Jack frowned, his mug halfway to his lips.  A thoughtful look came over his face as he took a long swallow of the drink and he lowered the mug before looking up at his partner.  “Luke, you sure you been feeling well lately?” he asked.  He shook his head skeptically.  “I mean, spiritwalking’s okay, but . . . “
        The otter sighed and waved a paw at the fox, silencing him.  “I know what it sounds like, Jack.  It sounds like I’ve gone crazy.  Lord knows Linda wants me to see Doc Thomas or a priest about it.  But . . . dammit, I just know, all right?”  Luke looked as if he hadn’t slept the previous night.  His eyes were slightly bloodshot as he grabbed his mug and poured some tea for himself.  Adding some milk and a spoonful of sugar he remarked, “You think I’m crazy?”
        Jack considered the question for a moment.  “No, I don’t,” his partner replied.  “We’ve known each other since school, Luke.  You’ve always been religious.  Remember when Father Cruikshank tried to get you to become a Catholic?”
        Luke smiled at the memory.  “Yeah.  Mother Hanakan almost had a fit.”
        “Yeah, but you would have gone in either direction,” Jack pointed out, “and you know it.”  He drained his mug of tea and licked a stray drop from his muzzle.  “Now, you think Sarkozy’s here.  Here, as in Rain Island, or here in town?” he asked.
        Luke thought for a moment then shook his head, half in anger and half in helplessness.  “I don’t know.  I wish whatever it is that’s bugging me would be more specific about things, but I get the feeling that he’s here on Barnes Island,” the otter said flatly.  “Exactly where – I can’t even guess.”
        “Well, the advantage we have is Barnes isn’t that big,” Jack said as he stood up and stretched.  The population of the island was only about five thousand, and three-fifths of them lived in Kyuquot.  “I think we should go round to the ferry slip and the docks and ask around.”
        “Good idea,” Luke said, nodding.


        Sarkozy stepped out of the small restaurant and squinted at the sunlit morning.  After leaving the ferry he had ducked down an alley and changed back into his usual clothes, leaving the stolen items of women’s clothing in a rain barrel, weighted down with a stone. 
        The first order of business was to find a place to get some sleep, and maybe a meal.  When the bank opened, he changed the Canadian money into Rain Island currency and found that he had more money now than when he had stepped onto the ferry.  A trip to the nearby diner followed, and he felt greatly fortified after a full meal.
        But he knew that he’d have to move soon, and keep moving.  The fur dye was decidedly inferior, and his skin itched abominably from the chemicals.  Once he’d gone back to his usual fur color, he could disappear again.
        He almost froze as he saw two stocky furs, an otter and a fox, walking toward him.  Both wore badges on their shirts and revolvers in the worn leather belts around their waists, and for a moment he started to panic.  To his surprise and disbelief, the two policefurs walked right past him, headed for the ferry slip as they talked to each other.
        Perhaps there was something to dyeing the fur after all.  He scratched his headfur, wondering if he could find anything better. 
        A brief visit to a chemist’s gave him what he needed, and he briefly considered the hotel in the center of the small town.  No; the police might look there for him first, and he wanted nothing at all to do with the police.
        Not until he was sure.
        He was practically staggering from exhaustion before he found a small boarding house on the west side of the town.  The proprietor had welcomed him, haggled only a bit over the cost of a room for the night (because she saw that he was tired), then ushered him in.


        “No, I haven’t seen anyone looks like that,” the ferry captain grumbled.  The elk favored Luke and Jack with a sour glance as he pulled a small oilskin-wrapped package from a pocket of his jacket.  He opened it and ran his tongue over the small salt lick, then smacked his lips.  “Only had one fox come through on the morning ferry, an’ that was a young girl,” he remarked as he put the package away.
        Jack nodded as he took notes, but Luke’s ears perked.  “A girl, eh?  What fur color?” he asked. 
        “Gray,” came the ready reply.  “Very short an’ slim, she was,” the elk added.  “Funny thing, though, she never said much.  Slept a bit while on the trip over,” he said, jerking a thumb in the general direction of Canada. 
        “Thanks.”  The two police officers stepped away from the elk and Jack murmured, “What do you think?”
        Luke replied, “Sleeping on the ferry, unwilling to say much, short and slim . . .”  He turned to the elk.  “Hey!  Any idea where this vixen went?”
        “Dunno,” the elk replied, shrugging.  “She might’ve gone into town,” and he waved in the general direction.  He turned his back on the two officers and stepped back onto the docked ferry.  The otter and the fox nodded and walked away from the town’s small dock area.
        “Any thoughts?” Jack asked Luke, looking at him quizzically.
        The otter paused, then shook his head and started walking away.  “It’s like I told you – it comes and goes.  I never know when it’ll start bothering me again.”
        “That’s too bad,” the fox remarked.  “We could use a little insight.  So, let’s start with the hotel.”
        Luke clapped his partner on the shoulder.  “Now you’re being sensible.  Let’s go.”


