droptines @droptines - Tumblr Blog

Nov 12, 2025

The Angel That Is Icarus — Chapter 5. Snake-Eyes.

Chapter Summary:

Micah bites a gift horse in the mouth.

Rating: Mature Characters: Micah, Hosea, Dutch, the Van der Linde gang Warnings: Check masterlist, we got a dark one Wordcount: 11,000

| AO3 | Masterlist | Map | | Theme: Micah Bell |

Hosea was colorless and sunken against his pillows, almost as pale as his spider-silk hair. He’d startle awake every few minutes just to shake out his lungs, then somewhere between the space of his heavy blinks and quiet moans he would slip back under. His coughing brought up thick phlegm shot with blooms of jellied blood. Toy Ann took one look at him and declared it pneumonia.

He’d been warning them all for weeks, but now everyone was starting to suspect it might be true: this old wind-broke horse had reached his last ride. I guess that’s why they’d put him right where Karen had died.

Little Bo, woken by the commotion, crept across the post-office in her new dress and quilted leggings and sat down quietly by Hosea’s head. As Toy Ann fed him some kind of tisane with a bitter woody smell, Bo took it upon herself to soothe him like one might a suffering animal, humming softly a broken tune, rhythmically smoothing back his hair, her sad, thin face solemn with focus. He coughed like Hell for fifteen minutes and then regained a bit of brightness—enough to clear his eyes and his lungs for gentle talk.

“Thank you, dear. Well, don’t you look lovely in that dress? You must be a proper little princess, is that right? No? I don’t believe it.”

Another cold night stole over our ruins as Hosea began to receive a rotation of death-bed well-wishers. The women was all tearful again. Grimshaw swept through like a whirlwind for a few minutes at a time, near scornful in her fussing, and he endured it with benevolent restraint. Mary-Beth with her girlish simpleness held his hand and asked him what it was like to be dying. But he didn’t get far in answering before Tilly jumped to her feet and scolded her—scolded them both, him for dying at all—and fled, sobbing, into the snow.

Abigail sat with him longer than anyone, big-eyed Jack bemused and uncertain at her side, and yet she said the least. The torn shirt in her lap spared her having to meet his eye.

“I gotta finish this,” she said bluntly.

“Don’t let me stop you.” Hosea gave a wet cough. “How are you, Jack?”

Jack glanced between them. “Fine,” he said, clipped.

“How’s that sore throat?”

“Better,” said Jack.

“Uh-huh. Good.”

In the silence that stretched tight across the post-office, Hosea’s rustling breaths was as loud as the fire snapping in the potbelly stove. Jack sniffled, watching his mother uneasily as she stabbed the needle in and yanked it out, stabbed and yanked, stabbed and yanked, mending with a violence made for shredding, with the same futile urgency she’d put to stitching Davey Callander.

Hosea coughed again into his hand and wiped it on the edge of his blanket. Abigail’s eyes followed the movement. The small dark spot his fingers left behind spread into a black bloom in the lanternlight. Her jaw tensed. She dropped the needle and the shirt and pressed white-knuckled fists against her thighs. She stared at the blood like it had wronged her, those sharp angular brows cutting mean lines of revulsion into her face.

“You’re gunna git better,” she bit out.

“I’m trying, my dear,” murmured Hosea.

“No, Hosea,” she snapped back. “If tryin ain’t good enough, I don’t wonna hear it. You’re gittin better.”

“Abigail . . .”

“You’re a bastard.” A tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away furiously. “Do you see where we are? D’you see the mess we’re in? You can’t leave us like this. You can’t, and you ain’t gunna.”

There was little he could do to console her; Abigail was too perceptive for that. In the end, he did nothing at all.

When she whisked out the door with her child in her wake, Reverend Swanson shuffled in after them, Bible in arm. His walk was one of the first in this outfit I’d learned to find by ear for its strange, careful, dragging arrhythmia. He stopped by Hosea’s feet and wiped a sweaty palm on his coat. Beneath the far-away reverie he’d stuck into his veins, he had the presence of mind to look vaguely ashamed.

“Mr. Matthews.” Every word sounded dragged out of him, like he had to reach in and pull them out hand over hand, lettered tape-worms as long as rivers. “What with your . . . condition . . . Well, I thought I ought to ask if you’d like to . . . get your affairs in order, as it were.”

“No eulogies, no coffin, and certainly no epitaph,” said Hosea. He cleared his throat. “Will that do?”

“I am trying to be courteous,” said Swanson tightly.

Hosea smiled at him, a long-suffering gesture. “You’re always courteous, Reverend,” he said indulgently. “The Lord’s not waitin on me, let’s not pretend. I’ve lived my life the way I’d live it a thousand times over. Met all the people I wanted to meet . . . robbed who needed robbin. Had some fun along the way. Good enough for me.”

Swanson swallowed. “You’ve been kind to me. More than I deserve. I have no other way to repay you. So . . .” He slid shaky fingers down the spine of his Bible, his eyes shining with moisture. “I will pray for you, my friend. I hope the Lord will hear my sincerity.”

“Thank you,” said Hosea. “Bury me beside Karen.”

“Of course.”

Soon it was Morgan alone who shouldered the burden of watching him wither, turning up again and again to check that he was still breathing and make a new joke of it each time to lure out some wry response. They was really quite fond of each other, in their way. Rare was the moments they disagreed, rarer still that they fought. They was as close to love as it gets between men who eat, drink and fuck in the company of their worst selves—I do believe that, even if it ended so poorly. Morgan just wasn’t loyal to him the way he was Dutch. Hosea had never asked it of him. Hosea had only asked it of Dutch, and only now.

Dutch didn’t come in once.

As the night waned, the post-office emptied but for the drowsy children and the bloodied men. Them four kids lay together by the stove, whispering like breeze-blown leaves on a crowded bough, Bo burrowed into Sampson’s side. Lenny dozed in his corner, slumped against the wall like a corpse; he had some bizarre aversion to lying down I never could understand. Blood was seeping through the bandage around his head.

At the ungodly hour of one o’clock in the morning, Toy Ann puttered into the post-office to deliver Hosea another dose of expectorant and stirred everyone out of their slumber. It truly seemed that no plight, however dire, could bear to touch her; she remained an all-weather brightness, immortally loud and tirelessly blithe.

I winced and turned my head away like the sight of her stung me.

“Braithe in that steam, Isaiah,” she damned near hollered in Hosea’s face. “Lookitchew, y’got some red in them apples agin. Whad I tell ye.” She pinched his pale cheek until he rattled with laughter.

“Indeed, Miss Baker,” he rasped, “I feel a changed man, born anew! I must thank you for lettin me borrow some of your youth.”

Toy Ann cackled. This flirting had become Hosea’s favorite game in the two weeks we’d had her, mostly for the sound it elicited—like beating a crow to death with a big stick.

