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Charles could tell when John Marston was nervous. Even in the dark, with just the meagre glow of the campfire they had built lighting up his chin, John couldn’t hide the way he wrung his hands or hid his eyes beneath the brim of a raggedy hat too familiar for Charles to think about. The oppressive silence of Beecher’s Hope betrayed him readily, and each too-long pause between breaths or rustle of fabric with the anxious rise of his shoulders gave him away as easily as his notoriously pitiful poker face.
It was easy for Charles to tell when John was nervous, because it felt like staring down Arthur Morgan all over again. And it made Charles’s heart ache, made his spirit wish he had laid down and died right next to the man he had loved above anything else on this cruel, wretched earth that did nothing but take, take, take.
Charles had known, when he and Arthur had stepped behind a tent on the reservation to hold each other close before parting, that they would never see each other again. He had managed to keep his eyes dry, by some miracle – though perhaps it was no miracle at all, just the force of Arthur’s faith in Charles to go and be useful, to no longer be an outsider scorned for the color of his skin. The redness around those brilliant blue eyes had been more than illness, Charles liked to tell himself. Maybe even the great Arthur Morgan was wounded by their parting. As tough as he always pretended to be, unharmed by any slight and indifferent to his own innate goodness, Arthur was so very tender. He was a gentle man, and Charles had always known it. Others began to learn, at the end, but too many called it the weakness of a dying man.
Arthur had been so patient, so kind in the face of Charles’s reluctance to leave him behind. He had allowed the breathless whispers of affection and the arms clung too tight around his feeble frame and the kisses Charles pressed to his brow. Even the one kiss stolen from his cracking lips was reluctantly reciprocated, as there had been too few since he had stumbled into Charles’s arms with the verdict of a kindly doctor on his lips. Regardless of how terrified he always was of the death rotting in his lungs, ready to spread, maybe Arthur decided to allow himself one last kindness, one last tender touch from the man he loved. The consumption was immaterial to Charles, the threat of wheezing demise a mere stone in the path that wound between their hearts like trails in the Grizzlies. Because Charles Smith would die with Arthur Morgan, for Arthur Morgan, had the permission been granted.
They had parted regardless of his stalling, and the somber nobility of Arthur kicking his horse onto the road without looking back was enough to make Charles fall in love with him all over again, at the most inopportune of moments. It was that moment that forced him to leave the newly resettled Wapiti and ride south again, scouring mountainsides and following days old trails of blood and pistol casings until he found the other half of his heart lying on the cold stone. Not since he was a boy hiding from his father’s belt had Charles wept, but he sobbed over Arthur’s body like a widow, clutching at his coat and wiping the blood from his face with shaking hands. Seeing him there, so frail and forgotten, left a void in Charles’s chest that he meagerly filled with prize fights and drink, trying to chase his own tail into a grave that matched the one he dug for Arthur.
Like the ever-impending coughs that had bided their time in Arthur’s chest, the novelty of being left behind eventually numbed into a chronic emptiness, leaving Charles as blank and stoic as he had been before, and yet nothing akin to the same. Split knuckles and bloody lips and pointless barfights pulled some of his rage at the injustice of the world to the surface from its dormant slumber, like that day hunting bison with Arthur. And so Charles continued to fight, if only to feel something, anything that wasn’t the lonesome pull of a vacant heart sucking him down like Lemoyne bayou mud.
It seemed like luck that John found him and drug him up to breathe after eight years of drowning in the memory of Arthur Morgan. John looked different, looked good, and his hopeful ambitions soothed some of the jagged edges around Charles’s heart, gave him focus and gave him purchase. Cleaning up the craggy pebble plantation that the damn fool had sold his soul to the bank to buy meant something, and for the first time in forever, Charles felt as if he wasn’t letting Arthur down. Even after so long it was difficult not to mourn, but he managed, despite how agonizing it was when John reflected Arthur like a mountain pond, as he did now.
Charles watched him fiddle with a loose string on the seam of his jeans, watched him stumble over words that would surely be so genuine, but Charles finally managed to speak past the knot of sorrow in his throat.
“The house is coming along, John. Another few days and we should be nearly done,” he said idly, glancing over his shoulder to the homestead. The scent of pine and cedar still hung in the air. “You should be proud.”
“I am,” John fumbled, finally kickstarted. “Thank you, Charles. I… without your help I’d still be the proud owner of an empty dirt patch.”
