May The Sunrise Bring Hope Where It Once Was Forgotten
Living up in the western Grizzlies as Sadie had, patience was a thing she'd necessarily learned, because winter was slow time, months spent biding time waiting on the thaw. Then that thaw came and life became a flurry of activity, rushing to grasp the opportunities of spring and summer before they slipped away again into fall and the next coming snow. The rhythm of an outlaw camp hadn't been so different--or at least, for those of them who rode out on jobs. Planning, waiting, a frenzied burst to execute the plan, then onward to the next turn of the cycle.
She would never call herself a naturally patient woman, but she could muster the effort for it when she could see its necessity. So that meant as much as she wanted to get all of them out of this small tent pitched by the ramshackle ruins of a cabin on the edge of the Bluewater Marsh immediately, get Tilly and Abigail and Jack the hell out of here to someplace better, there had to be that patience to do this right. Too many people had died already, especially--no, she wasn't going to think about Arthur, not now. But she wasn't going to see those deaths be in vain. In November, the darkness fell so early. But dawn would be here soon, and then they could ride away from all this, into something different, some new life. She'd get them down to St. Denis, and since Abigail slipped away before being identified by the Pinkertons when they caught Hosea, that meant it was safe enough. None of them would be identified and wanted for the whole mess at the bank. Had that really been less than two months ago? It felt like a lifetime had passed since.
St. Denis, then, and from there? They could figure out where each of their paths led. It helped that Tilly had a sack of cash Arthur had handed over from that last train robbery, four thousand dollars in it, and a stack of money from Arthur besides, and no camp stash taking half as a communal cut. They'd silently split the take, Tilly exchanging a knowing glance with Sadie, then with Sadie's slight nod of agreement, Tilly gave half the cash to Abigail without question. She didn't know Tilly Jackson that well, but Sadie could say with confidence that she had a good soul. They'd have given Abigail even more if she would have taken it.
Abigail still tried to refuse, tried to insist they split it equally, three ways. "You need it too," she said, Jack sitting there playing silently with a broken wooden toy cat he'd found in a dusty corner of the ruined cabin barely twenty feet away. He hadn't asked after John yet, and heartless bastard that Dutch van der Linde was, at least he'd spared Abigail having to break that hard news to her boy. Abigail sat there, dark hair straggling loose, eyes hollow and exhausted in the glow of lantern light in the grey of pre-dawn. Though wasn't that bone-deep exhaustion true for all of them? Sadie felt like she hadn't slept soundly since leaving Clemens Point, or maybe, truthfully, since Ambarino. "Since I assume you ain't heading back to your ranch, Sadie, and you got no family left to go to neither, Tilly."
She shook her head, pleased at managing a calm tone when she replied, "No. I ain't never going back up there." Jake would understand. There was nothing left except a burned out ruin, and the knowledge of how utterly the O'Driscolls had destroyed what happiness she'd had there. How they'd destroyed her. There was no reason to ever see that. She carried it within her all the same.
"Then don't you two be noble fools. A woman alone in this world needs some money of her own." Abigail reached out, brushed her fingers over Jack's hair, and Sadie could see her trying hard to hold it together, make plans, all while wanting to fall apart. She reached out, putting her hand on Abigail's shoulder briefly in comfort. Abigail reached up for a moment, covered Sadie's hand with her own, and then let go with a clumsy, absentminded pat.
"We'll have money. This will be just fine for me to start over," Tilly said. "You remember you told me what it was, being a woman in this world that don't care for us? Don't you be a noble fool neither. You've got Jack to think about. Take the money. Sadie and me, we both want you to have it." Abigail looked away, then nodded slowly.
Three women and a boy in a tent in the marsh, sitting by the light of a single lantern burning low, trying hard to think of what future they had now. They'd be the last ones who got away from the wreckage and ruin of the gang. Charles had stayed up with the Wapiti after the attack on Cornwall's oil business, after taking a dying Eagle Flies to his father, and she'd sensed from the mood of the tribe they would be clearing out quite soon. Pearson and Mary-Beth and Swanson and Trelawney and Uncle and Karen had all slipped away. Karen was maybe dead by now from how heavily she'd been drinking. John, Lenny, Hosea, Sean, Molly, and Kieran, dead. Bill and Javier and Micah--to hell with them anyway, and their talk about loyalty that amounted to blindness towards Dutch's bullshit. Then there was Arthur, the damn fool, determined to go give himself over to accomplish--what? Try to talk reason into Dutch one last time? Shoot Micah dead? She didn't know. She only knew he'd had to do it, and she'd sworn she'd look after the Marstons, or what remained of them, so she'd had to let him ride away from her. Shut out and left behind just like she'd been after the refinery, but the pain she felt now was far more than rejection and wounded pride. She could admit was as much the feeblest hope that somehow that man would make it through whatever he'd thought to do as the need to wait for daylight that kept her here. He was sick, weak, struggling. She'd had to let him go take care of things himself, bound by that damn promise, but she couldn't stand to leave him behind now.
