“Horror to end all!” Misty cried out and shivered at the viscera emerging from her memory. Yule thought to wrap her in a blanket from the bed but knew the linens were lousy with ejaculate. Instead he just held her and squeezed, lost for words which could offer comfort to one drowning so in a quicksand of the mind. Misty rattled on in a trance: “That old cannibal crone was akin to a corpse already, destitute of the Lord's spark, reanimated in some necromancer's laboratory. Her whole face came up red in that little babe's gush so that I could do nothin' but scream out so loud—”

And screams, indicating panic, do draw the pointed ears and fangs of predators. The crone heard in Misty's terror a fairer morsel, and she dumped the squirming papoose in the dirt. Kicking aside the infantile carcass, she set off after Misty. The crone's limbs operated independently, each possessed by a different demon. Misty pivoted on her heel and ran.

“There weren't nowhere to flee, though.” Misty was staring back into the past with eyes wide as the full moon. “The blazing tipis did ring me in and them braves I'd befriended in the seasons prior were more gruesome than that cannibal crone, in a way. It got to feelin' like they'd been waitin' their whole lives for the call to murder.”

“Savages,” Yule commiserated.

“They ain't all bad.”

Her flight from the crone ended not for lack of want, but for the absence of any further escape route. A half-moon of blood-drenched braves upon their appaloosas fenced her in. They were hawkish with their slit eyes and sharp frowns. The horses fumed and a brave nocked an arrow and drew his bowstring taut.

“Despair put a wilting hold on my legs then, and I swear I could not even breathe. The crone was come along so near I could smell that papoose's blood upon her lips. Sure was a right fucked up spot to be in. Nothin' to do but wait to see which'd prick me first – an arrow or a fang.”

She heard the twang of the bowstring and then the thud right after. A second arrow sliced past, just about kissing her cheek. Then a whole barrage was loosed and she collapsed in the dirt, shielding her head.

“Pale Misty!” She recognized the voice of her closest friend, Smiles on River. He was the leader of the heathen posse, and he had saved her life a second time. The crone sprawled out, a horse-length back. Smiles on River called to her in the heathen lingo: “You must go into the woods! Where the red berries grow – and stay hidden there until you hear my call! Go! Go!”

“What is happening to us?” she pleaded, but he only winked at her and led the posse away. She fled between the smoldering skeletal spires of the cremated tipis. Flinging herself out into the woods, she scrambled toward the knoll where the red berries flourished best. Behind her the ferns rustled and she had been chased enough to know what it was to be prey.

“And it was that same rotten fucking crone, Yule,” she told him. “Dressed with a whole quiver of arrows like a porcupine – fuckin' stuck all over – thrashing through the brush after me. Never seen nobody so dead-set.”

“God almighty,” Yule invoked.

“And same as the boy from the alleyway – Madame's boy – same as he were, the crone were, too. The braves had took her scalp – and she came lurchin' through the ferns without her top-knot and snapped at mine heels till I could run from her no further. I took up a tree there in the patch of red berries – guessin' right as it were that she would not be much for climbing trees – and thankfully fuckin' so. She sure did give-it-a-go though, clawin' and scratchin' at the trunk – while I crept higher still and cried for everything I was worth. And then she done it. She became lusty for her own blood leaked upon the tree-bark—”

And there was the trauma which had been rekindled by Madame's boy. Hunger so deep it compels the famished to try out the taste of their own flesh. The crone's tongue slithered out and sucked satanic nectar from her own glistening fissures. Misty heard the arrow shafts snapping as the crone twisted and lapped at the wounds torn upon her own breast. Hours passed with the hag distracted by her own oozing, diverted by bouts of self-destruction.

“She kept me treed for I don't know how long,” Misty remembered. “My arms and legs burnt for trying to hold on to my perch – but then comin' from the direction of yonder heathen apocalypse I heard the sound of thunder. It were musket-fire, Yule. Well, muskets were not the way of the tribe, so it meant some white men had come along and I was sure grateful for folks same-hued.”

