Chapter Text
You had never felt more desperate in your life.
You lay bleeding on the ground struggling to aim. Frantic. Panicked. Furious. You fired again and again with your left hand at the last man as he advanced and fired at you, and you yelled, and tears flowed back on your temples, and then, like he was never there, he dropped away, and suddenly it was quiet, just a blue bird flying high above you and the first flecks of rain, and you lay heaving in the grass thinking that was how it felt to die.
When hooves came pounding close, you tried to check your chambers but your hand shook too hard and the last cartridge tumbled down somewhere by your side.
You pushed yourself up to sit. Right arm numb. And you, so very tired.
Some distance away, your horse was screaming. Then a gunshot, and then only the echo of the gunshot.
In that dying sound you began to weep. A man’s voice was talking to you, at your side. The sky slowly tipped, and you were leaning into strong arms laying you down. He called over to someone else.
Hands grasped the plackets of your shirt and ripped it open; you hardly noticed because the sprinkling rain fell with your tears and you were so cold and tired you couldn’t move.
Someone patted your cheek, demanding something. A man’s face was above you with concern, not rage, in his eyes like the sky. As your ears began to ring his arms scooped you up and wrapped something warm around you smelling of leather and woodsmoke and work. You didn’t remember him lifting you up on his horse or most of what he said, talking to you the whole time. You only wanted to sleep against his chest, alive by the beat of his heart and the low reverberation of his voice. But he kept slapping your face.
At some point, other voices talked over you while you shivered and tried to sleep.
You escaped from Colm? Miss?
Give her some room, Dutch.
Where was he?
I…I don’t know.
How far did you ride? It can’t have been far - she can’t have come that far, look at her.
Get the hell out of her face, all of you. You too, Mister Morgan.
She shot three of em.
—
In the beginning, there you are. Well and truly fucked. Stuck worse than before, back to nothing but you and a gun.
And a hell of a lot of trouble, the two-inch stack of which you have folded into a leather sack secured in a lockbox in the crumbling sheriff’s office, and you lie on the floor to stuff it as far back under the boards as you can possibly reach.
Then you stand in the midst of that burned-out village in the meadow below their camp with your Cattleman in your left hand. The town is burned so black the charred wood crumbles and squeaks underfoot. Roofs all burned away. Glass melted. Licks of soot rising from the windows.
You stand and check your chambers. Your right arm is still useless and bound against your chest tighter than the bodice of the dress one of the girls lent you to wear.
You draw back the hammer and raise your arm at the line of six pinecones you have set in the middle of the town. And this is how you will start over, in the midst of that burned-down, dead-black place. As fitting a place for you as any. At twenty paces.
Of your six shots, you hit four, each recoil jarring you like a kick to your opposite shoulder. You sit on one of the crates and reload one-handed, with the barrel clamped between your knees.
You waste five shots on the last two. Lightheaded, you have to sit down again.
“That ain’t exactly the fancy shootin I heard about.” The Irish accent is thick, and it hits something in you like an ax.
You spin around, your gun shaking, thinking about your last round and scanning for where to send it.
“Whoa, be wide there!” The boy ducks, hands up, behind the remains of a wagon, his bowler, his rusty hair just visible over the side.
“Get the fuck away -”
“I just come down to see what all the fuss were. Thought you was a stick of the town still in flames.” Acting clever, he gestures at your hair, auburn as a chestnut roan, thick and wild when you can't tame it in a braid.
“You're one to talk. Down from where.”
“Up there.” He nods at the overlook and the smoke rising from the campfire. “I heard there were someone new about.”
“I didn’t see you there.”
He steps out from behind the wagon, keeping his hands visible and moving slow to take his matches out of his pocket. “I was detained,” he says, lips clamped around a cigarette as he lights it. He keeps his hands up. “Just rejoined to the fold. Not exactly a knight’s welcome.” He flicks an idle middle finger back at the overlook. “Think you might put that down?”
“You’re not with Colm?”
He jerks his head back in surprise. “Not a chance.”
You let your arm fall and you sit back hard on the crate.
“What, O’Driscoll’s got a claim to us all?” He keeps a slight distance and prowls around your right side.
“Safe guess out here.”
He shakes his cigarette knowingly at you, an unserious squint to his eyes. “What should I guess wrong about you?”
“You Dutch’s bloodhound?”
“So suspicious! Anyway you can’t hide nothin from me, I see through you plain as glass.” He walks jauntily around to your other side, getting the full survey of you.
“You can’t see shit.”
“Well yer no ciotóg, I can tell you that.” He draws his pistol out and aims lefthanded up the street and mimics an exaggerated wobbly shot before switching to his right hand.
