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When Worlds Collide

As the Chief of Staff of Canada's secret intelligence agency, the Foreign Operations eXecutive, Silver often had to stay late or come in early for teleconferences with allies in different time zones around the world. Tonight was one of those nights, and the big silver fox was killing time in the F.O.X. lounge until it was time to call his Australian colleagues. He munched on a sandwich that the duty bartender, Grey Muzzle, had made for him and sipped a pint of imported lager.

"Vikki and the kit gone home?" Grey inquired as he polished glasses and put them in the rack, ready for the evening crowd of agents and support staff that had nowhere else to drink and talk freely. For now though Silver was the only customer in the place.

"Yes. Leslie has school tomorrow." Silver answered, referring to the kit he had fathered with the agent Vikki Beausoleil. Although not married, they had been living together as mates for several years now.

"You're lucky to have them." Grey sighed, thinking about his own chances of ever settling down with the volatile party poodle who acted as secretary and body guard for the agency's director. "Not many in your line of work have a family."

"Don't I know it." Silver replied, clinking his half-empty beer glass against the one Grey had just finished cleaning. Then he drained the beer in one long gulp and set the glass back on its coaster. "Set me up again, Grey. A couple of beer downrange never hurt when dealing with the Aussies."

While Grey poured another Silver leaned over the bar and said in a low voice, "I heard about your little tango lesson in Argentina."

"Damn it! I asked Miss CC to keep that out of the report."

"She did." Silver grinned, having just had a rumor confirmed as the truth. "But I have ways of finding things out." He had actually overheard a snippet of conversation in the washroom and guessed the rest from what their reports on the Argentine mission had not said. "Was it as wild as I heard?"

"Wilder." Grey responded with a wink. "But you must have had dozens of experiences like that."

Silver thought back to the time that Scarlet and he had made love against a brass pole in a Polish strip joint and smiled. To think that she was running a convent now.

"No." He answered. "Nothing like that."

"Oh come on." Grey prodded. "You must have had a few strange experiences."

Silver sat back and sipped his beer as he thought. "Well, there was the time I made love to a Hungarian agent who had no arms."

"A female?"

"Yes a female!" Silver made as if to chuck his beer at the old red fox, but he brought it to his mouth for another sip instead. "I didn't know at the time I seduced her, about not having any arms I mean. I thought that she was just leaning against the wall of the disco with them folded behind her. That was in Berlin, back in the cold war. Her speciality was sucking weapon secrets out of NATO officers."

"Sounds like she lost the arms race."

"Ouch."

Silver went back to sipping his beer, remembering the dozens of conquests he had before meeting Vikki. Grey went back to polishing the glassware. After a minute of silence he spoke to Silver again.

"What are the strangest circumstances that you ever, you know, did it under?" The bartender asked.

Silver thought a bit before answering. "Strangest? That's hard to say. I've slept with a dozen females who were trying to kill me at the same time. I've come too after being knocked out to find myself shackled to a bed or hog-tied on a rug in front of a roaring fire with a naked lady already riding me. I've done it in canoes, speed boats, bi-planes, and tanks. I've done it on pool tables, under moving trains, upside-down hanging from a hot air balloon and underwater ... with and without a scuba tank."

"But that's all par for the course." Grey, who had heard similar tales from the retired agents that still worked for the Academy, or just came to drink when they were lonely. "Didn't you ever have an experience that you really weren't expecting?"

Silver drained his second beer and pushed the glass across the bar for a refill. "There was this one time," he said thoughtfully, "back before I met Vikki, before I wore these." He took off his glasses and put them down on the bar. "Before we recruited all the folk we have now, when I was the only field agent left on the roster."

"Tell me about it."

"It happened on a long stretch of lonely, desolate road." Silver began.

* * * * * * * * *

It was a desolate, lonely stretch of road that the pony found herself on. It was not a tourist road, but the kind made for shipping goods and resources from one region to another. The segment she was on now was several hundred miles of nothing but scrub brush, forest and the occasional access road marked "No Trespassing". There were no hotels, no gas stations and no rest stops. Trucks came by rarely, and cars were rarer still. Bicyclists and pedestrians were unheard off. She rode in silence because there were no radio stations this far out, or cell phone towers for that matter.

She was driving a heavy-duty pick-up truck and towing a fifth wheel horse trailer. There were no horses in the trailer, the only horse it housed these days was her older brother, who lived in it while she, her little sister and Granny lived in the farmhouse. But it was the only sizeable trailer that they owned, so her brother had moved into the barn temporarily while she used it to transport their crop to new markets.

Times had been tough back in her land. They were isolated geographically and economically from the rest of the world, and while it kept many of the troubles that plagued other nations out it was not always for the best. For one thing, if the market collapsed in a certain sector there was nowhere else to go to sell your products except outside, and that carried a number of risks. Being ripped off by canny big-city shrills was just one of them. Some who had ventured out never came back.

Things had gone badly for the produce sector his year and they were in danger of losing the family farm. A glut on the local supply and a general rescission that limited folks' disposable income had combined to bring the price of fresh fruit below what they needed to raise to keep paying the mortgage. They were diversified as they could be, but in tough times like this folk tended to buy the cheaper, mass produced juices and ciders that had come lately onto the market.

They had held a family meeting and decided that the only way to make enough to keep the farm was to venture outside, where the prices were hopefully better, and sell the excess crop there. She had volunteered to go. Her brother, who was much larger than her, would have gone, but she was the smarter, less naive of the two. And she was no weakling, she could take care of herself, in a fair fight at least, so Granny had agreed that she should be the one to go and that had settled that. And so it was that she had left a little over a week ago with the truck, a trailer full of fruit and fruit by-products, and enough of Granny's cooking to ensure that she did not have to risk eating the dubious fast food they seemed to prefer on the outside.

She had stopped to sell her wares at every town she came too, finally disposing of the last of her crop in a farmer's market in the first real city she encountered. There was a drought in this land, and the local crops had suffered, not that they were ever half as good as the produce she was selling, many told her. They begged her to come back again next year, and a distributor even slipped her his card, holding his thumb and last digit to his head in a gesture she did not recognize.

That had been yesterday, and she had been on the road home ever since then. At first the highways surrounding the urban centre were wide and busy with traffic of all kinds, but the farther she got away from there the narrower and quieter the roads became. But she was making good time, now that the trailer was empty except for a few city goods for her and her family, and she could use the sleeping compartment to rest rather than stretching out on the truck's bench seat like she had on the way in. She had stopped for a few hours sleep earlier that day in the last rest stop before turning onto this lonely road because she wanted to drive straight through to morning. She had also heeded the advice of the signs in the last town to fill up the truck and a couple of ten-gallon containers with gas, even though it was rather expensive, because she did not know if the gas stations on the other end of the empty stretch would be open when she passed through. But there was a station open twenty four and seven at the border and with luck she should be able to make it back to her home by supper the next day.

