Chapter Text
The man rode loose, slouching in his saddle. Collar upturned against the wind and hat brim low, he nudged his horse along carefully through the muddy road leading north outside of Harper’s Falls.
A heavy downpour had come sometime early that morning. The storm clouds, blocking out any sunlight, had fooled him into a late rise and he nearly scrambled for all of half an hour trying first to remember where he was, and second, why he was there.
There had been talk of flooding south of town in the areas settled lower near the river. The hotel clerk, watching the street from the window, had told him as such as he came down the stairs in twos. Though his business was in the other direction entirely, the roads themselves proved almost impassable, and the trip back colder and far more wet than he would’ve cared for.
He went into town mostly because Charles and Sadie had asked him to. The latter pausing in stoking a dying fire to tug him aside and prod him sternly in the chest.
“We can’t keep runnin’ blind,” Sadie had whispered, ducking her head to meet his eyes when he looked away. “We need to know what’s going on, Arthur. Hosea wouldn’t just say nothing. Especially if it’s you.”
He had considered it. Then Charles had joined him later that same afternoon. A bowl of something decidedly beige in one hand and a pewter cup balanced against his knee with the other.
“What’re we doing, Arthur?” He had asked. It felt rhetorical. He had brought the bowl to his lips and wasn’t even looking at him, so Arthur hadn’t answered at first. Leaned back against the wall of the empty cabin and lit a cigarette in favor of riddles. Then Charles looked at him sidelong and the meaning was understood.
“I’ll ride out tomorrow,” Arthur sighed.
Charles had smiled.
Sadie had seemed pleased the rest of the day.
He couldn’t be angry at them for it.
When he got into Harper’s Falls the next day, there had been a letter for one Tacitus Kilgore. Arthur opened it on the spot. It hadn’t been from who he’d expected though. He ran a hand along the ‘J.T.’ on the back of the envelope and tearing the letter free, frowned at Trelawney’s swirling script, reading the letter twice:
My Dear Brother,
May this letter find you well. At the moment, me and the wife are reading the book you gifted me! Truly a masterpiece. The author is not one of my favorites, However, an exception can be made for this. Each chapter has kept my interest piqued so far. We shall see if we cant finish it by the time you visit for holiday!
Send my well wishes to your wife. She is surely going to have the little one before your visit, yes? All of my prayers are with you two For so exciting a time. Elizabeth insists I add for you to make sure she’s getting all the rest and doting she needs, but knowing you, your missus won’t be in want for anything.
Let mother and father know all is well, as we don’t think my letter will Arrive to them in good time. You know how mother gets.
Lend me another book at any time as we’re always looking for new things to read. On another note, let me know what you like and we’ll send some too.
With affection,
J.
(p.s. it was this time last year, wasn’t it, that we were in forkstown? how time has flew)
To a prying eye, nothing would seem out of the ordinary. Though Arthur knew Josiah long enough to recognize that the wording and cadence seemed off for the man, and he had took it back with him to the hotel to stew over the rest of the evening when it struck him.
Josiah and he had a code. They only used it once on one of his harebrained schemes—an elaborate holdup in Forkstown, a little place back east—and it was painfully simple to crack compared to the others he concocted. All the recipient had to do was write in order every capital letter within the body of the letter and closing itself. If done well, should the letter get lost, anyone else reading wouldn’t find anything odd about it.
Arthur grabbed his journal from his satchel, flipping to an empty page and began transcribing the letters. The ‘M’ in ‘May.’ The ‘A’ in ‘At.’ Until a sentence was formed:
MATTHEWS SAFE
LAY LOW
He stares at it a moment longer and frowns. Tucks it in the back of his journal and returns both to his bag.
The letter raised more questions than it gave answers. Namely, why Josiah was being pulled into their mess in the first place and what Hosea could possibly be getting into that Josiah felt the need to say he was ‘safe.’
By the time Harper’s Falls was nothing more than its single church spire, looking as though it were nothing more than a needle risen from the ground, the sun found its way from behind the clouds casting lazy rays of pale light onto the hilly country below. Arthur pushed Luca into a gallop, and the remainder of the way tried to ignore the letter at his side.
Charles and Sadie greeted him when he arrived to the cabin. They stood on either side of the door like a pair of sentries, watching him dismount, roll his shoulders, and step past them inside.
They followed him in wordlessly while he shed his coat, nodding gratefully to Susan as she folded it near the fire, and greeting Abigail and Tilly as they sat near the back of the house with a box of sewing material between them and a napping Jack on a pile of blankets at his mothers feet.
They let him crouch to warm his hands for all of five minutes before Sadie cleared her throat, and sighing, he leaned back and looked up at the pair.
“There was a letter. From Josiah. He says Hosea’s safe and to lay low.”
“What do they want from Josiah?” Charles asked, and Arthur shrugged.
“I was wonderin’ the same thing. Answers probably. And if we lay any lower we’re gonna to be in the ground.”
“He knew where to find us,” Sadie announces. “Dutch and Micah might too.”
“If he spoke with Hosea, Hosea probably told him our route. I don’t think Dutch and Micah would know.”
Sadie hums in acknowledgement, dropping on the stool beside him and worrying at her lip. Between the time of the split to now, they would’ve been on the road for three months, though in that time it felt more like a very long dream than a reality. Over twenty years of his life, and suddenly it meant nothing. Their triumvirate and the kingdom they built going up in flames over a trolley accident, a concussion, and a week long of bedrest.
Nobody could have foresaw how serious Dutch’s injury was just like how nobody could have foresaw just how much it changed him. The tangible shift of loyalties when Hosea assumed position of temporary leader, this new sort of reckless abandon that spurred all their plans, Micah’s accusations of what transpired while Dutch was down. A cold, uneasy feeling settled somewhere between the bottom of Arthur’s spine and the pit of his stomach.
Standing, he said, “We’ll have to split ourselves soon. Running as a unit just makes us easier to track.”
“Molly’s going to be delivering soon,” Charles said quietly. “We ought to wait, at least until the baby is here.”
“I agree,” Sadie nodded. “Buy us time to get more money in our hands too.”
“Sure.”
Feeling returned to his hands in sharp spikes as he peered out what remained of the back window of the cabin, watching as John and Lenny helped Pearson and Uncle prepare an elk on a makeshift table of a split log. Mary Beth, Karen and a very pregnant Molly were going about rehanging laundry rescued from rain on a line running from an oak to a post beside the house...
What would they do?
Molly would have the baby, they’d have more money and then they’d go their separate ways, but Arthur would be lying if he said he’d thought that far ahead.
They’d sever the only ties they had, go out in the world with a frayed string, and try to tie a new one. It might work.
It would have to.
Maybe, in waiting, they’d have a better chance. But maybe too, they’d have time to figure out where they stood in a world rapidly changing.
The day they left, Uncle had said, “So, Morgan Gang’s in full swing now, are we?”
And Arthur had scowled at the name. Said, “We ain’t a gang anymore. We’re surviving.”
Until they reached this Faceless Future, that’s all they would have to do.
Survive.