"So all we have to do is shoot it with them and it'll die?"
"As I understand it, yes," she replied.
"Good," Duggan said, clapping her on the shoulder. "I trust you'll come calling when they arrive, then?"
"Don't see how we'll need your help, but I won't keep you in the dark."
The marshal nodded and left without another word. Cora watched him go, her arms tucked inside the sleeves of her buffalo-hide coat. Hearing how he'd managed to route the wendigo had surprised her. The marshal was made of tougher stuff than she'd thought, even after watching him stand down that group of miners. Drunken miners were easy enough to predict, but it took real guts to go up against a true creature of the night.
Feats like that always began out of desperation, either for yourself or someone else. Nobody in their right mind ever took a supernatural creature head on unless they knew what they were doing, and nobody ever knew that the first time around. It was a wonder anybody lived to tell such tales, but some people just had more luck.
"Ben!" she shouted, turning back toward the train. "Where you at? Let's get them bags and get back to our room!"
Cora sat on the cornshuck mattress and sighed. She was glad the same room was still available when they'd arrived back at the Northern Hotel. Staying in the same room in a city was a sort of tradition for them. It helped them feel more at home when they arrived at each place, and every new city they visited soon had a room they liked to call theirs.
Ben would apologize for it from time to time, saying he felt bad for not being able to provide a real house for his wife. She would always wave him off, saying she preferred the roaming lifestyle, anyway. Wandering from town to town, turning in local bounties, and moving on had seemed romantic, the sort of lifestyle most every woman they met grew to envy. She wasn't tied to children, a cooking stove, or a washboard. They were free to go where they pleased, sometimes sleeping under the summer stars for several nights in a row while on a hunt, sometimes bedding down for a month at a time in a city while investigating rumors and playing cards. Some folk called them heroes when they finished a job, even as they were collecting their pay from the local law. The life seemed to fit them like a well-tailored coat.
Or at least it had. As Cora sat on the bed, she could feel a dull ache in her feet and her fingers. Even a day of nothing but sitting in a train coach had left her slightly stiff. Getting up on a cold morning hurt more than it used to, and her draw wasn't as fast or as sharp as it was when they'd turned in their first bounty. Age. She'd felt it, fighting the wendigo in the mineshaft; the monster's chill had hurt her more than it should have.
She looked over at Ben, who was stretched out on the bed next to her reading a book. If time took its toll on him, he certainly never showed it. His brown mustache, a shade lighter than the hair on his head, showed no signs of graying, and his sky-blue eyes were still clear and bright. The pains of a long day of travel seemed to slide right off his back as they walked to the hotel from the station. Of course, that could have been because she'd carried the bags.
"You know, I sometimes wonder if we ought to retire soon," she said, leaning back against the headboard.
"Why's that?" Ben asked, looking up from his book.
"Seems to me we're about used up is all," Cora said. "Worn out like a pair of old pack mules. Somebody's bound to tie us to a tree and shoot us before too long."
"Not so long as we're useful, I reckon."
"But how long until we run out of useful? Take the situation here: we was nearly outdone by a fool of a marshal, and we had to go see a priest to even understand what it is we ought to be experts at fighting."
"Ain't nobody got to be an expert without learning something."
"But now they got experts that do nothing but sit around and study things like vampires." The meeting with James Townsend upset her more than she liked. She'd told Ben about the eccentric British scholar