Realistic or Modern 1875: Railroads and Runaways

[Bomb84]

1875: Railroads and Runaways
authored by CorinTraven and Bomb84
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BIOGRAPHIES
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Larson Stephen Macbraid

Age: 40

Birthplace: Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1834

Parents and family: Thomas Stowers MacBraid (deceased) and Helena Barnham MacBraid (living), brother Barnham William Macbraid.

Physical description: Medium height, dark hair and blue-grey eyes. Generally fit from an active lifestyle, usually wears a short beard now starting to show streaks of grey. A puckered scar isivily marks left eyebrow, a souvenir from Gettysburg.

Occupation: Professional fixer, frequently contracted with the Pinkertons and other detective agencies. Affiliated with the Van Bram family and their various oil and steel businesses in the Midwest.
Current residence: None permanent, often returns to Springfield, Illinois to visit his family (mother, brother, niece and nephew).

Current relationship status: None, intermittent short-term liaisons

Skills: Marksmanship, gun handling, horse riding and care, information gathering and tracking, surveillance, maintains a network of informants and contacts from prior work. Uneducated except for grade school reading and sums.

Likes: Whiskey, cards, fishing and hunting, being outside, gambling

Dislikes: losing at cards, losing at gambling, being around lots of people, trains, swimming, socialites,
Confederate veterans and discussion of the war in general



Josephine Sawyer, alias Natalee Gray

Age: 25
Description: Limber physique, Five feet and four inches tall, naturally athletic though discouraged most of her life from becoming too active out of fear she might develop a *'manish'* physique. Pale blonde hair kept long in the style of the day.

 

[Bomb84]

Santa Fe Trail, 1975


Larson hated the trains. He hated them passing, the screaming whistles and cacophonous clanking and shrieking of the wheels on the tracks. He’d hated watching them built, the great tears they made through the lands and the piles of refuse littering the wake of the railroad crews, the human misery those crews were subjected to in service of the almighty railroad company dollar, the graft and larceny the companies and the government collaborated in to get them built. He hated what they represented, a shrinking of the world and the extending grasp of big money into a previously unspoiled frontier, the heavy-handed oppression of a man’s freedom to get out a ways from other folks. Most of all, though, he hated riding them, the uncomfortable seats and drafty windows and crowding with the equally uncomfortable other passengers and the dusty, desperate little railroad stop towns that delayed his misery stop by endless stop.


He hated them, but that’s how the woman had chosen to flee her fate. Now the human embodiment of that inexorable doom pursued her, and he would follow wherever she went. It was what he did, and none did it better than Larson Stephen McBraid, Captain (retired) of the grand old Army of the Republic, sometime private detective, and always the bloodhound on the scent. He’d tracked old Jeb Stuart’s boys across Pennsylvania and Virginia, he’d tracked the Lakota and the Cheyenne and the Arapaho, he’d tracked Canadians and Mexicans and Californians alike. For someone who had the money and needed someone found, none was better spent than on Labraid’s services. Once found, he could make sure they’d never be found again if the employer had the right banknotes, as well.


This one was a find and return job, though. The bride to be was apparently a shrinking violet. What kind of shrinking violet 22 year old debutante took off, alone, on the train west with scarce the clothes on her back and ended up this far out Larson was more than curious to find out. New York City to Atchison, Kansas then on to Topeka and into the southwest of the state. The railroad had been extended as far as Santa Fe in 1972 but Dodge City was the stop he’d gotten off at because that’s the stop his contact had spotted her departing some time before. Telegraph operators were expensive to keep on the payroll but Larson found them to be invaluable in his trade and he was able to receive tipoffs that the competition wouldn’t hear about until the next year.


So the bounty hunter had gotten off at Dodge City, too. It was hardly more than a trading post with a general store and a saloon that doubled as a whorehouse, thankfully the stable had stock in better condition than the whores so he was able to find a horse and a pack horse that would take him into the plains. He paid a ruinous markup for the necessary supplies, food and other expendables, but thankfully he’d brought most of his field kit with him in his seaman’s trunk. The contents of which that were not transferred over to his pack animal were left with the storekeeper (who doubled as the post office, everything did double duty in this trainstop town) on deposit for safekeeping.


Asking around if anyone had seen his ‘sister’ had the desired results, along with Larson’s generous spending, and he learned that she’d moved on down the Santa Fe trail. Sounded as if she’d hitched a ride with a pioneer family on the way down to the promised land in New Mexico. Tracking her wouldn’t be hard—there was only one trail, after all—and Larson had made good time, overtaking several small wagon convoys. He’d stand off, observe, then carefully approach when they’d stop and ask after his sister. Noone had seen her, but he’d placidly tolerated his luck until it turned promising.


He’d spotted the single wagon over a mile away where the endless plain had started to climb into the rolling hills close to southern Colorado. Larson had been on the trail for a week now, but he didn’t hurry. People that hurried made mistakes, and he’d come too far for too much money at stake to start doing that now. He’d cut his mounts off the trail and circled around a rise to the south and kept going until the midafternoon. Then, he’d dismounted and climbed the highest hill he could, cresting the top of the hill and scrambling a little ways down it to not silhouette himself against the horizon. Then, he settled in and waited.


He rested on his belly and stretched out low to the ground, legs protected rocks and the sun by denim trousers and leather riding chaps, dusty booted feet extending behind him. His worn wool waistcoat was equally dusty, and he could feel sweat dampening the cotton shirt underneath. With his neckerchief and wide brimmed hat, he’d fit right in with all the cattle drivers and pioneers making their way to or from the frontier. He lay propped up on his elbows, rough beard and square tan face beaded with sweat, blue-grey eyes narrowed and peering through his field glasses—Army surplus, just like him—towards the east. The sun low in the wester sky would all but blind even sharp-eyed observers to his presence.


Larson didn’t have to wait long. The hefty wagon broke into view as its heaving oxen team propelled it over yet another gently undulating hill, and he got a look at all of them. There was the family he’d expected, Maw and Paw and a pack of young’uns. And there she was. Larson didn’t have to check the picture he had in his waistcoat pocket to feel the electric thrill of recognition, his first glimpse of the contract that had brought him across half a continent. Blonde, pretty, on the slim and delicate side though her skin was tanned and the way she carried herself hinted that her weeks-long excursion had already started to toughen her in ways that a lifetime of New York high society never would.


“Josephine Sawyer,” Larson spoke softly aloud to himself, “pretty as fifty thousand dollars in the bank. Your soon-to-be-husband must love the hell out of you.” Larson rarely got excited, but he couldn’t help but thrill at the opportunity to meet the woman who that East Coast blueblood would mortgage a small town to get back. Meet her, and drag her back to where she came from. He’d get a ten thousand dollar bonus if he could make it happen before autumn, and things were already looking up for Captain Larson Macbraid.

