#devil's backbone

The morning light comes in slats through the shutters of Leviticus Cornwall’s office, thin and pale, cut into stripes by the blinds. It does nothing to soften the dark room above the humming freight yard. The mahogany desk shines dark, the gilded clock on the mantel ticks. Outside, the city coughs and clatters itself awake: carriage wheels over stone, the groan of the riverboats' steam horns, the distant bark of men loading freight in the damp heat off the Lannahechee.

Cameron Spence stands before Cornwall’s desk with a folder tucked beneath his arm and the expression of a man carrying fresh meat into a lion’s den.

Cornwall does not sit at his desk. He stands at the window with his back to the room, his broad shoulders casting further shadow. His cigar burns between two fingers, but he has not bothered to smoke it. Ash clings to the end, glowing faintly.

“Well?” Cornwall spits, not turning around.

Spence clears his throat. “The attorneys have reviewed the matter again, sir.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No, sir.” Spence adjusts his spectacles with a damp hand. “The issue remains the same. Frederick Shaw is confirmed deceased. We have that much established through witness testimony and the reports from Blackwater. However…” He hesitates.

Cornwall finally turns. The look alone is enough to make Spence wish the floor would open and swallow him neatly, paperwork and all.

“However?” Cornwall asks.

“His widow is not proven dead.”

For one small second, the office becomes terribly still.

Then Cornwall’s cigar snaps between his fingers. A scattering of ash drops onto the polished floorboards. Spence continues quickly. “Without some kind of proof of the widow Shaw’s death, or her legal consent, the deed and surrounding land interests remain tied up. The charter filings around Limpany were thorough. Shaw arranged the deed so that upon his death, his interest would pass directly to his wife. Without her signature, the land remains beyond our reach.”

Cornwall’s eyes narrow. “Do not compliment him in front of me.”

“I did not mean to, sir.”

“You said he anticipated pressure.”

“He did.”

Cornwall steps away from the window. “He was a provincial upstart playing mayor in a burned-out bend of river.”

“Legally, he was rather careful. Our research on him was that he was previously a lawyer here in Saint Denis.”

Cornwall slams his hand onto the desk. The sound cracks through the room like a gunshot. Spence stops speaking at once.

“I do not pay men like you to tell me what I can and cannot do,” Cornwall says, voice low now, worse than shouting. “I pay men like you to remove impediments.”

Spence swallows. “Yes, Mister Cornwall.”

“Leland Development is breathing down my neck. I have surveyors waiting, capital waiting, oil contracts waiting, and every week that damned land at Limpany sits idle is another week that lesser men believe they can laugh at me.”

“No one is laughing, sir.”

Cornwall’s mouth curls. “You are either lying, Spence, or you are more foolish than I thought.”

Spence lowers his gaze. He has learned, over many years, that there are moments when agreement is the safest form of survival. Especially when dealing with Leviticus Cornwall.

Cornwall moves around the desk and picks up the folder Spence had brought. He opens it, scans the first page, then tosses it back down.

“So find her.”

“We are trying.”

“Try harder.” Cornwall sneers.

“That’s why Agent Milton is here.” 

At the mention of his name, the door opens. Andrew Milton enters without apology. He removes his bowler hat and tucks it beneath one arm, his pockmarked face composed into a professional calm that Cornwall finds both useful and infuriating. Milton is a tall, sharp man, built less like a soldier and more like a blade. He gives Cornwall a reserved nod, then Spence, as he stands at attention. “Mister Cornwall.”

Cornwall points at the papers on his desk. “My vice president informs me that a dead man continues to inconvenience me through his very much missing wife.”

Milton’s expression does not shift. “That seems to be the long and short of it.”

“I assume you have something more useful to offer.”

“We have widened the search.”

“Where?” Cornwall demands.

“Blackwater first. Then Strawberry, Wallace Station, Valentine. We have men posted near stage routes, depots, post offices, and hotels. If she is traveling under her own name, we will find her.”

The magnate lets out a humorless laugh. “If she is traveling under her own name. My God, Milton, do you think she's stupid?”

“No,” Milton says. “Frightened, perhaps. Desperate. But not stupid.”

Spence glances between them. “If she has fled east, she may seek Saint Denis. She lived here before, according to records.”

Milton nods. “We have men making discreet inquiries.”

Cornwall steps closer to Milton. “Discreet. I despise that word.”

“It is sometimes the more effective approach.”

“It is a word used by men who lack the stomach to be direct.”

Milton’s eyes cool slightly. “I do not lack the stomach for anything, Mister Cornwall. But a deer being hunted tends to bolt if the dogs bark too loudly.”

Cornwall says nothing for a beat. Then he smiles, thin and ugly.

“Do not mistake yourself for my equal, Agent Milton.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

“No,” Cornwall says. “You would not.”

The clock ticks. Somewhere down on the street, a horse screams at another horse. The city moves on, indifferent to the little storm gathering in that room.

Milton sets his hat on the corner of the desk. “We do not believe she is dead.”

Spence stiffens, having already given that news to the magnate. Cornwall’s gaze sharpens.

“Why?” Cornwall asks.

“No body. No grave. No record of passage under her name, but also no sign of a woman matching her description among the unidentified dead after the Blackwater business.” Milton pauses. “She is alive. We have a lead coming out of Valentine that a woman that sounds like her just spent a week there, holed up at the Saints Hotel.”

Cornwall’s jaw works.

“Then where is she?”

“That,” Milton says, “is what I intend to discover.” The leather of his gloves squeals as his hand tightens over the corner of the desk.

“You said the same weeks ago.”

“And since then, sir, the West Elizabeth situation has become complicated.”

Cornwall waves this off. “Outlaws. Ferries. Dead men. I am aware.”

Milton’s gaze flicks briefly to Spence. “The van der Linde gang has drawn a great deal of heat. Most local law is occupied with that disaster. It has muddied the water.”

Cornwall turns back to the window. “Then drain the water.”

Milton’s mouth tightens. “I will find Ruth Shaw.”

“You will bring her to me.”

Milton holds his stare. “Alive is preferable, I understand. But I cannot promise what condition she will be in if she runs into rough company.”

Cornwall lifts his chin. “Don’t be poetic. It doesn’t suit you. You and your men are as rough company as any of those miscreants outside these walls.”

“Then plainly, we will find her. We do not currently believe she is under the protection of any organized outfit. No evidence suggests she has joined with criminals or crossed into Mexico. Most likely, she is hiding alone, aided by strangers, or staying with some acquaintance from her prior life.”

Spence exhales softly, almost relieved.

No one in that room knows about the dried creek bed in New Hanover. No one knows about the wagons beneath old oak roots, or Susan Grimshaw’s sharp voice, or Mary Beth’s curls bent over a book, or Arthur Morgan stalking through camp with a bruised heart and bloodied hands. No one knows that Ruth Shaw is not alone.

Cornwall presses his palm flat to the glass and looks down at the street as if he owns every soul moving upon it.

“Then pull apart her prior life,” he says. “Thread by thread. Friends. Doctors. Land agents. Hotel clerks. Priests. Shopkeepers. I want every name. Every letter. Every charitable fool who may have looked at her and seen a woman worth saving.”

Milton picks up his hat. “Understood.”

Cornwall turns from the window.

“And Agent Milton?" Milton pauses at the door.

“If you fail me in this,” Cornwall says, voice quiet as a knife drawn slowly from leather, “the widow Shaw will be the least of your concerns.”

Milton inclines his head. Then he leaves.

Spence remains where he stands, folder clutched to his chest. Cornwall reaches for a new cigar. “Well?” Cornwall says without looking at him.

Spence blinks. “Sir?”

“Get out.”

—

Cicadas shrill from the trees above like they are sawing the sun into pieces. You wake with a headache pressed behind your eyes.

Not from drink. No, that particular misery belongs to Arthur Morgan, whose silhouette you see at once across camp, bent over near his wagon with one hand braced against the wheel and the other pressed to his brow. He looks as if the morning itself has personally insulted him and intends to keep doing so.

Good. Let it.

You sit up from your bedroll and push your hair back from your face. Your curls have worked themselves wild during the night, strands sticking to your neck in the damp heat. For one foolish second, your body remembers the heat of him crowding you against the wall, the whiskey on his breath, the terrible things he said in a voice that made your own blood betray you.

Then the memory closes around your ribs. The guilt. The wedding ring hanging from your neck. Your husband, not three months gone. You reach for your boots.

Mary Beth is already awake beside you, sitting cross-legged with her hair loose down her back, tying one ribbon with the dreamy slowness of a girl not yet prepared to face the day. She watches you from under her lashes.

“You sleep at all?” she asks softly.

You pull on one boot. “Enough.”

“That don’t sound like enough.”

“It was enough.”

She presses her lips together. You can feel her wanting to ask more. She is gentle, Mary Beth, but not blind. Not stupid. She knows something happened in Rhodes, something to make you short-tempered and snap at her. But she won’t ask, won’t prod.

Across camp, Arthur straightens too quickly and immediately regrets it. He closes his eyes, jaw tight. His hat is low, but not low enough to hide the pallor beneath his tan.

Sean laughs at something near the fire, far too loud, too bright. Arthur turns his head with murderous slowness.

Sean’s laughter dies mid-note.

That almost pleases you.

Almost.

Abigail appears carrying a basket of laundry against her hip, Jack trailing after her with a stick in hand, drawing lines through the dust. She takes one look at you, one look across camp at Arthur, then gives the kind of sigh that suggests she has seen more than enough of men and women and the trouble they make when their hearts start chewing through their good sense.

“Well,” Abigail says, dropping the basket near the wash tubs. “Ain’t this morning just brimmin’ with joy.”

You stand and brush your skirt smooth. “I’ll help with washing.”

“You don’t gotta.”

“I said I’ll help.”

Abigail looks at you sharply, “Alright then.”

The two of you fall into work. Water sloshes. Soap roughens your hands. Your knuckles ache from scrubbing shirts that belong to men who never seem to notice laundry unless it is missing. 

Tilly joins after a while, then Mary Beth, and the four of you make a small ring of labor at the edge of the camp.

Arthur is impossible not to notice.

You try. You fail.

He moves around his wagon with jerky irritation, gathering cartridges, checking a saddlebag, stopping once to swallow hard like his own stomach has turned traitor. He snaps at Bill for standing too close. He tells Sean to shut his damn mouth before Sean has even opened it. When Pearson asks him if he wants coffee, Arthur says something too low for you to hear, but Pearson takes three steps back and suddenly remembers business elsewhere.

“Lord,” Tilly murmurs, wringing out a shirt. “Somebody oughta put him out of his misery.”

“Or ours,” Abigail chimes in.

Mary Beth looks at you. You keep scrubbing.

The shirt beneath your hands is already clean. You keep scrubbing anyway, dragging the fabric against the washboard until your wrists burn.

Abigail notices.

“You’re gonna scrub holes through that,” she says.

You stop. Slowly, you wring it out and stand to hang it on the line. Of course, it’s one of Arthur’s shirts. Of course it is. Your skirt brushes your ankles, damp from splashed water. Your head throbs. Your heart throbs worse.

