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"You haven't got plans, have you?"
Arthur raises his eyebrows and pretends to peer about, periscopes left and right. "Me? Nothin' more than puttin' some braids on my mare, now that you ask."
Hosea smiles, the wrinkles by his eyes creasing fondly. "Never a quick answer with you, is it?"
"Never. Should know by now."
"I should. Have a mind to wring the neck of whoever taught you to be so smart."
Arthur smiles lightly. He puts both palms to the table top and gears his hips back to take some of the weight off his feet. "Whatchu need me for?"
"That Kieran Duffy smells like a sty. Now that he's not bound up by a tree, it's not so easily ignored."
"Alright. And?"
"Haven't grown out of being my brazen-faced boy, have you...," Hosea hums, impatient. "Arthur, please, take him down to the water. Toss him in for all I care. Just get him decent and I’ll see to it he’s kept that way."
Arthur frowns and exhales from his nostrils. "And what if I tell you I've got plans specifically from Dutch to—"
"I know for certain you don't," Hosea interrupts. "Dutch and I have discussed the matter. Whatever he's asked of you can wait."
"Oh, am I ever thankful I was brought in on that."
Hosea smiles sharply. "Sooner it is you pin shut that clever mouth of yours, sooner it is you'll be done with the boy."
Arthur issues a stubborn sigh. "Mmm, 'cause Bill," he mutters, starting to push up from the table, "looks awful preoccupied, sittin' on his ass as he is." With his neck, he gestures to where Bill is laid, hat awning his eyes as he rests, one ankle over the other.
Hosea's lips thin and fold into a frown. With blue eyes like two fine marbles, he seeks in Arthur's face a sincerity he knows he can root out, some buried kindness he planted there himself. He simmers his voice to a level whisper, "You're aware of... Bill's partiality. How he can be. Consider this an extension of my trust, Arthur. I wouldn't send you it I thought someone else were up to task."
What that means, Arthur doesn't need clarified. He scowls, but when he meets Hosea's eyes again, a shock of guilt runs through him like a rabbit, and he ducks his head away. No one else can strike shame within his heart quite like Hosea.
"Sure," he mumbles, stubborn, gritty. "I'll handle it."
Hosea perks up and reaches out to pat Arthur's bicep. "Thank you, my boy. Don't need turncoats runnin' off back to Colm."
"Sure," he repeats, turning away.
"I'll find some way to thank you proper," Hosea assures him. "Maybe Charles and you can have a time goin’ on out together for a bit of hunting, hm?"
With his thumb, Arthur flips back the hammer just to hear it click. Kieran's shoulders rise like dough. "You be smart, boy," he says.
Kieran says nothing. He trips up on a rock and keeps moving. He looks awfully small, from Arthur’s vantage point on his horse, like perhaps he’d been stunted as a child through neglect or struggle. Arthur cards that thought away for later, one hand on the worn leather of his pommel, the other keeping his pistol steady between the sways.
There's a clot of deer to the left of them, heads swiveling distrustfully at the sound of hoof falls. One of them flags and begins to bound; the whole of them follow suit, and it appears the area around them is largely empty, save for a rabbit already kicking off and away; a few songbirds trilling in the trees.
On his mount, Arthur can see well the water they're coming up on: a few ducks bundled like bedrolls on the sandy shore opposite their approach, head tucked beneath wing. Much further down, two men on horses are disappearing from the path.
Arthur dismounts and gestures with his pistol toward the water. "Alright. Get to it."
Kieran tremors, titters as he stumbles over the toes of his boots. "W-Why don't I get a-a washin' from one of the women...?” he finally asks, as though he’d been working the nerve the length of the walk. “L-Like I seen—"
"You think you're fit for their company?"
"No, sir, n-no, but—"
"Get on with it," Arthur snaps. "Dutch don't trust you further than he could throw you and I feel just about the same."
As he strips down, Arthur reconsiders this statement. Could likely throw Kieran a mighty distance.
The boy is beyond emaciated. His shirt hangs off him like a cape, whipping gently in the wind. That gets folded before Kieran realizes there's not a decent place to set it and it's discarded on the shore. Next are his boots, placed nicely side by side, then his britches, his back toward Arthur the entire time. His spine juts out in brutal knobs, shoulder blades a pair of spades beneath oatmeal skin. His pants are drawn off like a husk shucked from corn, peeling away.
Everything is tossed in a pile fit for burning.
He falters at removing his underclothes; stands upright and inhales before those are done away with too and he's entirely unclad. His buttocks are scant, fat receding. Kieran turns around, pigeon-toed, hands covering his groin (as if it's something Arthur ain't seen before, by threat of glowing gelding tongs), and looks toward Arthur. He hangs his head and his hair rushes down around his face, obscuring his chin and throat.