The sun was directly overhead when she saw the hitchhiker. She could see for miles on the straight, empty road and at first he was just a blob above the shimmering pavement. She initially thought that the blob was a sign, then some sort of wild animal, but as she drew closer it resolved itself into an upright creature wearing clothes with one arm outstretched and its thumb sticking out.

She did not intend to stop. She was not even going to slow down as she passed him, just pull over a bit to the left so that the mirrors on the truck did not hit his outstretched paw. She could tell that it was a male by now, and that he was fairly large, some sort of canine. It would be really dumb for a lone female pony to pull over and let a stranger in, she thought, even one that has won as many championships as I have. But another part of her said it would be pretty cruel to leave him out here in the hot sun too. She took her hoof off the gas, just to get a better look at the fellow, she told herself, sure that his certainly unsavoury looks would confirm her initial decision. The truck had a lot of momentum, and no load to speak off, so she was still going fairly fast when she passed him.

It wasn't a dog or a wolf she saw, but a fox. A big silvery fox wearing loafers, grey slacks, a white shirt and a blue blazer. He looked very out of place in this lonely place and she wondered how he came to be there as there was no sign of a broken down vehicle. He turned his head to follow the cab of the passing truck. He had the piercing blue-grey eyes that seemed to look right through her, accusingly. The sense of guilt his look brought combined with her naturally charitable nature to override her caution. She pressed hard on the brake pedal and brought the truck to a halt in the middle of the lane a hundred yards past him. Keeping one eye on the driver's mirror in case another vehicle came up from behind, she waited for the fox to make his way up to the cab.

He seemed to be in no hurry, and may have even been limping a bit. It took him almost a minute to cover the distance. The door was unlocked and he opened it and hauled himself up into the cab while expressing thanks for her stopping. But he was wincing as he spoke, as if he was in pain.

"You're welcome." She replied to his words of thanks. Looking him over before pulling away.

He was a big fox, about six feet tall she guessed. Fur that had once been black was now shot through with enough white hairs to make his coat look silver, especially around his head. It was well trimmed, like one would expect from a city slicker. That mix of black and white usually meant advanced age, in her experience, but he did not look that old. Perhaps because he was so fit. His Face was lean, his chest and shoulders were broad and his arms and legs heavily muscled; she could tell when the material over them went tight as he bent them to get into the truck. And it looked like he was used to a little rough living. There was a scar bisecting his left eyebrow and an old burn on the back of his left paw. There were spots where the fur was rubbed off his paws and callousness on the pads that she recognized from working the vegetable garden on the farm when she was little. This fox was used to getting down and dirty in God's green earth, if she was not mistaken, and that made her feel better about picking him up.

While she was checking him out he was giving her the once over. He saw a young filly with a golden coat that had a mane like corn silk and a tail to match. Both were tied up with bright red ribbon. Her eyes were as green as the first leaves of spring. She wore a battered cowboy hat, a checked shirt tied in a knot underneath moderately sized breasts and a pair of cut-off jeans that had faded to pale blue in the sun. She was showing a lot of skin, and the skin she was showing was pulled tight over long lean muscles that indicated she was some sort of athlete. Rope burns and chipped nails on her digits game him a clue as to what it was she excelled in. They both sat back as the truck accelerated, confident that the other was not about to kill them, or worse.

"What are y'all doing out here in the middle of nowhere?" She asked after they were cruising along at the speed limit again.

"I had a bit of car trouble." He answered. It was not exactly a lie. Having fifty rounds from a machine gun put through your car and then a couple of grenades go off inside qualified as trouble. "On one of the side roads."

She could not recall seeing a side road in the last fifty miles, although she had recently passed an access road that was blocked with a barrier and many signs indicating one would be unwise to venture further up it. She wanted to ask about that but instead she simply said "Where you headed?"

"Just drop me at the next gas station. I'll call my office to come pick me up."

"Geez Louise, mister. We won't be near a phone for another four hours at least. Maybe I should take you back to the last town, it's a might closer."

"No." He said quickly. "This is fine. Keep going. My, uh, colleagues will come from that direction so it will be less of a drive for them, and I would not want to put you behind schedule."

"Oh, I'm not on any particular schedule." She confessed. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "But you sure you work in an office? Those scars and callousness don't look like the kind of thing you get from paper cuts."

He shrugged. "I do a bit of gardening, just to keep my head on straight."

She slapped her thigh and shouted "I knew it!" startling him. "I can tell these things about folk. I had a feeling that you worked the land like I do from the first time I seen you."

"How perceptive." He commented in a weak voice. She looked at him more closely. The sudden movement in reaction to her shout had caused some injury to flare up it seemed. He was holding his paw against the left side of his jacket and gritting his teeth in effort not to cry out. She had seen that look often enough on her older brother.

"You hurt?" She asked.

"Just a cramp."

There was a dark stain spreading from a point underneath his paw. "Ah-yuh, and I suppose that's just a leaky pen in your pocket."

He looked down and pulled his paw away. She could see that it was stained red, blood red. There was a hole in his jacket where his paw had been and another a few inches further back. Now that he was not pressing it to his side the stain had stopped spreading on the jacket, but there was now a few red drops on the light brown leather of the seat beside him.

"Where I come from we may not be as up on the internet and technology and all as you folk," she said, "but we farm folk know a thing or two about firearms, and that there looks like a bullet hole to me."

He opened his jacket to show her the blood soaked shirt beneath. "Hunting accident." He said dryly.

"Ah-yuh. What were you-all hunting?"

"Bears."

"They have wild bears 'round these parts?"

"As wild as they come." He said, remembering the ex-KGB agent turned mobster that had proven so hard to kill.

She slowed the truck and pulled over on the shoulder of the road. "Let's have a look at that."

"No need. I'm fine." He tried to bat her away but his attempts were feeble.

She noted that unlike his other tailor made clothes the shirt was two sizes too big for him, and it had no corresponding bullet holes. His hide did, however, she saw as she pulled the shirt up for a better look. There was a lot of fresh blood and she used the tail of the shirt to wipe the wounds.

"Geez, did you sew those up with fishing line?"

"Six pound test. It was the only thing I could find in ... our hunting camp. I disinfected it first though."

"Phewee!" She sniffed. "What'd you use? Corn liquor?"

"Vodka." He said weakly. "Imported Russian vodka, I'll have you know. It was the only thing available."

"You need to have a doctor look at that."

"I will, after my office picks me up."

"Seriously, you look like you lost a lot of blood. You probably shouldn't ought'r wait that long."

