Eq Renaissance Part 14 (Ed)

Equestrian Renaissance - Attrition

    They gave him a proper Equestrian burial.
    Little Strongheart had never seen the full ceremony before, but she had insisted, more than any other member of the posse, that he be afforded one.  Silverstar had been the bravest man she had ever known, and he had died a warrior’s death.  He had ridden into an ambush, destroyed the enemy, and had died caring only for the safety of his own men.
    Later that night, as she and Braeburn laid underneath their single blanket a bit further away from the others, she sobbed quietly while he held her close from behind.  Then, after she had calmed herself, after the fire had died, they silently made love.  Only after she fell asleep, only after Braeburn was certain of it by the slowness of her heart, did he allow himself to cry.
    Before the sun rose above the horizon, as his first order, Braeburn ordered the camp be broken.  They wanted to travel faster, so they sent the slower of the two wagons back to Appleoosa.  Braeburn also sent back three of his most expendable men, both to break the news to the Sheriff’s wife, and to ask for reinforcements.  The Dogs of Discord were now responsible for murder, and the victim was a law man, an elected official.  Braeburn hoped Equestria would at least send a company of soldiers.
    The strange, rocky foothills lasted for another day's worth of travelling.  The mountains on the other side, a range that had been looming high both in their eyes and in their concerns, was almost an afterthought.  The pass was wide and low, and presented no difficulty to their progress.  The nights were colder, and there were more chipmunks than they could shake a stick at, but other than that they may as well have still been down in the plains.
    The terrain grew worse on the other side of the mountains.  They entered the badlands.  Little Strongheart could no longer guide them, she had never been this far, but as a survivalist her skills were still indispensable.  Nothing grew out here; nothing lived.  It was an endless sea of rolling hills, if hills were what they could be called.  In some sense they seemed more like dunes: piles of gravel cemented together with dust and clay.  It was all the same monotonous gray in every direction they looked.  On the rare occasions that it rained, it all turned to mud.  The strange landscape bore down heavily on their psyches, which had already been troubled by the loss of the sheriff.  The sky itself was dark, and the pregnant clouds loomed over them threateningly, even while it wouldn’t rain.  Only the occasional cold, burnt-out campfires of their quarry let them know they were still on the right trail.  They were also the only evidence that any person had ever been there before them in that alien place.
    The sky grew its darkest on the fourth day through the badlands.  It was late in the day, and far off at the horizon there must have been a break in the clouds, because there was a horizontal slash of red sunset that made the cloud cover look inflamed and dead.  They crested one last tall ridge, strangely sharp and jagged, and they knew they had reached the end of this stage of their journey.  Beneath them stretched a wide, grey plain.  It was as barren and charcoal gray as the sky above them.  In the center was a black streak.  They could just make out squat buildings.  Here was a town.
    As they approached, they wondered what on earth a town was doing out here.  Then they noticed the railroad.  Their discontent grew deeper.  If they had known where they were going, they could have just taken the train.  They stopped at the edge of town to tie up their horses near a trough.  Braeburn ordered a handful of men to stay behind and keep an eye on them.
    Braeburn was usually a trusting sort of person, but something about this town was rubbing him the wrong way.  There was only a single sign that they saw on their way in.  It read “ATTRITION.”
    The railroad didn’t pass through town.  It was a terminal.  A spur line connected to some as yet unlearned trunk, probably the Transcontinental.  In that respect, it was like Appleoosa.  Beyond that, there wasn’t much of a comparison.  In Braeburn’s opinion,  Appleoosa’s best days were ahead of it.  Now a bustling center for migration and homesteading, soon they would be bringing in new industries.  They would be building new neighborhoods.  They would invest in infrastructure, and attract business men.  Some day in the future it would be a shining metropolis, a Canterlot West.  It would generate its own culture, its own ideas, its own art.  There would be museums and universities and restaurants serving Appleoosan cuisine and waiters greeting customers with that distinct Appleoosan accent.