He holds it in a graceless way, like his grip never quite feels right. From the wear of the varnish, you guess he probably has sweaty palms. When he aims at the door of the stone building at the top of the road, his shot goes so wide you can’t tell what he was trying to hit.
“And you can’t shoot either way.”
“That’s no way to talk to a friend now is it?” He talks sideways to you, like a part of his mind is in constant search of the next target for his blather.
“I ain’t your friend.”
“Yeah you could use one though. A bird like you so far from home. So why don’t you tell us what you’re about.” He holsters his gun and crosses his arms.
“Why would I tell you anything?”
“So’s I can help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Sure you don’t. I’ll wait while you reload.” He makes a show of checking an imaginary watch. “Unless you’re too intimidated.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Is it?” He grins like he’s never turned down a chance to get himself in trouble.
And you don’t mind the chance to put this blowhard in his place. But you drop two cartridges while trying to load. He tuts and shakes his head. Bastard.
“Maybe you’d rather practice until my arm is healed.”
“Sounds like I’m better off taking you on now while I have an advantage, I reckon it’s rare.”
“You lick everyone’s boots or just mine?”
“Ooh, you’re makin me blush, love.” He crouches a little, relishing this, and throws down his cigarette.
Even offhand, you’re a better shot, and his bluster is, as ever, sharper than his aim. Six more pine cones. Eleven shots, five of them made, all of them yours.
“Straightest shot in town,” he praises in his loving-sarcastic way you will eventually come to enjoy, as he swings his arm exaggeratedly around at the empty street, and in spite of yourself, you smile.
His last shot burrows into the charred ground, and then he turns at the sound of an approaching rider slowing, and seeing him, he swears under his breath and rubs his temple with the butt of the gun.
“Christ here we go.”
And that’s when you meet him.
“Arter Morgan, the big man himself,” he calls, his voice both theatrical and mildly unwelcoming to the figure dismounting and walking up the blackened road, backed by the afternoon sun.
If your memory was at all to be trusted, you had stammered nonsense at him as he checked where you’d been hit, and he had gathered you up like a tumbled-down tent and carried you bleeding. What he had said to you, you could not place or even know if he had really said it, just the sound of his voice and the feel of it through his chest. More vibration than sound.
Show me those pretty eyes, darlin. Don’t go to sleep just yet.
Then when you woke he was gone.
“Sean, you ain’t back ten minutes and you’re already tormentin the poor girl.”
A rush flares through you to hear his voice again, and now he's standing there in a passing-through way. He touches his brim, but it seems to take him a while to look at you.
“She teachin you a thing or two?”
“I’d call it an even exchange.” Sean resigns his revolver to his holster with a forced and surly shrug. “The lady can shoot.”
“I’ve seen her shoot. Haven’t seen you hit anything yet.”
“Shows you must be goin blind, old man.”
“What d’you say, can he shoot worth a damn?” he asks you. He rests his hands on his gunbelt.
Everything about him, standing next to the boy, is bigger and readier for the world. He stands knowing no other way to be, with all that is natural and capable in him, and all that comes with being such a way. Fists hit him harder. Burdens are greater. So are bounties, so are the needs of others.
“He can shoot his mouth off, anyway,” you say, and Sean sulks good-naturedly at you, stepping back, hands up, as Arthur moves around him.
He leans sideways to get a peek at your revolver before reaching in his satchel and tossing a box of .45s on top of the barrel between you.
“Well, let’s go, killer. I don’t have to tell you what to do.”
“Don’t you ask a lady first?” Sean calls over, finding himself rightly ignored and finally just perching on the side of the wagon.
“You didn’t,” you say, and Sean starts in with some amused bluster when Arthur shuts him up with a glance.
“Your lead eye the right?” he asks you.
“Yes. You?”
“Never thought about it.”
You roll your eyes, but you see him suppressing what might have been a smile.
“Shot for shot,” he says, taking off his satchel and loosening up his shoulders. “Offhand only.” There is something on the edge of daring in his voice.
“And when you lose?”
His smile is crooked. Charming. Slightly provoked and enjoying it.
“Make it interesting. Loser does the winner’s bidding for a week.”
“My money’s on the lady, Morgan. Be the thrill of my life, to see you darnin my socks.”
“You don’t have any money, you dumbass.” But he isn’t looking at Sean; he’s watching you load one-handed on the barrel top. He spills the whole box there and loads his own.
“Need help?”
You snap the loading gate shut with a sharp flick of your thumb. “What with?”
He tips his head and gives you space. “Ladies first.”
That’s when something sparks in you. You get piqued at deference to your sex, for one thing, which he will quickly learn. And the spur of competition never fails to rile you up. Your horse was just the same; he was fast, but coming up on another horse at a gallop, he would show you something you didn't know you were asking for. He will learn that, too.