"I'll be fi- " His words were cut off as the fox slumped forward against the dash board, out cold.

* * * * * * * * *

Everything was dim when he woke up and he did not recognize where he was, some kind of metal room lit by an oil lamp. It was not the first time that had happened. He sat up, which elicited a grunt of pain and he remembered his wound. Before he checked his own condition however he reached behind him to check on something else, but his paw came up empty.

"Lookin' for this?" The pony with the golden coat and yellow mane stepped out of the shadows and held up an automatic pistol with a long black silencer by its trigger guard.

"Yes. Could I have it back please."

She did not move to return it. "Not exactly the recommended weapon for bear huntin'."

"Depends on the bear."

She looked at the bloody shirt that was hanging on a peg along with his other clothes. Then down to him. Besides the wound she had just patched there were three older, healed up bullet holes in his hide and set of horrible scars on his back and chest. "Ah-yup. I suppose that you have a point there." She turned the gun over and regarded it. "I've heard of serial numbers being filed off and serial numbers being burnt off with acid, but I'll be danged if this isn't the first pistol I've seem that looks like it never had a serial number in the first place."

"We buy direct from the factory."

She put the gun down well out of his reach and stepped forward. "I cleaned your wound and put some bandages on you."

"I can see that, thanks. How long was I out?"

"Twelve hours."

A worried expression crossed his face. "Where are we?"

"Inside the trailer. I rigged her back up for sleepin' after selling my goods in the city."

"No, I mean where are we parked?"

"An abandoned rest stop about halfway between where I picked you up and the gas station. You didn't look like you were going to make it that far so I pulled off the road and brought you back to the trailer to fix you up."

While she had been talking he had unwound the bandages to examine his wound. He discovered that she had added a few stitches to help close the holes the bear's bullet had made when it passed through him. The new stitching was very neat and the holes were already starting to heal. He took a closer look. "Did you use your hair to sew me up?"

"I didn't have any thread, and I'm fresh out of fish'n line. But luckily I have a needle, fer poppin' blisters and such. Don't worry, I have a jug of hard cider I kept for the return trip to sanitize it with. It's a mite cleaner than your em-por-ted vodka I'll bet."

"You've done this sort of thing before?" He asked.

She shrugged. "Accidents happen on the farm. It can take quite a while for help to get out there so we all know a little doctor'n."

"Thank you." He started to rewind the bandage but it was difficult for him to do half lying in the bed so she moved in and took over the job.

"What do they call you?" She asked as she pulled the outer wrapping tight.

"Eh?"

"What's your handle, your codename. You're a spy, ain'tcha?"

"Silver." He said. "They call me Silver. And I'm not a spy, I'm an Intelligence Agent."

"And I'm Annie Oakley."

"Nice to meet you Annie." His grin betrayed that he knew it was a joke. She swatted him on the shoulder, but opposite his wounded side. She was a little surprised to find that she was treating him like regular folk, considering the circumstances. "What is your name?" He asked. She told him.

"There used to be a breakfast cereal called that."

"Not where I'm from."

"And where's that?"

"A magical place."

"Ah, Ireland! I should have known by the accent."

She laughed and went to smack him again, but this time his paw shot out and caught her wrist playfully before it got halfway. Her arm came to a dead stop, and she was impressed by his strength. The physical contact sent a spark through her, and she found her gaze locked on those haunting blue-grey eyes. She licked her lips, opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it again.

Before she could think of a way to break the impasse he turned serious again. "We have to go. I'm not the only hunter in these woods and my, uh, office will be getting worried since I didn't report in."

"A car went by on the road about ten minutes ago, tearing up the tarmac in the direction we were heading." She informed him. "Could that be your folk?"

"No, not this soon." He looked at the ceiling as he thought. "Tell me, did you gas up at the last town before you picked me up?"

"Yup. Had to, to make it to the next fuel stop."

He knew that the bear's crew had probably found his body by now and were likely looking for whoever had killed him. "If they were who I think they are," he told her, "they will be looking in both directions from where you picked me up. They ask at the gas stations about me, and any vehicles spotted on the road in the last day. They will ask rather insistently. When they find out that I've not been seen and that a truck and trailer that used this road never made it to the other end they will backtrack and start checking out all the side roads and lay-bys along the route. They will have satellite communications to coordinate their search, so there is no sense trying to make a run for it in the truck." She shivered in the dark, but not from the cold. "We have a few hours at best before they find this place. If I head into the woods you can claim that you never saw me. Just tell them you got tired and pulled over to sleep."

She bit her lip. "Tha - that would be a lie." She said, her voice breaking a bit.

"Yes. Can you be convincing enough to fool them?"

"I don't think so. I can't even keep a secret about a surprise party without breakin' out in a sweat."

"Then we'll have to deal with them right here. Any more firearms around?

"Gosh no. My big brother does all the hunting 'round the farm. I couldn't hurt a fly."

"I'll deal with them then." He checked his bandages. "These feel good and solid. You did a good job."

She blushed and looked down to hide her embarrassment. "How many of the hombres do you figure there will be?" She asked.

"Six at least. The Russian gangs tend to go around in troikas."

"Is that some kind of Russian mini-van?"

He laughed. "Close. A Troitka is a large cart pulled by three horses. A Troika is a group of three creatures. In the Russian gulag the prisoners learned to form groups of three so that one prisoner could guard the group's possessions while the other two worked or earned money in some way. In Russian criminal gangs it means two can hold you down while the third kicks the shi- shine off of you."

She giggled. It made her face light up. "You were going to say 'shit', weren't you?"

He smiled; it made him look even more handsome. "I didn't want to offend a proper young lady such as yourself."

"Oh don't worry about my sensibilities, Mister. We deal with that stuff by the truckload on the farm. It makes the trees in the orchard fruitful."

The fox asked her to bring his pistol over and she did. He checked the magazine and frowned. "Four shots left." He said. "If we're lucky they will show up in two groups instead of all at once. That will give me a chance to get another weapon and more ammo off them."

"And if we're not lucky?"

He thought for a bit. "Do have a knife, or anything pointy at least?"

"Sure, I got a knife. We use them all the time for pruning, slicing fruit, cutting leather." She retreated into the shadows and came back with a hunting knife in an old scuffed sheath. She sat on the edge of the bed and held it out. The fox took it and drew the knife out to test the blade on the pad of his thumb. Beads of blood formed where it touched.

"Excellent. This will help." He checked the grip and the balance.

"You good at throwing those things?" She asked, curious.

"Yes, but only as a last resort. A knife in your paw is worth more than one stuck in the back of someone you can't find in the dark." He said it as if he was commenting on the best way to tie a lure to fishing line. She found it fascinating.