“Yewth?” she cawed. “What yewth?”

“Oh, don’t be so modest”—cough—“you’ve got the wisdom of five lifetimes and the age of a girl.”

She ruffled his hair, grinning with all the holes where teeth should be. Her eyes disappeared under a lacework of wrinkles. “Ain’t nothin gonna keel you, son, yer much too quick!”

“Lord!” barked Maurice by the stove, and buried his face in blankets.

Toy Ann nagged Hosea past his sweet talk until he dutifully quaffed his bitter tea, then she turned her attention to Lenny and his dinged head, then to my leg and its angry stitches. And when at last she left, and the post-office went quiet once more, Hosea’s breaths began to crackle and crackle into those shot-buck moans.

The next coughing fit that took him over had him coughing for a very long time.

“Need I remind you that you were wrong!”

I jerked awake as if a gun had gone off.

Dutch and Morgan was outside the post-office, fighting through the window in the door by the light of a muted morning. I looked at Hosea, propped against his pillows, and for an instant I thought he was dead. His head was canted back, mouth fallen open, eyes gazing dully at the ceiling. Then I heard the slow, creaky breaths leaking out of him. Still clinging on.

“And you were right to have us all leave camp?” snapped Morgan. “That went real well, didn’t make you look a damn fool—”

“What was that?” Dutch smiled derisively. “Oh, Arthur Morgan is full of opinions these days! But does he have any ideas? Cause I-I ain’t heard a one!” He raised his hands, going poison-pleasant. “You gonna tell me what I shoulda done, friend? You gonna tell these fine folks what our next move is?”

“Why you gotta read into every little thing I say? You know I ain’t—”

“The last thing I need right now is a whining child in my ear.” Dutch must have worn his voice ragged yesterday evening, calling for Toy Ann; it was serried to a rusty snarl, and getting only rougher. “If you ain’t doubtin me, then stop askin stupid questions! You think I haven’t considered the consequences? I ain’t as short sighted as you are, Arthur, I know what I am doing! I have planned—for—contingencies! I have got this—under—control!”

“Yeah well have you planned for what happens when Hosea dies here?” Arthur shot back. “Have you planned for women and children dyin? For Colm O’Driscoll t’be huntin our heads now? Have you planned for that?”

“Gettin away from here is my plan!” Dutch was beginning to pace. “And there—there ain’t nothin I can do about that stupid old man throwin himself over the God-damn Jordan. We all knew it was comin!”

Arthur’s glare went slack. “You—You w—What is wrong wit you?” He breathed out a cloud of disbelief. “You ain’t right in the head.”

“I am right as rain,” sneered Dutch, “it’s you who ain’t right.”

“Colm being here done somethin to you.”

Dutch stopped. The vein in his forehead was almost purple. “Colm being here just got five children killed. Murdered. Ain’t it done somethin to you? Or d’you think—” He laughed suddenly. “D’you think I’m as bad as he is? Is that what you think?”

“No,” said Arthur. “No, Dutch. I know it . . . It ain’t like that. But can you . . .”

There it was: that look of bleak helplessness. The train was heading for a wall, and the driver was laughing.

“Dutch,” he said weakly. “Hosea’s real sick.”

Dutch gripped Arthur’s shoulder under one firm palm. “This is Colm’s last-ditch effort to get us,” he growled. “Once we’re over the border, he’ll have lost us. If we turn around now, we’re playin right into his hands.”

“It ain’t the time for God-damn feudin!”

“He’s made time. And we pay for it. I have had enough payin.”

Just as his fist began to tighten, Dutch let go. He whirled around and vanished from the square of the window.

“Hosea’s gonna die, Dutch!” yelled Arthur.

“So be it!”

Arthur hung his head. He rubbed his eyes with gloved fingers, hooked his thumbs in his belt. For a moment, he only stood there. The stove ticked and tapped an idle rhythm. Thaw dripped from a gap in the ceiling, steady as a clock. Arthur heaved a heavy sigh, and pushed inside.

Hosea raised his head and smiled.

Arthur looked away, his face carefully blank.

“I assume you heard all that,” he said as he shut the door.

“Oh, yes,” said Hosea, breathy and slow. “Dutch doesn’t talk about me like that behind my back.”

“How would you know?”

Hosea thought for a moment. Then he said, “I see your point.”

If the joke was meant to coax Arthur away from his worry, it was a waste of breath. He shook his head stoically and moved to the stove. As he opened the hatch, his eyes twitched reflexively against the gust of shimmering hot air that rushed him. He threw in a fresh log. It sputtered and hissed with damp, smoke curling off of it like swirls of black oil.

“You sound a little better,” he allowed, watching the flames lick up the log’s rotten flanks.

Hosea hummed. “The wonders of medicine—modern, or otherwise.”

“Blood still comin up?”

“Bit.”

“Feverish at all?”

“I’m fine.”

“‘Fine’? Whatchu mean ‘fine’?”

“Arthur,” said Hosea severely.

Arthur scowled into the fire. “What?”

“You’re startin to sound like Susan.” Hosea croaked a laugh, but it wasn’t for humor. There was a testy glint in his eye. “One is quite enough.”

Arthur slammed the hatch shut. He dusted his hands on his coat.

“Molly,” he said. “Y’all right?”

It was then that I noticed her sitting silent on the bench in the corner of the room, her face white against the slash of red lips and the frame of a dark scarf. She was so pale the veins crawling under her eyes stood out like cracks in a porcelain vase, blue as ink. Her arms was wrapped tight around her middle.

“Oh, I dunno,” she said miserably. “D’yeh think I put im in this mood?”

“Dutch? Naw.” Arthur turned back to the stove as he said it, hiding that guilty look from her glassy gaze. “He’s just . . .” He scratched behind an ear. “Well, we’ve lost some folks—we’re all a little rattled.”

Molly dabbed her wet eyelashes with her finger-tips and sniffed. “He shouted at me. Really shouted at me, in front of e-everyone.”

“Miss O’Shea,” cut in Hosea, “forgive me for being brusque, but we are in a Hell of a lot of trouble, a Hell of a lot, and Dutch has just about lost his mind over it—”

“I know! Jesus, I know! You sound just bloody like im!” Molly stood up sharply, then quavered—she seemed to go a shade whiter, near translucent now, like the belly of a fish. She laid a hand against the wall to steady herself. “What if I’m sick?” she cried. “What if I just drop dead? Doesn’t he care? Doesn’t he?”

“Molly, dear,” said Hosea, gently now. He reached out to her with a trembling arm. “Come here. You’re not gonna drop dead. You’re—”

“How do you know? You don’t know! He’s left me alone, Hosea!” The whites of her eyes and her spit-wet teeth and the glaze of tears gathered on her lashes glittered madly in the shaft of pale light spilling over her. “I-I’m all alone here, and I am sick of snow, and I’m hungry, and I nearly got shot two days ago, and, oh, I just”—her voice was going thinner and thinner, the shrinking whimper of a child in the cobweb of a dark room—“I can’t shake the feelin anymore that I’m gonna die like this, I’m gonna die like an animal, a-all of us, how can he not see that we’re walkin to our deaths!”