Snorting, Charles leant down to toss a fresh log onto the fire. It landed with a furious cascade of sparks and spitting crackle before finally catching, burning slow with all the sap still fresh and wet. “No doubt.”
“You know, this is the first home I’ve had since before Dutch shot me down from the gallows. A real, physical home. A home I can share.”
Raising a brow curiously, Charles rested his elbows on his knees and watched the shadows dance on John’s face, watched them puddle in his deep old scars. John sounded so surprised that he could nearly pass for pleased with his efforts, if not for the lingering edge of something uncertain in the rasp of his voice.
“Have you written Abagail yet?” Charles asked, neutral.
A great sigh fell from John’s chest like a Blackwater downpour, and he rubbed his knuckles into his shadowed eyes. “I… I’ve tried,” he griped. “Started four goddamn letters and ain’t finished one. Can’t get my words right. Too much t’ say.”
Charles knew the agony of that sentiment as well, knew the crippling fear of no more second chances and the scorn befallen a heartfelt, bumbling fool. It was a great irony that Charles Smith, in all his brooding silence, had only found his words when time was running out. There was so much to say, and so few quiet moments to speak, and he had learned with the cruel sharpness of a bullet to the back that the only words that mattered were the ones that you had never been brave enough to say. Those were the most important, the ones that you knew you could never take to the grave. He wished he had learnt it sooner.
“Tell her what matters. That’s all she wants to hear,” Charles told him, feeling lonely and unhelpful. “Whatever your last words to her would be, that’s what you write. The rest will come.”
John gaped at him for a long moment, and then snorted a despondent laugh, conceding to his wisdom. “I never knew you was a philosopher, or a romantic.”
“I’ve been many things, my friend, but never those,” Charles huffed, finally grinning. “I’m just a fool who’s been in love, that’s all.”
A knowing, mournful expression sliced through the amusement on John’s face and he lowered his gaze once more, studying the swirling smoke from the campfire with more attention than it deserved. Charles wondered, for a moment, if John knew about he and Arthur. They had always been careful, Arthur too afraid of lending the strike of sodomite to Charles’s record of also being a murdering negro Indian. Charles was never afraid, too proud of Arthur to conceal him for the sake of propriety, but the terror in Arthur’s eyes when he’d spoken of his fear of finding Charles lynched by a roadside in Lemoyne ended the argument. He would do anything for Arthur, even pretend that he didn’t love him.
“I…” John fumbled, avoiding his eyes and rummaging about in his satchel for far longer than it actually took to find whatever he was looking for. When he turned back to the fire, there was something gleaming between his fingers from where he clutched it in his fist. “I'm gonna ask Abigail to marry me, I think. Proper, this time.”
Charles snapped his gaze from John's restless fingers to his face, and there was little to be done about the weakly tender smile that tugged at his lips.
“Congratulations, John.”
“Well I ain't asked her yet. She may not even have me,” he chuckled, more self conscious than Charles had seen him in a very long time.
Christ, he was just like Arthur.
Finally opening his hand, John ran his thumb over the stone in the dainty silver ring he had looped idly around his little finger, reaching out to show it to Charles. It was a pretty thing, though nothing overly fine, with a little red garnet and two scraps of turquoise mounted on the band, all of the colors bleeding orange in the firefight.
“I was going to use this, if I could. It was—”
“Arthur's,” Charles finished flatly, finally recognizing the ring.
He had never been a jealous man, and he knew that Arthur had loved others before him, but Charles also remembered the resignation inspired by this silly little band in an envelope that smelled like expensive perfume and regret. It was no secret. Arthur had told him about Mary, how he’d thought that he loved her and she him, and how it was not reciprocated as he’d hoped. Maybe they had truly cared for each other, once, but it seemed to Charles that Mary Linton was just too thrilled by the scandal of her folded in the arms of a righteous outlaw. It seemed she hoped to fix Arthur just the way she wanted him, preserving what bits of him suited her preferences like a flower pressed inside a heavy book. But Arthur was perfect as he was, flawed and lethal and so, so beautiful. Charles knew that. He knew what Arthur was, and loved him for his every bit of goodness, loved him for the blood under his fingernails and the gunmetal in his heart.
