Jacks sat back against the trunk of the pine tree, nestled and hidden under the eaves. A thick bed of fallen, rust-colored pine needles was fanned out on the ground near the base of the pine, poking and prodding him, even through his clothing, until he adjusted himself just so. Leafy, verdant plants sagged as they stretched up and out of the layers of pine needles, weighed down by clinging orbs of dew.

Several steps ahead, just beyond the elongated arms of the pine, was the sheer drop off of a canyon-like ravine, walled by cliffs of greyish-white rock. Pockets of dirt and roots clung to the wall here and there. The opposite side of the ravine was higher in elevation, and Jacks found that he was watching the mottled shadows of the spiny branches of the pines swaying back forth on the white cliff.

Meanwhile, he waited. It was a nice day, warmer than it had been lately, even taking into account the hurried breeze that kept making its way through the trees, causing the pine needles in the branches overhead to crackle and scrape.

Jacks was fully dressed in his travel gear, prepared for his trek on the western range. Except for his coat, which he’d removed and left hanging on a nearby branch. Didn’t need it now that he was past the morning chill. He still had a scarf wrapped around his neck, but he’d lowered it from his face and loosened it.

He wore a pair of brown leather gloves with the ends of the fingers cut off. He’d found that he required bare fingertips for the handling and loading of ammunition, even—or perhaps especially—in the cold.

Propped under one armpit and across his stretched and crossed legs was his stepfather’s old long-range rifle. He had only ever seen it used to hunt game, but it worked just as well when hunting people.

After leaving his family’s homestead and setting out for himself, Jacks’s work had been steadily carrying him west, toward the war front. Where there was war, there were war crimes. People who took advantage of all the chaos. Deserters. Looters. Roves of bandits, sometimes in the form of members of the military who would abscond from their promises to Federation and country to become soldiers of fortune.

This meant bounties. A whole lot of bounties. All Federation money, too. Good as crystal.

Someone steals a few horses from an Alverand warcamp, flees north. Can’t have that, the Federation says. Track him down, earn yourself a hundred Alverand dollars.

A few deserters flee the war front and shoot up a town a week’s ride southeast from the western border. No sir, the Federation says. Not in this country. Bear in mind, we can’t spare any more men ourselves. But we can spare a thousand dollars, if someone would be so kind as to bring these men in, so we can hang them, publicly, and prevent events like this from ever happening again in this great country.

Only it did happen. And it kept happening. Which meant that, for now, Jacks stayed west. And hunted.

There was nothing romantic about it, Jacks had been disappointed to discover. People had to sleep sometime, even if they were on the run. Sometimes, all you had to do was be careful and quiet. A knife here. A rope around the neck there. And when people ran(and they often did), sometimes all it took was standing your ground, taking aim, and being a better shot than you were yesterday.

At the moment, Jacks’s quarry was somewhere in the cleft of trees on the other side of the ravine. The last of a group of Federation deserters that Jacks had been tailing for the better part of two weeks now. The job would keep him and his dog Stepton fed for at least a month.

Stepton was the reason Jacks knew the deserter was still up there in those trees. If the man had started to move on, Stepton’s fuzzy, diamond-shaped ears would be standing on end, his throat vibrating with a low, rumbly growl. Instead, Stepton lay with his chin on one of his paws, one eye closed while the other was half-open, one ear perked up at an odd angle, listening and waiting.

Stepton wasn’t the best tracker dog. He couldn’t sniff out a day-old trail, like Jacks knew some breeds to be able to. But he could hear good. Real good. Had ears like a sandfox.

He was a little thing, though. A good dog, but little. Not particularly good in a fight. When things were about to get hairy, Jacks always instructed him to stay behind and wait for his return.

Sometimes, Stepton obeyed. But mostly, Jacks would eventually come to notice the dog tailing him some pace behind, Or prowling somewhere close by. While Stepton seemed to intuitively understand that Jacks was tougher and more capable than himself, he was still compelled to watch over his friend. And Jacks was lucky he did. It was possible the dog had saved his life on more than one occasion.

Stepton’s head came to about Jacks’s knee, with a torso that was about as wide as the distance between Jacks’s stretched thumb and middle finger. His hair was wiry, and dark—almost black. Except for the silver-white patches along the undersides of his legs and around his mouth, like the beard of a wizened old sage. Not that Stepton was old, particularly. He’d been only a pup when they’d first set out together, and would still live for another several years yet.

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Jacks wasn’t sure how he would handle Stepton being gone. He was the family dog, and one of the last vestiges of Jacks’s former life which he still carried with him. The others being his stepfather’s guns; his hunting rifle and his old revolver.

Resting with his back to the tree, Jacks was patient and relaxed. Not particularly concerned he might lose the mark. Stepton’s keen hearing hadn’t failed him yet. And even if it did, he and Stepton would pick up the trail. They’d take care of the deserter eventually. The same way they’d dealt with the rest of the scumbag’s fleeing comrades. One day at a time. One mile at a time. Watching and waiting for the perfect moment, when the mark was the most vulnerable, to take the shot.