 

[CorinTraven]

​

The disappearance of Josephine Sawyer had been the hottest topic consuming New Yorks upper echelons of society. It was a sensation, in no small part due to so many had been in attendance for the lavish engagement where she was last known to be. The gossip was infectious and discussed by even those who usually considered themselves above such musings, everyone wondering how, as if into ether, Josephine Sawyer had vanished.

A world away, where the name Josephine Sawyer had never been uttered, a different girl sharing her face rode astride her white and speckled horse and distanced herself with every step from the city where that other girl had been known. She introduced herself as Natalee Gray, avoiding the complications of a past whenever she could, but to those she couldn’t, she explained that she was without living family, and headed West with aspirations to be a schoolteacher in one of the countless prairie towns that sprung up along the way. That explained her educated manner of speaking, and why a woman so young travelled unaccompanied given the well-known risks of such a journey.

She had started off on the trail poorly equipped and apt to succumb to the elements, with the speckled horse, a rifle, and the most basic of necessities stored in steerage along its rump. She likely would already be rotting somewhere not far off the path had had she not been sharing it with the Grahams. Their interactions had begun kindly though brief, a hello on the road as they kept pace with one another, but within two days, as if sensing Natalee’s greenness, the wife had first approached the girl and offered that she might join them at their fire.

Had it been the first day since she’d departed from civilization, Natalee might have declined- but her ego had been degraded with her struggles. She knew it was a matter of time before she was picked off if she remained alone, and so trusting their genuineness given circumstances, she joined them and had been included ever since.

It helped that this girl demonstrated eagerness and skill to carry her weight, and thus lessen the burden of the family. She wanted to learn, having skill with her gun because of a childhood sporting in the Catskills, taught to shoot at targets and game alike. She understood the basics of skinning, the value of fur and meat, but had lacked the technical know-how to properly skin a squirrel or fox before she was taught by the father and eldest son. She repaid their generosity with sweat and dividends of any resource she gained along the way and was conscience to only take what was offered to her.

The father, Richard Graham, had been apprehensive to encumber himself past his wife and brood, knowing the road to be treacherous and the danger of exposing yourself to help another- but his damned wife, Lorraine, the saint that she was, she’d been buzzing since the moment she’d seen the lithe girl all alone, rifle slung across her back and dressed the part of Calamity Jane with her boots, tanned jacket and large corduroy pants, though youth and uncertainty drawn into her face. She couldn’t let it be- wouldn’t let it be, and begrudgingly he accepted after she offered the girl supper that it would be his responsibility to look after a young woman who hadn’t the sense to not bring herself to the great expanse of wilderness where vulnerable girls like her would be prime targets of ne’er-do-wells if not safeguarded from such. When she’d shown she was capable with her rifle, he’d been pleasantly surprised, and not since that first night had he felt reluctant about her presence among them.

His son had been expectantly enamored with her for weeks, a few years her junior and at an age where any girl could captivate him, let alone one so attractive and intriguing as she would be given circumstance. Natalee took care to temper his fondness for her, to keep him distant and not meet his schoolboy’s flirtation in a way that extended his hopes. She wanted nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with love, lust, or whatever space between them- feeling disgust rise in her at the consideration. Not just with this boy, but anyone, and she wouldn’t risk him convincing himself otherwise.

It was because of this that Natalee had taken some distance from the Graham’s as twilight befell the flood plains, a mix of guilt and awkwardness driving her up the trail a few hundred yards after they’d made camp for the evening. The sun was slow to set in the deep summer, hot and red on the western horizon, and she’d let Lorainne know she was going to ride a bit further before doubling back, making a lame excuse about looking for the fork in the creek, but the older woman was too wise and attune to believe her.

Lorainne had watched with a mix of amusement and empathy as her son struggled to express his fancying of Natalee, only to be rebuffed. She was kind and considerate in her denial, but the young man still bruised from it, and it was no wonder their friendship had been without word for most of the afternoon. Youth had its complications, but her Jonathan was resilient, and she knew he would recover. “A girl like that ain’t come all this way for a husband.” She reminded him when they were alone, trying to dampen the sting.

The tributaries and cricks set the trail at this point south, lowest at this time of year as they evaporated into the hot and humid air. It made it easier to ford, some points shallow enough to walk across, and as Natalee rode she saw the deep tracks through the mud of wagon wheels crossing. She dismounted her mare, named Calico on account of her coat, and took a moment to stroke the tender skin of her muzzle. She shouldn’t have spent as much of her money on a horse as she did- but Natalee liked knowing if she needed to ride hard and fast, Calico could. She hadn’t needed to yet, and felt strangely comfortable out in the wild, even alone with dusk setting along the horizon.

Natalee walked toward the edge of the broad, lazy creek, taking some effort at the end as a patch of greedy mud slurped her foot down to the ankle and dangerously close to the top of her boot, but she pulled free and stepped into the water- which thankfully had flat stone to sturdy herself on. She stepped a bit further out, where the water was moving and not stagnant with algae across the top, and unscrewing her canteen, submerged it at the surface to be filled.

She stood two dozen paces from her horse, rifle left astride. Her jacket was abandoned as well, not needing it in the heat and she wore a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows, well-worn and tucked into her pants. It was nearly time she turn back now, daylight quickly departing and she’d gotten the moment of solace she’d desired, not needing to worry her companions as the night encroached and she hadn’t returned.

 

[Bomb84]

The Sawyer girl behaved as if she wanted to be caught. She’d detached herself from the wagon and its family bustling about the chores of evening camp, then meandered away towards the broad shallow creek that ambled away southwards. Larson had already shifted from his loft observation perch and had made his way on foot along the reverse slopes of the gentle rocky rise on the approach towards his quarry, and she hadn’t been difficult to keep track of atop her palomino mare. Some stands of brush had made good cover nearly up to the bank of the stream behind where she had fumbled out of the sandy muck and out into the rocky shoal. Larson was grateful for the covering sound of water rushing over the stones.

Josephine’s horse nickered anxiously and shied away from the man’s predatory stalking approach but if she heard it and thought to turn it was too late. He broke into a careful run at the he instant, and the woman seemed to startle at Larson’s quick splashing boot impacts behind her. Then the chloroform soaked cloth was taut across her face. Lars, having easily a hundred pounds and eight inches on the fighting woman, hauled her struggling towards dry ground and forced her onto her face, knee between her shoulder blades and gripping the ends of the knotted cloth so that it muffled her cries. It was only a moment until the little blonde grew quiet and still.

Larson deftly tied her wrists and ankles behind her back and then again tied firm loops about her elbows and knees. He tucked the chloroform rag into his vest and replaced it with a leather braid that he forced into her slack mouth and tied behind her neck, then slipped a burlap bag over her head. It was as neat a snatch and grab as he’d ever accomplished, but Larson didn’t allow himself time for satisfaction. They were hardly out of sight of the pioneers and it wouldn’t be long before the woman had gone missing. Her horse nickered again, eyes wide and hooves pawing. Larson looked over at the mare, annoyed that she might attract one the man or his son and then things might get ugly.