    Attrition was like a distorted mirror image.  Roughly the same size, likely the same age, enjoying the same connection to the railways, but where Appleoosa was young and growing, Attrition appeared to be more like a rotting corpse.  The buildings had been slapped together in a hurry, and as if they weren’t ever expected to last long, or be replaced by anything more solid.  There was a doctor’s and dentist’s clinic, but it looked diseased.  There was what could have been a sheriff’s office, a general store, and a post office, but they were all deserted.
    The saloons, on the other hand, were all filled to the gills.  Appleoosa had a single saloon.  It wasn’t exactly wholesome, but it was a sight better than these wretched pits.  There was a whole main street of them.  The part of the posse that went into town passed down this street, on the single wooden boardwalk.  It smelled of vomit.  They had to step over passed-out drunks, and drunken whores who had passed out servicing the drunks.  There were vagrants and crippled beggars.  They saw at least two bodies, one stuffed under the boardwalk, the other pushed back into an alley.  Even the honky tonk music pouring out of the swinging double doors sounded greasy and vile.
    They looked through the windows of the first saloon they came across and thought it wasn’t even worth going in.  The next one was even worse, and so was the one after that.
    “Hey, boss,” Braeburn heard the voice of Appleoosa’s own bartender behind him.  He was one of the sharper men in his posse.  Braeburn turned to look.  “Hey, uh, I ain’t telling you how to do your job, but I thought, given the sort of clientele around here, maybe you oughta put the star away.”
    Braeburn looked down at the gleaming silver star.  “You’re right,” Braeburn nodded.  “It’s a little conspicuous.”  He took it off and hid it in his breast pocket.  Then he took a good look at the posse, which was in more or less single file behind him.  Little Strongheart was directly behind him.  He wouldn’t have taken her into the saloon in Appleoosa, let alone dives like these, but he was sure that she wasn’t going to stay away from him at a time like this.  The bartender was behind her, then the bank teller, and others behind him that were lost in the gloom.  He wondered if they were as reluctant about this place as he was.
    They continued down the street.  Somehow it just kept getting worse.  There was an opium den, and a series of brothels.  Low moans of true ecstasy droned out of the opium den.  There were screams of ecstasy coming from the brothels, but they sounded as phony as the acting in a bad burlesque show.  Braeburn had hoped to find a place to get himself and his men a decent meal and a drink, then start asking questions about the gang they were pursuing.  None of these places looked like they would fit the bill.
    “Hey,” the deputy bartender said, as they passed the next-to-last saloon.  “Hey boss, take a gander at this.”  Braeburn turned and saw the man peering into a smeared, dirty window.  None of the men had actually called him sheriff yet, just “boss”.  That was something he was sort of thankful for.  Braeburn back-tracked and looked into the window for himself.  “You see ‘im?”
    “Who?  Where?”
    “Over at the table in the corner.  The big one from the poster.  I think that’s him anyway.  Looks like he’s playing cards.”
    It was hard for Braeburn to tell.  He squinted and he shifted his position, then realized the only thing to do was actually go inside and see.  “Alright,” Braeburn said as he stood up straight again.  “Let’s take a look.”
    “You’re going inside?” one of his men asked.
    Braeburn hesitated for a moment.  “Um... well... I was kinda thinking we’d all go inside together.”  There were low mumbles of unhappiness and fear.  “I was hoping for you to back me up at least.”
    “But what are we supposed to do?” another man asked, clearly nervous.
    “Shoot, I don’t know.  Just act casual.”
    “Just what in the hell does that even mean?” asked somebody in back.
    “I..,” Braeburn wasn’t exactly sure what he meant.  “Just try not to look like a posse.  Spread out a little.  Mingle.”
