“Let’s see where the dust settles”

  Davy upon his return from stirring up trouble.

  Then off to his left he heard it, a gentle rustling in the undergrowth. “Whoever this is, they’re good.” He stayed perfectly still and slowed his breathing. “There it was again.” Davy slowly turned his head to where the sound had come from.

  He fiddled with the coin, turning it on the braid. Patient.

  Nothing.

  Then a nok’nil scampered out of the bushes and across the camp. Its four-legs and twitching gait mimicking the sound of wind as its fur shifted colour with its background. He smiled and relaxed, pretty sure there was no-one in the make-shift camp. But thinking it wasn’t good enough. So, he circled the camp from a good hundred yards out. Slowly, carefully, and extremely quietly. Nothing; it hadn’t been set as a trap.

  With a caution and patience learnt over many years, he moved in closer from “behind” the lean-to. “No need to rush. Gently gently.”

  Rather than just enter, he poked the stick through the opening and into the centre of the bivouac. He half expected some trap to be triggered but nothing happened, “Boring,” he thought with a snigger, “but I like it that way.”

  Then he added with a smile, “For now.”

  As he entered the lean-to, Davy was careful, making sure he didn’t brush against the edges or leave any marks that would give away his visit. It was empty but had clearly been used recently. There were some seed cases and chewing sticks still on the floor, dropped as if someone had been sitting, eating and watching them from across the valley. He looked out and could clearly see the dreys and where his grey mob had been practicing.

  “Definitely watching us. That changes things.”

  He crawled back out of the bivouac and looked around. “How’d they get here?” he wondered. With his back to the valley, he noticed that the ground fell away behind the lean-to. He walked that way and noticed an area that was brighter, despite it being night-time. He looked up and saw a small opening carefully cut in the tree canopy. “Hhmm, enough for a Bird,” but it had some bushes below it.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He got down on his haunches and inspected the ground, it looked like it’d been trodden down, some of the plants had broken stems. A ‘trail’ led across from the bivouac to the scrubby bushes in the middle of the clearing. He crossed to them and used the stick to push at one. It fell over. It had been cleanly cut and stuck in the ground. “That old trick. Now, what you hidin’?” he thought as he moved more of the bushes aside, memorising their placement. Beneath were the characteristic claw marks of a Bird. “They’re learning.”

  Davy was careful to put the bushes back how he’d found them and lightly brushed the ground where he’d walked making sure the leaves and litter looked right, “the greys aren’t a size nine,” he thought with a smile.

  Taking one last look around the site he found a ‘game’ track leading away from the valley. It had the faintest marks of ringtails on it. It was exactly what he wanted.

  He went back and hefted the two dead ringtails over his shoulder and set off striking a path through the brush parallel to the game trail. He sensed them before he heard them, a pair of browns walking the track. They didn’t see or smell him, he’d made sure to be downwind.

  “This’ll do,” he thought and waited for them to pass.

  He laid the brown out in the hollow of a rock cleft, where shadows pooled like ink, and went to work. First, he used his knife to open a shallow gash across the throat, then deeper claw marks across the chest; wounds meant to scream of violence.

  Next, he reached for the red. This one would need the same treatment, but in reverse.

  The red needed to look like the killer who didn’t get away clean.

  He turned the red over, exposed the spine, and dug a groove along the back like a knife or spear had struck him in retreat. Then he bent the arm wrong at the joint, snapped it quick; dry crack, dust and marrow. Too brittle.

  He paused.

  Was that enough? It had to be convincing. Not just blood, but rage.

  Davy took the red’s hand, dug the claws into the dirt as if they’d fought in their last breath. He even cut up the red’s clothes, careful to mimic the sharp tears that a brown’s claws would make in leather weave. Small touches. Details but it all mattered.

  To anyone passing through; a scout, a forager, a runner; it would look like reds had turned on their allies. Another skirmish gone wrong. Old grudges boiling over.

  That’s all it would take to turn suspicion into open anger.

  He stood back, studying his work. Not art. But close.

  And now they had to be found. He hoisted the red's body and half-dragged, half-carried it through the brush towards the game trail.

  It was risky, but the place looked like the kind of place where ringtails sent their young runners to keep watch… ledges and lookout rocks. He’d seen the greys do it. Hell, he’d even done it; spotters on a high ridge for days, on the brush lines.

  He left the body sprawled at the edge of a wash where water had run thick the day before, long enough to hold and carry the scent.

  Then he doubled back. Careful, no tracks left, invisible.

  The brown he left half-buried, a kill tucked just far enough off-trail to seem hidden by a guilty party, eager to rush off.

  When it was done, Davy cleaned his blade in a patch of sand and wiped his hands on his trousers. He took a breath, slow and shallow. The whole canyon felt still; like the silence that fell before a storm began to howl.

  “Good days work.”

  Back at the cave he lay awake, thinking and replaying recent events. It wasn’t just the greys who were sharpening their skills and getting fitter, so was he. But the reds were adjusting too. He needed to warn the mob about the red’s overwatch but not change too much else the reds would know their scouting party had been discovered. This could be the edge he’d been looking for.

  With that all squared away his thoughts drifted to Rebecca and the gift of the braid to tether his dollar back to his wrist. “Had it been just that, a gift, or more?”

  And with that thought he drifted off into sleep.