Scalped Book 5: High Lonesome (#25-29)

"I swear to you I'll save your son" - Catcher

Continuing with our look at Scalped, the crime thriller set on the fictional Prairie Rose Indian reservation. The backstory is that in 1975 two FBI agents were murdered on the rez by one of a group of four Indian radicals, Lincoln Red Crow, Gina Bad Horse, a man known as Catcher and the one man found guilty of the crime, Lawrence Belcourt who is serving life in prison. Another FBI agent called Nitz has fixated on bringing the other three to justice and has placed Gina's son Dashiell who is also an FBI agent undercover on the rez to find any murders he can pin on Red Crow.  Gina has also been murdered by Catcher, although only we the audience know he did it right now.  Dashiell is having a hard time coping with the stress of being undercover, where one wrong move will mean his death and in the previous book began a heroin habit to help deal with it.  Red Crow has headaches of his own, his new casino was part-funded by money from an East Asian criminal gang and their leader Johnny Tongue sent his sadistic enforcer Mr. Brass to deal with any extra-curricular crimes that might threaten his investments.  At the end of the previous book, Red Crow discovered Mr. Brass gouging out the eye of Dino Poor Bear and broke Mr.Brass's nose before having him arrested.  This plotline goes on hold for this volume as we get to see just how close to bottom Dash's life has quickly become as well as some one-shots exploring already established characters further as we hit the halfway point of the series. Artists are R.M. Guera who did issues one, four and five.  Davide Furno did two and Francesco Francavilla three.

THIS THEN IS THE REZ: An unseen narrator tells us that in 1876 Crazy Horse dreamed himself into the world and Custer got what was coming to him on the banks of the Little Bighorn.  In 1890 the Lakota believe the "Ghost Dance" will protect them from bullets.  They were wrong and at a place called Wounded Knee there is a massacre.  By the end of the century the Lakota warchiefs have all been murdered.  The Black Hills ripped of their gold and a great reservation reduced to tattered scraps of the least desirable land. Then the Christians came and beat them for speaking their native tongue and worshipping the wrong gods.  And then ultimately everyone forget them. But even now, over one hundred years later "they're still here".

The narrator is revealed to be a black man travelling onto the rez via a coach.  Now he's a confidence trickster who goes by many names and his real one is never told us, so to make quoting him easier I will call him "Styles" the first name he takes on in the story as he talks to an Indian travelling back to the rez, asking him why they stuck around here all those years. The Indian says it was so they could keep themselves sovereign and also keep their culture alive, "we fight back every day by surviving".

He asks Styles if he is an anthropologist, Styles just says he is a history buff.  The Indian introduces himself as "Bob Winslow" and tells Styles they have a lot of history here.  There's Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn and the Red Cloud school and also a new casino.  Styles says he might check the casino out.

"Styles"

Later as he checks into a hotel under the name "Winslow Griffith" he thinks that it's sad how that old man believes his own bullshit about "fighting back against the white man" by staying out in the middle of nowhere, dirt poor and forgotten. He himself escaped a poverty stricken childhood and believes the problem is that the Indians have "never learned to deal with the white man".  He opens his cases to reveal make-up kits and various disguise accessories.

He's gone from street hustles and email scams to multi-million dollar swindles that involve whole teams.  He was a confidence trickster and swindler, a loanshark and pimp.  He walks into the casino and sits down at his favourite game, blackjack.  He counts cards but is careful to do it in such a way he is undetected not always successfully.  Because if you are caught in a joint run by the likes of Red Crow you're in serious trouble.

Styles: "Back in the old days, I never woulda set foot in a shithole casino like this.  Especially not one run by a mad dog like Red Crow.  But things change.  When times is hard, you do what you gotta... just to get by."

Later he is admiring a pole dancer as he thinks about the most successful crew he ever ran, but one is in jail and the other dead and he's "working Injun joints in the middle of fucking nowhere". He pays the pole dancer to come back to his hotel room and have sex with him.

We cut to them post-coital.  She asks if his name is really "Moses Johnson?"  Styles says his mother was a religious freak.  He thinks that actually she was a trailer park whore.  She asks if he has kids, he says no while thinking "two or three at least".  She says she does have kids and needs to get home.  He offers her another two-hundred bucks to stay the night. He thinks:

Styles: "Fuck your kids.  You're mine now.  I bought you".

He says they don't have to have sex while he thinks of all the degrading things he wants to do to her and she can do to him. He lies about what he does when she asks then says he's never met an Indian before while thinking "tell me your secrets whore, so I can steal them.  Just keep talking so I can keep lying".

Next night he is made-up to look different and is back playing cards.   He's narrates that card counting needs to be done by a team, one counts the cards until he knows the deck is "hot" and then signals another player who swoops in and lays down the big money.  When done by yourself you have to strategically lose hands so the house doesn't get wise, "unfortunately for me, if there's one thing I ain't never been... it's patient".  And he gets a menacing hand on his shoulder.

Styles gambling away.

That night he is back with the same sex-worker.  His getting caught in the casino has affected his sexual performance and he can't get it up.   When she natters on about her being in stable employment, he repeatedly calls her a whore in his thoughts, "you beautiful little whore."  He asks her why she stays here, it's where the government left her people to die.  It's like the Jews deciding to settle at Auschwitz.

Styles: "I want to take you away from here.  I want to tell you my secrets and I want you to love me for them. I have no one.  I want you."

But as his thoughts run out of control he realises, "now I've gone and done it... now I'm even lying to myself."  She sees all the make-up in he bathroom and asks him about it but he brushes the question off to try having sex again.

Next night he's "whited up" and is playing cards while he thinks this is no way for him to be living.  He needs one last big score and this time he won't blow it on cars, pills and women. He fantasizes about "one last score and I can leave the nickel and dime life forever."  Then Dash stumbles past him and upon seeing him Styles whispers "holy fucking shit" to himself.

Outside on the payphone he rounds up some mates to help him with something he has now just planned, he just has a couple of loose ends to clean up and they need to get down here in two days.  Back in his hotel room he starts cleaning every surface as the sex-worker lies in bed watching with bemusement.  He tells her it's time to go and puts a pillow over her faces and shoots her in the head, the pillow acting as a silencer.

Styles blackmails Dash.

Then he goes back to the casino on the day his big score is planned and confronts Dash who is obviously as high as a fucking kite on smack.  Styles says he remembers Dash and he knows he's a fed, he busted him three years ago, and who must be here investigating Red Crow and if he doesn't help him rob the casino tonight he will "rat you out to Red Crow in a second.  I will sign your fucking death warrant".  And he tells a barely coherent Dash to come with him, right now.  And if you want to find out what happened next, that tale is told in the final issue of this collection so keep reading!

BEEN DOWN SO GODDAMN LONG THAT IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME: We join Britt "Diesel" Fillenworth in prison due to his murder of a woman and her twelve year old son.  And he's praying for them.  He also prays for his people, the Kickapoo, who never accepted him.  He prays for his mom who killed herself when he was ten.  He prays for his father even though he was beaten by him. 

Diesel: "About the only person I don't pray for is myself... never have.  Me and God got something of an arrangement going.  He fucks with me from on high.  And I endure.  I endure like a motherfucker.  So bring it on, God, you cocksucker you.  Diesel can hack it. Amen."

In the other cells the Indians in there mock his prayer and one-sixteenth Kickapoo identity.  They say him murdering a woman and child sounds like what a white man would do. Diesel grits his teeth and stays silent.

We go back twenty-four years and we see young Britt armed with a bow and arrow playing on his own.  Some young Indian men appear and ask what he's doing and he tells them he is being a Kickapoo brave. They say he's pretending then but Britt says he's not pretending, he's one-sixteenth Kickapoo.  Or he used to be until him and his mom got kicked of the rez because he didn't have enough Kickapoo blood.

Young Britt, desperate to be an Indian,

One of the Indian gang says he has the makings of a fine Indian and he'll talk to the head of his tribe about making him a member.  Britt just needs to be there tomorrow with a "membership fee". Britt enthusiastically agrees.  He's living with has dad now his mother is dead, his father is a deadbeat who "never taught me nothin' in life except how to take a beating".  He takes his father's money stash then goes to bed thinking he'll be "a real Indian. Acknowledged and accepted.  At last."

Next day he returns to the meeting place jumping up and down with excitement at the thought of joining their tribe which appears to be the Commanche.  He starts spouting all sorts of trivia, but the gang leader takes his money and they go and buy cigarettes. They tell him to wait there while they go to a secret tribal meeting.  So Britt says he'll wait and they drive off. He waits. And waits.  And waits.  Finally come the night he realises he's been tricked and trudges sadly back to the place he and his dad live in.

Once there he is confronted by his father who yells at him for stealing his money and thrashes Britt with his belt.  Next day a bruised and battered Britt confronts the men who took his money and attacks the leader with a knife.  He is taken down easily and the gang leader says that'll cost him another fifty bucks.  But Britt tells them where they can find a lot of money and pot too, just please stop hitting him.

He returns to the trailer.  His father is passed out drunk so Britt takes his gun and puts it by his hand. Then he quietly calls the police saying someone broke into the house.  We cut to twelve minutes later.  Britt is standing watching the Indian gang being arrested for breaking into the trailer and killing his dad.  He had told them when to come and emptied his father's gun of bullets so he'd definitely die in the shoot-out.  The cops haven't told Britt yet, they think he probably thought his life couldn't get any worse.  But he's alone now.  Britt just grins to himself and in that moment, Diesel is born.

