Chapter Text
1885
John sits curled into himself at the edge of the campfire's light.
Just close enough it can warm his frigid fingers, just far enough to hide himself away in the darkness.
He rubs the palm of his hand across the nasty bruise and raw skin spanning the front of his throat and wonders nervously if his voice will ever recover from nearly ending up lynched. It tastes like blood when he tries to speak.
This feller who took him in, he's an odd man. Charismatic with a booming voice and a stylish manner of dress that looks real funny 'cause he lives in a tent.
John owes him something for saving his life, and he's sure whatever it is he owes will be collected upon soon, though this Dutch character insists saving John's sorry hide was an act of justice. Seemed righteously mad over it, said how it's wrong punishing a kid just for the sin of bein' hungry, but John reckons he were actually being punished for far worse sins than that.
He still has nightmares about the feller he killed last year.
The bastard deserved it, that sick son of a bitch had it coming, was gonna do all sorts of god-knows-what to John just for pickpocketing him. But he was fat and slow and John had his long arms and quick speed on his side, and before he knew it he'd taken the man down with his own pistol.
Even knowing it were self defense don't erase the memory of watching him gargle and choke on his own blood, and especially don't erase the feeling of knowing he caused that.
God didn't strike him down for his mortal sin just that second, but folks always say he works in mysterious ways. John just assumed his untimely demise by hanging was his own punishment come due.
"You get enough to eat?" Comes the kindly voice of a middle-aged woman as she sits across from him at the fire. Mrs. Matthews, if John remembers correct.
He glances down to his licked-clean bowl of bland stew and then nods.
He didn't get enough. He's starving. But he don't want to take anything from these folk for risk of owing more, so he lies.
"You sure? There's plenty."
He nods again.
Her husband sits beside her, and that makes him a little nervous.
He seems nice enough, gives John a friendly smile, but strange men are always more dangerous than strange women in his experience.
He's told that night that he can sleep wherever he pleases but not to go far 'cause it ain't safe.
John's a little offended these folks think he ain't able to handle himself. Only reason them homesteaders caught him at all was 'cause there was three of 'em and they took him by surprise. He's more than capable of watching his own back. He wants to run off just to prove a point, but the fire is warm and even the nerves he's feelin' surrounded by strangers is dampened by a sense of safety in numbers.
So he sleeps next to the fire, tucked up against a log that's on its side, and has absolutely awful, terrifying dreams.
Next day, the more shrill of the two ladies corners John where he's sat staring into space and gnawing his fingernails 'til they're raw.
"If you're gonna be sticking around here, I can't have you lookin' nor smellin' like that."
He frowns up at her but says nothing.
He's hardly spoken more than a few words since he was brought here, actually- just said his name and his age and 'thank you, sorry' about a million times- half 'cause his throat hurts so damn bad and half because he keeps doing that thing where he full forgets how.
"C'mon. Get up, boy." She says sharply, but she offers him a hand.
He lets her pull him to his feet.
She leads him to a wash basin placed behind one of the wagons. There's a pile of clean clothes on the rock nearby.
He just sort of stares at it. She just sort of stares at him.
"What, you don't know how to wash yourself?" He frowns. Of course he does, he just don't know these people. Bathing in their camp is awful vulnerable. And why do they need him clean anyhow? Why are they acting like he's staying here forever, like he's one of their kids or something? Maybe they want him washed so they can cook him and eat him for dinner.
"Go on. I'll be back in ten minutes to empty the water, so hurry on up!"
He watches her walk away, then he looks back down at the water.
He does feel disgusting, and any natural body of water nearby is far too cold to wash in this time of year. But is he really going to wound his dignity by climbing into a wash basin in a camp full of strangers?
Ten minutes later, he's watching that grouchy woman Miss Grimshaw haul off his dirty bathwater, and he's standing there in the very ill-fitting clothes she'd left for him.
This is such an odd experience.
Why in the hell are all these folks being so nice to him? Well, other than the young feller, Arthur, who seems largely put off by his presence. He's odd, tall and sour-faced. He don't do anything unkind, necessarily, just glares at John sidelong and says nothing to him. Fine by him, he don't wanna talk anyhow.
Before John even knows it, he's been lingering in this camp for a few weeks.
They bought him new boots. They gave him a bedroll to sleep on. When it rained a few days back, they made big 'ol grumpy Arthur let him sleep on the ground in his tent.
