Scareship_Issue8

Bull Evans, and his master, Newton Starr!” he called out. “You
folks is now under my protection!”
Aww, wait a minute now. I think I done left out some things.
Getting old has a way of changing the tellin’ of the tale, I s’pose.
So lets jes’ take a breath, and step back a might.
Before the story began
I heard tell that Gilmore Gammesson was born the son of a
half-breed whore and the 3 rd Cavalry. It was the year of our lord
1850-something or other when Gilly shot out of his mama’s worn
cunny as she squatted in the woods near Fort Collins, Colorado.
The child emerged with a full head of golden curls, and eyes so
black they made the night sky burn dark with envy, and skin so
bronze the boy gave off a golden glow when the morning sun hit
him jes’ right.
His mama died out there in the woods on that sad eve, but
Gilly was rescued by a she-wolf what dragged the child back to her
den and suckled him for many a night. That unlikely pair was
eventually come upon by a wild feller, one Timothy Dugan by
name and a trapper by inclination. Trapper Dugan kilt that wolf,
thinking he was saving the child from harm. He stripped the wolf’s
fur, then cooked and ate her.
The next day, he wrapped baby Gilly in a cavalry blanket he
found in the wolf’s den, with the name “G. Gammes” scrawled
along its ragged fringe. He took the child with him as he continued
his journey south along the front ridge of the Rockies. But Trapper
Dugan was a solitary sort that preferred to keep his own company.
And, though the child was not a whiner, Dugan had his fill of the
boy’s civilizing effect by the time they came upon a mining camp
by the name of Rook, somewhere southwest of Boulder and
northeast of Denver. Dugan abandoned little Gilly to the tender
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