Your arm feels stronger as you stand there sensing him behind you, parallel to you, not two paces away. “Call it.”
He is silent for a moment. “Pinecone in the tree up there.” He nods at it.
You trust your eye, you know your hands, your left side steady when it counts. You spot it, you get your eye in, and fire. It explodes in pieces from the branch.
Arthur scratches his jaw. He isn’t as impressed as you thought he might be. In a way he’s even unimpressed.
And so the spirit in you that would race a horse doesn’t just want to beat him; now you have to stun him. Show-off.
“There’s a high bar set for you, English. Better go press your apron.”
“Shut it and go scare up some targets or I’ll take you back to Skelding,” he says, a little bark in his voice now. “Okay, miss, call it.”
“Top branch, leaning tree.”
“Which?”
“By the brick building. Topmost.”
He jostles the grip in his left hand and coolly takes his aim. The branch breaks but hangs by a thread, swinging, and then falls, as if convinced to let go by the irritated tilt of his head.
“Too close for comfort, Morgan.” Sean is picking up tin cans from the edge of town and downright sullen.
More seriously now, Arthur scouts around the thoroughfare and walks backward, eyeing the storefront across from him. “Come back up over here, and then the center of the O there.” He nods to the PROVISIONS sign.
“There are two.”
“Hit both.”
When you stand next to him, you can smell his leather jacket, the one he wrapped around you that day, and have to steady your breath. You get both targets, but to the right of where you intended on the second one, and he sees your nose wrinkle in disappointment.
He matches your shots, putting his second one nicely center, and coughs to hide a smile. “That me, then?”
“Call it.”
He walks up the middle of town, looking around. “So what’s your name, Red?”
“Nell. Riordan.” It’s never as reflexive as you want it to be, that one.
“Is that so.”
“Would I lie?”
“I don’t know, would you?” That playful roguish sneer in his voice.
You stare at each other, bridged by the plain understanding of ones who use aliases and ones who are told aliases. So after a moment he nods, leaving your reasons unguessed.
“Okay then, Red. ‘Nell Riordan.’ The period there on Co.” He aims at the upstairs of the saloon and you walk over beside him.
“Branch keeps moving in the way,” you mutter as you aim.
He stands closer at your side, as if to see your point of view, and leaning toward you, he practically growls, “Better to give no excuse than a bad one.”
He might as well have shoved you. You drop your arm and gape at him, and he stares back with an appalling lack of shame.
And so you hit that dot dead center, and his shot goes wide by a few inches.
“What’s your excuse, Mister Morgan?”
He grits his teeth but lets it pass. “Bad aim.”
He leans against a crate and takes two cigarettes out of his pack, lights both, and holds one up in a casual pinch to you. The way he settles there, a hand resting on his lap as he smokes and picks a fleck of tobacco off his tongue, hat down against the afternoon sun, and watches you take a grateful drag on the cigarette, you are uncertain if he’s about to interrogate you or confess something.
“How’s the arm?”
You don’t want to admit that it hurts, and it hurts enough that you can’t think of a breezy thing to say otherwise, so you exhale smoke and shrug, and immediately flinch.
“That good, huh.”
You try to pass it off as nothing. “I meant to thank you. Just haven’t seen you around.”
He nods, hat down, as if a little embarrassed to be thanked, but drags on his smoke and looks up again, clear-eyed. So clear-eyed he’s a little captivating. A face of experience. The slight chip in his tooth, the scars on his chin. Shade of a few days of growth on his face. The broken shape of his nose. His dark blond hair, long uncut and unwashed. A hard brow. And unwavering, slightly sunblind blue eyes. “Just glad you made it,” he says.
You are reminded of his hands on you. “I wouldn’t have.” Hurried and more gentle than they had to be. You glance down from the intent stillness in his face, and peer up again. "So. Thank you."
He smokes, still watching like he’s reading you. “You thanked me back there.”
“Did I? Well.” You dig your toe into the dirt and blow smoke to one side. “Hope I didn’t say anything crazy.”
He looks at his hands again, though you can see the creases at his temples and the way his lips purse at a certain memory.
“I did, didn’t I.”
“I believe you asked if I was real.”
Goddammit.
“That so?”
“Gave me a good scare there, too. Eyes rollin back, goin gray in the face -”
“You don’t have to go on, really.”
“What’d you do to those fellers, them huntin you down like that?”
“Do O’Driscolls need an excuse?”
He salutes your point with his cigarette. Then he clears his throat. “Hell of a scare for you.”
“For most people, I’d think, wouldn’t you?”
"Sure,” he says, and then he looks at you straight on, cutting through the smoke and the chitchat. “But you’re here practicin.”
You get the sense, from his eyes on you, he knows the feeling. When everything you have is not enough.
