Before he could puke whiskey in this, the most dignified parlor Red Junction had to offer, Yule flew out into the road. The gristle of Red Junction persevered the rains to pursue their various paths. Men coated in the mountain's residue, back-sore from another day in the mines, forged along the thoroughfare like so much pulverized meat burrowing into a sausage-casing. They milled betwixt the pick-axes and shovels barreled for display outside the hardware store. Innumerable grown delinquents abandoned their ponies and ambled into the bordello to drink, gamble and fuck – in any order as all were allowed. Horses were tethered outside the post office, the butcher and the JAIL – and that burro was still tied outside Yule's own storefront. The sight of it made him sicker still, and he worked his key at the lock and went inside.

His canine companion, Dude, whirled at his feet. He was a black-and-tan sheep-dog with a sharp muzzle and even keener ears, and Yule called him Dude on account of markings he reckoned resembled a tuxedo. Men out West made their own lingo, and that was one of his favorite terms. He had himself been labeled a 'dude' when he first arrived in Red Junction, still clad in his city-garb. It was a minor crime, being over-dressed – punishable by ridicule.

Yule had visited the bordello for only a short while that morning, but the absence of his master had occupied an eternity in the dog's mind. Yule winked and Dude winked back the way a dog's facial tics sometimes present themselves as human idiosyncrasy.

“How goes it for my handsome boy?”

With the shutters down, Yule's showroom was reduced to shadowy geometry. He felt along his lovingly-crafted carpentry as a blind man reads. Dude twisted along, too, performing by snout his usual inspection of the familiar space which possessed the scents of so many unfamiliar customers. Yule passed through the door to his workshop where the walls were lined by benches and fine, high-backed chairs in various stages of construction. Stacked on the floor were slats and planks which fit together at dove-tails and became caskets. Dude wormed along excitedly, pausing at intervals as he attempted to predict his master's next movement. Silently, Yule kicked off his boots.

He kept his bed in a loft at the top of a spiral staircase which he was proud to have constructed himself. Dude followed him upstairs, herding Yule by nuzzling wet-nosed at his ankles. The loft was lit by what meager grayness could seep in through an octagonal porthole. Beneath the porthole was an incomplete mural which depicted a crossing of the vast, American Continent. Sutures of railroad track went nowhere, fading away upon the plains. His rustic pallet lay disheveled on the floor, crusted and spent. One could acquire hammers, pickaxes, pans, sluices, whiskey or intercourse easily enough – but try and procure a thin-bristled, artisan's paintbrush and the whole thoroughfare was apt to question at length one's carnal preferences. He made do with what nature had to offer but cursed the imprecision of his yucca-stalk brush, whose mashed bristles were shed infuriatingly fast. That mural would have seen more progress if not for the rapid degradation of his improvised paints, too – but boiled berries and flowers kept for only so long. The mural was populated on the east coast by stick-drawn women and children. Yule could scarcely glance their way without becoming wet at the eyes, but that was the way whiskey affected him, sometimes.

“How could you allow me to make such a mess?” he asked his dog. The canine sat still and awaited more words. Yule anchored himself to his bed and endeavored to keep the world from turning over in his belly.

After sleeping a spell, he woke to find sunlight pouring in through the porthole. The clouds had burned off. Dude stood sentry still. Yule was more sober but more hollow, too. He said to the dog: “Do you hunger, Dude?”

Downstairs in the workshop Yule kept a cast-iron stove and upon it he prepared a steak from the butcher next-door. While the cut sizzled on the stove-top he banged together a casket for the corpse he'd seen at the bordello, preemptively answering that call which was sure-to-come. He was done before supper was even ready. In the interim he made preparations for his rendezvous with Misty. Into a reed-woven basket he packed bread rolls, strips of smoked fish and a corked flask brimming with sweet rum. When the steak was up-to-snuff, the fat trimmed off went into a bowl for Dude and together they chowed there amidst the sawdust.

“Room for more?” Yule asked, shoveling his uneaten meat into the dog's bowl. His own appetite had petered-out. Dude wolfed the steak and Yule smiled at his friend: “Indubitably, I see.”

Post-supper, the preordained ritual demanded outdoor ambulation and ultimately the movement of the dog's bowels. Yule looped a length about Dude's throat and braved the road. The mud had mostly stiffened except in the deeper, moister ruts. There were next to no children in camp, but Yule was always amused at the dog's ability to regress grown men till they planted their knees in the muck and allowed Dude to lap at their grinning faces. They knew not just where that tongue had lapped prior.

The day was getting on and the most fortuitous fellers were already returning to camp to have their yields assayed. Together, Yule and Dude came past the JAIL and the Post Office and finally to the camp's lone intersection. Yule stopped to glare down the less-traveled road. There at the termination of the crossroad loomed the Westman Compound, its perimeter enforced by a soaring palisade. Every skewer of the stake-wall was an over-sized spear stabbing skyward – whole trees shaved to be fang-sharp. At the gates a brute stood sentry, wielding a long-arm. The most ruthless element of the Frontier found sanctuary and employment inside.