“What do you want, girl?” Larson was surprised her mount hadn’t run off already. It was certainly an opportunity. “She’s ok, your gal’s ok. Just taking a little nap.” His tone was calm and soothing. Larson approached the animal with a gloved hand held up at its eye level, sure and steady. The mare shifted and tossed its head but finally allowed Lars to take it’s bridle. “Let’s all go have a chat, hmm?”

Moments later, Lars was carefully riding away, carefully so as not to send the limp blonde woman falling off onto the ground from her resting place across the front of his saddle. He rode away west until the sun was behind the hills ahead of him before he found the hollow between some hills where he’d tied of his own horse, a big sorrel mare. It was a good camping spot for the night as his fire wouldn’t be visible from very far away. Josephine had begun to stir and then struggle before he dragged her from the saddle and threw her over one shoulder before depositing her, without undue rough handling, onto the ground a little way away from the horses that he then tied off to a scrub tree. He kept an eye on her as he gathered up some branches from the scrub thicket and got a fire going.

“All right now, quit your fussing,” Larson grumbled as he saw her start to test her restraints in earnest. “Hold on just a minute.” He went over to her, booted feet loud on the hard earth, and hauled her up by her tied wrists and hen kicked her ankles out from under her and lowered her into a seated position, tied knees and ankles extended before her and tied wrists behind. Then he jerked the burlap off her head.

Larson settled into a crouch in front of her, the campfire behind him starting to leap into hungry life. The big man was cast into shadow, eyes dark under his hat and bearded features solemn and impassive. He’d drawn his long Bowie knife and was holding it in an offhand manner, muscles in his forearm glistening with sweat as he idly turned the blade this way and that, firelight gleaming from it’s sharp edge and vicious pointed tip.

“Hello Josephine.” He watched her eyes as he spoke, practiced.

“Now you and me are gonna have a real long talk.” His voice was low, not quite threatening but full of surety that this was going to go his way, or else. “First, some rules. You start screaming, or thrashing, or trying to run, the hood goes back on. You don’t want that, do you?” A pause. “Good, didn’t think so. Next rule, you’re mine now. I do what I want with you. Ain’t nobody around here to help you, your friends are a long way off and they couldn’t do nothing except get me to end them even if they were here. You do as I say, when I say, and there’s a good chance you come out all right.” His grin was white and savage in the firelight. “Now, first things first…” He loomed over her suddenly, bright blade flashing.

The leather gag fell away to one side and he settled back several feet away again.

“Now you get to screaming that’s going back on, y’hear?” He idly tapped a gloved finger on his knifepoint.

“Nice to finally meet you, Miss Grey. Or, rather, Miss Josephine Sawyer, soon to be Missus James van de Broek.” He grinned again. “You can call me Lars.”

 

[CorinTraven]

Before Natalee had dismounted, she had done the curtesy glance and confirmed to herself the belief that she was completely alone. She thought that she was still alert, still being safe and watching out for herself, but she realized her mistake quickly after turning nonchalantly to check on her nickering horse. There wasn’t much time to feel anything besides shock, instinctually turning back and beginning to run but not quite making it two steps before the man she’d been running from wrapped one girthy arm around her shoulders, pulling her back while the other brought a wet rag to her face. She had been drawing in a deep breath to begin screaming when instead she breathed and coughed on the caustic vapors. She really did try to fight with him while she could, thrusting her elbows back and kicking blindly and desperately. He had too much size on her for her to stall him, trying with all her might to fight but with every second her modest strength depleted, and though she knew she had to stay awake, no amount of will power or commanding herself stopped her head from falling limp against the dirt he’d forced her into facedown.


She didn’t have last thoughts in words, only feelings, the most terrible ones that started like a cancer of the bone, specifically her sternum where the marrow had all rotten away until the space was empty and heavy all at once. It pushed in on her lungs, closed her throat, constricted around her heart and put a cold fist of lead into the trench of the gut. She wouldn’t be awake long enough to develop further into dread, and it was probably for the best given her terror was only rising and the zenith of her suffering likely was still a distant peak. Her conscious was spared the moments of him tying and bagging her, and when she next remembered, she was in the dark, and her arms were numb, she couldn’t feel them…Her legs too, she tried to bend them, tried to part them, and she could feel her pants moving against the grass and began feeling and trying to establish herself from there.


Unaware she was being watched struggling and shamelessly trying to slip her binds, Natalee had been quite active, squirming and testing what part of her body she could move when a man’s raspy voice stunned her still for a moment. She heard him coming closer, and even tried to whing and jerk away blindly though she was about as mobile as she’d been the day she was born. Muffled cries were her response to be suddenly stood up and then kicked-out-from-under, sat down and the blackness gave way to a dark shadow and a bright light. She squinted her dark eyes, burning from the firelight for a second as she adjusted and focused on the shadow- which turned out to be the lumbering man squatted in front of her and blacking out most of her field of view. Her eyes were quick to blink away any fogginess for alert and alarm, focusing on his face before flickering to the knife in his hand, to linger a moment, before back to his face with a bit more desperation.


It was at this moment she was greeted, and her reaction was what could have been expected, shocked and realizing, and most definitely frightened, her eyes bulged from it, and as he began his spiel, she listened while that name echoed around her brain. Josephine, Josephine, Josephine. It made it hard to hear him, made it impossible to keep up. She did notice that he was showing his teeth- smiling though from her position it was hardly friendly; especially when he suddenly loomed closer, she tried to pull back but deftly, the knife sliced near her skin – but not through it- and she realized in that moment how awfully her jaw had been aching, and how dry her mouth had become.


She panted through her mouth a few deep breaths, having begun breathing heavily through her nose so with faculty returned to her mouth, it naturally took eager breath. She wanted to rub her jaw, forgetting her arms were tied behind her and pulling obstinately as if the binding had weakened since the last attempt to free herself.


As he continued, revealing that he was an agent of him, for a moment, she was overcome with the urge to start screaming, but swallowed it back if only because her throat and mouth were too dry to produce more than a hoarse whistle. Instead, she tried to reason with him- which seemed a foolish thing to do given no reasonable man would have gotten this far- but her options were limited beyond flat denial and hope that there was some way out of this. She shook her head slowly, “There must be some mistake. I don’t know what you’re talking about…”


Even she had to admit it was a weak attempt, but as good a springboard as any for the girl willing to say anything should it mean being let go. Blinking at him, she tried her best to match her face to what she imagined someone might look like if they were clueless, a little too late on account of the fear and recognition she’d shown earlier, but a good little actress giving a believable show at being wide eyed and innocent. She had a smear of dirt darkening the hollow of her cheek from when he’d wrangled her on the riverbank, her hair mussed around her face, static-filled still from when he’d removed the bag. Her eyes were intent on him, searching for any response or tell, something that would help her in any way. Slowly, her breathing became more measured and controlled, adapting quickly to her situation if only as a chameleon does, on her surface.