"You are not like the fellahs I'm used to back home." She said, unconsciously leaning in toward him. Her green eyes were wide and inquisitive.

"I could say the same for you." He said thoughtfully. Putting the knife and gun down on the floor he sat up a little straighter, brining his muzzle level with hers

"I never met anyone like you before." She leaned further in and her head tilted, hovering less than an inch from his snout.

"Me neither." He tilted his head the other way and moved in until just a hair's breadth separated them. "I never met someone like me either." His breath was hot on her skin.

"Shut up." She said, and pressed her lips to his. He pressed back

It started slowly, just a meeting of the lips at first, but she continued to press forward, as did he. She opened her mouth to keep her lips from mashing against her teeth and he did the same. Soon they were locked together as their heads rolled in unison. Then she felt his tongue on the edge of her mouth and hers shot out to meet it. The fox's slim tongue wrestled her thicker appendage for a moment before both broke away and explored the inner reaches of the other's oral orifice. She sucked air through her nostrils but exhaled into him, just as he was doing to her, and the heat from his breath seemed to spread through her until she was feeling uncomfortably hot in her clothes. It wasn't like she had never kissed before, but she had not been kissed often, nor as intensely as this. She longed to touch him but did not dare.

Silver had kissed many, many females, some of them who had had been trained in the art of seduction so well that they could kiss a corpse back to life. But it had been years since he had been kissed with so much eager innocence. Lately he had taken to returning kisses with cold, compassionless efficiency. But the females that he met professionally all wanted something from him, and it wasn't love, or even a moment's warmth. Making love with them was a competition where the winner took all, possibly including the other's life. This pony's unpretentious eagerness brought a sense of passion in him that he thought was dead. His paws came up and gripped the sides of her head as if to hold her mouth against his at all costs.

His touch broke her paralysis. She extended one hand and laid it on his thick bicep. When he did not flinch she raised the other to the side of his face, caressing his jaw as their kiss continued.

Her mouth was not enough for him, not now that she had awoken a youthful fervour in him again. He drew back and kissed her brow, the corner of her eye and the line of her jaw. He took the battered felt hat from her head and sailed it across the trailer to land on an empty peg. She did not see his trick as her eyes were shut tight, afraid to open in case this was all an illusion. He buried his digits in her yellow mane and the red ribbon came loose. She opened her eyes then, and she shook her head until the golden locks framed her face. Then she found his mouth again and sealed it with hers.

He dropped a paw from her hair and it found the knot in her shirt on its own. Digits moved with skill and muscle memory to pull the knot loose. Then it brushed the shirt aside, and she shrugged one shoulder after the other to shed it as if it the most natural thing in the world for her to doff her top in the arms of a stranger. He paused and looked down as her swelling chest. Once corner of his mouth came up in a sly grin.

"I bet that they don't sell those back where you come from." He commented as he ran the pad of his first digit across the lacework of the bright red silk bra that the shirt had concealed.

"We don't even talk about things like this back home." She breathed. "But they have billboards with models wearing them here, and little else save for wings like a Pegasus. Supposed to be somepony named Victoria's secret, but they're everywhere. I saw one of them shops at a place called a Mall and ...." She blushed and ducked her head. "I have a friend that probably wears this kind of thing, not that I ever peeked, but she makes all her own clothes and ... Don't I look like a proper fool now?"

"No." He said, kissing her between the eyes. "You don't." She glanced up to see if he was making fun of her but his face showed nothing but tenderness. She drove her face against his again, pressing her silk-clad breasts against his chest at the same time.

His paws abandoned her head and moved down, squeezing her breasts from the sides as they lay trapped between them. Her hands came down from his shoulders where they had been resting and ran through the thick fur on his upper arms and back. Meanwhile his paws moved behind her, feeling their way across her lean flanks and short-cropped coat until they met above the catch on her fancy bra. Claws that had practiced on a thousand similar items of lingerie undid the catch in one smooth motion. Then he reached up and pulled the straps off her shoulders. Only the pressure of her body on his was keeping the bra on now. She sensed more than felt what he had done and she leaned back, crossing her arms to keep the bra and the treasure it contained in place and out of view.

This was farther than she had gotten with any of the local colts after the barn dances or the village festivals, and she hesitated. It was at this point that the home town paramours usually begged her to continue, professing their undying love while trying to nudge her arms apart. They never succeeded, because she was strong in the arm from working the orchard and tossing her lasso for hours on end after her chores were done. Eventually they had all given up and galloped off complaining that there must be something wrong with her, because other fillies never had such airs with them. She had half believed them, but a voice inside her had said that they were ones with defects if they thought that way. She waited for the fox, a worldly creature she had no doubt, to use similar lines on her.

"Forgive me." He said reaching for her shirt. "I've upset you." He held the red checked material out toward her.

"Ain't you gonna tell me that I'm a silly filly and they're too beautiful to cover up?" She almost whispered.

"No. Not if it makes you uncomfortable."

"Don't all the other females you meet just toss their undies aside and fall into your arms?"

The smile that came to his face was a bit sad, but he chuckled at her statement none the less. "Not all of them." He joked. "Not the ones that are worth anything." He said more seriously.

She looked at the paw with the checkered shirt hanging from it and she pushed it aside. Then she lowered her arms, bringing the bra with them, to reveal firm breasts covered in fine golden down, with nipples just a shade lighter. They were already standing out from the smooth globes, erect and hard.

He did not say anything about what a great filly she was or how marvelous they looked. If he had she probably would have grabbed her shirt and fled in shame. Instead he took her by the shoulders and planted a tender kiss on her mouth. She responded, her arms hanging limp by her sides. After holding the kiss for a minute he moved his mouth to her neck, then her shoulder, and finally to the top of one breast. A paw came up and lifted that breast, softly caressing the tender flesh where it joined her chest. When the nipple was pointing up he took it, just the tip, between his lips. She gasped at the shock that went through her then, and arched her back to offer him more. He obliged, taking the full teat into his mouth and flicking the nipple with the tip of his tongue.

He switched breasts, sending waves through her each time he touched the sensitive skin of her breasts. Her hands had found their way back to his torso, and her nails were digging in to his biceps. Afraid that she would hurt him she moved to his chest, but when she brushed her digits over the scar on his chest he stiffened and pulled back from her. She gave him a puzzled look.

"Sorry." He mumbled, his head down. "I've never let anyone see those scars before, let alone touch them. I guess I'm still a bit sensitive about them."

"Do you want to stop?" She suggested, and was surprised to find that she wanted the answer to be 'no'.