Finally as the faint glow of dawn lit the back panel of the tent, facing east over the water, right about the point she saw Jack beginning to doze again, the muffled plopping rhythm of a horse's hooves sucking into the marsh mud caught her ear. She gestured for the other two to keep quiet and reached for the repeater, pointing it at the tent flap, listening intently. The call came then from their visitor. "Abigail? Jack? Tilly? Mrs. Adler? You in there?" It was a familiar voice, but not Arthur's soft rasping croak. This voice was husky and light, and impossible, because it was a dead man talking.
In a rush of muddy and wet skirts, Abigail pushed up from the pallet and was out the tent flap in a hurry, calling out his name. "John? Johnny?" Sadie made it out herself, Tilly by her side, in time to see Abigail grab John with such force it nearly bowled them both over into the sticky mud, and then the two of them were laughing, crying, clutching each other, talking over each other in their questions and exclamations. Seeing that there, their love shining pure and sweet, something ached in her, a still-raw scar of a thing she'd had and cherished and then had torn away.
The two finally calmed down enough for Abigail to take John by the hand and lead him into the tent. Sadie took one last look outside, seeing nobody else approaching, then turned back, leaving the flaps open this time. Now Jack rushed to his father, and John knelt down, hugging the boy tightly, looking like he would never let him go. She gave them some time, but she had to know. "What happened?" Sadie asked. "Dutch said he came back and found you dead, John. That the Army patrol had killed you by the time he got back there to try and find you."
"Dutch spinning good lies again, huh?" John said grimly, still sitting on his haunches, but letting Jack go. "That I'd see the day he was turning them on us rather than the people we was aiming to rob. He wouldn't lift a damn finger to get me out of Sisika, so I doubt he looked for me at all." Given how readily Dutch had written Abigail off, Sadie couldn't disagree with that assessment. "I ran, hid out in the swamp. Made it back to the Hollow just in time to see it all coming apart. Arthur apparently came on in ready to start the fight and then things...they went crazy. Everyone still left there forced into choosing sides. Me and Arthur, of course, and then Bill, Javier, and Micah stuck with Dutch. Micah, he's been the damn rat all along, blamed it on Molly. He killed Susan when she stood with us, and then the Pinkertons came on in, and we was left running for it." None of them spoke, listening to the tale John spun, and his rush of words conveyed the chaotic frenzy of it all. "Got out up and through the caves, and across the river. Then we got our horses shot out from under us, so we was left climbing Bluestone Ridge on foot. He was...he said…" He paused, obviously struggling for the words, voice going low and rough as he looked down at his hands. "He said he couldn't push himself any more, and we wasn't both gonna make it, and that I needed to make it out of there. That I had you, Abigail, and you, Jack. And that he...he...that it would mean a lot to him."
"So Arthur's dead, then." Now she saw it in the dim light--John was wearing Arthur's hat, the dark leather gambler with its braided cord, and had Arthur's satchel slung over his shoulder. Arthur must have given them to John in some kind of blessing and farewell, and sent him on his way. Something hit that damn scar inside her again, showing it for a still-raw wound instead. Another good man dead, one of the best she'd known, and for what? Perhaps he wouldn't have had that long with the way things were going, even if he'd made it back to Copperhead Landing. But something blazed angrily within her that a dying man should have to spend his last days suffering like that, and die in all this stupidity. If anyone had deserved to find some good and peaceful life in the aftermath, by now, she would confidently say it was Arthur Morgan.
"Yeah," John replied finally, voice barely more than a whisper. "He's got to be dead." Abigail let out a strangled sound, half a sob, and held Jack closer. Tilly let out a soft moan, hugging her knees to her chest, blinking furiously in the way of holding back tears. Sadie didn't make a sound herself, but something within her keened in grief all the same. She'd known it was coming, he'd looked three-quarters dead already and people didn't just shrug off tuberculosis like it was nothing, but she'd been in no way ready for it.
But knowing that for certain somehow helped her make up her mind. There was no need to wait here and hope against hope that he would arrive. Her path forward was clear as spring water. She looked at Tilly, then at John. "I'm thinking you'd better get to Rhodes or even Valentine now, not St. Denis, and catch the train from there. Best go right now too, cause if you ride hard you can still catch a morning train before things get too busy." John was a wanted man, and therefore so much harder to hide. "You gonna be OK without me?"
Tilly seemed to catch on first, looking at Sadie with a startled expression. "You're going back?"
"I'll be fine. Pinkertons don't know about me." The ones from Van Horn who did were rotting in their graves, anyway, so they were hardly talking. "I'm gonna make sure Arthur's buried, at least. I owe that much to him." John being there able able to look after his wife and boy gave her the freedom to do that, as far as she was concerned. Her promise had been fulfilled. She'd gotten them out, fighting to get Abigail free from the Pinkertons, no less. They were together and had money and the world ahead of them. Now she could do this for Arthur, and for her. It seemed only fitting, especially given what he'd done for Jake.
