In the end, the parting of the ways came with no fuss. The Wapiti headed north, she and Arthur headed south, and that was that. But they paused for a minute, watching Charles and his charges--his people, perhaps, and she hoped for that for him--disappear into the winter darkness. Beside her, Arthur raised a hand as well in farewell, and she thought she saw Charles acknowledge the gesture one last time before passing from view.
They watched as the lantern tied to Taima finally faded into the distance around the next turn of the mountain path. After that, there was nothing to stay around for, no reason to not leave the reservation behind them. The sight of it as they all rode out struck some deep chord, or a nerve, within her. Maybe a bit of both.
She couldn't look at it for too long. The last of the hide lodges and canvas tents struck, only a few small shacks and cabins remained. That, and the dark gaps of exposed bare stone in the frost and sugar-fine dusting of snow to show where they had been. It seemed a lonely place with everything that had made it home--even a sad one for the Wapiti--uprooted. For Sadie, it called to mind Tumbleweed's slow decay, and then that land up in Pinetree Gulch. She'd never been back these past six months, far as she'd roamed. She expected she never would go. She remembered the flames still burning as she rode away on the back of Dutch's horse, frozen in both body and mind. True, she'd never seen the wreckage of it. But she'd seen enough burned out ruins to imagine how forlorn it must look. One more instance of melancholy, all failed hopes and dreams left behind for nature to slowly swallow it up and reclaim it.
Focus on the moment, she told herself, a stern admonishment to stop woolgathering. Fine to dream all of those idle thoughts in slow times, but right now there was an important thing that needed doing.
Glancing over at Arthur, assessing him carefully, she couldn't help her relief at seeing him sitting up straight in the saddle, looking alert and watchful. A restful week wouldn't cure everything, but it had given him some reservoir of strength to draw upon for this. "You doing all right?"
"We've gone only about a quarter mile, Sadie," he said, his tone dry and sarcastic. "If I ain't able to handle that, you might as well drag me out back and shoot--" He cut himself off with an awkward grumble, obviously realizing it was a quip in poor taste, even with as thoughtless as it had been. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Got a horse, got a plan and somewhere to go, got a couple of guns. It'll be all right."
For a man who'd been wielding a gun since--how long? She wasn't sure, but she'd heard he'd been running with Dutch's gang for twenty years at least, so probably most if not all of that. Even in the months since Clemens Point when she made up her mind to shed her weakness and paralysis and first strapped on that gun belt, telling herself that nobody would surprise her, nobody would touch her, nobody would take anything from her so easily again, she would have felt naked riding out without that security and reassurance now. She had to imagine he felt that vulnerability too, and having a gun belt on again himself was a relief.
The Wapiti hadn't had as much use for sidearms, given they likely couldn't even trade them without provoking wrath of folks asking exactly who they'd killed to get them, because they couldn't imagine any other source. It had been easy enough to get him a pair of revolvers from their stash, since his were both gone when she found him. I think one ended up over the edge of the cliff when Micah attacked me. The other? I ain't sure. Maybe a Pinkerton took it for a souvenir, he'd said with a sigh and a rueful smile. They probably had, because along with the bragging rights of that bounty, having a notorious outlaw's gun would have been irresistible. Fair's fair. I ended up taking a gunslinger's weapon a time or two when it was a good one. Though I at least actually beat them myself.
Revolvers at his side, he also had a bow over his shoulder. That had been handed over from Charles as they mounted up, with nothing but a significant nod between the two men, some memory or the like between them. He'd refused to take a repeater, saying Sadie had one, that he could buy one later easily compared to them, and the Wapiti needed them more. She'd take the lead and be the scout for this anyway, so it was better she had the repeater. Though at least they were well west from Murfree territory, and happily, the O'Driscoll vermin had been cleaned out thanks to their joint efforts, so hopefully it would be an uneventful ride to Valentine with no bandits thinking to cause trouble. "Then let's go. If you need to slow down, you promise you'll tell me that. Better that than you passing out and falling off your damn horse." She'd managed to get him over Bob's back on the mountain, but somehow she doubted hauling an unconscious man on the train in Valentine would fit well with the notion of not attracting attention.
"Got it, boss," he said, giving her that familiar little two-fingered salute from the brim of his hat. Buell flicked his ears nervously, clearly still not used to the man on his back. But Arthur was a good enough rider to handle that. She'd seen ot. Hands on the reins even at a moment of ease like this, ready to help control even a big damn beast like that instantly. "Anyway, time we was away, or are we just gonna sit here?"
