Devil’s Backbone | An A. Morgan Fic
Beneath deep silver light, a match was struck.
Its flame glowed and pulsed, a living thing, and ate away at the end of a thick cigar. Orange sparks deepened to the cherry red of ember. A sweet smelling smoke plumed from the end of the cigar and twisted into the air, then danced to the narrowed eyes of the man whose teeth held the cigar firm between his lips. Turqoise shone in the light of the match. Tired, stern. The light of the match was suddenly extinguished with a quick flick of his hand before the stick was abandoned somewhere in the grass.
Arthur inhaled, pulled the ember deeper into the cigar, and held the sweet smoke in his mouth as if rinsing something out. When he released it, the silver smoke left both his nostrils and lips, as if he were more dragon than man. The full, straight shape of his lips quirked at the thought as he was reminded of a tale read to him by Hosea — The Legends of King Arthur.
There was certainly no Kingdom for him, now. Only the dark, quiet wood and the silver of the moon, his mare Sunup munching quietly near him as he sat hidden in the shadows of the trees. Dutch had sent him to scout for any sign of O’Driscoll activity in attempts to find their camp so that the hopeful plan growing in Dutch’s mind could come to fruition. What it entailed, Arthur wasn’t sure, nor did he particularly care. He’d learned years ago not to ask too many questions lest dig a thorn of doubt into the muscle of Dutch’s heart.
Arthur inhaled the sweet cigar smoke again and savored the taste. Inhale, exhale. Again. And again. The forested night brought with it the sound of crickets and owls, lulling Arthur’s tired mind to a sweet slowness, and soon enough the cigar came to a burnt nub against Arthur’s calloused finger tips. Just as he flicked it to the ground and toed the dying ember with his boot, the sound of a cantering horse came from the main road behind him, and he pressed himself against the thick trunk of a tree.
A lone rider moved beneath the shadow of the canopy. In snatches of moonlight Arthur caught the slight shape of a woman with long, dark hair. As she pulled her steed into a halt in a watery patch of moonlight, Arthur’s attention was drawn to her eyes, which were wide and frightened like a hunted doe. Dark smudges spread about her fine-boned face and spread like a disease to a soiled part of her pale blouse. The stain glistened against the fabric, having soaked the material through.
Over flank of the horse, the limp frame of a man still in working overalls. His body hung with the eery finality that came with a corpse, the power of a sleeping thing no longer protecting itself. The pungent, earthy tang of blood carried to Arthur on a whisper of a breeze. Arthur watched the woman as her head swung from side to side, then with a press of her right leg, turned her horse into the wall of forest opposite him.
The brush rustled and twigs snapped beneath hooves. Then woman, man, and horse were swallowed whole by the trees.
Arthur knew he ought to leave well enough alone. That woman was not the first to hide a body, nor the first to stain her flesh with the lifeblood of her husband. Hopefully, she would be quick enough to avoid O’Driscall “pleasantries”, and if not… There was nothing that could be done, nor should be done by his hand.
After allowing himself to breathe deeply again Arthur found himself listening for the woman, and was able to make out the quiet scrape of turning earth and the heave of her tired breath: a familiar, wet rattle. The sound scratched Arthur’s mind with an unpleasant sting. Memories of his mother clouded his mind: her waxy, perspiring skin, her cracked lips sucking down air that her sick lungs so desperately needed, and the dull exhaustion and grief that clouded her gaze.
“God damnit.” Arthur growled. Before he could stop himself, Arthur pushed his weight from the tree he had hidden behind, and began to move quietly through the woods, using the sounds of the woman’s labored breathing as his guide.
He found the woman in a light drenched clearing clawing at the ground with an almost animalistic desperation. Clumps of clay-rich dirt flew over her trembling shoulders as she took handful after handful of earth that landed carelessly on the brutalized face of the corpse just behind her. In the pale light, Arthur could only make out pulped flesh and aged gore in a pit that may have once been a face, and felt a chill snake down his spine.
Arthur stepped out from the shadows and into the clearing. “There’s no sense in burying a body that no one will recognize.”
The woman leapt from her feet with such a speed that even Arthur’s hand didn’t get a chance to twitch toward his pistol before she angled an iron poker towards him with two, white knuckled hands. Despite the severity in which she trembled, she looked absolutely feral, with her eyes blown wide and her teeth bared in a snarl. “Who the hell are you?” She hissed.
Arthur raised his hands in surrender. “Just someone passin through. I don’t mean no harm.”
“Bullshit,” she replied, voice thick with venom. “No man follows a woman for nothin.”
Arthur took a step forward, slow and gentle, as if approaching a spooked horse. The corner of his mouth quirked into a crooked smile. He now stood just on the other side of the corpse. “You need to get out of here.”