“Well, I don’t have a marksman watching my back just every day.” The less either of you thinks about that whole business, the better. You glance around that dead town, the bluffs in the distance, seeking anything to veer away from the subject. “And you apparently live in a camp on an overlook, just waiting for women in distress, or what's your game?”
He has a way about him you have noticed in a few men who have had enough barrels aimed their way to know something different about the world. Of searching for things. They see through the first layers of people, unhindered by insult or bluster. Time ticks slower for them, the space between the seconds. Jaws clench in that time and tell them things. Fingers twitch. In that moment, you find yourself being seen-through in that ill-fitting dress, your arm cocooned, feeling nothing like yourself. Shooting left-handed. Hair untamed. Only your boots feel right, and even then, the ground is spongy underfoot as you drop your cigarette and step on it.
So that thing in you, something you’ve always seemed to share with birds, tenses up in you, alert and ready to fly.
Then he rubs the back of his neck and glances up at you that way he does, that way you will come to go blind for as if you’ve just glanced at the sun, and when he shifts his stance you have to force yourself not to notice the rather considerable asymmetry below his gunbelt. A flush runs up your cheeks.
“Well I don’t know about a woman in distress, miss. I watched somethin of a shootist get off three of the best rounds I’ve seen in a long time. She just got wung, and then some fool stole the last shot. I ought to apologize.”
“Well maybe so,” you say, feigning haughtiness. You can’t help but imagine him apologizing on his knees right below you, and you turn and squeeze your eyes shut to smother that thought.
“In that case, I believe it’s your call, miss, and god help me.” He finishes his smoke and grinds it out in the charred ground.
Sean returns with a crate of empty bottles and one half-full bottle of whiskey he drinks from before he sets it on the crate nearby.
“Am I up so far or down?”
“Not sure who’s betting against you, Sean, but you're losing your zero cents today.” His tone is pleasant, though, and he picks up the bottle to take a swig and hands it to you as he wipes his lips.
By the time the sun is getting low, there are at least two dead rats, two dead pickerels in the stream, one shattered whiskey bottle, seventeen shattered beer bottles, numerous rusted cans shot from fenceposts, and twenty twinned holes in the side of the burned saloon like peep-eyes staring back at you from the western sky. A minor fortune in spent cartridges lies scattered at your feet. All three of you are slightly drunk.
“I’m disappointed in you, English. You’re no gentleman. Should of shot your right arm to even the odds.” Sean slouches splay-legged on the steps and rolls to one side to get up.
“Sorry you made a bad bet.” He watches you wiping down your revolver one-handed on the crate, having learned not to offer help as he stands beside you taking out two more cigarettes and denying Sean a third. “Won’t mind havin my needs attended for a week.”
He hands you one, and you wonder if his ears redden slightly as he holds the match for you, hands so near to your cheek. Some thought crossing his mind. Or maybe it’s just the sun behind him.
He untethers the buckskin and loops the reins on her pommel. She follows on his right side obedient as a gun dog as the three of you walk back to camp, where they're celebrating Sean's return already, and he eats it up like he expected every bit of it.
In reality, Arthur can’t bring himself to order you around. Not with a wounded arm. The one time he makes a harmless gloat of his victory and suggests you fetch him some whiskey, the other girls around you berate him until he backs away with his hands up.
The next day, you hear he’s gone again, sent on a job like always, they say, and while you begin to feel stronger through the week and finally get out of your sling, you begin to wonder about leaving too. The suspicious watchful eyes of Dutch and the older man on you make you think more urgently of it. You practice lifting things, at first unable to do any more than lift the arm itself a few times before you are exhausted, and wonder if you will ever lift a knife again, much less a gun. The longer you stay there, the greater the weight of all things begins to feel.
It is easier to be anonymous. You can make yourself liked when you are a stranger. Names have a way of getting unwanted attention. The other time you tried to strike out on your own, and your name changed and for a short while so did you, grew into a chamber of safety and new life, and for a moment you believed the sunlight through the little window and the person by your side offered all the hope you needed to think of life beyond the present moment.
But hopes pass, moments pass, the lovely chamber passes into darkness, things fall apart.
You find yourself thinking you might take it as a sign, as good as any other, to make your way if you don’t see him by the next morning. And like the fool you are, with a flutter in your sides, you imagine encountering him in your path, the sunlight behind him, and his shadow facing you.
You’re washing the plates after supper having that electrifying thought when the old man, Hosea, wanders over to you, deliberately casual, inviting you to play dominoes and share a drink with him.
He ushers you to the table as the sun goes down and lights a lantern and overturns the tiles. He asks you about your shoulder, how you’re coming along, and all the while you sense the time-biding of fishermen and hunters watching bait, and wonder what question he’s pacing himself to ask you.