"We're going." With that, she nudged Bob into a trot. They didn't talk to each other, riding in the cold late fall moonlight, watching the path intently in the darkness. Better to not get distracted, and better that he save his breath. But it felt odd all the same to not say anything for so long, given words usually came easily between them, and she found she missed talking to him. There would be time for that later, though. The crisp air stung her exposed skin above her scarf. Winter was coming on, and fast. She hoped the Wapiti would make it to Canada all right, thought of Red Shawl and her baby son, hoping for their safety on the journey. She was a good woman and a good mother. Sadie had been glad to befriend her this past week, though seeing her so happy with a husband and baby had hurt in that silent ache for a dream that she'd had torn away from her. She'd done her best to not show it, though. None of that was Red Shawl's fault, and she'd had it hard enough herself.
Past Cumberland Falls, after the effort of fording the river running several feet deep, she heard that retching cough start behind her, and she couldn't keep herself from wincing. No, a week of rest hadn't been nearly enough for him, and she'd known that, but some stupid part of her had apparently hoped. That sound tore up any illusions she had unwittingly harbored on that score. She finally couldn't help it, pulled Bob up and turned back to Arthur. She looked down to see the greenish crap he'd spat on the muddy trail, the blood in it shining red in the dim light of the lantern tied to Buell's saddle. He didn't say anything, just wrapped the scarf around his face again, wearily hauled himself back upright from the sagging half-lean he'd been in, and waved an arm in a keep going gesture. There didn't seem to be much to say. Damned if they did and damned if they didn't. Going too slowly only prolonged the misery and sapped his strength further out here in the cold, but rushing would burn through it like setting a match to kindling. He wanted to keep going, so they'd keep going.
Finally they made it to Valentine right about 10 at night by her watch, riding down the street past the lights still lit in the saloon, all the way to the train station. She watched him dismounting from Buell, leaning against the horse for a moment longer than a well man would have, then giving the horse a pat on the neck and a low murmur of praise, "Good boy." That done, he glanced over at her. "Being as folk don't need to hear from a ghost, guess I'll hang back and we'll have you do the talking."
At least his humor was still intact, even if his strength and his lungs weren't. "Might as well." She wasn't going to tell him that she thought it would be hard for most people to easily recognize the man who'd raised hell in Valentine that summer in this tall, thin, tired figure with his soft, exhausted rasp of a voice. It would be too cruel to point out how much he'd changed physically, given he had to sense it. Heading in, hearing the tread of Arthur's boots right behind her against the floor boards, she told the ticket agent, "We bought two tickets for the late train to Riggs Station earlier. They're held under the name of Griffith."
"Mr. and Mrs. Griffith, I assume." He glanced at Sadie, then at Arthur. She couldn't help but be thankful for the chilly night and the need to keep bundled up.
"Yeah, of course, you got a lot of folk asking for them tickets or something?" she asked, the unspoken damn idiot hanging right there in the air like a cloud of tobacco smoke. Did he suspect? Instinctively she wanted to reach for the gun at her side, wondering if there were lawmen right behind them. Had she not been careful enough? Had that damn doctor talked?
He laughed, shaking his head, and she felt herself relax. "Nothing meant by it, just making bad small talk, all right? Gets real boring on the late shift. You two got baggage? Horses?"
"Just a little bit of baggage." Clothes, the books and the like, and the two bison robes and a few other things the Wapiti had insisted on gifting them. The heavy robes likely wouldn't be much use in the Mexican desert, even if the nights got chilly sometimes. But the tribe's generosity was so kind she couldn't possibly turn them down. She suspected some of it was the Wapiti would rather see things gifted to friends than left behind to rot, and that was more than sensible. "And two horses."
He nodded at that, glanced over Sadie's shoulder at Arthur. "You don't say much, mister, do you?"
Arthur shrugged at that. "She talks enough for us both. Got most of the brains between us too."
She rolled her eyes at that, playing the role as best she could. "Ha, at least he admits it!" The less small talk the better, so she headed for the platform, trusting Arthur would follow her. The train was there already, lights bright in the night as it stood there in the station, so it was a matter of overseeing the horses being loaded onto the livestock car, Arthur having to step in to carefully coax Buell along, dropping their few things into the baggage car, and then finding seats.
She would have let him have the seat by the window, so he could easily lean against it and sleep, but whatever code of conduct some moron had dictated about women and men wouldn't have it. The man was expected to take the aisle to presumably protect his poor defenseless woman. From exactly what, she didn't know. It wasn't like a gun couldn't shoot a woman a foot or two further away every bit as easily. Besides, as she'd found on that trip three years ago with Jake, in the kind of heat when the train windows were open to keep it from being stifling, being a woman and sitting there meant getting the majority of the soot flying back from the engine. Good thing she hadn't worn light colored clothing that time. Given non-protection from gunfire and avoiding the soot, she'd have preferred the aisle seat, but she knew to take it would cause comment.