 

[Bomb84]

Lars continued to twist his knife point gently into his leather gloved fingertip, watching the girl’s bulging, frightened eyes reflect the firelight. He remained where he was while she appeared to orient herself, and the plain shock at his use of her name. Names, and her fiancée’s as well. He was nearly impressed when she gathered herself enough to make even a half-hearted denial.

“There must be some mistake. I don’t know what you’re talking about…” The girl’s voice was hardly more than a rasp as she protested. She was visibly gaining control of her own expression and breathing.

This one ain’t just some soft city-bred girl. A least, Lars reflected, she wasn’t any more. He could respect her composure despite her predicament. Still, a job was a job, and she was a lucrative enough one to set him up for life. No more chasing people up and down the country, no more violence when he found them.

“I can see you’ve got some heart, girl.” His voice seemed friendly, smile genuine, though the shadow did not disguise the menace in his ready stance or the hard note of finality in his voice. He reached into his vest pocket—he’d shed his jacket earlier and now had the sleeves of his long shirt rolled up to the elbow, as if about to do some dirty work—and withdrew a photograph. He turned it so she could see it.

It was the photograph James van de Broek had commissioned that May, on the day of their engagement announcement. To publish in the New York papers in the society columns, he’d boasted. It had never been published, because Josephine had fled her fiancée the very next day.

“I hate trains, Miss Sawyer.” Lars turned the photo around and held it up, making a show of examining her face alongside. “They take a long time to get anywhere, time a man has to think. I spent my time looking at this photo, and thinking about it, and you, and how I’d find you.” He tucked the photo back into his vest and his smile vanished. “How I’d bring you back New York, and all the things I might need to do to get you there.” He turned the knife blade so it flashed again. “Do to you, if I have to. Mr. van de Broek wasn’t real specific on what condition he expects his goods to be returned in.”

Lars admired Josephine’s guts to come as far as she had, and her resilience to try to talk her way out of her fate. Few men could do what she’d done, and she --a New York socialite—was out here near the end of the Santa Fe trail, mounted and armed like a Texas Ranger.

He admired her for all of it, and hoped it didn’t lead her to try some foolishness that would make him do things they’d both regret.

 

[CorinTraven]

From the inner pocket of his vest, he pulled out the photograph, no larger than a playing card with her face developed there in black and sepia. She was earnestly surprised by the photo- hurt by it- but she kept her face stony and flat- hid how seeing his face sent a spike through her body and brought unpleasant memories she dare not let settle at the surface. Swallow it down, somewhere distant and forgettable, somewhere guarded and fortressed so that they would never torment her with bids to be realized.

There was relief when he finally turned it away and exaggerated his effort of comparing her side-by -side. “I don’t see the resemblance.” She replied dryly, listening as he continued on and on about his travel and his thinking and his planning. He might think she was taking her time to consider his words with the thoughtful look that came to her face as he finished, that she was deciding how to tread most delicately through her precarious situation. If he was under such an illusion, the spell would be swiftly broken with her next words, gall enough to see if she might call his bluff.

“Did you have time to think up that swell little speech on the train? Practice the transition from recollecting your woes to making a threat?...Sounds like you did…Probably added the knife twirling in for dramatic flair. I told you, I’m not who you’re looking for, and little piece of advice- if you do ever find them, cut the line about ‘he don’t care ‘bout what state you’re in’…” Her voiced deepened briefly as she parroted him, likely to reasonable strain given her hoarseness. “It’s a little far-fetched, don’t you think? I’m supposed to believe you’d be bringing me back to marry a man and he wouldn’t care what I looked like when I got there?...As if…” She scoffed, knowing as she spoke she was not choosing her words wisely, but continuing with them anyhow. At least momentarily, it felt good, and she had given up living for anything past a moment when she’d stepped on that train out of New York. His hopes that her moxie wouldn’t cause her to make trouble would be difficult to maintain when that smart mouth of hers immediately shot off like a fire cracker. Braver and bolder than she was bad, with a startling lack of self preservation.

In the moments after she’d finished, there was a little time for a piece of her to worry. Behind her, her hands- the fingers the only part of her body she could manipulate, knitted and flexed against one another. Not as a bid to free herself, but a small and available chance to self soothe and relieve herself of some of the anxious energy latent in her body. He had caught himself a gambler, who waited now in that tremendous moment for the cards to flip and her fate to pass, already having maxed her bet and with unfavorable odds.

 

[Bomb84]

Lars nodded sagely as Josephine found her fire and commenced spouting off at him in earnest. There was the woman who'd made her way across the country deep into the frontier wilderness on her own. It would have been easier, of course, if she meekly accepted that the game was up and she was well and truly cornered. If she had, Lars might actually have questioned who he'd found out here in the prairie hills.

Still, it was going to be a very long trip back to New York if she kept on like this. Time for things to move in a direction they both might regret.

"Who said anything about your looks?" Lars leaned in, held the flat of his knife blade alongside her cheek so it's point caressed the light hairs of her eyebrow. "'Course a man ain't gonna send some thug to scar up his bride." The knife point slid down her check, to the hollow of her throat, pushed aside her open collar to idly trace her collarbone where it met her sternum just above the pale swell of her breast under her loose-fitting shirt, "Still, lots of things can happen. I'm sure a man's got to wonder what his woman had to do to make her way all alone out here." He leaned in further, let her smell the sweat on him. "There are lots of ways to punish a woman for actin' up. You don't know who you're talking to, Josephine." His voice was a harsh promise as he sheathed his knife.

As if to make good on that promise, Lars suddenly seized Josephine with both hands. His grip was irresistible. Ignoring her struggles and protests, he forced her down onto her side and then pressed her facedown into the dirt with one hand and yanked at her trousers with the other until her hips and half her moon-pale rear was exposed to the night. Lars straddled her and leaned in, pressing her into the ground with his weight and breathing heavily into her ear.

"Your fiancee knows about your birthmark, and so do all the people he's got hunting you." The small round mark as dark against her white skin in the firelight. As quickly as Lars had put her down, he tugged her britches back up and hauled her back into a seated position, withdrawing to some distance and looking at her as if nothing had happened.

"Your identity is not in question, Miss Sawyer." His face was blank, eyes hard. A canvas on which she might paint all manner of grim motivations. "You're going to go back to New York, and I'm going to be the one to take you. I'm capable of doing a lot of things you won't like to make that happen, so it'd be better if you just came along quietly."

 

[CorinTraven]

He remained cool and collected through her belittlement, his face unchanging and for a glimmer of a moment Natalee thought she had been correct to guess he would remain passive. But that mistook victory was fleeting as his posture changed and with it, his intentions were a double-speak they both understood. Josephine’s body went cold, face stony more with shock and terror than unphase.

The blade didn’t scare her, she hardly felt it on her body, too caught up in her mind the images his words, or rather the space between them, would recollect. It was when he returned it to its sheath that she knew that she was in danger, and he was quick to act on such an intuition. Completely tense, she closed her eyes and embraced the darkness, face contorting with agony but silent beside her shallow breathing through her nose. She knew not to fight, not to prolong the time spent conscious of it, and instead took shelter in her mind, separate from the hostile body. If it had to happen, there was no use remaining in tune with the sensation of it, though of course there was no perfect severance.