The birth of a bad guy.

Back in the preset he contemplates the fact that after his dad's death he "gave up on the idea of ever really belonging anywhere anymore".  He was sent to an orphanage and we cut between his first day their as a kid and his exercise in the prison yard in the present.  He stabbed a kid who tried to bully him in the eye with a pencil, while the Indian that taunted him does it again and Diesel smashes his face in before using a shiv to scalp him.

Diesel: "You motherfuckers will learn to fear me, I promise you.  Even if I gotta scalp every last fucking one of you. The Diesel has spoken".

And with those defiant words, this chapter ends.

THE BALLAD OF BAYLIS EARL NITZ: It's time for some backstory on Nitz whose vendetta is fueling the plot and why he's kept that vendetta alive over thirty-odd years.  It begins with Diesel in prison talking to Agent Newsome.  He wants to know why he's still in jail and Newsome says he killed a woman and a twelve-year old boy, "we can't just snap our fingers and get you out of there."  Diesel demands to talk to Nitz but Newsome says he's away on business.  Actually he's in the room perusing a porn magazine. 

Diesel hangs up in a rage saying Nitz owes him after what he got from Red Crow's office, and Nitz comments that maybe he should stop scalping other prisons if he wants to get out.  Newsome asks what it was Diesel got for him but Nitz changes the subject and asks about Dash who he's told hasn't checked in for two weeks.  Nitz decides to fuck it, he'll sort it all out when he gets back and leaves.

As he packs he thinks that he didn't used to believe in spiritual journeys, but the trip he's doing now counts as one. It's not about God or anything:

Nitz: "This is spiritual in the sense that men who've been through war together know spiritual.  This is the kinda shit you don't talk about you just do."

He's been waiting a long time to do it.  And we see him thirty-two years ago at the murder scene of the two agents killed by one of the Dog Soldiers in tears, swearing he'll kill every one of "those fucking redskin cocksuckers".
Back in the present he visits his first ex-wife, Marci.  She tells him to fuck off, he says he was in town and thought he's drop by.  She says after thirty years, really?  He says she doesn't have to let him in as she lets him in.  They have lunch together as they make small talk, he has two sons with her who don't ever ask about him.  She then asks him "so you wanna fuck or what?"  He grins and says "I thought you'd never ask."

Nitz and ex-wife.

Eleven minutes later they finish copulating and she tells him he can't stay, if he wants to be coddled he can try his other ex-wives.  There are five, though one died a year ago and he celebrated by finding the ugliest prostitute he could and fucked her for three days straight.

Marci starts checking out his scars, one where his dead wife stabbed him, one where she stomped him, one from a mechanical bull and booze and several bullet wounds.  Then there is the long scar across his belly that causes Marci to turn her back and tell him to get out.

He silently gets dressed thinking that scar is the one that still scares her, "it's the reason she left me."  A criminal called Maggart took him down and slashed him so deeply he nearly disemboweled him before leaving him to die.   But two agents found him, Robert Bayer and Steve Berntson and saved his life.   They were old school, met in Vietnam joined the bureau under Hoover.  They visited him every day in hospital, more than Marci did.

Things changed after that between him and her.  He couldn't let it go and when Maggart got let off on a techincality he was waiting outside the courtroom about to shoot him.  But Bayer and Berntson stopped him, "they saved my life a second time.  Six months later they were dead".  They were the two FBI agents murdered on the rez. He thinks that those two men were saints, good family men, great lawmen and the best friends he ever had.  

Nitz: "And on June 26, 1975, somebody shot them both in the face, and then took a knife and cut their fuckin' scalps off.  Somebody will pay for that.  I'll see to it. No matter what the courts say.  No matter what it takes. What lines I have to cross.  What laws I have to break.  No matter who gets hurt."

He reaches the graveyard and walks over to their graves holding an evidence bag.  He mulls that he could have moved on a long time ago.  Transferred to a cushy job and retired.  The young agents are all chasing Jihadists now, "they got their war on terror.  I got mine."  He isn't going anywhere until his friends have been avenged and their killer has been made to answer.

Nitz at his friends graves.

We flashback to four years ago.  Red Crow is shackled on his knees and Nitz is holding a gun to his head.   He yells at Red Crow to tell him that he killed his friends or he'll shoot him in his lying face.  Tell him he shot and scalped them.  He's seen a photo of his office and two scalps in his trophy case.  Are they his friends scalps?  Red Crow just grins silently at him and no matter what Nitz threatens, he doesn't say a word.

In the present he is sitting drinking beer by their graves.  He wonders if he should have killed Red Crow there and then but instead he intends to tear down everything Red Crow worked to build, eventually he'd admit what he's done and then he'd die.

Marci comes up behind him saying she knew she'd find him there.   She says those two agents were a "horrible influence" on him.  Their wives don't miss them as much as Nitz does. "Fuck their wives" retorts Nitz. Marci says he knows he sends money to their kids whereas he hasn't seen his own children in years.  Nitz says she doesn't understand.

She asks what happened to Maggart, Nitz says he moved away and he never saw him again.  Marci says she knows when he is lying and he's going to pay for the things he's done.  "You were a good man once.   I remember that.  Do you?" she tells him.  Nitz says Bob and Bernie were good men, "they're all that matters to me now."

Marci says they've been dead thirty years now, where does that leave Nitz?  "With a goddamn job to do" says Nitz.  And what will happen after that she asks?  She came to remind him he has family and if he wants to catch up he still has the time.  Because no matter what, these men will still be dead and Nitz will be alone.  Nitz says without them he'd have died a long time ago, she says he did.  And she walks away.

Yeah real saints.

We then get a flashback to good ol'Bob and Bernie showing Nitz a "surprise".  They have Maggart tied up in the boot of a car.  They stopped Nitz killing him outside the courthouse because that was the wrong way of doing it.  But Nitz still deserves his revenge and they offer him a gun.  But Nitz asks for a knife and Maggart screams and screams and screams.

Back in the present Nitz takes the scalps out of the evidence bag and with a trowel buries them on the two graves.  He tells them he hasn't got their killer yet, but the day of their revenge is coming.  Having finished, he thinks maybe he should say a few words but all he can think of is "fuck it".  He fucks everyone from Marci, through to Red Crow, the bureau, everyone. "Fuck'em all.  Who fucking needs 'em.  Not me, that's for goddamn sure." And that brings this chapter to a close.

I'LL NEVER GET OUTTA THIS WORLD ALIVE: We begin with tribal cop Officer Falls Down returning to the rez after his trip up to Kansas to talk with Lawrence Belcourt. He has a murder to attend to, it's the sex-worker "Styles" killed in the first chapter. Also attending the scene is FBI Agent Newsome who says women are dropping like flies round here.  Falls Down says it wasn't an Indian who did this, it was a black man who rented the room.

Falls Down comes back to the rez.

He snipes at Newsome saying he must be what passes for FBI these days.  He asks where Nitz is and is told he's away on business.

Falls Down: "Whoring it up, most likely. He still got that thing for underage girls?"

Newsome asks who the woman was, Falls Down says she was a dancer at the strip club called Margarette.  Newsome asks if this has anything to do with what happened at the casino afew nights ago.  Falls Down doesn't know what he's talking about, he was away when whatever it was happened.

Newsome asks how the Gina Bad Horse murder is going, Falls Down says about as well as their investigation into Red Crow.  He wants to talk to Nitz because he thinks Gina's murder is linked to the FBI murders in '75.  He then asks Newsome if he ever worked a murder before. He suspects Newsome wasn't top of the class which is why he ended up out here and he's working a murder now so get to it.

We cut to Lawrence in prison.  He walks out into the yard and speaks with the leader of the black gang in there.  He tells the man he knows Red Crow pays him to look out for Lawrence.  The man won't admit to it but say Lawrence shouldn't rock the boat.  But Lawrence tells him to get a message to Red Crow, "tell him I know who killed Gina Bad Horse".

Back with Falls Down he goes into his office with the files on the FBI murders with a post it note from Newsome telling him  not to ask him for anything again, "asshole".  Falls Down smiles and says to himself "thanks Newsome, but you're still a prick." He then goes over the files in detail.  The FBI agents came under fire when driving onto land occupied by the Dog Soldier Society.   When more agents arrive on scene the agents are dead from multiple gunshots, all native suspects have fled.  In 1978 three are acquitted of the murders due to lack of evidence and eye witness testimony.   In 1980 Lawrence Belcourt was convicted, witnesses who say he bragged about the murders later recanted  claiming FBI intimidation. The debate over who fired the shots continues to this day, no one present at the murders have ever spoken publically about it and presumably never will.

The FBI killer finally revealed.

We then get a flashback to the murders.  The agents and Red Crow exchange fire.  Lawrence is terrified and Gina is pleading with Red Crow to stop shooting.  Catcher is hit but only wounded.   The two agents sit injured against their car having thrown their guns away and surrended.  Gina demands to know why they shot at them, the FBI say they started it.  Lawrence tries to calm the situation as an angry Gina points a gun at them. Red Crow also tries to calm Gina down and she turns away from the agents to argue.  Suddenly the FBI agents are taken out with one head-shot each courtesy of Catcher.  Gina runs to a tree and leans against it to vomit.

In the present Catcher is standing by Gina's grave.  He apologises to her saying "it was all my fault.  Always was.  I wish I'd listened to you."  He says he never should have shot the agents and let Lawrence take the fall.  If he hadn't maybe he never would have lost her, "I'm sorry I had to kill you Gina".