Jacks had no qualms about killing; for money, no less. He was a man. And a man tended to his business. He did what was necessary. And he protected his own. As his father had always taught him. And as his mother had continued to instruct him, after his father had been caught by a bullet that shattered his ribs and killed him within hours.

His father’s work had got him killed, but it had also left the family with more than enough money to get by. Enough money to move up north, and start a farm, and a homestead.

Jacks’s step-father had been much like the first. A man with guns. A man who got paid to use them. And when Jacks had turned sixteen, his step-father had told him that he was now a man himself. He had gifted him one of his revolvers, and a holster than slung down at the hip. One that Jacks still wore now. Ten years later.

He cleaned it regularly, sometimes treated it for rust. There were newer models, now. Far superior ones, some said. But there was something about this one. The one gifted to him by his surrogate father, commemorating his manhood. It seemed to give him good luck. And every time he reached down and felt that ivory handle, he thought of his mother, and was reminded that he was on the right path.

Stepton’s head suddenly perked up. He let out a low, quiet, “BOOF”. The mark was moving.

Jacks didn’t budge, though. Not yet. Because Stepton hadn’t. Instead, he watched the top of the cliff wall on the other side of the ravine.

Sure enough, after a few moments, a cluster of waist-high brush parted and the deserter stepped through. He was still wearing his Federation greys, including a coat with two long tails in the back. Going off of that and the rank signifier pinned to the breast of the coat, Jacks guessed that he had been a captain of some kind.

The mark took off his grey hat and hung it on stubby branch, using it like a hat rack. He approached the edge of the dropoff.

Stepton, who’d been watching the mark, turned to look at Jacks expectantly. Anticipating what was about to happen next.

Careful not to make a sound, Jacks scooted forward. He didn’t want his body pressed tight against the tree when he pulled the trigger. He propped the barrel on a low and adequately thick branch, braced the heel of the rifle against his armpit, and flipped up the Ladder sight. Not that he much needed it at this range.

The deserter pulled down his pants and began pissing over the dropoff, into the ravine.

Jacks pulled the trigger. The rifle jolted backward, heel pressing into his shoulder.

The bullet, designed for hitting and killing large game at fair distances, punched a cavity in the man’s chest. Blood arced out behind his back, like a fish leaping off the surface of a pond.

He keeled forward. Fell. Pants still bunched at his ankles.

There was a loud splash as he hit the bottom of the ravine.

Jacks stood, looping the rifle’s sling over his shoulder. Stepton stood too, wagging his tail. Not out of excitement for another hard-won kill, but because he could tell they were about to go for a walk.

Jacks grabbed his coat, and together he and Stepton began the hike down. They followed the dropoff south until they reached a gradual incline leading down to the stream. A deer trail.

Stepton led the way, graceful as a mountain goat, descending the slope at an almost full-out run. Jacks was a bit more cautious. If he fell over the side and hurt himself--well, it wouldn’t be good. While life expectancy wasn’t great in this line of work, the last thing Jacks had imagined was slowly starving to death at the bottom of a ravine. There were hunters willing to kill their own dogs to survive in such situations. Jacks would choose death first.

Tall clumps of brown and green crabgrass grew on either side of the path, scraping against Jacks’s boots. The trail was smooth, and quite steep in some places. Occasionally Jacks slid a little, kicking up little clouds of dust and kicking loose rocks which rolled and fell, until he stepped off the path and into the clear stream at the bottom. The ankle-high water chortled, wounding through and around some large rocks which poked up from the surface, breaking and splitting it, causing little concentric V’s in the surface tension.

Somewhere ahead, upstream, the sounds of Stepton excited woofs echoed, playing back and forth off the cliff faces on either side of the stream.

Jacks’s boots tramped over smooth round stones in the bank. Spots of fine sand unsettled in his wake, catching and swirling, carried by the current.

When Jacks caught up, Stepton was standing in the middle of the stream, wagging a long, curled tail that kept splashing and skirting on the edge of the water. Just next to him was the face-down corpse of the deserter. Reeds of tendriled hair from the back of his head floated in the stream. His butt cheeks jutted up out of the water, facing the sun, like two sandy, oval islands.

Holding the shoulder strap for his rifle tight with one hand, Jacks drew his stepfather’s revolver and fired, hitting the corpse in the back of the head, making dark red ribbons in the stream.

Better safe than sorry.

He grabbed the body by the shoulder and flipped it over. Surprisingly easy thanks to the buoyancy in the water.

The bullet seemed to have caught somewhere in the skull, with no exit wound visible, though blood did seem to be seeping at the eyes, nose, and mouth, though this may have been more related to the fall. Ignoring that, Jacks reached down the deceased man’s shirt and grabbed the metal name tag that dangled at the chest, hanging from around his neck. He pulled, snapping the chain. He opened up a compartment in his travel pouch where he kept the other seven tags and dropped this one inside. The tags jangled, like tarns in a purse.

Jacks closed the pouch, suddenly feeling a bit lighter. More energetic. The weeks of tracking and killing for this job were over. Some of the tension in his muscles and head began to leak away.

“Well,” he said to Stepton. “Let’s get you something fine to eat.”