She sat there huddled up in the freezing cabin in the ruins of Colter, wearing her boots which had been right near the cabin's front door, and borrowed clothing from all the women, their names blurring in her mind. Tilly's skirt, or had that been Karen? Someone's wool socks, someone else's shirtwaist, another's spare mittens, yet another's coat, and a man's scarf with the scent of tobacco and aftershave that left her unsettled, stomach churning. She felt like her wardrobe, something made up of disjoint parts rather than one single thing.
She wanted to do nothing so much as find a hot bath and furiously scrub herself all over and hope that helped, and then maybe grab a pistol and turn it on herself, or perhaps trek out into the snow to find and kill some of those O'Driscolls, or maybe both.
She warily watched the men of this gang because they talked kindly, and they had women with them who didn't act like prisoners which felt like it meant something good, but who knew what they were planning. She hadn't slept a wink last night, and might not tonight either. Otherwise, there she was, sitting there and looking at the floor, shivering from cold and ordeal both, trying to lose herself in remembrance of good things, trying to escape memories of the recent bad things. A pair of boots entered her vision, men's boots, scuffed and dirty and tracking bits of ice and snow. "Mrs. Adler. Ma'am." She recognized that rough, deep, tired-sounding voice with a blurred accent that still seemed to have its roots in the twanging tones of New Austin. He was one of the men who'd been at her home--not the O'Driscolls, the others. This was the big one, the one she'd heard talking and calling out as he'd rummaged through her things, the one who'd awkwardly tried to reassure her. "Lenny, Javier, and me, we went back to your place. We went to bury your husband. I thought you ought to hear that."
Digging a grave in the snow--no wonder he sounded exhausted. Now she looked up at him. Morgan, was that the name they'd called him yesterday? Maybe. The women had called him "Arthur", though. "Don't know why you done that, but..."
He gave an awkward, dismissive half-shrug, ducking his head, hiding his eyes from her below the brim of his black hat. "It needed doing. I told you, we're bad men. But we ain't animals." No, maybe not. Not like the O'Driscolls. He reached in his pocket, pulled something out, gingerly held it out to her in one gloved hand. Her and Jake's wedding portrait, out of its frame and with one edge singed. How happy they'd been that day with that fresh start, getting married in Blackwater, and taking a few days in a fancy hotel and seeing a few things in the city outside of that hotel room, then heading north to finally start their life together after so long. "We looked around a bit, to see if there was anything else of yours to salvage, or that we could use. Found this near the fireplace. The frame got broke, but--I thought you might want to have it back."
She reached out and took it, not able to look at it just then, but grateful that he'd think of it, grateful that she had at least one thing to call her own, and it was this. A small kindness, but it meant something more than she could say. "Thank you, Mr. Morgan."
That picture was tucked in her satchel even now. He'd helped see Jake buried when she was just a stranger they'd rescued. Now she would return that favor for him, hoping she'd get there before the Pinkertons could drag his body back to St. Denis or Blackwater to display like some damn trophy buck if they were feeling particularly smug or vengeful. I can still fight, he'd insisted angrily just yesterday in Van Horn. If she was sure of anything, it was that he'd taken plenty of Pinkertons with him along the way. "I'll come with you--" John said immediately, making to get to his feet.
"No, you ain't," she told him coolly. "You say he knowingly went to die to buy you a chance to get away. Said that was what he wanted, even. Then you do what he damn well told you, John, and you take Abigail and Jack, and get as far away from all this as you can. And you go live your life."
John stood up, moving towards Abigail, obviously accepting that, even reluctantly. Tilly spoke up next, voice soft and uncertain. "We was all talking once in camp, Arthur, Lenny, Hosea, and me, about them as we'd buried already. How we'd like to be buried when our time came. Arthur, he tried to say it didn't matter to him, but then he said…" She inhaled, steadying herself, her gaze rising to meet Sadie's, eyes wise and old beyond her few years. "You should bury him facing west, so he can watch the sunset, and remember the happy times we had out that way."
She nodded, because she could do that for him. It seemed little enough, but it was all she could do at this point. "Thanks, Tilly. John, where's he at? As best you know." She listened to him describing the path they'd taken from the top of Beaver Hollow. It would still be a bit of a search, but she thought she had a good idea of where to look. They had been up near the highest peak of Bluestone Ridge, along the New Hanover and Ambarino border. If nothing else, the trail of blood or bodies would likely be a good marker.
She looked the four of them over, knowing this was probably the last she'd ever see of them. They would have split up soon enough anyway. Maybe it was better that it was here and now, no lingering and painful farewells. No particular reason to seek to keep in touch, not when they all wanted to get away from the wreckage of this. Better to bury it all and start over as best they could in new lives. She suspected all of them would do much better on that score than she ever would. Hope felt like a stranger to her by now. "You're good folks, all of you. So...be well." She touched the brim of her hat in salute. Then she slipped out from the tent, leaving them to it, whistling for Bob.