Catcher: "I always loved you, you know.  I dreamed about you for years before we even met.  I wish just once I'd had the courage to tell you that.  Maybe if I had you woulda listened. Maybe we could have saved each other. Maybe you'd still be alive."

In the past, Catcher watches Red Crow and Gina embrace and kiss.  Lawrence is panicking.  And then Catcher takes his knife and scalps the two agents, "you wanted a war, didn't ya Lincoln?  Well now you got it. Hoka Hey motherfuckers!"

Catcher escalates what he did.

In the present Catcher muses that they'll be coming for him soon and may already be on their way.  This narration takes place over Falls Down reading the files and wondering whatever happened to Catcher.  Catcher says that a Bad Horse has to lead if the rez is ever going to make it out of the darkness.  He promises he'll do anything to save Dash and this chapter ends.

ROCK BOTTOM, POP. 1: We jump back a few days to "Styles" and his plan to use Dash to rob the casino.  We see that after sex with Carol he smoked heroin, then went out to buy more and the dealer gave him a hypodermic loaded with heroin as an extra for being a good customer.  Sat wasted at the casino bar, Styles tells him it's time to rob the casino.  Dash is completely out of it though.

He staggers over to the garage door where the armoured truck will be coming in and opens it before collapsing.  One of Style's gang says Dash is in no fit state, he'll blow it for them.  The door opens and the security guard asks what the hell, and one of the gang stabs him through the nose into his brain. Angrily Styles tells Dash if he fucks up again he'll join the guard in death.

Dash starts remembering things. In the army, as a kid seeing his dad doing blow, just a few hours ago smoking drugs with Carol.  As the gang load up on cash he slumps to the ground cuffed to a rail. The rest of the gang move out with the cash, but Styles stays to deal with Dash.  He notes how the undercover life seems to have taken it's toll on Dash so his death seems somewhat inevitable.  Dash asks who he is:

Styles: "I'm Wesley Willeford.  I lie for a living.  But now it's time for a moment of truth."

He turns and points his gun at Dash.  And somehow the hypodermic needle full of drugs that Dash had in his pocket gets stuck in Styles.  He'd swiped Dash's jacket after the security guard was killed and got blood on his so he accidentally stuck himself that way.

Very convenient.

Anyway the syringe wasn't just filled with heroin, the dealer remembered Dash from a bust a few weeks ago.  So he put rat poison in his little extra.  Styles collapses, foaming at the mouth.  Security bang on the door, Styles starts firing at Dash who manages to dodge the flailing bullet aiming.  He keeps trying to say Dash is FBI but by the time the guards get in he's died and Dash is suddenly feeling very, very sober.

Released from his cuff and knowing there is the rest of the gang out there who know he's FBI, he takes a shotgun and walks out to where they were waiting and methodically blows away each one of them.  Then he walks off.  Red Crow arrives on the scene and picks up the syringe and asks where Dash is.  He's gone back to Carol.  He wakes her up and says he has something important to talk about, "what do you know about the FBI?"

Dash clears up loose ends.

Well as the series reaches the mid-point we get a volume of revelations and character history that help explain why certain people are acting the way they are. First of all we see how Dash has crumbled under the stress of the undercover life spending his days stoned out of his mind.  It's interesting that it takes a man who lies for a living to exploit a man who is living a lie.  Dash is in desperate need of someone to talk to hence is decision at the end to open up to Carol, and we'll see how she takes that in the next volume.  We also finally get the true story on who killed the two FBI agents that fateful day, the mysterious Catcher who seems to live entirely off the grid as even Falls Down, who is doggedly pursuing leads in Gina's murder case, doesn't know where to find him.  We also get his confession of killing Gina as well, presumbably because she was going to out him as the murderer.  Despite all his mysticism, self pity and apologies he's well... kind of a dick. Talking of dicks, we get some insight into Diesel and Nitz finally.  Nitz comes across as repugnant and corrupt and the men he sees as "saints" party to a sadistic murder they set up.  Diesel is more interesting, as I said you can see the precise moment the enthusiastic young kid died and the Diesel persona began.  It does give his character more depth although it doesn't excuse his actions one bit.  The vast majority of people who grow up in shitty households don't turn into full blown psychopaths, Britt unfortunately was one who did. Jason Aaron taking time to flesh out all the major characters is what gives this work its richness and depth, and the chapters drawn by R.M Guera continue to be impressive. Next volume we return to Red Crow's dealings with Mr. Brass and the Hmongs in "The Gnawing".

Scalped Book 4 : The Gravel In Your Guts (#19-24)

"An honourable man sure.  But that doesn't make me a nice guy" - Red Crow

Continuing our look at the American Indian crime noir story Scalped, a Vertigo title by writer Jason Aaron and artist R.M Guera.  Set on the fictional Prairie Rose reservation where a new casino has opened, the backbone of the story is a vendetta by FBI agent Nitz against the one-time members of an Indian radical group The Dog Soldiers.  In 1975 two FBI agents who had come on to the rez for reasons unkown were shot dead.  Present at the murders were Lincoln Red Crow, Gina Bad Horse, a man known as Catcher and Lawrence Belcourt.  Although all four were caught, only Lawrence who was tried in a different jurisdiction was found guilty.  Now, thirty years later Nitz has fixated on linking Red Crow with a murder, any murder, to have him put away for good and he is using Gina's son Dashiell, an FBI agent going back to the rez he grew up on to do the investigating while undercover.  He has another agent in play as well, the one-sixteenth Kickapoo white man called Diesel who in the previous book murdered a sex worker then gunned down her twelve year old son when he came to seek revenge.  This hit Dash hard as he had taken the kid under his wing and taught him how to shoot while bonding with him.  Another on-going plot thread is finding the murderer of Gina, who was revealed to be Catcher at the end of the last volume. Red Crow is now tribal leader and owner of the new casino but has headaches of his own in the form of Mr. Brass, an enforcer for the East Asian criminal gang who part funded the new casino who is here to deal with any threats to the place.  Dash has hooked up with Carol, Red Crow's estranged daughter and in this volume we'll find out just why she hates her father so much as he tries to deal the many problems besetting him.

THE BOUDOIR STOMP: Art by Davide Furno.  We begin twenty-four years in the past.  A young Dash is watching his father Wade chopping out lines of coke on a mirror as he rants about the government wanting people to watch "make-believe shit" so they don't open their eyes as to what is going on in the world.  When Dash asks what he is doing he tells him it's "grown-up stuff" and he never wants to cath Dash doing it and making the same mistakes he has.  Gina comes home and screams at him to get out, then hugs Dash saying she's sorry he had to see that.

Dash's deadbeat dad Wade.

In the present, Carol's husband is moving out under the watchful eye of Dash.  He says Dash is welcome to her, "I'm done with her. Had my fill.  Bitch is all yours."  Once he is gone, Dash goes inside and he and Carol make love.  When they have finished she thanks Dash for coming over, she was afraid her husbnd would beat the shit out of her when she told him to go.  She'll be divorcing him when she can "afford to".

She says the only reason she married him was because he was white and she wanted to "piss off my dad."  And she hoped he might be the one to take her away from the rez.  Dash asks if she had ever come close to getting away and she says she had in the past, the man was called Graham and worked for her father. "He died" she says when Dash asks what happened to him.  Dash asks if that was when she and Red Crow stopped talking, she doesn't answer but says she hears Dash is living in his mother's place now.  They both get up to go to work.

We then cut back and forth between Dash at his job on the tribal police and Carol as a waitress in a local diner.  Then we jump to Dash watching from afar as the dead twelve year old boy Shelton's family mourn at his grave.  Red Crow says he thought he'd find Dash here.  He tells Dash that he knows the last couple of weeks have been tough on him but he's handled it well and now he's offering him a promotion.

Red Crow: "You'll be working directly under me.  No more of this tribal cop bullshit. You'll work out of the casino.  You'll have your own crew.  Your duties will consist of whatever the fuck I say."

He tells Dash to take some time off to think it over.  As for Carol he is fine with him fucking her but he better not pick up any of her bad habits, because then he'll become a liability and "that, I will not abide."  He walks off leaving Dash alone in the graveyard.

Shelton's funeral.

Carol is having another annoying shift with people propositioning her and feeling her ass up.  Then she sees a woman feeding a baby and a sad look crosses her face.  After work she goes and buys some drugs and goes home where Dash finds her and they make love again. They contemplate each other in silence as we jump backwards and forwards between how they think of each other and what they are coping with.  Whatever else they may be they do seem to have feelings for each other based on more than just lust.

Strong feelings but can't spit them out.

She tells him she wants to get high, and Dash leaves.  Carol cooks up the black tar heroin she brought earlier.  She falls backwards in a drug induced reverie and flashes back to seven years ago.  She is heavily pregnant and her boyfriend Graham appears and says it's time to get in the car they are leaving right now.

She protests that she isn't packed and sees bullet holes in the car, he says he'll explain everything but she needs to get in the car,  She sees a bag with lots of packages of either coke or heroin in the back.  She realises he's stolen that from her father.

Graham: "This is the key to everything we've always dreamed about, baby.  Getting off the rez.  Starting a new life.  I did this for you Carol.  I did this for our family. Now get in the fuckin' car".

They go speeding past the edge of the reservation and Graham whoops that they are finally free.  Carol is unsure saying if her father catches him he'll kill him, but Graham says her father is history.  She feels the baby kick and puts his hand on her so he can feel their daughter moving.  As he tells their unborn child all the things she'll have suddenly the back windscreen is shot out.

No escape from the rez.