Hosea pressed the side of his fist against his forehead, shutting his eyes to her misery. By the stove, Arthur shuffled his feet and hands, unsure what to say.

I cleared my throat loudly.

All three heads in the room twisted quick to mine.

How curious it was to wield such empty power: little old Micah Bell, barely there at all, nothing more than a fly on the wall until the slit of my cold blue leer went round and my lumpy body dragged itself into a splay-legged sit. I came into existence like a headache or a bad smell, and the way they looked at me, I might well have been either. I savored it. Not the attention, but the potency of it. I didn’t own much—no one did in this line of work—but when I was in a room, it was mine.

I turned my smirk on Molly O’Shea.

Low as a purr, I said, “We never made no claim of goin someplace easy to be, Miss Molly.”

I took out my watch and began to wind it, slowly, slowly, methodically. I had to be careful what I said to her. The crown to which I pledged my soul with promises of human feeling was the sump of all her woes.

“There’s a price to be paid for the dreams of men with ambition. I wouldn’t expect a girl like you to understand—but you, and others like you, are very often the price.” I held up my watch, dangled it by its chain. Molly’s wide eyes darted to it. “No shame in a healthy dram o’fear, sweetheart; no shame in quittin while you still can. After all, if you really love Dutch, wouldn’t you want him free, and . . . unhindered?”

I laughed to myself, ugly and grunting, the noise of my fullest disdain.

Arthur took a thunderous step toward me, his brow darkening. “Why’s this son of a bitch still alive?”

Hosea’s glare was just as dark. “The poison ain’t kicked in yet.”

I swung my watch into my palm and tapped it with a finger. Tick. Tick. Tick.

“One o’these days,” I said through the trickle of my grin, “you’ll see I want what’s best for this family. You’ll all see.”

Arthur’s shadow fell over me. “Only thing I wanna see is you at the bottom of a hole.”

“Ain’t he charming, Miss Molly?” I jeered. “Ain’t he just?”

Molly’s red mouth quivered. Unbreathingly she stared at me, mottled pink splotching her face like blood in milk.

Then she shook herself. “Excuse me, Arthur.” She pushed past him stiffly as she hastened to the door.

When the panes had quit rattling from the violence of her exit, Arthur turned back to me. His nostrils flared with bull-rage. “Where do you get off scarin girls already scared outta their minds?”

“I have faith, Morgan,” I said. “Maybe I’m the last one who does. How are we supposed to get anywhere with this cloud of despair and disloyalty hangin over us, stifling our every move!” I tossed my arm, teeth bared. “Twenty—six—mouths—to—feed, half of them moanin, ‘I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!’ It’s no wonder Dutch can’t think straight!”

“He’s tryna get a rise outta you,” warned Hosea.

Arthur didn’t take his eyes off me. “I’ve half a mind to let him.”

“It’s just talk, Arthur.” Hosea sat forward, sharp and serious. “Just talk.”

Arthur was disappearing somewhere behind that predator in him. Oh, we always waltzed around it, but after so long he might as well have come out and said it: How I wish I could kill you. Could, could, could. I admit it was becoming intoxicating. Morgan could hit me until my face was twice its size and my teeth was scattered across the floor like bone-flowers, but he could not kill me. I held that empty power over him, like I held it over them all. If I was bound to them by my broken leg, they was bound to me by their own code, bound to feed me and nurse me and swallow their pride for me. Tussling brothers. Defanged Cain.

Arthur swirled his tongue in his mouth like he was licking at the teeth Dutch had pulled from him. The predator slid reluctantly out of his eyes. Poor beaten dog. I laughed angrily and leaned into the corner made between the wall and the counter, as comfortable as if I lived there, as if he didn’t make my hands shake.

Hosea lay back. He knocked his boot against Arthur’s leg. Arthur looked down at him, suddenly weary. His knees clicked as he lowered himself to Hosea’s side. All I could see of him was the sinking curve of his spine.

“Ah, old friend,” he said, “twenty-six mouths.”

“First time we’ve cracked twenty-five, huh?” murmured Hosea. “Remember when it was just the three of us?”

“Long time ago now.”

“Someone’s watchin our Tower of Babel.” Hosea coughed. “Gettin too big for our britches.”

“Well,” said Arthur, then stopped. He just nodded.

Hosea clapped a gnarled hand on Arthur’s knee, patted it twice hard. “Arthur, listen.”

Arthur nodded again.

“I’ve decided . . .” Hosea’s throat worked against the flutter in his voice. He averted his eyes. “Arthur, you can tell old Dutch I won’t bite his head off if he comes to visit”—he raked in a crackling breath—“he won’t get no quarrel from me anymore.”

Arthur stilled.

“What you mean?” he asked.

“It’s time I faced the music,” said Hosea. “We’re goin nowhere fast, and we ain’t comin back. Nothin I can do about it now. Used to be my life was a pretty good bargaining chip, but I guess that’s over with. Outlived my usefulness after all.”

“Why you talkin like this? You said you was feelin fine.”

Hosea blinked dimly at the window with such gray-faced exhaustion it seemed at first he had no strength to answer. Dutch was right; he had gotten thin. Weak shadows pooled in the hollows of his cheeks and the notches in his nose. His eyes was melting deep into his head, deeper by the day. Soon he would be peering out at us from the bottom of a well, sockets black like the crows had pecked them clean.

When he finally spoke, I could hardly hear him. “Just stay calm. You can do that, can’t you?”

“You ain’t been so calm,” said Arthur. “You been more worked up than I’ve seen in years.”

“I knew I was running out of time. Thought I could change his mind. Turns out I was wrong about a lot of things. Maybe everything important.”

This knell rung silent as the grave. All his long life and this was how he chose to go—giving up the ghost, giving up the fight, giving us up for lost. I ground my teeth beside them, crushing my head against the side of the clerk’s counter, thinking, thinking, thinking.

Hosea shook Arthur’s knee. “Look at me, Arthur, look at me.” That hard-edged intensity had come to him, put a wick in his eye. “It’s not over for you. It’s not over for any of these fools.”

“Past few months you been sayin the opposite,” said Arthur.

“And now I’m sayin it’s time to start makin plans.”

“For what?”

In a whip-quick flash of contempt, the drawstrings on the old man’s thin little mouth pulled even tighter. He withdrew his hand.

“When I’m gone, Arthur, there won’t be a soul alive who’ll bother to see through this act of yours,” he said darkly. “Do me a favor, for God’s sake, don’t die playin the part of the dumb brute—”

He barked out a rough cough, his body jolting with the effort, and rapped a fist against his breast-bone.