    Braeburn took a glance at Little Strongheart, hoping for a little boost of confidence.  He wanted to see her smile, or nod her head a bit, encouragingly.  Her face was as blank and stoic as Chief Thunderfeet had been on the eve of war.  Braeburn swallowed hard and pushed through the double doors.
    In the dime novels that Braeburn always liked to read, this would be the moment when all of the outlaws and cutthroats in the saloon dropped everything that they were doing, and turned to the stranger who had just walked in.  There would be a deafening silence, followed by the sound of knives being pulled from their sheaths, and hammers being cocked back.  None of that happened.  Nobody even noticed he had come in.  The music from the piano never stopped.  The raucus laughter and shouting of the drunk crowd hadn’t diminished.  Braeburn started to push his way through the crowd towards the bar in back.  He stole one glance behind and was relieved to see the rest of the posse following him in.  They did look like they were spreading out a little and were doing a decent job of fitting in.  Except for Little Strongheart, who was still right behind him, and didn’t look casual at all.  She looked like she was about to kill somebody, and for business, not for pleasure.  She sort of stood out like a sore thumb.  He briefly wondered if she could act casual if she tried.
    Braeburn grew closer to the table in the corner, and finally saw his target.  He looked like a mountain of flesh.  The chair beneath his ass was leaning precariously, and one of the legs looked like it was just about to give out.  In addition to his bulk, he was hunched over the poker  table, making him almost look spherical.  Still, the man’s back was to Braeburn, and he just had to be sure.  Braeburn walked right up behind him, cleared his throat, and spoke.
    “Senor Francisco Fernandez de la...”  In retrospect, Braeburn probably should have expected it to happen.  Only when he talked to the man did everybody in the crowded bar stop what they were doing and look.  There was the dreadful silence, followed by the sound of people putting down their bottles of beer, and their cards, and their forks.  Braeburn waited for his heart to stop pounding in his chest.  The mountain in front of him began to rumble.  He was actually growling in anger, like a guard dog might do if you stepped too close.  The man straightened up in his seat.  He didn’t look spherical anymore, more like the trunk of a tree.  Braeburn could see thick cords of muscle and sinew below the fat on his shoulders and neck.  God help him, the man even looked like he had muscles on his head, beneath his thick, bald scalp.
    “...Fido?” Braeburn finished.  He didn’t really need to wonder anymore.  He was pretty sure this was the guy.  “As, um, by the power invested in me,” this wasn’t exactly how he wanted to say it, but he had never wanted to be the sheriff anyway, “as the Sheriff of Appleoosa, I hereby place you under arrest for the crimes of, um, you have to right to...”  For some strange reason, Braeburn had been looking at the poker cards in Fido’s right hand.  It was a pretty good hand, as far as poker went.  He only barely noticed Fido’s left hand lowering down towards his gunbelt.
    “Freeze!” Braeburn ordered, as he deftly whipped his revolver from its holster, pulled the hammer and pressed the barrel up against the fat man’s skull.  That very instant he felt the cold, hard muzzle of somebody else’s gun pressing up against his own cheek.  Braeburn nearly dropped dead of a heart attack, within three seconds he could hear dozens of guns being drawn and brandished.  When his blood started to flow again, he realized that, somehow, nobody had pulled a single trigger even though everybody had drawn.
    “Nobody,” the fatman in front of him bellowed out loud enough so that all could hear him, “fucking... move!”  Braeburn thought it was pretty good advice, so he listened to him.  Still, Braeburn couldn’t help but move a little. He turned his head ever so slightly, and slowly tried to look down the barrel that was pointed straight at his brain.  He saw the man at the other end of the gun.  This man looked rather nervous himself.  Then he saw the barrel of Little Strongheart’s rifle pressing right underneath that man’s chin.  He didn’t dare turn further to look, but he could imagine that somebody was pointing a gun at Little Strongheart, and that scared him more than anything else.