Descending into a fugue state, she hardly realized he’d stopped, that his weight was no longer bearing down on her, his breath hot and humid in her ear, and that he’d begun righting her, and sat her back the same way she had been just moments before. It could have been any length of time, she felt numb to it, and only began to understand what had happened after he’d once again given her his bid to submit, this time at least not met with ridicule from her. Her eyes were squeezed closed for a few seconds after her face had relaxed, and when she opened them it wasn’t with the same alertness as before, but a deep and consuming disgust and revile for the refuse in front of her. She didn’t quite stare at him, but past him with contempt for the lowly creature proven.

Their conversation was over as far as the girl was concerned, and she’d settle into ignoring him with that look still impressed into her face, thoughtful but no less hateful and distrusting. It would appear she was not as tearful as a young lady ought to be, she hadn’t shed a single one though she’d been frightened by him and knew she was beyond hope.

 

[Bomb84]

The way Josephine had gone limp as Lars had manhandled her had been one clue. The dead stare that replaced desperation after he’d resettled her was another. He’d seen that look, more times than he wanted to recollect and certainly more than he was proud of. There was now no doubt in Lars’ mind that this woman had been badly abused, likely raped, and not all that long ago, either.

What did surprise him was the viper state that emerged from behind the blank fog in those eyes. The curling sneer of her lip, the hardness of her. He’d seen that look too, given it his share of times as well. Josephine’s palpable contempt of fear, humiliation, or death cut the air between him, sharp as the blade of his Bowie.

“Well now,”. Lars mused aloud to himself. “What are we gonna do with you now?”

This had not gone the way Lars had anticipated, had assumed, at all. Josephine’s reaction to his implied threat had been the first unforeseen complication on this job, and Lars wasn’t sure how he’d need to proceed now.

He ignored a tiny voice in the back of his internal deliberation as he returned Josephine’s vitriol with his own blank look, a whisper of something his younger self might recognize as conscience. What sorts of things happen to a woman that she’d choose humiliation and torture, out here all alone, choose death rather than go back to her life? He frowned and ignored the voice. Hard experience silencing it was a survival trait in his line of work.

Perhaps a change in tact was in order. Lars got up and went to his saddled horse where she’d been tied off, unstrapped his canteen and returned to his captive. He uncapped it and took a long pull, wiped his mouth, and held it out to er, practically touching her lips with it so a few drops fell to her chin.

“Just water, Miss Sawyer.” He made as if to tilt the canteen up before pausing. “I’m sure you’re dry. Been a while since you’ve had any. Drink up and let’s talk about how this is going to go from here.”

 

[CorinTraven]

She impassively watched him stand and walk a short distance to the shadowy shape of their horses behind the cackling fire. It was hard for Josephine to make him out with the firelight between them, the lay of the land, brabble, and trees casting their shadow, but she thought she might make out Caleco’s athletic shape among the shadowy figures. That brought her a little comfort- she’d worried what had become of the mare as some of her earliest thoughts at awakening in the pitch black, and without faculty.

When he returned, it might as well have been hot piss in the metal of his canteen for how absolutely Jo did not want to accept it. Are you trying to express remorse? Is this some pathetic bid at reasonability? Am I supposed to be impressed? Am I supposed to forgive you, let you forget beastly things done as if made undone by quenched thirst? It’s not forgiven, it’s not forgotten. You wanted me to be afraid of you, and now you can choke on it if it’s too much for you to swallow. I know you are bad, I see you for how little you are.

Though her face reflected her critical thoughts, when he pushed the cool water to her lips, the fresh smell and little droplets soaking her cracked lips made her relent. He’d only spill a little down her front before she began drinking it, looking down as she did as if ashamed her constitution was not greater. She would drink as much as he would let her, swallowing large mouthfuls until he’d pulled it back and she took a few deep breaths to account for the time spent drinking. She was quick to shut her mouth, not sit there open mouthed and stupid, panting like a dog for him to feel he’d done her some great favor in a drink.

Clenching her jaw, she turned her head away from him as a show of disengagement, that she hadn’t accepted his peace offering and felt no less assured in his ugliness of heart.

 

[Bomb84]

“Ain’t you the cold one.” Lars let a note of satisfaction into his acknowledgment as he stowed his canteen after he’d taken water from it himself. Grit crunched under his boots as he returned to face her. “Won’t change nothing, just gonna make things harder for both of us.” He settled back down a little in front of her and was quiet for a time, considering the lift of her chin and the clean line of her turned cheek in the firelight.

Defiance, cold and hard, practically radiated from the woman like its own little fire. Lars could only admire Josephine for her gumption, even as foolhardy as it seemed in her current position. Still, if it had been him tied up and her with the knife, he’d probably offer much the same.

Or he might have, anyway. As a younger man, with fewer miles and scars and bodies behind him, he would probably have spit curses and shot glares even as the knife came out and contended with his pride with his compliance as the prize. Lars knew now that if he found himself in a hopeless position, his pride would be buried in the dirt and he’d say what he needed to in order to get just enough freedom to change the odds. He expected Josephine would make the same assessment sooner rather than later, and mentally settled in to wait for it. In the mean time, they had things to talk about.

“This will go one of a couple of ways,” His tone was matter of fact, like he was discussing what they might cook for dinner. “You can accept that you gave it your best shot and got further than most people, but your fiancée can pay hard men like me to find you wherever you go and bring you back. Or,” he reached across and seized her chin with gloved hand and forced her to look at him. His stubbled face was grim, eyes as hard as her own. “Or, you can make this a long, painful experience and still go back to your Mr Noek.”

 

[CorinTraven]

His leather-clad hand was forceful, bent forefinger on one section of her jaw and his thumb pressed to the other with strength enough to turn the young face toward him and hold her there. If he was a crueler man, he might have crushed at the tender bone of her lower jaw, and she thought that might have been his intention, spiteful punishment after she refused to behave graciously, but his hand had not yet tightened beyond a firm but tempered grip.

Pouting lips pressed together as she contemplated, large eyes swiveling from one side and then the other, taking in their surroundings and then the big man who looked sternly at her, repeating his same offer for now the third time, as if she might become convinced by him if he only repeated himself. Her youth and inexperience would be plain across her face, the difficulty of defeat more bitter and lasting on the tongue unfamiliar to the flavor. All manner of emotions flashed, denial, defiance, resentment, frustrations and finally resignment, exhaling through her nose and closing her eyes a moment to settle the rabid rebellious parts of her that would rather tear herself limb from limb than go quietly. She was unsuccessful.