She rode hard, for all there was no real hurry for a dead man, but perhaps she could snatch him up before the Pinkertons could. She saw the wisps of smoke from the half-burned camp as she approached it, and she was prepared to spin a tale if she ran into anyone, and then get the hell out in a hurry. But she heard or saw no Pinkertons there--maybe they were busy chasing Dutch elsewhere, and she grimly wished them every luck at that endeavor. She crept in, searched quickly. Boot prints in the mud, that was all, and some wrecked tents and smoldering ruins. But she had to check, in case he'd made it back here off the ridge visible in the distance.
She found Susan Grimshaw's body under some scorched canvas, and sighed. She hadn't always liked the woman, her moments of kindness and protectiveness usually matched by the ones of iron and vinegar. She'd seen Miss Grimshaw trying to throw her weight around and complaining about no respect, obviously annoyed that she couldn't control the younger women as much as she'd liked. A woman past her prime and knowing it, hungry for respect given a younger woman's due of admiration wasn't her lot any longer. Knowing her own mind as Sadie did, it was bound to happen that the two of them would clash, and Grimshaw seemed glad to wash her hands of it with Sadie joining the hunters, and then the gang's gun hands. But she had been kind at other times. Sadie couldn't forget that. Besides, from what John said, she'd died a bad death, and a needless one. Just another one on a long list. Crouched beside her body, Sadie carefully closed her eyes and wrapped the canvas tightly around her, securing it with rope. That would help keep the animals out for a time. She would bury Grimshaw too, but finding Arthur came first.
She grabbed a few things of hers that she'd left sitting there when they'd gone on the train job, given they'd then immediately rushed out again to save Abigail, and from there to Copperhead Landing. Hesitated for only a moment, reminding herself it was no invasion of privacy now, hurrying over to Arthur's bunk next, his blankets still a mess as if waiting for him to return. Taking some of his personal things--the pictures, that little pink flowered plant in a jar, the horseshoe. She had no idea what the flower and horseshoe might have meant to him, but it had meant something all the same. He'd taken pains to return her wedding portrait to her from her own burned home. So she might as well bury all this with him rather than leave it for Pinkertons or scavengers paw it over.
Finding Bob again, she got in the saddle and headed for Bluestone Ridge. She had to go slower than she'd like, approaching the ridge, wary of searchers. She had to duck one patrol, and heard another in the distance, but that was it. Picking her way up towards the peak, she ran across a few blood pools and smears where the Pinkertons had recovered their dead, then the bodies of Old Boy and Zenobia, shot dead halfway up the slope just as John said. Arthur had ridden Buell, that big pale gold moody bastard of a stallion for a few days after showing up in camp with him about a week ago, muttering something with downcast eyes about a dead friend leaving the horse to him. She hadn't asked more. But after they went to Hanging Dog to take out the O'Driscolls for good, he'd left the stallion at the Valentine stables and took Zenobia from there, saying the stallion was too new to him, and he needed the little white Arabian for her reliability and her speed for the days to come. "Zenobia and Buell, Mrs. Adler, I want you to have them after I'm gone," after he told the stable owner she could come and take the stallion herself. Walking out from the stable, he gave her a small, tired smile. "See, Marston, I fear he don't much know a good horse, so I'd rather see fine ones like them two with someone who has the brains for it."
Poor Zenobia, faithful to the end. As to Buell, it looked like a trip to the Valentine stable was in order before she went wherever the hell she'd end up. She wasn't sure what she'd do with him, but Arthur had left him in her care. She couldn't leave him to be sold to someone else in a few weeks for clearing Arthur's stable bill that would go unpaid now, or worse, the butcher.
It was all serene and quiet as she climbed the ridge. Obviously the Pinkertons had turned the chase to the living, though they'd left a few bodies up on the heights they hadn't recovered yet. It was fully into the morning with the sun warming the land when she found Arthur almost exactly where John said they'd parted ways. Lying there as if he'd gone no further, slightly propped up against some rocks, arms spread out as if to embrace his end like holding a lover. Head turned to the east, so had he watched that sunrise one last time, rather than the sunset Tilly had said he'd so loved? No gunshot wounds, so unlike Grimshaw he looked more or less peaceful. Though the fact he'd somehow taken one hell of a beating, face blood-spattered and bruised, both eyes blackened, spoiled that image. Who had he been fighting with fists? Pinkertons? She didn't see his guns, so perhaps. Likely she'd never get answers. It didn't matter. That wasn't why she was here.
Reaching for her blanket from Bob's back to wrap him in, she sighed, kneeling down beside him on the cold, wet, mist-dampened stone. "Damn brave bastard, I wish you hadn't gone and done it like this," she told him quietly. "But what you set out to do, you done it. John got back to Abigail and Jack. They'll be on their way to Rhodes with Tilly right now. Abigail said something about Canada, so they'll be well away from it all."
