Arthur had seen enough of his fellow patients over the last six months to know when someone was fading out. He'd seen the look of it in himself, especially that last time in Valentine. Done his best to make his peace with it all drawing to an inevitable end. He'd gotten a bath, dressed himself in some of his better clothes. Went and had a shot of whiskey, and paid the poor barkeep at Smithfield's well for the trouble he'd caused over the summer, between the brawl with Tommy and that crazy night with Lenny. The man hadn't recognized him, which was perfectly fine by Arthur. Looking up into the mirror across from the barber's chair, he had approved of his hair neatly cut and his face neatly shaved, but that tidiness couldn't hide how pale and thin he was. Like a ghost fading from visibility by inches. But that was his own version of final rites. He'd readied himself to die. Readied himself to be buried, at that, trying to prepare himself for that. A touch of vanity, perhaps, given he wouldn't care after he was dead, but he'd done it anyway.
He saw that washed-out, nearly transparent look now in Marion Davies. He estimated she was close to sixty, and before the TB came into her life, he imagined she'd looked rather younger than her years from those features. She had no family here. Told him her sister and brother-in-law were still up in West Virginia, along with their kids. Never married, never had much interest in it, so she'd taught school. She'd spent six months here, got released two years ago, and now here she'd come back from West Virginia, wracked by the TB all over again. She'd gotten here a mere week ago, and they all understood seeing her that she'd come here for a last-ditch hope, but most likely to die.
She had enough strength still to go out to the courtyard during her daily hour of freedom, although barely. Some folks avoided her, as if it were too much to confront the reality that they might hope to walk out that convent gate someday with Garcia's clearance too, but there would never be guaranteed permanent safety in that. Some stopped by, especially the long-termers who still remembered her.
As for Arthur, he'd started talking to her because she was alone and dying, and that tugged at him in far too familiar a way. Plus that sing-song lilt to her voice told him what he needed to know before he ever heard her name, where she claimed her origins, summoning forth memories of the same sound in his mother's voice. He admitted later to himself maybe another reason he gravitated towards her was that Beatrice Morgan might have been about Marion's age. But he'd sat down and introduced himself, and she'd brightened to hear his Welsh surname, even if it was one loaned from Sadie, and that had been the beginning of things between them.
One grey-blue eye the color of winter skies peeked open as he sat down beside her cot, and Marion gave a slight smile. "Ah, there's my dear boy. How is it with you today?"
"I don't know that I'd call myself 'dear', but sure." He looked behind him, seeing nobody else nearby at the minute. Ramona Trujillo was closest, and she was caught up chatting with her husband Francisco, obviously on his way to help out in the stables. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Where in Wales did you come from? Your people, I mean. You must have grown up there. You got the accent and all."
"Merthyr Tydfil," she answered. "Near Cardiff, it was. We came on over when I was nineteen, that year when Gladys and Alun married. Just before the war, it was." She eyed him with more interest now, a bit of a lively spark coming into her eyes. "Wyt t'in siarad Cymraeg, bachgen? O ble wyt t'in dod?"
Already juggling learning Spanish as he was, and given it had been over twenty-five years now since he'd heard Welsh spoken, the gears of processing those words turned slower than he'd like. But he got it in the end. Asking if he spoke Welsh, where he was from too. His answer was halting to start, grasping hard for words he hadn't had to use since he was a small child, like pulling each one out from a pile of junk and trying to scrape the rust off and polish it up. "Dw i'n deall....ond araf, os gwelwch yn dda." Her face lit up even at that careful, awkward Welsh. He told her he understood, but to speak slower so he could better understand. "My folk came from Rhondda Valley. I was born there. I'm not sure which village exactly, they never told me. We came over when I was real little. That was just after the war. I don't remember much of it, not really." Only a few flickers from the boat ride to Guarma, and living in coal country up near Annesburg, that pulled at reminders. But like that memory of the train and the horses, nothing too certain, and only brief pieces of memory, not a whole picture. "And my folks both died when I was a kid. But yeah, they spoke it around each other." Argued in it too, all too often.
"And if your people are from Rhondda, why, we were practically neighbors. The Taff Valley's just a few miles away. So, my fine fellow, if it's your mother tongue, or one of them at any rate, I wouldn't mind helping you polish it up again, if you'd like. There's pride, there is, in keeping some things alive, even in a new land."
He almost said he wasn't sure he had much use for speaking Welsh, given he hadn't much found a need for it in twenty years. Though granted, some of that was in not wanting to explain things to Hosea and Dutch when he'd claimed he was born in New Austin. It had been an impulsive lie, wanting to appeal to them more as an American-born boy, but one he never wanted or bothered to correct. It didn't seem to matter in time. But then he stopped himself, realizing what she was really about. His mother and father, for all the nightmare their marriage had been, had kept that small tie of something comfortingly familiar by speaking it, and teaching it to him. Marion Davies was here in Mexico, and would almost definitely die here this time. Her family were in West Virginia, and she obviously didn't want them to watch her die that she'd come here to do it. He could sympathize with the painful dignity of that choice. But perhaps it would be a comfort all the same for her to hear that familiar sound of home on her way out of the world, even if it was a clumsy half-butchered version of it from a man whose English was also rough and unpolished. Near-neighbors, she'd called them. Perhaps that was close enough for her just now. "Diolch yn fawr. I'd ask you another favor, if you're up to it."
"What's that, then?"
"I know the sound of it. I can speak it, probably better once I'm reminded. But I learned to read years after my folks was both gone. So I expect I'd make more of a mess of writing it than I do my English. I'd rather learn to do that properly." She'd been a schoolteacher. He could give her this kindness. Give her one more pupil to teach, some small point of pride in being able to pass some kind of knowledge on at the end.
She gave a thoughtful nod, though the shrewd look in her eyes said she'd caught on to what he was doing. "'I've a few books in Welsh. Old stories, they are, but maybe that would help."
"That it would."
That earned a more genuine smile on her tired, thin face. "Very well, then. But you've better things to do for the rest of the day than listen to an old woman's chatter. There's that little wife of yours. Go spend some time with the woman you should be minding first of all, not tending to me."
He looked back over his shoulder to see Sadie now playing with the Trujillos' girls. Baby Gabriela was only about two, maybe three, and Monica was about eight. He wondered what Monica made of this place, being old enough to see and remember. But like the cats were a welcome thing, he'd noticed the patients tended to dote on the kids, because so few came here with young families. Much like the gang had with Jack in camp, it felt like all of them were moved to protect this small precious bit of innocence from the grim reality of their existence. Monica had to be more than old enough to maybe wonder where a few of those aunts and uncles had gone, and he wondered what Ramona and Francisco told her. Old enough to understand death, sure, but was she old enough to really hear about the ravages of TB? He could still remember Jack innocently asking if Mac was in jail. God, the poor kid. Especially the time he'd had of it last year, given they couldn't shield him from all of it by any means. He wondered if Jack's dreams were anything like as haunted as his, or Sadie's. Hard to avoid both of them knowing they both had nightmares sometimes when they shared a room.
Giving Marion a nod of acknowledgment, recognizing he'd been given more or less an order, he headed over. Tried to put the dark thoughts aside, crouching down beside Monica. "Now, what might you three fine ladies be doing here?" Shifting into yet another language, and the Spanish still caused him a headache sometimes, but it was becoming much easier. Having it pounded into his thick skull for two hours a day for near six months now, even he had to see some result.
"Playing," Monica said, giving him a quick, shy smile. "Mama's taking a rest, and Aunt Sadie's teaching me how to read music."
"Is she now!" He looked at the paper, the lines and notes--well, that was another language he couldn't touch. He'd been learning guitar from Juan Veracruz in trade for drawing lessons, but that was all doing it by ear, not by reading music. But clearly Sadie knew her share about that, and maybe he ought to ask her about it. "Well, that's really something."
