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Realistic or Modern 1875: Railroads and Runaways

Lars startled a little bit at the noise, nearly coming up off the ground with his hand on his pistol. He caught himself and relaxed as soon as he recollected where he was and what was happening, hopefully not causing Josephine reason to startle and bolt herself. He hadn't intended to let himself fall so deeply asleep. Perhaps he was underestimating the danger the girl posed to him, a possibly fatal mistake he wouldn't make again. Thankfully, it was her own gear she was messing about with and not his own. The sky was turning its first pale shades of blue, heralding the imminent return of the sun to the eastern horizon. He settled down under his poncho and watched Josephine struggle with her saddle for a while.

Finally admitting he'd get no further rest and that the entertainment value of watching the little woman fight with her turnout gear, he got up form the cold ground and stretched out his still joints. Groaning slightly at the arthritic aches he'd continued to accumulate, Lars popped his neck from side to side and gave Josephine a sour look.

"You're gonna get kicked in the head by that mare." He went over to his gear and rummaged a bit, pulling out his steel percolator and littleleather pouch of ground coffee. "Try holding it up on your shoulder and then tossing it up and across." Seeing she didn't understand, he set his morning coffee fixings by the embers of last nights fire and approached her, ignoring her reaction as he seized the saddle from her. Hoisting it up like a bag of flour, he held it by the pommel upside down so the seat was against his shoulder. He made as if to throw it over the palomino, then turned and dropped it at Josephine's feet. "Now you do it. You're going to have to get good at this, and quick, if you're going to ride out on your own. Unless you want Mister Wagon-man or that big puppy son of his to have to do it for you forever." He crouched at the fire and blew the embers into life, feeding it kindling while he pourded water from his caffeine into the percolator.

"You forgot the saddle blanket, Miss Sawyer," he called over his shoulder as he set the coffee on to boil. "Why don't you start over after breakfast? By the time you get back to them folks it'll be midmorning."
 
“Calico wouldn’t kick me- she’s good tempered and immutable.” The girl answered matter-of-factly to his warning, her chin canting in his direction. His next advice- she did really try to follow but couldn’t quite muscle the sixty pounds much further than her hips, holding it against herself for leverage and leaning back as if that might help lift it, but just stumbling and struggling to make her skinny arms maneuver the unwieldy thing. For the briefest moment, she thought she’d found her strength as it suddenly became light and lifted, but instead it was pulled from her grasp, hands outstretching before being pried open, the man showing her it was a simple thing, flipping it with ease onto his shoulder, and miming what the next action would be.

A queer mixture of appreciation and annoyance existed within her after his demonstration, looking down at the saddle at her feet and back to him in time for a touch of blush to color her face when he mentioned the ‘big puppy’. She was determined to show him that she could do it on her own, and would have begun right away had he not called out another one of her mistakes. She pressed her brows together, embarrassed by her own glaring inexperience, and dragged her feet back over to the fire. Her arms crossed and she watched him gently coax the fire back to life, waiting for him to relax back before, with some shifting from foot to foot and discomfort, she prospected for more of his expertise.

“Can I still do it that way if her back isn’t quite even with my shoulders? Should I find something I can step onto?” There was a deep genuineness in her asking, not wanting him to need to do it, or, Mr Graham or his son, she wanted to be able to do it herself, do it quickly like he said, and when he’d offered that piece of advice, rather than assurance that she couldn’t do it on her own, her eyes were alit and eager to learn.
 
"Mmmmmm." Lars poured some of the scalding bitter brew into his cup and took an appreciative whiff. "If you can't pick the saddle up on the ground trying to climb up on something with itis not gonna end well." His worn grease-encrusted skillet went onto the fire next. He tossed some pieces of salt pork onto the skillet to sizzle and pop while they softened and gnawed on a hardtack biscuit while he enjoyed his coffee.

"Try squatting under it, tilt it up so you can get under it, then lift with your legs." Lars blew on his steaming mug. "But if you're not strong enough to lift it you won't fix that this morning. If you had time you could practice back at the wagon, picking up bigger and bigger sacks of supplies until you worked up to the saddle." He took out his knife, leaned over and speared a piece of sizzling meat with it. "If you want, I can saddle her up after I break camp. Your friends aren't going anywhere fast."