You do not look at Arthur. You look at the shirt. At the line. At the wooden pin in your hand.

Then Arthur’s voice cuts across camp.

“Where’s my goddamn gun oil?”

The whole creek bed seems to pause.

John, seated near the fire, lifts his head like a dog hearing thunder in the distance. “How the hell would I know?”

“I seen you messin’ with that crate.”

“I didn’t touch your oil.” John snaps back, the scars on his face rippling with his scowl.

Arthur stalks toward him. “You sure?”

John rises halfway, eyes narrowing. “What’s your problem?”

“My problem is everybody in this camp touches what ain’t theirs and then looks stupid when asked about it.”

“Oh, you wanna talk stupid?”

“Don’t,” Abigail snaps from the washtub.

John looks toward her. “I ain’t started nothin’, woman.”

“You never do,” she says. “Somehow it always starts anyway.”

You hang the shirt. Your fingers tremble against the clothespin.

Arthur glances toward the women’s side at Abigail’s voice, and for one second, his eyes catch yours. It is not soft. That might have been easier.

His gaze is bloodshot and bruised with hangover, shadowed by anger and something beneath it that he refuses to name. Your own anger rises to meet it, hot and immediate, a dog straining at its chain.

You look away first and hate that you do.

Behind you, Abigail makes a small sound. Not a sigh. Not a word. Something in between, edged with pity and annoyance. Like she knows everything that has gone on between the two of you.

“Don’t,” you say quietly.

“I didn’t say nothin’.”

“You were about to.”

She wrings a union suit so hard that water rains into the tub. “Fine. I won’t.”

Mary Beth ducks her head, but her gaze keeps slipping between you and Arthur like she is reading one page, then the next, trying to understand how the story got so ugly overnight. Like one of her stories that she fawns over. 

You lift another shirt from the tub.

“Some things ain’t worth asking after,” you say, trying to backpedal on your tone previously.

Abigail gives you a sidelong look. “That so?”

“Mhm.”

“And some things rot if nobody airs ’em out.” She says, with wisdom beyond her years.

You turn to her, anger flaring again. “Some things rot whether you air them out or not.”

The words come sharper than you intend.

Mary Beth stills. Tilly looks down at the water.

Abigail’s brows rise. For a moment, you think she might snap back, and some ugly part of you almost wants her to. Wants a clean fight. A simple one. One that has nothing to do with Arthur’s hands, Arthur’s mouth, Arthur’s wounded pride, Arthur’s talent for making you feel both safe and foolish in the span of a single breath.

But Abigail only nods once.

“Alright,” she says. “Then we won’t.”

That makes you feel worse.

You drop the shirt back into the tub and turn away.

“I need more soap.”

“There’s some by Pearson,” Tilly says.

You know that, but go anyway.

Crossing camp feels like traversing open ground under fire. You feel eyes on you, or imagine them. Maybe both. Camp is too small for secrets. Grief can hide in tents and sorrow can tuck itself under shawls, but anger walks around in daylight. People notice the aura of it.

You reach Pearson’s wagon and find the soap near a stack of tin plates. Pearson himself is busy stirring the pot with a grave expression, as if the future of civilization depends upon his continued punishment of carrots.

“Missus Shaw,” he says. “You uh… need somethin’?”

“Soap.”

“Right. Right there.”

“I see it.”

You take it.

Behind you, boots scuff the ground.

You know before turning.

Arthur stands a few feet away, hat tipped low, one hand resting near his gunbelt. Up close, he looks worse. His eyes are bloodshot. Stubble shadows his jaw. His mouth is set in a grim line, but there is a faint unsteadiness to him, a man held together by spite, leather, and the last bitter fumes of whiskey from yesterday.

You should walk away. You do not.

His gaze drops to the soap in your hand. “Mornin’.”

“Ain’t a good one.” You breathe back, trying to choke back a snarl that you wish desperately to let out.

Pearson suddenly becomes fascinated by the stew.

Arthur glances past you, toward the women at the tubs. Then back. “You alright?”

You laugh once, low and sharp. “That’s what you want to ask me?”

His expression hardens. “Ain’t allowed?”

“Not after yesterday.”

The two of you stare at each other. There are things you could say. Honest things. You could tell him you barely slept. That you felt something at his drunken confession. But your pride is like a thornbush, and you are standing in the middle of it barefoot.

Arthur rubs at his brow. “Look, Ruth…”

The sound of your name in his mouth twists something in you, “No.”

His eyes narrow. “No?”

“You do not get to say my name like that after yesterday.”

His face closes. “Like what?”

“Like you’re thinking with anything other than your cock.”

That hits.

He looks away, nostrils flaring. “That ain’t fair.”

Your jaw catches as your eyes narrow. He wants to talk about fair? After yesterday? Pearson makes a very small squeak and shuffles backward from the fire.

Arthur takes half a step closer, then stops himself. His voice drops. “You wanna do this here? In front of everyone?”

You look around. Abigail is watching openly now. Mary Beth less openly. John pretends not to. Sean doesn’t even bother pretending until Charles gives him one quiet glance, and he turns away fast.

“No,” you say. “I don’t.”

“Then quit talkin’ like you do.”

Heat blooms in your throat. “Don’t give me orders.”

His face goes pale beneath the tan. Anger flashes bright, but hurt is quicker.

For one heartbeat, the whole camp falls away. There is only Arthur Morgan, hungover and furious and wounded, looking at you like you are a door he cannot open without breaking the hinges.

Your fingers tighten around the soap. Instead of going any further, you turn and walk away.

The back of your neck prickles all the way to the wash tubs. You do not look back, though every part of you feels him watching. You sit down beside Abigail, toss the soap into the water, and plunge your hands after it.

No one speaks for a while.

Then Mary Beth murmurs, very softly, “Ruth…”

“Please don’t.”

Her mouth closes.

Abigail watches you with a curiosity and reservation that nearly undoes you. “Alright.”

Across camp, Arthur’s voice rises again, harsher than before, “Marston, move your damn saddle!”

John barks back. Bill laughs. Susan shouts at them all to quit acting like a pack of rabid dogs before breakfast.

The day continues because days are cruel that way.

—

By midmorning, the camp has settled into a wary rhythm.

You keep to the wash tubs with Abigail, Mary Beth, and Tilly, working until the skin at your knuckles goes tender from soap and water. Across camp, Arthur has finally stopped barking at every man within ten feet of him, though that only means he has retreated into a silence so foul it seems to sour the air around his wagon.

You are pinning the last of the shirts to the line when hoofbeats sound from the road above camp.

Charles looks up first. Then Javier. Then Arthur, one hand drifting toward his gun out of habit before recognition stills him.

Hosea Matthews rides down into the dried creek bed with his hat low and his coat dusty from the road. Silver Dollar picks his way between roots and wagon tracks with practiced patience, the grey horse’s ears twitching toward campfire smoke and voices. Hosea looks tired, but there is a brightness in his eye that suggests he has brought back something more useful than sundries.

Dutch steps out from beneath the shade of his tent before Hosea has even swung down.

“Well?” Dutch calls, spreading his arms as if welcoming some grand performer to the stage. 

“What song does Rhodes sing, old friend?”

Hosea dismounts slowly, one hand pressed briefly to his lower back before he lets go of the reins. “An ugly one.”

Dutch smiles. “The ugly songs are often the most profitable.”

You look down at the shirt in your hands, but your ears tilt toward them despite yourself.

Hosea leads Silver Dollar to the hitching post and pats the horse’s neck before joining Dutch near the big tent. Arthur, who had been oiling a revolver at his wagon, looks up but does not move closer. Not at first.

Dutch gestures for Hosea to sit, but Hosea waves him off and pulls a folded newspaper from inside his coat.

“Rhodes is rotten straight through,” Hosea says. “Pretty little place on the surface. Clean streets. Fresh paint. Men smiling like they were born for town socials and fraud.”

Dutch’s expression warms with interest. “Go on.”

“You were right about those two families. “You were right about the Grays and Braithwaites,” Hosea says, pulling a folded newspaper from inside his coat. “Rhodes belongs to them in all but name. Sheriff is a Gray. Leigh Gray. Cousin to the family, and apparently as purchasable as any other man with a badge.”

Dutch’s eyes brighten. “And the Braithwaites?”

“Catherine Braithwaite runs that place like an old queen holding court over a ruined kingdom. There is moonshine moving somewhere between the two houses, and enough talk of buried Confederate gold to keep every drunk in Rhodes dreaming.”

Dutch laughs low. “Now there is a woman worth meeting.”

Hosea gives him a look. “Careful.”

“My dear Hosea, I am always careful.”

Arthur snorts. Dutch ignores him.

Hosea folds the newspaper again, but keeps it in his hand. “There’s bad blood between the families. Not ordinary neighborly hatred. Generations of it. Land, liquor, pride, old murders, stolen horses, burned barns. Depends who tells the story. Truth is likely buried under a few generations of lies.”

“Old feuds,” Dutch says softly. “They make men careless.”

“They also make men violent.”

“Yes, yes.” Dutch waves a hand. “Violence is the language of lesser minds. Fortunately, we speak many tongues.”

Hosea’s eyes narrow slightly. “Dutch.”

Dutch steps closer to Hosea, lowering his voice just enough that you have to strain to hear.

“So what are you suggesting?”

“Between the two families, there’s all this talk of confederate gold.”

Dutch smiles slowly. “You don’t say.”

Hosea almost smiles, wiping his brow again.

Dutch’s gaze sharpens, “Listen to what Hosea is saying. Two powerful families. Both proud. Both rich. Both hating each other so deeply that they likely cannot see the ground under their own feet. That, gentlemen, is opportunity.”

Arthur folds the rag over his revolver, finally entering the conversation. “Or a trap.”

“Everything is a trap if you walk into it blind,” Dutch says. “We won't be blind.”

Hosea tucks the newspaper back into his coat. “There’s also talk of moonshine. Lots of it. Braithwaites may be moving liquor. Grays may be trying to stop it, or steal it, or tax it. Depends who’s talking.”

Dutch’s smile widens.

“There,” he says. “Commerce.”

“Crime,” Hosea corrects.

Dutch spreads his hands. “In America, old friend, the distinction is mostly paperwork.”

That earns a tired chuckle from John near the fire. Even Javier grins into his coffee.

Arthur is not smiling. His face is hard, shadowed beneath the brim of his hat, but his gaze is fixed on Dutch and Hosea with the wary attention of a man who can already hear hoofbeats in the distance.

Hosea continues. “The Braithwaites think the Grays are beneath them. The Grays think the Braithwaites are poison. Both want to be seen as the true power in Scarlett Meadows.”

“And both will want outside hands,” Dutch says. “If those hands are useful.”

“Maybe.”

Dutch points at Arthur. “That is exactly why I need you to be subtle.”

Arthur’s expression sours. “Christ.”

Hosea looks toward him then, more serious. “Dutch is right about one thing. We need to know the ground. You take Lenny and maybe Bill into Rhodes again. Not to start anything. Just listen. Find out where the Grays drink. Where the Braithwaites send their wagons. Who hates who. Who owes money. Who’s scared. And for Christ’s sake, don’t start another bar fight. I heard that you slugged a man last night.”