Mary had coveted the ring Arthur gave her, even after she pushed him away. When she needed him, Arthur was always there to help, but by the time she decided that he was truly better than any metropolitan man she’d find, his heart no longer had any room for her and her fickleness. The ring arriving in camp seemed to cut the last of her tethers to Arthur, finally severing his self-imposed, guilt-ridden dedication to her. Charles watched him as he read the letter scrawled in her flowing hand, and there was nothing but exhausted resignation in the lines of his eyes, and maybe a little relief.
Perhaps Charles was too cruel in his opinion of the woman. Perhaps she truly did love Arthur as she said, but merely felt as bound to her family as Arthur did to his, both dysfunctional and broken. But even as he tried to rationalize such a difficult situation, to look at their past relationship as objectively as he could manage, Charles couldn’t help but see a desperate woman wringing the last out of a good hearted man who had nothing left to give.
“Yeah,” John grated, clearing his throat. “It was in the bottom of his satchel when he left it with me. I was hoping to use it, but I thought it was only right to offer it to you first.”
“To me?”
John sucked in a long breath through his nose, the smoke from the fire surely singeing his nostrils. There looked to be about one million words reined in behind his clenched teeth, but he pursed his lips, thought for several long moments, and sighed, slumping.
“I know ‘bout you and Arthur, Charles,” he finally admitted, meeting Charles’s wide-eyed stare in earnest for the first time all evening. He must have seen the rising panic painting its way onto Charles’s face through the darkness, because he suddenly sat up straighter, visibly backpedaling. “It don’t bother me, you know, even if I don’t understand it. Always thought Arthur was a little funny that way, but I never really knew ‘til you joined up. He always watched you, lingerin’ too long. But he told me true, about you, there at the end. Asked me to watch out for you, if I could. An’ I fucked that up too.”
“He never wanted to tell—”
Charles bit off his words, sucking air into lungs that felt too tight and wondering idly if this was how Arthur had felt for all those months — like a vise was closed around his chest, slowly crunching the life from his body. If so, it was truly a wonder he had made it so long, struggling to survive through firefights just so he could see Charles one more time. Arthur Morgan was a revelation, a legend, a dying man. And Charles had been so ignorant, so careless, running the one he loved into an early grave.
“Charles,” John cooed gently, voice lowering with the sort of awkward, uncertain kindness that only fatherhood could have taught him. “Charles, Arthur loved you. God, more than anything, it seemed like. The fact that he did, that he told me he did, is the only reason I ended up here, buildin’ a damn house and tryin’ to win my family back.”
John leaned forward, elbows on his knees, suddenly and easily commanding the sort of attention that Arthur always had. They really were brothers in everything but blood, even when they were entirely in opposition to one another. Sometimes it made Charles’s heart feel like one of the tall red cliffs near Tumbleweed, crumbling little by little and wearing down to nothing.
“I know why everything tore you up so bad that I found ya beatin’ men to death for money in San Denis. It’s the same reason why Sadie started killin’ after her husband.”
“You talk too much, Marston,” Charles gritted out, hanging his head.
“Well, I’m talkin’ truth, and you know it.”
“Maybe so.”
In the night, the Great Plains heat was sucked away with the sun, and a crisp, breezy chill settled in at Charles’s back. He breathed deep, the air sitting soft and cool in his chest until he huffed it out in a temperate sigh, stirring the smoke drifting lazily from the fire. Glancing at the ring still looped around John’s too-thick finger, he knew that the little band was never meant for him, but he held his hand out for it anyway. John obliged, dropping the dainty thing in Charles’s broad palm.
The metal was warm from John’s incessant fidgeting, the stones warped to molten colors in the firelight. Charles had never seen it so close – the thing that Arthur had given to profess his love to another, to ask her to be his – and he could practically feel Arthur’s intentions through the silver, his hopes and terror and devotion. They were the same feelings Charles had felt with Arthur’s fingers curled into his coat, Arthur’s breath warm on his lips the first time they kissed, trudging through two feet of snow outside of Colter. The timing was terrible but the intention was true, and in that moment Charles had known that he was doomed to fall in love with Arthur Morgan.
It was a relief, in a way, after months of dancing around each other and playing tough to protect themselves from the inevitable scorn that followed being ousted as a sodomite, especially in such rough company. Arthur may have been fine, being such a favored son of Dutch and having good standing in the gang, but Charles had only been with them for six months and could easily have been made an example of. But then Arthur had kissed him beneath a copse of pines, with snow falling heavy on their shoulders, and the overwhelming relief he had felt had warmed his heart to the potential of them. Arthur had whispered thank you, like he always did when Charles didn’t deserve it, and had kissed him again.
