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Traditionally, duels are held at high noon. But this one is unnegotiated, unplanned. When the pistols fire, it won't be over some minor slight or injury. Their country isn't a lawless place, but new money is louder than old parchment. And this is personal.
Arthur is a tracker, not a hunter. But when the sun is beating down on him, four in the afternoon and still hotter than hell, and the sores he has from the days spent on horseback are growing sores of their own, he thinks he’d be pretty damn pleased with putting a bullet in this thief’s head.
The town they land in - Arthur thinks that it is not so much him finding his target, not when the man himself is lounging against a post with a pistol twirling around his fingers, horse idly gnawing on a haybale in the distance - was abandoned years ago. It’s the two of them and the tumbleweeds for miles around. Arthur dismounts his horse, and the man - Eames - smirks.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Eames says, straightening up with a glint in his eye, “darling.”
Arthur draws nearer, but stops short of touching distance. “You knew I was tracking you.” Eames tips his hat, grinning.
It’s not like Arthur hadn’t known. But it grates on him, nonetheless, to know that even after all these years apart, Eames is still a step ahead of him. Enough that he even has time to be pleased about it. Arthur itches to draw his gun, ten-counts and manners be damned.
“You could’ve stopped me back in Sonora,” Arthur says evenly after a moment, tucking his hands into his pockets, “or Hidalgo. If you’ve known for so long.”
It’s a taunt as much as it's a plea. You did not strike while I was unguarded. Perhaps I am still better, in some ways, or perhaps in some ways you still care.
Eames smiles and steps closer, like a rattlesnake in the grass, and Arthur knows. It’s not a comfort.
“You track, darling,” Eames murmurs, breath near fanning across Arthur’s face, “I am hunting.”