Monica's eyes sparkled with excitement, and she bit her lip, seeming to keep from trying to smile too much. "Mother Miguela says I can start to learn to play the piano!"
"That'd be real fine, I bet. You'll be one proper lady by the time your momma's well."
Ramona laughed at that, sitting there watching her girls play. She looked good these days, her face and body getting round and full again. She'd been here close to a year herself, and he suspected she'd be on her way out the gate soon enough. Her dark eyes flashed merrily. "I appreciate the help, and both of you are lovely with children. Best to get some practice for when you have your own, right?"
He saw Sadie awkwardly stiffen up at that, just as he felt the cold shiver work its way down his spine. Oh, he'd had his own child, all right, and done poor little for him. As for Sadie, he'd seen how sweet she was around kids. But he didn't know the full story. There had been no child there when the O'Driscolls came, but she and Jake had been up there two and a half years. There might have been a tiny grave hidden beneath the snow, a child who stayed now forever in their father's care. He didn't know. Didn't know whether she'd intended to have children, whether she wanted them. Not knowing her history and desires in that direction, it had made him even more hesitant to ask her about it, because then she could ask him. She'd never asked directly, obviously assuming that a man who'd never been married of course had never had a child either. The sheer assumed propriety of it, the preacher's niece in her, might have made him smile, if anything to do with Isaac hadn't hurt so much. Some things were both that important but too close to the heart, and it felt almost like they got harder to talk about the longer things went on, and the tighter the ties drew between them in this friendship. Big things like Eliza and Isaac, like his time enduring the tender mercies of the O'Driscolls, they became secrets all knotted up inside, rather than things simply not shared yet.
Ramona obviously sensed she'd stepped into a pile of shit. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize. You're older, of course you've been...or maybe you lost..."
Lord. Now she was assuming given neither he nor Sadie was a spring chicken that they'd been married a long time, tried and tried for children, and just come up disappointed. Or else they'd had a kid and lost them. That had happened to Hosea and Bessie, given the one time she'd spoken of it, when he was sixteen or so. Oh, Hosea and me always wanted kids. We lost a few along the way. One who almost made it long enough to be born. A little boy. But you're our son now, and I'm thinking we couldn't ask for better. She'd had a way about her, Bessie. Never making him feel like he was some cheap replacement for the kids she didn't have already.
Seeing Sadie gone silent with her own thoughts, he tried to step in and patch it over as best he could for all of them. "It's no problem, Ramona. Sadie was a widow when we met, and that wasn't but a few months before we found out about my TB. No chance for us to think about all that, I guess."
Sadie chimed in, steady as a rock now. But he could read the look of gratitude she gave him for jumping in first, trying to give her enough space to recover her balance. "But you've got some sweet babies here for sure." She gestured to Monica and Gabriela.
Ramona's awkwardly apologetic expression eased, and she smiled, the expression lighting up her whole face and making something beautiful of it. "Not always so sweet, I tell you. But worth it, yes."
He glanced over at Sadie, figuring it was best to extract them both from the situation. "I was thinking of heading to the river this afternoon. Going fishing a bit."
"Yeah?" She nodded at that, pushing up to her feet and dusting off her pants. Everyone had long since given up commenting on her wearing them. "You should be able to manage some fishing, so that sounds like a fine idea." That was about what he figured. It was a bit of a ride to the river, but Buell could use the exercise, and fishing was restful enough if it didn't involve wrestling huge sturgeon or the like. Far better than the exertion of hunting, anyway. "Let's go, then."
Buell practically bounced with excitement as Arthur put on his tack, leading him out from the stable. He still needed corral time to burn off the rest of his energy, but at least they got out for rides regularly enough now. Short ones of an hour at most, and minimal galloping, which frustrated both of them. But it was progress. Better to stay close anyway rather than venturing out alone, given the report of more sightings of those Del Lobo boys out in the wilderness. He could recognize a slowly growing gang when he saw it, and that old prickling sense of danger told him that it wasn't going to be pretty. But he was out of that business anyway, certainly thanks to TB even before inclination. No need to be ready to fight to defend scores from being stolen. Though what he'd heard of the Del Lobos, he didn't much like.
Overall, things were still improving, week by week, month by month. He wouldn't say he'd begun to make firm plans for the future beyond Las Hermanas, given so much of that was still a frighteningly shapeless thing that he didn't even want to touch. But there was cause to consider more than his exit from the world by this point. For now, fishing for the afternoon was about as big a thing as he wanted to consider.
The nuisance about the desert was lack of water, and that included fishing spots. So north to the banks of the San Luis River they went, near Ramita de la Baya, the footbridge across the river to New Austin. It felt strange to look across to that opposite bank and spot American territory again for the first time in six months. Leaving Buell and Bob to graze in the scrub, they headed down towards the water. Took a few minutes to just rest up once they got there before doing anything else, because he could feel the first tugs of fatigue on him. He sensed Sadie right there, keeping a watchful eye on him as he sat on the riverbank, doing nothing but watching the flow of the water, focusing on breathing, resting up. It felt comforting now, knowing she wasn't there to comment on it, and that if he couldn't do something she wouldn't criticize or judge. She was only worried and watching over him, and that feeling had grown familiar in time.
Quickly recovered, he gave her a slight nod to let her know he'd be all right, and turned to the fishing tackle. "Fishing ain't gonna be as good as Ambarino, I'm sure," he said, preparing the fishing rod with a lure, and casting in, sitting back down on the slope of the bank. Easier to fish while standing, but they'd make it work. "Caught one hell of a salmon up there in Lake Isabella."
"You actually caught that monster?" Sadie sat down near him, far enough away to cast without snarling lines, but staying in the cool shade of a cottonwood. "Damn, I had it on the line twice, almost got it to shore once! Bastard snapped the line both times."
Almost a pity to pull a fish like that from the water and send it to that pretentious idiot Jeremy Gill, but he'd told himself every dollar helped the gang stay afloat a little bit longer in the end. What a fool he'd been there. No amount of money would ever have been enough for Dutch, would it? "I had a good teacher. You fish when you was a kid that you could go after a catch like that?"
"No, guess it was the lack of knowledge that got me. Jake and me learned it from books and a trapper fella we put up for the night once. Too far a ride to the San Luis from Tumbleweed since we didn't get much free time as kids," she said, dealing with her own fishing rod. For not having much formal teaching on fishing, she looked confident enough. "Always something to do on a farm to fill your days, especially one that's failing slowly."
He nodded to acknowledge that. "I didn't fish when I was a kid. My daddy, well, he sure put me to work. Then when I was on my own--no time for nothing but surviving. All that free time after Dutch and Hosea found me? That was an adjustment. I was about bouncing off the walls after that first winter in Montana. Frustrated and frustrating little shit, I was. Needed something to do. So Hosea, when that spring came, he took me fishing. First thing he taught me was reading and writing, given it was a long winter, but fishing, that was the second."
He could hear the warmth in her voice as she answered, "That's nice. So you two go fishing a lot?"
"No. I made a real poor student on fishing then, I'm afraid. Hunting too, when he tried to teach me that. I didn't have much patience. Didn't see much sense in sitting around waiting for something to happen. Me, I was out to make things happen. Force them if need be. It's funny. Dutch, he taught me shooting, riding too since he'd been taught all them tricks by a cavalryman. Hosea taught me reading, hunting, fishing. I look back at that now, seems they was trying to teach me their ways of doing things in life too."