        The new fur dye was a vast improvement over what he had been wearing, and Sarkozy watched the last of it wash down the bathtub drain.  He dried off carefully, checking constantly to make sure that the new color wasn’t coming off on the towel.  As he stepped out of the bathroom, he stopped and looked at the bed.
        He had been running for so long, and the bed, a thick soft mattress with four goose-down pillows, looked so very comfortable and inviting.  Without thinking any further about moving on, Sarkozy had obeyed his body’s needs, wrapped himself up in the quilt bedspread and collapsed into a deep sleep.
        The afternoon sun was slanting through the window when the fox came awake with a start.  His ears twitched as he heard voices outside the window of his room, and he felt his throat constrict with fear.  He disentangled himself from the quilt, shaking his head to clear it, and he reached out and gently eased the curtain aside.
        His heart started to hammer away in his chest and his hackles rose when he saw the two police from earlier talking with the elderly vixen that ran the boarding house.  As he watched, she nodded and pointed at his window.  He let the curtain fall, and one of the policefurs yelled, “Hey!  Police!”
        Sarkozy ran for the door to his room and stopped, dithering momentarily as he realized that he wasn’t wearing any clothes.  He pulled on his pants, jerked the door open and bolted from the room just in time to see the otter in the hallway.  He turned and ran for the back room of the house.
        “Damn it!” Luke swore as he started to chase the slim fox, resisting the urge to draw his revolver and shoot.  His partner was somewhere in the line of fire, and he didn’t want to risk hitting Jack.  There was a bang of wood striking wood and he heard a grunt of pained surprise, and he increased his speed.
        Jack was getting up from the ground as Luke emerged in the house’s back yard.  “What happened?” he asked as he helped the fox to his feet. 
        The fox shook his head angrily and rubbed his snout with a paw.  “I got here just in time to catch the door in my face,” he snarled.  He waved toward the nearby woods.  “Went that way.”
        Luke started to growl something, but took a breath and started off toward the forest, drawing his pistol as he went.  Jack rubbed his nose once more, drew his own revolver, and followed his partner.
        Sarkozy ran without any awareness of where he was going.  He crashed through bushes and tripped over tree roots in a headlong flight, barely thinking that he’d left behind most of his clothes and all of his money. 
        None of that mattered.
        He had to get away.
        Finally he tripped and landed hard on his muzzle, the pain and shock of the sudden halt to his flight clearing his mind.  He curled into a ball, shaking with fear, and his ears flicked as he heard his pursuers moving through the underbrush.  The fox scrambled into a hollow under a fallen tree, trying to slow his panting so that he couldn’t be heard.
        Luke paused in his pursuit, sniffing the air as he cast about for Sarkozy’s trail.  Luckily the smaller fur was making no effort at all to cover his tracks, but had simply run in a straight line.  There were plenty of crushed ferns and disturbed branches in his wake. 
        He turned as Jack came up behind him, and held a finger to his lips.  “Move out to the left, and we’ll try to trap him,” the otter suggested in a soft voice.
        Jack nodded and picked his way through the ferns and underbrush as Luke started forward again, his ears canted forward.  The trail seemed to dwindle and stop beside some trees, and he waved to Jack, who froze.  The otter pointed to where the trail ended, then gestured with a sweeping motion.  The fox nodded, and began moving closer in, keeping the muzzle of his revolver up.
        The ferns were springy, but a small tuft of them showed broken stems.  Yes, their quarry had been here . . .  Luke looked around, and a furtive sound under a fallen tree caught his attention.  He waved at Jack to holster his gun, and pointed his own revolver at the opening under the tree.  “Sarkozy, you’re under arrest,” he said quietly.  “Come on out.”
        There was a rustling of dead leaves, and suddenly a gray-furred blur shot out from under the tree.  Jack leaped at him, and the two foxes fell to the ground.  They wrestled around for a moment, then Jack yelled and punched the smaller Sarkozy, flipped the still-struggling fox onto his belly and pinned him. 
        “What happened?” Luke asked, tossing a pair of pawcuffs to his partner while keeping his gun aimed at their quarry.
        “Little bastard bit me,” Luke grumbled as he pinioned the smaller fox’s paws behind his back and cuffed him.  He hauled Sarkozy to his feet.  “C’mon, you little fraud, on your feet.”
        Sarkozy got up, swaying on his feet as he hung his head, his tail drooping.  He mumbled something, and both Luke and Jack stepped a bit closer.  “What’s that?  I didn’t hear you,” Luke said.
        Their prisoner spit out some dead leaves, swallowed and said a bit louder in heavily accented English, “Please, for the love of God . . . kill me.”



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