CHAPTER 13
BAUGHER AND GARISON’S HARDWARE, STOVES, TINWARE, the sign above the clapboard building reads.
The wood siding is weathered, sun bleached to the degree that the planks resemble driftwood. The building is a rudimentary thing, built longer than it is wide. The face of it has many windows, as do the buildings snugly built on either side of it.
We’re on the other side of town from the livery, near buildings I paid no mind to the first time I set foot in this town. I survey them now, curious.
WILL C. STAINSBY DRUGS & MEDICINES, the next door’s store sign reads. The other side’s store sign’s letters are painted taller and wider than any around and fairly shout, BLACK HAWK CRACKER BAKERY.
Privately, I marvel that they fretted enough to make their signage overlarge when the smell of freshly baked goods permeates the entire street.
“We can park here,” Becky tells me, indicating the hitching post in front of the bakery, more than likely positioning us here on account of nearly all the other hitching post spots being taken by various horseflesh.
Once Joel’s horse has eased our wagon into a parking space, reluctantly, I return Becky to the bench beside me, setting her down gingerly. Then I clamber off the wagon and secure Joel’s horse, tying the beautiful mare’s lead rope to the post .
Paco comes around the side of the wagon, sneaking up to Becky to be petted. When I finish my task and turn to him with the notion of tying him to the wagon, he wheels around and scrambles away from me, acting for all the world like a wild ass.
Sighing, I help Becky down from the wagon. Looping my arm with hers, I move for the bakery, the window of which Becky has been sending wistful looks.
She balks a little, looking up at me inquiringly. “You’re not going to catch him?”
Sparing a withering stare for our jackass, I shake my head.
“Someone else will take him, Will,” she worries.
My heart thrills to hear her use this shortened version of my name again.
But the words no more than exit her mouth when a gentleman steps into the middle of the dusty street and removes his hat, flapping it at Paco. “Hay up! Hay up! Cu’Bossy!”
I give my puzzled frown to Becky.
She snorts. “That’s how farmers call their cows. It’s short for ‘Come, Bossy.’” Her brow beetles. “It might work to call in a donkey that’s been kept in a field with cows.”
We both turn our attention back to Paco.
His ears have flattened. Barking a growl, he kicks out at the advancing man. When that doesn’t earn him the space he desires, Paco whirls around to chase him, grazer’s teeth flashing dangerously.
“He must not have been kept with cows,” I observe.
The man scrambles away and dives behind a line of barrels being loaded onto a nearby cart.
Paco sends one last kick in his direction. The exertion of this kick causes him to fart. As if he’s aware that it’s considered a rude bodily function and he’s pleased by the release of his gas, he wags his tail and continues to fart as he gallops down the street.
Becky covers her mouth with her hand .
“Donkeys are strange creatures,” I muse.
Waving his hat in surrender at our retreating jackass, the bystander who attempted to catch him steps back from the barrel barrier, brushing himself off before he walks away.
I pat Becky’s hand where it rests inside my arm. “If Paco allows himself to be caught, I’d be surprised. And if anyone actually does manage to capture him, I’d be more surprised if they can successfully hold him for any length of time.”
Becky tips her head, no doubt recalling how many times Paco has escaped from every stall and fence gate we’ve set him behind. “Fair points.”
This time when I nudge her to move with me, she shows no hesitation, and I help her mount the steps of the boardwalk that runs along the strip of store fronts on this side of the street.
She turns as if to head to our destination, the general store. But because her arm is locked with mine, I’m able to gently redirect and guide her into the bakery.
My chest fills with a new emotion when Becky looks up at me, a glimmer sparkling in her eyes. “You’re sweet, Will.”
The baker does a double take as we approach her counter. To a smiling Becky, she exclaims a somewhat surprised, “You must be a friend of Stella's!”
Becky’s smile tinges with polite regret. “Sorry, don’t know a Stella.”
“Ah. Well, her man likes to take her in here a lot too,” the baker says, nodding her head at me.
“I can see why a man would,” Becky says agreeably, squeezing my arm as she gazes around at all the prettily decorated dainties. “This man just earned himself so many brownie points.”
“What are brownie points?” I ask.
“I’ll show you later,” Becky promises. And then she sends a look up at me that enflames my lower abdomen’s frontal contents, constricts my chest, and overheats my brain .