    It was a standoff.  Nearly the entire posse was in this saloon.  Braeburn was sure that each had their gun drawn.  He had no idea if any side had a true advantage over the other, but he knew his posse was outnumbered.  Still, if there was any shooting, most everybody in here would die.
    Braeburn didn’t know what to do.  He had never been in a situation like this.  “I’m going to stand up,” Fido said out loud.  He didn’t bellow it, but said it in a perfect calm, relaxed voice.  It almost made Braeburn relax a little.  Maybe this guy knew what he was doing.  After all, he was at one end of the standoff, maybe he would be able to defuse the situation.
    The fat man stood up, nice and slow.   Braeburn’s gun lifted with him.   The barrel just kept going up and up.  By the time Fido was done standing, Braeburn’s arm was pointing at an angle, upwards.  This man towered over everybody.  To Braeburn’s discomfort, he realized that his arm was already getting tired, holding his revolver up like this.  All the man had to do was stand there, and Braeburn would have to drop the gun sooner or later.
    Fido slowly started to turn around.  He was even meaner looking than in the wanted poster.  There were scars all over his face, and a long moustache hid his upper lip.  “I’m going to take off my gun belt,” he told Braeburn.  Braeburn didn’t know if he was supposed to look the man in the eye, or watch his hands as he undid the buckle.  He shot glances at both.  There was a heavy thud as his belt landed on the floor, and Braeburn felt at least a little bit of weight lift off his mind.  Just as slowly, Fido started to raise his hands up into the air, to show Braeburn he was completely unarmed, all in good will.
    Braeburn didn’t know what to do.  The man had done pretty much all he could do.  “Now you drop yours,” Fido told him, as if he had been reading his mind.  “We all go in order, nobody gets hurt.”
    Braeburn tried to think of what Sheriff Silverstar would have done in a situation.  He probably never would have gotten into the fix in the first place.  Still, the man was always cool-headed, plain-dealing, and never violent if he could help it.  Braeburn lowered his gun.  It fell to the floor with a clang.  He only had the one revolver, but he unhooked his gunbelt anyway and let that fall as well.
    The man with the gun to Braeburn’s head now spoke.  “Now it’s my turn, boss?” he asked Fido.
    Braeburn’s heart sank.  As he watched, a grin grew on the man’s fat face.  “No,” Fido growled.  Then he bellowed again so that all could hear.  “Like I said!  Nobody fucking move!  If you see any of these fucking bastards move, blow their fucking brains out.  Comprende?  Besides, this son of a whore pulled a gun on me.  It’s all between me and him anyway.”
    Fido still had his hands raised up in the air.  Now Braeburn watched in horror as the man’s thick, sausage-like fingers slowly curled up into balled fists.  The next thing he saw was a sudden blur, then an explosion of stars when Fido slugged him square in the nose.  There was a sharp, stabbing pain that felt as if he had been struck by lightning.  He stumbled backwards.  He heard his young wife scream his name, and for a second he was worried he would hear the sound of all the guns firing at once.  “Hold your fire,” Braeburn tried to scream.  The last word came out wet and choked.  His mouth was already filling with blood, it was streaming out of his broken nose like water.
    When he managed to stand firmly on his feet again, and the room stopped spinning, the first thing Braeburn saw was that mountain of a man bearing down on him.  Braeburn tried to throw a right, but somehow Fido was faster.  He caught Braeburn with a right hook, then a quick left.
    Braeburn stumbled back further.  No man so big should be able to move so fast.
    He worried he would stumble back into the line of men with their guns still drawn and pointed.  He didn’t want to make any of them fire.  Some of them were getting out of his way, keeping an eye both on the fist fight, and the man they had at gunpoint.  There was nobody standing in front of the bar itself.  Braeburn backed up parallel to it.  He threw a quick jab at Fido, and this time connected.  There was a sharp pain in Braeburn’s fist, as if he had just broken a finger.  Fido’s head hadn’t even snapped back.  He didn’t look like he had been phased at all.  He sure looked angrier though.  Fido puffed out his cheeks in frustration, as if he had just been insulted.  Braeburn jabbed again, he connected for a second time.  Fido shook his head, enraged.  When Braeburn threw the third jab, Fido deftly parried it, and countered with a two punch combination.  It was a right cross that almost took off Braeburn’s head, and an uppercut straight to his ribs.
