Chapter Text
They had nearly as many names as they had stories told about them.
Ram. Raven. Red. Devil. Deputy. Outlaw. Short 'n Long. Ghosts of the Rapids.
What happened to them depends on who you ask. Some say the Raven twisted the Ram, but then again, the Ram might have been born with badness in the marrow of their bones. They say the outlaw was a thief, that her glittering horde still lies somewhere out in the desert among the canyons. They say the deputy was a sharpshooter with twenty notches on their pistol, one for every man who tried to take them. They say they were very much in love.
Maybe they still are. People who camp alone by the river say at night, they hear too-loud whispers over the rush.
If you ask the only man who was there that day, he'll tell you the same thing every time, and nothing more: "They went over the cliff and into the river. Never found the bodies."
He won't tell you whether they were dead before they hit the water. He won't even tell you whether they were shot at all. Maybe, as some say, the two of them just tipped, hand-in-hand, falling backwards over the edge together as children let themselves fall into soft grass.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what Bane says. If she so much as looks at me wrong, I’m shooting.”
Hurley whipped their head around, but Jerry and Barbra didn’t notice. Their horses dragged behind at a dull clop against the soft dust of the ground, while the two of them leaned toward each other as they whispered. Hurley slowed their mare and fell back themself, to hear them better over the jangling of the stirrups.
“Yeah, like you’d be that quick on the draw,” Barbra responded.
“Aw, fuck you,” Jerry sneered. “Anyway, I’ve heard this one killed a man with a pebble to the forehead, never mind what she can do with a bullet. I’m not taking chances.”
“You’re both gonna get yourselves killed if you’re that trigger-happy in the face of an outlaw,” Hurley called, loudly enough for both them and Sheriff Bane to hear. They met the simultaneous glares of the two men with a broad grin.
That diminished rather quickly when they heard, “Hurley, I told you this canyon echoes. Be careful.”
Hurley turned away before they could see Jerry and Barbra poorly hiding their snickers. When they looked at Bane riding in front of them, he beckoned with a nod of his head, and they came forward. There was just enough room for them to ride alongside him between the high walls of the sinuous canyon. The sun was at its highest, and rays shot down straight through the gap. It was brilliant enough to make the clear sky look nearly white when they looked straight up. Over the days of travel in the desert, their dark freckles had grown darker and multiplied across their thick, warm brown shoulders and back.
“The problem,” he began rather conspiratorially, “is anyone can take a look at a thousand-dollar ‘wanted’ poster and convince themself they’re a bounty hunter.” They followed his gaze as he slowly looked back to where Barbra was harassing Jerry with a wriggling scorpion he’d found.
Hurley giggled, then covered their mouth. “I wouldn’t suppose that a lot of bravado is all you need to be good at it.”
“You’re right about that. Not to mention that the people who come in guns blazing are also the ones who turn tail the quickest when things get to be too much for them.
“Well, I hope not, if you’re here to keep them in check.”
“And that’s why I asked you to come along.” His crow’s feet deepened as he glanced at them with a smile. “You’d rather rush in to stop trouble rather than to start it. Don’t think I missed how you break up all those tavern fights and call out folks who are hustling or stealing in there.”
They shrugged. Pride rose warm in their chest like the shimmering air that wafted from the desert’s ground. “I’d like to think I’m better at finishing fights than starting them, these days.”
“Well, sure, but I mean more than that. I need someone like you who wants to stop conflict before it starts. That’s what I see in you. You get so many people out here trying to collect bounties who want to be heroes, shooting first and asking questions never. Like they wanna be one-person juries. Can’t have that. You bring outlaws back alive whenever you can so they can go through the same damn justice system everyone else has to deal with.” His pale blue eyes glanced and gleamed their way. “We can work on your patience.”
They laughed again and bit their lip. “Well, I wouldn’t have come with if it weren’t for you. I wouldn’t be doing much of anything at the moment if it weren’t for you.”