He'd all too often been Dutch's in that, wanting to rush right out and seize the opportunities, rather than Hosea's way of putting out the bait and carefully, patiently waiting for something to come calling. He hadn't always seen the wisdom in that gentler way directly, though hadn't he always been relieved to work with Hosea on some scam full of his brilliant bullshit, to be able to be something other than the fearsome strong-arm throwing people around and growling threats at them? Sure, maybe sometimes he'd been cast to play a ridiculous role, and that one memorable time he was seventeen Hosea actually stuck him in a dress, but it had always been an adventure. He never left those jobs feeling sick or troubled in his soul in the same way he did after a beating or killing.
Seeing Sadie's cast needed some work, he gave her a few pointers, trying to not smile as he could almost hear Hosea telling them to him. Eventually, she reeled in a nice trout, and stuck it in the bag. She picked up the thread of the conversation, as if it hadn't lagged in peaceful silence for close to twenty minutes by then. "Hosea was real kind to me, especially early on. He'd lost his Bessie, so he knew what it was like for me with Jake."
"I can imagine that. All he wanted in the end was to make sure we was all right." No luck on his own cast that time, so he hitched up to his knees, casting out again, settling back down.
"What was it that was wrong with his lungs? If it ain't too forward to ask."
"Shit, you asked him, he'd have told you. He didn't keep it secret, just didn't want to make it no big thing. Cancer. He'd had it near four years by then. Dutch and me both thought the escape from Blackwater would kill him. He knew it would do for him in the end, just wasn't sure exactly when. Doctor said it would kill him in six months, but Hosea always was stubborn. Part of me always thought he needed to hang around to be sure we'd be OK."
She didn't answer for what felt like a long, long time. "You must have missed him, after you got back. From Guarma, I mean. Especially with your own troubles with the TB."
She ventured close to dangerous territory there, because he could feel the lump rising in his throat. Sometimes those nightmares still had visions of Hosea in them, dead among the litter and refuse of a St. Denis street. "Yeah," he managed. His struggle for breath had nothing to do with diseased lungs in that moment. "He...maybe he could have got through to Dutch." He'd tried, truly he had, but things were too set in stone between them, and every time he tried to protest, he'd felt Dutch's surprise and irritation, as if Arthur had completely overthrown the natural order even by seriously questioning and not being content with glib reassurances.
"Maybe. But that ain't what I meant. I meant you missed him."
He did. Only now, far too late, did he see things so much more clearly. How Hosea had tried so hard to carve out space to make him take a break at Horseshoe after weeks of constant work, going to go hunt that bear, saying they'd claim they'd been scoping out a job. Pulling him along on those nonsense jobs of his, maybe to take the sting out of the increasing violence of Dutch's jobs. Once again teaching him the skills their desperate situation needed, the skills he'd ignored and treated so nonchalantly nearly twenty years ago as an impatient boy--hunting, fishing, bait-making, making medicines. All the things that let Arthur survive out in the wilderness that hid them, and let him help their family survive.
He'd shoved book after book at Arthur as a kid, telling him, Reading what other people have to say is useful, son, but you do that enough, you start asking your own questions. And then you become able to think for yourself. Encouraging him to think, to question, and he'd been the loyal lieutenant to Dutch to the point he would never have openly challenged him and turned it into the ugliness of a coup. But he'd heard Hosea talking around the campfire, questioning Dutch in his tent, protesting that they'd turned into something dark and terrible, urging all of them who would listen to open their eyes and realize where this runaway train was headed. Trying over and over to get John to take Abigail and Jack and run, to step up, to be a man and a husband and a father.
But he'd been mindlessly loyal Arthur until it was far too late, and Dutch was already lost to them, if he'd ever been able to be swayed. Even then Hosea, dead and gone, had one last lesson to teach with the example he'd set. How to accept the inevitable without rage or bitterness. How to face a slow and painful end with courage, even with nearly every breath he took hurting. How to give what strength remained to try to see to the safety and comfort of others, to give that prolonged and agonizing exit some meaning and dignity by trying to save those he loved. Hosea had taught him so many things, but without a word directly spoken about it, he'd shown Arthur how to try and die with grace. He'd needed that so much at Beaver Hollow, especially without Hosea himself there.
Much as it hurt, he thought of those final moments in St. Denis, and the certainty blossomed inside of him. "Charles tell you what happened with the bank, with Hosea?"
"Some of it. Hosea got captured--can't say I'm unhappy that bastard Milton is dead, Abigail did a real good thing there--and Dutch tried to negotiate. Then Milton shot him down in the street."
Given he had shoved all this away for months, it was no surprise he had another realization now that he let it back in, however cautiously. "I think Micah must have ratted us out even then. Milton was right there to catch Hosea, blocks away from the bank? That don't seem a coincidence."
"No. It don't."
He shook his head. "But yeah, Milton pushed him into the street. He started walking towards us. But then he stopped. He turned back towards Milton. I expect he knew what was gonna happen. That this was his death coming. And he looked it right in the eye." In that last moment, all that uncertainty, the fearful hunch of his shoulders, vanished away like dissipating gun smoke. Hosea had turned to face his death, straight-backed and fearless.
"So did you," Sadie told him, voice low and soft.
So he had. Maybe he'd learned one last lesson there. "Yes. I missed him coming back from Guarma. I miss him now. I expect I always shall." He'd tried so hard to impress Dutch, only realizing now exactly how much the man dangled it like a carrot, voicing his alternating praise and doubts in that silken way he had, keeping Arthur always anxious, always hungry, always striving so Goddamn hard to be worthy to earn that love and approval. Hosea had loved him without demands. The more he thought on it, it felt like he'd proven out as Hosea's son rather than Dutch's, now that he could see what he'd become. Oh, less of a raconteur and silver-tongued rogue, awkward as he was, but it was there. The thoughts about the world and his place in it, the shame of mindless violence in his past, the desire to do as little harm as possible now, and the crippling doubts and the certainty of being a bad man, the desire to give love to those who would let him. Oh, you was a huckster, Hosea, sure, but you had a good heart. Maybe if you never met Dutch things would have been different for you too. You and Bessie should have had those kids, and you should have gone old and grey surrounded by a whole mess of grandchildren. Died at peace in your sleep after telling the whole lot of them one last bit of funny nonsense. But life ain't fair. Plenty of folk don't get what they deserve. We all knew that. He wished Hosea was here now, because he suspected the man would have a whole lot more to say now that he knew Arthur was finally of a mind to hear it. "But he loved fishing. I couldn't appreciate it then. The patience you need for it. Guess I can now, and fishing, well, it's a good way to remember him."
She let the notion go at that, sensing he'd needed to say things rather than get her opinion on them, and the silence was comfortable enough for a while. They added a few more fish to the bag, which Sister Ursula would appreciate. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, because even their patch of shade was getting a bit hotter. "Damn, it's getting hot. No wonder folk take a siesta in the afternoon."
"It's only May. Gonna get a lot hotter by July and August. You missed out on getting used to that when you left New Austin so young." He could hear the smug amusement in her voice in that, and just smiled to himself at it.
"Too bad there ain't nowhere good to swim here in Perdido except the river. Got some current to it, at least right here. I probably ain't up to it this year." He'd seen how his line reacted to the water's rapid flow, had to adjust for it already in the fishing. He wasn't strong enough to go swimming here.
"Can't swim anyway," she said with a reluctant sigh. "Like I said with fishing, wasn't nowhere nearby, and no spare time for it. And Jake couldn't swim for the same reasons, so I couldn't teach him, and he couldn't teach me. Then we got up north, Lake Isabella and the like was always so damn cold anyway."
No mistaking that. He'd caught that salmon in what, July or August, with the water still icy cold. "There's another thing Hosea taught me in Montana--swimming. John never took to it. He was always scared shitless when it came to the water. He made an even worse fisherman than me, I suppose, but he loved going hunting with Hosea. Anyway, you want to learn, maybe we put that on the list for next summer."