Arthur said nothing. He got up to leave.

“We only get so many chances,” snapped Hosea. “I ain’t askin you to be a great man, only a better one!”

Arthur threw the door open. The cold coursed in.

“Too damn late,” he said.

And he was gone.

Hosea pressed his hand to his forehead again, breathing harshly in his anger.

I watched him with a mirthless smile. “Poor—old—feller,” I drawled. “And you was tryin so hard.”

He glowered at me from the side of his oil-black eye. Hoarse as sandpaper, he grunted, “Go to Hell.”

My smile spread thinner. By habit I smoothed my cool palm over the grip of a gun, touching my finger-tips to the embossment. Arthur had set aside Hosea’s Peacemakers, left them in the belt discarded over a broken-legged stool on the other side of the post-office, far beyond his reach. I guessed the old man had no fear of me, and that was reassuring in its way. He couldn’t beat me like Arthur could; couldn’t kill me with his bare hands. Unarmed, he too was just talk.

I hummed to myself, skinning my thoughts, one at a time, taking them apart, hm-hm-hm. I took out my knife to busy my fingers and began to slice fine kerfs through the hem of my cotton blanket.

“You and I,” said I at last, “we ain’t so different, you know.”

“How depressing,” returned Hosea, stolid.

“Sticks and stones, old feller. You’ve learned to hate me, and”—I put a hand on my chest—“I surely sympathize, as I don’t like you much neither. But, at the end o’the day, we want the same thing: to stop draggin dogies into dog-fights.”

Slowly, Hosea lowered his arm and turned his head to me, inscrutable now. I stared back at him, hoping silently. His mind was quiet on his face, not like any other mind in Van der Linde company save our second greatest confidence man—the usurer. The world’s game to them was not cunning but cheating. No big speeches, no big conviction: desire and deceit, a trap and not a tower. It was my game when guns was off the cards, but it was theirs even when bullets would do.

“I think,” said Hosea, deliberate in every word, “we’ve got a very different idea of what that means.”

“Why we want it, maybe,” I conceded, “but not what it means.”

His look flattened, feigning disinterest. “Your point?”

“We are wedded in this chaos, for better or for worse. But for better . . .” I raised my knife between us, flipped it in the air. “For better, we can help each other. Way I see it, we are, as you say, goin nowhere fast. I’m all outta plans, and you’re damn near outta pulse.”

“If you were outta plans, you wouldn’t be sweet-talkin me.”

“True enough.” With a crooked grin, I tapped the flat of the blade to my nose. “Sharp feller, even if you is gettin long in the tooth. See, that’s why we’re better off puttin our talents together.”

Hosea coughed into his fist, then leaned over and spat onto the floor-boards. “Thought your talent was listenin,” he rasped, wiping his mouth. “Said I ain’t in the business of quarrelin anymore.”

“And yet you was all too keen to have at Morgan just now.”

He regarded me coolly.

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, old girl,” I laughed. “I’ll put in the hard labor all by my lonesome, cause unlike you, I ain’t the type to lie down and die when I want somethin.”

He did not react to any part of my insult. “So what do you want? My blessing?”

I picked at my grinning teeth with the point of my knife. “I’ll settle for a good word.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Devil’s advocate,” he said calmly.

“I ain’t no Devil, old man, and you ain’t no Angel.”

Hosea dropped his mask. All the thinking he’d tucked into his sleeve came tumbling out in the kind of madman’s malice I’d thought was Dutch’s alone. It was painted over his sunken skull and the black fire of his eyes, a glittering life born only of hating a man so intensely his very living spurs you on.

“I never claimed to be an Angel, far from it.” He spoke now with his teeth out and spitting, a rictus nearly glee. “I’m somethin worse than all the robbers and rapists and murderers of Hell: a man with nothin to lose. Every word outta your mouth has steered us wrong, and you think there’s a chance in Hell I’d trust you?” He wheezed a saw-blade laugh. “Think over your plans again, Micah Bell. You ain’t the only forked tongue in his ear.”

I studied him and every inch of his self-satisfaction. It never was hard to pry out a bad man’s manifesto. Confession for confession, a crook won’t be outdone. This old fool was just as easy as his god—in his petulant rage, he had given me my triumph.

I chuckled darkly, saluting him with my knife.

I did it. I’d breathed life into him.

But now, of course, he wanted me dead.

He didn’t show it—not to Grimshaw when she turned up clucking and fretting over his warmth, nor Charles creeping in for the heat of the stove, nor Mary-Beth meting out a breakfast of chewy bear stew—but he made no secret of his sudden good mood. A spark had come back to him, that boyish mischief that gave him his humor. He was joking, and laughing, and spinning his yarns; he charmed Mary-Beth into a conversation about cutthroat trout and entertained her inanely for half an hour. Something was feeding a new-found power in him, and I knew what it was, and he knew I knew.

He was waiting for my move. Watching me. Testing me. He lived for the time he was biding, and he lived for toying with me.

When Mary-Beth left us to the last of our stew, I stared at him without shame. The hot meal had brightened him yet more, brought blood to his skin and sprung his eyes from the shadows a little. He seemed quite calmed down, relaxed under his tight lungs, no coil of wire-spring readiness despite his lingering threat. Still he had no fear of me. But I no longer found it reassuring.

“You know,” he said into the silence, so abrupt I nearly jumped, “bear was one o’the first things I ever ate.”

“Is that right,” I said.

“Mm. Black bear is good.” Hosea tapped his spoon against the bowl. “This was a small one, though. Spring bears usually are—otherwise you get twice as much fat as meat. I bagged a thousand-pound grizzly once with an old huntin friend. Oh, to be young and stupid again.” Shaking his head, he chuckled to himself. “He’s long dead now. Might as well’ve been the bear that got him: totally riddled with worms. We was sick for two weeks. Gotta cook’m right through, learned that the hard way.”

I pushed a slimy wad of shank around my bowl. I’m sure he felt real smart with his Aesopian intimidation, very amusingly underhanded. Anger was starting to tense me, my fingers stiff and itching for a gun, but I soothed myself with thoughts of my power—indeed, it was not so empty a power when I was growing mad enough to catch a hundred bullets just for a taste of it.

This old man would get me what I wanted, or I’d shoot him in the fucking head and reckon with my death however I saw fit. How I chafed under his thumb, how I chafed.

The morning wore on, and I chafed, and I chafed. People came in and out to see him and send me dirty looks. They asked after his health. He asked after the kids. Tilly Jackson brought in that cross-eyed little Bo, and her cold-pinched face lit up with joy when she spotted him. She reached out and touched his cheek, and she giggled in her tiny voice. It was all so saccharine I felt ill.

But then, I just felt quite ill. My head was beginning to spin and my stomach roll, so I lay down. The swollen skin around my ankle had gone tighter, hotter, tugging at its stitches, like something inside me was trying to get out. That unborn creature of blood poisoning was pushing at my seams—I could already tell. I’d been bled enough times to know what it feels like.

