Chapter Text
Crisp, clean air filled Arthur Morgan’s lungs little by little as he looked behind him, tightening the reins in his hands.
The group that had been chasing him for ten minutes was no longer visible. He could’ve shot them, but he didn’t want to. Arthur knew his hands might have shaken too much, his eyes might not have been sharp enough. He was tired, had been working too hard for too for long without rest, hadn’t eaten enough in days, and he knew it. Besides, Dutch had told him to stay out of trouble.
Moving like this, it’s not something we want to do too often, he had said.
The humiliation of being thrown out of their camp by a few O’Driscolls was making Arthur push himself too much. The way Dutch looked at him, his dark eyes burning him with their shame and pity, his pursed lips trembling as he silently looked on at him, made him feel, perhaps, worse.
“Don’t come back until you’ve got enough for food for a year,” Hosea had said, smiling at him. It was obviously a joke, but Arthur wasn’t going to show his face to Dutch until he had at least enough for half a year.
He was almost there. But, Arthur thought, riding into town, he needed to rest before he did much else. He hitched his horse outside the saloon and entered it slowly, seating himself at a small round table.
A few moments later, a woman approached him. “Hello, sir. What can I get for you?”
“Whiskey,” he said, not looking up. He was too aware of the scratch on his hand he had gotten days ago. It didn’t hurt much, at the time, when the blade scraped him, or later that evening, when it started to sting, but now it felt like it was pulsing. Or maybe it had been pulsing for a while, and he had just slowed down enough to notice any sensation other than the cold of the wind or the tightness in his lungs.
Hosea has said, before, that Arthur needed to be more careful, that some men had to have their hand cut off due to nothing more than a nasty scratch. He’d thought Hosea was lying to try to get him to listen. He didn’t know if he still thought that now.
“That’s a bad cut, ain’t it? You build houses?”
Arthur looked up at the waitress. Her glossy lips were upturned slightly. Her brown eyes traveled from his sprawled-out hands to his shoulders to his face. She smiled at him. He averted his eyes.
“Uh, no ma’am.”
After a moment, she said, “I’ll get your whiskey, then.”
He watched as she walked away. Her hair was long and blonde and glistened when she passed by the window. It must have been a week since anyone had spoken to him. He couldn’t remember a time someone had looked at him like that.
He turned his eyes back to the cut on his right hand. It was his good hand. If he lost this hand he couldn’t shoot right. He’d be a burden on Hosea, on Dutch.
You’re not going to lose your hand, he thought to himself. How ridiculous. The lack of sleep was getting to him, perhaps.
The woman returned and set Arthur’s drink on the table. She was holding something else.
“Give me your hand,” she said.
He complied instantly. He watched as she wrapped a light brown bandage around his palm, willing himself to keep a straight face as he looked on at hers. She seemed determined. Her expression looked a little like Dutch’s often did.
“There,” she said, setting his hand down gently on the counter. Her fingers brushed his and he pulled his arm back slightly.
“I had a cousin, he got attacked by a little dog or something. Got a couple scratches like that, not as deep. And he died a month later. I reckon that was why.” She crossed her arms. “So, I don’t know if it makes it a difference, but I ain’t known anyone to cover up those things and die from it.”
“Ain’t you smart,” said Arthur. “Thank you, Miss—?”
“Jones. Eliza Jones.”
“Thank you, Miss Jones,” said Arthur.
“You get that cut in a fight? You look like a fighting man.”
“I do?”
“You do.”
She was smiling at him again. He felt warm. He looked around the saloon and saw that it was nearly empty.
“Miss Jones,” he said, and pointed to himself. “Arthur Morgan.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Morgan,” she said, and sat across from him. “You can call me Eliza.”
“Eliza,” he repeated, and drank from the glass in front of him.
“What are you doing out here, Mr. Morgan?”
There was no hostility in her voice, he thought, just curiosity.
“Arthur,” he said.
“What are you doing out here, Arthur?”
He shrugged. “Rest, I guess. I’m on the way to the town over.”
“That’s good, Arthur,” she said, sighing. “Ain’t much worth doing in this town.”
“Then what are you doing out here?”
“I used to have family lived out here. They’re all gone, now, but I’m still around.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sorry about the family, or sorry about me still being here?”
“Both, I reckon.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “My family weren’t so nice to me, and I got plans to get out of here.”
“What’s that?” Arthur asked, taking a sip of his drink.
“I been teaching myself to read.”
“You are a smart one,” said Arthur.
“I don’t know about that,” Eliza said, smiling, “but I’m going to learn lots, and then I’ll advertise my services to them rich folks’ kids. I’ll be a private tutor.
They’ve got so much money, it won’t be long until I’ve got enough to go anywhere in the world, Arthur.”
The way she said his name made it sound beautiful, he thought.
“I think it’s great you’re teaching yourself,” said Arthur, finishing his drink. “But there are easier ways to make money, Miss Eliza.”
“Well, I was never one for taking the easy way,” the woman said. “This plan I got—I know it’s a good one.”
Eliza stood up. “You want another one of those, Arthur?”
“Sure,” he said, hoping she would sit down again when she brought the drink. She did.
“What do you do, Arthur?”
“Uh, odd jobs,” he said slowly, thinking of Dutch and what he would say if he found out that Arthur told the whole town about the existence of the Van Der Linde gang.
The woman smiled and leaned forward. “Like what, Arthur?”
“Transportation. Deliveries,” he said. “Bounty hunting, sometimes.”
“You must have plenty of stories,” said Eliza.
“Sure,” said Arthur, sipping his drink, “but I’m not much of a storyteller.”
Eliza grinned.
“Where are you gonna go when you get your money, Miss Eliza?”
“Ain’t sure yet, Arthur,” she said. “I’ve always wondered what it’s like up North.”
“I been up North, a little,” Arthur said, sipping his drink. “It’s nice. Cold.”
“I do love the cold, Arthur.”
“Sure,” he said.
“You ever been South, Arthur? I mean, real South?”
Arthur shook his head.
“I want to go there, too. And East. And further West.”
Arthur felt himself smiling.
“You want to go everywhere.”
“I ain’t in a hurry. The women in my family, they live a long time,” she said, “unless they get killed.”
“Is that what happened to your family here?”
“Yeah,” the woman said, her smile fading. “It weren’t too long ago, maybe a year. We traveled outside the city a bit and got ambushed by some bastards. I got out safe, but no one else.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” said Eliza, sighing. “Like I said, they weren’t so nice to me.”
“Well,” Arthur said, “I wish you luck. I got no doubt you’ll be out of this town soon enough.”
“Thank you, Arthur.”
—
Dutch and Hosea were happy to see Arthur return, but the men’s happiness didn’t make him feel nearly as good as the thought of the woman he met.
He found himself visiting the town whenever he could, talking with her and reading with her, buying and bringing her books, books with stories of the North and the South and the East and the West.
At first he thought perhaps he annoyed her, or she was humoring him, but each day he appeared she would smile at him and say hello and his name. She told him how her family used to own a farm before she had to sell it, how she wished she could keep up a farm and still travel. They talked about what it would be like to get on his horse and ride and ride until they arrived at someplace neither of them had ever seen before, someplace beautiful and exciting and new. He told her about his life and how he could never be with her for very long and how he was a bad person.
“Ain’t no way you’re a bad person.”
“I’ve killed people, Eliza.”
“Who?”
“Killers. Thieves. Anyone trying to kill me.”
“That don’t make you a bad person, Arthur.”
He wasn’t sure.