Yule could only speculate toward the daily intrigues of the hard-asses comprising the Westman Mining Company. He'd heard the scurrying whispers of the town's imagination: that within that palisade Rex Westman enjoyed medieval violence. Maiming, often by heated, iron brands and torture, murder, and worse! Dungeons with racks where men were stretched till they slid apart at the sockets and spiked thrones where men were perforated and drained. High-piled carnage, suitable thereafter for the sole purpose of feeding hogs. Hapless vagabonds who'd stolen horses from the wrong-fucking-stable were crucified in the courtyard, setting an example for future would-be trespassers. They howled at their pulsating stigmata and pleaded for the release of death – but it was Yule who in fact oversaw the whole imaginary ordeal. He cringed at his ability to produce such cruel, gruesome fiction. Dude whined at his feet.

“Let us find a place for your business,” he said to his dog, and past that crossroads they went.

Upon their return to the woodworks there was nothing to do but kill the hours. He paced the shop, checking and rechecking the picnic basket to ensure its contents. Amidst this shuffling, uncertain discontent he paced away the evening till the road outside became dark and silent. He peered out through the porthole in his loft and saw the bordello go lights-out, too – and one final, dedicated drunk was chucked out by the tender.

The moon clung right overhead and he knew that the hour was prime. He went out into the alley by the stable-doors off the rear of his workshop, opposite the thoroughfare so none could be roused by his footsteps. At night, by his lonesome save the picnic basket, he sneaked about like a burglar. Weaving along the moon-lit nooks of Red Junction was woefully silly, like embarking upon an undeniably juvenile adventure – but he was excited beyond shame. He reached the boundary where the town surrendered to the woods and went on through the low scrub and tall grass. The creek giggled in the darkness ahead.

Yule narrowed his eyes, an odd way to further his vision – but effective nonetheless. He could make out the shape of her. Her hair could be seen etched in the pale, individual strands of it drifting up in the breeze about her shoulders like sheet lightning. She twisted and scoured the dark in the direction of his rustling.

“Sherwin?” she whispered, and he saw the tip of her cigarette flare orange.

“None other,” he crept to be beside her on the log. “I hope you have not been waiting long.”

“Have ye rum?”

“I do.” He produced the flask from the basket and passed it to her. She tipped it up and Yule set the basket aside and studied her. “Are ye well?”

“Sure.” She came up for air long enough to say just that and then resumed drowning herself in the flask. There was no sound for a long moment but that of the creek's hush and far-off trees groaning.

“Have ye want to talk about it?” Yule could only worry-in-silence for-so-long. He stroked the back of her hair and down to her neck. “Are you well?”

“Do you have want to fuckin' talk about it, Yule?” She sucked the tightly-wound cigarette. “Are you fucking well?”

It was silent again but for the pucker of the up-turned flask.

“Shit, I'm fuckin' sorry,” she finally said. “I do reckon I am not too well.”

“I cannot fathom that damnable Madame!” Yule took the flask from her and the sweet rum washed down his sour words.

“That's just it,” Misty said. “I've seen dead folk before, so that ain't uncommon misery – but this afternoon was the first I've ever seen the old mistress weep. That's the deeper hurt – she don't cry when us girls die.”

“Pardon?”

“I'm gonna tell you a secret now, Yule,” she whispered. “So don't you tell it to nobody. Reckon you can promise?”

“I sure do.”

“Alright then, so all us girls – we're all her 'daughters', she says. But that boy you seen?” Misty paused to take more rum. “That boy was her boy, alright. Her genuine son – right outta her own womb. Not recently, mind you. He was a few years aged.”

“She is some sturdy woman,” Yule observed. “She didn't let on in the parlor even while right beside the body.”

“She saved her tears till those men of Westman's were gone.”

“I'm surprised she did not keep you near to serve her during mourning.”

“Madame didn't mourn long,” Misty began. She leaned closer and Yule could smell her perfume. “She sent an invitation for Rex Westman himself to have supper with her at the Bare. Can you believe that? The man has your dead son delivered for a blow-job and you call on him for company?”

“Then you were forced to perform upon the body?” Yule asked.

“Shit I never even!” she laughed. “Yule, I didn't do nothin' with that dead youth but dress him for burial proper before they stuck him in yonder cellar for the night. He might've been the only man in Red Junction less interested in pussy than you, yourself.”

“Misty I—”

“You needn't be vexed,” she teased. “I don't judge your persuasions – not every man wants to fuck women. Some want for rougher-tumblin' with other fellers.”

“Misty,” Yule said sternly. “I am white and I am Christian.”

They laughed and ate the fish and bread rolls. It was their third such stolen picnic, and for awhile they were afforded that escapade. Too soon, the basket was depleted and the hours had gotten away. Side-by-side and arms inter-locked, they crept back in the direction of Red Junction. It was mostly an excuse for gentle touching and hushed snickering. They saw no one else all along their way, snaking along the alleys until the bordello loomed largest in the shadows ahead. Misty held him back by his elbow. She kissed his cheek and breathed in his ear:

“Thank ye most kindly, Mr Sherwin.”