“If you won’t let me go, then save us both the trouble of a long struggle and put me out of my misery here. I don’t care how you do it, cut my throat, shoot me, but just do it now let him have my rotten corpse. I can’t stop you from bringing my body back, but I can promise you, it might not be in Fort Dodge, or Independence, or not until New Jersey…but I will throw myself off of a cliff before I ever stand living in the presence of Mr van de Broek again. There are a lot of ways to die- and as you said, a lot of time to think. So take whatever payout you’ll get and just do it fast, you’d be doing me a kindness, I’ll accept I gave it my best shot, and if there is a judgment to come I will absolve you to our maker.” Her voice started off gritted through closed teeth but quickly developed into genuine hopelessness, eyes wide and pleading and there was no doubt in her sincerity. She continued to beg, not to be let go, not to be treated humanely, but to be killed, voice edging as close to tears as it thus had, “Please, Sir, just go ahead and do it, I’m begging you, please…please…”

 

[Bomb84]

"Well now." Lars released Josephine's chin and considered his captive, sucking his teeth meditatively. He reviewed his mental list rehearsed contingencies, refined by days spent considering just this conversation. Shock and awe, threats escalating into violating physical boundaries and emphasizing her special vulnerability as a woman alone in the wilderness in the power of a man she already knew to be rough and unscrupulous, maintaining control of the conversation even when she tried to exit it. "Well now, ain't you just something. You've got more brass than most of the men I've put in your position, that's for damn sure." She likely thought this was just the next in his attempts to manipulate, but Lars knew this expression was as genuine as any he'd made that night.

He stood up and stretched. Too much crouching and stooping after days of riding had his back and thighs in knots, and Lars wasn't the young gunfighter who'd first kicked up dust across the frontier almost a decade ago. Walking around to the other side of the campfire and pulled his gloves off, tucking them into his belt and holding his hands out over the fire. The night had become chilly, in more than one sense.

"Honestly, if it were just me I'd cut my losses at this point. You're clearly not worth the trouble, and I think getting you back to New York in once piece to collect is starting to look like a fool's errand." He pulled his saddle over to the fire from its resting place and took out his tobacco pouch. He rolled a cigarette, fingers performing the rite automatically with long-practiced precision. He struck a match on his boot and lit the loose roll, inhaling slowly and then letting the smoke out in a cloud. "See, though, it's not just me. Your spurned fellow has a small army out to find you. Seems his pride is worth more than his money, a sentiment I have trouble sharing." He took another puff. "I'm not the only hunter on your trail, Miss Sawyer. I'm just the best and the fastest. There's plenty that will give up, but the other ones, them's the ones you really need to worry about. They'll find you. Here, Santa Fe, Mexico, don't matter. They're with big outfits. I know some of those men, wouldn't care to have any of them chasing me. Them's the sort," he tossed the blew a cloud of smoke her way, "as would dose you up with opium or laudanum to keep you quiet, seal you up into a box with air holes and toss you on a train headed east. After they killed anybody you were with or as might slow them down or get in their way."

Lars was silent for a moment, taking his time with the rest of his smoke. The girl didn't seem likely to say much else to him, so he finally ground the cigarette out with his bootheel.

"So," he continued at last, almost conversationally, "how much you like that family you're riding with? Or the next one? Townsfolk, sheriffs, whoever's around when the real hard men show up?"

 

[CorinTraven]

She looked up at him with those desperate eyes, tawny brows knit together with anguish, releasing a disappointed sigh when he sucked his teeth, remarked on her mettle, and dismissed her pleas. Watching him stretch only made her shoulders and knees ache, her restraints having been applied hours ago and her arms had long since gone numb. Was he teasing her now? The young woman watched him petulantly, resigned to sulking now that she too had exhausted her options. Her eyes followed him around the fire, considering he might be grabbing his gun and though that was what she had begged him to do, there was a surprising amount of terror alit in her to think it might be happening.

But he didn’t grab his gun, instead he grabbed a pouch of shredded tobacco and made himself a cigarette, pulling and breathing out thick puffs of smoke intermingling with the darker smoke and ash of the fire. Josephine had smoked cigarettes a few times in her life- shared them with her girlhood friends in a tight circle at preparatory school, stolen them out of her brothers’ pockets only to be caught by her mother out on the balcony with the stick burning between her guilty lips. She remembered how hysterical her mother’s admonishment had been, and the sweet irony when, after sending Josephine inside and isolating herself on the balcony, the smell of tobacco and smoke lingered on Polly’s breath.

Listening to the lilt of his voice as he kept on about the other unsavory sort of men stalking her, she let out a quiet scoff, almost amused in a sardonic sort of way, “And I suppose you’re quite exceptional to them in that…? I’m to believe you won’t resort to such barbarisms? That because you’re the best of them, you’re also the most decent? You’ll only hurt and humiliate me if necessary whereas they would in excess? Okay- and if these men exist, and they’re so bad and bloody-…what’s going to stop them from putting a bullet in your brain the same as you say they would anyone else who’s around me? I don’t think I believe you Mister-…What did you say your name was, L-…Loius? Logan?...It started with an ‘L’… Anyways, whoever you are, you’re probably lying about there being anyone else but you, but I guess we’ll see whether I end up splattered with your humors or not. If I make it that far, that is.” She was a cheeky little thing, pouting and giving him sass she ought be rid of. Time would tell how much of that defiant personality would remain once he’d gotten her back to her husband, but if the last hour had been any indication of her tenacity, he’d be wedding a rattlesnake of a woman, as fragile and pretty she may appear.

 

[Bomb84]

“You can call me Lars,” he grinned, only intending for it to be slightly mocking. He was rolling another cigarette now. “And you’re probably pretty smart to question whether I’m telling you the truth. And as far as them that’s after you…well, time will tell, won’t it?” He finished the roll and held it up so she could get a good look at it. “I’d offer you this one, except you’d spit it into my eye, most like.” He lit it and held it out of the side of his mouth, speculatively eyeing his angry captive.

“No, I’m sure I’d have more trouble out of you than you’re worth.” He stood and walked back around the fire, drawing his knife. “I’ll never be able to untie you, you’d slit my throat first chance you get. I can see coming after you was a mistake, so now there’s really only one thing I can do.”

The woman found herself forced once more to the ground, a hard forearm pressing the back of her neck down and a sharp knee at the small of her back. The knife flashed in the firelight, and Lars grunted with the effort as he plunged it downward.

There was a tugging at Josephine’s bindings, and then Lars was up and away from her. He took his seat again on the saddle, lingering over his cigarette and watching her as she realized her bindings had been cut loose.

“You’re free to go, Miss Sawyer. Take your horse when you’re ready. If I were you I’d wait till first light so he doesn’t stick a hoof and break a leg, but I won’t keep you.” His grin was gone, just an impassive stare. “I’ve got water and whiskey and some rations if you want ‘em while you share my fire, but don’t be getting’ no ideas about coming after me, now or later. I ain’t sorry for what I’ve done, and I won’t be sorry for what I’ll do if I have to.”

