Sixes Wild: Manifest Destiny Read Online Free PDF

“Easy, Sheriff. You’re goin’ to be fine.”
    “Thank you, ma’— mister.” We meet eyes for a minute. Her blue ones widen just a touch. I cough up a laugh. “You’re decent for a fella who shot me.”
    “Aw shucks.” She winks, her smile coming back. “Ah am just a fool bunny.” Her eyes dart to the window. It’s painfully bright out; must be close to noon. The sun shines through the row of elixir bottles on display, lighting her face in the browns and greens of a forest canopy, her eyes glinting crisp blue like water in a mountain creek. Not much color out here in the Frontier, not compared with life back in the East.
    I hear a commotion outside. Her ears rise too.
    The hare’s paws stroke the handles of her guns. “Gotta run, lawbat. Take care now. Don’t let nobody else shoot ya.”
    She tucks the matchbox in her pocket and walks out the back door, casual as you please.
    The next moment, Hayes roars into the office: “I demand to see them! Blake, the outlaws, and anybody else I have a mind to. I am within my rights to talk to anybody I please!”
    Doc’s wife, Charlotte, accosts him with a yap and a whap. “Get outta my clinic, Mister Hayes, or so help me I’ll find you a way out!”
    Hayes towers over the vixen, almost twice her height. His claws extend for an instant, then slip back into his thick paws. “Doctor Richards.” His voice is cordially chilled. “See to your wife.”
    Charlotte fumes, her rust-red tail lashing against the back of her old army nurse’s smock.
    Doc steps out from the other room, his paws bloody. “My wife isn’t the one who’s out of line.” From my cot, I see his tail brush down hers. “You’d best leave, Hayes.” His teeth bare a little on that last, as if it’s a cuss word. “I have patients to attend to.”
    “Every moment we wait, my money could be getting further away!”
    “And every moment you delay me, you put my patients at risk.”
    Haye’s mane bristles. “They’re outlaws!”
    “They’re patients.” Doc snarls, pulling a needle and thread from his apron as he storms back to the triage room, calling to Harding: “Deputy, this lion needs a breath of fresh air. See that he finds it.”
    The old bloodhound nods and leads him out, but not before the lion gets a good look around the room I’m in. I lay still, so as not to tip my hand. He’s in a foul temper for a man whose robbers just got bound by law, and gained a few ounces of lead in the process. Unless those robbers were his to begin with. Come to think of it, he took it for granted there were several robbers, though he insisted on only one at the time of the robbery. That bunny might have been telling the truth.
    Wait, does that even make sense? Maybe I should hold off on the thinking until I’m less perforated.
    After the fuss dies down, Doc Richards comes in and pulls off his bloodied smock, washing his paws in a basin. He checks my bandages with deft paws and smiles a tired vulpine smile. “You’re going to be right as rain, Blake. Good thing that friend of yours got you here when he did.” He looks around, his black ears cupped forward. “Where’d he get to?”
    I shrug, then wince. “Had business, I suppose.”
    “Well, isn’t that the way of it these days? Isn’t slow like back when I was a kit. Makes a fellow want a smoke.” He pats down the pockets of his vest and trousers. “Say, have you seen my matchbox?”
     
    * * * * *
     
    Just about four weeks, and I’m well enough to sit at my desk, not to mention too stir-crazy to spend one more minute in bed. While I was too busy having been shot, I left the outlaws there under the watchful eyes of a few trusted men and the vigilant nose of Deputy Harding. Doc is good; even the boar lived. Good. They have a long stretch in the lockup to look forward too. Left on the train last week, under armed guard. Doc switched me over to a looser splint— he joked it was mostly to keep me from flying after stray hares. I just grinned