Wolves by D. J. Molles

stables?”
    â€œCoin or barter?” the kid asks.
    Huxley doesn’t want to show the coins he has. There is something about having them that makes him feel like it will call attention. And he doesn’t want attention. He wants a bed to sleep in, out of the elements for the night, maybe a hot meal, and then to be gone and never remembered. “Barter,” he says. “How far will .22 ammo get me around here?”
    The kid purses his lips and sizes the men up. “Take fifty rounds for the three of you and your horses. That’s per night.”
    Huxley makes a face. They hadn’t counted the .22 cartridges in his satchel, but he thought there were approximately a hundred. He snorts and spits in the dirt. “Tell you what, kid. I think ten for each man and his horse is a good number. Brings us up to thirty.”
    The kid chews the inside of his lip, giving Huxley a funny look. His eyes track over Huxley’s companions for a second, seeming to count them up. But then he just nods, briskly. “Yeah, alright. Deal.”
    Huxley pulls his satchel off the horse and reaches in, feeling his way around the different items until he finds the old coffee can. He pulls it free and counts out thirty cartridges and places them in the kid’s cupped hands. The kid scrutinizes them, and then nods, shoving them into a little pouch tied to his belt. He takes the reins of the horses and the men remove their possessions, then the boy guides the horses around back.
    Josie greets them at the front door. She is a plain woman with a stocky build and sandy hair she keeps in a tight braid. She has a large smile full of badly kept teeth and she welcomes them in with a wave of her thick arms.
    â€œMalcolm already take your horses?”
    Huxley nods. “He did.”
    â€œGood.” Josie makes her way toward them.
    Behind her, there is a roughhewn counter with several large clay jugs that Huxley assumes are full of homemade wine and spirits. The tavern area is cramped, containing only the bar and a few tables with chairs around them. Two men sit at the bar, and one solitary man sits secluded at one of the tables, pulled into a dark corner like a spider in a web.
    â€œWhat you boys looking for? Food? A place to stay?” Josie asks when she is before them.
    Huxley looks down at her. “A room. Some beds. Food, if you have enough.”
    â€œSure do,” she says cheerfully, and draws them into the tavern. “Have a seat. I’ll get some food in you and get your room ready while you eat.”
    They take a table and Josie disappears into what they can only assume is a kitchen area. When she returns, it is with a platter of what appears to be deer or antelope meat and some potatoes. She sets the platter before the three men and they eat until they have finished the entire plate and can fit no more in their mouths. She takes the three men to their room, a drafty space on the second floor where cracks in the walls between the boards and the sheets of corrugated steel let a dim glow of lantern light across the wall in stippling patterns.
    Exhausted from their ride and fuller in their bellies than they have felt in months, the three men collapse on the dirty mattresses that lay unadorned on the floor and they are quickly asleep.

Chapter 11
    Huxley wakes the next morning to the sound of a horse stamping up to the hitching station directly outside and below their room. Lying on his back and staring at the ceiling with an old blanket wrapped around him in the cold room, Huxley sees the gray sky through the cracks in the walls and roof and knows that it is dawn.
    Below the room, he hears muffled voices.
    A child’s voice and the voice of a young man.
    This is the first bed he’s slept in since his own bed in his own house. He doesn’t want to get out of it. He wants to stay there, stay warm, stay comfortable, imagine that things are better. But there is something about the voices below