the night’s cold. I cogitate on the new events for a while. It took near to three hours for me to find her, and I was tracking. She could’ve outrun me just fine. So why was she only starting to dig when I found her? The answer hits me like a hoof to the head. “...That strongbox is empty. You already hid most of the money somewhere else.”

The hare gives a shivering laugh. “Hope for you yet, Sheriff.” She is holding me a fair bit closer than is strictly necessary for warmth. I can feel certain lady parts pressed against me in an altogether unladylike manner.

I direct my mind elsewhere and try to be a gentleman. “Won’t they look inside?”

“I fixed ‘em in apple pie order: locked it right back up. They’ll have to take it back to Hayes for the key. I’m sure that kitty’ll be pleased as punch to get back that box chock-full a’ nothin’.” Clearly freezing, she still sounds proud. “Even if they chase us, we got a good half hour’s start for the trail to go cold.”

“How’d you figure?”

“That’s how long it takes to pick up few dozen twenty-dollar bills in the dark.”

“They’ll stop to pick them up?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

I straighten up. “I’d have gotten my man.”

“Well, ya sure did that!” She pulls the rope taut. Her paw shakes. “Play by Hoyle’s rules and ya lose at poker.”

My ears lift. “Hoyle never wrote a word on poker.”

“Bosh! I’ve seen those pretty little rulebooks he puts out.”

“They just use his name to sell it. He was dead a hundred years before anybody threw a chip in.”

“The hell’d you learn a thing like that? Wait, now...” She quirks an ear. Her gaze is steady. She’s not shivering. “You’re not local. You’ve got Old States schoolin’ written all over you.”

“Gotta come from somewhere.”

“Rich family?”

“Lawmen and lawyers.”

She flips an ear, scoffing. “Figures.”

I expect her to talk on it more, but that’s the sum of it. She lays her head back against my chest, paw still clenched on the rope. There’s nary a move from her, but I don’t figure for a minute she’s asleep. I can’t afford to fall asleep either, but sky’s a heck of a lot brighter when I finish resting my eyes.

Her guns shine in the first light of the morning. Pretty little things, now that I look at them. Matched set too; I wonder how she laid paw on such custom jobs.

The hare’s still not moving. I breathe deeper, steeling myself.

In one tight-sprung leap, I go for her guns.

She gasps as I jump and roll to the side. I get a hind paw under myself, clutching a gun in the other. I train it on her.

The hare yawns and stretches against the boulder. “Wondered when you’d do that.” A wink.

I steady the gun. “Sorry, Six. I’ve gotta take you in.”

She doesn’t move, just grins up at me. That little fluff of a tail bobs.

We stare at each other for a long moment. The cuffs, the river, the freezing night: it all runs through my mind. The pistol lowers. “Aw heck, I can’t prove a darn thing anyhow.” While I could charge her under my own testimony, I don’t see the good it would do. Besides, maybe now she’ll untie me. I toss the pistol back to her.

Catching it with one paw, she laughs. “That’s just as well. I never had any dry rounds in the first place.” She spins the gun into her grip and levels it. “Watch.”

A deafening bang.

The bullet ricochets off a rock beside me, scattering chips of stone against my tender wings. I scowl at her, at myself, at the ropes my wing thumbs can’t untie.

The bunny just stands there, ears back from the noise. “Dang. Who’d a’ thought they’d still work?”

She snags the matching gun, holsters both, and undoes the knot. I flap, helping blood flow back into my wings with a tingle and prickle. My ears ring. Our eyes meet. “Grand. Now what’s the plan?”

“The plan...” A whetstone voice echoes from behind the rocks. “...is to show us where in the hell the cash went.” A lynx steps out. His ears are pinned back and his rifle is cocked.

Six’s paws flash to her iron, but I soon see we’re surrounded. If her shot hadn’t halfway deafened us, we might have heard them coming.

A loud clang. The empty strongbox crashes against a boulder beside us. The lock dangles in pieces, smashed apart. Three more outlaws surround us.

I look over to my thief, wondering how we’re going to deal with this new fix.

Her tail twitches.

She levels her iron at me, and next thing I know the world is exploding in a great crash of pain and noise. Flat on my back, it comes to me after a moment.

The bunny shot me!