A car draws level with theirs firing upon them and Graham loses control and crashes it.  He is killed and Carol takes a bullet to the stomach. As she cries in agony the men who ran them down come over and when they realise who she is, call Red Crow. We cut back to Carol in the present, still drugged up, holding her hands over her stomach.

Dash is drinking heavily in a bar when a woman comes up to him.  She slaps him saying he got her nephew killed, she shouts that she was going to take Shelton away from this place and he went and taught him how to shoot, "you got him killed, Bad Horse! It's all your goddamn fault!"  He says nothing as she is escorted off the premises, he just reaches for his drink.  Later that night he drunkenly contemplates suicide and holds his gun to his head several times, then says to himself, "no.. it ain't all my fucking fault."

Back in Carol's past she is drinking away after getting out of hospital.  Red Crow approaches and offers to buy her one. He said he'd tried to see her in hospital but she had told the nurses not to let him in.  She asks what the fuck he wants, and he says "I want to tell you I'm sorry".

She explodes at him saying is he really sorry for killing Graham?   Red Crow says he didn't know she was in the car or that she was involved with that "motherfucker." He didn't even know she was pregnant.   She says fine he's sorry, "now get the fuck out."  As he leaves he asks if the baby was gonna be a girl or... she cuts him off shouting "get the fuck out!"

She orders more whiskey but a creepy man sitting at the bar says he has something that can really get her fucked up.  She says she can't fuck him, can't fuck anyone for another six weeks.  He says her mouth still works doesn't it?  He then says he's kidding but if she does want to party his name is... she says she doesn't care what his name is "let's just go." And we see her again in the present in her squalid house smoking heroin off tin foil silently.

Dash has gone to White Haven Sheriff's Office to see Diesel, the man who murdered Shelton. He sits down and Diesel whispers that Dash knows they are both working for the same team now.   Dash says he knows and Diesel demands to know "when the fuck you guys getting me outta here?"  Diesel says as far as he is concerned he can rot in this place.

Dash and Diesel talk.

They have a short back and forth where Dash accuses him of shooting Shelton down like a dog and Diesel saying it was self defence.  And him killing his mother was an accident, she liked getting choked and he got carried away.  They regard each other in silence then Dash tells him:

Dashiell: "If I ever see you outside of these walls again... I'll kill you.  I swear to fucking Christ".

Diesel laughs at that saying the kid had more balls than Dash does.  He doesn't think Dash is cut out for this work, "a blind man could see it".  As Dash goes to leave, Diesel says he's Dash's best friend on the rez.  Red Crow and Nitz would feed him to the dogs at the drop of a hat, "without me, who the fuck else you got left to turn to?"

He goes to Carol's place and they lie together just holding each other for a while.  Then they get up and Carol starts cooking up more heroin.  As she smokes it Dash looks at her, then he asks "can you show me how to do that?"  She replies "sure" and as this arc ends, Dash starts smoking heroin as well.

Dash gives in to temptation.

THE GRAVEL IN YOUR GUTS: R.M. Guera is back on art duties for this Red Crow-centric four parter.  We begin three weeks in the future.  Red Crow is in his car outside the Badlands Cafe.  He looks at a small bundle on the seat and says "I'm sorry" to it before walking inside the cafe and opening fire on people's unseen inside.

Back in the present Dino Poor Bear got his car fixed with the cash Red Crow gave him and he is speeding along the road with his friend Griff.  Unfortunately this results in them getting pulled over by two corrupt cops.  They "fine" Dino the five-hundred dollars he has on him and tells the pair of them to cover the rest of the fine they have to deliver something for them to an address in Nebraska. After the cops have gone Dino and Griff drive off but the water pump in the car breaks and Griff, terrified of repercussions if they fail to deliver the package, flees leaving it with Dino.

In the casino Red Crow is being told by Shunka that he needs to see Hmong enforcer Mr. Brass who is staying in the casino hotel.  Inside his room we see Red Crow looking at something which enrages him while Mr. Brass apologises for the "mess".   Red Crow says angrily:

Red Crow: "Listen goddammit.  This is my place. My rez. My fucking rules. I don't let nobody come in here and disrespect me like this."

Mr. Brass says the place was built with his employers money and he's been sent to keep an eye on the investment.   Red Crow demands to know what he is looking at here then.

Mr. Brass says he is a man of "certain peccadillos, it's true" and has to unfetter himself from time to time to allow him to work with a clear head.  And there is much work here to be done.  Red Crow's people are undisciplined.  They run deals behind his back, trafficking in drugs and guns.  The organisation lacks structure and the chaos will lead to problems his employer wishes to avoid.

Red Crow yells that Mr. Brass is the one going around gouging people's eyes out, "this is not the way we do things around here!"  Mr. Brass says he looks around and sees nothing but filth, people wallowing in alcohol, content with their own ignorance and poverty.  Red Crow stands at the head of the pack:

Mr. Brass: "I know everyone you've ever killed to get where you are, my good chief, so don't presume to labe me a hypocrite, sir.  It's far too late for you to go adopting a sense of moral indignation".

Red Crow says he expected less arrogance from someone who just a few short years ago was sleeping with monkeys and wiping his ass with his hand.  He and the rest of the Hmong have "the stench of the banana boat" on them and they dare insult him and his people?

Mr. Brass's mess.

If Mr.Brass is going to keep going the way he is he will bury him on the rez.  Mr. Brass shrugs the threat off saying he's never be that foolish and now he can go and leave him to enjoy the rest of his meal in peace.  But also send up someone to clear up the mess and we see two bloody shackled corpses of a man and a woman in his bed.  Red Crow walks out in silent fury.

Dino meanwhile got ahold of a bicycle and rode it to where the package needed delivering to.  The man who takes it from him is quite impressed and hands over Dino a delivery fee saying if he wants to make some real money to come and see him. Later at the rodeo Dino is attending with his daughter and his friends.  Griff comes up and apologises and Dino forgives him.

Red Crow is also at the rodeo at an award ceremony.  As he walks off he asks Shunka if he found out what he asks, Shunka says not yet and that he thinks they should disappear the kids, but Red Crow says he wants to know who they were.  Then he is told an old woman wants to speak to him and he tells Shunka to wait as he goes to speak with Granny Poor Bear.

Gina's soul bundle.

She has a small bundle on the table in front of her.  It's a "soul bundle.  It's Gina's soul".  It has to be given to someone who will keep it for a year who must live a harmonious life, no fighting, no arguing "everything they do must help to purify this soul".  Once that is done it can be released and travel the spirit path and "return to wakan tanka".  If it isn't done the soul will wander the earth lost and alone forever.

Granny tells Red Crow that he is going to keep it.  He says it should be a family member, like Dashiell.  Granny says he's in not up to it.  "This is Gina's last chance, Lincoln.  And yours as well.  Don't squander it".  And she walks off leaving Red Crow contemplating Gina's soul in silence.

Thirty-five years ago and the Dog Soldiers (which is more than just the four involved in the FBI murders) are having a meeting.  Red Crow reveals that he knows one of them is working for the FBI.  Ask they discuss who and what they'll do to them when they find out they hear raucaus laughter close by.  Some hippies are partying there.

Hippy fight!

Reggie Standing Rock goes over to explain to them that the mountain is sacred to his people and he'd appreciate it if they took their party elsewhere.  One of them says it's still a free country, so Red Crow punches him. The Indians and the hippies exchange blows, with Gina slapping one of the women around and the hippies make themselves scarce shouting they can keep their mountain.  "The sixties are over you shitbirds! Go get a fucking job!" shouts Red Crow after them. Then he and Gina embrace and kiss passionately.

In the present Red Crow is looking at Gina's soul bundle back in his home.  He talks to it saying they were too alike, even if she'd never have admitted it.

Red Crow: "Too quick-tempered.  Too stubborn.  Too full of ourselves.  Too much damn gravel in our guts.  Still I always figured we'd somehow end up together.  Just never like this."

The little bundle of tabacco and sage is all that's left of Gina Bad Horse. Friend, fellow activist, co-defendent, lover, rival, bitter enemy.  Now she dead and he is the keeper of her soul.

He thinks on how he been respobsible for lofty responsibilties.  Multi-million deals, the lives of his men, the fate of whole communities, "but never anything like this."  He screws up and she's lost forever, "and I'll have yet another ghost to haunt my dreams."

Later Shunka comes in to tell him of Mr. Brass's latest activities.  He cut up a dealer for selling coke on the side, angrily Red Crow says he knew about that, the man was doing it to support his large family. Shunka says the Hmongs are trying to prove a point, "and this shit ain't gonna stop.  You either cave in and kiss their asses... or else get bloody".

Red Crow says he doesn't want a war.  Shunka will let their boys know to refrain from extracurricular activities for now, let Brass think he's made his point.   Shunka says Brass is never going to stop.   He's also found out who the two kids Brass killed were, two runaways, no one is looking for the boy but the girl was called Geraldine Standing Rock and Red Crow knew her grandfather.

He drives out to see Phyllis Standing Rock who starts by telling Red Crow it's been thirty-five years since Reggie disappeared.  Red Crow says he is here about her grandaughter.  Phyllis says she had never had a chance, always in trouble since she was old enough to know better.  Her mother dumped her on her, after her father Reggie disappeared she gave up on life and is a waitress somewhere else now.

Phillys Standing Rock.