“And Sean?” Dutch asks.

Hosea grimaces. “Only if you want subtlety shot dead in the street.”

Arthur gives a short laugh despite himself, though it fades quickly.

Dutch clasps his hands behind his back and looks pleased, almost serene, as if the day has offered him a shining apple and he has not yet seen the worm beneath the skin.

“Good,” he says. “Very good. This is precisely what we need. A divided kingdom.”

Dutch goes on talking, already spinning the first thread of the scheme.

The day is still hot. The creek bed still smells of clay and smoke. Arthur is still angry. And somewhere south, two old families sit behind gates and painted walls, waiting to be discovered by wolves who think themselves clever enough to prey on both.

-

By early afternoon, Arthur’s head still feels full of broken glass.

Each sound cuts. Sean’s voice cuts. Pearson’s ladle scraping the pot cuts. John’s boots in the dirt cut. Even the damn cicadas up in the trees sound like tiny saws worrying at his skull. But none of it cuts as deep as you walking away from him with that look on your face.

Arthur stalks toward his wagon because motion is easier than standing still. He finds the offending gun oil exactly where he left it.

That makes him angrier.

He snatches it from the crate and slams the lid shut. The bang sends a lance through his head. He swears, low and vicious, and presses the heel of his hand to one eye.

“Rough mornin’?”

Arthur does not turn. “Not now, Hosea.”

Naturally, Hosea comes closer.

The old man moves quietly when he wants to. Today he wants to. Arthur hears the faint crunch of dry clay beneath his boots, then the soft exhale as Hosea leans against the wagon.

“You and Missus Shaw seem cheerful.”

Arthur uncorks the oil. “Ain’t your business.”

“No,” Hosea says. “But that ain’t stopped me before.”

Arthur looks at him then. “I said not now.”

Hosea’s expression is mild, which means he is already angry. “You can snarl at me all you like. Won’t make you less a fool.”

Arthur laughs without humor. “There it is.”

“There what is?”

“You callin’ me stupid. Always gets there eventually.”

“You certainly make it easy.”

Arthur turns away, jaw clenched. He picks up a revolver and begins cleaning it with more force than necessary. The cylinder spins under his thumb. Oil glints dark in the morning light.

Hosea watches him for a moment.

“You drunk?” he asks.

“Was.”

“Hungover, then.”

Arthur says nothing.

“Explains some of it.”

“Some of what?”

Hosea’s voice hardens. “I saw the way she looked at you this morning. Then I rode into Rhodes and heard why.”

Arthur’s hand stills. His eyes flick toward the laundry tubs despite himself. The laundry is done, and the women disbanded, but Hosea knows who he is looking for.

“She’s mad,” he says.

“Course she is.”

“She got a reason to be?”

“Probably,” Arthur admits, rubbing at his temple again.

“Did you frighten her?”

Arthur’s jaw tightens.

Hosea’s voice goes quieter. “Arthur.”

“I said things.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Arthur looks at his foster father. “You here to help or peck at me like a crow?”

“Depends whether there’s anything useful left on the carcass.”

Despite himself, Arthur almost smiles. Almost. It dies before it reaches his mouth. He sets the revolver down and drags both hands over his face. The hangover pulses behind his eyes, but beneath it is something worse. A sick, low ache. Not the easy kind that can be beaten out of a man in a fistfight or drowned under whiskey.

He thinks of you saying he gives orders. He thinks of Owanjila and the moonlight. He thinks of Valentine. Of leaving you.

“I ain’t mean to be ugly,” he says, so quietly Hosea almost does not hear.

“I know.”

“That don’t fix it.”

“No,” Hosea says. “It doesn’t.”

Arthur picks up his hat from the wagon and puts it on, tugging the brim low. “I need to get outta camp.”

“Arthur.”

“I need air.”

“You need sense.”

“Fresh out.”

Hosea steps in front of him before he can move off. The old man’s eyes are clear and tired and full of that terrible fatherly disappointment Arthur has never learned how to withstand.

Arthur exhales through his nose.

Hosea sees it all. Of course he does.

“Arthur,” he says softly. But Arthur steps around him. He does not go far, only to the far edge of camp, where the old creek bed narrows, and the roots claw out from the banks like fingers. He lights a cigarette with hands that are steadier than he feels. Smoke fills his lungs, bitter and familiar.

Behind him, camp carries on. Ahead, the road waits.

Arthur smokes half the cigarette before throwing it down and crushing it beneath his boot.

By early evening, the heat has gone coppery and mean. It sits low in the creek bed, caught between the white clay banks, trapped under the roots and wagons and canvas, pressing sweat beneath collars and sourness into every look. Supper comes and goes with little ceremony. Pearson’s stew is ladled out. Tin spoons scrape against tin bowls. Someone laughs on the far side of camp, but the sound dies quickly, as if even joy knows better than to linger too long in this fetid air.

At your end of the fire, there is mostly silence. Abigail eats with Jack tucked against her side, her eyes occasionally lifting toward you but never staying long. Mary Beth sits close enough that her skirt brushes yours, a quiet kind of comfort she does not force. Tilly picks at her food and watches the flames with a thoughtful frown.

Arthur keeps to the far side of camp.

He speaks only when spoken to. Even then, his answers are short, gruff things, half-swallowed before they can become conversation. His shoulders stay tight beneath his shirt. His hat is pulled low. 

You feel Arthur’s eyes on you more than once.

You never give him the satisfaction of meeting them.

Let him look. Let him sit over there with his wounded pride and his hangover and all those things he refuses to say. Let him stew in it the way the rest of you stew in this cursed heat.

That is what you tell yourself. It doesn’t help.

When the sky finally darkens into a deep indigo, and the first stars blink through the branches overhead, you stand without a word and carry your bowl to Pearson’s wash basin. The campfire snaps softly behind you. Somewhere near the horses, leather creaks. Dutch’s voice murmurs low from his tent. The rest of camp begins to loosen into the night, bodies drifting toward bedrolls, bottles, cigarettes, and whatever small comforts can be stolen before sleep.

You slip away to the women’s lean-to.

Mary Beth offers you a small, worried smile as you pass, but she does not follow. Abigail is already curled beside Jack, one arm thrown over him, her breathing slow and even. Tilly is a dim shape in the corner, snoring softly with her shawl bunched beneath her cheek. Susan Grimshaw is absent, likely still making some final round of camp like a general inspecting a battered army.

You are grateful for the quiet.

You crawl into your bedroll fully dressed, boots kicked off, but skirt still tangled around your legs. The canvas above you sags low, patched and stained, the pitch of the lean-to pressing down like a held breath. The night air is thick and humid, carrying the distant snorting of the horses, the hum of insects, and the occasional pop of the dying fire.

Every small sound feels too loud. A murmur near the men’s wagons. A horse blowing through its nose. A tin cup knocked softly against wood. Your own breathing.

You turn onto your back and stare up at the sagging canvas.

You are furious with him.

Furious at the way he looked at you this morning, like you were something he both wanted and resented. Furious at the way he pushes and pulls, saves and wounds, touches tenderness with one hand and reaches for cruelty with the other.

Furious that even now, hours later, your body still remembers him. The shape of his hands.

The rough scrape of his voice when he told you what he wanted to do to you.

You close your eyes tightly.

You will not do this. Not here. Not with Tilly sleeping several feet away and Abigail breathing softly beneath her blanket. Not with the camp spread around you in the dark, full of ears and gossip and ghosts. Not with anger still sitting hot beneath your ribs.

But your body is a traitorous thing.

It remembers yesterday in pieces. His weight. His breath. The way his frame caged you in, covered you, and smothered you.

You press your thighs together beneath the blanket, trying to will the ache away, but it only sharpens.

“Damn you, Arthur,” you whisper into the dark.

The words vanish into the canvas and humid night.

Your hand slides down before you can talk yourself out of it.

The fabric of your skirt bunches at your waist. Your fingers slip beneath the thin cotton of your drawers and find you already wet, shamefully so. You bite the inside of your cheek to stay silent, eyes shut so tightly that little sparks bloom in the dark behind your lids.

You think of him anyway.

Of his broad shoulders braced over you yesterday. Of the ragged scrape in his voice when anger tipped into want. Of his hands braced beside your shoulders, keeping you there without touching what he threatened to take.

You imagine those same hands between your legs instead.

Thick fingers. Calloused skin. His mouth at your ear, voice rough and low, telling you to be quiet so the whole damn camp doesn’t hear.

Your breath hitches.

You circle your swollen clit with two fingers, quick and angry, chasing the feeling. Like if you can make yourself come apart fast enough, hard enough, you can burn him out of your blood. The tension coils tight in your belly, winding higher with every stroke of your most sensitive skin. Then it hits sharp and bright. You shove your face into the crook of your arm to muffle the small, choked gasp that escapes. Pleasure flashes through you in fierce waves, pulsing outward until your thighs tremble beneath the blanket and your fingers still against your own slick heat.

For a few seconds, there is nothing but the rush of it. The relief, the heat. Then it fades.

And the anger is still there.

Worse now, somehow. Now something thin and aching.

You lie there panting quietly, fingers still pressed between your legs, the cooling slickness of your arousal making you feel suddenly exposed despite the blanket pulled over you. Your heart beats too fast against your ribs. Your eyes sting with something that might become tears if you let it.

You withdraw your hand, wipe it against the edge of your blanket, and stare up at the sagging roof of the lean-to.

The ring at your throat has slipped loose from beneath your chemise. Frederick’s ring. Cold against your damp skin.

You close your fist around it until the metal bites your palm.

The ache between your thighs fades eventually.

The moment Hosea leads you deeper into the camp at Dewberry Creek, the women converge on you like a flock of startled birds, skirts rustling, eyes wide, hands already reaching. Abigail is first, her palms flying up toward your shoulders as if expecting you to collapse onto the packed earth. Tilly hurries behind her with a blanket clutched to her chest, and Mary Beth rises from her little stool so fast her book slips from her lap and falls open in the dirt.

It is strangely quiet in the dried riverbed as you step inside its sun-baked cradle. The cicadas buzz overhead. Susan Grimshaw’s voice rings sharp somewhere behind the wagons. A few men stop what they are doing and stare.

You are dusty, shaken, breathless. And underneath your ribs, your heart still thrums with the panic of the train, the shouting of the law, Arthur’s rough hands gripping you as he hauled you out of danger, the gallop through the trees. The anger you held close to your chest since yesterday has finally faded, and with it, your energy. Your knees feel water-weak. But you force yourself not to sink. 

Abigail takes your arms. “Lord above, sweetheart. What did they do to you?”

You realize that the makeup you had put on before getting on the train has since worn off, and the yellowing bruise under your eyes is visible.

“M’fine,” you lie. It comes out thin as paper.

But the women are already ushering you toward Pearson’s wagon, toward the shade of an old oak root that curls overhead like a sheltering arm. Tilly presses the blanket to your back as if she expects you to shiver apart. Mary Beth drops to her knees at your feet and grabs your hands, her curls bouncing. “You look pale. Sit. Please sit.”