So she slid into the seat nearest the window, and he sat down beside her. The bench seat was small enough, and he was big enough, that his hip and thigh pressed against hers. "Sorry," he muttered, trying ridiculously to press himself tighter against the other end of the seat, and moving maybe a fraction of an inch at best.
She sighed, lowered her voice. "You and me are supposedly a husband and wife, you know. You start trying to scoot away from me like this, you think people ain't gonna notice that?" Strangely enough, the contact, the nearness of him and the faint smell of his sweat, didn't unsettle her as badly as she'd expected. It took only a moment to quell the flicker of alarm within her, sternly telling herself this was Arthur, her friend.
"What people?" He pointedly glanced around the car. The only other passenger right now was one man in the first seat on the right, and they'd taken the back left of the car in consequence. "That fella?" But he gave up fidgeting, and changed the subject. "Mr. and Mrs. Griffith, huh?"
"You prefer Mr. and Mrs. Kilgore?"
"God, no. Trying to claim my parents saddled me with the name 'Tacitus' and keeping a straight face was bad enough." He managed a tired grin at her. "Though if you was gonna be Tacitus' wife, I believe that'd make you Julia."
"Not sure I see me being a Julia." She was well aware she hadn't answered the implied question he'd asked, but she wasn't of a mind to talk about it unless he brought it up again.
"No, I ain't sure I do either." The whistle screeched, and the train jolted to life, picking up steam. The steady clack of the wheels on the tracks took on a soothing rhythm before long, and Valentine soon faded into the distance, with only the faint glow of the small lights on the wall of the train car casting some illumination into the dark of the night. Only two others had joined this car, and they'd stuck further forward, so she thought they'd be all right to talk freely as long as they kept their voices low, like a husband and wife would with their confidences.
She joked, "Hope no fool gets a notion to rob this train. That would be the last thing we need."
He sat back, let out a low chuckle at that, arms folded over his chest, and gave her a smug smile. "You was a real good outlaw, Sadie Adler, but there's tricks you ain't never had time to learn. We'll be fine. Only amateurs hit the midnight special, whether it's actually midnight or not. Handful of passengers only, mostly poor folk buying the cheap tickets to travel at a rough time of the night. Nothing worth robbing. Evening train, that's where you find the money. Rich folk headed somewhere after the day's work is done."
It felt good to see him amused about something, and she hated to squash that, but it was time for some necessary serious talk. "We'll be fine until Blackwater, you mean. You may be a dead man on paper, but I doubt word's got out to all them bounty hunters yet. And I'm sure there's still plenty of pissed off Pinkertons looking for Dutch and the rest. But it's near winter, nobody will look too close at folks all bundled up, and I put us through there before dawn to boot, so we'll have the darkness."
"That was good thinking." A strange calm expression came over his features just then. "If it goes bad, you don't fight. You start screaming for them to rescue you. The Pinkertons don't know you, or at least, the ones that survived Van Horn wouldn't have identified you just yet. So if it goes that way, you're just some poor woman caught up in bad business."
He meant she would play some spineless jellyfish, and it took everything she had to not reject that notion with everything in her. "What, I got seduced by a bad man and didn't know that until it got too late to run?" The words came out sharp and brittle, like slivers of glass on her tongue. She'd made her choices. She could have left after Horseshoe Overlook, Arthur had even offered her money if she wanted to go, but she'd stayed. Nothing better to do, perhaps, and nobody to go to, but that wasn't all of it. The notion that here were some so-called bad men, men who could kill, men who could live a life where nobody would mess with them, stirred something to life within her that soon became an inferno. She'd thought she was strong, capable of hunting and fishing and everything else. Six mean bastards with guns showed her otherwise on a snowy night six months ago. So she'd chosen to embrace those bad men. Become a bad woman, she guessed, and what the exact cost of that would be was an ongoing discovery.
Another laugh from him at that, something as dark and fragile as her words had been, nothing like that previous warm chuckle. "Is anyone really gonna believe a woman like you wanted the likes of me in your bed? No, it's got to be that I threatened you." She had the odd sense he wasn't talking only about his being sick from the TB in deriding himself. He turned to her as best as he could in the crowded seat, looking her right in the face, those green-blue eyes fierce in a way she hadn't seen in a while, even with exhaustion in his features. "What you done already for me? That's--look, I ain't taking you down with me, you hear? I figure we got enough folks dead already in this whole mess."