Charles was lucky, in retrospect, to even have the chance to love Arthur Morgan at all.
“Abigail will love it,” he breathed gently, trying to smile as he handed the ring back to John. “It suits her.”
John gaped for a moment before his jaw clicked shut audibly. “But Arthur…”
“Arthur didn’t just belong to me, John,” Charles told him. “Arthur loved you, you were always his foolish little brother. He loved you, even when he didn’t like you. Just like he loved Abigail, Jack, Hosea, Sadie, Lenny, Tilly, Sean. He wasn’t just mine.”
Clenching his fingers around the ring in his palm, John brought his fist to his brow and wheezed a shaky sigh. He had never seen John so close to tears, and Charles felt terrible for dragging him to the edge of mourning like this, especially with how young he looked with his expression pulled so tight.
“Thank you, Charles,” John whispered, sniffling and rubbing his eyes like a boy. “I don’t… I can’t leave you with nothing of him, not when I have all this.”
“I don’t have nothing,” Charles said, tapping at his chest. “Arthur’s right here, always has been.”
“You deserve more. With all you did for Arthur, for me,” he trailed off, the pinched lines between his brow smoothing out in realization as a thought seeped through the sorrow, and he began digging through his satchel again.
Arthur would have told John not to hurt himself by thinking too much, but Charles suspected that, like Arthur, John was not nearly as stupid as he allowed everyone to think. Maybe he had been, once, but time had changed him and worn him smooth into a decent man, a thoughtful man, a father. Maybe that’s what had done it – being a father. Perhaps Arthur had been the same way, before his son had been taken from him. Poor Arthur, Charles thought sadly. He had lost so much, time and again.
The sound of ripping paper drug Charles out of his head, and he turned back to John with confusion twisting his lips. On John’s lap was a journal, leather bound and beaten, and so familiar that the breath left Charles in what could have been a whine, had he been able to hear anything aside from the hammering of his own heart. He was reaching out before he had consciously decided to, sliding from the crate he sat on and sinking into the dirt by John’s feet, trembling fingers hovering above the scratched leather binding.
“It’s yours, if you want it,” John told him gently, as he folded a loose sheet with his financials scrawled on it and tucking it into his pocket with Abigail’s ring. “It’s the least I can do.”
Charles slid the journal from John’s knee, gently as he could, as if it were a Gutenberg Bible – and it might as well have been, because Arthur Morgan had become his religion long ago, and he was a fanatic, a veiled worshipper weeping at his altar. Thumbing over the cover, Charles finally found the strength to open the unassuming little book, and he had to sink his teeth into his lip at the languid scrawl of handwriting that was not nearly as familiar as it should have been, at pretty little sketches and masterpieces sharing the breadth of a single sheet. The days of Arthur’s life fluttered by, page after page, recorded in pencil that always smudged against thick, coarse fingers when he drew too quickly.
A dark, heavy page of familiar scribbles caught his attention, and he spread the journal open wide to the drawing of their little spot near O’Creagh’s Run, when he and Arthur had made the excuse of needing meat for camp to go hide away for a few days. Charles remembered watching Arthur draw it, remembered ceasing his attempts to fletch arrows to instead follow the scratching of lead against paper, enamored. He remembered the afternoon sun painting Arthur’s hair amber, remembered the long shadows of the mountains pouring ink across the lake, remembered the trembling of pines and the heat of unhurried passion within their tent, keeping them warm long into the night. But for all the spectacular images that Charles could recall, none of it was as beautiful as the peaks and valleys carved out of the page by Arthur’s hand.
“Thank you, John,” Charles wheezed on the end of a watery laugh, flipping carefully to the next page. “Thank you. I—”
He swallowed his words of gratitude in a shaky gasp, damp eyes wide with wonder. On the sheet before him was his own sleeping face, smudged lovingly with early morning shadow, Arthur’s heavy winter coat folded beneath his head.
“Arthur loved you,” John said softly, rising from his seat and setting a comforting hand on Charles’s shoulder. “I’ve read that thing from cover to cover, and anyone could see it.”
“Thank you.”
Nodding, John turned away and began trudging back to the house, the weight of the evening’s conversation pressing like lead upon his shoulders. He stopped, barely still within the flickering reach of the firelight, to glance over his shoulder one last time, calling back to Charles: “There’s a few entries you should read. One from Colter, one from just before Clemens Point, one from right before Eagle Flies was shot, and the last. I think they’ll remind you of what I already know. Goodnight, Charles.”