She was glad when he replied that he would be okay. "Its just one thin layer of cotton less between us." He said, reaching out to caress her bare breast. Then he took her hand in his free paw and placed it deliberately on his chest. She was tempted to remove it, afraid of how he would react if she touched his scar again. But she figured that it would be better to get it over with, so she used it to stroke his chest and then she deliberately traced the line of the thick scar tissue. He gritted his teeth and shuddered a bit at first contact but he settled down as she slowly drew her digit across his chest. She noticed then that one of his nipples was missing, but the other was standing up above his chest fur, as firm and hard as hers. She leaned down and kissed it like he had done. Then she licked it, and then she sucked it tenderly. She felt another shudder go through him, but the moan that accompanied it was not one of despair or fear. She responded by sucking harder.

As she continued to suck on his teat and caress his chest he leaned over, pushing her gently until she was on her back in the bed beside him. One of her arms was under his and she toyed with the fur on his back with it while the other continued to caress his chest. She glanced down his torso, admiring his taut abdomen, and saw that the blanket that covered him from the waist down had developed a tent-like profile over his groin. Biting her tongue, she slid her hand down across his rippling muscles to the edge of the blanket. This would be another first for her, but she hesitated only a moment before letting it slip underneath.

It encountered some thicker fur at first, and then it found his thick, warm shaft. She wrapped her hand around it, to gauge its thickness, and then she let her palm wander along it. Up it went, and around, and down again, trying to determine its shape by feel. It seemed to grow as her hand glided along it, filling her palm, and it got hotter and stiffer the more she rubbed it. She let her hand explore a little further, down below the base where she rolled his furry balls together and traced the line where they joined his crotch, across his inner thighs and then to the sensitive line where leg and abdomen meet. Then she went back to the shaft, and rubbed it harder, pressing it down against his belly sometimes and tilting it back to point at his feet at others. But all the while her paw was moving on it just as his lips were moving on her breasts and her mouth and her neck.

She felt something wet on her wrist and pulled her hand back quickly. "Did I ...?" she asked him as she examined the small glob of translucent fluid that was dripping down her arm.

"No, that's just pre-cum. It helps lubricate, for later. But if you keep stroking me like that you'll get the real thing soon enough." As he spoke he sat up, throwing the blanket off. She got a look at what she had been rubbing for the first time. It was long and reddish from the blood that throbbed through serpentine veins just below the surface of the tight skin. It had a slightly pointed knob on the end and the shaft disappeared into a patch of curly black fur, like a tree trunk in a grassy meadow. It was standing straight up and it twitched like something alive, which she supposed it was. She reached for it again.

"Oh no you don't." He grabbed her wrist. "I need to bring the pressure down a bit. Meanwhile, let me bring yours up a touch." He put a paw to the button of her cut-off jeans and undid it. Grasping the metal tab on the zipper he slid it down. She lay back as his paw slipped under the denim and caressed her through the panties that matched the bra she had worn earlier. After rubbing her mons for a while through the silk he slid it under the waistband and down across the downy hairs of her groin to the shaved mound of her pussy. She shaved down there to reduce the chaffing and sweat when working the farm or competing, and because it made her feel sexy when she was alone in her room at night, touching herself.

He commented on the smoothness and she pressed her pelvis aginst his paw. He rubbed her with three digits, one that ran along her slit with one on each side, pressing her outer vagina against the more sensitive inner lips and her hardening clitoris. As he continued to rub, her inner lips swelled and pushed the two outer digits aside. Then they spread and the middle digit sank deeper and deeper into the gap. In three more strokes she was fully open and she could feel the rougher skin on the pads sliding across the sensitive surface of her clip. Her hips bucked and her vagina spasmed and before she knew it her lady parts had swallowed the digit whole.

She was not surprised to find that she was already wet when he first put his paw inside her pants; she had been getting more and more exited ever since that first kiss. But she was shocked to discover that her vagina could grab and gulp like a greedy calf on its mamma's teat. And it had not stopped yet, it continued to squeeze and pull on his thick digit as he worked it in and out of her twat.

It wasn't the first time that she had anything up there, although she was technically still a virgin. She had tried carrots, cucumbers, and once one of Granny's rolling pins. But those inanimate objects did not home in on the sweet spots like his digit did, nor were they half as warm or responsive. And while her hands were busy manoeuvring the cooking ware the rest of her body was being neglected. Not so with a real live lover, she found. His lips were everywhere, on her chest, on her face, under her breasts, and his other paw was never idle. He used it like a wizard, waving it over her so that there was just the barest of contact between it and her skin. Sometimes she swore he wasn't touching her at all, that it was just an electrical charge built up between them that she felt. But it felt good. Better than good. And with his digit working her clit and the sensitive pad of flesh inside her twat it was driving her nuts.

While she writhed in passion his lips left her torso and moved down. He trailed kisses along her flanks and across her belly. He nibbled on her side and sucked on her protruding navel. When he reached the waistband of her jeans he withdrew his paw from under them and used both to pull the shorts and panties down. She raised her legs and he slid them off, tossing them in a corner. His lips continued their previous path but he stopped when he came to the curve of her buttock.

"You naughty filly." He grinned. "You have a tattoo! Did you get that while you were visiting the big city?" He traced the cluster of fruit she had inked on her butt with one digit as he spoke.

"Naw. Everyone back home has them. It's sort of a coming of age thing for us."

"What are these anyway?" He tilted his head to make the markings out. "Three raspberries?"

"No. Take a closer look."

He lowered his head and licked the area. "Strawberries?"

"No." She giggled. "That tickles."

"I can see that they are red." He kissed the spot above her tail and ran his digits through the silken hair. "And have something to do with the farm. Radishes?"

"No." She moaned. "They're a type of fruit."

The fox gently parted her legs and used his paws to caress her inner thighs and the area around her pussy. As his paws soothed her his mouth sought out one ankle and kissed it. The kiss traveled up her leg and thigh until she could feel his hot breath on the exposed lips of her vagina.

"Tomatoes." He breathed. "Tomatoes are a fruit. Plump, juicy tomatoes."

"No." She gasped. "They grow on trees. Something crisp and sweet and good to eat."

"Ahh!" He said in a low voice. "Then they must be ... cherries." He kissed her then where the mons met the thigh, and then he licked all around her pussy. Placing the ball of his thumb on her clit he slid his narrow tongue up the length of her slit. He licked her again, and then he sent his tongue down the hole that his digit had lately explored. She did not bother to correct him about the fruit.

She had certainly never felt anything like this. It was like a snake loose inside her. He licked and lapped, gulped and sucked on her twat while his thumb made little circles on her clit. His other paw continued to wander, squeezing a breast one moment, teasing the fur under her arm the next. She threw her head back and rolled it from side to side as waves of pleasure swept though her, her arms flung wide and her hands gripping the sheets to anchor her least she float away on those waves.