“I said get away from me!” The woman shrieked and sent a brutal swing of the iron towards Arthur. The shrillness of it echoed through the quiet wood and sent critters scampering through the brush.
Arthur cursed under his breath and jumped back, only to narrowly avoid another swipe of the iron with a twist. “Will you quit it?” He snarled. Gentleness turned sharp with irritation as he watched her prep for another swing and pummel it forward. Arthur reached out and caught the bar in his hand, iron biting against callouses, and held it with an ease that came with carefully honed strength. “I’m not the most dangerous thing in these woods.”
It was as if God had his ear hard-pressed into their conversation, for it was only a second after these words left his mouth that a gunshot rang through the air and the woman let out a pained yelp and fell to the ground. In a slow, unforgiving moment before she collapsed to the recently turned soil, he saw ribbons of torn flesh bloom from her cheek.
“Get em’!” A thickly accented voice shouted from the dark. At once, a handful of men leapt from the dark with guns in hand, and Arthur had only a second of limb-numbing rage before he threw himself behind a large boulder and drew out his own weapon. On the ground before him, the woman cradled a hand to her cheek, clutching the torn flesh in which the bullet had carved a chunk out of her face. Blood pooled beneath her fingers and began to drip slowly down her neck. Her eyes remained squeezed shut as gunfire began to bark through the air, sending her bay mount galloping away with a frightened cry into the dark wilderness.
Arthur scowled as he tightened his hold on his pistol and began firing back into the clearing. Metal found flesh and bone with a familiar efficiency, and the familiar strange satisfaction came as bodies fell with a slump time after time. He began to lose himself in the familiar dance of shooting living targets — finding each vulnerability and sending a bullet square into its center with a simple press of his finger.
A long whistle pierced the air, and the gun fire dropped. “Morgan!” The accented voice called, harsh with an Irish brogue. “Come on out, lad. We only want to talk. In fact, we have a message for your dear old Dutch if you care to listen.”
Arthur leaned just enough to the side of the boulder to see a blonde-haired man standing in the clearing. A wide, jackal like grin was pulled on his pale lips. The immaculate cleanliness of his clothes, simple dark trousers and a neatly tucked white button up behind leather suspenders, struck Arthur with an immediate sense of apprehension. It reminded him of Dutch, and for this reason, he felt a sudden pulse of fear.
The man caught Arthur’s eye and tilted his head to the side. “Come on, man. We killed the girl, yes, but it was only a matter of inconvenience. Wrong place, wrong time you see. We don’t mean any harm.”
The silver light of the moon turned this man’s pale features aglow with a primordial light. Arthur might’ve thought it was angelic, were it not for the emptiness in his gaze. What made a soul had clearly not passed onto him. As Arthur slowly stood he was sure to keep eye contact with the man and not allow it to slip to the woman, who took a sharp intake of breath as Arthur stepped over her.
The man smiled as he took Arthur in. Wrinkles pinched at the corner of his pale eyes in the only indication of how old he was. The rest of his pale face was as smooth and as unmarked as a bowl of cream. “Good lad. Now, if I may introduce myself.” The gun in his right hand, an intricately carved silver pistol, was deposited into his holster. “Shamus Kelley.” Then as if he was a perfectly ordinary stranger in perfectly ordinary circumstances, he extended his hand.
Arthur merely glanced down at it. “What’s your message?” He asked coldly.
Shamus didn’t miss a beat and withdrew his hand. It lay like a resting dog on his holster. “He requests a private meeting on June 17th, at sundown. The location will be revealed to you in a letter in Blackwater. No guns, only three bodies allowed to enter.”
Behind him, Arthur could feel the woman shifting on the ground.
She was trying to crawl away.
Arthur took a step back and found the fabric of her skirt with the heel of his boot and dug his weight into the ground. At once, she stopped moving.
“You need a firing squad for a simple message?” Arthur asked. “Or does Colm need some blood to satiate himself?”
Shamus’s grin widened to a point where it seemed to stretch his skin tight over his skull. “You’re a dangerous man, Arthur. We were just muzzling Dutch’s favorite hound.”
Arthur feigned resigned interest, although a hot rush of anger shot through him. Around them, O’Driscoll boys watched the two of them with almost ravenous apprehension as they fiddled with blade and gun like. Arthur had a passing fantasy of blowing a hole through every one of their skulls. Instead, he allowed a chuckle to escape his wind chapped lips. “Well,” he began, keeping his voice as steady as he could despite his rising adrenaline. “It’s a shame you didn’t.”