He thinks they're gunslingers, like Landon Ricketts.
They're always armed to the teeth, talking about 'jobs' and 'cons', poring over maps and papers. Plus, Arthur's come back into camp bloodied three times in less than a month. What else could they possibly be up to but outlawing?
John wants so bad to go robbing with them. He's good at it, quick and sneaky and young enough that folk don't suspect him. Old ladies in town still pinch his cheek if he's not too dirty. And with his nice new boots that ain't two sizes too small like the last pair, he'd probably be extra fast. He could prove his worth if only they'd let him, or if only he'd even ask.
Two months into his stay at this camp, Dutch starts teaching John to read.
He fights it at first, stubborn and ornery, argues he ain't got any need for learning that skill, but if he's honest there's a little baby bloom of excitement in his chest over it. It's somethin' he never thought he'd get the blessing of learning, his daddy too poor and too aloof and too liquored up to send him to school, and too dead by the time they passed the laws saying he had to.
The nuns in the orphanage tried and failed to teach him. He learned a lot about God's infinite wrath, and a little about his conditional love, but not much at all about how to make sense of the letters on the pages. He got told once on a particularly hard day that he just clearly weren't bright enough to figure it out. That stuck with him.
By four months, he's beyond simply copying the shapes of letters onto paper, and onto trying- and not really succeeding- at actually reading passages aloud.
"I can't do this." He whines, frowning down at the pages of Moby Dick.
"Look me in the eye." Dutch reminds, a statement he makes to John often. " Yes you can. There's no 'can nots' here, that attitude is for quitters. You ain't a quitter, are you, Johnny boy?"
"I can quit if I want to." John argues back. He can feel that frustration building, overwhelmed from far too many minutes of trying to decipher this stupid whale book, the stress of it threatening to choke the words from his throat and make him lash out.
"If that big dumb brute could figure this out, so can you." Dutch gestures to Arthur, who sits doodling in his silly little diary by the fire a few yards away. "Now, come on. One more paragraph."
"Most of these ain't even real words." John grumbles. Circumambulate his ass. Nobody's ever said that.
With far more patience than John could ever even hope to muster in himself, Dutch and Hosea sit with him and slowly but surely point him down the path of literacy.
Dutch says reading and writing are keys to the human soul, necessities of communication in a society so terribly lacking it. Hosea says it's just somethin' you gotta know if you ever want a real job, which sounds more reasonable.
The majority of the books Dutch has him reading are Evelyn Miller, some dramatic modern philosopher whose words seem, to John at least, like a whole lot of fancy nothin'. Regardless of his opinions on the reading material, he can't argue- he is figuring it out. Perhaps that nun was wrong, perhaps he does have enough going on in his head to really learn this. Maybe he ain't so dull after all. Dutch don't think he is anyhow, says it to him with conviction and makes sure he hears it when he does. Tells him he's intelligent. Says he ain't dumb, he's a victim of America's toxic desire to throttle free thinkers, or something. John don't really understand, but it feels good to hear anyway. Makes him feel giddy and warm.
John's been around nearly seven months when he starts hearing talk of leaving, and his heart drops all the way down into his feet.
He reckons he shouldn't be surprised. They're living in tents, obviously they was gonna move on at some point, but that don't make it hurt less. Hell, he'd gotten real used to hanging around here. Started feeling like something permanent, something he could count on and maybe even call home. But just like everything else in his life, it was fleeting.
He don't like goodbyes. He's lost his fair share of folks already.
His mother before he even knew her, his father who he didn't even get the chance to say nothing to before he was carted off by a law man and dumped at the orphanage. Friends he made there who would go find family to live with or a job to work, or more often run off or pass away from sickness. Friends he made on the street who just disappeared, vanished into thin air when John weren't looking and never got seen again. It happened enough times to make him real jumpy about getting attached to folk, and just when he'd started letting his guard down…
Unwilling to risk having to say goodbye, John scurries away from camp while the others are busy packing up.
He don't go terribly far, just scrambles up into a tree and sits high enough to where he can watch all of 'em rushing around to put everything into wagons- he can see them, but they can't see him unless they go looking. All the food he's ate these last few months has made him too slow and too heavy, and it's real hard to drag his sorry ass up into the branches, but he manages.