You also get the feeling he isn’t the only one interested in this game. Dutch, leaning against the post in the mouth of his tent, distant and attentive the entire time, might as well have binoculars trained on you.
“I was thinking I’d be on my way soon,” you say, to broach the inevitable. “With thanks for everything you all have done.”
Hosea nods in thought as he lines up tiles on his stand. “Of course we’re glad you came out all right. But one has to wonder about your next destination. In the name of caution.”
“I understand.” You line your own tiles up, trying to use your right hand as much as possible, and although you have mulled over the same question all that time, you are no closer to an answer. So you tell him that.
He’s quiet a moment, and muses, “Big wide world, ain’t it.”
“Could put down anywhere, if I can make a little money to get there.” You clear your throat and lay a six-three.
He plays a three-blank. “Funny you should mention it.”
“Is it?” Blank-five, all you can manage.
“Well, miss, we don’t always take in strays, but Arthur tells me you’re a regular Hickok.” Six-ace.
“Does he?” Staring at your tiles, you can’t seem to manage basic arithmetic.
“I believe his words were ‘shooting star.’ You made quite the impression.”
Your cheeks flush a bit as you lay the only tile you can, five-four.
“You understand why a person might be careful in wondering about your background and your intentions, miss. With skills like yours, and having crossed the moral line, so to speak. Not only able, but willing.” Four-three.
“I do, sir.” Three-ace.
He doesn’t play. He tilts his head, those sharp, un-foolable eyes on you.
You take a sip of the whiskey and plan your words. “I’ve had to make my choices, sir. Out here, it isn’t kind to women alone. I manage, my way.” You search your mind for what other delirious nonsense you might have said that first day.
“You ain’t run with other gangs?”
“For a job, here and there, not for any stretch of time. Done a bounty or two when I needed the money.”
“Any bounty on you?”
“I’m careful.”
He plays a three-four. “What can you tell a man that will put his mind at ease about you? And you can’t con me, miss; don’t even try.”
You lay your three-five, with a twinge of pain shooting down your arm. “I pay my debts, Mr. Matthews. I figure I’m in yours, or Mr. Morgan’s.”
“How upstanding of you.”
“I may have a past, but I’m no snake.” You match his brazen, doubtful stare. You are plain and open. You are used to suspicious men.
“Then you must understand there is a certain need for you to prove yourself.”
“I would expect to.”
“We have enough women to do their share of things. But we’re currently short a gun.” He nods toward the green tent, which has largely remained closed during the time you’ve been there. “Think you can get your arm up to speed?”
“Seems better by the day.”
He lays a five-blank.
When you look up, a buckskin horse noses into view from the edge of the trees, and astride her, Arthur. You feel the heat spread on your cheeks. Hosea sees your face, checks behind him, and turns back to you, hawkish.
Blank-deuce from you.
He draws.
Deuce-three.
You lay a four-six and start to sit up straight with your victory when Hosea suddenly reaches across the table and firmly takes your wrist. It strains your shoulder, and you grunt but pull against his strength despite the pain, and stare him straight in the eye, your breath shaking.
“I mean it, Miss Riordan,” he says. “Prove yourself.” Whatever unspoken threat lies underneath, it is yours to discover.
“I heard you.” You jerk away and resist the urge to hold your burning arm as he stands and nods and leaves.
Arthur removes the saddle and sets it on the hitching post, and spends a while brushing down her sides. When he turns, you notice his face is bruised, his lip cut, his clothes dirty, the shoulder of his coat ripped, and his whole posture says he is tired and doesn’t want to encounter anyone between his horse and his tent. You pretend not to see him. You know that look. But behind you Dutch calls to him from his tent, and you feel Arthur’s reluctance to go near.
“How’s the other guy?” There’s laughter in Dutch’s voice.
And tired tolerance in Arthur’s. “Two.”
“You back to that crazy business?” Dutch says more seriously. “That was the last time I’m bailing you out.”
“No. Just a disagreement in Annesburg.”
“Were you asking for it?”
“Not sure what you mean, Dutch.” His tone says he's been pushed far enough, and he wants nothing more than to fall onto his cot, but first he has to listen to some scheming or other. When you turn to glance at him, he’s standing in Dutch’s tent looking beaten, and you walk away towards the girls’ tent so he doesn't see you watching him in his state.
Lying in the darkness listening to the sounds from the campfire outside, you try to put the old man's tacit threats out of your mind. Every sound around you feels like the presence of someone watching. Putting the pieces of you together. The longer you stay, the longer you risk the trouble that nips your heels, and as you lie there, and the strains of a guitar plink softly in the night, you feel the constriction of time, unwanted attention, questions unanswered. You consider leaving in the middle of the night, struggling to get a saddle on one of the horses, and riding off. You consider all the directions you could run.