    It was so powerful, Braeburn fell right over backwards.  Before Fido could grab him, Braeburn crawled on his hands and knees behind the bar, where he managed to get back up on his feet again.  Fido grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the corner of the bar by the neck and bashed it against the wood.  Instead of making a shiv to stab Braeburn with, the bottle shattered into a thousand pieces.  Fido yelled in rage as a shard sliced his hand open.  Braeburn, thankful for the distraction, threw the hardest, wildest haymaker he had ever thrown in his life.  It landed perfectly on Fido’s face.  This time it actually seemed to be effective.  Fido’s head snapped, and spit flew from his mouth.
    Fido responded with a wild backhanded swing that knocked Braeburn back onto his ass again. Braeburn crabwalked backwards a few yards, got to his feet, and found another bottle on the shelf with his hand.  Instead of trying to break it open, he simply threw it.  It went spinning end over end in a beautiful arc, and the thick bottom corner hit Fido right on his thick skull and bounced off with a weird, ringing “thunk”.  Fido roared in pain and actually stumbled himself.  Braeburn thought he saw a dent in his scalp before Fido covered it with his hand.  It was the bleeding hand, and now the blood was all over his face.
    Braeburn hoped the tide of the fight had turned, but then he almost crapped his drawers when Fido charged him with a wild scream.  Fido grabbed him under the arms and actually lifted him high up into the air as easily as if he were a child’s doll.  Braeburn tried to hit Fido as he was being driven backwards, but every blow just seemed to glance off his head.
    Fido drove Braeburn back into a wall hard enough to shatter the plaster, and drive all of the wind from his lungs.  He dropped Braeburn back onto his feet, and then started to swing.  Braeburn was holding his hands up, trying vainly to protect his head, but it felt so futile.  He had time to think that this was what it must feel like to be trampled in a stampede.  The blows just kept coming, one after another.  They landed on his skull and his ribs and his shoulders.  He felt his ribs breaking.  He felt his muscles turning spongy and bruised.  Braeburn thought that he was going to die this way.  There was nothing he could do but take it.  He was still backed up into the wall, with no way to get out.  There was no hope in begging for mercy; Fido was intent on beating him to death in front of everybody.
    Then, for some reason, Fido started to pull his punches.  It was as if he wasn’t as enraged he had been a moment before.  The blows weren’t landing as hard.  Then they weren’t landing as frequently.  Braeburn felt hope returning.  He realized that Fido wasn’t pulling his punches, he was slowing.  He had been using Braeburn like a punching bag, and now he had worn himself out.  When Braeburn looked, he noticed that Fido’s head was covered in sweat as much as it had been covered with the blood of his own hand.  He was breathing heavy, almost coughing.
    Braeburn covered up tighter and let a couple of more blows land, then countered with a surprise overhand right.  He covered up again just in time to block a flurry of blows that came both fast and hard, but soon slowed and weakened even more than before.  Braeburn threw another punch that landed, he covered and the whole process repeated.
    Braeburn saw his big chance.  He threw a hard right, and then threw a second punch that started pushing Fido backwards.  Fido tried to throw a big counter punch, but it was so slow and drunken that Braeburn easily managed to dodge it.  Braeburn threw one punch after another, each landed, and each took its toll.  The tables had finally turned.
    The fight had come almost full circle.  Braeburn had been driven back in front of the bar, had fled behind it, and was now fighting Fido to the poker table where it all started.  Fido tried to throw one last big swing.  Braeburn, despite all his terrible pain, despite his own exhaustion, saw it coming easily.  Not only did he dodge it, he cocked back his fist, got into the right stance and, right when the time was right, he swung the hardest, most perfect punch of his life, and it landed so squarely on Fido’s jaw that it almost broke.