The muskets cracked again-and-again, and what remained of her adopted village became a fuming crater. The braves began scattering to the far ends of the forest. Finally she saw men in trousers and shirts, and it had been a long while since she had seen a man wear anything but an immodest patch of cloth over his loins. The white men came along shoulder-to-shoulder with their rifles lowered, some with bayonets. This was an irregular crew, some with hats sewn from whole beaver carcasses – tail and eyes and all. They came rolling across that patch of woodland blasting holes in every heathen they caught. When they found the prickly crone at the base of Misty's tree a whole firing line formed and took up rifles as one. Once the muskets’ echoes had receded, Misty called down. Somehow she had forgotten how to turn her tongue and her cries for help came out a mockery of English. The company turned their guns toward her, but then one of the men raised his hand and hollered:

“Hold yer fire! Ain't no heathen, fellers!” He was filthy and clad in furs and he reached a hand up for her to climb down. “White as the un-pissed upon snow, this one is – and purdy!”

“I was rescued from mine Indian odyssey then, and came to know mine saviors as the Westman Fur Company.” She exhaled and her pause told Yule that her tale was nearing its end. “For a while I rode along with them as they trapped every beaver in Oregon. At first – they treated me as a daughter, but then my menses did present and, as I became a woman, I learned how to entertain the company. Well, after a while, Mr Westman tired of the fur-trade and dragged us out here to Colorado so he could pursue the Color. After another while, he didn't need for so many whores, and when Madame arrived in town and opened the Bare he bartered me and a couple of the other girls for twenty blankets and a whole mess of whiskey. Well, that’s how Madame tells it – and won't let any of us forget how those blankets and whiskey might've at least kept some fellers warm in the night.”

At last, Misty was quiet, and Yule shook his head, unsure what to make of her unfathomable testimony.

“You believe me, don't you Yule? Yule? You go an’ ask the Doc in this camp and he can tell ye – he's the same doc Rex Westman has always kept and he was there when they found me! He rides out to see folks on one of them Indian's appaloosas to this day!”

“Of course I believe,” Yule answered. “I simply wish not to – for your sake.”

“But you do see it was true then? And now…now it is happening again. I did care for Madame's boy a time or two when he were unwell, the way I do for my whore-sisters from time-to-time. With tea, or a mossy press; those methods I learned from ol' Moon Bear. Now the same sick befalls Madame's boy as did the crone and my other old Indians – and me the common thread.” Misty paused. “Do you think I'm a white germ? Do you think I’m a bad seed? Maybe I ain’t meant to know company without also knowing misery ten-fold.”

“Hush,” Yule said. “You are not nor have you ever been a white germ nor any other agent of unwellness.”

“But have you ever before seen somethin' like that dead boy ettin' upon himself? 'Cause I has, Yule – ain't that too much to be coincidence?”

“I have not seen any man ever so risen from his casket,” Yule admitted, “but I have seen heathens in this camp – last night, even – and those moon-worshippers are also a common link between events recent and those in your telling.”

“I don't reckon I'd thought of it that way.”

“Well I have and am still.” Gently, he kissed her cheek.

“Thank you Yule.” She stretched and yawned. “You've soothed me purely – man, I think I could sleep!”

“Then mayhap you ought to.” Yule took her hand and together they tucked her into bed beneath the yellowed sheets. He asked, “Should I tell Isaac you are unwell?”

“No, tell him instead that you have worked me past exhaustion,” she began, “so that he does not summon the doctor to probe for unwellness within the shadow of my nethers.”

“As you wish.”

“Thank you for hearing me,” she said as he slipped out through the door.

“My pleasure entirely.” He smiled, and just before he shut the chamber said: “Till next.”

Downstairs he found the parlor had abandoned breakfast and instead engaged in its regular curriculum of tense show-downs. Poker adversaries, the pissed, droll and drunk – all resolute against the house. Men licked their lips, hooked their thumbs and cut pieces of ass from the swaying skin-dancers. They retreated into the moaning catacombs to complete their carnal transactions. Yule went down the stairs as a passenger in his own body – a vessel set adrift on a sea of old whiskey. His ears rang. He paid coin to the tender for his time spent with Misty.

“I've paid extra so she might be afforded some additional time to recover from our lovemaking,” he said.

Isaac snorted and pocketed the coin.

“You make sure to come on back now, Mr Sherwin,” he said.