“Don’t thank me. You’ve got promise. Can’t do anything about that.” His voice took on its typical instructive tone. “Now, all that being said, you’ve got to look out for yourself out here. The Raven’s lightning-quick and knows this land and clearly doesn’t mind killing, as you know. I don’t suspect she’ll do much but run, but keep your guard up.”
“Have you tried tracking her down before?”
“This is what I know from other people who’ve gone after her. I think you needn’t be too worried, but…” His voice died off. His horse came to a stop. “This is the place she’s been seen before.”
Their heart began to bounce inside their chest as they thought of facing their quarry. Their horse sped up to a trot.
“Hurley.”
They looked behind them to find a stern-faced Bane and a posse that had stopped moving altogether. Trying to swallow down the blush working up their face, they got back in line behind Bane.
The four moved single-file through the canyon. At various points, Bane sometimes whispered, more often simply signalled with his hands for one of them to break off and explore another path. They would return empty-handed.
Quiet filled up the gaps between the stone walls, washed over them like the long-dead rivers that had once carved out these canyons. The soft crunch of the horse’s feet against the grit of the ground was all that came to them.
Bane held up a hand for them to stop. Hurley heard, then, just for a moment, the sound of hoofbeats that belonged to none of their rides. With the way sound played off the stone, they couldn’t determine how far it was. The group kept forward, turned once.
And then a flash of dark around a corner.
Their galloping set the whole place rumbling as they all shot off. Hurley’s horse nearly skittered on the sand several times as they whipped the reins sharply to the side. It was what was necessary to wind through the narrow passages that curled deeper and deeper into the canyon.
Whenever there was a widening of the path that might allow more than one horse through at a time, Hurley tried to shove past the others. They had to be up front. They could barely see anything past Bane, leading at the front and shouting things they couldn’t hear.
He grabbed his lasso as they came around one bend. There was nothing on his face except the same solid determination as usual, only sharpened.
The posse pulled around the corner and came to an instant halt, scraping hooves stirring sand. Hurley craned their neck to see the dead end at the end of this passage, a sheer wall of redstone. But no Raven.
Not until there was sound well behind the whole group as the dark form reappeared and shot off in the other direction.
They kept pace with the rest of the group, until they didn't. By degrees, they drew their horse back into a canter, then a slow trot. As expected, the others were too fixated on their path to notice that they were losing Hurley, as they leaned low over the manes of their galloping animals. The posse twisted around a sharp corner and out of their sight.
You're thinking with your belly again, they heard their mother say, while she poked the round ball of their seven-year-old tummy.
None of them were about to outpace the Raven while she stayed three turns ahead of them. She knew the canyon, maybe so well that she knew where her pursuers were just by hearing the echo of them along the red stone walls. But if just one of them could out-maneuver...
They bid their horse to turn around and move at a quiet walk. This was not a betrayal of Bane's orders, they convinced themself. Not really, anyway. Maybe he had told them to keep up with the group, but surely the higher order was to catch the thief. If they did that, he could forgive the unconventional methods.
And they would do it.
They started to pick their way through the tangle of paths. The Raven had traveled back this way, running in front of the posse, only to disappear around a bend and re-emerge behind them all. This, perhaps, was where a number of the narrow natural trails converged. They might part only to circle back and rejoin each other elsewhere. If that were true, she would be likely to stay near the place where she had a number of exit routes. This was where she expected she'd be safe. That was good for Hurley.
They chose their directions nearly at random, only knowing that they wanted to roughly parallel the path that their team had been taking before. They could meet up with them and maybe head the Raven off, if they could only keep track of where the others might be. They went left, left again, right. When they reached a slot-like passage in the rock face too narrow for a horse, they bit their lip, then dismounted and left the gelding behind as they sidled sideways through.
