Chapter 2: Help!

Sheriff Silverstar hated payday. He liked getting his bits as much as the next pony, but he hated what it meant for that night. A long, lonely night spent patrolling the town, while his deputy was out getting soused and picking out some fine filly to spend the night with. Braeburn was damned lucky the Sheriff’s own filly wasn’t quite so fine these days, or happy to be hauled out to Appleoosa in the name of her marital vows.

“Y’d think the damn fool filly’d figure it out after Ah left to set up a whole new town just to get far enough away from her,” he muttered to himself, tipping his hat back and scanning the side streets for signs of drunken ponies or some other brewing trouble.

“Sheriff! Sheriff Silverstar!” Salt Lick wailed as he barreled around the corner of Stirrup and Mane. He galloped down the street at full pace, moving in an impressively straight line for how much the old salt usually put down on payday.

Silverstar cocked his head curiously, wondering just what could lead Salt Lick to be running towards him so early in the evening. If the Salt Block had been on fire he’d have seen it from where he was standing. Maybe the old coot had finally had enough of seeing pink monkeys that he’d decided to get locked up until he stopped shaking…?

“What’s the mattooph!”

Salt Lick may have been scared sober enough to manage corners and straight lines, but apparently that took brainpower that was otherwise meant for depth perception and the vital skill of stopping. He barreled straight into the younger Sheriff, sending them both sprawling into the dirt of the Appleoosan street.

“Sheriff!” Salt Lick wailed just as loudly.

“Ah’m right here, y’damn drunk dolt of a colt!” Silverstar snarled, shoving Salt Lick off of him. “What in tarnation’s goin’ on, somepony get ‘imself killed?”

“Not yet, Sheriff, but if’n you don’t get down t’the Salt Block, buncha drays’re fixin’ t’change that!” Lick told him seriously, glancing back towards the bar. “Lead Belly’s in town, and madder’n’a hornet’s nest in a salt shaker about somethin’ he thinks Braeburn did!”

“Dagnabbit, why didn’t you start out sayin’ that?” Silverstar spat, getting to his hooves and taking off for the Salt Block at a dead gallop.

