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The poster catches Mad Dog’s eye as he’s leaving the hotel. It always does, no matter how many times he’s seen it, no matter what kind of wall it happens to be clinging to. Wanted, it says. Dead or alive.
His fingers twitch. He has his own copy of the poster, of course, folded neatly into squares and tucked into his back pocket. Anytime he wants to, he can take it out and study it, memorize the shape of the other man’s jaw, the lines around his eyes. He’s seen him often enough to know things a black and white picture can’t tell you—the grey threaded through his beard, the way he rolls his shoulders. But the railroaders will be filing out of the dining hall and headed back to work soon, and so he digs his nails into the corner of the poster and tears it down.
He’s spent the day chatting up the locals, pressing them for any info they might have had on a man, about six feet tall, about 35 years old, riding alone from town to town with little but the clothes on his back and the gun on his belt. The Sundown Kid had been here, he was sure of it—someone fitting his description had been spotted in the saloon the other night, but apparently he’d been so quiet the bartender had plumb forgot about him until Mad Dog came along and jogged his memory. But the Kid never stayed anywhere overnight, meaning if he’d been here for a drink, he’d have likely hit the trail soon after.
That evening, violet shadows rise over the desert as the sun sinks on the horizon. The stars swing low and bright as Mad Dog rides out of town.
He gets lucky. It only takes a few hours hard riding before he finds him.
When he does, it’s like the other man has been waiting for him all along. He’s made camp. His horse grazes nearby, untethered, while the Kid himself leans against an outcropping, arms crossed behind his head as he watches the campfire.
“Well, shucks,” Mad Dog says with a grin. “Ain’t this a fine welcome?”
He swings off his horse and drops to the ground, then strolls towards the fire, hand resting on the revolver at his hip.
“Kind of you to wait for me,” he says with a mocking tip of his hat. “But now that I’m here, we can get started, can’t we? Ain’t no sense in putting it off any longer. We’ve both been waiting long enough as is. Now come on. Draw.”
The Kid doesn’t move. Doesn’t even look at him.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Mad Dog says after a moment. He takes his revolver from its holster, aiming square at the Kid. “Draw.”
“I ain’t drawing.”
“You think I’m gonna accept that?”
“You won’t shoot.”
“Excuse me? I may not like shooting men who won’t fight back, but—”
“The night was quiet ‘til you showed up,” the Kid cuts him off. “Seems a shame to spoil it.”
Mad Dog’s face grows hot, but his barrel doesn’t waver. He keeps it level. Even so, the Sundown Kid won’t move.
“I ain’t messing around here,” Mad Dog hisses. His pleasure at the ease with which he’d found the Kid is fading fast, replaced instead with a tight coil of anger in his gut. It’s always like this, always like this, always like this. “I came all this way and you won’t even draw? I ain’t worth it to you? I came for satisfaction and I’ll get it, goddamn it—”
“Sunrise.”
“Huh?”
“You want satisfaction, I’ll give it.” The Kid’s eyes are on him now, cooler than the desert at night. “But I’m not letting you spoil such a pretty night. So sunrise. I’ll draw my pistol then.”
Slowly, Mad Dog lowers his gun. “That so,” he says.
“Yup.”
“I guess I’d have to stay with you to make sure you don’t run away, then.”
“Guess so.”
Silence falls over the two of them. The air tastes of dust. It’s been a hell of a long day for Mad Dog and his throat is awful dry.
“Well then,” Mad Dog says, returning his gun to his holster. “Got anything to drink?”
The Kid does, in fact, have something to drink. Whiskey picked up from the saloon before he’d left town. It burns Mad Dog’s throat as it goes down, but it leaves him feeling loose.
“You’ve been slipping, Kid,” he says between swigs that warm his blood. “It’s getting easier and easier to track you down. Or maybe that just goes to show how well I know you, heh.”
“That so?” The Kid takes the bottle back, taking a swig himself, but he doesn’t lose his steadiness.
“Sure is!” Mad Dog crows. “Why, just looking at the map, it was like the stars themselves laid out the trail to you for me. They were singing go west, go west—”
The bottle is pressed back into his hands. It doesn’t feel any lighter, somehow, but that’s fine. More for him.
Speaking of stars. Mad Dog tips back his head, looking at the night sky. The stars overhead are clear and bright, like a scattering of salt across black velvet. He forgets what he had been about to say. “You’re right,” he says instead. “It is a pretty night. It’d have been a shame to spoil it by shedding blood.”
“Mine or yours?”
“Is that a joke? From you?” Mad Dog grins. “Yours, of course. I don’t intend to lose.”
He tips back another mouthful, and something like a smile crooks itself on the Kid’s lips, but it’s gone before Mad Dog can say for sure.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Mad Dog says. “You’re thinking, heard that before, ain’t you? You’re lucky I’m a gentleman. Some men wouldn’t stand for that kinda disrespect.”
“Lucky for me none of ‘em ever seem to come my way,” the Kid answers smoothly.
Mad Dog thinks suddenly of the wanted poster in his back pocket—of the poster he’d torn down at the hotel and the many others like it. His face grows hot again. There’s no way the Kid would know. But even if he did, so what? There’s a $5000 bounty at stake. Maybe it’s not the most honourable thing to do, but a man can hardly be blamed for wanting something like that for himself.
