Scareship_Issue8

To stand up to Mad Gilly was to get the wrong pig by the tail
and, in the days and weeks that follered, townsfolk were starting to
miss Bull Evans.
Then, one day a timber crew returned from Humble’s Wood
with a frightening tale. They had been set upon by the biggest bear
ever seen in them parts. It attacked them and ate poor Sam Butt,
owner of the general store, and clawed a few others in the crew
afore they could make it back to town. The creature had even left a
tooth in the leg of a young Chinee by the name of Kwai Chang.
When Gilly examined the tooth, he realized he had worn its
identical twin round his neck, nestled alongside his talisman, for
the past 10 years. So, it would be up to Gilly now to go into the
woods and hunt that bear, whose name he suspected he already
knew.
Horse took Gilly back to the clearing in Humble’s Wood
where once Gilly stood and ate rabbits with Inky Dugan. There
they waited. It did not take long. Inky had growed even bigger
since last they met, standing nearly 20 hands high now, as thick
around the chest as a Longhorn steer measures from tip to tip, and
appeared well able to crush a grizzly in a bear hug, if’n he were of
a mind to. In fact, with his habit of wearing pelts and maintaining
his overlong black tresses in an unkempt manner, Inky suggested a
big ole grizz hisself, to those few what crossed his path and lived
to tell the tale.
“Hello, Inky.”
“Welcome back, Gilly.”
“I think you done ate one oʼ my timber crew.”
“Possibly. All white men taste alike to me.”
“Well, I need you to stop.”
“With Hums being so scarce these days, and the townsfolk
being so suddenly plentiful in my woods, I take what I can get,”
sighed Inky.
“So how come yer not eatin’ me right now, then?” asked
Gilly, his eyes narrowing.
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