You consider leaving on foot.
But unavoidably, he’s there, every way you imagine it. As if he had the same notion to step outside, and now stands in your way, and you in his.
He seems to catch his breath. His voice is graveled but soft. Where you goin.
Away.
The singing outside gets louder, and your heart races, but he looms in your mind, immovable.
He steps closer. Why.
I shouldn’t be here.
Why.
I don’t know.
And with the sound of someone approaching, he looks behind him, then snags you by the wrist, and does not break stride. He leads you through the walls of his tent before anyone else can see. And you imagine how, in the dim lantern light, he would put his finger to his lips one second before he kisses you. How his hand would cradle your neck and pull you toward him, gentle but intent. The smoky taste of him, the faint tempting musk of his body, the scratch of his scruff on your mouth. How fine his lips would be, firm and then yielding with yours, parting with yours, closing, and then pushing apart with urgency. The dart of his tongue, testing you, and when you respond in kind, the soft sound you get from him, and the ravening tilt of his head as he kisses you then in earnest.
If there were any doubt as to what kind of lover he could be, he shows you the instant his hands begin to move up your sides, soft at first but deliberate, knowing what he wants. Wanting to know you.
You consider his hand on your back moving lower and rounding over your right hip, about to go further but for now lingering, kneading, content to discover the curve of your body he has wanted to touch for days. You hold the back of his neck, your fingers clawing up into his hair, your other hand loving the taper of his back to his tight waist, finding him sensitive there when you touch him, the way he moves into you, his breath suddenly hot against your cheek.
The rustle of someone turning over on their cot is so loud you both freeze, and you hear Uncle’s snoring across the camp. Your hearts pound. But whatever alarm you feel, it’s forgotten when he brushes his thumb over your cheek and guides you back to him.
His kiss is more forceful now, and when he breaks away from your mouth you are left gasping up at the ceiling of his tent as his lips trail the underside of your jaw and down the channel of your neck.
Shhh, he whispers into your collarbone before he kisses you there and takes a full, firm handful of your ass, pulling you closer. How a person can remain quiet under the circumstances, you have no idea, but if it prolongs this thing happening now, you are determined to try.
When he pulls you in, you feel him hard for you, and he stops for that breath of silent confession and doubt, do you want this, do you know, until you dig your hips toward him and press the ridge of him against your lower belly. You feel his moan in his chest.
Now you are the one to shush him. He seems flustered, unsure what to do, running his hand down his face as if he realizes where you both are and how unsatisfactory a cot would be for anything a person might want to do.
So you slide your hand around his waist from his back to his stomach, and watch his eyebrows knit up as it dawns on him what you’re doing as you begin unfastening the first button of his trousers. You imagine if his hands are any indication, it would be more than the size of your wrist around, were you to grasp it. Which you certainly mean to.
You sure? he mouths, his expression of extreme compunction melting as soon as you skim your hand down his hip and up the inner seam of his trousers, up to the fullness there, along his solid length, and suppress your own sound, realizing the size of him.
Very, you mouth back, at which point he has to sit against the table as you pry the front of his trousers open, and the buttons of his union suit, his chest rising as you run your fingertips over the trail from his navel down to his pubic hair and you slip your hand under the fabric and feel the stiff naked shaft of his cock. His stomach tightens as you do. He watches every move you make as you ease him out of his union and see him fully, the dark head of his cock bloomed from its taut skin. He looks down, and if the lantern were not so dim you would see him blush at your expression and the way he fills your grip and rises far past your wrist when you take him underhand and stroke down to his base, inducing a light pant from his open mouth. He pulls you in by the small of your back to kiss him as if he can’t take it alone, and you straddle his thigh where he guides you.
You imagine he would rather be the one taking charge, but for the fact that he’s too overcome by your caress to do much else.
So you grind yourself against the hard muscles of his upper thigh as you kiss his neck and work your hand up and down his shaft, avoiding the head as long as you can, or just brushing it lightly with the soft skin of your wrist, hearing how he likes it in the way his breath falters. You draw away from his neck to see the head of his cock shining with fluid in the lamp light, his hips jerking slightly in need. You glance at him briefly through your lashes, his eyes going wide with marvel as you let a long line of spit drizzle onto his cockhead and slick it down around his shaft, twisting your hand as you do. You thumb the last drop off your lower lip. His gaze trails up from your hand stroking him so well to your face, amazed at you, perhaps disbelieving.
What do you want, you whisper into his ear, the tent getting a little airless as you begin to feel wet against his thigh. He grazes your ear with his teeth and then can't seem to speak. Just his strained breath.