Once she’s properly treated, we leave the little shop. The proprietor’s reaction when she spied us was strange, and I ponder that as I carefully match my stride to Becky’s. Much of the boardwalk is covered with overhangs from each storefront, and the shade is much-needed relief. If we weren’t in a crowd, I would relax appreciably.
But we are somewhat amid a crowd.
I’m not the only one not at ease. As if they can sense that I’m not like them, the humans using the boardwalk fairly scramble out of our way, clearing a nice path for us. It’s mostly clusters of men with only the occasional woman tucked close. All go still as we —I— draw near them, making our presence stand out even more prominently. Becky’s and my boots clack as we make our way to the door of the store, our steps sounding loud when the bustle around us has nearly come to a frozen standstill. Scanning the neural activity of the patrons milling inside—all yet unaware of my predator status and thus moving freely—I shoulder the door open, indicating to Becky that she should precede me.
Scents assail me as the air swings in my direction. Dried foodstuffs, leather, the sweat of male humans, and a pungent, oily smell that is somewhat similar to kerosene oil, which our homestead has need of on occasion if Becky chooses to conserve electricity and utilize night lamps.
“This establishment will have what we require?” I ask, eyeing the somewhat dimly lit interior of the general store. For all its windows at the front of the shop, these are the establishment’s only windows, and primitively they seem to be the main source of light.
A man dressed in vest and tie with a neatly fitted white apron over it all is bustling behind a long counter that’s off to the side of us. He’s reaching for items before he taps on a large metal cash register—finally something I recognize from the vids I’ve enjoyed.
Becky slowly waves her hand at the walls, which are fitted with floor-to-ceiling shelving. The shelves are full—packed with various sacks, bottles, containers, and labeled crockery. Jutting off the shelves are long nails, from which hang the harness spiders and collars for Draft and Haflinger horses, or so the signs near each item read.
On the floor are barrels, some that smell of meats, some of metal. One such metal-scented barrel is labeled fence staples. “They sell livestock fencing, ship engines, and sub sandwiches,” Becky explains. “In other words, like all general stores in these parts, this place is full service.”
I usher her farther inside and something in me settles to watch her animate and begin looking at items with interest. Although we came here for fencing supplies, I don’t mind at all that my mate’s fingers are combing over feminine-looking items that have nothing at all to do with the purpose we came for. I’m thinking to myself that I rather enjoy the pleasure-suffused look that’s taken over her face, and I hope to coax out more of this.
That’s when I get the shock of my life.
Through the wall at my back, I sense a threat. A Yonderin male, like me.
He’s moving past the storefront, and my ears pick up the faintest sound of his boots on the boardwalk, muffled by our distance of separation.
When I turn around sharply, Becky glances from me to the wall where I’ve pinned a killing glare. “Are you mad at that steering system or something?”
“What?” I mutter, distracted.
She waves to the wall in front of us, where some kind of space ship machinery is crowding a painting of a pastoral scene depicting the bovines of this planet.
“No,” I tell her. “I’m watching out for threats.” And I’ve discovered one .
She sidles closer to me and pitches her voice to a worried whisper, as if she’s afraid I might be addled. “And you can do that by staring at the wall?”
I stare hard at the other Yonderin in the vicinity, and watch him freeze as he senses me.
And then he moves to attack.
Whirling around, he rushes to meet me in challenge, coming to a stop directly across from me, the wall still between us, staring right back at me. Beside him there’s another brain signature, but it’s human. Confusion blankets that skull as the Yonderin male begins a swift march in the direction the way they just came.
My ears detect his growl as the door to this establishment that Becky and I are standing in is slammed open, and the other male bursts inside.
Our eyes lock, and I utter a death growl right back.
His human companion presses against him, looking around in confusion as if she’s trying to spy the reason for his very pointed and threatening attention. Inside her heavily rounded stomach, neural activity proves she’s carrying young. Evidently this Yonderin’s young. No wonder he’s meeting me so aggressively.
His eyes glow an unnatural blue. Cyborg blue—the color comes from data chasing over his optics. Only the oldest model cyborgs had these eyes installed. Mine look much more human.
He’s dressed in dark striped trousers, a dress shirt, and a scarlet red vest. Atop his head is a black cowboy hat.
