dare to dream

Hennigan’s Stead opens wide before you.

The land is different here. Gone are the dark conifers of West Elizabeth. Gone even is the bright, clean sky of the mountain. Here, everything seems tinged in amber. The grass grows tougher, paler, rasping under the wind. Dust lifts from the horses’ hooves in soft red-brown gusts, settling on your skirts and Arthur’s boots and the lower edge of his coat. The air smells of stone, sun-bleached grass, and horse sweat. It is not the green, soft comfort of the Heartlands. It is sharper than that. Wider. As if the world has been scraped down to dry heat and sky.

You ride beside Arthur now, not behind him, and the difference feels larger than it should.

He keeps glancing toward the horizon, measuring distance. His hat shades his face, but you can still see the set of his mouth, the faint crease between his brows. He is thinking of routes. Of camp. Of Dutch and Hosea and wagons and guards and whether the whole gang can be threaded through a hidden pass.

You are thinking of Mexico.

Not fully. Not practically. Not with maps, feed, and water stops. Not getting the whole gang there. Just the word itself, bright as a struck match in your mind.

Mexico.

A place beyond Blackwater. Beyond the Pinkertons. Beyond American law. Beyond every trap closing around the gang. You imagine sun on adobe white walls, river water flashing gold, children laughing somewhere, women hanging laundry, and men drinking coffee under the shade of a porch. You imagine the gang scattered but alive. You imagine Arthur breathing easier.

The thought makes your chest ache.

Arthur notices. Of course he does.

“You’re quiet,” he says.

You look over at him. “Am I?”

“Mm.” His eyes flick to you, then away. “Usually means you’re either schemin’ or worryin’.”

A smile tugs at your mouth. “Can’t it be a little of both?”

He huffs, soft and low. “With you? Seems likely.”

The tease warms you. It settles under your ribs, dangerous in its sweetness. You look ahead again quickly.

The figurine is in your bag on your horse.

You have not touched it since morning. You have not even thought of it, but now and then the awareness returns: stone wrapped in cloth, buried among your things, strange and crude and secret. You tell yourself it is only an odd little relic. Something to sell. Something to laugh about later.

Still, every so often, you swear you feel the echo of it.

Not heat. Not exactly.

A pulse.

A low, distant throb, gone the moment you notice it.

You shift in the saddle and push the thought away.

The sun lowers. The world turns orange from the west. Long shadows stretch from cottonwood trees, and the sky burns in wide bands of rose and gold. You are beginning to wonder where you might make camp when the road bends, and the ranch appears ahead as if it has been waiting for you all along.

MacFarlane’s Ranch sits warm in the dusk, lamplight beginning to glow. You hear it before you reach it: laughter, fiddle music, the clap of hands, the bright spill of voices rising and falling together. Smoke curls from a cook fire. Horses whicker in the paddock. Somewhere, someone hollers with the joy of a man already several drinks deep.

Arthur slows first, his hand raising slightly in an unspoken order.

You slow with him.

“Looks lively,” you say.

“Looks drunk,” Arthur mutters.

You laugh before you can stop yourself, and he glances over, mouth twitching like he didn’t mean to amuse you and is somewhat pleased that he has.

A man near the fence spots you and lifts an arm.

“Travelers!” he calls. “You folks hungry?”

Arthur’s shoulders go a little stiff.

You can see the calculation move through him: unknown people, unknown loyalties, too much attention, too much noise. But the road behind you is long, and the day has been longer, and the smell of food is suddenly unbearable in the best possible way.

You raise your hand before he can refuse.

“We wouldn’t say no,” you call back, completely ignorant of his concern.

Arthur gives you a look.

You give him one right back, sweet as honey and twice as stubborn.

The man at the fence laughs. “Come on, then! Plenty to go around.”

Arthur sighs through his nose, but he nudges Rhiannon forward.

The ranch swallows you in lamplight and human warmth. A few workers come over to help with the horses, friendly without being too curious. Someone takes your reins and tells you your mare will be watered and fed. Someone else claps Arthur on the shoulder like they’re old friends, and Arthur bears it with the faint, braced patience of a man enduring weather.

“Long way from home?” a woman asks you, pressing a tin cup into your hands.

“Feels longer than it is,” you answer.

She smiles knowingly. Her eyes flick from you to Arthur and back again. “That's how marriage goes sometimes.”

You nearly choke on the coffee.

Arthur, beside you, goes very still.

The woman does not notice. Or perhaps she notices everything and chooses mercy.

“You two eat,” she says, waving toward the tables. “Plenty of beans, cornbread, and stew. Men slaughtered a wild hog yesterday, so we’re celebratin’ like kings.”

Arthur clears his throat. “Ma’am, we ain’t-”

“Thank you,” you say quickly, bright and firm, stepping just enough in front of him that he has to stop.

The woman pats your arm and moves off before Arthur can correct anything.