Keep goin. Please. He barely gets out the word, and you have to smile at the afterthought of manners. From the rasp in his voice you sense that if you tasted him, the way you very much want to, the whole camp would hear what you’re doing beyond any shadow of a doubt.
You like that? Just to tease him, you skim your tongue up his throat the way you would do to his shaft, and his head falls back, his Adam's apple bobbing with a swallow.
My girl, you have no idea.
One-handed, he yanks the volume of your nightdress up out of the way of your junction with his leg and juts his hip against you, his lip twitching in a kind of pained, blissful sneer. He will touch the wet spot there when you are gone and feel both gratified and utterly deprived.
You stroke more deliberately, a pace steady but not too fast, feeling your own heartbeat, and he leans harder against the table. It creaks. He can’t do anything but grip the side with one hand and knead your bare left ass cheek under your nightdress with the other, urging you to grind faster. You are making him forget about everything but the one thing he wants and is on the verge of pleading for. But later. Just now, you are stroking him with everything you can give him through the pressure and increasing pace and occasional twist of your right hand, shoulder be damned, and it seems impossible that he could get any harder, but he does, full and tight. You think about him stretching your cunt and almost lose yourself. The table creaks louder. His neck strains and he tries to hold his shuddering breath, hips beginning to twitch. His expression contorts into something different, urgent, helpless -
Jesus christ, you have to get up and leave the girls’ tent before you make any sound you will regret. The camp is quieter now, fewer people around the dying embers, the moon high as you get dressed in your own clothes and pull on your boots with trembling hands.
Tilly repaired your shirt, and you thanked her with your necklace, nearly the last thing of your own. Somehow having nothing but your satchel now makes you feel lighter. You buried the one thing from it that could damn you, and although you are fairly sure they didn’t notice it while you were unconscious, your shirt is still stained brown with blood as if to remind you nothing is safe for very long. Nor ever the same as it was before it was damaged.
When you emerge, the old man is sitting in the lamplight of Dutch’s tent with his elbows on his knees as they talk late, and glances at you. He touches the brim of his hat with a knowing nod and you nod back just as surely. They are silent as you pass.
There is an overlook away from camp that juts out with a view of the burned-out town, and in the moonlight you walk out, through the dense foliage toward the train tracks, and then turn right along the path. Lenny is standing guard and greets you cautiously as you head out. Just a walk at night. You suppose that appears suspicious, as now everything you do seems to arouse suspicion.
From that overlook, you can only halfway hear the sounds from camp, the light guitar playing and singing from the ones up late, and you know it’s past the time for you to leave. Not just because you are sitting with your legs swinging in open air feeling freer and stronger than you have in days but generally by the way the camp knows you and how they seem to have a collective watchful eye on you.
You wince when you move your shoulder. You still can’t pull yourself up into a saddle if you had one or a horse to put it on. You can barely lift a goddamned domino without your shoulder feeling hot. So flying off, at least for the moment, will have to wait.
You jump when the brush behind you crashes with footsteps.
A hammer cocks back.
You grip the rocky ground and freeze. Stones tumble from the ledge. They clatter in hollow echoes, careening down the face of the cliff, your pounding heart just the same.
“Jesus, I could’ve shot you.”
Arthur in the moonlight is a tall black silhouette uncocking his revolver and holding his hand out unthreateningly. “Didn’t think anyone would be out here.”
“I can leave,” you offer, though not entirely confident you can stand up without slipping.
He seems unsure of how to respond, and you start to scoot yourself backward.
“Don’t get up,” he says. He walks over, towering before he sits beside you with a painful grimace, staring out at that town you both shot to pieces a few days ago. Cracks his knuckles. Seems distracted by his thoughts. He’s different when he’s quiet.
“You okay?” you ask.
“Sure.”
“Don’t look okay.”
He snorts as he takes out a pack of cigarettes and shakes two out. “Now what do I say to that?”
“What happened?”
“A little drink after a little job.” He tips his head to light his smoke, and holds out the cupped flame to you. In the light you can see the knuckles of both hands scabbed and bruised.
“Turned brawlin?”
He bats his smoke away like it has just formed the shape of that foolish memory.
“Does it ever work?”
You’ve long known it’s the ones without a conscience who don’t have to go out and do something self-destructive after a job.
He looks at you with vague surprise, and sees himself discovered. “For a little while.”
“Looks like it wore off already.” You gesture to him being out there, trying to be alone. “I can leave, really.”
“You’re fine.” He smokes, and sniffs, and dabs the back of his hand to his nose to see if it’s still bleeding. “I guess I interrupted your peace and quiet. If you want me to -”
“No, you’re fine.”
You both clear your throats, smoke at the same time, blow smoke at the same time, and smirk at your synchronized awkwardness.
“How’s that shoulder?”
“All right.”