His mate is in what I will hear Becky discussing later is called a gingham milkmaid dress. All I register in this moment is its light green hue.
The male’s arm drops around his female, an obvious claiming gesture, and the very Yonderin part of me points out that in antiquity, it was not unheard of for males to fight to the death over a female. The pairbonded male because he fought to protect his mate, and to a lesser immediate importance their territory.
Meanwhile the bachelor male fought to claim the loser’s spoils.
I nearly rear back at the possibility. The very thought of claiming his woman is abhorrent.
“I’ve most definitely pairbonded to you,” I tell Becky, who is looking from me to the Yonderin and his human woman. I knew I’d bonded to Becky, and yet…
Becky’s head whips up to me. “You—what?”
“The urge to remove a threat in order to keep you safe, to expand our territory and resources—that’s ingrained so deeply I’m ready to battle this rival male,” I note.
Becky’s eyes leave mine briefly as she sends a glance at said rival. Just as quickly, her attention returns to me. “You’re ‘pairbonded?’”
“I most certainly am.” I don’t take my eyes off of the danger, but I do reach out and catch Becky’s neck, giving her a gently reassuring clasp—because her brain is a mess of activity in every direction. I further elucidate for my mate’s peace of mind, “I don’t want to have sex with that other female. I don’t even want to go near her.”
Becky’s head rears back at my first statement, and care of my excellent peripheral vision, I watch her roll her lips between her teeth as she squints up at me. “Say that again?”
“I only desire to protect you and our tadpole,” I tell her. “And the land we are standing on so that you and I aren’t forced to flee from it in your heavily gravid state.”
It occurs to me in a cold rush that if I lose this fight, this male is unlikely to provide for Becky.
He’ll claim our territory and, at best, leave her to starve. Her and our tadpole.
Because it appears he has a mate, he won’t have any compulsion to bond to Becky—which means he has no incentive to see that she and our young thrive. In fact, if I lose, he will see his vanquished rival’s offspring as a threat that needs neutralizing. Permanently.
Starkly, I know that if I lose, he’ll kill Becky in order to kill our tadpole she’s carrying.
I've never been more inclined to win.
“Our tadpole?” Becky queries.
Shielding scales sprout over the rival Yonderin’s gill slits. His gills look to have been sewn shut, just as mine were, but his defensive mechanism is still operational—and, I see with a spike of challenge, his defense is very good. His scales are thick and form a tight barrier of protection at the sides of his throat.
It will be harder to kill him now.
His female, staring up at him, makes a noise that conveys surprise. “Wow, that’s new!” One hand on her belly, she looks around, seeming flustered. “Umm, C’vest, I think we could use a bathroom break.”
This C’vest peels his lips back from his teeth and snarls in my direction.
Narrowing my eyes, I bare my own teeth. To my relief, I believe mine are bigger.
When the other male moves to step forward, his female steps in front of him, halting him. She looks from me to Becky—and focuses on Becky’s stomach as she shouts over her mate’s vibrating growl, “It's because we're ‘breeding!’”
Becky, her hand clutching mine, is nonplussed. “What?!”
“Yeah!” the other female replies, her smile looking strained as she meet’s Becky’s stunned gaze. “Because we're pregnant, they turn aggressive with each other. Apparently way back when Yonderin still took mates in the ocean,” she digs her elbow into her male’s stomach, making him grunt and stop leaning forward with such killing purpose, “the males became super aggressive and battled for territory and to protect their pregnant mates.” She moves more firmly against her male’s side and pats him on his stiff back, making his frame stiffen more. “ Ancient instincts are getting triggered with us. I guess this kind of aggression is why their species began to remove themselves from the act of claiming mates. Now they’re loners who reproduce by test tubes.”
“That's crazy,” Becky calls, side-eyeing me. “This guy is the planet’s biggest cuddler, not a loner.”
Something in my chest seizes, unsure if my mate finds this trait appealing or… not.
The other female grins. “So’s mine,” she shares.
Becky squeezes my hand and shoots me a smile—making every one of my muscles loosen. To the other female, she says, “I’m Becky.”
“Stella,” the rival’s mate replies.
“Ahhh,” I murmur. “The baker’s interaction with us now makes sense. Two Yonderin males in the same town, frequenting the same establishment is a remarkable happenstance.”