But when she touched his cheek one last time in farewell, she couldn't help but be confused. His cheek was cool, but he wasn't cold and stiff, and he should be. He'd been dead out here for hours. When she looked closer, struggling to see beneath the blood and bruises even in the bright light of the morning, she saw it. He still had the hint of fever flush in his cheeks, and holding her hand near his nose and mouth, she felt the faintest stirring of breath against her palm, even if his chest didn't look to rise and fall at all. "Oh, God," she breathed, mind suddenly spiraling in a hundred different directions. "You're still alive, then?"
He wouldn't be alive for long if she didn't get him out of here, though. Suffocating slowly from the tuberculosis to begin, plus then he'd pushed himself to exhaustion with John, got badly beaten next, then been out here near all night too with the foggy cold and damp, clothes wet. Sorry, Miss Grimshaw. Her priorities had changed. The woman wouldn't blame Sadie for it. She'd cared deeply for Arthur, that much was clear, and she would have put the living before the dead anyhow.
Where to take him? He needed to get somewhere far south of here, somewhere hot and dry, to even start to try and deal with his tuberculosis. But he wouldn't survive that trip immediately. She needed to get him somewhere to attempt to get him rested up enough to be able to worry about the disease trying to kill him in weeks to months, rather than him dying in minutes or hours right now. For the moment, she couldn't take him back down to Beaver Hollow. It was a miserable place to begin, and that would be the first place the searchers would look. Van Horn was also no option after the mess they'd made shooting the place up yesterday afternoon to rescue Abigail. Any nearby town, really, because if she rode in with a half-dead man on her horse and got him a bed, word would get around about that, and Pinkertons would follow. But she couldn't set up camp in the wild with him either. He couldn't survive roughing it for days or even weeks to better be able to travel.
There seemed to be only one safe option she could think of where she could still hope to make it there today. She would have to take him to Wapiti, to the reservation. Charles was likely still there, and Arthur was quite friendly with Chief Rains Fall besides. They knew her there, given she and Charles had dropped off meat more than once. With luck, they'd be willing to let them hide and rest for a few days, and she knew damn well they were no friend to the government right now even before any love for Arthur, so nobody would rat him out to the Pinkertons.
Mind made up, she struggle to roll him into the blanket, thinking ahead. She'd have to sling him over Bob's back anyway, and hope he survived that long ride. Unconscious as he was, he wouldn't be riding himself, or hanging on to her. So--make him look like a dead bounty to anyone passing her on the road, and keep him warmer in the blanket besides. Grabbing the knife at her hip, she carefully cut away some of the blanket from his face so he could breathe. She'd have to buy a new one later, but no matter. She'd been lucky enough that she could ride Bob all the way up the slope to this spot. But getting him up onto Bob was no easy task, because she was a damn strong woman from years of farm work, but he was still a big, tall, strong-framed man. Though she suspected she'd had a much easier time than she would have months ago, given how much weight he'd lost thanks to the TB. Eventually she managed it, panting hard in the thinner mountain air as she settled and secured him. She laid a hand on his shoulder for a moment, pretty sure he couldn't hear her, but needing to say it anyway. "You made it this far. So you stay with me, Arthur Morgan. Don't you dare go die on me now." Then she swung up into the saddle and once she'd picked her way down the ridge she dug her heels into Bob's flanks and headed northwest for Wapiti as quickly as she could without pushing Bob too hard with the double burden, and praying the jostling wouldn't kill Arthur.
The Pinkertons stopped her barely ten minutes into the ride, two of them along the road flashing both their shield-shaped badges and ready rifles, calling out to her in the morning mist, asking where she was going in such a hurry. "Got a bounty I'm delivering to Annesburg, after I check in with my partner at O'Creagh's Run. We was both searching the area, and luck was on my side. Got to let him know I found the man and the job's done. Then after that, I'd rather get the fella there and off my horse before he really starts to stink. I assure you he was no spring rose, even alive."
"You think about taking a bath yourself?" one of them asked, a big, broadly built blond, eyeing her up and down.
She shrugged, still trying for brisk nonchalance, though her heart pounded in her chest like a blacksmith's hammer. "I been living rough while running bounties. It's late fall, boys, too cold to wash up in a stream. A bath sounds real nice. It's on my list after I drop this sack of shit off for the bounty." A bath really did sound wonderful, and she did stink. They all did. They'd been living terrified in bad territory in Shady Belle and Lakay, been outright living like animals in the Hollow. When they were busy fighting and turning on each other these last weeks, human things like baths fell by the wayside, too scared to venture too far into a town for something as suddenly luxurious as a bath when it could get them snapped up and arrested, or even killed outright. Pearson had heated water for them for a while, and those that still cared had each headed down into the cave with hot water, some soap, and a cloth for some privacy to wash up, but even that had vanished about a week ago as the mood got worse. Then Pearson himself had vanished in the night.
"Who's the bounty?" his companion asked, and from his sharp, intent gaze, she pegged him as the smarter of the two. He poked the blanket, pushed it aside slightly, prodding curiously at it.