With a flash of movement Arthur sent a fist flying into Shamus’s sharp jaw. It practically bent beneath his knuckles, flimsy and thin, and Shamus stumbled backwards, shocked, and before he had a chance to bark an order he was yelping in pain from one of Arthur’s bullets lancing through his shin. The men around him stood in stunned silence for a few aching moments before they turned the barrels of their guns towards Arthur — but he and the woman were already gone and tearing through the forest.
Arthur clasped the woman’s small, cold arm with as much care as he could provide as he pulled her through the woods and towards his mare. He moved under thick branches, around dense brush. Anything to spare them even a half of a second. The woman followed, thankfully, without asking any questions, although, she began to breathe raggedly as they continued to sprint through the brush. In a patch of moonlight, Arthur saw her spit a wad of bloody saliva onto the ground.
Sunup was exactly where he had left her, much to his relief. Arthur leapt onto the saddle and offered an arm to the woman. “Get on.” Arthur ordered.
“Where are you taking me?” She asked while pulling herself atop the horse with the help of Arthur’s strong arm. Her other hand clung to her dark skirts.
“Train station.” Arthur replied curtly before kicking his mare into a gallop just as the sound of pursuing horses came painstakingly close. The trees turned into a blur of deep blue and silver as they tore over the dirt path with the sounds of cursing and gunfire trailing behind them. The mare puffed air in deep, bursting breaths as Arthur pushed her farther and farther. He knew they could lose them, Sunup was the fastest he’d ever ridden. Behind him, the woman pressed herself tight against his back, and he felt her tremble against him as if she was about to fall apart.
He needed to get back to Dutch — he needed to tell someone, anyone, about Shamus. The almost ghost-like flesh with the cleanliness of a choir boy had made him sick to his stomach. How long had Colm kept him at his side? Surely not long enough. Dutch would’ve mentioned someone like him, someone who seemed a shell of a person, with a viciousness promised in neatly tucked shirts and a feral grin.
They came upon Valentine in what seemed to be a matter of minutes. Beneath him, his horse was puffing and gasping with exhaustion and as soon as he brought her to a nearby trough, she buried her nose into the water and took deep, long gulps. Muscles danced in her neck where adrenaline still pounded.
The night was beginning to lighten now — black was turning into blue. The mounted lamps of the train station cast a faint, golden glow on the two of them and faintly, the sounds of stirring farm animals broke through the silence of early morning. Arthur took this moment to finally take a full look of the woman now, and once he did, he felt his breath thicken in his throat.
Despite the haggardness and the torn flesh of her cheek, the woman who looked down at him as he dismounted was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Open, deep green eyes watched him with a wary intelligence. Her full lips tightened as he offered her his hand, and the length of her dark hair swayed as she took his hand and dismounted.
“Take that train as far as you can go.” Arthur said to her. “Clean up that cheek as soon as you can.” Each word came out clipped, unsure. Arthur dug into his saddle bag and withdrew a button-down shirt: neatly folded in a square of blue, striped fabric. “And change your blouse. You won’t get far past the law if they see you covered in blood.”
The woman took the shirt with a nod, and without another word she started for the stairs. Arthur stepped to the side and watched her, breath finally returning to his lungs.
Just as she came to the first step of the train deck she looked over her shoulder. “Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” she said. Her voice was even now, and oddly low. It found a spot in Arthur’s chest like a new, undiscovered part of his lungs — as if it was always meant to be there.
Arthur could only dip his head in reply, and stood watching as she began to pull his shirt over her blouse and disappear into the train station. Once she did, he turned to mount onto his saddle, and took his eyes to the brightening sky. The twinkling stars were beginning to die out. Dawn had come, at last.
“C’mon girl.” Arthur grumbled to his mare as he settled into the saddle. “We’ll take it nice and easy.”
A long, keening whistle came from the distance. Arthur’s blood ran cold. Along the horizon, fanned out in a straight line over the bleeding dawn, stood the O’ Driscolls. In the center, on a thick muscled quarter horse as pale as his rider, sat Shamus Kelley, who raised a solitary hand as if acknowledging an old friend.
Somehow Arthur knew that the gesture didn’t hold the intent of acknowledgment. It was a gesture of promise. Arthur glared at the man, knowing in his heart he would face that pale-faced bastard soon enough, and raised his hand in reply.
As Arthur turned toward Valentine and began making his way through the mud slewn streets, he felt Shamus’s eyes upon his back.
Only when he dissapeared behind the church did he feel any reprieve, and only when he lit another cigar and clasped it between his lips did he make his way back home to Dutch.
Hello! I am so sorry for my long absence. I was actually able to get a new job at a ranch, and have been working hard! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of my very first Arthur Morgan fic, and I will do my best to update as quickly as possible!