I closed my eyes for a while.

“What’s your name, little lady? Is it a secret? Come on now, you can tell me. I can keep a secret.”

“Micah.”

I flinched hard. Squinting through a fevered smear of black and white contorting under morning sun I found Dutch bent over me, his hand out like he would have touched me. I groaned in the back of my throat, sore all over. Crumpled in a dead slump with the wall at my spine and my neck at an angle, I’d fallen asleep like Lenny Summers.

I grasped for Dutch’s hand. He pulled me into a sit. The snow beneath me had become slush, and my clothes was wet. Hot and cold rolled over my skin in prickling waves. My head nodded forward.

Dutch was kneeling now, his hand on my shoulder, thumb and forefinger at the junction of my neck. Instinct tensed me, but in my shuddering he did not notice.

“You don’t look well, son,” he said. His voice was a ruin, husky and deep.

I could hardly steady myself to see him. “I don’t f-feel well, Dutch,” I said haltingly. “Fucking horse got me g-good.”

A knife of pain spiked through my leg, quick as a bullet. I clutched my knee and beat it with my fist, harder harder harder. Dutch’s grip tightened.

“Micah.”

“What,” I forced out.

“Why are you out here?”

Well, brainless moron, I thought I ought to be murdered where everyone could see me.

I hid behind my hat. My best friend spite was clearing my head. I hoped Dutch was afraid. I hoped it was all falling apart inside him. It was falling apart inside me, and I hated to waste my misery.

“I’m burni-ing,” I said, shivering. “I’m on fire.”

Dutch swore under his breath. “Toy Ann ain’t given you somethin?”

“Old hag’s been at me three times now. She’s g-given me plenty.”

“I’ll make sure she gives you somethin a little stronger.”

His touch vanished as he stood, and I sagged in relief. I leaned my weight onto one numbed hand and looked up at him shakily. He was moving away.

“Dutch,” I said.

He stopped. Against the blue sky he was taller than the mountains, dark as the ghost of the sun.

“Gonna lose old H-Hosea if we’re up here much longer.”

His face shuttered. “Not you too.”

“No, don’t worry”—I raised my off-hand to placate him—“I know you’re only doing what’s bes-st for your people. You always do. A visionary, but a provider when it matters.”

His look turned hunted. He nodded stiffly.

“That’s all I want,” he gritted out. “To make sure we all get outta this alive.”

“And you will.” I made a wide gesture, pleading with my faith. “We kn-now . . . we know we’d be lost without you. Them kids, well—they’d be mincemeat.”

Dutch stilled in his scowl. His throat bobbed. He flickered somewhere else. I hoped he was seeing that child again. Hoped it was all falling apart.

“Go inside, Micah,” he said. He turned around, and the long, dark line of him swayed slowly toward the log cabin where twenty frightened faces waited for the mantle of his conviction to fall over their eyes.

Tell us again we’re gonna be free. Tell us again we ain’t never gonna die. Tell us again. Tell us again.

When I dragged myself back inside, Hosea was watching me. I returned him a glower that was weakened by my trembling, the rats’ tails of my hair rattling a greasy dance.

“I-I need c-clothes,” I snapped through chattering teeth.

Under the bandage my leg was red and hot as a coal. But it was the smell that worried me. Yellow with pus all in the seam, the wound was going sour, curdling like old milk. Toy Ann pulled up my stitches and washed it out and stuffed it with a paste of knit-bone and bistort. Then she started winding my bandage again.

I grabbed her wrist. “Sew me back up.”

Toy Ann shook her head. “Thread is puttin that blood-cheese in you,” she hollered.

I stared at her dizzily, hazed in a pulsing pain. “Blood-cheese?” I repeated. “Listen, you old witch, I’m tellin you—sew me back up!”

Beatific as ever, Toy Ann spun her wrist and twisted out of my grasp. “Drink this and go t’sleep.”

She pressed a rusty tin mug, boiling to the touch, into my hands. The tea was black and stank of bile. My stomach writhed.

“Drink it right up,” she insisted, “then go right t’sleep. Poison’s goin through ye, needa sleep it out. Git it? Sleep it out, son. Ye’ll wake up fever-broke, sweated all out in yer dreams. Trust this old witch now.”

I was already sweating like a pig, soaking through old stains in the O’Driscoll shirt Hosea had foisted upon me. But Toy Ann, for all her dirty charlatanries, knew one thing quite well: how to shock the body into living a little longer. And I will tell you this. I was beginning to fear dying myself. I’d seen a dozen strong men outdone by blood poisoning—Hell, it only took one night to claim Davey—and it is a long fate, a fading-away fate, the kind that robs you of sudden-death dignity. This was not how I planned to go. No man who reckons with bullets wants to die in a bed.

“Well,” I said bitterly, “I guess I will just sweat it out in my fuckin dreams then.”

Hosea toasted me with his own mug. “That’s it, Micah,” he chirped. “Better than the sweetest liquor!”

“Look at you, all cheerful,” I sneered. “Till death do us part, old feller, and by the state o’you I’ll put my money on sooner rather than later.”

The gleam in the old bastard’s eye was wicked as a dagger. “Hear that, Toy Ann, the man’s got no faith in medicine.”

“Keep talkin, dead man,” I said. “I’ve always liked your shoes.”

He might have flung some retort—had opened his mouth to do so—but for the cough that came out instead. He grabbed his chest, put down his tea, bent his head forward as it rocked through him, tore through him, clawed out of him raw and wet with blood. His brows was screwed tight, face twisted up. Toy Ann looked on studiously, tapping the wrinkled slash of her lips.

It was torture to keep this thing alive. He put on his big show of meeting Death with open arms, but it terrified him. I could tell. No man with so many regrets is content to lay down the burden of his failure. When it was looming over him, when it became the only thing he could see before him, I wondered if he would beg like Karen for one more moment of torture, two more, three more, anything but ending, anything but losing his chance.

No I don’t wanna die. Don’t let him kill me, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die.

My shaking hands sent scalding tea over the rim of my mug. I sucked it desperately off my skin.

With blood in his teeth, Hosea smiled knowingly. He knew damned near everything.

Dutch burst in like a bat out of Hell, striking his hands together like they might light a spark. Hazily, I blinked. Honey gold in hard light, his gaze was ablaze with a terrible excitement and ringed with sleepless black. For a moment I thought he was on fire, but it was the flare of high noon making candles of his fur. I let my eyelids lower again on the anvil of my headache.

“You’re smilin,” said Dutch. “Feelin better?”

“Gettin there,” said Hosea. The smile was in his voice, warm and lax.

“I told you that old woman could work miracles.” Dutch’s boots charted a slow, stalking path across the room. “I’m gonna hold this over you.”

“Well, don’t jinx it.”