After a few minutes he removed his thumb and, switching paws, probed her canal while he worked her clit exclusively with his clever tongue. She could feel the tension rising in her and the flesh inside her swelling up as she neared an orgasm that promised to put all her previously self-inflicted ones to shame. But like him she did not want to go out this way.

Gathering all her will she brought her legs up and rolled over, leaving him lying on his side along the edge of the bed. He went to get up and come to her but she pressed him down and onto his back.

"Some parts of you work mighty fine," she assured him, "but that hole in your hide is gonna open up if you try gettin' in the saddle so soon." She put one hand on his chest and reached for his cock with the other. "And I'm the only bona-fide cowpuncher here. So let me do the honours." He lay back, keeping his eyes on hers. She stroked his cock until it was as hard as it had been earlier and then she threw a leg over him and crouched over his hips. Aiming his prick with her hand she lowered herself down until she could feel the tip against her moist inner lips. She rubbed it against her, spreading her juices over it and mingling them with the few drops of fluid that seeped from him. When she thought that she had lubricated it well enough she took a deep breath and brought herself down around it.

It was different feeling from his tongue or digits. Hotter for one thing, and harder, much harder. She felt her inner works moving aside as her twat sealed itself around the thicker portion of his shaft. It stuck a bit as the lower half was still dry, so she raised herself up again and then relaxed her legs to let her weight carry her back down. It went almost all the way in that time, and on the next repetition she felt her clit press up against the bone of his pelvis. She flexed her thighs and rose up until just the tip remained between the swollen inner lips, and then she let herself drop hard enough to make his balls slap her ass when she hit the bottom.

She rose and fell on him, sometimes holding her knees for balance, sometimes placing her hands on his chest and just rocking her hips to milk his cock with her pussy. Either way he was loving the view it afforded of his shaft being engulfed and released by her bald pussy. He could see the way the inner sheath of her vagina was pulled out when she withdrew and how it and the pink lips that surrounded it were pushed in when she came down again. He would have liked to help her but she was right about the wound being too fresh, so instead he used his paws on her flanks and inside her thighs and on her firm breasts.

She did not know how long it was supposed to take to go from almost cumming to orgasm, but even though she moved faster and faster on him it was always a hair's breadth away. She dropped against him and whirled her hips to grind her clit between them for a bit, but her insides missed that moving mass of meat so she started humping it again. Catching her frustration, Silver reached down and put his paw on the line of her groin so that his thump was under her clit. He rubbed it franticly as she bounced up and down on his shaft, gritting his teeth and biting his tongue in an effort to hold out longer than her.

She could tell that it would be soon. _ It had better be soon,_ she thought, if not I'm gonna die of a failed heart right here and now. But she did not die, although what happened next felt a lot like that. The first indication was a sudden swelling of the tissues inside her, as if they had been pumped full of water. The next thing was her clit becoming so sensitive that the signals it sent up through her were almost painful, but it was a hurting she did not want to stop. Suddenly something inside her let go and she was filled with liquid fire. Spasms shot through her, and her insides melted. The fire became a flood, and she collapsed on top of the fox, still bucking her hips and grinding her clit on his trapped thumb as jets of hot fluid shot out around the base of his cock.

He too surrendered then, pressing her down against him with a paw on the base of her tail as his cock fired off a few volleys of its own form of hot lead. By the time it stopped vibrating her clit had had enough and it retreated between mounds of spongy flesh. Silver managed to find it again though and he pressed on it with his thumb hard enough to give her a series of mini-orgasms that were near exhausting. She had to pull his paw out from between them to make it stop.

"Whoa, Hoss, whoa!" She gasped. "Don't you know if you ride your pony to hard in the first race it'll be plumb tuckered out and no good for the second round?"

"There's a second round?" He said with a grin.

"Actually," She said, idly flicking one of his ears with her finger, "back home we like to run a little series we refer to as the 'Triple Crown'."

* * * * * * * *

Silver thanked whatever Saint looked after foxes and spies for the twelve hours of rest he had before his session with the insatiable pony. He had to stop the athletic equine after the third round because he needed time to prepare a welcome for the visitors he was expecting.

The first order of business was to go through everything she had to see what could be used to make a weapon or a bobby trap. There was not much. Still, it was almost four in the morning by the time they were done and ready to take on whoever showed up. She found Silver some of her brother's old clothes that fit well enough. They were dark, a red jacket and dark brown work pants. With them he would be almost invisible in the night. The best that she could do was a faded denim jacket and full length jeans. He had her tie up her mane and tail and tuck them in out of sight.

Working by the light of her lantern they used a branch to sweep their tire tracks away and then they blocked the short access road with a fallen tree. They used shorter deadfall branches and some rope from an old lasso of hers to lock it into place. "That will slow them down," the fox commented, "but it won't stop them." After they were done he insisted that they go over all of the ground inside the rest area twice, first with the lantern and then in the dark after letting their eyes adjust for twenty minutes.

"You have to memorize where the openings in the vegetation are and where there are dips in the ground." He lectured. "There is no moon tonight and it's a bit overcast so it will be hard to see low hanging branches and you will have no depth perception in the dark. Avoid unnecessary movement; at night the portion of the eye that is sensitive to movement is dominant. Use your ears to track movement that you can't see by opening your mouth to form an echo chamber and by cupping your paws ... hooves ... hands ... whatever, by cupping them beside your ears to focus the sound like a satellite dish." He demonstrated. "We will have the advantage because we know the terrain and our night vision will be at its peak. When you hear the cars coming close your strong eye and put your palm over it to block the light of their headlamps so you will have one eye still acclimatized to the dark. Other than that, keep low and keep out of the way. I don't want to see you get hurt."

"Are you going to be able to see well enough to shoot?"

"Yes. I have excellent night vision and I've trained under these conditions. That's not going to guarantee a kill with every bullet, and we only have four of them anyway. Be ready to run for it if they ... if things go badly."

She shivered in the dark, but not from the cold. She had kept the remnants of her lasso, figuring that she could tie it between a couple of trees to slow down any pursuers, and she slung it over her shoulder and across her chest to keep it from snagging on a branch. She moved into a position where she could cover the fox's back while having a clear escape route and picked up a stout branch that she had left there. She may not be able to bring herself to shot or stab someone but she had no qualms about sending them to la-la land for an hour or so with a good smack to the noggin. She heard him settle into his first position and the woods went silent.

She had no watch, but she was used to telling the time by the passage of nature. The night creatures had remained silent for a time but had started moving about again when they heard no sound and detected no movement from the two large invaders. She estimated that a half hour had passed when they suddenly fell silent again. She strained to detect what it was that had silenced them and after a minute of turning her head to and fro with her hands by her ears and her mouth hanging open she picked up engine noises. There were at least two of them, one coming from the way that they had been heading in and another from the opposite direction.