He wants to say something cool and cutting, but his mind’s a fog, and there’s something about the way the Kid is looking at him that ties his tongue. It’s not the kind of hard glare or calculating gaze he’s used to seeing on the outlaws he hunts, but something quieter, more thoughtful, like he’s assessing him.
Suddenly the man pulls closer. Mad Dog instinctively draws back, only for his shoulders to meet the hard rock of the outcropping. He’d just been thinking about the Kid’s gaze, but he wasn’t ready for it to be turned on him with such force, and now his vision’s swimming with all those little details he hunts for nightly in that poster he carries; the shape of the Kid’s jaw, the grey in his beard, and something more that he can’t name.
“You’re drunk,” the Kid declares, and he pulls away, leaving Mad Dog’s heart thudding in his throat.
“Well, so what if I am?” Mad Dog retorts. Not very witty, but his mind is slurring, and he can’t think of anything more clever to say, not with his temper flared.
“Stupid of you to let yourself get drunk with an outlaw,” the Kid answers. But before Mad Dog can think of a response—something other than I trust you, though—the Kid rises, rolling his shoulders in a familiar gesture.
He reaches for his saddlebags, drawing from them a blanket. Before Mad Dog can ask him what he’s doing, Kid tosses it to him and settles back down, legs outstretched and ankles crossed.
“I know you Easterners like your comfort,” is all he says by way of explanation.
“I don’t need this,” Mad Dog snaps, throwing the blanket back as hard as a blanket can be thrown. “I got my own sleeping rig, thank you very much.”
The Kid doesn’t answer. His hat is tipped forward, covering his eyes, but again, Mad Dog thinks he can see the ghost of a smile on his face.
The Kid goes quiet, and even through Mad Dog’s whiskey-induced haze, he can see that he’s gone to sleep. Stupid of you to let yourself get drunk with an outlaw, he'd said, but even stupider to let himself fall asleep by a bounty hunter.
Still. Mad Dog’s never been one for shooting unarmed men.
The whiskey is still warm in his blood, the stars still bright overhead. For all that it might be stupid of him to think so, he can’t say it hasn’t been a pleasant night.
Mad Dog finds his horse, checking that she’s still tied securely to the cross of sticks he’d shoved into the dirt. From his saddlebags, he draws out his own blanket, then settles down back by the fire, blanket draped over his chest. With a yawn, he drifts off to sleep.
He awakens to the kiss of metal at his throat.
“What’s this?” Mad Dog asks, meeting the Sundown Kid’s even gaze with a smirk. His head is thick from the whiskey the night before, but the twitch of excitement he feels at the sight of a pistol cuts through the fog, bringing clarity.
“It’s sunrise,” the Kid replies. Sure enough, the dawn sky behind him is banded crimson and gold.
“So you’re gonna kill me?” Mad Dog asks. “Just like that? Not very sporting of you.”
“Twenty miles, give or take,” Kid replies, jerking his head west.
“Twenty—wait, goddamn it!” Mad Dog can feel the rope around his wrists now, lashing them to his own belt, the whiskey-induced fog finally vanishing completely. Piece by piece, the scene is coming together. The rope hanging from the cross where Mad Dog’s horse had been tied has been cut. The fire’s been kicked dead, all traces of camp gone. “You son of a bitch, you—”
“I’ll take care of your horse,” Kid interrupts, unbothered. He swings atop his own horse, all while Mad Dog’s mare, the traitor, stares up at him, enamoured. “She’ll be waiting for you at the next town. Probably.”
“You’re just gonna leave me here?” Mad Dog shouts. And then, pathetically, unable to stop the words from flying forth: “What about last night?!”
And the Sundown Kid offers Mad Dog a smile. For the first time, it’s clear enough that Mad Dog knows what he’s seeing, and something plunges in his chest to see it.
“Guess you’ll just have to find me again,” the Kid says.
And then he’s gone.
“Goddamn you!” Mad Dog hollers after the vanishing silhouette on the horizon. “Goddamn you!”
Mad Dog could run after him. He knows he could.
But he won’t. He won’t let himself look that desperate.
It takes a while to get loose, but not as long as it could have been had he been tied with anything other than rope. He keeps cuffs in his saddlebags for live bounties, but either the Kid didn’t think to use them or he was doing Mad Dog a favour. Something about the thought of that itches, but no matter. His wrists are raw when he’s done, but at least he’s free.
The Sundown Kid might have stolen his horse, but he left Mad Dog his bags, at least. He’s got water, food, weapons. And twenty miles isn’t that far, really. He can make it there on foot if he has to, so long as he takes care in the heat.
He’ll just have to buck up and start over. He knows where the Kid is heading, after all, and though another person might have lied, Mad Dog knows he isn’t like that.
He thinks of the Sundown Kid sitting astride his horse, grinning down at Mad Dog with the dawn sky glowing behind him.
Guess you’ll just have to find me again, he’d said.
Mad Dog touches his back pocket. The poster is still there.
Once he reaches town, he’ll get his horse back, and track that bastard down.