Free Storm's Thunder by Brandon Boyce

out.”
    â€œOkay, then.” I nodded to Halverson and turned to take my leave.
    â€œYou know where you’re headed?” he asked.
    â€œReckon the town ain’t that big.”
    â€œWalk east till you hit the smell of garlic and the funny writing on the windows.”
    I found some words forming in my throat, but decided to remain them as thought.
    They all look funny to me.

CHAPTER SIX
    I keep the sun in front of me and cut a diagonal course through town, where sheets of threaded chili peppers, drying bloodred in the rising heat, dangle by the doorways of each passing adobe like the city’s second official flag. It is no secret, in an unfamiliar town, to finding the house where a man can lay in the soft company of welcoming arms: at every turn, opt for the narrower road. After several minutes, the chili peppers have faded into memory, replaced by strange and rooty vegetables hanging from baskets and the smell of sizzling pork, quick-fried in peanut oil.
    The Chinese move with downcast eyes in straight, purposeful lines, and the ones I pass show little interest in, but a keen awareness of, my presence. A bad feeling rises up my spine. The guns. I am too heavily armed for the city. The Spencer weighs on my shoulder, countered with every step by the jangle of the pistols. Atop a horse and away from town, such weapons might be in any man’s possession. But here, walking the streets, I forge a statement of aggression that ill-suits my intention. I flip the Spencer barrel-down and hitch the strap tight into the crook of my arm, making the rifle as unassuming as I can. The pistols I dump into the saddlebag across my back. If trouble calls, I will make do with the thirty-two riding my pocket.
    I walk until the alley dead-ends and only a cramped passageway breeches the last two huts where bright paper lanterns disappear down an alley that even sunlight dares not enter. Stepping into the darkness, my shoulders scrape the encroaching walls and I have to turn sideways. Every sense of reason and propriety says to turn back, so I forge on. I duck my head below another set of lanterns while stepping over a woven hutch housing some sort of animal. The toe of my boot catches the edge and the screeching from within tells me it is chickens. Any shred of stealth vanishes in a din of clucks and fluttering feathers. I might as well beat my arrival on a drum. A few paces on, the alley opens up and I find myself in a small courtyard. A miniature fountain babbles in the corner and next to it sits a low stone bench, obscured from the view of the only door by a paper screen depicting what must be a muted Oriental sunrise. Delicate handkerchiefs of blue silk cover the lanterns, bathing the plazita in a seductive twilight, augmented only by a single shaft of clear midday sun from an opening above that beckons the bougainvillea upward along the wall.
    I move toward the bench, drawn by the serenity of the setting that scarcely undercuts the genius of its practicality. How many dusty cowpokes have waited shyly behind the screen for their turn, or, having completed their business, been silently grateful for the fountain’s constant din when recombobulating a belt buckle or depositing a fistful of coins into fair, yellow fingers? It is under such cover of sound that the Ears of a Buck fail me. I catch her scent before I hear her. I have hardly lowered myself into the seat when a soft voice acknowledges my existence. Turning toward the door, now opened, my first thought is not the woman standing there, but the door’s hinges, so flawlessly oiled to negate even the faintest whisper of a creak. I have crossed into a world both erotic and carefully engineered, down to the splash of jasmine perfume that reaches me before I have finished turning. The Nose of a Wolf—after so many nights in the bush—misses nothing.
    â€œHiii.” She drags out the word as her ruby-red lips curl into a smile against the powdery