For one breath, neither of you speaks.

Then Arthur turns his head slowly toward you.

You look up at him, trying very hard not to smile.

“We ain’t married,” he says under his breath.

“I know.”

“You let her think we was.”

“She seemed happy thinking it.”

“That ain’t a reason.”

“It fed us.”

He stares at you. You stare back. Then, despite himself, he gives a quiet, helpless little laugh, and the sound goes through you softer than it has any right to.

“Sly thing,” he murmurs.

You take a sip of the drink to hide your face. “Practical thing.”

The liquor inside hits you, and you cough, and suddenly Arthur’s laugh goes from quiet to loud as you suck air in through your teeth, handing the tin mug to Arthur.

The evening gathers around you and draws you into the safety of being surrounded by people who seemingly don’t want to see you hanged.

You eat at a rough plank table under strings of lanterns, shoulder to shoulder with ranch hands and hired men and two women who keep filling your plate no matter how often you insist you have enough. The stew is thick and rich. The cornbread crumbles warm between your fingers. Someone passes whiskey. Arthur takes one drink, then another when pressed, though he keeps his wits about him.

Still, the line of his shoulders eases.

You like watching it happen.

You like him here in the lamplight, with dust on his coat and firelight touching the sun-streaked gold in his hair. You like the way his eyes crinkle when someone tells a story that almost earns a laugh from him. You like the way he leans back from the table with one arm braced along the bench, boot stretched out, comfortable for once.

A fiddle starts up again near the cookfire.

The first tune is quick and bright, all elbows and stomping boots. Men clap along. A girl in a blue dress grabs one of the ranch hands and spins him so hard his hat flies off, and everyone roars. Someone shoves the hat back onto his head backward. The music rises, wild with delight.

You feel it in your feet first.

Then your hands.

Then somewhere behind your ribs.

Arthur sees the change in you and narrows his eyes.

“No,” he says.

You turn to him. “I haven’t asked anything.”

“You’re about to.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I surely do. You have that wild look in your eye that you’re about to do somethin’ reckless.”

You set your cup down. “Arthur.”

“No.”

“One dance.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You haven’t even heard my argument.”

“Don’t need to.”

You lean closer, lowering your voice as if this is a negotiation of grave importance. “They think we’re married.”

“That ain’t my fault.”

“It will look terribly rude if you refuse to dance with your wife.”

His eyes sharpen at that, but not with anger. Something more like amused. More helpless. More like he can’t tell you no. “You’re enjoyin’ this.”

“Maybe a little.”

“A little,” he repeats flatly.

You give him your hand.

Arthur looks at it like you have offered him a lit stick of dynamite.

The fiddle slips into a slower tune, still lively but less frantic, the kind of song that lets people turn under lamplight without knocking teeth loose. Couples begin to gather. Some are married. Some are pretending they might be by morning. The music softens the edges of everything.

“Come on,” you say. “No one here knows us.”

Arthur looks from your hand to your face.

For a moment, you think he will refuse again. He should, maybe. It would be sensible. You are too far from camp, too full of strange discovery, too warmed by whiskey and lamplight and being mistaken for something neither of you has dared name.

Then he takes your hand.

His palm is warm and callused, closing around yours with careful strength.

“One dance,” he says.

Your smile breaks free. “One dance.”

He lets you pull him up.

For all his grumbling, Arthur knows how to move. That surprises you, though it shouldn’t. A man who rides like part of the horse, who fights like weather coming down from the mountains, ought to know what to do with rhythm when it finds him.

He is not showy. He is not polished. But he is steady.

His hand settles at your waist, respectful and firm, and yours rests on his shoulder. The first few steps are awkward only because you are suddenly very aware of everyone watching, though perhaps no one is watching at all. Then the music catches you both properly, and the world begins to turn.

Dust rises under your boots.

Lanterns blur.

Arthur’s coat brushes your skirt, and his hand tightens just slightly when another couple spins too close. Protective. You feel it through the thin layers of your dress, and warmth blooms under his touch.

“You lied,” you say softly.

His brow furrows. “About what?”

“You said you wouldn’t dance.”

“I said one dance.”

“But you can dance.”

“That ain’t the same thing.”

“It is when you’re this good at it.”

He scoffs, but there is color high on his cheekbones now, almost hidden by the low light. “Don’t start.”

You laugh, and his eyes flick down to your mouth.

The moment changes.

Only a little. Only enough for the air between you to still. His gaze lifts again almost immediately, but you saw it. You felt it. The same charge that has been following you since that ruined place near Van Horn. The same careful not-looking. The same want pulled thin over restraint.

Arthur feels it too. You know he does.

He adjusts his hold just a fraction, giving you space, but the space does not help. Somehow, it only makes you feel the places where he is not touching you more keenly. The music slows. Or maybe your blood does. The whole ranch becomes a haze of gold and sound, and Arthur is the only clear thing in it.