She chuckled, reeling in her hook. "Got to say, Arthur, it's real good to hear you thinking about next year."
"I got to start to think like that. Or else I ain't never getting anywhere, I suppose." Even if all he could think about was a little thing like that.
"Just about. All right, a deal's a deal." She held out her hand to him, eyes alight with merriment. "You agree to stay alive, and I agree you get to teach me to swim next summer."
"Well, I can't break a deal like that, so guess I'm sticking around and living," he joked, even as he reached out and took her hand in his, shaking it to seal the deal, then letting go. Perhaps it was just the power of superstition, but it felt meaningful that his surviving to next summer was all tied up in a promise now, not just hopes. "Done and done."
The conversation was comfortable enough in that way they had now, but the fact that it was mid-May gave him pause. He had his own unhappy anniversary here, and so did she. He hated to bring it up, and puncture the good mood they had going, but it felt too dishonest if he ignored it. She was his friend, by now easily his best friend, and that meant not just enjoying the good stuff. Besides, he wanted to be clear to her that she needn't hide this for his sake. "It's the 12th today." According to what Sadie had said long ago in Pinetree Gulch that night they'd rescued her, Jake had died on the 15th.
"Yes," she said, and he felt the cautious retreat, the careful distance suddenly in her eyes and her tone. There was a sudden stiffness in her shoulders, a ramrod straightness to her back rather than the easy relaxation that had been there moments before.
"If you...Sadie, I know it's rough. But can't imagine it'll be easier over the next few days with it being a year since...since all that. You need time and room to be alone with all that, you tell me. I can sleep on the rooftop, even."
She looked away, far into the distance, across the riverbank towards America. Then she closed her eyes. Heart and thoughts probably not in New Austin, but long miles away in the northern reaches of Ambarino. "Thank you, Arthur," and he barely heard her, because her words were so soft. "You don't need to go sleeping on the roof. But...thank you. And thanks for what you said to Ramona. About Jake. That...meant a good deal."
"Of course. Look, you're stuck in this. That don't mean I have to make it harder on you by cutting him out entirely of the story we're telling folk." It felt like such a little thing to give her the ability to claim Jake again, even if she still didn't fully have the right to her grief back given she'd supposedly gotten over him and married Arthur. But at least he'd managed to pull the man's existence, and his marriage to her, back into reality. That felt like something, and something he should have done before if there had only been a good chance.
She sighed, did the reel up one last time, and laid her rod down beside her on the bank. Tucked her knees up towards her chest, draping her arms over them. "Weren't Ramona's fault. The thing about the kids. She meant it well. It just hit me in the wrong place, especially coming up on it being a year. Jake and me, we wanted children, we really did. But not when we couldn't even afford to get married, and then up in the Grizzlies we had to put it off even more until we got the place settled better. We was talking about last year or this year almost for sure."
So she'd opened that door now, and answered that question. His heart ached for her. One more thing taken from her--her husband, her home, her hopes of kids. If not for the O'Driscolls, she'd be at home in Ambarino right now with that man she adored, and probably pregnant or with a baby in her arms. From the way she huddled in on herself a little tighter, he suspected she had to be thinking of those ruined dreams and the shattered, sad life she now had instead. Realizing all over again the man beside her wasn't the right one. "I should have figured that. I seen how you was with Jack. And how you are with the kids at the convent." He should have recognized that same longing in her for something that now couldn't be. "For what it's worth, I think you'd have been one hell of a mother."
She let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, wiping her arm across her eyes quickly, but her breathing stayed even. "Don't think I didn't see how you was always real sweet to Jack. You was better to that boy than John for sure. And the kids here too, you're good to them. I can see that. If women didn't seem to be such damn blind fools about you, I'd say you'd have made one hell of a father yourself."
There it was now, the fear gently closing in around him, squeezing him in a tight grasp. Was it really fair to tell her that he'd been so terrible as a father himself, that he'd had what she wanted and valued it so little that he lost it so carelessly? But all the same, hadn't he told himself that being her friend meant more than just the good things? Besides, it had been ten years, and he'd told almost nobody. Hosea, Bessie, Dutch, and Susan had been the only ones who knew the full truth, and of those four, Dutch was now the only one alive. He doubted his former mentor gave a shit. He'd always considered Isaac little more than a distraction. Playing house like that with a woman who made it clear she ain't willing to marry you, son, you're doing them no favors. Better you let her go to have a clean start. Never mentioned him again after Arthur told him, just stressed that the gang was his family. So aside from the pieces he'd told Calderón and Rains Fall, Eliza and Isaac truly existed only in his memories now, much as Jake did for her. He owed them better than that. He'd pulled Jake back into reality for her by acknowledging him. He should do the same to them, even as it showed him at some of his most shamefully selfish and stupid. They didn't deserve to be forgotten only because it hurt him to talk about it.
For a moment as he glanced down the riverbank, he thought he could almost see a tiny dark-haired boy, bored already with fishing lessons, laughing and splashing in the shallows. Fishing's no fun, come play, Pa! He'd just laughed at that and given in, kicking off his boots and rolling up his pant legs, because he'd agreed then that fishing wasn't much fun. But it made for something safe and special to do with a little boy just a couple weeks shy of four years old. Promised Isaac that they'd do something different when he came to visit after his birthday. So maybe Isaac had gotten something from him after all--his restlessness and energy. How he hoped maybe what his son had gotten had been the best of Arthur Morgan, because God knew what came after was sure as hell the worst. But Isaac was dead so now he would never know what that had been, or who he could have become.
A few folks in town had been very helpful to poor grieving Arthur McCready. Tragic, his losing his wife and his little boy like that to bandits while he was away on the cattle trail. And those four bastards--nobody seemed to know their names, though--had caused their share of trouble over the last few weeks after coming into the area. Finding that cabin had been almost too easy. It was just a little over an hour from Warrenton.
He'd waited, and chose to ride in at night, knowing exactly what he meant to do and how darkness would aid him. He'd been good enough as a boy to dip pockets and sneak away undetected. Those skills translated easily to slipping through the dark silently. He caught one on his way to the outhouse out near the tree line, grabbed him, and put a knife in his back. Caught another feeding his horse and gave him the same treatment, soothing the horse with a few low words. Kicked in the door on the other two, and shot one dead before he could even get up from the table. Grabbed the last one, slammed him back into his chair, and bound him there--a big man, and yet Arthur saw the way this idiot looked at him, eyes wide. Confronted by the specter of a blood spattered murderous devil breaking down the door to do violence. Only fair, given that was exactly what they'd done to Eliza's home.
Pushing aside a platter of meat to clear a space, he leaned on the edge of the table near the trussed-up man, keeping his voice calm and low, even as much as he wanted to beat this man to death right that instant. He kept his revolver visible in his hand, knowing they both understood the implied threat of it. "Now, we're gonna talk, you and me. Was it your gang here who went robbing last week at a cabin near Eagle's Bluff?"
A crafty expression now intermingled with the terror, trying to figure out what Arthur wanted to hear. "OK, I get it. You want answers. You a bounty hunter? I talk, you gonna bring me in alive? Bounty's often better for a living man."
He gave a slight shrug. "It can't hurt your chances. So, how about it?"
"It was all Mike's idea! Said that cabin was remote enough, so it was worth checking out."
He leaned in, lowered his voice to the most menacing growl he could muster. "Didn't ask whose idea it was. Whoever came up with the notion, they ain't gonna be having any more ideas now, cause they're dead. I asked if you was there."
His captive sighed, obviously seeing there was no point in denying it. "Yeah. Yeah, we was there. Look, it wasn't nothing worth it. Ten bucks was all they had anyway."