She thought furiously of the bounty posters she'd grabbed recently. "A Murfree Brood fella. Guess they was looking to expand their territory into Ambarino. He looked like Walt, or maybe it was Jeff? He didn't do me the courtesy of giving his name before shooting at me, and well, after that, he ain't telling nobody his name again. They're all wanted for murder, kidnapping, doing indecent things to women. Gave me a hell of a fight. Guess I'll lose the extra twenty-five dollars for hauling him in alive, but I got to admit, killing him was a pleasure." They'd been living like animals, true, but also like the Murfrees they'd run out of the Hollow, because she wasn't sure they were fully human either. Though at least they hadn't fully sunk to those depths. Hopefully Arthur's hair, since some of that was about all the man could see, could pass for a Murfree at a glance. He'd cleaned himself up right before that train job, gotten a bath and a haircut, so maybe not.
"Reece, let her go," the blond one advised. She held her breath and willed Arthur to stay unconscious and limp, to not start to wake up and stir or cough at all right now. It would be the worst possible time for him to show any clear signs of life.
"Should we take the man in ourselves?" Reece asked, still standing there, holding the blanket corner in his hand as if ready to yank away more of it for a better look.
Blond snorted derisively. "Don't be unchivalrous. She killed him fair and square. Besides, we've got bigger fish to fry. Hill and Yancy have their claim already. Five thousand for Arthur Morgan, confirmed dead. Snapped the picture themselves. But there's still three thousand each for Bill Williamson and Javier Escuella. Four for John Marston and Micah Bell. Ten for old Dutch van der Linde himself. Nab some of those boys, you're living like a king, and you want to worry about hauling in some dead sister-fucking Murfree trash who might be worth a hundred bucks at most, or probably nothing? That's why bounty hunters like this gal exist, to handle the little fish."
She kept the reins in her left hand, right hand resting on her thigh to quickly grab her revolver if need be, her heels gently pressed to Bob's sides, ready to spur him on at a moment's notice, all while trying to look at ease. "Ten thousand dollars, you say? Wouldn't mind getting a piece of that pie." Five thousand dollars for Arthur? If they peeled back that blanket enough to get a look at his face, this was going to get messy, because at best they'd assume she was stealing his body. But they were the ones damn stupid enough to have not checked closely that he was dead when they'd presumably found him on the ridge. They'd seen a man who looked dead, and ran with that, greedy for the payday. Though she couldn't entirely blame them for the assumption. No reason to suspect he was alive, looking as he did, and none of them would have gotten as close as her.
Reece smirked at that. "Federal bounty only for authorized government agents, missy, being as we've been the ones who pursued the bastard for six months and across five states. I believe it's only five hundred or so to a bounty hunter." He let the blanket fall back into place, nodded towards Arthur's still limp form, then looked up at her. "But we'll let you be on your way with your quarry here. Piece of advice, though, if you want to get ahead in this business? Make sure of who you're shooting first. One less Murfree savage is a good thing for us all regardless, but let's hope there's an actual bounty out there on him. Hate for you to drag him in to Annesburg for nothing." Blond let go of Bob's bridle and stepped back.
Some part of her wanted to shoot Reece dead right there because of that knowing, smug look on his face talking down to a woman. Instead she forced a sweet smile. "Thank you, sir, for the expertise. Good hunting to you." Nudging Bob, she hit the trail again, forcing herself to go north to make it look like she was headed to O'Creagh's Run and then to Annesburg as she'd said, then picking her way through the trees to turn west again.
It was a quiet morning on the road, for which she had to thank God. She crossed paths with a mail rider from his clearly marked satchel and saddlebags, a hunter with a deer on his horse's back, and that was it. She heard a few distant howls from wolves as she headed up into the Grizzlies, and she reassured Bob, murmuring lowly to him to keep him steady. Despite the day getting on, the temperature dropped again as she headed up into the mountains, air turning crisp and sharp. She slowed, wary of Bob's footing, treacherous both where the frost hadn't melted and where it had, as the water made the rock slick under Bob's hooves. She settled down deeper into her jacket, wishing she'd brought something warmer. She hadn't expected to be riding into the Grizzlies in a rush, and if anyone knew what being unprepared in these mountains felt like, and what folly that was, it was her. She and Jake found that out three years ago.
She rode into Wapiti late in the afternoon, feeling the weariness in both her and Bob from a day of riding fast and too hard, and she could see the difference here from when she'd last passed through with Charles a couple weeks ago, before everything went to hell with Eagle Flies' war band. At least half the hide lodges were gone, most of the horses, and there weren't many people out doing anything, a few older folks huddled deep into their robes as they slowly headed for a tent. The whole place had the air of something sad, abandoned, all the hopes and life leeched out of it. It had never been a happy place, but it felt eerily like a ghost town now.
She saw Taima's familiar spotted coat on a mare hitched near one of the lodges. Charles stood there, brushing her down, scratching her nose and feeding her something. "Charles!" she hailed him.