Occasionally, their calls and the pounding of their horses' hooves would come to Hurley, and they would stop to hear more. By then, though, the echoes would have already receded. It was impossible to pinpoint the place where the sounds came from--they got bounced around and lost in the network of paths until they seemed entirely disembodied. They might as well have been the chattering of specters wafting their way in the cavernous, lonely canyon. Right, left. No route here was distinct from the rest. For all they knew, they were wearing circles into the sand.
Right, right again, and then, suddenly, no further. They pulled themself back behind a boulder and instinctively clapped a hand over their mouth. It was some time before they were able to make themself crane their neck back around, to determine whether they had seen what they'd thought they'd seen.
From behind, they saw a figure sitting atop her steed. Long black duster turned sepia by the caked-on dust of the desert and a wide-brimmed, jet bolero with a sharp feather sticking up straight from the hatband. She was still. Just waiting.
Their mouth felt dry. At some point, they realized that it was gaping open, and they snapped it shut. The clack of their teeth sounded far too loud in their mouth.
They took a single step around the large stone that they hid behind. The half-elf's ears swiveled around and moved to pick up on sound. They seemed to fixate on nothing, though. Certainly, she didn't look Hurley's way as they gripped the long rope and positioned it in their hands. Their every movement was measured now. With every scrape of the rough hemp coil against their fingers, they felt certain that she would turn around, but she didn't. Another step, placed on the ground deliberately. The sand did not crunch beneath them.
From where they stood behind the boulder, they did not have a clear shot at her, but they did not dare step out fully into the open. They could still get her, though. They would still get her. It probably should have been fear that sent the eager blood blazing through them--the fear that she would see them and be gone in an instant, the fear that they would be gone in an instant when she spun to blow them away--but that wasn't it. This was the familiar thrill of the final blow and the bullseye. It ran through them whenever they knew they were about to prove what they could do. They clenched their lasso as the world shrunk to what was right in front of them. What was right in front of them was an opportunity.
They threw. The Raven had a half-second to look at the loop that had snapped tight around her ankle before Hurley pulled with all they could, and down she went to the ground. When she impacted, it was with a choked noise that might have been a yell, had the wind not been punched out of her lungs.
They almost wanted to cheer as her horse spooked and ran off.
But then they turned to look at just what it was they had caught. The figure at the end of their tether lay on her back for several moments, unmoving. For a moment, they wondered if she had been stunned by a blow to the head. They saw that, certainly, she was still hurting from the way her spine had slammed into the baked-hard earth. Low, creaking groans came from the back of her throat along with her exhales.
Suddenly, as though startled awake, her eyes snapped wide open to the sky. She scrambled to push herself onto her elbows look at the place where her ride had been, then spun her whole body around to face Hurley.
There was a bandana tied around her face, black and patterned with feathers, puffing out slightly with every breath. It covered up everything except her eyes, but the eyes were enough. Now unshielded by the hat that had fallen from her head, they snatched Hurley's gaze and held it tight. They were big, for one thing, and youthful, with the red-brown skin around them unlined. What hit them, though, was how they went wide and got wider, caught bare and off-guard. Like they took in everything and understood none of it. Disbelief at being brought down so far and so fast.
Hurley liked making people believe they could do things previously thought impossible. Usually.
The Raven's eyes flitted down to the rope around her foot twice, the first time almost as an afterthought, the second with a look of mounting rage, and it occurred to Hurley just then that they had not really restrained her much at all. They tightened their grip on the lasso just as she went to stand and yanked so that she could not get her footing. She fell back onto her but with an indignant grunt and tried again. They pulled again, becoming more aware all the while that they were just bringing her closer to them.
That was when the sound returned to them like rocks tumbling over each other. Both they and the Raven turned just in time to see Barbra and Jerry come riding up, each of them tossing a rope around her torso and pinning her arms to her sides. She squirmed against the bonds for a few moments and then went still, glaring between the three of them there. That was that.