 

[CorinTraven]

Her eyes flashed to the cigarette when he held it up for her to regard, her interest piqued at his brief supposing that he might give it to her. Josephine hadn’t realized how attached to the habit she’d become and she was ashamed of how much she wanted it. She wasn’t quite ready to beg for a smoke yet, though if he continued to blow his exhaust over at her, the familiar smell would undoubtedly have her close. He surprised her when he came toward her with his knife drawn again. He had seemed to ignore her when wishing to be killed, and the desperate moment passed, the young woman started to doubt her conviction to die.

She began to voice as much when he’d manhandled her in the dirt, high shrill voice cutting through the otherwise quiet night. “Wait! No! Not from behind- not through the back! Stop! Stop!” It was hard to squirm or resist when his arm pinning her at the neck, and the rest of his weight driving her down at the middle, but she grunted and gave it her best attempt, the knife coming down and rather than cutting through her, he sliced through the binding at her wrists and elbows, and then down to her knees and ankles. She realized immediately he had not stabbed her, arms falling limply to her side and an intense burning sensation shooting through them. Her face was intensely burning too- but this was from embarrassment to have been squealing a moment ago. Breathing deeply, she rolled onto her back and eased herself up into sitting much the same she had been- though this time with her arms crossed her lap, stiff and not entirely respondent. Her eyes came to him, face still pink with shame and she grumbled, “…Did you have to be so ambiguous about what you were about to do?”

Folding her legs up, she tested her right, then her left, and then with some effort, she stood up, stumbling on unsteady legs but finally finding her balance. She was immediately satisfied to be freed, her attitude was much improved by it, and there was an almost giddiness she had to keep herself from becoming intoxicated on. Had she really convinced him- had it really worked? She savored this while walking over to her horse, unable to keep herself from snorting and covering her laughing mouth with a hand when he warned her against coming after him, finding the prospect hilarious- if only because of euphoric effects the sudden freedom was having on her humor. Suddenly, quite a lot about life seemed funny, seemed hopeful and lucky.

“Oh- don’t make yourself sick with worry over that. I’ll be so kind to spare you.” She called back to him, running her hand along the broad of her mare’s neck, noticing that she’d been relieved of her saddle and supplies- which made sense to bed down, but Josie wondered if he’d done it purposefully, knowing she’d be unable to resaddle the horse on her own, but giving her the illusion of a choice. If he had, she had to give it to him, it was clever, and she looked back at him questioningly, not quite willing to accuse him- unable to admit she would struggle to do something so basic on her own. “How far from the trail did you bring me?" She asked, like she was still considering leaving that night despite his warning against it. Her jacket was pulled from her supplies, and she returned in it to the fireside, not quite coming near him but lingering between him and the horses, gripping herself by the elbows.

“This isn’t going to be some sick trick- is it, Lars?...You aren’t just going to find me and start all over again, right?” She asked him outright after a few seconds of silence, not trusting his sudden change of heart and he would see uncertainty weaving into her face. “I’d rather not be toyed with.”

 

[Bomb84]

"No trick." Lars stuck out an arm, gesturing into the night. "East is that way. It's couple of miles over the hills. Come daylight you'll see the creek and the valley your friends are camped." He twirled his half-smoked cigarette between his fingers and looked pointedly at her horse. "Like I said, best you wait 'till then. If you want, I'll take you most of the way tehre come sunup and you can hook back up with them." He took a flask from his own jacket pocket and took a swig from it, a smile of satisfaction briefly followed by an offer of the flask to her. "Your fiancee's advance payed for some decent whiskey, Miss Sawyer. Figure you've as much a right to enjoy it as any."

 

[CorinTraven]

“No tricks?” She echoed though she found it hard to believe him. Tiptoeing tentatively closer, her eyes followed his gesture into the darkness, looking out and then back to the man lounging near the fire against his saddle. Part of her was uneasy to step within his range, as if he would spring up suddenly and resume his antagonism. It’d be hard to blame the girl for being wary, she still had marks of his ropes impressed into her wrists, tender and red. His change had been sudden- who was to say if he would remain decided in letting her go? Josephine couldn’t, but she had resigned herself to remain at least until the sun cast the rolling hills in its morning glow.

His coarse paw palmed the metal flask, holding it out to her, and tentatively she reached out to take it from him- the entire time feeling that any moment he would snatch out and grab her wrist. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll spit this into your eyes?” She asked before taking a swig and where he had smiled contentedly in the aftermath of his drink, her face scrunched together on reflex, then she coughed, shaking her head, and regretting the mouthful burning all the way down to her gut. A brief shiver straightened the hair on her arms, and she gave an inexperienced ‘bleh’ as she quickly handed it back to him. Try as she might, she didn’t think she’d ever develop a palette for liquor, swallowing several times to try and clear the taste.

“Thanks…” She said while blinking away the burning wetness in her eyes, before correcting him. “He’s not my fiancé though…” Shifting from one foot to the other, she looked over to him, not quite so large as he’d felt when she was tied up and sitting at his feet, but a substantial man nonetheless.

“…You said- that anybody that I associate with-…that they’ll be in danger? So if I go back to them….” Josephine trailed off, unwilling to speak aloud the end of that sentiment. She had claimed she didn’t believe him when he said there were others, but now she seemed to be questioning that more critically, raising her hand to soothe through her hair and lowering herself cross legged into a little spot by the fire.

 

[Bomb84]

The wheels were turning behind the girl's suspicious eyes, watery as they were after a slug of strong rye whiskey. That was good. She'd need that intelligence to survive what was coming, and if she didn't Lars was out a retirement payday. He offered her the canteen of plain water, noticing that the liquor didn't quite agree with her palate. A waste, he lamented.

"As far as James van de Broek and the rest of the world is concerned, you're the future Missus van de Broek." Lars took out his camp cup and poured another drink for himself, relishing the burning and the sweet-sour taste that permeated his nose and mouth after the whiskey had passed down to warm his belly. "He's mad enough to put the likes of me and half the register of top shelf bounty hunters on your tail. Anybody that tries to protect you or is just in the way at the wrong time-" FWOOOM! Lars tossed the last bit of whiskey into the fire, causing it to flare up dramatically. He got up, slowly so as not to startle her, and crossed to his own gear bundle. He took out a brightly colored tassel-fringed blanket that could double as a poncho and returned to his spot, leaning back onto his saddle and spreading the blanket over himself.

"They'll do like I done. Wait and watch a while. Most won't risk trying to remove you quietly...they'll just ride in at dawn or when you're on the move and put down anyone that they feel like." Lars settled back, stretching out his legs and crossing his booted ankles. "Might decide the wagon is the best way to get you anywhere and the current owners are too much of a liability." He tilted the brim of his hat forward so that his eyes were shadowed from the firelight. "I'd hate to have them folks on my conscience."