She noticed the lights next. At first it was a faint glow on the tops of the most distant trees along the road but soon it evolved into slivers of light that cut through the dense vegetation. She closed her right eye and put a palm over it, pressing hard to seal the edges from intruding beams. By the time she could hear the engines winding down as the vehicles slowed the light was a constant, casting long shadows but illuminating anything between them. She ducked as much as she could as a nervous tingle rose in her.

There were only two cars, each a four door sedan. She could not make out how many occupants there were behind the glare of their headlamps but she heard the doors open and close as some or all of them debarked. The lights and the motors cut off at the same time, startling her almost enough to make her jump, but she held her ground. She took her hand from her eye and found that she could make out their shapes in the dark with it. The occupants of the cars remained in one place, listening it seemed, for a full minute before advancing.

Two of them seemed to be headed for the truck and trailer, as Silver had suspected they would. They had left the cab of the pick-up unlocked and empty, but a surprise was waiting for them when they opened the trailer door. The rest tried to move the fallen tree off the lane but gave up after several grunts and a few words in a foreign language that sounded like swearing to her. They began looking for a way over or around the obstacle. The two that had headed straight for the truck through the sparser brush near the lake were far ahead of the rest.

She heard the cab doors open and saw a flash of light as the dome light came on inside. A few seconds was all that it took to determine that the truck held nothing of interest and they moved off, closing the doors softly to extinguish the light. Now the only light was a faint glowing line around the edges of the trailer door. The line grew to a wedge as one of the intruders carefully pulled the door open while the other pressed itself against the trailer on the other side of the opening. When it was wide enough to allow access they both peered inside.

Knowing what was coming, she put her palm back to her eye. A moment later the night was lit up as the corn liquor jug and the oil lamp, which had been hung on opposite sides of the doorway, swung down from the ceiling and met in the middle of the trailer, right in front of the doorway. Two burning figures ran for the lake. Only one made it. The smell of burning fur and flesh wafted over her and she fought not to gag, but she could not hold it in and wet cough escaped from her. The others by the fallen tree heard it and a few shouts were exchanged. None bothered to call on them to come out of hiding. _ I guess once you fricassee one of 'em hey figure you're in it for the long haul_, she supposed. The other creatures were moving toward her but she held her ground. Their path would take them right past the silver fox and if she moved they might change course and stumble into his hiding place.

She waited, lowering her palm from her face as the fire in the trailer died off for lack of fuel, as did the one that had consumed the attacker that had not made it to the water. She tried to gauge how far the rest had come but Silver had been right, her ability to judge distances had fled in the dark. But by the sound of it they must be even with the fox's hiding place by now. She went into a crouch, preparing to move back to a position closer to the lake, as she strained to see where the intruders were.

The night was lit up again as a gun went off twice from behind the searchers. She saw two of them fall, and counted two more from their muzzle flashes as they filled the woods in that direction with lead. A rustle and a snapping noise came from the right, opposite where they had been shooting, and they fired in that direction too. Silver had stocked his lair with some fair sized rocks, and she guessed that he had thrown one to make the noise. When the echoes of the bullets and the ricochets died off one of them called out, and a strained voice came from where the two had fallen. Something was moving in the woods there, marked b a darker spot in the gloom. A single shot rang out from a spot she knew was the fox's second position, and the dark figure disappeared with a scream that died to a gurgle.

The remaining two fired again, but not as wildly as before. They stood side by side and moved in opposite directions as they pumped round after round into the brush. Anyone moving ahead of one's volley would be caught by the second shooter's fire coming the other way. By the light of the almost continuous muzzle flashes she could make out that one was a bear and the other a Siberian husky. They would soon be firing in her direction so she pressed her face down into the dirt and tried to hold still, but her body was shaking as a nervous tremor sweep through her. It wasn't that she was afraid; she had been in a number of tense situations back home, but the feeling of helplessness, of being confronted by a faceless enemy, that was getting to her. And back home that did not settle things with guns ... cold, cruel, impersonal guns.

The two firers had completed their circle and had paused to reload. Something blocked her view of them and then Silver's silhouette was lit up by the muzzle blast from his last bullet. The husky's head flew back and it dropped like a rock before the light faded. But the bear was unhurt, and Silver was out of ammo. The bear seemed to realize that and it charged in the direction Silver had appeared in, laying a fan of covering fire as it did.

She had not seen where the fox went after he fired his last shot, and she did not have time to look for him. She had to move because the bear was, well he was bearing down on her. She waited for it to run out of ammo and then she jumped up and made for her next hideaway, by the edge of the lake.

It was a mistake. With nothing but the wide expanse of smooth water behind her the bear picked up her movement right away. It did not hesitate, it just ran straight for her and leapt. Almost three hundred pounds of bear knocked the air out of her and sent her club flying. She went down under the furry mass. She managed to roll onto her back but could not force the bear off her, nor did her blows to its head seem to be deterring it at all. It knocked the hat from her head, grabbed a paw full of her yellow locks and growled into her face. "You kill Ivan's friend with your bobby trap. You die burning too. But not soon." It raised one massive paw, preparing to rake its long claws across her face, but the arm did not descend.

Something dark had wrapped itself around that bulging arm. The bear struggled, but all that it managed to do was to rip the hooded jacket that covered the fox's silvery fur. His torso seemed to shine in the dark as he pulled the bear's head back with one arm and brought the other around in a sweeping gesture. Hot fluid splashed on the pony's face, fluid that smelled like copper tastes, a smell she only recognized when she recalled how badly she had bleed when she cut her hoof chopping wood when she was just a filly. She started to gag again.

The fox rolled the corpse of the bear off her. "Go rinse off in the lake." He told her. "But keep your eyes peeled until I confirm that we got all of them."

She got to her hooves and stumbled to the water's edge. The post action adrenaline made her shake and the cramps from the smell of the blood made it hard to bend over to wash, so she waded into the warm water waist deep and doused herself all over. Feeling a little better she turned to see what Silver was up to. He was wandering through the woods, using the flashlight from her truck to locate the bodies of the attackers and check for vital signs. He paused by the burnt corpse, transferring bullets from a pistol he had found nearby to his gun and casting the beam of the flashlight to and fro around the small beach.

"What's wrong, Silver?" She called.

"We seem to be short one corpse. Did you see which way he ..." He was drowned out by an explosion of water behind her. Before she could react a powerful arm came around her throat and squeezed off her cry of warning off. A sickening odour of kerosene, corn liquor, burnt fur and overdone steak filled her nostrils. She would have vomited but her esophagus was closed shut by the arm about her neck. The best she could do was to hang onto that arm and try to kick at her assailant, but in the waist deep water her kicks had no force.