You lower yourself onto a wooden crate. The moment your weight settles, a tremor ripples through your fingers. You hide them in your lap.

Susan Grimshaw arrives with brisk, cutting steps, planting herself squarely in front of you. She takes your chin in her hand without warning and tilts your face toward the light.

“This from yesterday?” she asks as she studies the faint bruise blooming along your cheekbone. “Or when you were alone?”

You manage a tired smile. “Neither. The man who did it ’s dead.”

“Arthur kill ‘m?

“I did.” You mumble, shivering as you recall the feeling of the knife piercing that man’s flesh in the burned-out shell of Limpany.

She snorts, though her gaze softens in something that resembles concern. “Mary Beth, help her with those buttons. Tilly, water. Abigail, quit hovering.”

Abigail huffs but does not move far.

The camp murmurs around you. Pearson complains about his stew. A horse snorts. Someone coughs. But beneath it all hums something quieter, something wary: the feeling that you have brought trouble back with you.

Tilly presses a tin cup into your hands. “Drink.”

You do. The water is cool and clean and steadies you a little.

Mary Beth kneels closer, fingers gentle as she inspects the torn hem of your skirt. “I was so worried. Arthur wouldn’t tell us what happened when you didn’t come back.” Her voice cracks on the last word.

You place your hand on hers. “ ‘m alright,” you whisper. Another lie. But she relaxes a fraction.

Behind them, Charles Smith turns and walks toward the far edge of camp. Arthur stands there with the black-maned Rhiannon, holding her reins as if he needs the anchor. His jaw clenched tight, his hat low, you cannot read his expression. He watches you with a stillness that is not calm. Something coils tight in him, something that flickers each time the wind shifts your way.

As you watch him, Micah leans back on a barrel not far away from the two other men, flicking ash from his cigarette. His gaze cuts between you and Arthur, a curl of mockery twisting at the corner of his mouth. You cannot hear what he mutters, but Arthur’s shoulders lock up like a loaded spring.

Charles sees it. He steps directly into Micah’s path.

“Walk away,” Charles says. Quiet. Deadly flat.

Micah scoffs. “Aw, come on now, I was just—”

“Did you not hear me?” Charles does not raise his voice. He doesn’t need to.

Micah’s lips curl in a bitter sneer, but he slides off the barrel and saunters away toward the far side of camp, spitting a curse into the dirt. The tension drains slightly, though not nearly enough.

Charles returns to the throng of women enough to place a steadying hand on your shoulder. “You’re safe now.”

You nod. You cannot trust your voice not to shake. Your heart is still lodged somewhere high in your throat.

“He keeps looking at you,” Mary Beth murmurs gently. “Arthur, I mean.”

You stiffen. And when you look again, Arthur is indeed watching you. But the moment your eyes meet, he turns away and leads Rhiannon toward the hitching posts.

A strange heaviness settles in your chest.

Mary Beth squeezes your hand. “He’s upset,” she whispers. “But not at you.”

You do not answer her.

The women guide you toward the shared tent, smoothing your hair, fussing with your sleeves. You let them. Anything to escape the eyes that you can feel tracking you across the camp. You step inside your tent and sit heavily on your bedroll.

The air is still. Canvas flaps rustle in the faint breeze. Your heartbeat echoes in your ears.

Your hands start shaking again.

You press your palms hard against your thighs until the tremors quiet until your breath stops hitching. Until the tight knot behind your ribs loosens just enough to breathe.

When you lift the edge of the tent flap again, the camp has shifted. Someone laughs near the fire. Sean is recounting something loud and embellished. John kicks at the dirt with a scowl.

Arthur is gone.

And his absence hits you harder than the sight of him did.

You lie back and close your eyes.

Just for a moment. Just to let your lungs settle. Just to stop seeing the dark line of Arthur’s shoulders disappearing into the trees.

-

The heat rolls across the Heartlands the next morning in shimmering waves. Even under the shade of the tall oaks, the air feels thick enough to drink. You pull your light shawl tighter as you approach Hosea’s horse, though warmth clings to the inside of your collar. The women were kind enough to keep your things bundled together in a small bag while you were gone.

Hosea stands ready, adjusting Silver Dollar’s reins with a gentleness that belies his age. He turns when he hears your steps crunching over the baked clay.

“There she is,” he says, voice warm but edged with worry. “You look steadier this morning.”

You nod slowly, placing a hand cautiously on the horse’s flank, never quite at ease around the animals- not after dealing with Aethon for all those years.

God, you even miss that foul-tempered beast now.

“Ruth?”

You look over at Hosea and realize that he was talking to you. Blinking, you apologize. 

Hosea places a hand around your shoulder, “How about we get out of camp for a little today. I’m going to go check out the town to the south. Rhodes. Ever been?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“It’s settled then. Lets ride on into town and see if there are any suckers there to swindle out of some money.”

A laugh escapes you, thin but real. A smile crept across his weathered face, as if he could not help the charade anymore. Hosea pats your hand as he helps you to mount behind him.

It is a quiet, gentle ride south toward the town of Rhodes. The red dust of the road rises behind the Turkoman’s hooves. Cicadas scream in the trees. A line of egrets stalks the shallows of Dewberry Creek as you leave camp behind. Away from the Heartlands, into the red clay of Scarlett Meadows, so aptly named.

Hosea speaks after a few minutes. “You know, dear, there is no shame in taking a day to rest.”

“Then I just dwell,” you say softly.

Hosea simply murmurs in reply, agreeing with you. As the town comes into view, the older man turns his head halfway back to you, “Alright, so you’re my daughter, and I’m a doddering old fool. Shouldn’t be that hard to pull off, right?”

A smile creeps across your face again, and you are unable to hold it back. You feel almost like a child, knowing some kind of excitement was coming. Fortunately for you, the excitement that Hosea brings shouldn’t include gunfire.

He leads the horse toward the small wooden buildings of Rhodes. The general store sits at the corner under a creaking signboard with fading mustard paint. Hosea dismounts with a theatrical groan.

“Ohh, mercy, this back of mine,” he huffs, doubling over slightly.

You hide your smile and take his offered hand. “Here, Papa,” you say loudly enough for the people mulling in the street to hear. “Let’s get your powders.”

“Good girl,” Hosea rasp-whispers as you lead him into the store.

Inside, the clerk behind the counter brightens the moment you step in. He is round-faced, with thinning hair and a quick eagerness that suggests he does not often have company.

“Morning,” he chirps. “What can I do for you fine folks?”

You stand at the counter, letting one hand brush your bonnet ribbon as if flustered. “My father has terrible headaches. We were told you keep powders here for that.”

“Oh yes, yes, of course.” The clerk turns to pull a small tin down from a shelf. “Terrible thing, headaches. Rough with his age?”

“Sometimes,” you say vaguely. “He insists he does not need help, but he gets confused. Forgetful.” 

Hosea shoots you a withering look before turning back to the sundries lined up on shelves.

Behind the clerk, Hosea snoops among the table and shelves with the subtlety of a stage actor in a second-rate play. He picks up a jar of pickled onions, squints at it, shakes it, and puts it back crookedly. He knocks a tin of biscuits onto the floor, apologizes loudly, then sets it back upside down.

The clerk winces, looking ready to leap over the counter.

“Papa.” You say with a slight scold in your tone. “Remember what you came for. It wasn’t pickled onions.”

Hosea looks confused. “Chewing tobacco?”

You sigh, placing your palm on your forehead in mock annoyance. The clerk rounds the register, “Here, let me help you with those powders, they are over here.”

You place a gentle hand on the man’s forearm as he leads you over to the side of the store. “I am sorry, papa… well he just gets confused alot.”

You smile, a polite one, eyes soft. The clerk’s full attention is on you. You talk about fabrics from Saint Denis, about the heat, about the price of flour, whatever keeps his eyes locked on yours. He barely hears the soft click of the register behind him as Hosea’s quick fingers slip inside the drawer and remove several folded bills.

When the clerk turns around again, Hosea has miraculously discovered the handkerchief display and is pretending to consider each color.

“Papa, we have your powders,” you call sweetly.

Hosea shuffles over, stooped and blinking at nothing. “What was it we came here for again?”

“Headaches,” you remind him softly.

“Oh. Right. Terrible headaches,” Hosea says, and nods to the clerk with a grandfatherly smile.

You pay a handful of coins and thank the man warmly before taking Hosea’s arm and leading him out of the store as if he had no idea what planet he was on.

Outside, Hosea straightens the instant the door closes.

“You were brilliant,” he says. “Like a born swindler.”

You laugh. “I hardly did anything.”

“You distracted the man clean out of his shoes,” Hosea replies, proud as a rooster. “I might have to put you and Javier together for something bigger one of these days.”

You swat at his arm. “Absolutely not. I have had enough excitement for a lifetime.”

Hosea’s laugh dims, but softens. He lays his other hand over yours where it rests on his forearm. “You know, not everything we do involves killing people. Can be just as harmless as that. Not exciting, I swear.” 

“Sure, sure.”

He swings up on to Silver Dollar, who was tied to the hitching post. Leaning over, he extends his arm to help you climb on the Turkoman’s rump. 

“Dear girl, You spoke a bit of Frederick yesterday,” he says quietly as he pulls you mount the horse again. “If you want to tell me more, I’ll listen.”

The air becomes heavier at the mention of of your dead husband’s name. In your lightheadedness had you cried and said you missed him? 

You hesitate. Then you give a slight nod. Maybe it would do to talk. Talk and not hold everything in the chasm in your chest. You wind your arm around Hosea’s waist as the horse moves.

Silver Dollar walks out of Rhodes at a leisurely pace. The fields stretch wide, green and gold with summer grasses. Hosea waits until the road is empty before he speaks again.

“Tell me about him,” he prompts gently.

You draw in a slow, aching breath. “He was kind. Silly sometimes. He wanted to build a town for us. A place where we could start something. Limpany.” You swallow. “We were married for almost ten years. He was dead when I came home from Blackwater with a neighbor one day…shot.”

You close your eyes, and suddenly you see Frederick’s face, the hole between his eyes, the blood pooling on the floor of that cabin on the Montana. You clutch harder at Hosea’s waist without meaning to.

Hosea’s hands tighten on the reins. His voice is rough when he finally answers.

“My Bessie… she was my whole world once. Dutch used to tease me that loving a woman that much was bad luck. Maybe he was right. Maybe not.” He sighs. “But grief… grief still surprises me some days. Even after all these years.”

You rest your forehead lightly against his back. “Every day.”

“That is how you know it mattered,” Hosea says. “Pain like that only exists where love once stood.”

Your eyes sting. You blink hard.

Hosea is quiet for a long moment. He places his hand over yours and holds it.

The Turkoman carries you both back toward Dewberry Creek, the road dipping through warm shadows of overhanging branches. And though grief still sits heavy in your chest, the presence of the old man before you keeps it from swallowing you whole.

–

The sun hangs low by the time you and Hosea return to camp, its light stretched thin across the dried riverbed. Dewberry Creek shifts in the evening breeze, lanterns flickering against the carved walls of the old bank. The place is bustling when you arrive. Susan shouts orders. Pearson stirs a pot big enough to drown a man. Bill sharpens a knife on an old whetstone, muttering under his breath.