He just hoped he made it there in time to stop things from getting ugly.

~~~===~~~

“Lead, Ah’m tellin’ you, Ah didn’t touch her,” Braeburn protested even as the rest of Lead Belly’s pack gathered around him. Smokestack was keeping his eyes on Morton, and most of the others were watching the Appleoosans there. A handful of them were quietly leaving, trying not to be recognized by friends and family who might take them to task later. Others were tensed, ready to move into action to protect one of their own.

There’d be a riot before this was over, if Braeburn didn’t do something to move it outside and fast.

“Sundancer says otherwise,” Lead growled, disregarding the threat posed by the rest of the crowd, focused only on the stallion who’d cuckolded him. “Don’t worry, Ah ain’t gonna kill you. T’ain’t worth the trouble.”

Braeburn let out a sigh of relief just before the other horseshoe dropped.

“Me an’ the boys are just gonna make sure you know to make damn sure you know who you’re ruttin’ with next time. Can’t promise ya’ll’re gonna have an easy time getting the chance though.”

“Look, fellas,” Braeburn talked fast, raising his hooves. “ Ah’ve learned mah lesson, promise! Ah won’t go near her or any other mare Ah’ve seen any of y’with, Apple’s honor!” He looked around at the lot of them. He didn’t think this was working especially well, and it would be harder to get out if he waited much longer.

Five stallions. Big, rough, strong, angry, stone-cold-sober stallions. Smokestack, with the same sick, shit-eating grin he always had on. Big Iron, Lead’s second on the team, scowling and looking like he was fit to spit nails. Rock Braker, Smokestack’s harness mate, a palomino wearing a bowler hat, with an axe handle on his flank to match the one he carried on his back for his job. Red Caboose, smirking like Smokestack as he clopped his steel-shod hooves together like a prize fighter getting ready to enter the ring. And, of course, Lead Belly, just standing there and staring, like he was fixing to beat Braeburn bloody through sheer force of will.

There was no chance he could take one of them on in his state, let alone all five. Maybe Smokestack, but with the others there? Thinner odds than an apple in a press. Even if the rest of the crowd helped pull him out of this, how many other ponies would get hurt? He couldn’t chance it.

“G-guys, come on, all of y’all know Ah’m deputy roun’ here,” Braeburn pointed out. “Gonna be some mighty big trouble fer all of us, even with me in the wrong here, when Sheriff –“

Braeburn didn’t get a chance to finish his plea. He’d reached up to fold back his vest and flash his badge, but Red had stopped him by jabbing one of those giant hooves into the side of his head, sending the deputy sprawling out across the floor, rolling onto his back and trying to figure out which way was up.

He was reasonably sure it was the one that wasn’t made out of wood, but at the moment, he wasn’t entirely convinced.

As he gathered his thoughts, one thing managed to percolate to the top through the pain and confusion.

Why ain’t they beatin’ on me more? Not that he minded, but typically getting punched in the face by one of the angry gang that wanted to rearrange said features was followed up by continued beating. It was possible that Mort had gotten the shotgun, or somepony else had moved in to keep them back, but typically that would’ve meant more noise and confusion. Instead, things were strangely quiet, like everypony… was staring… at….

Oh horseapples.

There, between Braeburn’s splayed out, twitching hind legs where a normal stallion would have a sheath and other vulnerable unmentionables to worry about getting stomped in, there was instead the reason Braeburn had joined the settlers when they left the rolling hills outside Manehattan.

A very distinct, very not-masculine slit.

“Reckon that’s how he… it knows it didn’t knock up Sundancer,” Braker spat out in a disgusted voice. Braeburn knew that tone of voice. He knew it meant one thing, and one thing only.

It was time to get out of town, and fast. The need to try and prevent a brawl wasn’t to protect his kinsfolk anymore; it was to keep them from joining in against him. And the only way to keep out of that fight was not to be there when it started.

Braeburn scrambled over onto his front, starting to lurch to his hooves just in time for Big Iron to rear up and try to stop him. Before the huge stallion could come down on top of him, Braeburn lunged forward and rammed into his belly. As they topped towards the ground, he pulled his hind hooves in close, and shot them out behind him expertly, his bare hooves clipping Caboose’s jaw as the part-time prize fighter made the mistake of getting too close to the wrong end of an applebucker.

Braeburn could feel it wasn’t a clean hit though. As much as it sickened him to think it, there wasn’t enough ‘crunch’ behind the impact for that. And, as bright an idea as it had seemed in the heat of the moment, now that he was laying on top of Big Iron he realized that there was a flaw in his half-baked plan.

Namely, that he’d given the massive dray a chance to get a good grip around him, a grip that let Big Iron put every ounce of punishing, train-pulling muscle along his back, shoulders, and flank into crushing the wind right out of the much smaller stallion-mare on top of him.

Smokestack started to move away from the bar to join in the fight, and Morton took the chance he was offered to make a break for the shotgun. Realizing his mistake, Smokestack turned back, reaching over the bar just as Morton was grabbing for the weapon. They reached it at the same im, Smokestack knocking the weapon up over the level of the bar, Morton sending it tumbling over towards the floor. Ponies screamed, realizing a moment too late that the two black, angry barrels swinging through the air could kill anypony now. Eyes wide, Smokestack tried to grab it, bobbling the weapon. The twin death-dealers angled towards the ground, directly at Braeburn and Big Iron.

Braeburn squeezed his eyes shut, just willing for whatever happened to be over with quickly.

Big Iron couldn’t stop staring as the weapon pointed straight as his head for a split-second that felt like an eternity. His grip on Braeburn shifted and tightened, into something more like a titanic hug than a weapon. Smokestack swung his hoof out in one last desperate attempt to control the shotgun, but instead he clipped the stock and sent the sawed-off 10-gauge spinning around so that it struck the floor mightily, flat on its side.

Thunder erupted, and everypony screamed.

The screaming stopped, except beneath Braeburn.

The cowpony’s eyes were wide open now, his lungs burning, sides aching as and Big Iron’s hooves fell from around his sides, reaching instead to his flank, where the shotgun had gone off and sent a shell filled with rock salt and dried pinto beans ripping into the thick muscle of his thigh. There was a moment of collective shock and confusion, the expected death and gore infinitely less horrific than anypony’d been thinking it would be.

“What the Hell, Morton?” Smokestack snarled over the bar, his usual preference for sounding sophisticated lost in the injury of his harness mate. “Rock salt?”

“You’d’ve rather Ah used coyote-shot?” Morton snarled back at him. “He’d be dyin’ then, not just wishin’ he was!”

Various townsfolk were moving to try and help Big Iron, the previous quarrel forgotten in light of the more immediate concern. Braeburn shot off of the stallion like he’d been loaded into the other barrel, ears ringing as he rushed out through the door.

He couldn’t hear if anypony was following him, and didn’t dare look back to find out. He’d been through scenes like this before, in Manehattan, in Tall Tale, in Applewood, at home. He didn’t need his ears to tell him what was probably being shouted behind him, or at least snarled between those who’d been willing to fight for him before that sucker punch.

Filly fooler.

Always thought he was a bit mare-ish, if y’know what Ah mean. Didn’t wanna say nothin’ though, on account of ‘is luck with the ladies.

Pervert.

But- but Ah’ve been with him! Her. Whatever he-she is!
Ah ain’t no filly fooler, ah know it was in me, what was it?!?

Liar.

Why the hay would Sundancer think that knocked her up?

Freak.

Teach that little so’n’so what a mare oughta be like!

He-she.

Oh, Celestia, I thought it was watching my fillies in the market!

Monster.

Get it!

Braeburn ran hard, and he ran fast, not knowing and hardly caring where it was that he went as long as it was away from the mob he knew had to be forming up behind him. He’d have to get to the station, get a coach out of town before word spread. Where could he go, where could he hide? Who would take him in this time, who wouldn’t get word from somepony in town and find out in the space of a week? Only one place he could think of… he hated to impose, but this was something of an emergency.

Braeburn was so fixated on the question of where he was going to run away to that he forgot to worry about where exactly he was running. He finally slowed down, panting hard, coat slick with sweat as his eyes darted back and forth, looking for landmarks so he could get his bearings and find the railway station. He’d just have to hope he could hire a coach without running into any more of Lead Belly’s friends.

He rounded the corner, heading towards the station… and walked right into a tower of steel grey fur and muscle. Well, he hadn’t run into Lead’s friends.

Just the stallion himself.

“Well, well, lucky me,” Lead sneered down at him.

“Yeah… lucky you,” Braeburn muttered, ears flat, crouching down as he backed away from Lead. “Where’s your posse?”

“They’re comin’, don’t you worry ‘bout that. Y’oughta be glad it’s just me, Braeburn.” Lead followed him forward, looking him up and down with new appraisal that didn’t sit well with the cowpony at all.

“The rest of the boys ain’t inclined t’be so gentle.”

Author's Note

Oh my... looks like things are about to get rough, don't they?