Perched as close to heaven as he'll ever see, he can't help the frustrated tears that well in his eyes. Why's everything he touch go sour? He's got whatever's the opposite of that Greek feller who made things into gold.
He's gotta turn away. He can't stand to look at them no more, can't handle the ache in his chest.
He stays sat up there in his tree long enough that it's turning dark now. He can hear the distant sound of Miss Grimshaw lecturing someone from behind him, and he's starting to get real frustrated that they ain't left yet. What the hell is taking them so long? Why's this gotta get dragged out? He turns around to take a peek.
The wagons are still there, the horses hooked up to 'em, and John can see in the low light of evening Dutch and Hosea and Arthur standing in a half-circle and being chastised by Miss Grimshaw. They're too far to hear distinctly, but John recognizes the tone. He sees Arthur throw his hands up dejectedly before turning and marching off into the woods.
John just wishes they would hurry up and git. It's starting to get on his nerves.
He turns back around to stare into the trees surrounding him, when he hears a shout. Drawn out but far off, like someone calling for a lost dog, and he thinks it might be Arthur. What in God's name is he hollering about?
John listens as it gets closer and closer, and suddenly, he realizes the shouting he's hearing is his own name.
"John!" Comes Arthur's terribly annoyed voice from somewhere to his left. "John, where the hell have you gone?"
He can hear Arthur's heavy footsteps crunching in the leaf litter that covers the ground.
"John, god damn you!" A pause in the shouting as Arthur comes to a stop not five yards off, hands on hips and looking real angry. "Where did he run off to?" He asks himself.
John knows his brain is far too overwhelmed to let him form a real sentence. He tries, makes a pitiful squeak, then tries again.
"...Here." Is all he manages, quieter than he'd meant for it to come out.
Arthur spins around on his heels, his eyes squinted to try and see through the dark. It takes him a second, but he does spot him- crouched like a beast, hiding amongst the leaves and branches.
"Jesus, kid, what the hell is your problem?" Arthur spits, stepping up to the base of John's tree. The anger in his voice makes him tense up, makes him not wanna look him in his face. He makes a discontented noise.
"Get down from there."
He just pulls his limbs in as close as he can.
"I said get- god damn it, get down."
Why is he mad? Why is he mad? He should'a stayed silent. Shouldn't've trusted Arthur enough to give away his hiding spot.
Arthur reaches up with a long arm and pulls himself up closer to where John's tucked between the joint of three branches, swings his other hand up like he means to pull him down by his ankle, and John just stares down at him wide-eyed.
Any little bit of sense still in his body drains out real quick and is replaced by good old fashioned fear.
He stands, climbs up another gnarled limb 'til he's well out of Arthur's reach, and Arthur's cussing at him the whole while.
"John, get the hell down! Now!" He's trying to climb up after him, but he's slow.
Is it too far down to jump? He's gotta get away, and quick.
His heart pounds hard in his chest as he pulls himself higher and higher with shaking hands, but the branches are getting thin and bendy and refusing to hold him up no more. He can barely hear Arthur's voice over the ringing in his ears. His vision's blurry, his breath heaving, and then Arthur's gone silent from below- he takes a bit to muster the courage to look.
Arthur's back on the ground again, face in his hands for a brief moment before he heaves a great sigh.
"Kid… come down. Please. I didn't mean to scare you." He sounds annoyed, maybe at himself and not at John, but he can't tell. "John, come down. We thought you'd run off is all. Susan's real mad you ain't helped pack." He chuckles awkwardly.
Why the hell would he have helped pack?
He just hums a wobbly note.
"Please come down." Arthur gestures from John toward the ground. "I ain't gonna grab you, swear."
He still sounds mad, but like he's trying real hard to keep it in check.
John's hands tremble around the thin branches he's clutching, his eyes dart from Arthur to his own feet to the ground and back again, and finally he decides to lower himself down.
It takes him longer than it ought to with how his legs shake, and when his boots finally hit the dirt, Arthur's tapping his own foot impatiently.
"Alright, now c'mon. You're holdin' us up."
Few days later, and John's outside of Illinois for the very first time in his life.
Squeezed into the back of a wagon, he stays quiet and confused and curled into himself as they travel west into territory what's fully unknown to him. They set up camp somewhere in Iowa. John gets his very own lean-to, and Dutch lets him paint his name on the corner of the canvas fabric, then takes the brunt of Miss Grimshaw's wrath when she notices. Shaky and unsure is his signature, but it's assuredly his.