She should have agreed, because he was a man who might still die soon, one way or another, and she ought to give him his wish and some small bit of comfort for all he'd spent of himself trying to comfort and save others. But she was so tired herself, and he was the one certain thing she had right now. The only thing that made sense in her shattered world. "If I get Pinkertons to shoot me, Arthur, that dying's by my choice, not cause of you." Don't ask me to watch another good man shot dead in front of me, and say I have to carry on. I can't. I'm all broken bits from Jake, you want to grind me right down to dust by losing you too? "It ain't all selfless like you're thinking. Everything I done? I killed every O'Driscoll that crossed my path. Killed that fat bastard Tommy Watkins with my own two hands. But I could drown the whole wide world in blood and it don't change anything. Cause what happened, it can't be drowned away. And I can't take back what I turned into. I got to live with that. Knowing what I am. Knowing what I chose to be. So maybe...maybe it's what I need now. That chance of saving someone. You understand?"
He took being told he was part of her chosen hope of redemption gracefully enough, all things considered, given he could have been offended at being deemed as much a project as a friend. He sighed, looked away for a moment, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Sure, I get the notion. I been doing a bit of that thinking myself. I just wish you'd been able to put all that effort towards saving someone...decent, I guess."
She couldn't bear to argue about his own decency with him. Not right now. Not when she didn't feel all that decent herself, and at least he'd become better while she'd become worse, so if he wasn't decent, what the hell did that make her? So she'd turn it into a joke and hope he could accept that, and they both could move past it for the moment. "Couldn't find a widow or orphan or beggar to help. Apparently you was already busy helping all of them. Then you wasn't quite dead, and well, that seemed like it'd do for an opportunity."
That soft chuckle came back, and it eased something within her. "Yeah, all right, I could have left you one of them. Though my account's got a lot more ground to make up, so pardon me on that."
She could argue with him on that score, but she let it bide. She eyed him, seeing the weariness etched into him, sensing how those slow hours riding to Valentine had just about drained him. "You want to sleep at all?"
He shook his head, rubbing his eyes. "No, not just yet. I'd rather keep awake until we're clear of New Hanover and West Elizabeth at least."
Given there wasn't much to talk about right then that didn't hit some painfully sore spots, and a need to keep awake, turning to the books seemed like the best way to deal with it. She saw him reach for "A Tale of Two Cities", wondering if he wished he could make the last six months all go away, if he could stitch his life back to the place before it went wrong in Blackwater when he'd last been reading that particular novel. At least she didn't have a pending novel to finish, given she doubted she could bear to open that book again. The last one she'd finished, the night before Jake died, had been about a wreck of a ship named the Titan, striking an iceberg and sinking, with almost everyone dying from a lack of lifeboats from a ship that everyone assumed was unsinkable. "Futility". That was the name of the book. It seemed appropriate enough for what came after that for her. Overly confident in the permanence of things, a sudden disaster in winter, and a hell of a lot of death and futility.
So she opened "Rob Roy" instead and lost herself in the Scottish Highlands, trying to ignore it when Arthur would pull out a kerchief, turn away from her towards the aisle, and start coughing into it. Knowing he hated her making a fuss about it, so she tried to not worry. But all the same, it wasn't easy to listen to it, imagining how miserable and painful it had to be. Somewhere past Flatneck Station, she saw him as he sat there once again coming off a coughing spree, not turning back into the seat, leaning over with his elbows on his knees and head bowed. Weary to the bone and suffering, but she could reassure him he wasn't alone at least. If him being there comforted her, she could hope she did the same for him. She risked closing her book, reaching out, putting a hand on his shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. He tensed for a second like a startled cat, and she almost let go, but then she felt him ease into the touch. "The doctor gave me some laudanum, if it would help?"
"No," the word came out as a weary wheeze. He took a few deep breaths, cleared his throat, and the words come out stronger now as he turned back to her. "The last thing I need right before going through Blackwater is my mind gone all foggy. Besides, we all seen what the opium gone and done to Swanson. Too easy to get hooked on the stuff if you take it before you're just about ready to shoot yourself from the pain. I ain't in a hurry to take on another vice. My list is long enough already."