He's got coltish, nervous joints, bandy-legged, and it reminds Arthur of how John had come to them: half feral, under-fed, a small and pitiful thing. At his grown age, the O'Driscoll could pass for much younger if you looked only at his body, whittled down to a pale, frail stalk. His breast sunken, his legs twin stilts composed solely of sinew. Battered up with bruises, as well, yellow in the places that would be softer were there meat enough on him to grow natural softness, like the crooks of his elbows. A few empurpled clusters streak the length of his thighs, inner and out.
Unnatural when a man is widest where the bones articulate, Arthur's seen enough to know that.
To think, they'd done that to him—reduced this boy, as he certainly is a boy, quivering like one—to a rawboned and weedy deliriant.
A fierce, unwanted empathy whips through Arthur and he wishes he could turn his face away. Feels they've gone too far with him, withheld too much. He might be a brute, but Christ alive...
"Go on," urges Arthur. "'Fore a catamount comes along and makes you his next sorry meal."
At this, Kieran frowns deeply, his tired, bleary eyes widening with panic. "There ain't really...," he whispers. He turns again and steps in, stops about shin-deep. His hands dodder as he scoops up a palmful of water and rubs it into his chest. He shivers deeper at the new cold. "Not-Not 'round here, there ain't any..."
"If you'd like to be the one that finds out, I surely won't stand in yer way."
Kieran washes in silence. Slaps both palms to the sides of his neck and rubs viciously. Spoons handful of water after handful of water over his collarbones, his pectorals. Strokes down the concave pasture of his stomach. Ribs like kindling, plank aside plank, skin tight and pebbled.
Arthur grunts. He holsters his pistol and unlatches his possibles bag, roots around through maps and rings and the chewed ends of cigars. Comes up with a fragment of pumice—one Hosea had given to Arthur, so young then he'd not yet known a shave.
"C'mere," Arthur says, uses a hand to wave Kieran over, who sways nervously before obeying. "Put yer hand out." And when Kieran does, Arthur lays into his palm the chunk of rock, closes his cold fingers around it. "Scrub down with that. It'll go faster, get you cleaner."
Kieran flowers his hand open and stares at the pumice before stepping back, out of Arthur's reach. He doesn't say thank you, but Arthur doesn't expect it of him.
"Colm ever let the lot of you bathe?"
Kieran rubs down his arms with the pumice. "Hardly." He starts in on his chest, pauses to consider what he might say next. "We'd just... just boot around a while, here and there and yon, t-till we found a spot he'd think suitable. And it weren't always—Wasn't always by water, like yer camp here is."
"Mm."
"Hardest part was keepin' everybody fed."
"I'll bet."
There, the conversation peters out and Arthur considers packing a cigarette to smoke while he's idle. Could surely draw his pistol quick one handed, but under command of Hosea and Dutch, he's not want to slack. He rests his palm on the butt of his gun and adjusts how his hat sits.
He glances downstream. A solitary rider is due to trot past, opposite bank. Further out, some pronghorn graze quietly. Should might bag a kill to bring back to camp, or at least tell Charles the herd is big enough to be culled reasonably.
"You think I'm trim to run, yer a fool," Kieran mutters.
"What's that?" Arthur changes the way his boots are placed, a few inches shy of the water, and crosses his arms over his chest.
"I-I-I—I couldn't make it more'n a dash before I'm dead." Kieran drops into a squat and starts about washing his groin, slender thighs angled so most of him is modestly shielded. Shovels more river with one hand. "Yer a fool if you think I've got that in me." He shakes his head.
Arthur says nothing. He watches water drip down the boney curve of Kieran's knee cap.
Kieran keeps going, face fixed bitterly. "And where'd I'd go, that's a-a-a whole other nothing. What your lot thinks I got or had or-or could have, well, it surely ain't with the likes of Colm. Couldn't barely feed the-the horses with him. Might as well h-have started eatin' the leather offa our boots. Who in their right mind might want that?" His voice wavers with emotion and Arthur's eyes draw up to the pale pillar of his throat to see his Adam's apple quivering as he swallows. "And-and now... Well, don't seem to be a easy road with the likes of y-you and yers neither."
"If we was gonna kill ya, you'd be long dead."
Kieran scrubs down his thighs, using the pumice to bite through the film of sweat and dirt. His flesh tremors deeper, beyond what he can tense and control. The skin shines a pale and raw pink. "Y-You say that, but yer j-just you."
"What's that mean?"
"I k-know y-y-you w-won't kill me." His teeth chatter loudly.