His head lifted, and immediately the air of quiet contemplation vanished from him, leaving him purposeful and intent. She tracked his gaze, saw it go to the blanket-wrapped bundle on Bob's back. "What--who--have you got there, Sadie?"
"It's Arthur. I'll explain, but right now, you got to help me get him inside. I found him up on Bluestone Ridge, still alive. But barely. He's...he's bad off." Hopping down, she admitted, feeling a tightness in her throat, "He's dying, or maybe dead by now, or--I don't know. Once I got him up on Bob, and knew I was coming here, I wasn't gonna stop to check." She met his eyes. "I...I had to try, you understand?" She wasn't sure she could bear to believe Arthur could have made it this far, only to be disappointed. Not cold and wet and enduring hours on the trail. The blanket could only do to such to cushion and warm a man clinging that feebly to life, couldn't it? She suddenly felt the urge to prepare herself for the worst rather than dare to hope for the best. It would hurt too much. But even if he'd died along the way, she'd tried. He'd died with someone who cared trying to save him, rather than dying alone on that ridge. That had to count for something.
Charles didn't hesitate, simply nodded. "Of course you did." With Charles there, it was much easier, because he slung Arthur over his shoulder like the man weighed nothing. She felt the curious eyes of the Wapiti on them as Charles gestured for her to open the flap of his tent and go in, him following her, putting Arthur down right close to the fire.
She cut loose the ropes holding the blanket, unwrapping it, and felt the surge of surprised relief at confirming that yes, Arthur was still breathing. More visibly so than he'd been on the ridge, so being bundled up in the warmth of that blanket and padded by it must have helped, despite the long hours. But one deeper breath came back out with a racking wheeze that she didn't like, and she didn't realize she was holding her own breath, fearing him starting a spasm of coughing, until she let it out in a long sigh when he settled back down again. "So he made it here alive. Best do what we can to keep him that way."
Charles took hold of Arthur's arm, working it out of the sleeve of his damp waxed canvas jacket. "He's cold, and those clothes are wet to boot. Help me out." At that moment, she was thankful she was with Charles and he had more than his share of sense, so they weren't going to get into the notion that no matter how dire the situation, a woman undressing a man was something depraved, unless she wore his wedding ring. Horseshit. Like it wasn't usually women who had the washing and laying out and dressing of the dead. Besides, she'd been a married woman. It wasn't like she didn't know exactly what bits a man had when his pants and unmentionables came off. Even if she'd been of a frame of mind for that, and he was a man she wanted as a lover rather than a friend, getting an eyeful of a man while he was this sick wasn't going to turn her towards any kind of sinful thoughts anyhow.
If anything, the sight of Arthur as they got him undressed inspired pain for his sake, not lust. On a big-framed, formerly muscular man, the ravages of the tuberculosis showed even more obviously. No wonder they called it "consumption", because it looked like he was a fragile husk that had been burned up from the inside out, a skeleton with skin stretched over it, ample bruising visible on his ribs and hipbones and elsewhere from the beating he'd taken, dark and big enough to be visible even beneath the hair on his chest. So this was what he'd come to in the end, after all the struggle, all the sacrifice: a half-dead man hiding on a mostly-abandoned Indian reservation, clinging to a thin thread of life somehow. But then, he was a stubborn man.
Stubborn enough to keep going despite the toll the disease took on him. He'd lost all that weight, and she'd seen his face going thin, features sharp, exhausted and bloodshot eyes sunk in their sockets. He gave up shaving in Beaver Hollow, as did most of the men, in part because she suspected the exhaustion and hopelessness. Then he'd come back right before the train job, clean and with a fresh haircut and a clean shave, dressed these fine clothes. She could only suspect what that had said--he was preparing himself to die. But he'd managed to hide a lot of it beneath his clothes, wearing that waxed canvas jacket most everywhere, tiredly saying he was cold. Probably was, given how thin she could now see he'd become. Undeniable now how much extra fabric there was in his shirt and pants, and how two of the holes in his belt were crudely hand-punched ones so he could cinch it smaller.
Charles must have thought the same, because as he gently folded the heavy bison robe over Arthur's shoulders, tucking him in to warm up, he said, "He hid a lot of it from us. We all knew he was sick, but I don't much know how he kept going for as long as he did." They'd all seen him finishing a job, leaning tiredly on rocks or a tree, struggling for breath. Coming back to camp, barely murmuring greetings, and dropping into his bunk to sleep for hours, coughing in his sleep, when in the summer she'd seen he could come in, fuss over everyone, run on a few hours' sleep, and then ride right out again without missing a step.
His knuckles were bloody and beaten too. As weak as he was, as much pain as he'd taken, he'd still dealt some back out. Of course he had. The two of them silently and carefully laid out the clothes he'd dressed in to die, that almost flamboyant red and black finery, to let them dry. She saw how they were already acting with the hope that he would need and want them again.