She noticed the kerchief he stuffed back in his pocket was red to begin, as if to hide the bloodstains. It wasn't to hide it from her. It wasn't as if they all hadn't known. But maybe that hid it from others. Though she also knew why he kept grabbing it every time he coughed. He told her he supposed he'd gotten the TB from that debtor coughing blood up in his face. Sitting so close, he wouldn't dare to risk her getting it from him. True, either of them could move to another seat, but a woman seemingly traveling alone usually got enough scrutiny that it was just easier this way. Besides, it was so cold in the train car that having the warmth of him there helped, even if she guiltily realized from the sweat on his brow that some of that was fever heat.
She kept her hand on his shoulder for another long minute, then finally let it drop as the conductor came through the car, announcing they would be arriving in Riggs Station in just a few minutes. They'd made it this far. Now came the truly risky part. He'd have to manage another short ride on Buell to Strawberry first, and he already looked tired. "We can do this," she told him, maybe as much for her own sake as his. "Shit, the two of us got John out of Sisika. Skipping through Blackwater in the wee hours of the morning? That ain't nothing. You and me is all we need to get things done, remember." As she said it, she had to wonder exactly how much you and me is all we need went far beyond the problem at hand. If she was ever going to be an outlaw on the run fleeing to Mexico, he'd be the friend she'd want by her side. Though he'd probably joke that was a damn fine and damn odd compliment. Maybe it was.
~~~~~~~~~~
The habit of silence kept up, and they didn't talk much on the stagecoach from Strawberry to Blackwater, well aware that the driver could hear them if they got much above a murmur. Better to take the level of concealment the stagecoach offered rather than riding into Blackwater on Buell's back, bold as brass. Not to mention if he was honest with himself, the ride from the reservation to Valentine took enough out of him that he wasn't sure he could have managed long, long hours in the saddle. Admitting that limit hurt in a curious way. He'd pushed himself all the way up Bluestone Ridge all right, pushed far too damn hard for John's sake and then for the hope of wiping Micah and his evil out for good. Now he was paying for that because what rickety supports his strength and stamina had been on at that point, they'd finally shattered and the whole thing collapsed in on him. That was him right now. Something caved in, hollowed out. Nothing left but some fragile shell that might get crushed far too easily. Consumption. He felt damn well consumed, all right, devoured bit by bit by some invisible monster hiding inside his own chest. He wished it could have been some monster grizzly like the one up near Hanging Dog, something he could fight the way he knew how, and if nothing else, something that would make the end quick. Bad as that cellar had been, much as he preferred to not think about any of it, Colm O'Driscoll and his boys honestly had nothing on tuberculosis when it came to masterfully slow torture.
The streetlights of Blackwater arrived far too soon for his taste, and yet somehow, not soon enough. He decided he'd rather be through the place, and then likely never see it again. It was only a few hundred feet from the stagecoach post to the train station, and he kept his hat pulled down low and his collar turned up, stayed to the shadows away from a lamp while Sadie went in and got the tickets to the station at MacFarlane's Ranch in New Austin. All the while, though, he ended up scanning the streets for the few people that passed by, trying to read their demeanor and see if they were looking back at him, if there was that sudden hard scrutiny that would mean he'd best be reaching for his gun right now. No point running for Buell because he wouldn't be able to ride hard enough to make it north of the river like he had last time. At that point, it would be best to make sure he made enough of a ruckus that they killed him.
The thought hit him in some curiously painful place. Sure, start a gunfight, and how many folks would die in that? They'd called it the "Blackwater Massacre" back in May, courtesy of Dutch and whatever Goddamn demon had touched off within him that day. It had been bad. Bad enough that none of them who'd seen it wanted to talk about exactly what Dutch had done. Blackwater, Valentine, Rhodes, St. Denis, they'd left a trail of bodies in their wake. Hosea hadn't been wrong to say they'd become nothing but a bunch of killers. Taking a hard look at it now, he couldn't imagine most of those people had really, truly needed killing. Did Blackwater really need another bloodbath in the same damn year for--what? His pride at being able to brag they didn't take him alive, like that stupid newspaper article had claimed were his notorious last words? His dread of the noose? Hanging could be a hard death, and he'd sworn at eleven years old, in that crowd in San Francisco and watching his father twitch and fight in the noose--a bad, slow hanging that didn't break his neck--he'd far rather be shot than hanged. But he wasn't that scared, angry kid anymore. To hell with it. He'd been suffocating slowly and painfully for a few months now. If it came to it, he could take strangling for a few minutes at the end of a rope. If they did it right, snapped his neck, he'd barely feel a thing.
No, he'd made up his mind, and he felt calm and certain about it. Nothing to fear in death anymore. Nothing nearly so frightening as the prospect of the future. Whatever he had now was some unduly lucky extra time thanks to Sadie Adler's stubbornness and loyalty. If the Pinkertons or the law caught him here in Blackwater, they caught him, and he'd let them have the satisfaction of watching him swing. Nobody else needed to die for his sake. He just hoped like hell Sadie would accept that as his choice, his final hope of being better than the man he'd been for so many years.
