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It’s cold in the mountains, so cold that spring doesn’t look like spring, but the snow has melted enough that they’re able to free themselves from the icy hell they had found themselves in. Relief comes only when they’re in valley and it’s too warm for his winter coat, and Arthur was just beginning to think he’d never sweat again, he was happily wrong.
The best part is when they’ve settled, made their new temporary home on some cliff in New Hanover, Amberino far behind them, and he feels like he can finally breathe deeply again. There’s still a chill to the air some nights but he prefers it to being calf deep in snow. Even better yet, everyone else in camp seems to be feeling better as well. Dutch and Hosea smile again, John is up and moving around some, Jack runs about the camp unhindered and joyful as a child should be, overall there’s more life in everyone’s eyes and things seem to be hopeful again.
Even in poor Mrs. Adler.
He’s overheard her conversations with Abigail, ones he probably shouldn’t have while he lies awake at night or when no one thinks he’s listening while he absently draws in his journal. They’re not good, still rather bleak if anything, no better than the sobbing mess she had been at Colter. If the women hadn’t fawned over her he might have offered more than the occasional check in. Something in him even hurts the day he hears her admit she’s thought about killing herself to Abigail. He admires her on the days that she quietly moves about the camp or the ones where she snaps at the O’Driscoll boy, because Arthur can see that even the spring time has had its affect on her too, and he can see how strong she is just by the fact alone she’s still alive.
He half expected her to leave them as soon as they were out of the mountains yet she hasn’t. It’s difficult for him to understand because every day she stays she actively chooses their life when she could just run, unlike him where it had been too late.
But there was still time. Spring had just begun, she could still run away.
It’s cold in the mountains and on the hottest nights in Lemoyne he curses himself for wishing he was back there. Sleepless among the terrible sounds of bugs all around in the sticky heat he misses the early weeks of spring. Curse Cornwall for having found them and driving them from Horseshoe Overlook. He had begun to like it there.
Things still aren’t awful, still better than the ice. People smile less but at least they’re still smiling, even if the heat and humidity had gotten a few people on edge.
Like Mrs. Adler. Whom he no longer felt bad for and was now rather intimidated by. She showed her tenacity and ferocity to him when she threatened to kill Mr. Pearson and he had taken her with him on an afternoon trip to Rhodes. It wasn’t even that which had frightened him, no, he thought her outburst humorous. It was when she slaughtered almost more of those damn Lemoyne Raiders than he had that he feared her.
It wasn’t just fear, he realized later as he sketched her in his journal, a whole page dedicated to her rugged beauty, it was respect above all things. As he detailed the lines in her face and the individual freckles he let himself wonder if she had perhaps been like him, some outlaw who had moved to a solidarity ranch in the mountains to get away from the law. Arthur laughed at himself when he was finished, closing his journal and watching as she insisted on taking over guard duty from Charles, he admired her, that was for certain.
It’s cold in the mountains and a humid hell in the swamps. Arthur damned his previous self for thinking that Clemens Point had ever been an unbearable heat. At least under a roof it was more bearable, aided only by the cross breeze from the night he left the balcony door open to let air flow between there and the broken window.
Spring wasn’t quite gone and he dreaded every passing day as summer drew nearer. If it was hot now he could only imagine how much worse it could get.
People hardly smiled anymore, with Sean’s death and the disappearance of Jack along with their third move of the season, spirits were low. The only joy had been Jack’s return party. Even now, after the attack from the O’Driscolls and the death of poor Kieran, things seemed even more bleak and that night felt so far away.
Arthur was no longer sure how he felt about Sadie. He had feared and respected her before but how he worried where her explosive anger might get her after seeing how ruthlessly she killed her enemies in close combat, itching for more when the camp had silenced and cleaning up the bodies with a satisfactory look on her face. He knew she’d never turn it on him, he wasn’t fearful of his own life, if anything he was impressed and sometimes dreamt about asking her along with him into a fight. But he realized he cared for her just like he did everyone else in camp and would hate to see what might happen if she let that anger out on the wrong person.
Still, he believed she might have hers better in control than Dutch had his. Sadie had changed with the season and though he dreaded the coming summer he almost couldn’t wait to see which part of herself she’d show him next.
It’s cold in the mountains and a million miles away from Guarma. So far he really does wish he was back in that decrepit mining town freezing his ass off when his sunburn becomes almost unbearable. His cheeks burn red, there’s salt encrusted in his hair, and he’s being hunted in a foreign land.
When he sleeps at night he often dreams of Colter or Horseshoe, of the days when people still smiled. Arthur misses the spring and yearns for it as days pass on the island. If he thought Shady Bell was bad, if that was truly hell, then Guarma was something else. Maybe he’d die and find actual hell burned cold like the mountains. He heard it did. He foolishly wished for that sweet relief when it feels his skin might start to blister from the sun exposer.
He’s startled awake one night when he sees her face in his dreams. In his dreams of home, or the closest to it he had, he had expected Mary above all others, perhaps even Eliza or maybe even Abigail. But Sadie is the last face he had expected to dream. It rattles him to the point he’s unable to fall back asleep, left lying awake on the cot, staring at the stars and finding himself wondering if she can see them too. It’s a different feeling that isn’t entirely unwelcoming, though he doesn’t understand the feeling he prefers it over worrying about John and the crippling grief that losing Lenny and Hosea had brought him. Thinking about Sadie and the stars offered some relief. He thinks about her scars and the lines in her face and every single freckle he had committed to memory, knowing it would be a blessing if he ever got to fight by her side again.
