Ruby was onyx-black and lustrous; she looked like a shadowy, lithe version of a standard hippo. She stood five feet tall at the shoulder, about the height of a standard Carolina Marsh Tacky—although horses, Tackies included, were rare ever since the Marsh Expansion Project had rendered their thin legs a liability on the muddy, pocked roads. Her barrel chest swung low to the ground over short legs, perfect for propelling her through marshy waters when her rider needed to round up wayward hippos on the ranch. She grumbled on land, but could carry Houndstooth up to ten miles overland between dips in the water—another marker of her superior breeding (her cousins could only do six miles, and that only under duress). Fortunately, she was rarely out of the water that long.
“I know, girlie. I shouldn’t have left you out here by yourself for so long. But you know I just can’t resist blue-eyed boys.” Houndstooth patted Ruby’s flank and she let out a little rumble, standing under him and dripping freely for a few moments. She lifted her broad, flat nose briefly and yawned wide. Her jaw swung open by nearly 180 degrees, revealing her wickedly sharp, gold-plated tusks. They gleamed in the late-afternoon sun. She snapped her mouth shut and lowered her head until her nose nearly brushed the ground as she prepared to head home.
“Yes, alright, I know. Let’s go home, Rubes, and you can keep your judgments to yourself. We need to pack up.”
Houndstooth swayed with her rolling gait as she began to trot. He rubbed a loving hand over her leathery, hairless, blue-black flank, feeling the muscles shifting under the skin. Ruby was sleeker than most hippos, but not by much. Though her livestock cousins had been bred for marbling, her sub-Saharan ancestors carried little excess fat. Their rotund shape belied merciless speed and agility, and Ruby was the apex of those ancient ideals: bred for maneuverability, fearlessness, and above all, stealth. She was dangerous in the water: no gulls dared to plague the marshes she wallowed in, and if one was so foolish as to try to rest on her back, it would quickly be reduced to a cautionary tale for other gulls to tell their children.
“Eight thousand dollars, Ruby. We’ll be able to buy our own little patch of marshland, maybe get you a bull.” Ruby huffed, her nostrils—set squarely on top of her nearly rectangular snout—flaring with impatience. Her round ears didn’t turn toward the sound of his voice, but they flapped irritably. Houndstooth chuckled. “Of course I’m joking. You’re past breeding age anyway, Ruby-roo.”
It was another thirty minutes to the marshside tavern where Houndstooth had a room. It would have been forty by horseback, but Ruby’s trot was quicker than a horse’s, even with her frequent detours to dip back into the river. Houndstooth knew when he’d picked her out that she’d grow up to be more temperamental than a slower hop would have been, but her agility had made her spirited temperament worthwhile.
She’d saved his life enough times that he figured she’d earned the right to her opinions.
When they got back to the tavern, Houndstooth unlatched the kneeling saddle and the saddlebags from Ruby’s harness and set her loose in the marsh. “I’ll see you in the morning, Ruby. We’ll head out around dawn, alright?” She waited, already half-submerged in the water, for him to rub her snout. Her ears twitched back and forth, impatient, and she blew a bubble at him. He laughed, earning a long, slow blink of her slanting, hooded eyes. “Okay, alright, I know. You’ve got places to be, grass to eat.” Houndstooth crouched and put a hand on either side of her broad snout.
“You’re my girl, Ruby-roo,” he cooed, rubbing her whiskers. “And you’re the best gull-damned hippo there is.”
With that, Ruby sank into the water and was gone.
*
Houndstooth propped his feet on a chair as he watched Nadine work the room. She was in her element: sliding full mugs of beer down the gleaming bar, promising to arm wrestle drunk patrons, letting customers buy her shots of whiskey to share with them (she always poured herself iced tea and pocketed the cash). He loved to see her efficiency. He’d told her many times that she would make an excellent hopper, but she always said she preferred to herd malodorous beasts that paid in cash.
She dropped off a steaming mug of Earl Grey—brewed from his own personal supply—and straightened his hat. “Where’ve you been, Winslow? Out with some new girl?”
He winked at her, and she tapped the brim of his hat to set it back askance.
“Ah, some new boy. Green eyes or brown on this one?”
“Blue,” he said, toasting her. “Blue as the Gulf, and twice as hot.”
He pulled out a silk handkerchief and bent to polish a scuff on his left boot. His timing was fortuitous. As he bent down, the door to the tavern burst inward and a man nearly the size of Ruby barrelled inside.
“What jack-livered apple-bearded son of a horse’s ass,” the man bellowed, “let a fucking hippo loose in a private marsh?”
Houndstooth did not remove his boots from the chair as he waved his silk handkerchief over his head. “Yoo-hoo,” he said in a high falsetto, before dropping his voice down to its usual baritone. “I believe I’m the jack-livered apple-bearded son of a horse’s ass you’re looking for.” With the hand not holding the square of paisley silk, he unbuttoned his pin-striped jacket. “What would you like to say to me about my Ruby?”
“That’s your hippo?” the man said, crossing the now-silent room in a few sweeping strides. As he came closer, Houndstooth did a quick calculation. He added the bristling beard to the muscles straining at a flannel shirt and the shedding flakes of marsh grass, and he came to the obvious conclusion: marshjack. The man, it was safe to assume, spent his days scything marsh grasses to send to inland ranches. His accent was unplaceable, a combination of tight-jawed California vowels and loose Southern consonants. Houndstooth decided that he must have come South during the boom and taken up marshjacking after the bust. “That tar-skinned brass-toothed dog-eating monster out there is yours?” The man looked down at Houndstooth, who was still in his chair. “Who the hell let you on a hopper ranch, anyway? I’d like to have a word with the damn fool what thought to let you—”
“Dog-eating, did you say?”
“That’s right, you yellow-bellied bastard,” the man growled. “That monster of yours done et my Petunia.”
“And what,” Houndstooth inquired, easing his feet off their perch, “was your Petunia doing in that private marsh? Certainly not helping you hunt ducks on private property, I would hope?”
Everyone in the bar was watching them, speechless. Nadine leaned forward over the bar—the private marsh in question was her property, and so were the ducks that swam in it. The ducks she raised from eggs and sold at the market in order to pay the taxes on her bar.
“That ain’t none of your business, you slick fuck,” the marshjack spat. “What’s your business is that my Petunia’s dead because of your painted-up hippo bitch.”
He swung his arm. Houndstooth registered the glint of metal.
What happened next happened very quickly indeed.
Houndstooth dropped forward out of his chair and into a crouch, and the knife sailed over his head.
The marshjack’s momentum carried him forward and he stumbled, his leg brushing Houndstooth’s shoulder as he put out a hand to catch himself before he could hit the ground.