“You’re still smokin with your offhand.”
“Wore it out, I suppose.”
"Doin what?"
“Dishes, maybe."
“They got you doin -” He sits up with real concern.
“I don't expect to be put up.” You switch to your right hand as if to show him you can manage to pull your weak arm up without wincing. The air is so still, you feel a bit too warm.
“I had a chat with Hosea,” you say, facing ahead, feeling him turn to look at you.
“You did, did you?”
“He said you had a need for a gun, if I could manage it.”
He looks out again, as if he’ll have to have words with someone later.
“I could," you say.
He is looking down on that burned-out hole-riddled town that proves you right. “You don’t strike me as the robbin type.”
“Well how do I strike you?” (The hell are you doing asking him that, in that way, so coy.)
He exhales a long stream of smoke in the perfectly still air. “Strike me different.”
“Different.”
He coughs. “Above it, I mean.”
“Trust me, I'm not above it.”
“That’s what’s got me mixed up about you.”
“Oh?” (Get a hold of yourself.)
He rubs the back of his neck. “I just can’t figure a woman like you has any use for stealin.”
If only he knew.
You try to reckon with your plan to steal a horse, and how it’s impossible to think about that while he’s sitting there, seeker of moments alone, intolerant of bullshit, admitter of faults. And with such lovely, strong legs.
You take another drag and lean back on your left hand trying to be casual, contemplating that burned-out town below, that silent abyss, nothing reflecting the moonlight, all of it black and lifeless. But just beyond its scars there are deer drinking at the edge of the river. There are fox kits tumbling in the long grass. There are pronghorn grazing in the yarrow and bats fluttering high above, and little silent pinpricks of fireflies winking near the water.
He stamps out his smoke and leans back on his palms beside you, and that is when his thumb grazes yours.
You reflexively start to move away, but he stays there, and so you stay there. Touching. A shock shoots up through your sides, a little flush of heat between your legs.
“There's a job comin up." He clears his throat, looking out at the town.
You are incapable of thought.
"Charles and I are headin up tonight to scout it out, back in a couple of days."
You recover enough to find your voice. “What kind of job?”
“Train.” When his thumb hooks over yours and holds it, he glances back at his hand, but he doesn't quite glance at you.
“Need a lot of guns for that.” Slowly, you unpin your thumb and curl it over his. The rush of that small risk takes your breath away. Just that contact, and his thumb then sliding back over your thumb, running along the inner side.
“That’s true.”
His hand moves, fingers now grasping more of yours, curling with yours, and lord you are trying not to breathe hard but your heart is racing. Your mind flashes with scenes of what you would have him do to you. Where else his fingers could go.
You tell yourself you’re both grown, and used to certain realities. You have no need for attachments, promises, or being true. New freedoms spread out wide before you. And it has been so goddamn long. That he wants it too is enough to make your mind race to the point of dizziness.
Then he moves his hand, and your heart nearly sinks, before he spreads his legs a little wider, closer to yours, and then he looks down, his hand brushing the outside of your thigh, and when you stir into his touch, his hand slides over the top of your thigh with more pressure, inviting your leg toward him, met with the slight rise of your hips, and his penetrating gaze gets the lay of your body, up to your face in the moonlight -
Footsteps in the brush break you both apart. It’s an interruption so impossibly cruel you feel stabbed, and not a small flash of anger at the intruder.
“English, you out here?” Sean calls out.
His chin drops to his chest for a moment, and then he raises his head like he’s addressing the whole sky for this injustice. “What is it?”
“Dutch was askin.”
“When ain’t he askin?” he mutters, getting up to a crouch and stretching up tall, sore. He offers you his hand, and you take it and he pulls you up beside him, holding your fingers a second longer than he needs to without a word as he walks away.
And the last you see of Arthur before he disappears into the night is his silhouette, and you can’t tell if he is facing away or glancing back to get a look at you.
But what you do know for certain, in the pit of your stomach, before you get yourself into more trouble, is that now you really must leave. With some painful effort you can saddle one of the horses and be gone. Arthur would come back, see right away what you had done, and weather any passing disappointment the way a person forsakes a stolen trinket as the toll for not having known better. He really should have.
—
Here’s a thing about you: You tend to ignore notions of fate. Find little point in virtue. Often can’t tell good judgment from bad. Despite your best intentions, you seek out the dangerous and dare providence, living in patterns that curve the lines of your life into spirals, and it’s usually too late by the time you notice what you’ve done. You hellion.
So as the sound of them walking away in the bushes fades, overtaken by the crickets and the frogsong, and the stars overhead really do strike you speechless to view them, you face yourself and the sky. Your life has been a long, winding strand of bad choices so far. In the moment, they always feel right.
You walk along the path back to camp, knowing that for certain too.