“Excuse us for just one second,” this Stella is saying with a tight smile as she pats her Yonderin on his chest, and when that doesn’t get her the level of his attention that she desires, she loops her arm around his lower middle in order to reach behind him. The muscles of her limb tighten.
By the way his body tenses, I believe she may have squeezed him on the muscles of his posterior.
With a snarl, he turns and pounces on his mate.
Becky gasps—but then the Yonderin hauls his heavily gravid female into his arms and begins walking swiftly for the back of the store, obeying his female’s rapidly whispered commands, if I’m not mistaken.
Their scents whirl toward us. The pheromones of victory are being heavily released by his body, as if he’s won a challenge.
Against me.
Chuckling in disbelief, Becky waves to them with her free hand before beginning to rub her belly. “That was wild!” She looks up, meeting my intense stare. “You act like us humans are primitive with the way we reproduce but you guys go around ready to randomly kill each other?”
If I were able to unhinge my jaws far enough to manage speech, I’d assure her it isn’t random. One of us must enter a mated male’s territory to trigger such a response. Because of advances we’ve made, this is thankfully rarely a concern.
From the rearmost corner of the building where his Stella guided him, the other male Yonderin’s limbic system—the birthplace of physical drives—flares even brighter, and several other rapidly following clues strongly indicate he’s being activated for sexual purposes and will soon be servicing his mate.
Like a champion who has utterly defeated his rival.
“I could be wrong, but I think that guy’s about to get lucky—” Becky starts to say with a quiet chuckle, but she’s cut off when I catch her by the hips, lift her, and seat her rear end on the edge of the store’s counter.
Gripping her belly, she gawks up at me. “What are you doing?” she says in a near-sonic whisper-screech.
The shopkeeper peers over a stack of wares, and spies us. “Hey! You two can’t—can’t fornicate in here—”
I stare him dead in the eyes. “Look. Away.”
He does. Around us, the store of discomfited, terror-frozen occupants rapidly empties.
Becky makes a noise, and her brain shows activity in her ventro lateral prefrontal cortex—the area associated with embarrassment. “William Frederick Cody!” she hisses. “Take me to the bathroom at least!”
My hands go still on her. She has to void. I clear my throat and force myself to speak like a human being, not snarl like the Yonderin I am. “Ah, time to use the Pythagorean siphon?”
“Say… that… again?”
“The toilets you favor. They utilize a Pythagorean siphon.”
“Okay… no, that’s not the chief reason for having you take me to the bathroom. Well, now it is, because now I have to go. But I really meant to take you in there for some private time like I think Stella is doing. I think it resets you.”
“Resets?” I ask.
“And it makes you cuddly.” Becky pats my chest. “Do you want to get offended about the words I use, or do you want to fornicate?”
I bring my mate to the Pythagorean siphons. Not to mate, as I refuse to service her so close to an unbeaten male. But to void, as she so often needs to do.
She has never voided in front of me before now though. Becky’s neural activity tells me she’s bashful but her hands show me she’s determined as she pulls me into the siphon box with her in the very same common voiding area that my rival has claimed so that Stella can drag her male past our closed siphon stall and out of the communal siphon room. I can feel her male gloating as I’m forced to breathe the stink of their mating—an offense to my senses.
“How did they do it?” Becky asks. “There’s almost no way to have sex when we’re this pregnant,” she very nearly grumbles.
I can’t reply. I’m fighting my frustration that I wasn’t allowed to conquer the rival male and victoriously service my mate. (Although she brings up a valid point: she really requires the use of pillows to support her upper half so that her stomach is comfortable while she raises her rump for me to mount. But I appreciate her willingness to attempt a wild claiming had we been otherwise able to.)
When Becky has finished voiding, has shooed me from the stall and washed her hands, we exit and find that the Yonderin and Stella are no longer in the store.
They’re loitering outside the door of this place, waiting. Waiting for us to emerge.
My eyes narrow to slits .
“I think they want to talk to us, and they don’t want you to freak out,” Becky offers. She pats my arm. “Let’s order what we came for and then we’ll see what’s up.”
The shopkeeper is nervous but takes our money and tells us he will have the fencing and posts loaded in our wagon shortly.
Together, Becky and I step out of the shop to confront the other human-Yonderin pair.