“He-ey. Been a long time,” says the bartender without looking up from the glass he’s been polishing.

The newcomer takes a seat at the empty bar. “I can see you’re having a busy night.”

“Oh, yeah. The usual?”

“Nope.”

The bartender looks up. “You on duty, then?”

The other man nods and briefly fingers the brim of his hat.

The bartender nods at him. “You are allowed to take the hat off. No whiteys in here to mistake you for the Devil.”

The other man glares. He leaves the hat on.

After a pause, he asks, “So how have things been?”

It is not small talk. The bartender finally sets down his glass and runs his finger around the rim. It emits a horrific squeak.

The bartender, finally, shrugs. “Normal as can be. You know. People scrabble by out here, I see way too many of the townsfolk in my establishment on a regular basis, and, oh yeah, we have a witch.”

As if on cue, a weird air smothers the bar. The man in the hat rises slowly from the barstool. He follows the bartender’s stare to the back window.

Something not quite an animal darts off into the shadows.

“He’s heading towards someone’s house,” the bartender calls. The man in the hat waves an acknowledgement as he darts out the door.

The bartender goes back to polishing his glass. Half an hour, a scream, and a gunshot later, he puts it down for good this time and saunters outside.

The man in the hat stands over the skin-covered body of a man. Dead and in the open, the Yeenaaldlooshii looks like a drunken frat boy playing a ghoulish kind of dress-up. The bartender walks up and kicks at the last few shredded strips of decaying skin. They disintegrate in a foul-smelling puff of dust.

“You know, I’m almost insulted,” Coyote says.

The man in the hat holsters his gun, looking wry. “Like that’s unusual, First Scolder.”

Coyote laughs. “You’re off-duty now, right, soldier? Want that drink?”

The man shakes his head.

Coyote laughs again, a laugh with an edge. “Me neither.” And with a jaunty wave, he turns and heads away from the decrepit town, away from the skinwalker’s corpse, away from haunted things.

The buffalo soldier watches him go, and then, when he’s sure he’s out of Coyote’s sight, tips his hat.

Somewhere in the wilderness at the outskirts of town, a coyote laughs.