Arthur laughs. "Starvation did somethin' funny to yer brain, my friend. I could kill you dead and Dutch wouldn’t even ask where the ditch I thrown yo—"
Kieran blusters, whipping his face in Arthur's direction. Scared again, that fear rising up through his shoulders the way electricity in the air draws hair on end. "What-What I mean is—" He moves a leg back, the other tucked under him as he tries to edge away, still crouched. His arms go up in a flash—the pumice slices clean through the water with a plop so quiet it's barely heard, one dark glint as it sinks, fading. Kieran's wrists are at his nipple line, elbows tucked in and down near his crotch as if to protect himself, how little there is. "What I-I-I meant-meant—"
Arthur barrels on, meaner, deeper, "Think just because you made one lucky shot I owe you now? That it? Think you got somethin’ over on me? Just as easy, I could—"
"You...!" Kieran's shoulders jump like a cat gone to arch. One eye wrenches shut. "Y-You won't do nothing less-less-less-less I 'cause you to do som-somethin'..!" he squeals, practically caterwauling.
"You best lower your voice," Arthur barks and Kieran's mouth clamps shut like a vice cranked closed in one slap. "You have any of them come down here with that hollerin' of yers, think I'm torturin' you, and you'll wish that's what I'd been doin', God damn you."
Kieran nods. His bottom lip bobs.
"You think I won't be the man to kill you?”
Kieran's eyes are cratered wide with fright. He's still ratcheted up and his pupils dart side to side, face flushed. He shakes his head slowly. His filthy hair swings around the curve of his jaw.
"You think that?"
Hesitantly, Kieran brings his arms down, but he's yet to return to his washing. His face clouds then springs up with fear once he realizes he's lost Arthur's pumice. "L-Less I instigate it or-or Mr. van der Linde makes that call..." He sucks in a breath. "I seen it—You got... You've got better manners than most the others. Act like you don't, s-sometimes, b-but I seen it..."
Arthur thins his eyes.
"Some of them others... They don't take much convincin'."
Arthur knows immediately who Kieran means: Bill. Why he wasn't tasked with this, and wouldn't be, further on down the line. Mrs. Adler, that searing venom in her heart, justifiable as it seemed. Sean. Hell, even Jack had thrown some stones, tiny fists pitching them with all his pint-sized fury that his mother had to shush away.
"Dutch says go, I won't have no qualms about it," Arthur insists. Hardly believes it.
In truth, he imagines riding Kieran out somewhere, the dead pulse of the Heartlands and offloading him. Wouldn't do him the courtesy of a compass, wouldn't flick him not one penny. Cruel situation to be bound up in, but there was still a chance he'd be scooped by some other wayward gang, looking to make a work horse out of him. Hell, maybe he'd get lucky—a passing carriage might be transporting a particularly generous family with means enough to have a soft spot for strays…
No, even if Dutch ordered it, Arthur would struggle to execute him. Soft in his age or just outright foolish, Arthur ain't sure; lost the edge he had once.
"And if Mr. van der Linde don't...?"
Arthur grins with all the rancor he can work to the front. "I'll be waitin' on any reason you might reckon to provide."
"So 'till then...?"
"You make a habit askin' all these questions? Shoulda had you gagged, Christ alive."
Kieran's mouth quirks. "Surprised I ain't spanceled," he mutters.
A laugh leaps out of Arthur. "You got more fight in you'n I'd supposed. Jesus. Dunk yer head and get out."
Kieran wades out to just above his navel and tosses himself under, the current fairly strong. With a whoop, he breaches, teeth-clattering. Hair all in his face, seamed to his throat and jaw. "Christ almighty," he sputters, hands clasped over his biceps. "Y-Y-You had y-y-yers yet?" he asks, blinking in Arthur's direction.
"Oh, I've had mine," Arthur chuckles. "Certainly ain't jealous, if that's what you're worried about. Get on now."
Kieran trudges to shore. He's shrunk up from the cold, nipples and gonads drawn tight. His hair drips a steady trail that streaks down and around the bulbs of his spine.
Arthur whistles for his horse, who'd shied back when they'd got to yelling, and from one of the saddle bags he produces a gunny sack. "Run it over yerself," he says when Kieran meets his eyes with timorous confusion. "Get that last bit of dirt off, and dry you some of the way."
Trick Hosea had taught them—way out in nowhere, they'd burlap-brush the horses. Watching Kieran now, Arthur's stomach quivers, coils cold. He pivots again toward his horse, speaks soft to her. She responds with impatient nickering. "Almost set," he murmurs as he unloads the sack off her back. He sets the bag between his boots and unspools the draw so the mouth opens.
"Hosea figured these'd'of fit," he says, pulling out a shirt, some britches. There's a full-length black coat with a fair amount of tarnish, which Arthur recognizes as having once belonged to John. No stockings. A set of brown leather boots, though the soles are almost entirely eaten away.
Bent over as he is, Arthur sees Kieran's shadow waver closer.
"Thank you," Kieran whispers.
Arthur stands, shirt and pants draped across his arm. "You always so grateful for someone else's left-overs?"
Kieran frowns. He's holding the gunny sack with both hands, at level with his groin. "Wouldn't you be?"