 

[CorinTraven]

She waved off his offer of the canteen, staring intensely at the fire and listening to him speak with contemplation knitting her brow. In her lap, without her noticing, her hands had started to pull at one another, flexing and twisting anxious knots of one another. Despite his deliberate effort, her posture tensed, and her attention became rapt the moment he started to move. She relaxed a hair by the time he returned and stretched himself out in preparation to sleep. Josephine didn’t understand how he could so quickly relax, how he looked to be seconds from sleep given their situation not twenty minutes ago. Her body was alert and buzzing, mind worrying over truth and consequences, and she severely doubted she’d find much sleep that night with all the weight bearing down on her.

Still, she followed his lead and a few minutes after he’d done so, she too returned to her supplies, and came with a stripped blanket of similar make to his folded over one arm. Once she’d resettled, sitting cross-legged a half dozen feet from him, and squinting to try and make out if his eyes were open under the shadow of his hat. Without being able to tell one way or the other, she continued to talk- asking him a lot of questions for someone who’d insisted he was a liar.

“…How far behind you do you reckon the next guy would be?...Are they close?” Her eyes swept up to the trees and sky around them with paranoia of being watched, before looking back to him and continuing, “You knew I was with the Grahams-…How long have you been watching me? How do you know you’re the only one? Could someone else have seen you nab me because they were just behind you?” She was catastrophizing, clearly panicked by this knowledge she was being hunted by numerous others. “…How do I make them stop.”

 

[Bomb84]

"That's a lot of questions." Lars responded readily, clearly alert despite his relaxed posture. One didn't live life in the company of bounty hunters and outlaws in open country for long by falling asleep with potential enemies nearby. He didn't move to look at her as he continued. "I watched you for most of the day. Didn't see nobody else moving about around you, but I've missed men in the brush before. Doubt anybody followed me here."

"How do you make them stop?" He snorted, "Girl, what kind of question is that? They ain't never gonna stop. I've spent years hunting men for a lot less than your so-called-fiancée is offering. If somehow you survive the first, or the next, even put one in the ground, word will get out as to where you are and they'll close in like coyotes on a lame calf. You'll die out here alone, too, most anybody will eventually." He'd seen it enough, almost lost his own life half a dozen ways. Falls, snakebites, infections, getting stranded by weather. The frontier was a beautiful deadly mistress to even the best prepared. Which, despite her guts and brains, Josephine was not. Couldn't be.

"Best chance you got is to lose yourself in some frontier town, maybe marry a rancher or something and have his kids. Of course, if them's as after you are as persistent as I'd be, that's a whole new family you're putting in the gunsights." He reached up and lifted his hat brim, eyes on her and glittering in the firelight.

"Only three ways this ends, Miss Sawyer. They get you, they kill you, or you go back willingly. You only get to have a say in the body count along the way."

 

[CorinTraven]

When he laughed at her question, she was disheartened and sunk a bit lower into her slouch, frowning deeply and his words only made her expression more serious. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and she was beginning to know it. He was right that she would die alone, she thought when she left that she could fend for herself, but her saddle sprawled out on the ground was one of many reminders of her struggles.

Their eyes met for a moment before Josephine brought her hands up to rub at her temples, letting her vision become unfocused, a throbbing headache beginning to form as she clenched her jaw and stress tensed her expression. Releasing a pent up breath, a deep sigh, she looked back to the experienced man, searching his face for some sign he was not being truthful and disappointed by his genuineness. She seemed angry for a moment, incensed, but as quickly as it came, it transformed into something more akin to injury, pain resulting from a deep feeling of powerlessness. Her voice was a whisper when she spoke, deflated and less of a protest than an admission of defeat. “…I don’t want to go back…”

 

[Bomb84]

"We can't all have what we want." Lars' acknowledgement was a slightly sad admission of reality. He had questions of his own but wasn't going to break the silence just to make conversation.

How had she managed to get her kit together and make it this far without any experience or preparation, he wondered? Better prepared expeditions had foundered on the same trail, and here she'd been, deep in frontier territory. More importantly, what had happened to drive a soft Eastern woman from the lap of New York high society, the world of salons and dressing gowns and theaters, seemingly overnight out into the hardscrabble life on the road and bumptious company of farmers looking for new dirt to scratch?

Her near-catatonia at Lars' implications and physical domination of her so-recently restrained body suggested answers that made Lars uncomfortable to dwell upon. He pulled his blanket up to his chain, then surreptitiously loosened his revolver in his belt where she wouldn't see. He wouldn't even get a light doze tonight, not with a desperate woman at his fire who might decide to get a head start on putting bounty hunters in the ground. Tomorrow was going to be a miserable day for both of them.

Wide awake with one eye half-open and on Josephine, Lars stilled his body and slowed his breathing grow steady. She didn't need to know he wasn't asleep.

 

[CorinTraven]

His wariness of the girl would turn out to be for naught. All she would do was sit there for a while, looking around and then up to the sky, muttering words to herself not quite loud enough to make out over the pops of the fire, drag her fingers through her hair and other idiosyncratic tics and self-soothing gestures. After an hour or so, she finally laid back, though rolling from one side to the other, she was unable to make herself comfortable. She’d been on her back when she’d finally fallen asleep, staring straight up at the stars and working through for the hundredth time the impossible puzzle of what she was to do next.

When she woke up, it was with a startled realization that she’d dozed off and a sharp inhale sitting up in the dewy grass. She’d been asleep for a few hours, not enough to be well-rested, but enough for the pitch black of the night to be brightening, the western skies still dark, but on the east, the sun was eliminating the stars and flooding the skies with rich hues of pinks, oranges, and the familiar shade of blue foretelling the day. It was not quite light yet, but there was light enough to see by, and though she was no more decided on what she was next to do, she was quick to her feet to begin folding her blanket, and get on to with whatever that may be. She could decide just as well once she and her horse were ready to leave, and there was still the issue of returning the saddle to her back- which Josephine was at least going to try on her own before humiliating herself by asking Lars for help. It wasn’t impossible, she’d done it before with clever positioning and great effort, but it sure as hell wasn’t pretty.

All the more reason to start now, while she, without too close of inspection, assumed he was asleep. She stepped away from the burnt remains of their fire, over toward Caleco and rubbing the soft muzzle of her nose affectionately and speaking quietly to her. “You’re going to be good for me so I can saddle you up now, right? Might need you to be patient, might take a couple tries, but we’ll do it, huh?” Presumably satisfied with the whiney and hooves stamping at the ground as agreement, Josephine nodded and went over to squat down beside her saddle and the two bags accompanying it. She checked the buckles and straps, going over mentally the order of operation, and what her best angle of approach would be. She looked around, wondering if there was a felled tree, or embankment she might exploit to her advantage. She couldn’t carry the saddle far, but she could drag it with some effort a few dozen feet if needed. That’s exactly what she began doing, hands hooking under either side, lifting it cumbersomely and waddling a few steps before dropping it and taking a respite, wondering if it somehow had gotten heavier than she last remembered, though it was more it’s shape that posed the most trouble, there never seemed to be an easy place for her to grab it, and she couldn’t so easily maneuver it once lifted.

“…Fuck…” She murmured, placing her hands on her hips and looking at the apparatus critically. Why’d they have to make it so heavy, anyways?