I peered at them between my lashes. With a blown-out sigh, Dutch settled himself by Hosea’s left side where I could see the red heat in his eye. He pulled off his gloves and set a hand on Hosea’s chest. He pressed down searchingly. His fingers crept beneath Hosea’s coat. It was clear when he’d found what he was looking for: a long exhale left him, steady and rolling, his weight seeping out as air.

“There’s your heart,” he muttered. “Still goin strong.”

“Hallelujah,” said Hosea dryly.

Dutch’s hand jumped with every hot pulse of Hosea’s heart, rose and fell with the tide of gravelly breath, some strange hypnotic war of rhythms. I touched the spot where my heart would be, but it wasn’t there—melted already, it was freed from its cage, running all through my burning blood, all through the swelling drum that was my body. My head was killing me. My leg was killing me.

“I’m thinkin what we need to do,” said Dutch, “is put you and the women and the rest o’the old fogies on a train to Montana.”

“With our secret fortune?” scoffed Hosea. “That’s eleven people—sixteen if we’re bringin those abandons with us. Seventeen if you wanna add this useless crip. It’ll be two hunnerd dollars for tickets alone.”

Stupid old man was counting sheep like I was. One two three four five little sheep all in a row.

“I know.” Dutch’s voice went low. “We need . . . one good take. To set us up again.”

“Dutch.”

“Hosea. We need money.”

“We need to keep our heads down, or we’ll all be dead before we make it to the border. You think throwin a blind dart at the nearest bank’s the right move?”

“Not a bank, for Christ’s sake.”

“Excuse me for figuring we was done with logic and reason.”

Angry now, Dutch began to seethe. I heard him shuffle, then strike a match, light a cigarette, draw deep to bring the fire through.

“You said you were done with the doubting,” he said, gone dark and heavy with smoke.

“Ain’t nothin to doubt when you ain’t even got a plan,” shot back Hosea. “What’s the plan? Who’s your mark? How’re you gonna keep the heat off us when it comes down?”

“Don’t get superior with me,” growled Dutch. “I’ve been stuck up here, same as you. I need to get the lay o’the land.”

“Well that’s just it, Dutch. There’s your solution.”

“What is?”

“The land. Work with the land. Be resourceful. Look at what’s right in front of you steada what’s locked up in that head o’yours.”

“There’s nothing here, you crazy old bastard. What, you want us to become trappers? You want us to sell off what little resources we got left?”

“Round up those sheep on the ranch and sell those.”

Dutch paused. He grumbled through a pull, but he was thoughtful as the smoke poured out.

“How much is a damn sheep worth these days?”

“I reckon two dollars a head. No less than that. And after this cold snap, well, there’ll be hunnerds of local ranchers with gaps in their flocks need fillin. Ask that Mrs. Adler, she’ll know.”

He was thinking. Thinking.

“And what if she don’t wanna give em up? They’re her sheep.”

Hosea wheezed, the cat that got the cream. “Aha. Look.”

“What?”

“The stupid’s comin out. You know I’m right.”

Oh, Dutch hated that. His spiteful glint was thinly veiled. “We’ll try it your way, old man, but I got my dart set on somethin bigger than mutton-punchin.”

Hosea plucked the cigarette from his fingers and sucked on it. Apology by way of annoying him further. He smiled lazily, and offered it back.

“How about we do the mutton-punchin first,” he said, “and then we’ll see which way the cat jumps?”

Dutch took the cigarette, took the bait. “First reasonable thing you’ve said.”

“Is it? Here I was thinkin, between the two of us, I’m the one with all the reason.”

“Oh, is that so.”

“Ain’t that why you keep me around?”

His eyes sparking with amusement, Dutch blew out a plume of smoke through a smile. “Not at all, Hosea.”

He handed back his cigarette. Hosea coughed a little as he took it.

Dutch leaned closer, conspiratory. “Never mind what I said,” he murmured. “Let’s go rob a bank.”

Hosea chuckled behind his smoking hand. “Let’s revive this mining town operation, maybe they were onto something.”

“Mm, a mountain full o’gold.”

“Packed with it, all the way to the top of Dead Head Crown.”

“A crown’s gotta be made of gold, right?”

“Gotta be, or you ain’t a real king.”

We was going to die and them two was in each other’s ears like lovers. It would have been so fucking funny if it didn’t make me so fucking mad, scorching mad, trembling mad.

“Maybe I can convince Mr. Bell to cough up his teeth,” said Dutch.

I curled my hidden hands into fists.

“He’s awake, you know,” said Hosea.

“He is? How can you tell?”

“He’s too still. He dreams like a dog.”

I opened my eyes full and fixed them in my cold blue stare. The light made them pale as caught specters, dark-eyed demons. Hosea was mocking me, laughing at me with his smug look, his damned smug look.

“Didn’t mean nothin by it, son,” said Dutch soothingly. “We ain’t at pullin teeth just yet.”

“I know, boss.” I smiled, flashing gold to the blinding sun. “But what’s mine is yours.”

I was just drifting off again when Morgan and Javier came barging into the post-office with a red slab of meat that might once have been John Marston. They laid him down by the potbelly stove in a spill of mangled limbs and cold, clotted blood, his head lolling on a limp neck, puffing shallow cloudless breaths. His face was alien in its disfigurement, black and ballooned, eyes sealed behind the bloat of his bruises. Every part of him was dripping. I could not tell what was blood and what was snow-melt.

“Think he’s out now,” said Morgan, squatted down beside him.

“¡Oye, pendejo!” Javier gripped John’s chin roughly between his fingers and shook him hard. “¡Ya levántate, eh!”

John remained silent.

“Yeah, he’s real gone,” said Javier.

“Stupid bastard.” Morgan chewed at his thumb-nail. His eyes was stuck fast on John, transfixed by the damage. “Get Abigail and Susan. Toy Ann, if you can find her. Hell, get the reverend.”

Javier put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. “And Dutch?” he asked.

“I guess,” said Morgan.

“He won’t be happy.”

Morgan met his eye grimly. “Well, at least you ain’t died, that’s all I’ll say.”

Javier gave him a pointed look. “If I died of the grippe, I’d ask God to send me back and kill me with wolves.”

In Javier’s absence, Hosea staggered to his feet and moved to crouch by Morgan. Awoken from an uneasy sleep, he was creased in the face and wet with drool and shivering now in the cold. He brushed his knuckles over John’s forehead, nose, cheek, frowning to himself. He rolled John onto his side and began to peel him out of his soaked and shredded coat.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“Found him like this in the forest, couple o’miles out from that basin. Only he was talkin then, and now he’s just about crow bait.”

“How’d he get like this? Where’s his horse?”