    A lesser man than Fido would have been knocked out cold.  Fido himself spun around and his legs started to waver and shake.  When Fido turned back around to face Braeburn, the only thing he saw was the chair swinging through the air.
    The wooden chair shattered across Fido’s head, and the legs went flying everywhere.  Braeburn looked at the seatback still in his hands, then realized that it had been the chair that Fido had been sitting on and had almost broken.  Braeburn picked up another chair, one that looked much more solid.  Fido was on the floor.  He was on his belly, and struggling to get back up again.  He collapsed again when Braeburn hit him with the second chair.
    Braeburn brought it down a second time, and a third, and just didn’t stop.  He screamed each time as he hit the much larger and more dangerous man.  Fido wasn’t trying to get up any more.  The fifth time Braeburn hit him with the chair, his leg started to twitch.  When Braeburn brought it down the sixth time, the leg stopped moving.  If Braeburn was of sound mind, if it had meant to be a fair fight, he would have stopped swinging.  If all the men in the saloon didn’t have guns to their heads, they would have pulled him off of Fido before he killed him.  Nobody moved, just like Fido had ordered.
    Braeburn didn’t realize how many times he brought down the chair.  He only stopped when he saw the pool of blood spread out across the floor.  Then he dropped the chair, and realized he was supposed to arrest this man, and bring him back for a trial.  He awkwardly squatted down, and felt for a pulse at Fido’s thick neck.  A minute ago, Fido had been struggling, coughing to find a breath.  Now he wasn’t breathing at all.
    Braeburn stood back up, tall and straight.  It wasn’t easy, considering how dizzy he was.  He looked out at the crowded saloon.  Everybody still had everybody else at gunpoint, but all of the eyes were on him.  There was silence.  Braeburn reached into his shirt pocket, and pulled out the sheriff’s star.  He clipped it back on so that everybody could see it.  He was proper and official once more.  Then he hefted up his revolver that he had retrieved from the floor.  He held the point up to the ceiling and noticed everybody’s eyes were now on his gun.
    He casually strolled over to the man who had been holding the gun to his head before the fistfight broke out.  He wasn’t holding up Braeburn anymore.  Braeburn tried to look as stern and serious as he could.  The man gulped, clearly nervous.  Braeburn then started to go down the line.
    Little Strongheart was next.  She still had her rifle up under the previous man’s chin.  He tried to wink at her and grin.  Without a mirror, he didn’t quite quite understand how bad he looked.  Both eyes were black and would soon swell shut.  His nose was a bloody, broken mess, and he didn’t even realize there was a gap in his smile where a tooth had been.  Instead of smiling back, Little Strongheart pursed her lips and glared at him.  It was the meanest looking glare he had ever seen.  Strongheart’s tribe had a system of sign and body language that Braeburn had never learned.  He didn’t know if this was a part of that Indian sign language, or a different sign language that belonged to wives around the world.  He didn’t need a translation.  It meant: “there’s absolutely nothing funny about this, and you’re going to be in big trouble with me later on, white boy.”
    The smile vanished from Braeburn’s face.  He walked on.   The next man in line was holding a gun to Little Strongheart’s head.  There was an animalistic part of Braeburn’s mind that wanted to murder this man right here and now.  That part of his mind had already shed enough blood for one night.  Braeburn pushed the thought down.  The next man was Appleoosa’s bartender, whom he nodded to.  There was some thug from Attrition, then another man of Braeburn’s posse.  Braeburn followed the line all the way back.  In the far corner, on the opposite side of the saloon from that one poker table, there was a nervous looking resident of Appleoosa who seemed to have a bead on just about everybody.  Braeburn casually walked over him.  He shot the man a smile.  The man nervously smiled back.  Braeburn pointed his revolver at the man’s head.