She says if the find Geraldine she doesn't want her back, can she be arrested for her own good?  Red Crow says he'll see what he can do.   She says this wouldn't have happened if Reggie was still around.  She says she doesn't believe what they say, that he was a snitch for the FBI.  If anyone would have known it'd be his "goddamn wife".  Red Crow leaves as she says, "ain't no hope for any of us no more, is there Red Crow? No hope at all! 'specially not for you, ya bastard."

Time passes, Dino is now fully working as a drug coriour for the two cops.  We then cut to Red Crow meeting with Jigger the head of the local Bureau for Indian Affairs.  He says it's in his interest that the reservation flourishes and what's this he hears about the Hmong?  Red Crow says the discussion is over, then Jigger drops a bombshell, "you got a Fed in your house."  He's probably working for Nitz and has been there for a few months.  Red Crow yells "it's bullshit!"  And drives off.

Back thirty-five years ago.  Red Crow is confronting Reggie about being with the FBI.  Reggie protests his innocence, but Red Crow demands to know why and hopes it wasn't merely for money.  As Reggie continues to deny it Red Crow grabs him round the throat and starts choking him:

Red Crow: "First thing you learn when you witness a killing is that it ain't at all like it is in the movies.  In the westerns I watched as a kid, a cowboy'd take an arrow in the back and instantly fall over dead.  First man I killed.. I had to strangle for eleven minutes."

We see him stumble away from Reggie's corpse as he thinks how there is no honour or glory in killing. Just the dying howls and them shitting their pants. Sometimes you do to, sometimes exhausted, sometimes jacked on adrenaline.  And in the end you stand over something that doesn't look human anymore and you swear you'll never do it again, "and sometimes you might even believe that lie".

Red Crow's first kill.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe all life is precious and there there are others like him who "accept the cold hard fact that sometimes people have to die for the greater good."  That's the world he sees and the only way he's never known how to be.  We then see him kneeling on a prayer mat with Gina's soul bundle in front of him as he prays and thinks, "I'm trying Gina.  I promise you I am.  I'm trying to be something different."

Three year ago Dino is making out with his girlfriend, she tells him to put a condom on but he promises her he won't come inside her.  Cut to the present and his daughter Angie is crying away, Dino is on the phone and tells Granny to deal with her.  Granny says Angie has an ear infection so Dino tosses her some cash for medicine.

Granny says his job cleaning up at the casino doesn't pay this well and she warns him that after the last time he got in trouble with the law she said if it happened again she'd kick him out of the house for good.  She says if she finds out he's dealing drugs she'll call the cops on him herself, Dino says not to worry "I work for the police now".  They are waiting outside and Dino gets in the back with a big box of deliveries to make that day.

Time goes by as he works as the drug delivery boy.  As he does so he remembers that one day an astronaut came to their classs and talked about walking on the moon.  Dino became obssessed with being like him, dreaming of flying through space.  He thinks it's funny that all those years spent dreaming and here he is all those years later "and I can't even get the fuck out of Shannon County, South Dakota".

They make one more stop to the home of an old man called Andy Short Bear.  His son owed them money but he's in a coma in hospital so the two cops say his debt has passed on to him and start beating him when he refuses to pay.  Andy recognises Dino and asks what he is doin with these "hoodlums".  As they beat him some more, Dino runs outside.

An accidental knife to the face.,

Andy grabs a knife and swings at the two cops before making a beeline for the door.  Unfortunately he crashes into Dino and accidentally stabs himself in the face, much to the two cops amusement and Dino's horror.  Later they drop Dino off and he stashes his money before washing the blood off his hands and checking his daughter.

Next day Dino is phoned by his parole officer Falls Down who is up in Kansas on the Gina Bad Horse murder.  He niggles at Dino asking if he is in any trouble which Dino denies. He says the cops Granny has seen him with are "two degenerates".  Dino denies any wrong doing again.  Then he gets pissed off and says no one is stepping forward to pay his bills or give him a better job so he can get of the rez and get his daughter what she needs.  Then he tells him to leave him the fuck alone unless he has a warrant and slams the phone down. Falls Down mutters "damn it, son.. you ain't ever getting of the rez"

Sometime later Dino is being observed making drug deliveries by Mr. Brass and his two bodyguards, he says the people here are like animals.  When Dino gets him Granny tosses his things out of the house in a bag saying "you don't live here anymore."  His sister is in the hospital from smoking God knows what and may lose the baby.  Dino brought the junk into their house and she can't have it here no more. Dino tries to come in and get his daughter but Granny says she is staying here.

Granny: "It ain't safe for her to be around you.  I'm sorry if you can't see that.  I put all your money in that bag.  We don't want any more of it here.  God be with you boy".

And she closes the door on him, leaving him alone in the road before he picks up his things and walks away.  The two cops pull up behind him and asks if he wants a life.  When Dino declines and tells him he quits they get nasty and point a gun at him so he gets in the car.

Granny tosses Dino out.

As they drive they discuss Shunka's orders to lay low for a while, but as Red Crow don't pay their bills they gotta look out for themselves.  While they talk, Dino thinks about people like his Granny who are old and live in walking distance of where they were born.  But he never wanted that life, he was never happy on the rez and thought he was destined for something bigger.

They park up outside the Badlands Cafe and go inside.  Dino goes to the bathroom to wash up as he thinks life is all about luck.  Some folks get to be astronauts "and then some folks get the kinda luck that sucks dick".

Dino: "They get born with the deck stacked against them and can't never seem to catch no breaks. Some folks just get fucked by fate.  Fucked 'til it hurts.  Fucks 'til it bleeds.  Fucked 'til it kills ya."

And over this narration we see the two cops lying dead, their throats slasheds.  Mr. Brass is standing there smiling as usual and says politely to Dino, "I want to talk about your future."

Uh oh.

Thirty-five years ago Gina slaps Red Crow when she realises he had something to do with the disappearance of Reggie Standing Rock.  Red Crow says he was FBI and moves to hold Gina, who tells him "no! Don't touch me!"  Don't ever touch me again!" And she walks away into the snow. 

In the present Shunka is itching for a fight with the Hmongs.  Under false pretences he lures Red Crow to a place where he has been keeping the bodies of the two kids Mr. Brass murdered.  Shunka introduce them as James Dowd and Geraldine Standing Rock.  He thought Red Crow might want to meet them.

He then shows the wounds on them saying the were inflicted pre-mortem while he was raping them, "he fucked and stabbed them to death, all at the same time."  He made the girl watch what he did to the boy then did her the same, does he want to know where they found the semen inside her.  Red Crow yells at Shunka to pack his things and get off the rez which doesn't seem to bother Shunka much.  Indeed later as he is packing, Red Crow comes up and asks where Brass is.

We then join Red Crow back where this arc started in his car outside the Badlands Cafe.  He apologises to Gina's soul bundle and goes inside gun in hand.  There he finds Mr. Brass in the process of tearing out Dino's eye.  He seems pleased to see Red Crow saying "I was just re-educating a few of your citizens".

Red Crow tells him to put the knife down as he points his gun at them.  Mr. Brass enquires as to if he's lost his mind.  But Red Crow says he's has enough of the Hmong on his rez they are done here.  Then he shoots one of the goons right in the head,  And gunfire between him and the second breaks out.

Red Crow may be old but he can still move.

The other goon gets ahold of Red Crow and the roll around on the floor kicking and punching unti Red Crow uses a knife to pin the man to the floor then blows his brains out.  Mr. Brass drops the knife as he says Red Crow would never dare shoot him.  Angrily Red Crow says fuck him and "every piece of shit member of your cocksucking mongrel fucking race!"  Brass calls him a stupid man saying stupid things and gets pistol whipped by Red Crow breaking his nose.  Red Crow then tells him "you're under arrest you sick little fuck".

Back in the past, seventeen years ago, Red Crow has paid an impromtu visit to Gina's house.  Dash is sleeping and Red Crow comments he looks like an angel.  Then he says to Gina that he is running for tribal council and wants to count on her support because he has heard she's been speaking out against him.  She says she won't let him worm his way into politics she wants the whole rez to know what he's capable of.  But he draws his gun and points it as the sleeping Dash saying "what exactly am I capable of, Gina?"

He says just because he used to fuck her doesn't mean he'll let her stand in his way now.  She is to stay out of his affairs, "the reservation needs a man like me whether you like it or not".  He finishes up by making a threat to hurt Dash if she doesn't play along then leaves and she slumps to the ground in distress. Back in the present.

Red Crow: "My name is Lincoln Red Crowm, and I consider myself an honourable man. Spiritual.  Respectful of my elders. Kind to animals.  A tender lover.  Benevolent politician".

But none of that makes him a nice guy as we see images of Dino in hospital with a banaged eye and Granny Poor Bear with him.  He's killed a lot of people in pursuit of his dream and he'd kill a hundred more to see his vision through,  "to carve a better place in this world for my people".  We see an image of Mr. Brass in a jail cell nursing his broken nose.

That's who he is and that's all he always be. He does what he does because someone has too, and if it doesn't make him popular so be it.  No one will shed tears when he dies, but that's all right, "ghosts are best forgotten anyway.  Who's got time to worry about the dead?  It's trouble enough just trying to live."  And we see Granny Poor Bear receive a package, it has Gina's soul bundle in it.  And that brings this volume to an end.

Gina's soul returned.