“’Night,” Charles called to his retreating back, watching him be swallowed by the darkness with a liminal sort of numbness blurring his head. He opened the journal once more, from where it had fallen shut on his fingers, and turned to the beginning. The Colter entries were short and smeared with blotches from melting snow, but each word was so entirely Arthur that Charles could feel the sting of emotion behind his eyes and in his nose.
May 14, 1899
I hate this frozen shithole. Thank Christ for Charles though, first for lending me Taima and second for the company. Without him I think I would’ve put a bullet in Swanson by now. Or Pearson. Or Micah. Helps me keep my head on. I have no fucking clue no idea what the hell is going on or why we’re here, but everything went to shit in Blackwater. I at least know that.
Charles has been good company, though. Manages to keep everyone steady. When he first joined up I thought he was going to be a big mean bastard, and he can be, but that’s not who he is. Sometimes he watches me, makes me real nervous. I think he may have caught me staring a few times. Maybe he knows. He’s real friendly when he wants to be, but maybe he’ll really turn into a big mean bastard if he finds out I’m half a sodomite who wants him.
May 16, 1899
GODDAMMIT. I’m a damn fool. I kissed Charles while we were out hunting for Pearson. Just leaned right in and did it. I can’t believe he didn’t put a knife in me, since it was already in his hand. I figured we may die up here anyway, so I just did it without thinking. I kissed him and thanked him for something kind he’d said, half expecting him to knock my teeth out. Instead he pressed right up against me, sweet as a cheap whore, and kissed me back until I couldn’t breathe. There’s still blood on my cheek from where he held the side of my neck, those same hands that had just put down a deer holding onto me like I was important it mattered.
It was good. Damn, was it good. I wonder if this changes anything. I hope it does.
“You fool, Arthur,” Charles griped down at the page, grinning. “I was thinking you’d be the one to put a bullet in me, you big mean bastard.”
He flipped through the pages, stopping to admire the occasional drawing of some plant or bird or horse at a hitching post in Valentine, swearing that he would go back and read each page later, basking in every word. Leaning back against the crate that John had vacated, Charles rested the journal on his knees and began to read.
June 1, 1899
Left camp real early to go hunting with Charles up near Twin Stacks. He said we were hunting bison. Now, I had seen those big sons of bitches, but never up close enough to put a bullet in one, and I was hoping to keep it that way. But I can’t say no to Charles. Not with the way he smiles at me and says sweet things against my lips. I don’t believe a word of it, but its nice to pretend sometimes.
He told me all about his people and they way the followed the bison on the ride up. I could listen to him talk forever. He doesn’t usually say much, but he does when we’re alone. Like he’s saving all his words up for me.
We managed to take down a bison, and I don’t think my heart has beat so fast since I was trying to keep those wolves off of Marston and Javier up north. I was damn sure I’d get trampled. Pretty sure Lizzie thought the same, poor horse. But we got it, and Charles kept talking the whole time we butchered the thing, right there in the sun. He looked good with his hair sticking to his face and bloody up to his elbows. Made me want to say things I shouldn’t. Made me want to lick the sweat off his neck. Fuck, I’m filthy. But so’s he, because he would have let me.
When we were starting back he saw a bunch of vultures circling to the west and I followed him to see what they were after. Ended up finding a trail of half rotten bison corpses that we followed to a camp with a couple of fellers. Poachers. They thought they were tough bastards just because they talked big. I nearly put a bullet in one for calling Charles something rude, but Charles beat me to it. Turns out some Army man from Fort Wallace was paying them to kill bison and make it look like Indians. I did put a bullet in the other one, though.
Charles looked madder than hell, but I know he was actually real sad. I understood, but didn’t know what to say. I let him go when he wanted to head back to camp on his own. Felt like a damn fool for it. Shit. I think I love him, but couldn’t even do anything to help. Maybe there wasn’t nothing to do. I don’t know. Feels like I let him down.
Charles felt his stomach twist at the last line, knowing all the way down to the marrow of his bones that Arthur had never, not once, let him down. He’d come close a time or two, but he was so good, so inherently good that he had always managed to listen more to the muscle beating in his chest than Dutch’s incessant drone of more, more, more. Arthur had been so convinced that he was a terrible man that he nearly made it true sometimes, and the way he had convinced himself that he deserved every bad turn he got always broke Charles’s heart. He tried to help, he truly did, but like Arthur had suspected after their trip to the Heartlands, there was nothing to be done.