It feels almost normal. Almost safe.

But you see Arthur before you see anything else, and your jaw sets in something between anger and sadness.

He leans against the hitching post, arms crossed, hat tipped low, watching Hosea’s horse approach. His expression is unreadable. The same hard line in his jaw, the same tightness across his shoulders, as if he has been bracing for hours.

You look away before your heart can stutter.

Hosea dismounts stiffly. “Let me help you down, dear.” He places his hands gently at your waist, lowering you to the ground. “Thank you,” you whisper.

“It was you who did the work today,” he says, patting your arm. “Now go have a drink and rest. I’ll put the money in the camp funds under your name.”

You nod and step toward the women’s lean-to, but before you take more than a few steps, the sound of childish laughter rings out across camp.

Jack is sprinting along the creek bed, waving a stick like a knight brandishing a sword. The boy leaps off rocks and slashes at imaginary foes, his brown hair messy, his cheeks pink from exertion.

John Marston stands a short distance away with his arms crossed, watching him.

No — watching him try to watch him.

Every few seconds, Jack glances toward his father. Each time, something hopeful flickers behind his eyes. Each time, John shifts or turns or scowls, and the boy’s expression dims.

Finally, Jack gathers his courage and takes a tentative step toward him.

John stiffens.

Jack hesitates, then frowns, clutching his stick sword tighter.

You can almost feel the moment the boy’s heart folds inward.

Jack turns away from John and runs toward Arthur’s wagon instead, climbing onto the stump near the wheel and swinging his stick again with renewed, desperate energy.

John’s face pinches with guilt so sharp it could cut glass. His scars pull tight across his cheek. He rakes a hand through his hair and mutters something unintelligible.

When he spins around, he nearly bumps straight into Abigail.

She stands solid and unmoving, hands planted on her hips, a mended shirt draped over one arm. Her dark eyes pin John in place with more force than any gun could.

They stare at each other for several seconds.

John opens his mouth first. “I’m tryin’.”

“Tryin’?” Abigail repeats, voice low and dangerous. “You think looking at him from twenty feet away is the same as being a father?”

“You don’t understand—”

“No,” she cuts him off. “You do not understand. That child, for some reason, worships the ground you walk on. And you can’t even walk over and speak to him.”

John’s jaw clenches. “I’m doin’ my goddamn best.”

Abigail’s voice softens, but it is sad, not forgiving. “Your best would look like more than this.”

She steps around him, brushing his shoulder, and walks away.

John stands there a long moment, jaw tight, hands fisted, looking like a man trying not to fall apart. Then he kicks a loose stone so hard it skitters across the dirt and disappears into the brush.

-

Later, when you retreat to the quiet of the women’s tent and lie down beneath the canvas roof, the sounds of camp settle around you like a lullaby. Horses snort. Someone laughs sharply, then quiets. A harmonica starts and stops. The earth cools beneath your bedroll.

You lie on your back, eyes open, staring up at the faint silhouette of the night sky through the tent’s top seam.

A soft breeze slips through the gap in the flap.

A cricket sings.

And you think of the train, of the lawmen shouting, of your name wrapped in Arthur’s voice like a curse and a prayer at once.

You think of him pulling you close to shield you from stray bullets. Of his hand clamped over your mouth as he hid you in that gully. Of the fury in his eyes when he told you the truth you have avoided: The Pinkertons weren’t there for them, they were in Blackwater for you.

And if Dutch learns that…

Your breath shakes.

You roll onto your side, clutching the edge of your blanket.

Through the gap in the tent flap, a figure moves near the firelight. Broad shoulders, familiar gait, the quiet heaviness of a man who carries too many burdens at once.

Arthur.

He stops near the dying fire, turns his head slightly toward the lean-to where you sleep, and stands very still. You cannot see his face. You don’t need to. He is watching the quiet of the women’s tents.

Maybe watching you. Maybe wrestling with his anger. Maybe wishing he could take back the words he flung at you yesterday.

You close your eyes, your breath shallow. When you look again, he is gone.

The embers glow—the air hums.

The Heartlands swelter under late afternoon haze, the air thick and humming with cicadas. Camp at Dewberry Creek sprawls along the sun-baked bed of the old river, its crooked estuaries cut into the earth like the bones of some dead leviathan. The outlaws make it a fortress all the same-wagons tucked beneath the roots of trees, lanterns hung from branches, a campfire smolders low. The place smells of dried clay and horse and Pearson’s stew- a low, resentful boil that promises little. The air buzzes with horseflies, with Susan Grimshaw’s voice cutting sharp over the men’s laughter.

It is Mary Beth who comes running first.

Her skirts are dust-stained from an earlier trip to Valentine, brown curls slipping from the ribbon tied at the back of her hair, cheeks pink from excitement. She finds Dutch standing with Hosea, the two older men hunched over a crate that serves as a table in Dutch’s large tent. The girl bursts forward without ceremony, clutching a folded handbill in her hands. She has the look of someone holding onto a secret, a mischievous shine in her eyes.

“Dutch!” she calls, weaving between wagons until she stands in front of the two men. “Dutch, you won’t believe it-”

Arthur, crouched near his wagon, cinching down a saddlebag, lifts his head at the sound of her voice. The girl always carries that spark when she thinks she’s brought news worth gold.

Dutch straightens, one hand adjusting the lapel of his red vest, the other smoothing Molly’s scrawl of handwriting from the papers he has been leafing through. “Mary Beth, my dear, what has you so flushed?”

“Word at the station. A passenger train leavin’ Valentine in the morning. Headed south from the oilfields. Businessmen from Saint Denis, maybe even bonds. It’s fat with moneyed folks, Dutch-I heard it myself.”

Dutch’s face lights with that preacher’s smile he wears so well. He takes the handbill from her with a flourish, holding it like a stage prop. “See? Providence. The world provides, if only we have the eyes to look.”

Hosea’s look is not unkind, but it is skeptical. “You sure of your source, girl?”

“I’m sure of my ears,” Mary Beth says, pride and nerves twined together. “They weren’t exactly whisperin’.”

Arthur stands on the edge of the gathering, arms folded across his chest. He knows what is coming before Dutch opens his mouth again. Hosea arches a skeptical brow, but doesn’t argue. He lights his pipe instead, smoke curling upward into the hot evening.

“Arthur, John, Charles, Sean-you boys’ll take this one. Put a little life back in our coffers. It don’t sound like much trouble. Quick, clean, easy.”

Sean whoops loud enough to wake the dead. “Knew it! Knew today was ma’ lucky day.”

John grunts, looking less convinced. “Ain’t no such thing as easy trains.”

Charles says nothing at all. He has a knife in his hand and a strip of rawhide in the other, drawing edge over edge with a patience that makes the hair on a man’s neck stand up. When he glances toward Arthur, it is quick and quiet, a talk without words: we’ll do it, and we’ll do it well, because we must.

“Quit yer bellyachin’, Marston,” Sean shoots back. “This one’s ours for the takin’. Besides, it’s time for ye to get back in the saddle after your beauty rest.”

John curses a storm so loud and colorful that Grimshaw stalks over and smacks him upside the head. Sean bends to his knees, laughing.

Arthur simply takes out his revolver, counting the bullets in the chamber. Always need a few on jobs like these.

-

Saint Denis wears its heat like a rich woman wears perfume-heavy, expensive, clinging. In the dark office, the shutters are half-latticed against the light and the city sounds, but the stink of the river still seeps in. Leviticus Cornwall sweats through his waistcoat. He dabs at his damp brow with a handkerchief while a valet pours him a brandy. Papers sprawl across the desk like fallen birds-contracts, telegrams, invoices in a pile that would bury a lesser man.

He stands at his window with a glass sweating in his fist.

Cameron Spence waits with his hat crushed in both hands, his collar limp and damp. “Sir… Leland Development wired this morning.” His voice trembles with the sound of a man walking into the court with one truth and a dozen excuses. “They’ve withdrawn from the slate at Limpany. They’re citing nonperformance, delays.” He swallows. “They say their board will not entertain further exposure, not after the, ah… unfortunate fire.”

Cornwall turns. For a heartbeat, he is quiet. Then he sets the glass down so hard the side table jumps, and the brandy slops over like a gaping wound. “Withdrawn,” he says, the word biting. “Withdrawn.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do they teach you the meaning of consequence in whatever little East Coast school spat you out, Spence?” Cornwall’s voice rises by slow degrees, each one like a rung on a ladder to the gallows. “Do they teach you what it costs a man when a board of cowards folds because they cannot stomach a little heat?”

Spence swallows hard. “It means lost revenue, sir, but-”

“It is not only heat, sir. It is… Pinkerton reports say the line west of Blackwater is-”

“The Pinkertons say a great deal.” Cornwall strides twice, then a third time, and suddenly Spence can smell the brandy on his breath. “They say a great deal, and they do very little. I am the engine that runs this region. Me. Not Milton, with his little badge and his prissy reports. Not a dozen prancing directors. Me. Find Milton. Double his men. Triple them. By God, I will not be undone by some flit of woman that belongs in a whorehouse.”

Spence nods too quickly. His glance flicks to the corner where a file already lies open, fatter than yesterday. Limpany. “Yes, sir.”

Cornwall plants himself again at the shutters and glares through them as though he can burn the city pure. “And, Spence- send a wire to Leland.” He lifts his chin with the arrogance of a king, tipping it for the executioner. “They will not like what it says.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And what is this about my goddamn train being robbed?”

Spence freezes, pale as parchment. Cornwall turns away, glaring through the slats of the shutter at the city beyond, as if he already sees bodies hanging from the gibbets.

-

Night at Dewberry Creek is a shallow thing. The heat retreats a step, no more. Insects chirp their songs in the trees. Arthur lies on his cot beneath the gnarled roots of the oak and listens to the low talk around the fire until it thins and goes to embers. He rolls a cigarette half-asleep, then lets it go out in his teeth. At some point, he slips from that uneasy edge into a dream.

In it, the world is cool. Soft fog braids itself through ponderosas, and the dead creek becomes a living run of water that speaks low over stones. He holds a rifle and follows prints in the earth that break the moss in crescents- dainty, careful. He moves the way animals move, at the edge of sound.

He sees her then: a doe, belly pale as milk, neck slender like a woman’s wrist. She lifts her head and the world goes quiet around her- like the hush in a church when a hymn hangs in the air. He feels the weight of the rifle in his arms, familiar. He doesn’t think. He raises it and fires.

The crack flattens the fog. Birds rise from the pines in a clatter. By the time he reaches the doe, her legs kick in the moss as if she could find the ground that has given way. The little bleat that comes from her throat is an ugly noise. She looks at him. He has never known a deer could look at a man like that: every question he has ever avoided, laid bare.

He reaches out a hand. He can end it quickly, he tells himself. He can clean the sin he has made. But his hand shakes, and in the reflection of her eye, he sees not a beast but something soft and bright and trusting gone wrong. The sound dwindles to nothing. The forest fills the space with itself again. He feels all at once giant and small and cruel.