They were illuminated by the beam of the flashlight. "Drop the gun." A gruff voice demanded. "Drop it or I break her neck." He squeezed harder, making her gasp for air.

The light picked out the gun in Silver's paw and followed it as he tossed it into the water between them. He had moved down to the water's edge and only ten feet separated them now. He held the flashlight so that its light reflected off the surface of the lake, washing them in wavering light as the ripples caused by the rise of the charred attacker settled down. The attacker eased the pressure on her neck and she was able to see that it was another bear, a horribly burnt and disfigured bear, a very angry bear.

"There, the guns gone. Now let her go."

"No. She comes with me." The bear began to inch forward into the shallower water. She could feel it questing with its bare feet as it moved and she wondered what it was up to.

"You don't want her. You want me. Your boss will not be satisfied with anyone else."

"Maybe is true. Maybe I break her neck and then yours, eh?"

"You want a piece of me?" The fox taunted him. "If you want to try me just let her go and come and get me." He spread his arms to indicate that he was ready. Other than the flashlight his paws were empty.

Her hoof bumped against something metallic under the water. A moment later his foot brushed against it too. The bear let out a cry of triumph and, keeping his grip on her, doubled over to snatch whatever it was from the lakebed. When they surfaced he had Silver's pistol in his paw, and he wasted no time pointing at the source of the light and firing three shots in rapid succession. But the light did not move. It did not even waver. With a confused grunt the bear shoved her forward toward it. Before they were halfway it was obvious that the light was far too low to be held in anyone's paw, and it wasn't. It was stuck in the sand just above the water line and there was no sign of the silver fox.

The bear grabbed the flashlight and threw her to the sand. Some skinny little filly was the least of its worries now. It shone the light toward the corpses of its comrades, assuming that the fox would go for one of their weapons, but did not spot him. While he was distracted she crawled toward the woods. She managed to get twenty feet away before the bear remembered her and picked her out with the light. She saw the gun come up from the darkness behind the light as he took aim at her.

"No!" Silver's voice rang out. The beam jerked around, picked him out on the edge of the tree line twenty five feet away. He stepped out from the cover and raised his arms until his paws were outside the cone of light. He was a sitting duck. He looked at her and shrugged his shoulders. Then he tilted his chin toward her escape route. The message was clear; he was sacrificing himself for her. She had to run while she had the chance, while the bear had its back turned. She gritted her teeth, got into a crouch, and prepared to move.

"The bear laughed and raised the gun in Silver's direction, his whole attention focused on the greater threat. This was her chance. "What you got to say now, fox?" The bear said as he leveled the pistol and took careful aim.

She used the sound of his voice to cover any noise she might make. With muscles honed by years of practice until the memory of what she wanted to do was ingrained in them she flipped the lasso from her shoulder and whirled it once in the air before letting it fly. She had to guess where the bulk of the bear was from the position of the flashlight but like Silver, she had practiced her speciality in all sorts of conditions so that she could take whatever the rodeo circuit could throw at her. The loop sailed cleanly over the bear and came down across his raised arm. As soon as it did she pulled hard, digging her heels in as she reeled in the rope.

The rope pulled the bear's arm down to his side just as he fired at Silver, but the shot went wide because Silver, seeing the rope descend around his nemesis, had turned to one side to reduce his silhouette and stepped backward, out of the line of fire. Before the bear could struggle out of the rope the fox brought one of his raised arms down, and a the light caught a bright spinning object as it traversed the space between them. There was a thud as the object struck the bear. It screamed and dropped the gun. The flashlight waved wildly, sometimes lighting up the trees, sometimes shining on him, as it struggled to get its arms up. She recognized the handle of her hunting knife sticking out of its shoulder.

Silver was across the gap in a flash and on the bear. Pinning its wounded arms to its sides he pulled the knife from it and raised it high for a killing blow. The pony turned her head, not bearing to watch what happened next. But she heard. She heard the fox speak to the bear in Russian, and heard the bear answer roughly. There was a cry of pain and then Silver spoke in a calm voice again. This time the bear answered in a whimper. She walked over to the edge of the water and sat down in her soggy jeans as the conversation continued behind her. The sky was just beginning to grow lighter on the horizon on the far side of the lake. It would be dawn in another hour. She hugged her knees, watched the sky and tried to ignore the occasional cry of pain from the bear.

The first sliver of sun was visible when Silver came and sat down beside her. She had not heard anything from the bear for several minutes.

"Did you ... ?"

"Kill him? No. No need for more killing. I used your rope to tie him up. He told me what I needed to know though. We're safe for now. They can't get any more of their crew here until tonight, and we'll be long gone by then."

She turned and took in the bear, who was trussed up like a turkey, and her burnt out trailer.

"What are we going to do with him?" She asked.

"I used their satellite phone to call my office. They are sending a helicopter to pick him and I up. He has agreed to turn on his gang in exchange for immunity. They will be here in five hours and they will take it from there. I'll see that you get compensated for your trailer. You can head out whenever you're ready."

She looked at him over her knees. "What are you going to do while you wait?"

"Clean up. I have to clear that roadblock, put all the bodies in the cars and drive them down the boat ramp there." He pointed. When the cops or the gang find this spot all's they'll see is a burnt out trailer and a broken jug of moon shine. Neither side is likely to waste too much brain wattage looking any further."

She stood up and slapped the sand from her jeans. "I'll give you a hand."

Silver knew the therapeutic value of hard work after a shock like she had suffered, so he did not object. Within an hour they had sunk the evidence and transferred the bear to the cab of the truck where he could rest after they cleaned up the worst of his wounds. Covered in blood and dirt and twigs Silver peeled off his clothes and waded naked into the lake. He began to scrub his hide with a bar of soap that had survived the inferno in the trailer. While the soap soaked in he rinsed the pants, shirt and jacket. She watched him for a bit and them she too stripped down and followed him into the lake, but she left her clothes on the sand. She had others and would never bear to wear those ones again.

He helped scrub her back, and she did his. When they were clean again they left the water and hung up his borrowed clothes to dry in the sun. He wrung the water out of his tail and snapped it back to its former fullness. Then, despite what they had done in the trailer the night before and the fact that they had just spent an hour together naked, he held his tail shyly in front of his groin and shuffled his feet awkwardly.

"I guess that you'll have to be going if you want to make the border before dark. But I wanted to thank you for what you did with the lasso. I would still have gone for him with the knife but your act raised the odds immensely. Thank you."

She took two steps to cross the gap between them and put her arms around him. "Geez, Silver. You made that little speech look harder than all the fancy shoot'n and knife throw'n and such. And speaking of hard ..." She pulled his tail out from between them and lowered a hand to where it had been. "You said we have a few hours. What's your rush?"