So Eliza had been getting low, even as hard as she worked and much as she saved. She must have bought Isaac a present for his birthday like Arthur had urged. That was this bastard's sole regret. A mere ten dollar take. Not the two lives they'd snuffed out casually as grinding out a cigarette underfoot. The rage surged up within him again until he swore he saw red at the edges of his vision, and before he thought better of it, he reached out and punched him in the face, and then again for good measure. "You pieces of shit murdered a woman and a little boy, it don't fucking matter what the take was!"
Spitting out blood and what looked like part of a tooth, the man's eyes widened, obviously seeing how he'd miscalculated. "They was yours? Mister, I didn't--" No, they hadn't been his. Not entirely. Eliza had built that wall and kept it, and he couldn't blame her for it. But they'd been enough his to not be anyone else's, to be alone out in the woods when these violent men went looking for a quick score. Arthur raised his gun, suddenly feeling as calm as anything, like the anger got so great it became a blackness swallowing everything, every feeling. He pointed it right between the man's eyes. "You ain't gonna shoot me! You can't! Please, I'll do anything."
Coward. Big man when facing a woman and her tiny son, but get a man in there who was a threat and he sniveled. Pissed himself too, if the acrid smell was any judge. "She beg like that? Or the boy? Or did you shoot them before they could beg?" Silence was the only reply. He gave the robber another punch to encourage some talking. "Answer me! And don't give me no lies."
The man's head slumped down to his chest in defeat. His voice, when it came out, was little more than a mumble. "She was doing her best to keep the kid quiet. Begged for us to spare the boy. Said she'd do anything. Mike said it was no good, that they'd both seen our faces. That's the truth."
"Well, then, that's that." The click of the hammer felt loud as a gunshot itself in the charged air inside that tiny room. The lantern on the table flickered and dimmed, almost out of kerosene. No matter. He'd be done and gone before that became a problem. Because he wouldn't search this place in order to take anything from it. He was a robber and a killer himself, yes, but he couldn't stand the idea of looting anything from these animals. The mere thought of it made him sick.
"You said--"
Revenge was a fool's errand, so he kept hearing. Yeah, well, Dutch had his own little blood feud with Colm thanks to Annabelle, so to Arthur's mind, the man could hardly talk lofty words about not pursuing vengeance. It had been either track these animals down and take care of them, or point the gun at himself because he couldn't bear to be in his own head, living in his own skin right now. Though there was no saying he might not still do that anyway, because some part of him already knew this wouldn't change anything, that they were the killers but he was the problem, the poison that had ensured their deaths. All he was doing by this was openly admitting and embracing that. Killing with deliberate intent this time rather than in a fair gunfight, embracing his own monstrosity. But he didn't care. It was time to stop fooling himself, and making others suffer for it. "I said it couldn't hurt your chances." He looked down into the man's wide, horrified eyes. "You can't get more hurt than none. You get the same chances you gave them." Then he pulled the trigger.
He ended up staring across to river himself now, north towards Wyoming. Wanting to remember and not remember, all at once, because ten years still felt like yesterday. Knowing Sadie had seen that longing in him, knowing that longing still lived in him like an ache that just couldn't quit no matter how much he knew he didn't deserve another chance to destroy another woman's life. But he had no right to it, not after how he'd had that chance for a wife and a family if only he'd done right by them, and instead he'd failed so terribly. She had to know, had to see him truly, rather than letting her believe the best of a man whose full sins she didn't even know. He wanted to look at her and see what would probably be the last time she'd look on him with compassion rather than disgust, but he didn't let himself have that. It would tempt him too much to keep silent, to live that lie. "I had a son once. And you're wrong. I wasn't much of a father to him. I wasn't much good to him at all."
~~~~~~~~~~
She wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly at first, as surprised as she was by those words. He had a son? That was big news for her to have never had any hint of it. But then she thought about how he was around Jack. Sweet and gentle, not nearly so awkward as he was around most people. Like he knew a thing or two about it already. Stupid, so stupid of her. She'd been thinking about it through the straight and narrow lens of the morality she'd grown up with, where if he was an unmarried man, of course he shouldn't have a child. Living in the gang had taught her otherwise, Abigail and John being explicit proof that these people operated by a different code.
Then his words sank in more. He'd had a son, past tense. So the boy was dead, or lost to him somehow. She shouldn't pry, given it had to be nothing but pain all the same, but he'd offered that up and now she had to know. Seeing him sitting there, she had the sense that he wanted to say some things, even as the hunch of his shoulders and the way he refused to look at her said that he was afraid of it. Keep him talking, she thought. So she started with a simple question. "What was his name?"
"Isaac," and she could hear a whole world of grief in that name.
She kept going. If he wasn't ready to talk about what had happened to him, she'd turn elsewhere first. "Who was his mother?" She couldn't help but imagine a little boy, maybe with Arthur's green-blue eyes, or that shy half-smile of his. With that name, that boy became something real. He'd had a son. A boy named Isaac, a child he couldn't even speak of due to whatever pain the memories carried.
"I know how you women talk, and given I seen her a couple times last year, I'll guess someone told you that I had something with a girl named Mary once."
Yes, she'd heard about that. Susan Grimshaw grumbled about some high and mighty miss who Arthur apparently loved hopelessly. Marries some other man, breaks his heart, shows up after fifteen years, crooks her finger and bats her eyelashes and says she needs help, and what does that idiot man do? Drops everything to run to her! It was a time she'd found it easy to like the older woman in seeing how protective she was of Arthur. He wasn't wrong. They'd had their share of conversation about Mary Linton, formerly Gillis, around the women's wagon. Abigail was about the only charitable one hoping it would work out this time, but they'd all sensed that was because she needed so much to believe that loving hard enough could solve everything, given her own situation with John. The rest of them had been far more skeptical. Sadie had to agree.
"I heard a bit, sure. But I'd rather hear the truth of it from you, though. So, what, you and her had a kid?" That was another shock to that still somewhat-ingrained sense of right and wrong. Proper girls didn't bear babies to men they didn't marry, and that was that. If Mary Linton was so conventional, she couldn't imagine that it had happened. But if it had, had she given the baby up for adoption and not told Arthur until later?
"No, I…" He hesitated, reeling in his line and undoing the tackle. She kept silent, sensing that now was the time to not prompt him. This was something crucial to his life, but so big and close to the heart, he couldn't put words to it easily. "We met when we was just kids ourselves. I was nineteen. And--when I was with her it was like I could see a way for everything in my life to be different. To be a different man. I reckon she seen the same in me."
She nodded, even if he couldn't see it with how fixedly he stared across the river. "Proper girl, outlaw boy. I expect you was both looking for a way out from your lives, and you seen that in each other, right?"
He glanced over at her, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. "Just about. Her father was one controlling son of a bitch. Loved and feared him, she did. And it works out in them romances of Mary-Beth's. But with us it would all make sense, we'd be talking about this life we'd have and it was all good and fine, and then five minutes later she's criticizing the coarse way I talk and I'm pissed off at her for being such a damn prim snob acting like I ain't fit to be seen with her. It was either perfect dreams or fighting like cats and dogs with us."
"Cause you was each other's escape, Arthur. But you can't run away from everything. Can't run away from the folk you show yourself to be when you're in a marriage. You can't build a life on that, cause you still got to live with each other at the end of the day. Take it from a woman who's been married, you don't know someone until you've lived that close with them. From what the gals was saying, I don't see her hunting a deer, helping build a hog pen, or anything like that."