So lots to take in here.  I will first off say I think the first arc is let down by the art.  David Furno's crude charcoally style doesn't come off very well when placed against Guera's meticulous and beautiful work.  That said, lets move onto the plot.  We're finally given the very good reason Gina loathes her father, killing her baby and boyfriend in one fell swoop leading to a hard drugs habit that Dash, not a person we have seen deal at all well with th guilt and pressure he's come under, has decided to take up and it'll be affecting him through several volumes to come.  Red Crow is once again at odds with the only people who could make him look like a good guy, the Hmongs.  Dino once again ends up being the woobie of the series as he has now been tortured and lost an eye as well. Shunka also gets some credit for having the balls to stand up to Red Crow and admit Mr. Brass is a problem.  Of course with him in prison now, word is going to get back to Johnny Tongue and the crew he runs which means the possibility of a gang war being brought on to the reservation as well.  Finally Granny entrusting Gina's soul bundle to Red Crow in the vain hope it would force him to live a better life failed.  Red Crow finally knows what he is, and he isn't going to change, not for anyone.  As he says at the end, living is the problem not listening to ghosts from the past. Interestingly the scene where he points a gun at the sleeping Dash would appear to be around when Gina decided to send him away from the rez.  It's not stated outright but one can make that inference. Once again Jason Aaron mixes action with strong and detailed character work while R,M Guera delivers grittily gorgeous artwork perfectly suited to the story.  So join me, techinical issues not withstanding, for "High Lonesome" in a few days time.

Scalped Book 3: Dead Mothers (#12-18)

"What's with the war party? I thought you n'me was old buddies" - Agent Nitz.

Continuing our look at Scalped, the Vertigo series about life on an American Indian reservation.  The backbone of the story is about an incident thirty-years prior in which two FBI agents who came onto the fictional Prairie Rose reservation in South Dakota were shot by one member of a group of four Indian radicals.  They were Red Crow, who is now the tribal leader, a man known as "Catcher" who is now a shiftless drunk who has visions, Gina Bad Horse, and the one who definitely didn't kill them but who is the one in prison for life for the murders - Lawrence Belcourt.  At the end of the last volume a guilt-ridden Gina was going to confront the person she knew could get Lawrence free.  Then her body was found next morning by Dino Poor Bear.  FBI agent Nitz has two undercover agents on the rez hoping they can catch Red Crow in any involvment in any murders to make up for the fact he wasn't found guilty of the FBI agent's deaths. They are Dashiell Bad Horse, Gina's estranged son, who is now part of the tribal police and also shagging Red Crow's daughter Carol.  And Britt "Diesel" Fillenworth a white, sorry... one-sixteenth Kickapoo, man who has been part of Gina's resistance movement protesting the opening of Red Crow's casino and who broke into his office and stole something mysterious that pleased Agent Nitz greatly. The murder of Gina Bad Horse adds a second on-going strand to the overall story as we see om this volume how it impacts those who knew her.

DREAMING HIMSELF INTO THE REAL WORLD: Art by John Paul Leon. Before the main "Dead Mothers" arc begins we get a one-shot dealing with Dash and his dreams.  Every night he has the same dream, that Red Crow knows he's an undercover FBI agent and "I lose.  I fail.  I fuck up. I die. And then I wake up." Only the feel of a gun in his hand can calm him down before he has a beer and gets back on the clock.

Dash has bad dreams.

He's living in the "Badlands Motor Lodge" which is full of ne'er do-wells.  He could make a case on all of them, but he's only here for murders that can be tied to Red Crow.  Nitz doesn't care what he does, how he does it or who he hurts in the proces, bring Agent Nitz Red Crow and he might cut Dash loose.  Dash is now having his psyche tell him things.

We see Red Crow "talking" to him, he tells him that he wouldn't hesitate to kill Dash despite the relationship he had with Gina in the past.  He's already suspicious of Dash, "how much longer before you slip up and I get wise?"  Then he's with Carol.  She tells him that rule number one of undercover work is never get involved in improper sexual relationships.  "Whoops, guess you fucked that one up already, huh, hoss?" she says.

Carol: "The trashier I am, the more you want me, am I right? What sort of deep-seeded psychosis is that, I wonder? Though a better question is... how much lower will you go, just to get your rocks off?  Personally, I'm wet with anticipation.  Whadda ya say to that, lover?"

Dash thinks about how he's got here.  We see a succession of images: him as a teenager cowering from someone, nine years ago holding a gun to his head, eight years ago in the army and six months ago in prison.  But more important is how he gets out and why does he feel the worst is to come.  He lies back and starts having the same dream again of being taken into Red Crow's office and killed.

Dream Gina to the rescue.

But this time Gina appears and kills Shunka before he can kill Dash.  She tells him to listen, he doesn't have much time.  She tells him about Crazy Horse dreaming himself into the real world so he'd be unbeatable in battle.  Suddenly they are standing by a mass Indian grave and she tells him, "if you're gonna live through what's coming for you, Dash, then you're gonna have to open your eyes and accept who you are".  They are both shot in the head and she says to him, "this is who you are".  He responds, "fuck you mom."

Then they are being hanged and she tells him that he may hate her, but "these people hate you more". Next they are suffering advanced smallpox, he demands to wake up from this crazy nightmare but she tells him to look around, "this is what the white man thinks of you."  Back to normal she asks why he is risking everything for the FBI? She tells him if he wants something to fight for, "just look to the dirt at your feet".

Gina: "The ground you're standing on.  The people who live on it.  Your people.  Your heritage... those are the only things in life worth dying for."

They stand on Mount Rushmore and Gina apologises for not being around to help him.  She warns him that things are going to get ugly around the rez and more people are going to die.  And before it's over, "you'll have done some horrible things".

I don't think this will sway Dash.

Dash doesn't understand what she is talking about.  But she says he will and it will have started already by the time he wakes up.  She says that when he finds out he'll want to kill him, but he's not worth it because if he does he'll pay dearly.  Dash can't hear her over the rain, so she gives him one last hug, tells him she loves him and is gone in a crack of thunder.  Dash wakes up dismissing it as a "weird-ass dream".
Elsewhere a cop radios in the discovering of Gina's body.  Dash doesn't hear it as he is showering  and getting ready for work.  He tells himself he needs focus and to brush aside "crazy dreams". 

Dash: "I ain't looking to make up with dear old mommy or get in touch with my injun roots.  Ain't looking for true love or God or any other such make believe bullshit."

He's here to do a job and once the job is done he is gone from this place. And the job will be done most assuredly so long as things don't get more complicated.  And we close the chapter on the various cops and crime scene techs exmaining Gina's body out in the desert where it was dumped.

DEAD MOTHERS: Co-creator R.M Guera is back on art duties for this five part arc.  We begin with Red Crow sat looking down at Gina's body still where she was killed.  He pulls an anguished face and says to himself "Goddam you Gina!"  Watching from some distance away the cops say the coroner can't collect the body until Red Crow says so and they have been trying to raise Dash but he is on a meth bust.

We cut to Dash as he takes one of the meth cookers down and start going through the house arresting everyone until they come to a room with five children in it.  They start to cry in fear and a lady cop - Officer Bindle - draws Dash's attention to the fact that the room next has a dead woman in it.  She's been strangled and some hours earlier. The older child comes up behind Dash and queries "mom?"  Dash tries to tell him his mother is dead but Officer Bindle says she's just sleeping and gets someone to take the kids down to the station.

Shelton and his siblings.

Downstairs a man called Clyde is being interrogated but he refuses to say anything about the dead woman.  The techs find Hydriodic acid in the fridge and so a coldly furious Dash orders the other cops to pull down Clyde's pants and put his dick on the counter.  They do so and Dash holds the acid beaker over Clyde's dick and asks again about the dead woman.

Her name was Pamela Bittan, she sometimes lived there and those were her kids.  The person who was having sex with her last night was a crazy guy, "looks white but says he's part Kickapoo.  I don't know his name... but he calls himself Diesel".  At that Dash demands the case and is given it by Officer Bindle.  Dash then delivers a powerful kick to Clydes balls. Back with Red Crow he walks away from Gina's body and he says that no one tell Dash until he's had a chance to tell him.  Then he tells everyone to get to work, they have a murder to solve.

At the station Dash and another cop are watching the kids through the one-way mirror.  The unnamed cop tells Dash that he brought them all cheeseburgers and when he gave the eldest one - Shelton - his, he tore it into five pieces, "when I showed him that they each had their own burger, I thought he was gonna cry".  Dash says someone has to tell them about their mom, they have a right to know.

Red Crow comes in and tells him he is off the case, and that Gina has been found dead.  He tells Dash to take some time off, but Dash just says "why would I wanna do that?"  Red Crow says she was still Dash's mother for all their differences.  But Dash says he is on a case and he is not going to be taken off it and he walks into the room with the kids.  Then played out with no dialouge we see the kids reactions with Shelton taking it hard.  Dash leaves the room as all the others crowd round Shelton who is wailing in grief huddled in the corner.

Shelton reacts to the bad news.

Seventeen years ago and Gina is showing a bored teenage Dash round "Wasun Wiconiya Wakan.  Sacred Breath Cave.  Wind Cave" which was where the Spider Trickster Iktomi had told the underground dwelling Lakota to go through to the upper world where there was plenty of buffalo and nice weather.  But when the Lakota got up there they found harsh winters and scarce buffalo.  They tried to get back but the entrance to the cave had been hidden.  So the Lakota learned to survive the winters and hunt the buffalo and became the founders of the seven council fires. 

Dash: "That's stupid! This is just some dumb cave.  There ain't nothin' special about it.  Them stories is all bullshit!"

Gina says the stories are his heritage and he needs to learn respect for his Lakota ancestors.  But Dash just storms out of the cave saying he isn't listening and he doesn't care about "any of this crap!"  Gina calls to him, then we are back in the present watching her being zipped up and pushed into a morgue draw.

