Chapter Text
Arthur tugs the brim of his hat a little lower as the wind picks up and sweeps over the prairie, quiescent from long drought and encroaching winter. There’s a chill in the air, but it don’t bother him. The light is silver and clear, the grass grey-green and shimmering like water, russet tips bent over in the breeze. The sky opens up in a great sweeping arc from horizon to horizon, clouds so stark against the deep azure that it mimics a cyanotype.
He guides Benji cautiously around a spurt of prickly-pear — the horse is steady, but he hasn’t had much exposure to the flora out here, and Arthur doesn't intend to force an introduction. He took the dappled-gray off Albright’s hands in Valentine, and reckons the stallion is outta good Northern stock: well put-together, tall, with a pronounced Roman nose that speaks to recently imported bloodlines, undiluted by frontier breeding. Arthur has no doubt that Albright paid a pretty penny for this one, and he considers the acquisition of the horse to be well worth his while, even apart from the bounty rewarded for dragging Albright’s sorry ass out of the river and depositing him on the Sheriff’s doorstep.
He gives the stallion a pat on the neck and scans the horizon. A ripple of movement a few-hundred-yards east reads like wild hogs, maybe coyotes. He turns Benji towards it and encourages him into an easy lope.
The land out here is sparse, arid, desolate and beautiful in its own way. He's deeper into it now than he's ever gone before, in an effort to clear his head and escape the echoes of Dutch's latest ill-considered adjurations to keep the money coming in, put the camp back on its feet, as if that ain't what he's working night and day to do-
Doing what he can, at least. Hunting is a challenge, and there's better land for it. Little in the way of cover out here, or high ground from which to sight prey, but Arthur’s been working this range for a week now, and he’s starting to feel like he’s got the hang of it. He likes the openness of the scrubland, the way it cuts something loose in his chest to know he ain’t being watched from behind the trees, awaited in the next blind valley. Apart from a couple mission houses, with their adobe bell-towers jutting stark against the horizon, signs of civilization are few and far between.
Still, Arthur knows better than to let down his guard. He’s now well over a hundred miles out from camp, from friends. Anything goes wrong, he’s liable to have to fend for himself.
And of course, giving that thought credence is as good as calling the powers of Hell itself down upon him, because not five seconds later, the bluestem suddenly gives way to swath of clear land, and he finds himself face to face with the meanest-looking hog he's ever seen.
His rifle is at his shoulder in an instant and he gets about three bullets into it as it charges, but he’d come up on it too fast, should have known better— It gets up under Benji’s front legs fixing to gore him, and the horse starts rearing, stamping down on the creature. Arthur ain’t about to let the stallion pay the cost of his bad decisions and end up with a belly flayed open by this hellspawn; he lunges out of the saddle, and Benji, understanding well that he is no longer beholden to this predicament, makes a run for it.
The hog is bleeding badly, stunned and glassy-eyed, but that doesn’t stop it from turning on a dime and making another run at Arthur, who manages to stumble back a few paces and get another shot off, an inch above the demon’s eye. It’s obvious he hit something important, because its front legs seize, and it gazes at him for a long moment, insensate, maw gaping and filled with blood— before it’s knees buckle and goes face-first into the dirt.
Arthur shoulders his rifle, draws a ragged breath, wiping his palms on his jeans and giving the hog a long minute to stay dead.
It does.
Vaguely disgusted by the outcome of this encounter, by his own foolishness, he doesn’t find any desire within himself to put his knife through the hide of the animal and break down the carcass. Wasn’t worth half the trouble, and making a mistake like that, coming up on it at a run— he’s hardly earned the spoils, ugly as they may be. He recognizes his own distraction, exhaustion, and Dutch's last oration playing a loop in his head- He needs to stay sharp, can't let the noise follow him out here. He takes a few minutes to quiet his mind as he field-dresses the hog, and when he's done, he cleans the blood off his knife and whistles for Benji. The stallion, from his vantage point a good quarter-mile off, take one look in Arthur’s direction, and turns tail at a jog.
Arthur curses under his breath. Well. Can’t hardly blame him for deciding that proximity is not in his best interest. Arthur abandons the hog's carcass for now - if he can coax Benji back, he’ll pack away the loins, at least, but he doesn’t want the horse getting tangled up in his reins in the meantime, spooked as he is. He reaches into his satchel, draws out a sugar cube, and sets about trying to settle the stallion.
It takes more convincing than Arthur would like. Benji him warily, snorting, trotting to maintain the distance between them whenever Arthur dares to encroach.
“Hey, boy, I know, I’m sorry.” Arthur pitches his voice low, genuine in his apology. “It’s alright— I know, it’s over now.”
The horse flicks an ear in Arthur’s direction, lowers his head a little in acquiescence, but something ain’t right. Arthur’s breath catches, aching in his chest, when he sees a streak of blood down Benji’s leg. He’s moving well, ain’t favoring nothin, but Arthur can’t get a good look at it from this distance, and if he cost this horse his life—
It’s for this reason, and perhaps others, that he does not notice the coalescence of ill fate which lurks at his feet, the rattler coiled atop a flat slab of limestone, until it strikes.
Arthur feels the sting of the bite, recognize it for what it is in an instant. He looks down, and rage blooms incandescent in his chest.
He draws his hatchet from his belt and with a single, swift blow, decapitates the viper. The blade glances off the rock and clatters, resounding, doomed. Then, and only then, in the throes of death, does the creature emit its deathly rattle.
Some warning, that was. Arthur’s chest heaves as he glances up at Benji, who stands stock still now, eyeing Arthur with no small measure of concern.