He gave off a short laugh at that. "Don't see her shooting no O'Driscolls, that's true. I guess that's why the dream stuck all these years. We both still wanted out. Still talking wild notions of running away together. The love came right back, but we still didn't much like each other. I knew it wasn't right, but...she was all I had. And back then, it seemed like it might be OK. We wasn't engaged, not quite, but we had what she called an 'understanding'. That we'd try to work things out and she'd get her family to approve of me, and I'd try to be better than a no-account outlaw. Not quite sure how that could happen, but I gave her a ring. Then...in '85, we went east to Illinois. Found John there, about ready to get himself hanged by a mob for stealing. Twelve years old, he was. I ain't proud to say I didn't take well to Dutch and Hosea taking him in. Got real scared, I supposed, that he was their boy now, and they wouldn't need me around no more. So when we got back to California, I went out, started chasing bigger jobs, rougher jobs. Trying to prove myself. Dutch, he liked that. Said it was me finally finding my place."
Sadie shook her head, sighing. "Yeah, of course he did." She imagined Dutch had enjoyed Arthur pushing himself even harder for approval in his sudden uncertainty of his place.
"Mary found out about all that. Told me I'd gotten worse, not better, and her daddy had found a proper husband for her besides, and she was gonna marry him. She tried to give back that ring. I told her to keep it. I didn't want the reminder. We ended up in Wyoming later that summer. Some tired little mining town, don't even remember the name now. Three drinks in, feeling damn sorry for myself. The waitress was being nice. Young. Pretty as hell. Dark hair, like Mary. Listening to me talk whatever crap I was talking, and being kind about it. And not in that way women have when they're putting up with a man cause they got no other option."
Now Sadie could see where this was going, and it wasn't towards Mary Linton at all. It suddenly made more sense. "What was her name?"
"Eliza McCready. She was nineteen then." He said her name with a peculiar hushed tone, as if he was afraid to say it too loudly and summon a ghost. "We ended up having a few drinks together after her shift was done. Talking a bit. She was missing someone too who'd left her. And we was both young and stupid and lonely and drunk, so…well, you can imagine what happened. I woke up with a hell of a headache and pretty ashamed of myself, so I was gone before dawn. Thought that was for the best and we both ought to pretend that night didn't happen, especially given we was both drunk as anything. The gang spent the winter in Oregon, and John and me made our peace, but we headed back that way the next spring, so I came on back to at least apologize for sneaking out on her like that. I find Eliza and she's seven months pregnant. No pretending or apologizing that away."
He still wouldn't look at her as he was talking. She felt the slow build of the anger within her. She'd wanted kids with Jake so much, waited for them, put them off. Arthur? He'd gotten roaring drunk, gone to bed one night with a girl he didn't even really want except as a reminder of another girl who'd broken his heart, and gotten her pregnant. The unfairness of it all took her breath away for a moment. She tried to find some calm again before she spoke up. "Nobody talked about her in the gang, so I'm guessing she didn't join." Had he really just abandoned her, and his son? That didn't seem like him at all. But maybe he'd been very different as a younger man.
"I tried," he protested. "God, that poor girl. I got the shock of my life when I seen her belly, she got the shock of hers when I told her who I was and what my life was. Eliza didn't want that life. Even when I told her of course I'd marry her, that she'd be safe with us, that she'd have Bessie and Susan to look after her and help her. She told me that she didn't need nothing from me. I could tell she meant it. I could see how things changed immediately after I told her about the gang. She went from this girl hoping I'd do right by her to putting up a wall."
Sadie had to admit to a sudden respect for this Eliza McCready, even with the brave, foolish youthful naivete to saying she'd go it alone. The easiest thing to do would have been to marry him, no matter what, and accept whatever terms a man gave her. Even if her life would still be ruined in some ways being married to an outlaw. Given about all that Eliza McCready could have known of Arthur Morgan at that point was that he was an outlaw and the man who had accidentally fathered a child on her, Sadie guessed she couldn't much blame a scared girl-woman had tried to stick to what she knew. "So what did you do with that?"
"What could I do? Kidnap her and force her to marry me? Jesus! I said I'd do for them what I could. Insisted I help out, on whatever terms she'd give. I helped her move to a new place where folk didn't know her. Got them to build her a cabin out in the woods like she wanted, like she'd had as a kid back in Tennessee. I stopped by whenever I could to give them some money, and spend a few days with the boy. I claimed to be Mr. McCready, and she told folk I was away a lot on cattle drives and the like. We got to the point of being friendly for Isaac's sake, but that one night was all there ever was between us. I slept on a pallet on the floor anytime I was there. That way she was a respectable married woman around town, but if she ever met a fella she did want, she could claim she was a widow, tell me to get lost, and be free of me easy enough."
It sounded like he'd readily handed Eliza almost all the power in that strange relationship. Out of principle or guilt, or both? She couldn't be sure. But now it came to the part that would probably hurt the most. The reason he'd said he had a son. "Is that how it went? She met someone and told you the boy was no concern of yours?" It would have come eventually, she supposed. They couldn't live that lie forever. A tiny boy would grow up enough to ask inconvenient questions about his father. "Did they move away?" Was that boy out there somewhere, even now? He'd be, what, fourteen now?
"I wish to God it had been that. I was coming back to visit. I'd been there just a couple weeks before, but he begged me to come back for his birthday, and I said I would. Couldn't make it for the day itself, but I promised I'd be there probably that next week. Except when I got there, I found two fresh graves and two crosses outside that cabin. Isaac turned four on May 19th, and they died on the 21st. I got there four days later. I went to town, and folk told me they'd been robbed and killed. Her boss at the saloon found them and buried them when she didn't show for work. So I tracked the men who done it. Wasn't that hard. I killed three of them straight off. Questioned the fourth just to find out what happened. He was pissed off they'd only gotten ten dollars from Eliza. So then I killed him too. And I just--let go of anything else. They died cause I was a no-good bastard who made my choice, and I didn't choose them. I hunted down and slaughtered those men. No hiding from it after that. It felt like it was time I grew up and accepted I was a bad person who was made to hurt folk. So I stopped trying to pretend like I could be anything else."
He'd had a child, and chose the gang over him, and something in that anger tightened even more. If she'd had a child, she'd have done anything for them. He'd left Eliza in a lousy situation too, giving her the armor of respectability, but it was a thin enough veneer. At the end of the day, he'd put his loyalty to his gang first, and as a woman, knowing how easily the world hobbled women and let the men around them dictate the shape of their lives, she found that harder to forgive. Maybe he'd been far more respectful than most in not walking away, and letting her name her terms. But he could have done better, should have done better.
But looking over at him, seeing how tightly he'd huddled in on himself, hearing the too-even controlled tone of his voice as if he couldn't bear to let any emotion in or he'd break from it, something in that got through to her. If he'd shrugged it off as the past, tried to excuse himself, he would have made it easy to yell at him and hate him for it. But he wasn't a foolish young man, barely more than a boy, who'd gotten drunk, carelessly sired a son, and then done only partly right by him. He was a man of nearly thirty-seven, older and wiser and much sadder, and there was no need for her to hold him to account for it. He already blamed himself. He already clearly had sworn to never forgive himself for any of it. He'd impaled himself on the thorn of it deeply and thoroughly, and it had stayed inside him all these years, left his soul painful and bleeding. She couldn't be angry with him when he'd already punished himself for it so thoroughly, and continued to do so. After that, all she could muster was sympathy. God, losing Jake was bad enough, but to have lost a child? That would have destroyed her. And he'd let her talk about her pain, and kept his locked up inside. The fact that none of the women, or even John, had known about it to say anything to her said plenty about how silent he'd been on the subject all these years.
Now you finally make some sense, she thought, looking at him. This was that piece she'd been missing that somehow bound it all together. The way he'd resigned himself to that outlaw life, even as he clearly didn't love the man it made him be, because the gang was all he had left. How he'd given up on himself, denied himself any kind of love or kindness, denied there was any love or kindness in him. She sat there, turning it all over in her mind, trying to think of what to say that could help unbind some of that slippery, blood-soaked knot he'd bound his heart up in ten years ago now.
