The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head by Cassandra Duffy

could have sworn she saw his
mouth form the words ‘teddy bears’ as he swatted at the empty air
around him. The followers seemed perplexed by his new behavior, but
soon picked up on the sufficiently direness of the situation when
the rest of the priests joined in on the hallucination and began to
have trips of their own.
     
    “I was kind of concerned it wouldn’t work as
well on blind people,” Gieo said.
     
    “You can stop worrying,” Fiona replied with a
little giggle. “Apparently they don’t need functioning eyes to see
things that aren’t there.” She pulled away from the telescope and
leaned back in the lawn chair, obviously satisfied by the outcome.
“So, what now?”
     
    “Now we wait and see if they have a
sufficiently moving religious experience,” Gieo said. “Oh, I also
found these…” She produced the collar and leash, holding them out
for Fiona, displayed across her open palms.
     
    Fiona leaned forward a little to look them
over and nodded noncommittally. “That should work.” She began to
lean back again.
     
    “Can you put the collar on me?” Gieo blurted
out. “I mean, it’s like a necklace, but harder to get on, you know?
I could use the help.”
     
    Fiona shrugged and took the offered collar.
She started to reach up to put it on Gieo, who was sitting a little
higher than her on the edge of the roof, but Gieo apparently had
other ideas. The pilot knelt between Fiona’s boots and tilted her
head back to display her neck to Fiona.
     
    “Um…okay.” Fiona gently slipped the collar
around Gieo’s neck and buckled it into place.
     
    Gieo’s stomach did tiny somersaults through
the entire collaring process and refused to calm down even after it
was comfortably buckled. There wasn’t any rationale to how good it
made her feel, but she quickly listed it as one of the more
important moments in their burgeoning relationship. When she opened
her eyes to look up at Fiona, she found the gunfighter staring at
her, confusion clearly painted across her face.
     
    “There’s a leash too.” Gieo offered the wound
leather strap to Fiona, who took it, a little begrudgingly.
     
    She clipped the end to the loop on the collar
and held the unfurled strap as though she weren’t quite sure what
to do with the five-feet of leather dangling from the front of
Gieo’s throat. “Um…what do I do with it?”
     
    “You lead me over to Zeke’s to collect your
payment,” Gieo said. “The other hunters should be just about ready
to head out. They’ll all see us and know .”
     
    “Okay, right, good idea,” Fiona said, getting
a little enthusiasm off of Gieo’s infectious mood.
     
    Gieo walked a few paces behind Fiona, with
plenty of slack in the leash, as they made their way down into the
saloon, through the main hall where all eyes were on them, and then
out onto the thoroughfare. Gieo, who had planned on every level to
act the subservient piece of property, actually strutted, head held
high, almost preening with pride in being collared by Fiona. This
seemed to confuse the other hunters more than anything; they
watched the couple with slack jaws and some, quite-literally
scratched their heads.
     
    Out on the street in front of Zeke’s
community center, Fiona let out a sharp whistle. Slow, as if the
morning held twice as many hours, Zeke ambled out of the dark
interior to stand on the balcony. He glanced down to the duo with a
little snort of amusement. Rawlins emerged from the front door of
the building, directly beneath Zeke, leaning heavily against the
door frame with a contemptuous glare leveled at Gieo and the leash.
His angry eyes, tantrum-red face, and twitching jaw muscles were
irrelevant to her—they both knew their position in relation to
Fiona, and she knew he wished he was in her place, even if it meant
being at the end of a leash.
     
    “They’re bugging out over there, but I don’t
see any of them dropping,” Zeke growled. “The job was to thin the
heard, not stir it