"Hm. Guess I have been, before." He offers out his arm and it takes Kieran a moment to realize what he's being presented with. They trade off: Arthur folds the gunny sack into the smallest possible square as Kieran pulls on the white shirt.
There are no under linens. Kieran steps into the britches nude. He'll need a belt, Arthur notes, until he takes on some weight and fills in about the waist. He toes into the boots and gone are his pale, pale feet. He flexes his ankles, tests how much room he’s got inside, which is likely ample, likely too much, but it’ll have to do.
"Sure the gals will find you somethin' more suitable," Arthur says in a hushed voice as Kieran works the second button of his britches latched. Sounds too soft.
"I don't reckon they're fit to be charitable when it comes to... to me."
"You think you know every goddamn thing, don't you?" Arthur bites. Kieran turns his face up, fingers stilled at the hem of his hand-me-downs, and there's fear shot through him. Arthur steps closer and Kieran's trained enough to know he best not step back. In a whisper, Arthur says, "You go to Tilly, you understand? She's got a generous streak, and enough discretion to keep any pride you might yet still manage."
"Why're-Why—"
"You listen to me 'fore we get back up to camp and I turn you over. See Tilly 'bout clothes. Hosea'll fix you somethin', too, somethin' to put in that gut that won't hit you like a train. Herbs or whatnot that'll keep you settled till you can fit a meal proper."
Kieran chews his bottom lip, eyes fixed on Arthur so true, it almost makes him retreat a pace. "Yessir," he whispers.
"You stay away from 'bout all the rest of 'em. Not one of them trusts you, and if they do, they ain't gonna be caught admittin' it. Any one of us sees you goin' for yer mount, you and that poor thing'll both be dead, and I might be one mean, ugly bastard, but I don't like killin' horses, no matter who owns 'em."
That rattles him—the thought of his horse, loyal enough to make it down the mountain, sniffing the air and tossing her head when she caught Kieran's scent, so plainly executed—and he swallows. "Yessir, Mr. Morgan."
"Bill ever bothers you—Bill ever gets in a way ungentlemanly—you'll know what I mean should it happen—you tell me, if it does."
Kieran's eyes are almost all pupil, the whites of them yellowing. Something else to look after with him. "Yessir," he says again, obedient, tired.
Arthur tosses him the jacket. "Good. Let's go."
This time, Arthur allows him the small dignity to ride. He knows the boy won’t reach around for his gun or skinning knife, and he’s right. They trot up the incline in silence and once Arthur’s stopped his horse, he says, “Git.”
And Keiran does.
Hosea sidles up in line for stew. "How is he?"
"Skinny as a church candle."
"Mm. So weren't you." Hosea inhales and even over the din of a late lunch, Arthur can hear the irregular pull of his chest. "He salvageable?"
"Oh, I reckon so." Arthur taps the ladling spoon against the rim of his bowl to get that last cling of stew off. "Needs lookin' after, but he'll do."
"Good..." There's a smile in his exhale. "Thank you."
"Don't go expectin' it, old man." Arthur passes the spoon over to Hosea then steps aside, starts to eat, standing there.
Hosea chuckles. "Learned not to long ago," he teases. He goes about fixing his bowl and Arthur dismisses himself with a nod and a grunt.
He spoons a portion into his mouth as he walks toward his cot, carefully dodging the sights of Dutch and Uncle and Swanson, and all the rest that may snare him into evening conversation. So distracted is he that he nearly trips over Kieran, standing nervously beside Arthur's trunk.
"O'Driscoll," he spits, startled.
"S-Sir," twitters Kieran. His hands work over the other.
"What."
"I-I-I. Uhm. I wanted. To thank you, sir. For giving me a wash and-and givin' me some clothes."
"I ain't gonna be rid of you, am I."
"Oh... I." Keiran’s face is bashful, confused. His eyes dart around.
"You eat?" Arthur asks.
"H-Have I?"
"You got two ears that work? You eat yet?"
Kieran shakes his head then stops himself. "Charles... He—He gave me somethin'. Tincture he'd brewed.”
“Mm.” Arthur shovels in another mouthful, chews a fatty piece of rabbit. “Probably reckon now is a good time to rest up, then. Next few days and you’ll be gettin’ put to work.”
Kieran frowns but nods his understanding. “Yessir. Like I said… Just wanted to. To thank you for. Well. You know.” And with that, Kieran slinks away and Arthur is finally given a moment to sit on his cot.
In his journal, that night:
Washed the O’Driscoll boy. Filthy. Gaunt. Will have to do right by him, somehow. Really truly seems he hardly knew Colm and now we've starved him near to death. Wasn't like this some years back. We killed, but when had we taken prisoners? If anyone has noticed these changes, these ways we've become so cruel, they haven't said it to Dutch. Maybe Dutch just don't listen.