Arthur wakes with his heart loud under his ribs. His hand has curled in the blanket and dented it. He sits and breathes and stares into the dark space where the dream had been. When a breeze bends the leaves above and makes the lantern’s last light clink against its hook, he flinches like a beaten dog.

He does not sleep again before the gray.

-

Valentine is a smudge of woodsmoke and stale beer in dawn’s muted light. The station sits quietly except for the sigh of the engine and the mutter of porters. Steam feathers low across the platform. The four men come from the east side, where the road bends around a stable, and slip behind the caboose like they belong to the shadows.

“Easy,” Arthur says, voice no more than a breath behind his bandana. “We do this like we said.”

“Like ye’ said,” Sean teases, but he keeps his boots careful. For all his mouth, he has a way of moving that makes less noise than you’d expect from a man so in love with his own noise.

Charles peels off first, easy as mist off water, and vanishes along the rear. He will take the caboose. He will take the guards. He always does, and he never makes a song about it.

John’s hands are sure on the rail when he hauls himself to the first step, then the next. Arthur follows, then Sean, boots knocking iron, the smell of hot metal in their noses. The train jostles and hisses and begins to move like a slow beast pushed from sleep. They are aboard before anyone knows to be troubled.

Charles is already a blot of dark inside the caboose when the first guard turns. The knife’s flash is white and then red and then nothing at all. The second man gets a hand to his holster and dies with it there. Charles drags both into the shadow between crates. He looks to Arthur and raises two fingers in a small, almost bored salute.

Arthur nods: good. Now forward.

They hit the first passenger car like a quiet storm. Arthur pushes the door and lets it bang once -just once- enough to pull every eye to him. He steps in slowly. John comes off his shoulder, gun up. Sean slides in on their wake. The air is thick with coal soot and the smell of rose water and fear waiting to be born.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Arthur says, and his voice doesn’t need to be loud to fill the car. He speaks like a canyon speaks when you shout into it, all the walls giving the sound back to you. 

“This is a robbery.”

It starts the way it always starts- first with silence, like disbelief has hands around every throat, and then with noise. The little clatter of dropped watches and snapped-open purses. A man says the word law in a tone that begs to be answered, and John puts the barrel of his revolver where it will knock some of the teeth out of his protest. He complies.

“Hands where we can see ’em,” John says, steady and fearless. “You’ll keep your lives if you keep your manners.”

“Jewelry,” Sean calls, his voice almost merry as he waves his bag, “and if you can manage it, somethin’ with taste. Lord knows I can’t wear all these ugly rings meself.”

“Shut up and work,” Arthur says, but he doesn’t look at Sean when he says it. He keeps his eyes on the car and lets his presence be its own persuasion.

They move with a practiced method. John takes the right aisle, Arthur the left, Sean ghosts shamelessly between, quick fingers emptying a woman’s handbag like he is showing off a card trick. The air takes on a metallic edge as coins and chains fall into canvas sacks. If a man’s hand lingers near his inside pocket too long, Arthur tips the flat of his gun against the man’s knuckles, and he finds his good sense again.

In the next car, the businessmen have the look of men cheated at a game- red about the ears, indignant and righteous in their silk ties. The bravest among them stands and speaks of consequences in the tone of a boy who repeats what he’s heard his father say. John lets him get to you. You can’t possibly think- before he lays the man out with a measured, almost gentle crack of gun to jaw. The others sit down in a sudden hurry. They begin to see the sense in the situation. The snapping of watch chains sounds to Arthur like someone trying to break the neck of a hundred little birds.

“You’ll get it all back in heaven,” Sean tells a portly gentleman with a ring too tight on his finger. He takes the ring and the finger comes away red, and somehow Sean still smiles underneath his bandana like he’s done the man a favor.

Charles appears as they reach the third car. He has cleaned his blade on a guard’s sleeve and left the body cooling in the dark. “Two more in the vestibule,” he murmurs, not winded at all. “They won’t bother us.”

Arthur tips his head. “We keep movin’.”

And they do. The train is up to a good pace now-wheels beating iron, wind rattling down the seams, the valley opening and closing around them in green walls. Arthur counts without counting. How many watches. How many chains. How many times his gun said don’t without firing. The sum is a weight in his gut and in his bag and in the look some men give him when they think he isn’t looking: hate, and something like admiration, and a little kernel of fear that will be told around a supper table tonight and made into a better-sounding story by Sunday.

It goes wrong the way it always goes wrong- sudden, sideways, stupid. A woman in a blue traveling dress and a bonnet shoots out of her seat like a rabbit. She is small and fast and moves like a dog that has broken from its rope. Before Arthur can pivot, she has gone around a fellow holding a briefcase and hit the door at the end of the car with both hands. It flies wide. She vanishes into the next car.

Sean laughs. Of course he does. “Oh, we’ve a runner,” he says, gleeful, and he throws himself after her with none of the caution that his elders have. “I got ‘er!”

“Sean-” John starts, and then swallows his own admonishment. They have a car full of people who would forget how to be sensible if a breeze came through wrong. The two of them- the ones who are supposed to be stubborn- cannot leave a hundred folk and a hundred dollars to go chasing one.

Arthur feels that something is wrong under his ribs. He bites down on it. “Do your side,” he tells John, and then to the car at large: “Anyone else feel like runnin’, think on whose day it’ll ruin.”

They push forward. A man begins to blubber that his wife will die if he loses their savings. Arthur takes his wallet and says, “She’ll do it slower if you make me mad,” and moves on. The words come easily because he has said them hundreds of times. 

The baggage car is dim. Coal dust, canvas, leather- a smell like old boots and old money. Sean hits it at a sprint and lets the door slam behind his back. The sound is swallowed before it can find the next car. He slows in the half-dark and lets his grin set again. He loves the hunting part. He loves the noise he can make in a quiet place, the way it makes his blood sing.

“Now where did ye run off to, little hare?” His voice bounces off trunks and crate-sides and comes back to him. “Don’t make me go lookin’ in trunks. That’d make us both late for supper.”

Boxes rise on either side, lashed with strap and wire. He moves between them, light for a man the world might call careless. The engine sings its loud song. The car sways with a sideways pull that makes him spread his boots a little. He raises his pistol and sights along it into a run of shadow.

Movement out of the corner of his eye- that breath at the edge of a curtain. He turns fast, pleased with himself, already putting a joke together for when he drags her back by the elbow.

The muzzle of a revolver fills his vision.

It is inches from his face, black and neat and steady as a church bell. There is a hand behind it, small and white-knuckled and shaking. He sees the line of a wrist, a cuff torn where it has caught on wood.

Sean stops with his boot hung midair. The grin goes out of him as if someone has put their fingers into the corner of his mouth and wiped it clean.

The train thunders, indifferent. The floor vibrates under both of them. Somewhere behind, coins are still falling into canvas, and a woman begins to cry again and is hushed.

Night at Dewberry Creek is a shallow thing. The heat retreats a step, no more. Insects stitch their songs in the trees. Arthur lies on his cot beneath the roots of the oak and listens to the low talk around the fire until it thins and goes to embers. He rolls a cigarette half-asleep, then lets it go out in his teeth. At some point he slips from that uneasy edge into a dream.

In it, the world is cool. Soft fog braids itself through pines, and the dead creek becomes a living run of water that flows low over stones. He holds a rifle and follows prints in the earth that break the moss in crescents—dainty, careful. He moves the way animals move, at the edge of sound.

He sees her then: a doe, belly pale as milk, neck slender like a woman’s wrist. She lifts her head and the world goes quiet around her—like the hush in a church when a hymn hangs in the air. He feels the weight of the rifle in his arms, familiar. He doesn’t think. He raises it and fires.

The crack flattens the fog. Birds rise from the pines in a clatter. By the time he reaches the doe, her legs kick in the moss as though she can find the ground that has given way. The little bleat that comes from her throat is an ugly noise. She looks at him. He has never known a deer could look at a man like that: like she was asking every question he has ever avoided, laid bare.

He reaches out a hand. He can end it quick, he tells himself. He can clean the sin he has made. But his hand shakes, and in the reflection of her eye he sees not a beast but something soft and bright and trusting gone wrong. The sound dwindles to nothing. The forest fills the space with itself again. He feels all at once giant and small and cruel.

Arthur wakes with his heart loud under his ribs. His hand has curled in the blanket and dented it. He sits and breathes and stares into the dark space where the dream had been. When a breeze bends the leaves above and makes the lantern’s last light clink against its hook, he flinches like a beaten dog.

I'm a cigarette rolling down an empty road In the night like a shooting star I'm a midnight train keeping you awake When I come home from the bar I'm a photograph taken in the past But it wasn't what you thought Well, you look for hours but you don't know how What you found was it was gone Make me no king Give me no crown Make me no king I will only let you down -Bones Owens, “Make Me No King”

-

The sharp line of her jaw - it's always been something he’d been attracted to - the way her neck sloped downward so elegantly. The sepia tones of the photograph never exactly captured the right color of her hair, which was so very dark when it was between his fingers, all those years ago.

Mary Gillis stares off into the distance, the hint of a smile on her face. The truth of the matter was the sweeter thing. He remembers that day clearly. He had taken her into town to get a picture taken-he had asked to have that picture so that he would see her pretty face every night, even when he was far away.

He remembers - that edge of a smile, the way her dark eyes caught his - he was standing there, behind the photographer, and her eyes were on him. 

His ring was on her finger, and there was nothing wrong in the world. All those years ago.

Arthur Morgan’s elbows rest on his knees as he sits on his cot, staring at the decade-old photograph of his former lover. Her likeness sits upon the side table across from him, the framed photograph stark against boxes of ammunition piled haphazardly on the bearskin cover of the table. The cigarette that hangs between his lips burns slowly.

His wagon is only half unpacked - it usually takes some time for him to truly settle in when camp moves. 

He sighs, removing his hat and smoothing his hair back before replacing it on his head. Sweat beads on his forehead, the heat and humidity settling in deep in his bones. He already hates it here.

The trees above rustle as a warm breeze rolls in from the Heartlands. 

“Dutch wanted me to come get you - said somethin’ about a job?”

Arthur looks up at the noise and sees Lenny Summers approach his tent, standing expectantly in the dried riverbed where the camp was set up. Away from the main wash of Dewberry Creek, the band of outlaws had filed into the long-dried estuaries, cut into the earth, providing a natural shelter for their camp. Arthur’s wagon is set up under the gnarled roots of a large oak tree, perched high on the old banks of this long-dead river.

Lenny stands expectantly as Arthur grunts and pushes himself up from the cot. Sidling past the younger man, he claps his hand on Lenny’s shoulder. “C’mon then, let’s go.”

The repeater strapped to Arthur’s back knocks against his spine, and he adjusts the longarm’s strap idly as Lenny catches up. “I don’t… I ain’t a fan of bein’ down here,” the young man replies lowly.

“The creek?”

“Lemoyne.” Lenny’s voice drops even further, “I left this damn state for a reason.”