Sitting down cross-legged on a wolf pelt, looking across the fire at Charles, she shook her head. He was a smart man, a truly good one, but on some things, he just didn't know. Not in the same way that she did. Now she finally replied, certain he would know it was her answer to a question he hadn't fully asked. "It was love that done it, Charles. Cause that's what love does to you. It keeps you going long past the point where you should break and give out." She glanced down at the man under that robe, all ragged and battered and frail, and perhaps the strongest man she'd ever known. If anyone could pull through after this, it would be Arthur Morgan. Stubborn bastard. "He loved us all enough to keep going, keep fighting. He wanted to give folk a chance." Some of Uncle Will's preaching had gone by the wayside over the years, but she easily could remember that one quote. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
"Sounds like you've got it about right," he answered her. "How long do you need to stay?" He made a self-conscious grumble at that, waving a hand in an awkwardly apologetic gesture. "You're welcome here in my lodge as long as you need, Sadie, you and Arthur both. But the people--we ain't staying." He gestured towards the door of the tent next, vaguely indicating the camp itself.
"I seen you was missing a lot of folk from when I was here last. Where'd they all go?"
"North, to Canada. The young ones headed out the morning after we came back with Eagle Flies. After we buried him. Paytah led them. The elders told them to go, to get ahead of the Army. Soldiers probably went on the trail of the ones who left, so that buys some time here, but ain't nobody expecting them to hold off forever. The ones left are the ones who needed more time to gather their strength for the journey. The mothers nearing their time, the old, the weak, the sick."
"Abigail and John and Jack was talking about heading north too, so it seems everyone's got notions of escaping to Canada." Now the quiet and stillness in camp made sense, given the few left were the weakest ones. "Sounds like Arthur fits in just about right." She meant it to be darkly funny, but it came out strangely mournful all the same. She sighed, grabbed another log, threw it on the fire. "He needs time too. Like you was saying, to get stronger. If--when he wakes up and he can travel, he's got to go south. Somewhere warm."
"Tahiti?" Charles offered with a sly smile. "A tropical paradise, so I kept hearing."
She couldn't help but laugh at that, grateful to him for the lighthearted moment. "No, I'm thinking New Austin, or maybe all the way into Mexico." She'd thought about getting the gang there before Dutch came back, given New Austin was familiar stomping grounds for her.
"I'd suggest Mexico. Better to get across the border, and away from the hornet's nest. That's pretty much what we're doing with Canada." She noticed he included himself in with the tribe easily, instinctively. He'd found his place and new life already, and some part of her flared up in the heat of jealousy for it, and the shame of knowing herself for what she was, some monster made of broken bits barely holding together.
"That was what I thought too." She'd have to try to brush up her handful of Spanish in a hurry, and learn more rapidly, so that could get interesting. She knew New Austin, and so that would be easier to handle, but wasn't like they could hide out near Tumbleweed. Not with Arthur dying of TB as he was. He needed a doctor.
Charles reached for the coffee percolator sitting beside his pelt, pouring some of its contents into a battered tin cup and holding it out to her. She took it, grateful for the warmth against her fingers, and the first sip of it warmed her up from the inside. They'd come to a decent friendship in the weeks Dutch and the rest were gone on Guarma, trying to take care of everyone. It felt good to not have to worry or explain or justify, simply to be, and know he had her back here. "You'll go with him?" he asked her.
She gave an awkward shrug. "Not like I can let him go by himself as he is, so--yes, I will." It helped ease her mind, having some sense of direction, clarity of purpose. Kept her from having to answer that question of what now? that they were all facing, because here was a right now that needed minding. "You want to come with us? Seems like you got your own folks to look after already, though."
She wasn't surprised when he shook his head. "No, I'll be going to Canada as well. I stayed behind to do some hunting and the like, protect the ones here. I couldn't leave Rains Fall to handle it all himself. "
She couldn't help but smile at him. "Love, huh?"
He gave her a slight smile back. "Guess so." He looked at her more closely, eyebrows raised. "How long it been since you slept?"
She had to think about it, and think harder than she'd like. Last night was lost to getting to Copperhead Landing and keeping watch all through the night. Before that, she'd been rescuing Abigail with Arthur, and then--beyond there it all seemed to recede into a thick fog in her mind, too tired to pull details and memories and make sense of them. "Two days? I think? I ain't quite sure."
"I thought so." He indicated what she assumed was his own pallet, covered with another bison robe. "Get some sleep, Sadie." He got to his feet, crossing to her side of the fire and leaning down to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. You don't need to sit here the whole thing once you're rested. I know how you need to stay busy." He did at that, and that told her the notion of friendship she'd had was no illusion. "Snow Goose and I need to go hunt, but Red Shawl will come sit with him if I ask. She'll come get you if he wakes up."
"When he wakes up," she insisted, but on the point of sleep or finding things to do, she wasn't going to argue with him. She could feel the exhaustion pulling at her, tugging again and again like a kite on a string. Pulling off her boots and putting her gun belt and repeater beside her, she crawled underneath the fur robe and fell asleep in what felt like a few seconds.