Nobody gave him more than a glance. Blackwater itself was much the same as he remembered, still brightly lit by the streetlamps at this time of night, so much of it peacefully quiet, but still thrumming with a soft current of life and activity all the same. The place was half a city now, growing in awkward leaps and bounds, and consequently, that meant that much like St. Denis, it now never fully slept. He'd walked or stumbled out of the saloon a time or two in the early morning hours, sometimes just for the hell of having a drink, sometimes plotting and chatting with Hosea about their planned "fleece the fleecers" real estate scam. For a moment he looked down the street as if that slight, slim figure in one of his bright, fancy vests might be there, hailing Arthur, telling him to come have a drink and a chat while spinning some glorious nonsense. Something in him ached to not see him, as if wishing hard enough could have made Hosea appear.
He'd torn out of Blackwater on Boadicea six months ago, Hosea right on his heels on Silver Dollar. It was Hosea who he'd worried about then, his nagging cough and flagging strength that had cropped up over the winter and spring. Arthur himself had been fit and strong enough that he'd made it over the river as easy as a thought, dodging patrols the whole way, focus keen on guarding and guiding Hosea until they all met up again near Lake Owanjila. He rode a different horse now. He was a different man in so many ways. And no Hosea by his side either, not ever again. No Hosea, no Davey, no Mac, no Jenny, no Sean, no Lenny, no Kieran, no Molly, no Susan, all dead and gone. God, counting the cost hurt. Nine of them killed in a mere half of a year, and he supposedly had died as well. Twenty-two years and he'd seen nothing like that.
Stepping over to Buell, seeing the high, irritated set of his head, he stroked the big stallion's neck, slipping him a sugar cube. "You're doing just fine, boy," he said lowly. "Been a real strange few weeks for you, huh? No wonder you're all out of sorts." Buell lowered his head into the caress, his stance easing, though he cast Arthur a sidelong glance warning that he probably would remember this whole business of being boxed up on a train. He couldn't help but smile at that. The grumpy bastard had some opinions and spirit. The best horses always did.
He chided himself for his lack of focus when he barely noticed Sadie came back until she was right in front of him, allowing anyone to sneak up on him like that. "The train will be here in about twenty minutes."
Not too long to wait, at least. They stayed outside, Sadie lighting up a cigarette, offering him one. He managed a laugh, hating to admit, "I'd love one, but I expect my lungs wouldn't." The last time he'd tried one back at Wapiti, getting a smoke from Charles, he'd set off one hell of a coughing fit.
"Shit." She dropped it, ground it out under the heel of her boot, the red glow of it snuffed out into darkness.
He could have told her she didn't need to do that, but he was honestly too tired to turn cigarettes into some kind of argument. He'd take the kindness for what she intended, at least for now. He leaned back against the wall of the train station, keeping a careful eye on the street. "So, what are you thinking about our adventure so far?"
She gave a low, husky chuckle. "Running away in the middle of the night with a man? My Lord, won't all them folks at home be scandalized."
He thought of Beau Grey and Penelope Braithwaite at that, running away in the night on a train to make a life together. There was something desperately romantic to the notion, true. Young and defiant and determined to get away from all the bullshit of their families. Looking to the future and hoping to make the world better, rather than clinging desperately to the tattered remnants of a poisoned legacy like most of their relatives. He couldn't help but smile, hoping things turned out all right for them up in Boston. She'd probably be marching in suffrage parades up there too. Good on her. If Beau knew what was good for him, he'd have accepted that already. "Give them something to gossip about at Sunday dinner." A big Sunday dinner was something proper folk did. He knew that much. Never mind that Sunday was no different from any other day for an outlaw, heathens that they were.
She laughed at that, a warm and rich sound, giving a friendly nudge to his shoulder. The train pulled up on schedule, and he sat down in their seat, more at ease with Sadie pressed right up against him now. He waited for the recognition and holler for the law that felt certain to come. But somehow, it didn't, and they left Blackwater in the last hours of the night, and he felt himself relax a little more. Dumb luck, some kind of divine intervention, he wasn't sure what, but he'd take it. Though he wasn't sorry to see the back end of Blackwater again, and not only because of the danger of recognition. Even an hour there called up too many ghosts, the wounds still far too fresh.