“Folks are starin’,” he murmurs.

You glance around. No one seems to be. Everyone is busy laughing, drinking, dancing, living.

“No, they aren’t.”

“They might be.”

“Then let them think we’re very fond of each other.”

His mouth parts slightly, as if whatever he meant to say has vanished before it could become sound.

You do not know where your courage comes from. Maybe whiskey. Maybe the road. Maybe the impossible pass at your back and the promise of another country ahead. Maybe it is just Arthur himself, his hand at your waist, his eyes on yours, his body close enough that every turn feels like a question.

Maybe it is the fantasies you have been living in your head about him touching you.

The song ends too soon.

Applause breaks around you. Someone cheers. Someone calls for another tune.

Arthur releases you slowly, like he has to remind his hand how.

“There,” he says, rougher than before. “You got your dance.”

“I did.”

You should step back.

For one small suspended moment, you stand close together under the lanterns, breath still a little quick, your palm lingering against his sleeve. Arthur looks down at you with something unguarded in his face, something tender and bewildered and afraid.

Then someone shouts for more whiskey, and the spell breaks.

Arthur clears his throat and steps away.

The rest of the evening passes warmly. Easier, somehow. You sit beside him again, and though neither of you speaks much about the dance, it remains there between you, glowing like an ember in a dying campfire. People keep calling you “ma’am” and Arthur “sir” with that teasing reverence reserved for married strangers. You stop correcting them before you ever start.

Arthur never corrects them either.

Eventually, the hour grows late. The party thins. A few men are drunk enough to sing badly. The older woman who first greeted you points you toward a small spare room off one of the outbuildings, insisting you take it instead of sleeping rough.

“For you and your husband,” she says.

Arthur opens his mouth.

You touch his wrist.

He closes it again.

The room is plain but clean, with two narrow cots, a wash basin, and a window looking out toward the dark pasture. The walls hold the day’s heat. The air smells faintly of hay and soap. Outside, the music has softened to a distant murmur.

Arthur stands just inside the door, looking at the two cots like they might accuse him of something.

“You take whichever,” he says. “I can sleep outside if—”

“Arthur.”

He stops.

“You don’t have to sleep outside.”

His jaw works. “Just tryin’ to be proper.”

“I know.”

That is the trouble with him, you think. He is rough in all the ways the world has required, but gentle in the places no one taught him to be. It makes you ache. It makes you reckless.

You set your bag down near the cot by the window. Not the bag with the figurine. That one remains outside with the horses, tied securely among your other things, forgotten for now.

Arthur removes his hat and sets it carefully on a small chair. Without it, he looks softer. Younger, almost, though the lines of his life are still there in his face. He runs a hand through his hair and avoids your eyes again.

“You did good today,” he says.

You turn toward him.

“With the pass,” he clarifies. “Figurin’ where we was. Thinkin’ through what it might mean.” He looks at you then. “Was smart.”

Praise from Arthur is never careless. He gives it like a coin he had to earn before he could hand it over. You feel the weight of it settle in your palm.

“Thank you,” you say quietly.

He nods once, then looks away as if the room has become too small.

You move before you can lose your nerve.

It is only a few steps. Nothing at all. Yet each one feels enormous. Arthur looks back when you stop in front of him, his expression stilling.

You rise on your toes and kiss him.

It is sweet. Soft. Barely more than a press of lips against the corner of his mouth, innocent enough that no one could condemn it and intimate enough that your whole body trembles with the doing of it.

Arthur does not move.

Not away. Not toward.

For one heartbeat, he is still beneath your mouth.

Then he exhales, and the sound brings you back to reality.

You draw back before either of you can make it more than it is.

“Goodnight, Arthur,” you whisper.

His eyes are dark in the lamplight, fixed on you with an intensity that makes your pulse stumble.

“Goodnight,” he says at last, voice low and scraped raw.

You turn to your cot before you can do something foolish. Like something you’ve fantasized about these last weeks. Behind you, Arthur remains still for several seconds longer. You hear him shift eventually, hear the creak of the other cot as he sits, then the soft thud of his boots coming off one by one.

Neither of you speaks again.

Outside, the ranch settles into sleep. Lanterns are blown out. The last song dies unfinished. Horses stamp and sigh in the dark pasture.

Your travel bag hangs from the saddle where you left it, untouched beneath the wide black bowl of the sky.

Deep inside it, wrapped in cloth, the little stone woman waits.

For a long while, nothing happens.

Then, faint as a second heartbeat, the figurine begins to pulse.

Once.

Twice.

A low, secret throb of warmth moves through the stone, unseen in the dark. The horses shift uneasily, ears flicking toward the bag and away again. The night holds its breath.

Inside the small room, you sleep with your fingers near your lips, dreaming of lantern light and Arthur’s hand at your waist.