Gina.

Dash comes in and he and the coroner discuss Pamela's murder.  She died of manual strangulation by a big guy with strong hands although she put up a fight.  The killer left semen in her so they'll be able to DNA match her killer.  As Dash leaves the coroner points to Gina's stuff saying he though Dash would want it.  "That ain't my case" says Dash and he's gone.

Outside the police station Shelton approaches Dash and they talk awkwardly.  The children have relatives in Canada coming down, Dash rather lamely says that's nice. Angrily Shelton says:

Shelton: "I can't wait to leave this place.  I hate it here.  I don't wanna be an Indian no more.  I just wanna be a regular person.  I wanna go someplace where nobody knows who I am.  But I'm not leaving until you catch the man who killed my mom".

Dash tells Shelton he promises he will.  Shelton says he wants that person hurt, he wants Dash to hurt him, will he promise Shelton that?  We don't see what Dash's reply is.

We jump to the evening and Dash is out talking to Nitz.  He has a plan, they help him find Diesel then he takes Diesel to Red Crow who'll want to kill Diesel for wrecking his office on the night of his casino's grand opening.  He'll then see Red Crow with blood on his hands and Nitz gets his murder tied to Red Crow.  Problem solves and they all go home.

Nitz says "no".  Dash asks why not and Nitz evades and tells him to forget about Diesel.  Dash keeps pushing it until Nitz yells, "Diesel is not to be touched!"  And Dash realises the truth, that Diesel is another undercover FBI agent.  He tries to take a swing at Nitz and Newsome holds him back.  He then says he is walking and Nitz says no you won't or he'll take those kids and put them through the system until the boys are stone cold bangers and the girls peddling their asses like pros.  And Dash knows he'd do it.

He tells Dash the only dead woman he's worried about is Dash's mother, "if Red Crow didn't kill her, he sure as shit gave the order."  Dash needs to pretend like he cares about her and get Red Crow to talk about it.  Then he tells Dash to call him when he has something he can use.  As they drive away Newsome says to Dash "sorry about your mother". Frustrated beyond belief Dash punches the hell out of his old pickup truck.

Dash takes out his anger on his truck.

Next day Shelton comes to ask his daily question as to if they have caught his mum's murderer yet.  Dash says he can't keep coming to the station every day.  Shelton starts to walk off and Dash calls him back and asks if he wants to come for a ride to Wind Cave and when Shelton seems unenthused he begins to tell him the story Gina told him.

Red Crow is sitting in the casino restaurant examining the crime scene photos of Gina's death.  His right-hand man Shunka comes in, Red Crow immediately asks if he did this, he told him Gina was not to be touched.  Shunka says has he ever given Red Crow a reason to doubt his loyalty?  Red Crow grabs him and asks again if he did it.  Shunka says no and they have a bigger problem right now.  It's the enforcer for the Hmongs, an East Asian criminal gang who gave Red Crow cash towards the casino, the one-armed Mr.Brass and a couple of back-up goons.

Mr. Brass and co.

Seventeen years ago, Gina brings some arrowheads to a bored teenage Dash.  He barely acknowledges her before going back to reading a magazine and listening to music.  She leaves him be.  Back in the present the executor of Gina's will hands over the keys of her house to Dash, he doesn't take them telling him to burn the house for all he cares.

He gets into the patrol car which has Shelton inside, he hands Dash a beer and says he heard Dash mum had been murdered as well.   When Dash tries to explain they weren't that close, Shelton says:

Shelton: "She was still your mom though.  My mom wasn't so great either.  But I still always loved her."

Dash just says does he want to talk all damn day or does he want to learn to shoot?  They line up some bottles and Shelton fires off a shot that misses.  Dash says the key is to think of something you really want to shoot.  He imagines the bottles are his troubles and he fires destroying every bottle.

Red Crow is out on the balcony drinking when Shunka comes in a queries why he sent all the evidence from Gina's murders to the FBI Crime Lab in Rapid City, Red Crow says if they didn't kill her he'd sure like to know who did.  Shunka thinks it was Mr. Brass, but Gina was shot in the back and scalped post-mortem, that's too humane for Brass.  Shunka says it should have been buried, her death is a can of worms they can't afford to open.

Shunka leaves and Dash walks in, exchanging snide digs at each other as they pass.  Red Crow wants to know what Dash wants and Dash fumbles his way through a speech saying he knows Red Crow had Gina killed, she pushed her luck and now she's dead and he understands why it had to happen and is cool with it.  This enrages Red Crow who lays a righteous smack across Dash's face and yells at him to get the fuck out of there.

Red Crow did not kill Gina!

Dash goes back to the station and has Carol, who had been arrested for smoking a weed on a cop car.  She says to Dash she has to go to crazy lengths to see him now he's off camping with twelve year olds.  Dash has her cut loose then asks where Clyde is.  He's being interrogated by Mr.Brass.

We see Clyde saying he told the cops everything over and over.  It was Diesel and he doesn't know where he is.  Mr. Brass opens up a kit-bag full of unpleasant looking instruments and says, "I'm a man who does not ask a question twice".  He is very polite as he introduces himself as working for Johnny Tongue.  He has a vested interest in the casino and Diesel has proved himself to be at odds with those interests.

He is going to ask a question and Clyde will only have seconds to answer, "be so kind as to pick a number between one and nine".  A panicking Clyde picks three. "That would be the right eye" says Mr. Brass "Splendid choice!"  The goon fits a gag around Clyde's mouth and Mr.Brass uses a pair of tongs to fix round the eyeball.  Then there are noises and lots and lots of blood.

Interrogation Mr.Brass style.

Dash marches over and tries to barge past the goon left outside.  They start to get into it, but Mr. Brass tells him to put Dash down and apologises to Dash saying he is merely here to assist in the murder investigation.  Dash tells them to fuck the hell off and starts to walk away.  But it turned out Clyde did at least know Diesel was in Nebraska. 

Mr. Brass: "I'm afraid your prisoner could not be any more specific than that, despite my best efforts at persuasion. You're welcome to try asking him yourself.  But you might first want to provide him with medical care.  He seems to have suffered a most grisly accident."

And they depart as Dash ponders the unconcious and severely injured Clyde.  Later that night he and Shelton are camping out.  Shelton says his mom is being buried on the rez.  He asks if there are any knew leads... and Dash abruptly goes for a walk.  He goes into Gina's house, sees his bedroom still as it was when he left, his arrowhead collection framed on the wall and seeing that he has to compose himself.  Shelton comes looking for him as Dash walks back saying he'd been "just.. nowhere."

Next day he travels to White Haven, Nebraska showing a sketch of Diesel to various shiftless young men out drinking. Then he is interrupted by the local Sheriff a braggart of a man called Karnow. He says Dash might be the law on the rez but not here.  He says he's something of a living legend in these parts, played football, did multiple tours in Vietnam as part of the Green Berets, didn't come home until '75. 

Karnow: "You like John Wayne movies? ...Rio Bravo, True Grit, High Noon.  My motto is, never trust a man who don't like John Wayne".

Dash says he isn't a fucking movie critic he is looking for a murder suspect.  Karno thinks he means Gina, "good luck with that.  That woman had more enemies than there's niggers on welfare."  Realising this is going nowhere Dash starts to leave.

Sheriff Karnow.

Karnow tells him that he'll track this man down but he wants Red Crow to know that him starting to sell booze on the rez has cut into White Haven's business supplying alchohol to rez dwellers. And it's made he less inclined to look the other way at the truckloads of drugs that pass along his roads, if you catch his meaning.  In response Dash says Gary Cooper was in High Noon, not John Wayne and his instructor at Fort Bragg was with the Special Forces in Vietnam and they all came home in '71.  Furious Karnow tells him to deliver the message to Red Crow and get the hell out of his town.

Back with Red Crow the tribal council is badgering Red Crow about having two murders on his opening night, and why can't he control this shit.  "It's being handled" says Red Crow.  They tell him the council is freaking out and they also think he killed her, which Red Crow again denies.  They them if it was Mr. Brass?  Another says whoever it was they created a "big fucking mess.  We gotta make it go away."

They tell him to catch Diesel and pin both murders on him.  Press will eat up a "crazy white guy killing Injuns".  Another says it has to be done fast, they don't want the FBI sticking their nose in this mess.  Unfortunately the FBI is already there, they are sent over to see Agent Nitz sitting at a table grinning.

Nitz pays Red Crow a visit.

He tells Red Crow that the rez is still FBI jurisdiction when it comes to murder and there's just been two.  He says he heard a white guy is the main suspect for one murder, "I don't need to remind you that a non-tribal member is completely outside your jurisdiction, no matter what he's done."  He tells Red Crow to turn over what he has on that investigation to him and he'll track the killer down and Red Crow can concentrate on finding who killed Gina.  Red Crow tells him not to tell him how to run his affairs.

Nitz: "I'll tell you whatever I goddamn well please, Lincoln.  You don't like it... go tell your ancestors they shouldn't a' signed all them fucking treaties."

Red Crow says Nitz won't get a rise out of him.  Nitz says putting a casino in this place is like "putting tits on a boar hog" and if anyone else dies he expects a call. When they catch Gina's killer call him too, "I'd like to shake the motherfucker's hand".  And he leaves.

Red Crow, walks off into one of the back corridors where Karnow is who tells Red Crow they need to talk, but Red Crow tells him to "FUCK OFF!"  Then he spots a man being ejected from the casino for cheating, in a rage Red Crow punches him to the ground and kicks and stamps on him over and over screaming "FUCK YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!" Dino witnesses this, Red Crow gives him a significant look and leaves with Dino getting ready to clean up the bloody footprints he left.