Morgan grunted. “Well, the damn idiot got lost in that snowstorm and found himself some real hungry wolves. They was comin at him for hours, he said. He’d done dug himself into a hole. At some point they got tired of reckoning with his bullets and went after Benny. He got up and followed them, killed the rest, I think. Rode Benny to death on the way down. Crawled the rest of the way.” Morgan helped Hosea lift John out of his shirt and vest. “I’ll go find his saddle to-morrow. We can sell it if John doesn’t make it.”

Hosea made a vague noise. His fingers picked carefully over the swaths of flesh torn from John’s arms.

“Nothin like a dead man to get old Hosea out of bed,” said Morgan.

Without looking up, Hosea flicked a hand to dismiss him. “Stop being useless and go find Toy Ann.”

It wasn’t long before half the camp was crammed into the post-office and gathered round their piecemeal brother-in-arms. Toy Ann and Abigail got to work sewing him up at once and packing him with the same foul, oily poultice I was filled with, and Swanson put some morphine in him. There was little talk.

The old guard stood above them, blank-faced observers. Folded over in pain, Hosea had a shoulder against the wall, his lungs rumbling.

Dutch tilted his head to Arthur. His gaze was somewhere far beyond the space where John was lying.

“What d’you think?” he asked vacantly.

“He’d be real lucky,” said Arthur.

“Then he will be.” Dutch nodded, deep in thought. “He will be lucky.”

Arthur sighed. “Might be we’ve about used up all our luck.”

Dutch’s eyes cut across his collar to Hosea. The old man stared back at him, struggling to breathe.

I could no longer track the passing of time, where the pain was coming from, what happened before or behind my fever-bludgeoned eyes. The room smelled of blood and rot. My agony was complete. There was no reason for living except that they wanted me dead.

They wanted me dead.

Shit, he said softly. Quite the miserable wretch, ain’t you?

I hiccuped, shivering like a dog. The sun was so bright so burning it scraped upon the backs of my eyeballs, jagged as a splinter. I would have squeezed them shut but I could not do that with Hosea wiping my face, my shirt, my blanket, close enough to kill me and maybe even strong enough, weak as I was. I knew I was bug eyed with fear, probably reeked of it to a snake like him.

You cccan’t kkill me, I stuttered. Hhe’ll knnoww.

Think I’d waste my time cleanin up your vomit if I was gonna kill you?

Youu been wwwastin your time lllonng as I knownn yyou.

Well he looked at me with black in him then, he did not like that, no, he knew I was right. Knew I was right and how stupid was that, all these God damned liars looking like fools in front of me, Hell I knew them now better than they knew themselves, better than they knew each other, I under no illusions, under no hocus-pocus preacher with his hand to some pagan Lord. I laughed at that stupid Hosea. I felt such life in me, such floating life. I could kill him easily I realized. What was I so afraid of? He was a dead man walking and I was as living as the vulture that sweeps its shadow over all the world and all the little animals scurrying to their holes and all the pilgrims thirsting for mirages in the desert.

Why so glum old maaan why so glum! You could be dead but cher alive! Now that is somethin, that’s a real somethin!

She gave you somethin strong all right.

The door opened behind Hosea’s head. As he twisted round to see, my heart froze in my chest with fresh fear at the sight of the dark figure walking in like a shadow that lost its head.

Not right now son, said Hosea.

Lamb smiled his terrible smile. I think Mr. Bell needs more medcin.

The last dose seems to be doin its job well enough.

Lamb moved slowly to the stove, one long step after the other, young and sure, surer than most boys his age, sure for having nothing worth anything in all the world, nothing but wanting. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He threw it onto the pile of stinking spoiled flesh lying at his feet.

Beginner’s luck, he said cheerfully. Next game’s mine.

Hosea pushed me back down, sharp hand to my shoulder, unfolding me from my stare. Beneath the blanket I held my guns tight by the grips and swiveled my wild eyes.

Why ain’t he dead, I rasped.

From what I hear you saved his life, said Hosea.

I shivered, shivered, shivered.

Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time for more.

I slipped out.

And I slipped in.

And I slipped out

and I slipped in

and I slipped out and I

slipped in and

I slipped

out wake up now come on

his hands was on me grasping bony hands he was holding some abyssal black oil to me Micah drink up he said but I did not want to drink what came from his hands cruel hands cruel mouth all violence all deceit but I would drink him if I had to I would drink what he did not offer and if I

could chop his head open and all the snakes come out like worms like maggots white and writhing white as bone with red running long lines down their twisted spines how he nursed those snakes his wicked children birthed them from the semen of his lies and there I was sticking my fingers into the liquid mass of them and putting them in my mouth and they tasted of

poison but a poison I could eat because I was of their flesh and ilk I was Beelzebub and they was my cousins and I

showed him my teeth he looked

at me with hate in him hate as black as the empty space where the crows had eaten their jelly and he said to me drink up Micah drink up your poison and my

hot heart

surged with a rage of blood that was mine and not his mine and not anyones I

reached out grabbed him threw him pinned him beat him beat him beat him he was grabbing at my belt I twisted his arm slithered down sank my fangs into him sank my venom into him seeded my snakes louder

and more violent than his

louder and bloodier

crying out in horror like I was Death but my friend I was far more benevolent than Death by far more benevolent even if this

snake beneath me was trying to get free thrashing against my solid hands I got out my knife to make this easier tried to plunge it into his maggoty brain but his hand was free he grabbed me grabbed my knife sprung it from my sweatslick palm tossed it somewhere clatter I put my knee on his hand put my fingers round his pulse crushing squeezing pressing all my weight down his face was swelling like a grape his eyes popping out of his head and rolling he jerked he jerked my knee slipped his

hand hit my belt again and he had my gun

bang

my ears

singing

fell back he rolled me weight on my back my leg I screamed

screamed

the weight came off I gasped and trembled looked up wildly to a boot meeting my face blood burst from my nose like hot iron running down my chin my leg was such Hell I could hardly

feel it but I felt the knee that pinned the back of my neck and held me down and the hands that twisted my wrists into knots the hands that twisted my shins into knots I yelled you go and fuck yourself you gutless coward you go and fuck

yourself untie me put a gun in my hands and we will shoot each other like men gutless worm gutless fuckin worm cracked

against my head I saw white and I saw red and then I twisted and saw Arthur Morgan above me with murder in his eye and Dutch standing by the door black as an omen and Hosea sitting at his side sweet little snake wrapped around his neck fuck yourself you damn snake fuck yourself

now tell me said Dutch stalking a slow circle around me watching me with tiny predatory eyes where was he where was he

tell me why I shouldnt rip you into so many pieces there will be nothin left for the God damn rats

cause it would take some gutless worm to kill a man when hes tied up God damn you all you make me sick

Arthur will you please escort this savage out of here I will join you shortly

Dutch the old mans voice was just a whisper he was touching his throat his breath coming hard and thin forced through too small a hole Dutch look at his eyes

so Dutch came to me knelt down before me pressed his thumb to my eyebrow dragged it up to widen my eye

what the Hell is wrong with him is he kiting out on somethin

Toy Ann gave him somethin

whad she give him cocaine is he coked up how much fuckin coke does it take to turn a man into a monster

he was always a fuckin monster Dutch you just seen it proper now hes gone after one of us

dont talk about me God fuck you all you try to poison me and you call me a monster untie me so I can shoot you in your shit eatin cock suckin mouths

Micah do you know who I am

I tried to say Dutch but what came out was the Devil. And that

oh yes

that was of great interest to him.