He glances down at the body of the snake, back to his companion, as the fury ebbs to stunned disbelief.
Arthur’s never been bit before. But he’s sure seen it. Seen it take limbs, take lives, even. Already, he feels the cloying stir of nausea in his gut. Can’t possibly work that fast, can it?
It can. He doubles over and retches, and when he comes up for air, his head is spinning. The pain pulses with every beat of his damned, foolish heart.
“C’mere, boy,” he calls hoarsely to Benji, pleading now, and in act of providential mercy, the stallion gives up his flight and comes to Arthur’s side at a jog.
Arthur has just enough presence of mind to gather the body and the severed head of the snake into his satchel. Charles once stopped to help a man they found on the trail, half-dead already, used the adder’s head and milked it for the last drops of venom, brewed it into some kind of tea with herbs to mutate it— folk medicine, the old ways, unknown to Arthur. He remembers with a jolt of dismay that the man had died anyway, but he had been old, a weak heart—
He pushes that thought aside, forces himself to think in increments as his mind begins to haze with fear. He remembers Benji’s wound, runs his hand across the stallion’s chest. The horse recoils as he gets his fingers into it, assessing the depth. Ain’t good, could be worse. Caught muscle, will need tending to, stitches, to keep the infection out. Arthur’s hands are already shaking.
He comes to Benji’s withers, drapes an arm over his proud neck, rests his forehead against the stallion’s shoulder, and whispers:
“I’m sorry.”
The words catch in his throat, strictured by pain and a sudden, seizing terror. He can feel the venom in his heart now, a deep ache blooming behind his sternum, the edges of his breath stolen by a relentless tightness in his chest.
No. Not like this. Not from some damn rattler—
He allows his knees to buckle, rolls the cuff of his jeans to inspect the bite, makes an attempt to reach it with his mouth to draw the poison out— ain’t no use, can’t get to it from any angle. It’s bleeding briskly, but even so, he takes the tip of his knife and hisses through his teeth as he makes a deep cut, right between the twin marks of the fangs, and goes about kneading the already swollen flesh to get as much of the venom out as he can. The pain is like nothing he’s ever felt before, blazing white-hot and furious. He binds his leg with a strip of cloth above the wound, not so tight as to cut off the blood flow entirely, but enough to slow things down some- he hopes.
Staggering to his feet, he finds himself barely able to bear weight on it now. With a fist in Benji's mane, he braces himself against another brutal wave of nausea. His neck flushes with a choking, bruising heat, and his throat clicks as he swallows against the bitter taste of bile.
He needs air, and seems to be in increasingly short supply. He can feel something dancing at the edge of his consciousness, dark and weightless, beckoning him out of the pain, and he shakes his head to clear it, clambers up onto Benji’s saddle, and vomits off the other side. Forcing himself to focus on the horizon long enough to set course east, he spurs the stallion into a lope, and folds over the saddle horn as his stomach continues to spasm and ache. He draws air into his lungs in ragged, gusty heaves that seem to shiver through his bones - his whole body vibrates with a low and thrumming heat.
He’s two day’s ride from camp at a steady lope, a pace he already knows he won’t be able to sustain for long. A day further from a doctor. One of the missions might open their doors to him, but none are marked on his map, and the few he’d seen on the way out showed no sign of recent inhabitants.
He is alone.
And dying?
Sure feels like it.
Better this way than some others, he supposes. Never had much desire to go out with an audience. Least he’s got his guns with him, if things get real bad. And under a sky like this—
But he ain’t ready yet.
John ain’t ready yet. Dutch ain’t ready. And Charles—
Been six months since Valentine, and they’re still working to recoup their losses, find some peace. Arthur’s been giving all he has alongside Hosea to get this built, get folks settled, convince Dutch that there’s a future for them here. Things are good— not good, maybe, but better. The land here is wild and open, a last bastion of the America that Dutch, Hosea, and Arthur once knew and staked the desires of their heart and soul upon. There’s money to be made in working the range, the town. He wants to believe they made it far enough West to leave the mess behind them.
But he don’t know it for sure, and Dutch neither. Arthur still senses a restlessness in the man, a vacillating undercurrent. Always been there, and in his more sober moments, Arthur questions whether there’s any purpose in fighting it, in working himself to the bone to give all of ‘em a little stability, when stability ain’t what Dutch wants. Doesn’t help that Micah’s in his ear every second that Arthur and Hosea can’t be. The man riles up the rest of ‘em: Sean and Javier, Bill even— the ones who are unable to find work that suits them, still itching for game, for gunsmoke.
No. This ain’t over yet. If Arthur doesn’t make it home— it all falls apart. Hosea won’t be able to hold the line without him there to keep the money coming in, won’t alone be able to dissuade Dutch from his proclivity to turn towards the scent of blood and coin. He and the rest of them will follow Micah into hell.
Arthur wonders ruefully why Micah couldn’t be the one to take himself out to the desert to die, with poison singing in his blood.
Hurts like hell. Worse than hell. His ankle and knee are locked in seizure now, and he can feel the stiffness deep in his hip too, and it aches. The fever is down in his bones, alight in the marrow and burning, burning in his belly—
He continues to be sick until he’s wrung dry, and even then, he retches inconsolably over Benji’s shoulder at short intervals, clinging desperately to the saddle horn as his vision blurs.
Soon the pain precludes coherent thought, and he knows only the sun, the angle of the light slanting over the prairie, the cadence of Benji’s stride. He feels the deep tiredness of a man mortally wounded— knows enough to recognize that. Knows enough to resist it. Night falls, and he slumps low over Benji’s neck, and lets the horse carry him on.