The flat lands of Great Plains and then Hennigan's Stead rolled by in the darkness, and the unending quality of it had a strange, hypnotic lull. He felt himself dozing, couldn't really fight it. Dreamed of another time, of that other train ride into New Austin, the one from Galveston. He'd been so little that the recollection wasn't a solid story to follow, only a few flickers of memory that faded in and then out like a gust of wind.
Leaning on the window, barely tall enough to see by standing on his mother's lap, he pointed excitedly at a big herd of horses running near the tracks. "Mam! Mam, ceffylau!"
"English, Arthur, use English. 'Horses'. It's America we're in now." But he felt the gentle caress of her hand smoothing over his hair, and heard the smile in her voice as she leaned in to take a look herself.
He woke with a start and a cough, which sent him hurrying again for that kerchief, pressing it to his face. He probably hadn't seen horses like that back in Rhondda. To judge from Annesburg, they would have been big, solid drays plodding their way between the railway and the mine, not the fierce grace of mustangs running wild. Small wonder he'd been enchanted by that in this strange and wonderful new land. And what would you think of your boy now, Momma? My English is better, but the man sure ain't. But I'm trying. That's more than Daddy could ever say. He was grateful he hadn't spoken as he woke up, because he suspected it might have come out in a tongue he hadn't spoken since he was a child, the fragments of which still lived in his memories and dreams.
The miles rolled on, and the changeover at MacFarlane's Ranch went rapidly and uneventfully. It was late in the morning as they caught a southbound train towards Mexico, and the temperature warmed further. He wasn't warm enough to take off the jacket, though Sadie shed hers. Something nagged him--MacFarlane. Hadn't that man washed up on the shore of Flat Iron Lake had a letter addressed to someone by that name, someone who presumably lived there? He'd glanced over the water-stained letter to see if he could make some sense of it. The man's last words had been about her: And tell her...I never stopped… So she had been that important to him. The letter itself sounded half-crazy, rambling about how much he loved her, how bright their future would be, insisting that she was wrong and he'd make something of himself. But damn fool that Arthur was himself, he couldn't help but see some familiar notions. Wanting a woman so much who seemed so ambiguous about him, a disapproving daddy--was it like him and Mary? Or did he only want it to be that way? Whatever the case, the man had died in that quest, so it felt like he ought to at least let them know. The MacFarlanes would hopefully know who his people were, and if they weren't complete stuck up sons of bitches, they'd do the proper thing and pass on word to his kin. The letter hadn't been signed, so he didn't have the poor bastard's name, though. He didn't have the letter either at this point, as it had been of course in his satchel, but he remembered the gist of it well enough. He'd had some vague notion of delivering it at some point if he was in the area, but given the gang expected New Austin to be forbidden territory for a while, that hadn't happened. He could have sat down and written to this Miss MacFarlane and enclosed the letter while he was at it, and considered his duty to the dead done, but he'd had far more pressing matters at hand keeping the people he loved alive to worry about a small and distant courtesy.
As the train left the station, in his head he added that task back to his list of things to do. Whoever the dead man had been, maybe she'd at least shed a tear or two for him, or tell those who would, so he wouldn't die completely unmourned. At that thought, he paused, acknowledging his own close brush with death spurred him on, urging him to take care of something he'd left languishing for months. He had time on this train ride, and no time like the present. Who knew how long he'd have in the end? He might as well take care of it right now to be sure it got done. "You got any paper or the like?" he asked Sadie. "I need to write a letter."
She raised an eyebrow, but dug in her satchel, handed over a couple of sheets of paper and a pencil. "Ain't exactly gonna keep a fountain pen with all my stuff. All I got is the pencil."
"That'll do just fine."
"Who you need to write to, if a gal can ask?"
"A woman that lives back at MacFarlane's. Don't know her first name, just that she's a 'Miss'. Found a dead man along the lake shore back when we was camped up at Horseshoe Overlook. He had a letter on him addressed to her. Maybe he meant something to her. She sure as hell meant something to him." Picking up "A Tale of Two Cities" again, he made it into an impromptu writing desk balanced on his thigh. Waited for the coughing to pass, because he knew how it played hell with his handwriting, causing jerks and shakiness in the letters.
As he bent his head to his writing, he heard her say softly, "Then she'll appreciate knowing what happened, even if it hurts."
The writing was good, because it gave him something to focus on besides the journey, the future, and all of it. Here was something within his grasp. He could get it done, and feel maybe a little satisfied at having some something decent and honorable. He only hoped he wasn't sounding like a complete idiot in the letter.
He paused to take in the view as they came up on the bridge at Manteca Falls, and the border crossing into Mexico. "Never understood why they named it for butter," Sadie commented, looking out the window towards the roaring rush of the falls to the west of the bridge.