Sometime later Dash is getting ready to say goodbye to Shelton, he doesn't want to leave with his mom's killer still out there.  Dash says they'll find him.  Shelton says he hears he's hiding out in Nebraska now, it's what everybody says.  Then Shelton smiles and says thankyou to Dash for showing him round and teaching him to shoot these past few days.  Dash says it was "cool" and as a going away gift gives Shelton the framed arrowheads from his house.  Shelton thanks him and leaves.

That night Dash pulls over some drunk drivers, he checks the backseat of the car and finds the framed arrowheads.  He demands to know how they came about them and the men say some kid traded them to him in return for a ride to White Haven and "a gun.  He wanted a gun".  Horrorstruck Dash jumps in his patrol car and guns it towards White Haven.

Shelton meets a tragic end.

The final chapter of this arc starts with a slow pan out from the face of Shelton's dead body, two bullet wounds in his chest and a huge pool of blood blossoming out from underneath him.  Diesel is kneeling on the ground, hands on head saying it was self-defence to the officer pointing a gun at him, the boy came up and opened fire on him.  Karnow tells him to "shut the hell up".

Dash screeches up and gets out of his car, rushing over to Shelton as Karnow says that he was dead when they got there. Diesel complains that he nearly got killed, "who the hell taught him how to shoot anyhow".  Suddenly Dash turns and fires at Diesel hitting him in the shoulder and thigh. Karnow kicks the gun out of his hands and tells him to stand down or he will shoot Dash. As Diesel is taken away Karnow says, "you want him.  You tell your Chief Red Crow to come and beg me for him."

Next day is Gina's funeral.  There are many mourners but Dash is not one of them.  When Red Crow reaches the coffin he takes a knife and cuts a lock of his own hair off and puts it in with Gina, "travel well, mita kola."  We then cut to his office where he is talking with officer Falls Down.   He says he wants the murder of Gina solved, "I don't care who gets pissed or who gets hurt".  He's giving Falls Down a blank cheque what ever he needs he'll get.  He wants to see someone answer for Gina's murder but first they need to be found, "will you do that officer Falls Down?" 

Falls Down will have to think about it.

Later Nitz is visiting Gina's grave.  He tells her that he regrets she died without knowing Dash was working for him.  And he's sorry it wasn't him who put her in the ground, but he won't look a gift horse in the mouth and he pisses on her grave saying "rot in hell.  You murdering bitch".

Sitting alone at night a morose Red Crow tries to phone his daughter Carol but can't think of what to say to her and she hangs up.  In the mortuary, Shelton's body is zipped up and stored away, while elsewhere Dash is getting blackout drunk.  He goads some fellow bar patrons in to beating him up and nearly gets run over as he staggers along the road.

He finds himself somehow on the doorstep of Gina's house.  He kneels and looks at it, then begins to cry.  And as he sobs he staggers inside and goes to sleep.  We finish this arc with Catcher in his old shack scrubbing himself as he babblingly prays to God that he doesn't understand, "why won't the blood wash off?" And we see him naked and his hands coated in the substance.

Gina's killer revealed.

FALL DOWN:  Art by Davide Furno.  We finish this volume with another one-shot, this time one looking at Officer Falls Down, the incorruptible member of the tribal police.  He narrates that everytime he tries to sleep he tries to concentrate on the beautiful things in life.  What he loves about his homeland. Star Quilts, hot fry bread, the dancers at summer powwow, tobacco ties fluttering in the wind, sunrise on the Mako Sica.

Falls Down: "Every night I try to focus on the beautiful...but instead all I ever see is ugliness.  The ugliest moments from my 25 years as a cop on this rez."

Red ants eating the brains of a man with his head blown off. Hearing the confession of an old high school buddy who is telling him how he beat a four year old to death. The stench of burned rubber, engine fumes and alcohol.  The taste of blood on his lips as he tried to resucitate his wife, killed by a drunk driver.  The eyes of the men who shot him.

He reflects on being set up to be killed in a routine bust a couple of months back as shown in Book 1.   Vest stopped most of the bullets but not all and it hurts when he breathes.   He knows it was Red Crow who was sick of him being the "one good cop" on his crooked force. Falls Down is tired too and thinks he could retire today, read more romance novels, stay caught up on his stories, wouldn't get shot, wouldn't have to arrest no more friends.  Wouldn't have to care who killed Gina Bad Horse or why Red Crow wants him to take the case so badly, "only problem with that is... I do."

Falls Down takes a punch.

He returns to the station and is sent to help out on a bust, which goes a tad awry when the meth house they are busting has a huge tattooed guy come bursting out the back window where Falls Down is. Falls Down points his gun at him but his hand shakes and the big bloke punches him and knocks him out briefly where he remembers more awful stuff like two drugged up kids dead from cold and a man bragging about raping his sister. The other cops rouse him and he discovers the tattooed man took his gun.

Captain Rayfield gives him a bollocking then we cut to Falls Down round at Granny Poor Bear's place talking to her.  He complains to her that his grandfather policed the rez for 30 years and never carried a gun.   He'd solve problems according to the old ways, avoiding blood feuds and only using his jail for drunks to sleep it off.  The world out there now is a world for "young psychos like Dashiell Bad Horse.  Not for me."  He's just a fuck-up who lost his gun.

He tells Granny that Red Crow wants him to investigate a murder but he doesn't think he can do the job anymore.   Granny asks him if he sees the man, Parker Louvin, who killed Falls Down's wife around.  Falls Down says he sees him all the time, staggering back from White Haven.  He pretends not to notice him.

Granny tells him that his grandfather Alfus Louvin got so liquored up he beat his wife with an axe handle until "she never was right no more".  He went after his kids and killed one or two and the rest ran away.  Falls Down's grandfather tried to handle it, but there wasn't no handling a man like that.  So one day he was put on the back of a truck at gunpoint and disappeared.  Never seen again and no one ever asked why.

Granny: "Things ain't changed as much as you think they have Franklin.  This world has always been a harsh place, especially for us,  You can't let that change who you are though.  Do you remember who you are Franklin Falls Down? If not, don;t let it worry ya none.  We can help ya remember".

We cut to him naked in a sweat lodge with some other older Indians.  They share round a bowl of something and Falls Down eats some as they chant in Lakota.  We flashback to him holding the bloodied corpse of his wife. 

Falls Down: "This is where I forgot who I was.  This is where life tried to crush me.  When my wife died it seemed like everything that was ever beautiful to me died with her.  But I can't let that be true anymore.  Beauty is all around us. You just have to fight for it."

And as he thinks this, his wifes body  and the blood flowing from her turns into flowers.  Some men appear behind him and he tells them he is not afraid to die.  They shot him through the head and flowers burst out of his forehead. Now when he closes his eyes he'll remember how much he loved her and he'll remember who he is and "what i'm fighting for."

The ceremony.

Next day he returns to work.  The captain asks if he's decided to take the Gina Bad Horse case, Falls Down says he'll let him know when he gets back and he goes to the scene of a bust which the cops won't start until Dash arrives.  Falls Down arrives on the scene and marches up to the door and tells the man "O'Ray" he knows he's in there and that he has Falls Down's gun.

O'Ray points the gun at him and when Falls Down says he won't shoot, O'Ray fires over his shoulder.   Falls Down presses his forehead against the gun barrel and says that O'Ray will turn the gun in and they'll go to the station together.  O'Ray says he'll fire in five seconds.  Falls Down says either you hand over the gun or "you use it."

Later he is snoozing and thinks of sweet grass and sage, Granny Poor Bear's fry bread and plum wojapi, the old songs, the smell of his wife coming out of the shower.  He is woken up and told the prisoner is ready to see him and it turns out he's in Kansas now talking to Lawrence Belcourt as he was the last person Gina spoke to before her death.

Falls Down: "I do:n't give a damn about Red Crow or his interests.  All I care about is finding Gina's murderer.  All I want is the truth.  Why don't we start with that. Tell me everything".

Falls Down takes the case.

So some interesting revelations here.  We're filled in more about what a rebellious kid Dash was and he doesn't seem to be able to listen to his mother even during a highly prophetic dream.  Yet it was interesting how he chose to bond with Shelton, another kid who wants out of the Indian identity, by telling him the story he reacted so violently to in his own past.  His horror at finding out Diesel couldn't be touched as he is FBI and this leading, along with the fact he gave Shelton shooting lessons, to Shelton's demise just added a boatload of guilt to his already fragile psyche.  He's scared every day about being found out and now he has the death of a kid partially on his hands.  This will explain some unwise personal choices he makes in future volumes as the anguish on his faces as he staggers into his childhood home at the end shows he is not coping at all well with the pressures place upon him.  Nitz shows what a despicable huan being he is holding the fate of the kids over Dash to stop him going after Diesel.  And as for Diesel, what is there left to say?  The man is a monster through-and-through and although we'll get some more backstory for him in a later volume to show how he came to be like that, it doesn't excuse him one bit.  The affably evil Mr. Brass is another spanner in Red Crow's works too. And yet it's not all grim stuff.  Falls Down is spiritually healed by an Indian ritual and learns once again to see the things that make life worth living and to remember his dead wife with joy not sorrow.  He has now taken the Gina case and will doggedly pursue it through the next few volumes.  So join me in a few days time (internet service permitting) for "The Gravel In Your Guts".