    “Alright!” Braeburn shouted out so that everybody could hear him.  “My name is Braeburn, and I’m the sheriff.  What we have here is a standoff, and I’m the last man in line.  We already tried to defuse this here situation once, and it didn’t quite work out.  So we’re going to try it again, and this time we’re going to do it my way.
    “Now, before we move on, I want to let you know that I’m on the trail of a gang of outlaws known as the ‘Dogs of Discord.’  That big son-of-a-bitch on the floor over there was one of them. It ain’t just me, I’ve brought a posse.  Now what I want to happen first is...,”  Braeburn tried to think of what to do.  He ran this tongue behind his teeth, and found the bleeding gap where a tooth had been.  “I want all of the men of my posse to yell out ‘Appleoosa.’”
    All of his men hollered out “Appleoosa.”  It was a beautiful sound that filled the room.  Hopefully, it made it sound like there was more men then there actually was.  He knew his men were outnumbered.  He knew that if everybody fired their guns, all of his men would die, and there would still be men of Attrition left over that he would have to deal with.  On the other hand, nobody else wanted to die tonight, and at the moment, he was definitely the man in charge here.  Besides, he was in some seedy Western town with a room full of outlaws and guns, it felt like just the right sort of place to bluff.
    “Everybody else, I want you to drop your guns.”  All around them, the men of Attrition were dropping their guns to the floor.  Those with gun belts were dropping them too.  Now his posse was able to turn, and make sure they were covering everybody else, just in case somebody decided to make a stupid move.
    “Great!” Braeburn shouted. “Now, one last thing.  I’m not interested in arresting any of you bastards.  I’m after Discord’s Dogs.  I know they’ve been through here, and I want you to tell me which way they went.”  The men from Attrition slowly lifted their arms and they all pointed in the same direction.
    “They went that way, sheriff,” a man said.  Then they all started to speak.  “That way.  They went west.  West, sheriff.  They took the train.  West, sheriff, down the railroad.”
    “Thank you,” Braeburn said.  “Now, nice and slow like, my posse’s going to leave your establishment, and your nice little town in peace.”
    Braeburn started to back his way out of the front door.  His posse followed him.  The boardwalk in front of the saloon was clear.  So was the main street, as if the scum of Attrition had sensed the violence and scuttled away.  Braeburn held the door open until the last of his posse was out, then they quickly turned and headed back towards the horses at the edge of town, always keeping an eye out for anybody following them.
    “That was something, sheriff,” the bartender told him.
    “I’m just glad nobody pointed out I have no jurisdiction out here,” Braeburn tried to smile.  It hurt.  Little Strongheart clutched his right arm in hers, but said nothing.  He didn’t know if she was trying to hold him up, or physically drag him away from Attrition, or if she just wanted to hold him.  Maybe all three.
    “You showed that son-of-a-bitch, sheriff,” he heard Appleoosa’s dentist say.  Men were slapping him on the back.  “We get back to Appleoosa, I’m giving you a gold tooth, free of charge.”
    “We waiting for the train, sheriff?” somebody asked.
    “Hell no, we ain’t waiting here,” Braeburn said.  “We’ll follow the tracks to the junction, and the next town beyond.”  Braeburn didn’t tell him that once at that town, he was going to ship the rest of the posse back to Appleoosa.  Little Strongheart wasn’t going to like that; she was going to put up a fight.  It wouldn’t matter.  They were all going home.
    It had been Braeburn’s first incident as acting Sheriff, and he had almost gotten every single one of them killed...  Spot and Fido were dead.  There were still more outlaws to be hunted down.  Rover.  Blackfoot.  Perhaps some enigmatic gangleader who was the brains behind it all.  From here on out, Braeburn was going to be doing it alone.  None of his men had been hurt, yet the town of Attrition had taken its toll.