A fine thread of blood had begun to trickle out from beneath her hairline, barely skirting her eye, where she could not wipe it away. It ran all the way down to her neck. Hurley's doing. They were about to step forward to take a look at her when they felt a large hand press down on their shoulder.
Bane had a grin for them. "Knew it was a good idea bringing you along." They smiled back, and while it was genuine, it must not have been enough. "Something the matter?"
"Nothing, nothing much, it's just..." They looked back at the woman who had been scruffed and pulled to her knees. Barbra still had her by the back of the collar, with a bit of her hair caught in his fist. Something was the matter with Hurley, yes. But they didn't know what, and the best they could do was shrug and murmur, "She's younger than I thought."
He gave the thief an assessing look. "Not more than a year or two younger than you, I'd say. Anyway, why would she be older? Outlaws don't last long out here, Hurley, not the way they live." He walked forward then, presumably to tell the boys to ease up on the lassos before she started to suffocate. Her breathing had already turned shallower as she struggled to expand her chest.
He didn't do that. Instead he stepped close to her so that the tips of his boots nearly touched her knees. He cast her into shadow as he stood over her, making her lean back in order to match his gaze. Then, with a forefinger and thumb, he gripped the mask around her face and pulled it down in one motion. They saw all of her hard countenance now. A pale scar ran over the bridge of her nose, another down across her lips in a perfect vertical.
With the same hand that had felt warm and strong on Hurley's shoulder a moment ago, he suddenly grabbed her jaw. His fingers pressed into the skin of her cheek, his thumb dug into the bone beneath her ear. They released a minute gasp. They could see it from where they stood, how he kept squeezing as though to wring something out of her, which perhaps he did when her mouth was forced open a bit.
"So that's what you look like," he said coolly. "You'll really get your picture in all the papers now, isn't that right?"
There would be crescent-moon indentations in her flesh for hours. He dug and dug.
Her expression stayed hard and solid as stone. Her lower jaw was gritted and jutted. Hurley didn't understand how any of this was happening, but mostly they didn't know how she wasn't even trying to pull away. How she stood it rather than trying to whip her head out of his grasp. That was what they would have done, they thought.
He dropped his hand, finally. "Make sure you tie her up tight. She's been known to try sneaking away."
This was the only time she fought, really. Jerry came up behind her and she glanced backwards, gritted her teeth, got one of her feet underneath her and tried to stand before being shoved back to the ground. A hand on her bent back, right at the vertebra where the neck met the spine. She kept struggling as her arms were crossed behind her, with each wrist bound against the opposite elbow. It was only when Barbra pulled back on the rope hard enough to make her wince that she stopped. That left her leaning over a little. Her chest and the muscles of her belly worked hard on every rasping inhale. Her breathing stayed heavy and open-mouthed when she was half-pulled and half-kicked to her feet and started walking behind the horses as they moved in the direction of their base camp.
On the way back, they kept turning back to look. She just walked. She drove her gaze into the ground like a plough and hardly moved or lifted it, except to glare when she felt the occasional extra tug on the ropes around her torso. Other than that, she looked almost listless. Concussed, maybe, they thought. But she wasn't uncoordinated or struggling to focus. She simply wasn't reactive.
At one point, Jerry, at Bane’s behest, tossed them the gun that he had pulled off her. It was an older model, but it looked clean, at least cleaner than the rest of her. When they rubbed their finger inside the barrel, it came out immaculate rather than being blackened with old traces of powder, as though it had almost never been fired at all. They tried several times, and after that, looked at their incongruously clean hands.
"Sheriff..." they started once they were back at the base camp. They had just watched the boys shove the Raven into the wagon and lock her inside. "You're going to have them untie her first, right?"
"She can sit in there for a little while like that. It won't do any harm. Good for tiring her out a bit."
"Yes it will," they responded without waiting a beat. "That's dangerous."
"It's only for a few hours, Hurley. It won't hurt anything."
They tried to keep from gaping at him. "It'll definitely hurt. It probably hurts now."