Arthur only grunts, though he doesn’t disagree. The damp air and crawling heat sat wrong in his chest, and the shadows of the cypress made the hair on his neck twitch. But Dutch had set up camp here all the same, tucked down in the dried bones of Dewberry Creek. What Arthur thought about it didn’t matter much.

They walked on in silence until the earth dipped lower, the trench of the old river widening into the hub of camp. Lanterns hung from tree roots and wagon wheels, casting extra light across the worn faces of their company. Voices carried- Susan’s sharp commands, Pearson bellyaching over stew, a few of the boys laughing too loud. Arthur clapped Lenny’s shoulder again. “Go on then, tell Dutch you fetched me.

The boy nodded, peeling off toward the largest tent. Arthur lingered in the shade for a moment, adjusting the strap of his repeater. His boots carried him to Dutch’s tent before he’d properly decided to go.

The man was already waiting, rings catching the glow of the lantern in his tent as he shuffled papers across his table. Without looking up, he said, “Strauss has a few more loans to collect on. We need that cash fast now that we’ve moved. We’re still low on cash since Blackwater.” Arthur purses his lips, the muscle in his jaw working as he stares at the ground between his boots. He doesn’t trust himself to speak. His face twists into a scowl, that hard look he wore when he wanted to keep everything inside where it couldn’t be used against him.

Dutch sits, then leans back in his chair, folding his hands over his blood-red vest. For a single heartbeat his dark eyes measure Arthur, then narrow just slightly - like a knife point turned over in the hand. “Come on now, son,” he drawls, slyness coiling in his voice. “You’ve been sour ever since you lost your little blonde eye candy. Stompin’ around this camp like you need to shoot at the wind just to work the edge off.”

Arthur’s head lifts, slow, a warning in his eyes, but Dutch only smiles wider. “Go out and work. Strauss’s debtors, a coach, hell, even Pearson’s supply run. Ain’t nothin’ like a stack of cash to make a man forget his troubles and remember his purpose.”

Arthur exhales through his nose, steady and low. He doesn’t bite, doesn’t give Dutch the satisfaction. Dutch watches him a beat longer before tilting his head, lips twitching at the corners. “And if you’re still that sour, well… go find a brothel.” Arthur’s voice comes gravel-low. “I wasn’t sleepin’ with her.”

Dutch lets out a hum, exaggerated disbelief, like a stage actor playing to the rafters. “Oh? Coulda fooled me. The way you was looking at her…” He lets the words dangle, deliberately unfinished, heavy with suggestion.

Arthur’s scowl deepens into something darker. His hands flex at his sides, restless, itching for the weight of his revolver or reins or anything but this conversation. He waves Dutch off with a curt flick of his wrist, muttering something under his breath.

He turns, shoulders hunched, the brim of his hat shadowing his eyes. The carved earth walls of Dewberry Creek rise around him as he stalks away, the shade of the leaves above slashing across his frame before the brightness of the sun swallows him up. Each step grinds dust beneath his boots. The air is close down here, heavy with damp, like the whole world pressing down on him.

Dutch calls something after him - half chuckle, half warning - but Arthur doesn’t turn back. He weaves deeper into the crooked channels of the dry creek bed, carrying his scowl.

-  Smoke curls lazily from the fire several feet away as Arthur cinches the girth of the mare’s saddle. She shifts beneath him, still not used to his weight, ears twitching at the snap of leather. Her buttermilk coat shines in the sunlight that cuts through the leafy trees.

“Pretty thing,” Hosea’s voice cuts across the stillness. The old man’s arms were crossed over his chest, watching Arthur with narrowed eyes. “Shame you got a rotten look on your face while ridin’ her.”

Arthur tugs the strap tighter than necessary. “She’s a horse, Hosea, not a goddamn painting. Don’t matter what my face looks like.”

“It matters plenty,” Hosea says evenly, stepping closer. “What matters more is what you done last week.” Arthur freezes, jaw tightening. He knew what was coming. He shoves the stirrup down, testing its give, pretending he hadn’t heard. Hosea had been avoiding him since he rejoined the gang as they settled on the state line - one foot in New Hanover, the other in Lemoyne. Far away from the heat of West Elizabeth. “You left her, Arthur.” Hosea’s voice sharpens, disappointment lacing each syllable. “Dropped that poor girl in Valentine like some parcel you didn’t want to carry. I’ve seen you do a lot of unkind things, son, but that-” Arthur wheels around, swinging down from the horse, eyes flashing. “Don’t you start.” The two men stare across the narrow space between horse and camp, fire popping in the background. Hosea’s lined face didn’t soften. “Then explain it to me. Because from where I stand, you left that poor woman alone in some backwater livestock town. She had no one, Arthur. We were all she had.”

Arthur swallows the bile rising in his throat. “Better there than here. She’s safer with walls around her, safer without our goddamn shadow lurkin’ over her. You think I want her near this mess? You think I’d have her shot to ribbons like Jenny, or run down in some Pinkerton dragnet? No.” His voice cracks, but he forces it flat again. “I’d rather she hate me than bury her.”

Hosea’s mouth presses into a thin line. He studies Arthur for a long moment, eyes softening just slightly. “So you do care.”

Arthur mutters, “Course I do,” before he turns back to the horse, fussing with the saddle blanket as though it needed fixing. His shoulders hunch like he wants to crawl inside himself.

Hosea lets out a long sigh, a mix of resignation and weariness. “You’ve got a damn peculiar way of showin’ it.”

Arthur swings back into the saddle, the mare dancing beneath him.  Hosea squints against the sunlight. “What’d you name this girl, by the way?”

“Rhiannon,” he says suddenly, almost defensive.

“Rhiannon?” Hosea arches his brow. “First Boadicea, now Rhiannon - seems like you’ve got a thing for old Celtic tales there.”

The old man didn’t push further, only tips his hat, though his eyes still followed Arthur with that weary fatherly worry.

Arthur nudges Rhiannon forward, away from camp, his mood as black as the storm clouds gathering over the hills of the Heartlands to the west. He spits into the dirt, jaw set tight. 

The mare tosses her head, restless under his heavy hands. Arthur pulls the reins tighter. “Settle, girl. We got work to do.”

Dutch’s earlier comment rings in his head. Arthur hadn’t been to a brothel in years. He hadn’t sought out a woman’s comfort since those dark days after Mary had left him, after she had cut off their engagement and married that Linton man. 

Discomfort roils in his gut as he remembers the cheery smile of a young girl who didn’t deserve everything he left with her. As he tries to stifle down the memories of those days, of poor decisions and failures, death, two crosses on the roadside, he scowls again, kicking his spurs into his horse’s side. The mare whinnies as she trots into a canter, climbing the steep hillside from the creek up and into the Heartlands.

-

Strauss’s paper crackles in Arthur’s pocket like a bee’s nest that wouldn’t quiet. Rhiannon takes the ridge trail light, hooves nipping the packed trail with a dancer’s confidence. The morning burned off into a hard noon, the hot kind that flattened the world and made every fence post look the same. Arthur’s temper stayed flat right along with it. First mark was Wróbel.

The ranch hid deep behind pine trees, high above the Dakota, boards listing, a stovepipe coughing a thin blue thread that smelled of boiled potatoes and old grease. Cows mosey halfheartedly in a pen that was more mud than anything else. Arthur swung down, boots thudding, his mare watching with a dark, curious eye.

He didn’t bother knocking. One kick and the door flew in on a startled curse. A small man whirled from the table, thin mustache, sleeves rolled to the elbows, flour on his hands like he’d tried to coax bread from nothing.

“Mister Wróbel,” Arthur says flatly. “Afternoon.Time to pay up.”

The man’s eyes dart to a tin box on the hutch. Arthur follows the look, then smiles without humor.

“I- I tell Strauss- I pay when harvest come,” Wróbel stammers, his accent thick as the steam lingering in the room. “Please, I have wife back in-”

“Due now, we ain’t waitin’ for no harvest,” Arthur cuts in. He pushes past Wróbel, opening the tin box. Buttons, a faded ribbon, two nickels, and a saint’s medallion. Not worth spit. He drops it back with a clatter, then starts to yank open drawers with a violence that made the plates tremble.

“Please!” Wróbel reaches for Arthur’s sleeve. Arthur shook him off so hard the man hit the table and sucked air through his teeth.

“You borrowed from us,” Arthur says, his voice deep with that black smoothness he saved for bad jobs. “You signed. Thirty percent. That’s the deal.”

Wróbel’s chin crumples. His eyes flick to the corner, and that was all the tell Arthur needed. He strode there, shouldering aside a curtain tacked up as a wardrobe door, and dug his hand into the pile of clothes on the crate beneath.

Fingers closed on velvet. He brings out a small jewelry box, cracked with age, hinges stubborn. He popped it open with a knife tip.

An antique watch lay inside.

Wróbel makes a sound like a kicked dog. “P-please, sir.  All I have from- from Silesia. You take the pot, take-”

“I ain’t much for stew,” Arthur said. He snaps the watch shut and slides it into his vest. 

Wróbel grabbed his arm again, tears bright now. “Please-”

Arthur wheels on him. “You took our money - we take it back.” And some dark part of him took satisfaction in the flinch that answer wrung out of the man.

He leaves to the sound of a prayer muttered in a language he didn’t know, the sort of words mothers use when the wolves drag a lamb into the treeline and there ain’t a rifle handy.

Rhiannon tosses her head as he mounted. “Don’t start,” he mutters, as if the horse was disapproving of what he just did.

He rides north and east, back over the Dakota, through the northern Heartlands, finally skirting the edges of Emerald Ranch where the fields lay shorn, stubble catching late light like stubble on a man’s jaw. The main house glared white, windows glinting in the afternoon sun.

His second debtor was out back of the bunkhouse- a girl no more than twenty with reddish hair and a bruise healing yellow under one eye. She looks up from scrubbing a saddle blanket in a tin tub, hands red to the wrist, then went back to her work as if maybe ignoring him would make him keep riding.

“Miss,” Arthur said, dismounting. “You Lilly Millet?”

“Don’t answer to men come lookin’ for me,” she shoots back without meeting his eyes. There was a tremble under the hardness in her voice.

He hooks his thumb in his belt and lets silence grind on a moment. “Leopold Strauss says you took money on your fella’s promise. Fella’s gone. That makes it your promise.”

“Cooper said he’d bring it back.” Lilly wrings the blanket so hard that water splashes her skirt. “He said he had a lead out near Valentine and-”

“And he ain’t here,” Arthur cuts in, tired of men who used hope like a lynchpin. “How much you got?”

“Nothin’.” That came out too fast. Her jaw sets and she faces him at last. “I ain’t got-”

“Necklace,” Arthur spits, pointing to the red pendant peeking at her throat. “Let’s not play.”

Her hand went up to touch it reflexively, then curls into a fist. “It was my ma’s.”

Arthur hears the echo of Wróbel’s plea and that makes something sour in him smile. “I’ll be damned, everybody’s ma lent ever’body jewels.” He steps in and grabs the chain. The girl’s breath goes sharp; she claws for it and he bats her hand away with the back of his knuckles - with more force than he needed, enough to sting.

“Don’t,” he says softly, with a threat in his low voice.