Somber with sorrow and an expectation of worse to come, Charles jumped further forward, gritting his teeth at the date. Arthur had told him a week or two before that he was dying, and nearly pushed Charles away entirely in an attempt to keep him safe and healthy. It had been agonizing, but he was damn determined that he would not, would not, let Arthur struggle through it all alone. Arthur had conceded, eventually, so tired of fighting. Eventually he had turned his attempts at saving lives to John and his family, to Tilly, to Sadie, and had miserably accepted that Charles would not leave him behind as he wanted him to. He did, though, in the end. He left with the Wapiti, and let Arthur die alone.
September 15, 1899
Charles and I busted Eagle Flies out of Fort Wallace last night. We made a right mess, and Eagle Flies looked like shit by the end of it all, but we all made it out in one piece. Or at least, we made it out not dead.
Running jobs with Charles still makes me want to puke. Every gunshot scares the shit out of me, afraid that it was the one that finally got him. Losing Charles would kill me sooner than the consumption will. I want him to be safe, and far away from all this mess. But he’s a good fighter and one of the few people I can still put my back to without thinking a knife may end up in it. It’s good to have him around, but I can’t keep watching him walk into gunfire like he’s untouchable.
Christ, I love him more than anything. So much it hurts. And it hurts to try to get him to go, especially when he fights me like a wildcat every time I bring it up. Even Marston puts up less of a fuss about it now, but I think maybe he’s just too scared to never see his family again. Or maybe he’s just too stupid. Charles, though, he’s convinced that the only thing he has to lose is me, and I can’t begin to tell him how wrong he is. He has a whole life to live, if I haven’t managed to pass him my sickness, and I only have a couple weeks.
I can feel my time running out. I’m tired. I’m sick of fighting. And I’m scared. I’m scared because I’ll never see him again. I’ll end up in hell where I belong, and a long time from now he’ll end up in heaven. Maybe if we were both sinners it wouldn’t be so bad. But this is what I get for always wanting what ain’t mine to have, and taking the rest.
And I want. I want so much. I want him to know how much he means to me. I want him to live and be happy after I’m gone. I want to give him a ring and make him mine forever, even if the law or God says it’s wrong. But I’m afraid that if I did he would never leave me when the time came. And the time is coming, fast.
September 21, 1899
My whole code that I lived and killed by.
Was it true? Or was there some other truth that I was too dumb to ever see?
Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t. Charles is the only one who ever thought I wasn’t too dumb to just kill because Dutch told me to. Charles and knowing I’m a bad man who’s dying are the only things that have let me try to make amends. I’ll never redeem myself the things I’ve done. There’s not enough time. Probably never would be. I’m trying, but its too late for everyone, so all I do is probably worthless. Charles says I’m wrong. I hope he’s right.
I’m going to miss him. I already do, and I only left him behind with Rains Fall yesterday. I hope I die soon, just so that I don’t have to keep remembering the look on his face. He kissed me, even though I’ve warned him not to, and it was the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted. I love him. I don’t want him to watch me die. I love him.
I hope he’ll be okay and that he’ll forget about me. I hope Sadie and John and Abigail and Jack will all forget too, that they’ll be okay too. It’ll be better that way.
“Oh, Arthur.”
Charles wiped the salty wetness from his face, trying to catch it before it dripped from his jaw and onto the page, ruining Arthur’s words. Arthur made him soft, made him the type to grow all teary over sentiments expressed eight years ago by a man who never wanted to be remembered. But Charles would always remember, even if forgetting was the only thing that Arthur ever asked of him.
Even if he would betray Arthur’s last hope for him, Charles would still live. He wouldn’t drink himself into back alley brawls, hoping that some big dockworker would finally crack his skull against the concrete. He wouldn’t take on bounties that had him outgunned ten to one, praying for a bullet. He would do his best, help John and his family, and try to atone for all the things he’d done. He could do that much for Arthur, at least. But he would never forget.
Charles sighed and clutched the journal to his chest, scrubbing the tears from his eyes as he looked up at the same stars that Arthur lay below on a ridge in Roanoke Valley. He would go visit him once they were finished raising John’s homestead, maybe after the wedding. Arthur would like to hear about it, he decided. Besides, Charles needed to go remind that fool how much he loved him.