She wanted to move closer, but he felt like a spooked horse to her right now, ready to run away if she approached too quickly. "So that's why you said you thought my going to Hanging Dog wouldn't help. You'd been through that with the folk that killed Eliza and Isaac. You knew revenge don't help much."
He looked surprised that she would say that, as if he'd expected some kind of words of condemnation as the first thing she'd say, telling him that he was the miserable bastard he truly believed of himself. "It don't take away the sorrow, Sadie. It don't bring them back. All you get is knowing the bastards won't do it to anyone else, and that's something, but it don't fix much in you. But I expect that's a thing you got to find for yourself to know it."
"Also why you was always so hard on John about Jack. I heard he left them for a year. Can't have been easy to forgive him for that, John having what you'd lost and treating it like it was nothing to him. Did he know?"
"No. Maybe I should have been kinder about it. Time was when it was me that was twenty-six and still not quite doing right by a woman and her boy either. But it weren't the same, Sadie, even so. Abigail and Jack was right there in the gang, living our life. She adored him. Would have married him in an instant, if he only stepped up. He could have had everything, just like that," he snapped his fingers, "if he only gave a damn. But he didn't. So I couldn't forgive him for it."
Now she pressed in, both physically and on the conversation, moving closer and settling down beside him. He finally looked her way now and eyed her cautiously, but didn't move away at all. He didn't return to avoiding her gaze either, and she had the sense he was still searching her for that condemnation. "Yeah, you couldn't, because you couldn't forgive yourself."
"Oh, really now?"
She couldn't help but laugh. "I know you enough by now, Arthur Morgan." The old name hung there between them, but it felt only right she use that one, addressing the man he'd been, and the shadow that cast over this new life. "You'll do anything for the folk you love, but you can't be good to yourself. You got this impossible ideal of what you got to be to be worth a damn. And you're just an ordinary person like the rest of us, so you screw up, you make mistakes, and then you can't let them failures go. So I'd say you're bound to hate yourself, over and over and over, until you learn some forgiveness for yourself. And trust me, it ain't easy for me to watch a good man so determined to hurt himself like that."
Now he showed something more than that guilt, and the spark of temper somehow felt better. "So what would you have me do? Say they didn't matter at all? Say it was nothing of mine, what happened to them?" He got up to his feet, his fishing pole left in the dirt of the embankment, obviously intending to go run off and protect his need to flay himself alive and feel regretful and guilty and doomed. Damned if she'd let him, so she got up too, stayed close to him.
"Living two different lives was one thing, Arthur, but how was what happened to them yours? She could have got killed in that saloon where she worked. She could have married some other man and got killed by him. Say you'd married her, say you'd left the gang behind you. Who's to say that they wouldn't have come while you was on a cattle drive, or out hunting? Or even broke in while you was there, with both of you asleep with no harm meant to any soul on this earth." She could hear the temper in her own voice rising to meet his, but she couldn't help herself, letting some of her own rage out finally. "Cause I don't care how big and bad an outlaw you was, I can tell you that when a bunch of armed men intent on a killing surprise you and your wife in your sleep, there ain't the first fucking thing you can do about it!" She willed herself not to think of Jake, dragged out of bed before either of them could react, thrown against the shelf and held there at gunpoint.
"What happened to you, that was…"
"Different? How? Cause those bastards killed Eliza quickly? Why do you think I was still alive three days after they had killed Jake? It weren't cause they were feeling charitable, Arthur. Only meant they wanted to have some fun with me before they killed me too."
Now he did look at her, and along with the blazing anger, she could see the sympathy, or pity, in his eyes. She almost hated the pity more than the anger, because it was so easy to recall when fury had been the bread she lived upon, the only thing that kept her going. "I knew that, Sadie. I knew the kind of men the O'Driscolls was. Find a woman being kept prisoner by them in her cellar after a blizzard, in only her shimmy, a woman who's scared out of her wits and attacks a man on sight? It ain't hard to guess what they done to her. You didn't have to hide it, Sadie, at least not with me."
The tired sorrow in his words hurt. The women of the camp knew. Of course they knew, being women themselves. But she'd deluded herself that the men wouldn't assume it, that they wouldn't see her as something broken and tainted. Maybe a dumbass like Bill hadn't put it together, but of course the smart ones like Arthur had known all along. Even Micah must have known, given some of his taunts. Some part of her was glad that Arthur had treated her no differently, that she hadn't become that ruined woman. But her immediate response was to lash out at him to protect herself, because it touched on the pain and fury that still lived too close to her soul about all of that, and hit him where she sensed he was also vulnerable. "Oh, like you don't know nothing yourself about why someone would want to try to hide it from folk?"
He froze like a startled deer, and looked about ready to be sick. He didn't deny it, though. So she pressed on, throwing it right back at him, pushing him harder away from that part of her. "O'Driscolls kidnapped you. They hold you for your own three day stay at their mercy. You escaped, came riding back to camp in just your own unmentionables, which is how they must have been keeping you? As though I didn't see that and worry that it might have been just the same. Then you said some things when you was feverish. Tried to say something to me about O'Driscolls and cellars, you knowing now what it was like. You about took Swanson's head off when he was trying to give you a morphine injection, yelling for him to not touch you. And when you was in camp still recovering, one of them O'Driscolls I caught said something--"
His voice went flat, almost lifeless. "What did he say?"
"You really want me to repeat it?"
"You wanted to bring all this up, Sadie," his words still clipped and terse, "you really think me hearing some nasty words is worse than what got done?" She closed her eyes for a moment at hearing him admit it, even so carefully. She realized only now that some tiny, foolish part of her had still wanted to hope it wasn't true, even as she'd been certain of what they'd done to him.
She sighed, admitting she'd neatly boxed herself in on this one, and cursing the temper and panic in both of them that had sent them here, to this moment where she sensed they both stood there as fragile as eggshells. "He said it was hilarious that the Van Der Lindes were sending women out now. Asked how 'Dutch's other bitch, Morgan', was doing, and said Colm would find me a better filly to break than you." From that remark, apparently he hadn't known her, or known about her past with his gang mates up in Pinetree Gulch. It hadn't mattered. She'd killed him, and felt satisfied by it, because she couldn't rest or feel safe, or like Jake had been avenged, until they were all gone. "And I suppose that's the other reason why you went with me to Hanging Dog. You already knew all the reasons I needed to kill that fat bearded bastard. Cause you, Dutch, and Micah, you had already killed the rest of them that night at the ranch. Also why you didn't care about the rest of the gang after you seen Colm swing."
"Yeah." He said it softly, but he at least met her eyes, though she could see the awkwardness and shame in them that she knew all too well, because it lived in her too. But his having spoken it probably made the burden a bit easier. He licked his lips, looked away for a moment. "Did...anyone else know? I know Hosea and Susan must have."
Of course he worried about that. Bad enough when it happened to a woman, when that ruined her reputation for many. For a man, anyone knowing would be damn near unbearable. "I didn't say nothing. And yeah, I'm...sure Hosea and Susan figured it out. Cause they spent so much time caring for you. Cause they knew you so well." For the rest of them, the notion that it could happen to a man wasn't readily something that came to mind. They all had been so focused on his gunshot wound, the bruises clearly there from beatings, and the marks on his ankles that spoke of being in shackles. They had probably attributed his restless sleep and alarmed reactions only to physical torture. She hadn't been of any mind to tell them otherwise.
