The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head by Cassandra Duffy Page A

street remained quiet for a time after Fiona had
departed.
     
    “We need to get you a weapon,” Fiona
said.
     
    They paused outside Fiona’s room. Gieo was
visibly shaken and Fiona was still a fiddle string strung too
tightly, threatening to snap and lash out violently at the
slightest provocation. Gieo simultaneously wanted to soothe the
gunfighter and wanted Fiona to comfort her; instead, she stood at
the end of her leash trembling.
     
    “I don’t want to shoot anyone,” Gieo
whispered.
     
    “I saw the giant gun pod we took from the
crash site,” Fiona said. “You’ve clearly shot Slark before.”
     
    “That’s different. Slark aren’t human. Isn’t
there a difference for you to hunt them versus shooting
humans?”
     
    Fiona shrugged and shook her head. “Why would
there be?”
     
    “You frighten me sometimes,” Gieo said.
     
    Fiona opened her mouth to respond, but the
resumption of the haunting singing of hymns began again outside.
They ran into Fiona’s room and made for the window. Down on the
streets, walking slowly in clumps of a half-dozen or so, the entire
Hawkins House cult spread through the town, clogging the streets
with their aimless march.
     
    “What are they doing?” Gieo asked.
     
    “Seeing if I was bluffing,” Fiona
replied.

     
    Fiona stood at her window the rest of the
day, watching the cultists marching around the streets, clogging
any vehicular traffic, singing their dire hymns in eerily flat
voices. The net effect on her was to make her antsy. Her skin was
crawling with the need to be free, to rocket her car across the
desert away from the blind masses. She’d seen a few other hunters
walking the streets, unable to get their cars out either, and they
looked as agitated as she felt.
     
    “Rawlins is here,” Gieo said, poking her head
into Fiona’s room.
     
    Fiona pulled her attention away from the
window. Rawlins would have word from Zeke and Zeke wouldn’t be
happy that the cultists who were supposed to be poisoned and dead
were wandering the streets, en masse, preventing anyone from
participating in the town’s primary business of Slark hunting. Gieo
blocked the door, the leash in her hand, held out for Fiona to
take. The pilot’s face was unreadable and blank. Fiona took the
leash and tried to force a smile.
     
    “I’m sorry,” Gieo whispered.
     
    “For what?”
     
    “For the mess that’s outside,” she said. “If
I hadn’t taken the job, Zeke would have found someone willing to
actually poison them, and this shutdown wouldn’t have
happened.”
     
    Fiona sighed and ran her free hand gently
down Gieo’s smooth cheek. “As big of a headache as this is,
poisoning them would have gone too far, even by Tombstone
standards,” she said, a great deal of the tension draining from her
in finally saying what everyone should have been thinking. “For
what it’s worth, I’m glad you took the job.” Fiona pulled Gieo in
close by the leash and kissed her full on the lips in a steamy
embrace. Gieo’s thumbs looped through the front of Fiona’s gun belt
and held her close. Their lips reluctantly parted and Gieo stepped
aside to let Fiona past.
     
    “This leash is driving me nuts,” Gieo
whispered as Fiona led her toward the stairs.
     
    “I’m sorry,” Fiona replied, “maybe we can get
by with just the collar.”
     
    Gieo closed the gap between them and gave
Fiona’s butt a meaningful squeeze. “That’s not what I meant.”
     
    Fiona found herself flushed and excited when
she came to the meeting table with Rawlins. The cultist protest had
been bad for the saloon’s business as most of the tables were
empty, and the few patrons who had found their way to the watering
hole spent most of their time at the windows. Rawlins was sitting
at one of the center tables with his hands folded in front of him.
Fiona sat across from him, guiding Gieo toward the chair to her
right. Rather than sit in the chair, the pilot knelt at Fiona’s
side and sat back