He meant to return her kiss then, for the first time – but up ahead in the direction of the bordello a door slammed. The hairs on his arms were drawn to attention. Misty startled at the sound and they both peered along the alley, tracing its course to the rear of the Sleeping Bare. Up yonder, there was movement in the dark.

A drunk was shambling at the egress where the alley opened onto the thoroughfare. He was a sharp-dressed souse, tripping over his pin-striped trousers. A stovepipe hat fell from his crown and he trampled it beneath his polished boots. Misty squeezed Yule's arm. Though he did not know why, she was trying to drag him back from whence they'd come, into the deeper shadows.

“It's nothing,” Yule said. “Just some drunk dude.”

“That drunk feller,” she whispered against his neck and kept tugging at his shirt. “That's the Madame's son – dressed in his burial suit!”

Yule frowned. “That cannot be.” He held her and, together, they watched the drunk lurch into the road. “The dead do not resume walking after any interval, ever.”

“You sure?” she argued. “What about Jesus?”

“Misty!”

“I'm telling you!” Her voice was shaking the same as her whole-self. “I pinned those trousers and cuffs shut myself – to keep the worms out!”

Squinting, Yule saw that the dude's arms ended in stumps where the cuffs of his blazer had been pinned shut. The trousers were stuffed into the ankles of his polished boots. Without the discarded top-hat keeping it in place, the youth's scalp had come loose. The furry veil of it draped over the youth's ear and the blood of his under-skin glistened in the moonlight.

“Impossible,” Yule heard himself murmur.

A horse nearby snorted and stamped, and then another sensed unwholesomeness and joined the first pony's protest.

The dead boy had gone stiff-legged and shambling across the thoroughfare. Mystified, Yule traipsed ahead with Misty in-tow.

“No,” she pleaded. “Yule please.”

The dead boy lurked outside Yule's shop, beside the burro which had been abandoned there. The beast slept standing upright, its head bowed. Misty and Yule came to the alley's mouth, though she never relented in her attempts to draw him back from the edge. She was still yanking his sleeve when Madame's son suddenly attacked the burro, slathering himself upon its backside as if to breed. It brayed and bucked, jackknifing despite its tether – and it drove its hind-hooves against the dead boy's gut. He was stricken and tumbled back into the road as the beast kept bleating.

The blow had spun the boy about so that he was facing the alley. He sat flat on his rump with his legs out-stretched in the thoroughfare. His scalp had been realigned by the violence, and it had become a furry blindfold. Misty and Yule clenched together. One of the boy's cuffs had come un-pinned and he swiped his hand across his brow and tore the scalp free. Before they could look away the boy was tonguing the bloody underside of his own lid – slurping his own gore from his fingers.

“Please Lord, no,” Misty groaned. “Not again.”

“Amen,” Yule whispered, but he knew right away it had gone unheard by God.

The sound of Yule's single-word prayer drew the boy's attention. As he gnawed at the thin, hirsute morsel of himself, his eyes found Yule's own. Slowly, the youth's limbs unfolded beneath him, lifting him to stand once more.

Misty hauled on Yule's arm and, this time, he allowed himself to be drawn back into the alley.

That well-dressed dead boy, having tasted blood from beneath his own scalp, wanted for warmer stuff. With digits and lips thick with gore, he came scrambling after them. Their blood had quickened him.

“Yule! Yule! Yule!”

“Run girl!” he howled and she went scurrying to where he could not see.

Yule crossed his fingers to form an improvised crucifix and held the symbol outstretched – he knew no other defense.

Two rams collided on the mountainside. Cathedral bells cast of bone tolled immensely. It was a momentous sound, more lethal than any rifle's report.

Madame's dead son sprawled face-down in the mud. A tomahawk with its handle wrapped in leather jutted from the backside of his skull. Prone as the dead boy was, Yule witnessed the wet mess upon its crown where the scalp should have been. A fissure wrought by the tomahawk eked out brain-matter and it was pinker than the deepening red blood – softer, more fragile – and he knew right then that this image was being seared into him by the moonlight. He felt water in his eyes, and he blinked that weakness away before tears could drown him.

When his blood had cooled and he could reason again he came to recognize a pitch-black silhouette standing over the twice-killed youth. The figure knelt beside the dead boy and jerked the tomahawk free from its split skull. The residue was wiped upon the corpse's back and then the hatchet was tucked away. Sherwin beheld the savage without ever exhaling, suddenly certain he was next to be scalped. The heathen was unmistakable and unforgettable – dressed in a beaded shirt beneath white man's threads. There were feathers tied to the cuffs of his blazer and his trousers were frayed at the ends. He was the only one of his breed to walk the streets of Red Junction, and men called him:

“Tom Savage,” Yule whispered. The heathen looked him up-and-down but did not speak a word. Then he took the dead boy by the ankles and dragged the body right past Yule, finally disappearing through the still-agape cellar-doors of the bordello.

Before the heathen could return, Yule righted himself and fled across the thoroughfare. As he passed the dead boy's lost stovepipe cap he paused despite himself, and what he committed next he deemed self-preservation – a token of complicity in the heathen's unspoken scheme. He scooped the hat from the dirt and went fast inside his shop.

The burro never did stop bleating.