Her eyes shine, not with tears -too proud for that- but with a hate that burned clean. She pulls the chain from around her neck to avoid him breaking it. “You think this makes you a man?”

“I think this pays a debt.” He coils the chain, sliding it next to the watch in his satchel. “You settle with fully with Strauss. Or I come back.”

“Ain’t you afraid of the judgment you’re gonna get?” Lilly spits at him angrily, but her voice is reserved enough to know she had lost.

Arthur looks back, his jaw setting with irritation, “Shoah, I believe in a higher power. I wear it on my hip.”

He turns his back on her. Arthur feels the weight of her stare like a bead sight between his shoulders until he swings up and Rhiannon moves smoothly into the sunset to the south.

-

Arthur sits alone near the dwindling fire at the edge of camp, the orange embers crackling softly in the dark. The others had already turned in or wandered off into their own miseries, but he remains, nursing a tin cup half full of something sharp and cheap, the taste burning his tongue less than the memory weighing on his chest.

The night was thick. A few insects chirp in the brush. Somewhere across the clearing, a coyote yelps, lonely. He continues to stare into the fire, into the shifting logs, and thought of her again. Ruth. Her name kept echoing in his mind like the last note of a hymn you can't shake, one he wasn’t sure he even deserved to hear.

He hadn’t meant to leave her behind. Not really. Not like that. But the bruising across her nose and her tear-swollen eyes made him make that snap decision there in Valentine those days ago. And time kept moving, and the gang kept riding, and he keeps telling himself she'll be better off.

Behind him, a bottle clinks.

Arthur turns his head, surprised to see Reverend Swanson of all people walking up to the fire. His coat was crooked, his collar stained, but his eyes - unusually - look clear tonight. Sober. Or close to it. The man blinks down at him like someone coming out of a long fog.

“Mind if I sit?”

Arthur shrugs. “Help yourself.”

Swanson groans as he lowers himself onto a log across the fire, joints popping. For a few seconds, they say nothing. The fire popped, shadows dancing across the reverend’s gaunt features.

“I ever tell you I was a preacher once?” Swanson asks, scratching absently at his unkempt beard.

Arthur snorts. “Couple hundred times. Usually right before you pass out.”

Swanson chuckles, dry and hollow. “Fair enough.”

The reverend fell quiet again, hands on his knees, gazing into the fire. The wind shifts, and the flame hisses. Then, out of nowhere, the reverend speaks with strange clarity, voice low and even: “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”

Arthur blinks. The words rang out over the quiet like a bell tolling. For the first time in a very long time, Swanson sounds the preacher that Arthur knows he is underneath the drink and the morphine and all of his demons.

Then Swanson glances up, eyes catching Arthur’s like a hook.

“Psalm thirty-four. Verse eighteen,” he says softly. “Funny how some things stick.”

Arthur frowns. “What’re you goin’ on about?”

The reverend doesn’t answer right away. He just watches Arthur with a strange calm, like a man remembering something long buried.

“You ever know the story of a woman in the bible named Ruth?” he asks, voice casual but weighted. Arthur freezes.

His heart stutters. A chill threads down his spine. “What’d you just say?”

“I said,” Swanson repeats, clear eyes still on him, “do you know the story of Ruth?” Arthur stares at him, mouth slightly open. His grip on the tin cup tightens, “Why’re you askin’ that?”

Swanson shrugs slowly. “The widow Ruth… she came to Boaz in the field and prostrated at his feet for his protection. Boaz gave her that and more.”

Arthur didn’t respond. Couldn’t. He was caught somewhere between rage and panic and something too heavy for either. It was just a biblical name. Of course it would come to a half-mad preacher rambling about broken hearts and contrite spirits. But the way Swanson says it - like he knew something - made Arthur feel naked in his own skin.

Swanson didn’t press. Just looked at him with an almost unsettling awareness.

“Sometimes,” he says, “God don’t speak in thunder or burning bushes. Sometimes He just taps on your shoulder and says: Remember.”

Arthur swallows hard.

“You drunk?” he mutters, voice gruff.

Swanson gives a sad smile. “Not yet.”

He stands slowly, joints creaking again, and pats Arthur on the shoulder with a weak hand.

“I know mercy don’t come to you naturally, Mister Morgan. Just try to give it when you can.”

And then he walks off into the dark, his silhouette swallowed by the shadows beyond the firelight.

Arthur sat frozen, barely breathing. His chest aches like someone had reached in and twisted something vital. He puts his bottle down, stares into the fire, and for a long time, he doesn’t move. Ruth’s face floats behind his eyes - fearful, crying, defiant. And he hated himself for leaving her to face whatever came next.

Maybe the reverend was right. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe-

The fire hisses again in the night.

-

Valentine rose out of the dust the way it always did - mud, boards, sheep, and the salty stink of men who hadn’t seen a bath in a while. The sign of Smithfield’s Saloon swings lazily in the small wind. Arthur ties off at the hitch outside the Sheriff’s office, slides the dead weight off of Rhiannon’s rump, and pushes through the door, and the bell jangles thin.

Sheriff Malloy peers up, the same practiced suspicion in his look. “What can I do you for, sir?”

“Brought you Reynolds,” Arthur says, sliding a folded wanted poster and a blood-smeared rag across the counter. “Well, what’s left of him. You’ll want to count your bullet holes against mine. I ain’t arguin’- he shot first and he shot last, only I shot better.”

The deputy takes the rag with two fingers as it might bite. Malloy sighs and points to the door at back of the office, and Arthur shuffle through, heaving the former bandit onto the muddy ground unceremoniously. 

When he returns, Arthur waits expectantly at the desk. The Sheriff reaches under the counter for a ledger. They haggle over the price, dead versus alive. Arthur let the man think he was winning and walked out with enough dollars to make the ugliness of the afternoon seem like it had purpose. The bounty was just a reason to come to Valentine. He had another motive entirely for being in town.

He’d just stepped off the boardwalk to his horse when Rhiannon’s ears spikes and she shifts. Arthur follows her gaze down the street.

Pinkertons.

Bowler hats. Coats too fine for this livestock town. The way they hold their shoulders like city men who’d learned to shoot late in life and never learned when to lower a voice. Three of them, cutting across the street closer to the Saints Hotel. One had a badge on his breast pocket and the kind of clean jaw Arthur wanted to punch simply on principle. 

Arthur feels his spine go cold. He takes Rhiannon’s reins, walks her casually past a stack of crates, and then slides into the shadow behind a covered wagon next to the gunsmith’s. He places a hand on the mare’s nose, calming her; she stills like she’d read his mind and liked it there.

Voices carry over sawdust of construction in town. Arthur risks a glance around the wagon’s canvas covering.

“-not here either,” one of them was saying, paper crackling in his hand. “Checked the boarding house down the way and the hotel’s rooms. The clerk at the hotel mentioned a woman who sounded like her a few days ago.”

The next man’s reply was tight, voice made for being obeyed. “She passed through here. I’ve got it from two different men in the saloon that a woman answerin’ to the name Shaw was seen at the hotel. Widow, small, blonde.”

Shaw.

Arthur didn’t mean to grab the wagon board. His knuckles went white, heart racing.

The third Pinkerton spits on the ground, careless. “Cornwall don’t care where she is, only that the paper ends on his desk signed. He said alive’s preferable, but he’s got a low tolerance for failure these days.”

“Alive, and if not-” The leader let that hang, like dog tugging on the leash of the threat. “It’s simple. The husband’s dead. The only thing between Leviticus Cornwall and Limpany is a frightened little widow with a pen.”

The other man laughs. “And the the ferry mess?”

The leader’s jaw twitches. “I am certain that every time you see smoke in these state lately, that goddamn gang is one hill over. The widow made it to Blackwater, that’s why we were there. Then goddamn Dutch’s boys rode in, and everything went to hell.”

Arthur could hear his pulse in his heard. Blackwater flashes behind his eyes - gunfire, shouts, the scream of the crowd, the first sick knowledge that Dutch’s job had tripped a wire laid for someone else. He looks around the canvas again and sees the Pinkerton’s eyes - dark and sharp and hard- sweeping the street.

“And she was here?” the third man asks.

“Sounds like it,” the leader replies. “Could be she had help and moved on. But Strawberry, Riggs, Valentine - she’s gotta be in one of ’em. I’ll sit this town for two days and then we sweep south toward Saint Denis. Put a man on every street where a train stops and another at every stagecoach stop. This woman ain’t a ghost.”

Arthur slides back deeper in the shade as the three stepped closer to his hiding place. He immediately turns and tends to Rhiannon. One of them tapped the wagon’s tailboard; dust drifts into Arthur’s face and he fights the urge to cough.

“You there,” One of them calls suddenly, voice pitching to address a newspaper boy dozing on a hay bale. The boy jerks upright. “You see a woman -thirty-something, fair hair, small, alone - you let the Sheriff know. There’s reward in it.”

The boy looks like he might piss himself at the honor of being spoken to by a man with his boots that clean. “Yessir.”

The Pinkertons move on, the smell of their cologne souring in the dust.

Arthur stays put until their coats are just a ripple at the corner near the stables and then a memory. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been strangling and finds his palm is still on Rhiannon’s muzzle, fingers brushing the velvet there. Rhiannon snorts through her nose and jerks his hand off of her. Arthur barely notices.

Shaw. Ruth Shaw. Widow.

The widow he’d dumped here in Valentine like a sack of flour.

Everything he’d tried not to think about became a ledger he couldn’t ignore. That burned town. Leviticus Cornwall. Pinkertons. Blackwater.

It all weighed against her soft eyes, the way she’d looked fearfully at Arthur on the trail when he shot those O’Driscolls near the Montana. Innocent and soft and so needy.

All those Pinkertons in Blackwater hadn’t been for Dutch alone. They’d been for her. And the gang had blundered right into it, carrying their own storm. Jenny Kirk bled out in a wagon. Davey rotting in the ground. Mac lost to God knows where. All the times he’d cursed that ferry job for damning the gang. Thinking that the fact that they had fallen into what felt like a trap was all their fault.

But it wasn’t.

It was her.

The picture of her came back, trembling on Hosea’s horse. The same soft eyes that turned to Arthur when the bullets started flying. Those hands that stitched wounds in camp, held young Jack, gently took that press-dried blossom that he’d saved between pages of his journal. Those blonde curls that he had longed to run his fingers through. The gentle curves of her body in the lake that he had brought himself to pleasure thinking of.

And goddamnit, she’d been the fire at the center of it all.

His jaw locks tight, teeth grinding. “Son of a bitch,” he mutters, voice ragged.

He pulls his hand from Rhiannon like her hide had scalded him, pacing two hard strides before stopping, fists curling white. Anger crawls up from his gut - hotter than he’d felt in years.

“Goddamn it,” His voice cracks, low and furious, breaking the quiet street like a gunshot.

He sees it plain: bodies cut down, graves dug shallow, the gang scattered to the wind - all for a widow who’d stayed quiet with her big, tearful eyes. All because she hadn’t said a word.The breath tore from him like smoke from a furnace, and when he looked up, his eyes were molten under the brim of his hat. There was no mercy in them now. The conversation with Swanson completely forgotten.