A marker of home, traveling though it may be.
Iowa ain't so different from Illinois, least this part of Iowa isn't.
Same trees. Same grass.
And yet some part of John's brain seems well aware he's someplace new, and it's trying its best to scare him bad over it.
He keeps having nightmares. Only four days they've been camped where they are now, and every night, he's been woken by awful dreams that leave him feeling like he's just outrun a train.
The solution to this, obviously, is to simply not sleep at all.
John sits hugging his knees by the fire, alone. It's late and dark and cold, and there ain't nothing to do but stare into the flames until his mind goes blank. He's exhausted, but it ain't worth it to sleep, no sir.
Next morning, he's washing laundry- perhaps doing so willingly for the first time in his sorry life.
Susan was pleasantly surprised by his 'early rising' and enthusiasm for chores. Set him straight to work scrubbing stains from dirty clothes, wringing 'em out, pinning 'em to a line.
She don't have to know that he's just desperately trying to stay distracted from the ghosts in his brain, nor that he's working so hard to keep himself from fallin' over dead mid-breath from exhaustion. Far as she's concerned, he's just very suddenly become a remarkably well behaved young man.
He's kneeling in the dirt, scrubbing away at the knee of a pair of pants, when he's suddenly startled awake by someone saying his name.
When had he fallen asleep?
"Jesus, John. You look like hell."
John looks up, squinting against the mid-morning sun to frown at Hosea. Unlike when Arthur makes insults against John's appearance, Hosea's expression shows more concern than anything else.
It takes some convincing, and promises that he can skip a day of chores without gettin' in trouble, but ultimately Hosea does end up ushering John to his own tent to rest- his and Bessie's cot far more comfortable than John's bedroll on the ground.
"A change of scenery will do you good, son." He assures, patting John's shoulder before slipping back out into the sunshine.
With the light softened through pale canvas, and in a bed much nicer than his own, John finally feels safe enough to sleep.
And sleep, and sleep, and sleep some more.
It occurs to him, when he awakens in the evening to the quiet sounds of the others chatting by the fire, that maybe he means somethin' more to them than just an extra hand at chores, or a project for Dutch to teach his philosophy books to.
Maybe they see him as family as much as he's starting to see them as family. Havin' anybody who cares enough to see him happy, healthy, and well-rested is… new. Very new.
They don't stay at the camp in Iowa for long. They move again, then again, further southwest each time and across state lines and into new places unlike anything John's ever seen.
They're somewhere in Kansas when they finally settle down again for more than a month or two, and by that point John's been with Dutch and his folks for a year and a half or more. Maybe almost two. Even Arthur seems to finally be used to his presence, far less standoffish and more willing to put up with John's constant questions about what he gets up to outside camp, takin' him into town for supplies, even letting him peek over his shoulder when he's sketching. He's real kind when he wants to be, actually, sits with John when neither of ‘em can sleep, teaches him things about horses he never knew, tells stories to him about when he first met Dutch and Hosea. They're probably lies. But even so, they help John finally start to feel truly comfortable.
John being more comfortable also means more butting heads, though.
He's got real strong opinions and an awful loud mouth that frequently outruns his brain, and Arthur's got a hot temper and a low tolerance for bullshit.
But Dutch gathers them together, lectures 'em on how family is supposed to behave and reassures John that Arthur only gets all angry 'cause he cares.
John ain't so sure, but hearing it from Dutch is near enough to convince him. The man ain't ever lied to him before, why would he start now?
"John, look at me." Dutch prompts, a ring-adorned hand clasped tight over John's shoulder. "You boys are so precious to me. You know that, don't you?"
John huffs.
"You two are my sons. I mean that. But I can't have you ripping each other's hair out all the damn time, because I got much bigger things to focus on."
The concept of that, of them really being a family, sticks with him. A second chance at being a son ain't something most folks get, and it certainly ain't something he thought he would get, so he don't intend to squander it.
So he tries his best to behave. Tries not to annoy Arthur on purpose- unless it's too funny not to- nor bug him too terribly much if he can help it. Sometimes he can't, but surely that's just human nature?
And Arthur aside, John really tries his best to impress Dutch. The man was already some kinda story book hero, but John swears the longer he's around him the bigger his personality becomes. His ideas are grandiose and complex, his countenance sparkling bright and confident, and it rubs off on the other folks in camp when he gets that way. The mood is high and the coffers are full, and John's a son again. How could he possibly complain?