Do you know who you attacked just now

a snake a snake a snake a snake—

Somethins. Fairly. Wrong with him.

Thats clear.

Dutch unfurled like some great bird Lucifer on sinstained wings glowered down at me violent malevolent. It is by this old snakes infinite grace that you are still breathin mister Bell. I suggest you consider this a debt that binds you to him body and soul because the very moment his last breath leaves his lungs I will kill you with my bare hands do you hear me my bare hands.

What we gonna do with him Dutch.

Throw him in the God damn stable.

He will kick up such a damn fuss make the horses all agitated you know he will and I have no doubt he will try to get away on that Hell horse of his.

Then throw him in the fuckin snow so help me God I want him out of my sight or I will do somethin to him.

Dutch.

What. What Hosea.

Just. Toss him. Over the counter there.

I am not leavin him in here with you. Not no damn way

body and soul. Hes mine.

Dutch regarded him with burning eyes red as heartsblood. In the end this was not his power. Hosea had pried it gently from his white knuckled fists.

Hes yours then. Do it Arthur.

And so I was lifted up and tossed over the clerks counter in the corner of the postoffice to lie in Lambs nest of broken shelves and empty bottles sweating and shaking bereft of my guns nearly crying for my pain my wild rage my helplessness my cage

and in those hours

trussed up like a hog

I felt the cold weight of a corpse against my back.

I still cannot fathom exactly what happened that day.

The memories are of a different color, a different shape, like they was made in a different mind than mine. I met a creature in me that I had never met before, and by its actions one thing was certain: I had finally done my prospects irreparable harm. There was no spit-shined boot that would hear my plea this time. I’d breathed life into Hosea, and then I had squeezed it out again.

From my dark corner I heard only his sharp, sandy gasps, scrabbling for life, the body’s last desperate spasms. His breaths was coming weaker than ever, weaker by the hour, weak enough that he had fallen asleep and could not be awoken. There was no peace in it; he struggled even in unconsciousness. His farce of a family lingered by his death throes, waiting for him to die.

I was lucky they could not see me. If they’d remembered I was there, they would have lynched me where I lay, tied up and crippled, and they would scatter me across that mountain, my eternal Hell.

So I was silent through their mourning, lingering, murmuring. The night grew deep; my corner was the blackest shadow. Two small children choked on cries of fear. Some folks was sniffling. The talk was bleak, circling the drain of this strange apocalypse. Little of it was about Hosea. He was never going to survive—he’d been warning them, after all. But he would be there to haunt them, join them round the fire, sing with them in chorus, meet them as a passing bird, a passing beast, press against their backs at night. That’s what dead men do.

Tilly Jackson alone was trying desperately to pass her life to him, preaching Dutch’s promises, begging him to return to his torture. Green fields. Open country as far as the eye can see. Freedom from all this meaningless loss. Come back and enjoy my life with me. Remember when we took the train from Altonville to Lamy and I was afraid of the whistle? You held my hand and told me I was making the train feel self-conscious for her poor singing. Tight crowd like this, she’ll never make it to Broadway. Remember, Hosea? I need you for the train to Montana. Please.

“All is lost,” muttered Pearson to himself. “Damn it all. All is lost.”

I did not hear Dutch. He wasn’t there.

I closed my fevered eyes. It wasn’t fair that a man like Hosea should die in his sleep. Dreaming someplace far from all this. Dreaming of happy times. I tasted metal on my tongue. Hosea’s blood. I tried to spit, but my mouth was too dry.

All men is eaten, my daddy said once. If you meet a man, you’ve eaten him.

I shivered, and tried to spit again. I felt a horror creeping over me.

“No! No!”

It was like a long sigh had left the room, a candle snuffing out.

“Dutch!” cried Tilly Jackson. With a crash of feet the door flew open and she ran into the frozen night, screaming, screaming.

“Dutch! He’s dead! Hosea is dead!”

The hair on my neck rose. I shivered, shivered, shivered.

When Dutch stormed in, the candleless room went dark. I know it was him because he was chanting no, no, no like he could command the world to admit its lie. His presence spurred the gang into sudden frenzy. All weight shifted toward him in steps of one and two, pulled like moths to a flame. He was their strength, and now he was their desperation. I heard his boots cross the room, his knees strike the floor-boards.

“Hosea. Hosea. Don’t do this to me. You ain’t dead.”

Women began to cry.

“Wait,” said Dutch, “his heart’s still goin!”

“Oh my God,” said Grimshaw, striding forward. “We gotta get him to cough. Dutch—”

Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack. It sounded like he was bludgeoning a dead man with a mallet, pounding the fragile cocoon of his empty lungs.

“You ain’t gonna die,” he snarled, wild as an animal. “I forbid it. I forbid it.”

“Dutch, listen,” said Abigail pleadingly, “he’s got no air. Somebody’s gotta git air into him. Here, put im down, let me—”

The babies was wailing now, I couldn’t hear a thing. Voices rose in a chorus of shouting, praying, cursing. Dutch beat that withered corpse hard enough to knock its soul out, then Abigail breathed it back in. Push, pull, push, pull. It seemed to go on for hours, hours of torture, hours.

Then, a weak, bubbled noise. More a gurgle than a cough.

“He’s back,” cried Abigail through a muffle of tears.

He coughed again, bubbled again. He coughed until he retched. Dutch was murmuring—into his ear, I am sure. Stealing him back from that brink.

Hosea was alive. My body and soul was still under his thumb. A hot tear slipped out of my eye as I shook in fury and fear and relief. I thought about death. My daddy dying in a rage of stripped flesh, torn apart. Freddy Ogle, screaming in his coffin. Annemarie drowning with hands around her neck.

I thought about Jenny. Dead, lovely Jenny. What a beautiful way to die.

After that night in Ogallala, I never saw Ruddy Bainton again.

Two years later my daddy saw in the newspaper that he’d been hung in Kansas for snatching a post-master’s six-year-old son. The boy was three days dead when they found him curled up like a baby in the sea of Flint Hills bluestem with his knees tucked against his unbeating heart and his hands pillowing his cheek. Like he’d fallen asleep there. Just fallen asleep.

Daddy smacked the paper with the back of his hand and tipped back his head and with razor-blade rhapsody he laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

I couldn’t help but feel that I’d missed my chance.

droptines

#will be starting this chapter tonight #with a bubble bath and a glass of something strong = wonderful evening

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

droptines