“Maybe you’re right. Still, better that then having her try to bust out and run.”
“What could she possibly do from inside a wagon?”
There was a force and urgency in their voice that they heard too late. He half-turned his head towards them, just enough that they could see the widening of his eye and the raising of his brow. He wasn't upset, but something in his voice suggested "yet." "Hurley, you caught an outlaw on your first go, and that's to be commended, but you're still new to all of this. I've been here plenty of times. Trust me when I say I know what to do here." He nodded towards said outlaw, now unseen behind the door. "You suppose we were too rough?"
"I..." They bit the inside of their cheek. Hurley was included in that "we." Only one of them among the group, after all, had made the Raven bleed. "I just think we shouldn't do anything unnecessary."
He nodded, not looking away from the locked wagon. "I'm not surprised you'd say that. I thought the same thing when I started out. Wouldn't surprise me if most bounty hunters do, though good luck finding someone else willing to admit it."
"I doubt Barbra and Jerry felt that way starting out," they mumbled.
"You might be surprised. Listen, it is rough. And if you were to be in my place someday and lead a posse of your own, and you didn't want to do this, I wouldn't take offense. Hell, if I'm not all broken hips and arthritis by then, maybe I'll come along with you and take your orders." He chuckled deeply. They didn't. "But keep something in mind when you do all that. People like you and me, we think of protecting the innocent as protecting ourselves. You'll do what you need to do to protect people like you'd protect yourself. Sometimes you get dirty that way."
That, in their mind, was as lovely and noble of an idea as could be, and also had fuck-all to do with anything. "But Sheriff--"
"Hurley," he said. The word was a quiet warning. "Let yourself learn first."
They stared at him even after he turned around to walk away, wondering what exactly it was about "this" that required harming someone who no longer posed a threat. For a long time, they stood dumbly and watched his back as he strode back towards the fire pit.
Again, this was not disobedience, they told themself as they covertly unlocked the wagon door while the others ate dinner a ways off. Bane said he wanted to bring his prisoners back alive? Then they were going to make sure this one stayed alive, whether he liked it or not.
The late amber light struggled in through the tiny barred window, getting caught up in the smoky dust that rose from the floor. It was just bright enough to see the way the Raven lifted her hanging head, letting the long black hair fall away from where it covered her cheek. Without turning their way, she let her gaze slice across them.
After far too long of a pause, they opened with, "Hello," since it seemed like as good an introduction as any.
Behind the airtight line of her mouth, they could tell, her teeth were gritted. They could almost hear the scrape of them.
"That looks uncomfortable," they continued, stepping forward, because the alternative was backing down. "I'll get those ropes off of you if you'll let me."
They kept coming towards her until they saw her pulling her leg back slowly, winding up for a kick. "Hey. Easy." They took another small step forward, still out of her strike range. Their voice did not rise above a murmur. "Easy. There's no catch here, I promise. I'm still going to have to chain your ankles, but I'll untie you so you can move around. You just have to let me, please."
When they kept walking forward, nothing in her changed, including the intensity of her glare. But she didn't seem primed to kick them anymore either, which was good enough for them.
She tracked their every motion, twisting her neck around to look at them over her shoulder as they went to undo the knots at her wrists. When their fingers brushed hers, she flinched, curled her hands up into fists. But they didn't miss the long sigh and slumping of her shoulders when the bonds fell away, the way her eyes shut slowly.
They moved so that they were back in front of her and saw, without a moment to spare, the way she eyed the key to the cuffs that had just been locked around her legs. They pulled back the hand that held it just as she swiped at it, catching only the air. Well, that escape attempt had taken all of thirty seconds for her to concoct. The three-day journey back to Goldcliff would be exciting, at least.
"Nice try," they commented, keeping their voice high and light. They dropped the key into their breast pocket and reached for their canteen. "Do you want water?"