Once he's been with Dutch just two years and change, he really feels settled in.
Gone is that sense that everything's gonna be ripped out from beneath him.
John still ain't allowed to go robbing. Arthur's still an ass, but he’s about the best friend John’s got so he can’t really complain. Really, life is swell. Hosea, Bessie and Dutch are about the only grown-ups ever been truly kind to him. Even Susan, but in her own sort of hard-assed way. Well, sometimes Dutch is a hard-ass too. But it's alright. They're his family, he thinks. Through and through.
On a warm, pleasant morning, John stands from his bedroll and stretches his arms up above his head with a dramatic yawn.
"My god, boy, you are just growing like a weed." Comes Bessie's voice from behind, and John turns to face her.
"Really?"
He supposes he has been growing quick- all upwards and never outwards- standing just a head and a bit shorter than Arthur who ain't exactly dainty himself.
Hell, Bessie's tall for a lady and John's her height.
"Yes! I swear you've grown six inches overnight. We gotta quit feeding you so much." She chuckles, walks past him and lays a hand on his shoulder as she goes.
He puffs his chest out. Ain't gonna be 'Little Johnny Marston' forever.
It's nice to see her in a chipper mood. She's been unwell a lot lately, spends a lot more time by her lonesome or resting than she used to, so having her up early and feeling chatty is a pleasant change. She's always been the sunshiniest of everyone here.
It don't last long, though, that positivity she brings 'round fading quick again like it so often does lately. Not that Bessie's ever anything close to unpleasant, but she falls back into bein' tired and ill and it lasts quite a while longer than the last few times.
Days become weeks, and then instead of getting better it gets worse, and then Hosea's leaving camp to take her on a ride in the wagon. Says he's bringin' her someplace nice they'd been before, thinks it'll make her feel better. Just a day or two.
When he comes back, alone, he's like a different feller.
Despondent and teary eyed and stinking of liquor, Hosea tears down the tent he's always shared with his wife. There's still dirt caked beneath his nails.
Arthur and Susan just watch in stunned silence, Dutch tries his best to talk him down, but it's like Hosea ain't even in there anymore. Just a body moving on its own, no soul inside. Entirely empty.
He stays that way for a long, long while.
John feels helpless. It's like he's watching his father reappear before him, drunk and self-destructive, isolated and angry. There ain't been a moment since John's been here that he's felt really scared, honest-to-God frightened, the way he does now watching grief squeeze the life from Hosea's body.
And John's known a long time, since boyhood, that you can't fix Bad with liquor. He watched his daddy do it, and all it got him was blinded and killed. No, John knows all too well that booze can't fix the bad in life, but Hosea don't wanna hear it. Not from Dutch, not from no one. Certainly wouldn't wanna hear it from John, so he don't try. He wishes he had the guts to.
Even when Hosea starts slowly coming back to life, he's different. Irrevocably changed by loss.
Through all this it occurs to John, not for the first time, that love is far too big a risk to take. Seeing someone so stable, so level-headed, someone John looked up to, be dragged to his knees quick as anything like this? It's awful. Why would anyone ever take that chance?
He's heard stories about Dutch losing his girl to that O'Driscoll feller, how he near lost his mind after. Dutch himself said losing someone you love can turn you into a monster.
John don't want to be a monster.
He decides, at the wizened age of just nearly fifteen, that he ain't ever gonna take a wife. It's frightening enough to finally have a group of folks he cares for- the thought he could lose them at any time like Hosea's lost Bessie, like they've all lost Bessie, looms heavy over his head like a storm cloud at all times. He don't need to add to the number of people that could be torn away from him at a moment's notice.
Hosea doesn't ever sleep in a tent no more, just out in the open on a bedroll, and John don't think he'll ever go back. It's very odd. So many months of this, and he still refuses. John reckons Bessie really took some part of Hosea with him when she went, broke off some piece of his sanity and left him however he is now.
And Dutch, maybe in response to seeing his oldest friend hurting, starts acting odd too. Quiet, withdrawn. No jobs for weeks. The mood in camp is so unbearably dour, and John can't figure out for the life of him how to fix it. It's gotta be one of the biggest heartbreaks he's ever felt, and there ain't a damn thing he can do for it.