"They must have not said anything to Dutch. I didn't want him knowing." He wasn't wrong. It likely would have lessened him in Dutch's eyes. "Besides, as crazy as he was going, that might have been the one insult to him that he took as excuse for an actual war. Which was why Colm done that in the first place. Really, why all of it happened from the moment they planned to grab me at that parlay. It was never about me. He just wanted to capture and mess with someone he figured would provoke Dutch into a fight."
"I don't know how you kept yourself from killing Colm." Thought she actually did. He thought little enough of vengeance, and little enough of himself that he wouldn't get outraged on his own behalf enough to do something stupid and violent about it. Only if someone had known, and he'd have had to do it to avenge himself to their satisfaction. She hated that in her determined, reckless fury she'd tried to provoke him in St. Denis. She'd almost dared either of them to say exactly what O'Driscolls had done to them, make him admit that he probably cared more than he claimed. But Dutch was there, and that was enough. Besides, forcing that secret into the open like that would have made her feel even more disgusted with herself than she already was for all that she'd done.
He managed a half-hearted smile. "Well, I don't recommend it, but TB does wonders for putting things into perspective. We had much bigger problems than me liking the idea of seeing Colm dead." She ruefully admitted he'd had himself under much better control than her on that score. "Can't say it didn't satisfy me to watch him swing, though. Especially seeing him realize at the last moment that it wasn't his boy up there on the rooftop to save him. I seen it in his face through that scope. He knew it was me, and that I was up there with an excellent view to watch him die."
"Yeah, but for all that you seen him die, I got the notion you convinced yourself you deserved what happened to you." He didn't deny it, and she hated being right. "Arthur…" She stepped closer, put her hands carefully on his forearms, and looked up at him. He didn't back away. She settled her hands, lightly held on to him. "You think I ain't been through that? Worried that somehow, I asked for it by being alone up there in the middle of nowhere? But we didn't ask for it. Some folks deserve a beating, some deserve killing. But nobody deserves having that done to them, never. And Jake didn't deserve killing, and Eliza and Isaac didn't either, and there ain't nobody to blame for all it, except them folk who did it."
He was a big man, and for a moment, she felt that nervousness and vulnerability of him being so close to her. Strange, given she slept in the same room as him without a qualm. But she put aside that feeling with effort. She knew him, she trusted him. So she took one step closer, and carefully wrapped her arms around him. He hesitated, went utterly still as if uncertain what to do, like had done that first time she'd deliberately taken his hand back at Wapiti. Maybe some of that was what Colm did to him, the fear and the shame she understood all too well. But she suspected it had lived in him long before this past summer. That after what happened with Eliza, that impossibly iron bound sense of guilt and self-loathing kept him from believing he should be allowed anything kind or reassuring.
Part of her hurt too, wanting so much to believe again that being so close to a man, that the feel of his body near hers didn't have to be bound up in humiliation and terror. Wanting so much to be comforted, as much as she wanted to comfort him. "It's all right." She said it to reassure herself as well as him. "It ain't wrong to want this, you know. We're still alive. It's good to remember that sometimes." Then she felt his arms go around her in turn, at first uncertain. But then he pulled her in tightly, almost too tightly, but that was all right. It felt good, almost natural. She closed her eyes, turning her cheek into his shoulder.
She could feel that he was still too thin, but he'd put a good deal of weight back on that shockingly emaciated frame, and his heartbeat against her was steady and strong. He was alive, and continuing to heal in ways that she could track each week and month, and somehow that gave her some hope for herself too. It felt good to see that she wasn't too broken to be comforted. But she hadn't held or been held tenderly by another man since Jake, and the feel of a tall, broadly built man in her arms carried those old echoes. That called up the memories, and the guilt. Arthur must have felt something change in her, and sensed its cause. "It's OK." His voice went barely above a whisper, his breath stirring warmly against her hair. "There's no betraying Jake in this. We got nothing like that between us. You know it, I know it, and he knows it. We're remembering we're alive, like you said. That's all."
She managed a painful laugh because he'd hit the mark so instinctively about her sudden awkwardness, and also at realizing something. He'd played Mr. McCready for Eliza, and now here he was playing Mr. Griffith, and Mary Gillis had rejected him as a husband. She at least had those wonderful memories of loving and being loved as a wife. I ain't even got that, he'd told her at Hanging Dog, and he was right. All he had was the knowledge that two women had judged him not good enough to marry, and here he was playing house with a third who was wedded to the memory of a dead man. He was trapped in this sham as much as she was, doomed every day to act like her husband. She could sense something he could perhaps never say aloud. But he obviously hungered so much for that life, to be married to a woman who chose him, truly accepted him. But she couldn't give him that, so instead he was living another lie. "You're a damn good friend. If you ever meet some nice woman you're of a mind to court, I'll be sure to sing your praises to her."
"Don't think that's too likely. I'm a TB derelict who's getting old, I got no profession, no money, and a notorious past besides. Not the makings of a great catch as a husband."
"Oh, shut up. Call it feminine intuition, but I bet it never was you as a man that Mary and Eliza didn't want, you know that? It was the life you was living that scared them off. And you're out of that life now, so don't count yourself out. But now you're faking being a husband for the second time. I'd say you deserve to get to be a real one someday."
"Thanks," he said, and she could hear the humor and gratitude in his voice, even if she couldn't see his face, tucked together as tightly as they still were. It looked like neither of them was in a rush to let go, as long as it had been since there had been simple, ordinary comfort like this for either of them.
"I mean it, though. I knew you well enough, and I know you even better now. I know you got to have loved Isaac. How bad it's hurt that you couldn't protect him. But anything could have happened to him. Eliza--" How to put this and not hurt him more than he'd already been hurt? "You and her made a mistake, yeah. She loved Isaac, wanted to give him a life that wasn't an outlaw one, even if it made things harder on her. But you say you dropped by only sometimes. So it was her life that she lived, the one she chose. You don't help yourself tearing yourself apart for things you couldn't help, and you don't give Eliza no credit either by trying to make her life, and her dying, all about the things you done. You gave her respect enough to let her make her own choices with that boy, and live her own life. Her dying shouldn't change that. She weren't just some helpless victim of yours, Arthur. Don't you do that to her."
"I know. But I can't help but think I should have seen things clearer. I didn't argue much with her about that. Talking all that big talk of Dutch's about how we was living this brave and free life. If I didn't want my own boy living the life I had, then what the hell was so great about it? But I was too damn scared to try to leave. Especially with not knowing whether she even would want that."
"You go down that road, you ain't never getting away from it. And you must have been a decent father that she kept letting you come back. She knew her own mind, sounds like. She wouldn't have let you around Isaac, let you stay in her house, if she didn't trust you at least that much." She'd defeat him with pure logic if she had to, because that felt like the only thing that might get through to him. "They took something from you. You know I understand that if anyone does. You can mourn that, but don't hate yourself for things that wasn't on you. I'm trying to do the same."
"There's sense in that. Can't change what's past. Seems all there is now is trying to learn from it." Finally, he let her go, and she could feel the reluctance in it with how his arms stayed around her, loosening until the very last moment, as if to get every single moment of touch he could out of it. He stepped back, put a hand lightly on her shoulder, and looked directly and deliberately her in the eyes for the first time since they'd arrived on the banks of the river. She couldn't say he looked happy in that moment, but he looked thoughtful, calmer. She wondered if he felt somehow lighter, like she did. "Thank you." Those words came with the solemnity of some kind of vow. Then he let go.
She reached out, put her own hand on his shoulder in passing as he turned to grab the fishing poles, repeating that benediction of sorts. "Thank you, Arthur. If you need to be alone some on the 21st, you let me know."
He nodded at that, and she grabbed the bag of fish, both of them climbing the bank towards the horses. They rode back to Las Hermanas talking mostly of little things, the air quieter and more serious than it usually was between them, but somehow, it didn't feel uncomfortable. It felt real.