She looked at it like it was the first she had ever seen. When they held it out a little further to her, though, she brought her gaze back to them and kept it there. It didn't move away even as she took the metal container from them and unscrewed the cap. Finally, if they were not mistaken, they saw something else other than the bitterness in her, even if it wasn't gone entirely. Her head was angled curiously, to eye them as though she were looking through a keyhole.
"I'm Hurley, by the way. I know you didn't ask, which was a bit rude, but I thought if you needed--"
"It's not going to work."
They stopped. In an instant, her lips had become stretched thin into a tight smile. It stayed unchanged on her face even as Hurley searched it for answers. She didn't open her mouth to laugh a low, heavy laugh, dredged up like phlegm.
"What's not going to wo--"
She held up a finger to halt them as she brought up their canteen to her mouth and tipped her entire head back. They lost count of how many swallows she took, but they did wonder whether she was planning on leaving any for them. Finally, she pulled it away with a loud, refreshed exhale and tossed it back into their lap, half as heavy. "You," she began, casually wiping her mouth, "are trying to make this easier on yourself. You think if you throw me a bone or two I'll be docile and not give you any trouble while you're dragging me off to prison. Well, go fuck yourself, little Red." She dragged out the last sentence like she had all day to say it. Her voice had a sing-song tilt, swinging like a head rocking from side to side, slathered in mock sweetness.
They stayed sitting on their butt in front of her. Well. In all fairness, they didn't really know what else they should have expected. They ran a hand through the short puff of almost-auburn curls on the top of their head, of which they were suddenly quite conscious. "Fine, I'll go fuck myself," they mumbled. There was no truth to what she said, but they doubted there was any way to convince her of that. "Can I at least have your name, since I gave you mine? Though it seems like you forgot it already."
"My name is whatever you think it is, Red."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"What have you heard me called? The Raven, I'm sure." She gave them a curl of her lips that was a smirk and a sneer and a snarl all at once. "What else?"
They matched her hard stare. "They call you Black Devil," they answered quietly.
She looked amused, but not surprised.
"You seem pretty nonchalant about all this."
"What? Getting harassed by people like you? Yeah, you could say I'm used to it."
They had to almost chuckle at that. "Harassment seems like a stretch. What did you expect anyway? You think people will just ignore the murder of an innocent man and an unbroken streak of robberies stretching from one end of the territory clear to the other? That's not the kind of thing you get away with forever. If not us, some other posse would've--"
"What did you say?"
For the second time, she brought them to a stop. While they had been speaking, the Raven had been staring at the spot of floor between her chained feet with slowly widening eyes. Her expression had gradually eroded into perplexion, her furrowed brow loosening into surprise. Now she turned to face Hurley directly.
They found their voice again. "What do you mean?"
"About the murder."
Her bewilderment was genuine. Hurley could not see how it could have been otherwise, with the way that she blinked fast, as though trying to clear her vision of sleep in the morning. But she should have known, at least, that the murder conviction was a possibility. "I said we can't just ignore it."
"Who..." The word came out cracked as her parched lips. She cleared her throat, then. She swallowed her spit and seemed to pull something back inside herself along with it, something that she had let spill out by accident. Her eyes didn't look quite so wild, even as she breathed more quickly. "So who do they say I killed?"
She hadn't a goddamn clue.
"Bank teller. A Mr. Miles Abernathy, from the First Bank of Dry Oak. He was killed during the burglary. A whole bunch of witnesses spotted someone with your description running from the place." They weren't sure if the last sentence was to inform the Raven or to give themself a reminder. "You don't remem--you didn't know?"
"Didn't hear that, no." She had been nodding along as they spoke, in a way that looked like someone still learning how to nod.
"So you didn't do it?"
She acted as if she hadn't heard.
"Well..." They grasped at anything. "Well, if you didn't do it, that'll come out in the trial."
That brought her back, seemingly, to herself. Her eyes went cold and narrow again, squinting at more than seeing what was before her. "Get out," she muttered, not looking their way.