It’s cold in the mountains and though Lakay is hot it’s not as bad as Guarma. Arthur smiled making his fading sunburn sting when he sees the note left for him and smiles for days after arriving at Lakay, feeling his chest swell when he sees them, his home, safe, thanks to Sadie. He can’t look her in the eye, he knows she’s noticed but he can’t yet, not after the dream he had and not after letting her be the sole thing that drove him onward, and he couldn’t even begin to describe how he felt towards her for making sure they were safe.
He was grateful. More grateful than words could possibly express. No one smiled anymore, and he felt guilty for doing so, but after being in hell he couldn’t help it.
He doesn’t exactly feel blessed when his dreams come true and he gets to fight along side her again. The stress is high after being forced, tricked even, into flying in a hot air balloon, and a diagnosis he tries not to think about. He feels bad for shouting at her afterward, after all the work she had done saving his people and working towards freeing John from prison, she didn’t deserve his outburst.
It doesn’t deter Sadie in the least bit and if he could have any more respect for her he would because she doesn’t shy away from his anger, she challenges it, makes it clear she doesn’t need him and he hates how he wants to try that much harder for her. Arthur is sick and dying when they finally rescue John from Sisika but fighting by her side brings some life back into him. It reminds him of the day he brought her to Rhodes and the first time he’d seen her spirit.
It’s cold in the mountains and they’re closer than he’d like, right back where they started, than he’d like up in Beaver Hollow.
It’s hell but for different reasons. The heat is gone as the summer retreats and the fall ebbs it’s way in. The night brings a certain chill that makes their situation that much worse. His people, his home, isn’t what it used to be and Arthur supposes it hasn’t been for a while. He desperately misses the days before Blackwater with a fierce nostalgia that only grows as his time on the earth lessens. The days begin to feel like a funeral precession for what once was.
Sadie had changed with the seasons and now she seems to be herself, or as herself as Arthur will ever know her. She’s open with him, vulnerable even, going so far as to specifically ask him to accompany her on the most personal fight of her life. Her revenge. Watching Colm Gang wasn’t enough and now she wanted them all dead. He truly fears her anger when he sees her consumed by it as she murders the last of them. He wants nothing more than to properly console her when she breaks down but knows better than to without her permission. Yet it pains him to do so, he respects when she asks to be left alone.
He had feared what her revenge would do to her but is pleasantly surprised when they fight their last together, riding to Van Horn to rescue Abigail. He’s begun to shake and feel unsteady on his legs as he pushes onward and her demand for him to stay in the lighthouse is almost insulting but it feels good to know she has his back and she’s watching out for him, that she hasn’t been blind to his condition. Her care feels like the warmth the spring had brought him after the snow.
It’s cold in the mountains and those days feel forever away now. Still yet, though on the eastern side, the mountains feel just as cold as death begins to take him.
Arthur is worn and tired, barely able to continue breathing long enough to watch the sun rise. And yet he thinks of the spring, the joy on the faces of those he loved. He thinks of her, thinks of Sadie, and how he feels lucky to have known a woman like her. In his last moments he sends a prayer to a god he stopped believing in the day his mother died, that John had made it okay, that he’d get to have a life with his family, and that Sadie never lose that spirit of hers. He wondered if she’d grieve him and if she did he hoped she’d continue on, that she’d keep every ounce of ferocity and stubbornness and that she would continue to live in spite of the hand she’d been dealt in life. And with that hope he’s able to rest.
It’s cold in the mountains and it’s been years since she called them her home. Yet Sadie hasn’t forgotten what her life had been like back then. As she ages she misses it, of course she would, things had been simpler back then.
She hate what happened, still harbors a great hatred in her heart for the men who took it for her. She hates the dead O’Driscolls whom she had killed herself, she hates Dutch and she hates Micah and spends days wishing she could do something about what they’d done.
She wasn’t a fool, she knew they were responsible for ruining so many lives, lives of people they had claimed to care about. She watched Arthur slowly kill himself for those people. He had always been kind to her from the start, always checking on her and fighting with her, Sadie felt she owed it to him to hunt Micah down.
And oh, oh it is so satisfying when she does. Arthur would repeat Dutch’s line of “Revenge is a fools game,” and it may be but Dutch told lies and sold them as faith and if killing the O’Driscolls had brought her any ounce of peace then seeing Micah bleed out on the ground would feel just as good.
Though the wound she’s sustained from one of his men pains her, it feels like a happy ending once John has shot him dead. She was right, it did feel just as good. But what she hadn’t expected was what she’d do next. Back then she had people to take care of, people to watch out for because she knew Arthur didn’t have long, people she’d guard in his place. That was all gone now, it was finished. Sadie had no plan for after.
It’s cold in the mountains, that much is so very, very true. It’s frigid and harsh and bordering on nightmarish most days with snow and wind more unforgiving than anything else imaginable. But winter is followed by spring, and with the thaw there’s always hope, always a promise of warmth and something better around the corner.
Sadie doesn’t know what she’ll do, no plan for her life anymore. But she’s still alive and as long as she’s alive she can still help people, she can protect them from the O’Driscolls, Lemoyne Raiders, and Micahs of the world. She’d prevent people from becoming like her, broken and hardened by life. She supposed it would be enough.