"Butter?"
"Manteca. That's 'butter' in Spanish."
"You speak Spanish, do you?"
"Just a few phrases, more or less." She offered no explanation for it, but her accent sounded like New Austin to his ear, much like the bedrock of his own. Though he was proof enough that didn't mean much. Maybe she'd only lived there a few years as a kid, like he had.
"Well, then looks like you're doing the talking for us again. I know about a dozen words of Spanish, and most of them ain't fit for polite company."
She snorted in amusement, leaning her cheek on her fist, suddenly looking like a cat up to its whiskers in cream. "What, you know how to buy a beer, say naughty things to a woman, and insult the size of someone's dick?"
"Just about. Blame Javier." That brought another fresh pain in his chest that had nothing to do with the disease, only his aching heart. Javier had hesitated, never actually pointing his gun at Arthur and John, and he'd walked over to Dutch slowly enough. But he'd gone all the same. He'd made his choice. Bill wasn't that bright, and the two of them had always had that somewhat contentious relationship, Bill always snapping at Arthur's heels and complaining about how he got no respect. Loyal and dumb, he'd have jumped at the chance for his allegiance to Dutch to finally earn him the status that he so obviously craved.
He hadn't exactly counted on Bill turning away from Dutch. But he'd hoped that Javier might be smart enough to see sense. Though he'd been caught up in Dutch's clever words for about four times as long as Javier Escuella had. He could hardly fault someone else for not seeing the light when it counted. That didn't make it hurt any less, because he and Javier had been close. He'd liked the man, damn it. They'd been brothers. Javier had fled Mexico for America, and now here Arthur was running from America into Mexico, and everything seemed so messed up, nothing certain or real. Maybe there was hope for Javier yet. Maybe he'd wake up someday, and see the truth. If anyone proved that it wasn't too late for that, Arthur himself did. "Butter Falls, you say? I've heard of butterflies, but..."
"Butterfly--now that one's a pretty word. Mariposa." She said the word almost dreamily. He looked over at her, seeing the faint smile on her face, lashes half-lowered at some thought or memory he couldn't know. She looked so much softer sitting there thinking of butterflies. He had the thought that the fierce and fine outlaw Sadie Adler made, who'd ridden with him time after time, come back to Bluestone Ridge in the middle of the night and saved his life, was a woman he'd always admire and be grateful to call a friend. But he was glad too that there was something gentler like that in her that the O'Driscolls, and the wild and lawless life she'd lived after that, hadn't destroyed.
"Mariposa, huh?" He looked out the window, seeing the tawny desert going by, pale flat-topped adobe buildings dotting the landscape here and there. "Mexico's a big place. Any notion of where we go, or are we just riding this thing until somewhere looks good?"
"Yeah. We're staying in Nuevo Paraiso, and going to Chuparosa."
"Any reason?"
"The ticket agent in Blackwater said he's sold some tickets the past few years to folks with TB headed that way. Supposed to be some kind of doctor there who's pretty good."
"I seen a doctor already."
"What, that fella in St. Denis? What's the harm in a second opinion anyhow? Sounds like all that one did was tell you that you was doomed."
"More or less." It's a hell of a thing, son. I'm sorry. Looking at him as if he was already a dead man walking, no hope.
She leaned in, amber eyes intense. "There are some people who do survive TB. Don't you give up. So we'll see this fella in Chuparosa and see what he's got to say."
"Not like he's gonna tell me I ain't got TB, Sadie."
"No, but he's in a place people go for it, so he might know something to do besides wait for the end. The worst that happens is you're no worse off than you are now, right?"
"Suppose I can't argue that." He turned back to the letter then, wanting to finish it before the next stage of whatever this was kicked off. Kept stopping, thinking it over, coming back to it, as the sun rose at their backs as they traveled west in Nuevo Paraiso, through what Sadie told him was the county of Diez Coronas, and then into Perdido. That sounded a little too close to "Perdition" to him, but perhaps that was fitting enough as a place for him to end up.
As the train slowed to a halt in the Chuparosa station with one last low moan of the whistle, he scribbled the signature "Arthur", instinctively went to write "Morgan", and then hesitated. Morgan's dead. So Griffith it is, to be safe. As good a name as any. New name, new man, new life? Wish it could wash out as easy as that. He signed it, the surname strange and unfamiliar. He folded the letter and tucked it between the pages of "A Tale Of Two Cities", putting it in his satchel, and stood, ready to go face whatever Chuparosa and this doctor had to offer.