He considered Josephine for a moment, up close and in the daylight. The slim girl was as out of place on the trail as a parasol on a chuck wagon. Sure, the exposed skin of her arms and neck was reddened and tanning, and new blisters and callouses on her hands were evidence of a willingness to work. The way she wore her loose riding clothes and the broad-brimmed man's hat she'd affected, though, spoke of someone riding out for the adventure of a lifetime, not going to meet the endless backbreaking toil of a frontier farmer or rancher's wife.

"What exactly," he wondered aloud, "were you planning on doing when you got to Santa Fe?"
 
She nodded to his answer, one side of her mouth dimpling into a mild frown, but taking the information without too much duress. He worked heating his breakfast, waking up and immediately beginning to eat whereas in her stress and fervor, her appetite was the furthest thing from her mind.

“I will try again in a minute.” She answered, wanting to at least give it an honest attempt before relenting and letting him help her. “But thank you.” She added after a brief pause, turning away to retrieve some of the dried jerky she had in her own rations and returning with a handful she took her time with eating. In her other hand was a map folded into a rectangular. Her stomach was uneasy, probably due to her nerves, and she likely would have foregone breakfast if she’d been without his company. Instead, she at least made a half-hearted effort, not sharing his satisfaction in the ritual. She sat on the ground, unfolding her map in front of her, not quite large enough to be particularly detailed, but spanning from Maine to California with the railroads and renderings of major geography. In pencil, Natalee had drawn her path so far and marked prospective future destinations.

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Josephine took a moment considering his final question before she finally gave a light shrug and a breathy laugh, “…Well-… I wasn’t quite sure. I don’t know if this was obvious, but I have not been making many…long term decisions with travelling or destination. I figured- I’d know if I liked Santa Fe or not once I got there. I have an aunt in San Franscico, I thought maybe I might end up there, but maybe not. Now, I’ve got to figure out where I’m even going. If you weren’t lying, then I can’t go back to the Grahams, I won’t put that on them, not their fault I’m in trouble…And I probably can’t go back up the trail, either-…So…Maybe I’ll just cut north, stay off the trail and find one of these rivers and follow it up until I get somewhere I can get onto a train, or until a better idea finds me.”

She examined her map, frowning and wondering how much could lie between one line and another that was not marked. Innately, she knew going off of the trail would be dangerous, but otherwise, if anyone was far enough along to have been on the trail, she’d only be expediting their collision. It seemed to her the safer risk, albeit only because she was so unknown to what might lie out there in the open country.
 
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Incredulity grew upon Lars’ face as Josephine outlined her plan. The map ahead was using was at a scale that would encompass the entire frontier in the space between his spread thumb and forefinger. Here she was, deep in the wilderness north of Comanche country in some of the last easily traversable train before California, and she was seriously proposing just cutting cross country with no road, no real provisions, and no company. All she had was a railroad map of the continental United States and a shaky alias.

“Might oughta get your horse saddled before you take off into the wild unknown by your lonesome, Miss Sawyer,” he didn’t heap quite the layer of scorn on his suggestion that he might, though the wry tone was unmistakable. He blew on a sizzling bit of meat on his knifepoint before he popped it into his mouth and chewed reflectively. Perhaps her getting this far could be attributed to luck, because she had indeed been lucky. To make it up the railroad unaccompanied without interference, to gather the impressive mount and trail load out she had, and to find the company of a decent family to travel among.

If she continued along the route she now plotted, Josephine’s luck would run out sooner than later, Lars. Much sooner.

“Tell you the truth, girl, if you wanna die why not do it quick?” He topped off his coffee and cursed as a little spilled on his trouser leg. “I’ll loan you a pistol and give you the bullet, if you wanna do it yourself?” He raised his eyes at her over the rim of his tin cup, then held the percolator up to her, “Coffee?”
 
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“Might be right…or I could learn how to ride a horse bareback.” She joked in response to his mild scolding, flashing a charming grin that had been until this point absent in their interaction, and a loose shrug of her shoulders. He was right to lay his critique, but she had not begun this journey because she thought she’d be well prepared for it. She’d gone because she had to, because the other choices were more unbearable than the possibility of dying out here. Death pursued her doggedly, it had ever since she’d left stumbling from James van de Broek’s doorstep and gone off in a daze down the New York City street. That was the first time it had occurred to her, that to die would not be such a terrible thing compared to the horror committed in life. In opposition to that dread was a hunger unsatisfied, the angry piece of her that cried out: No, the nectars of life have hardly yet saturated my palette; I have barely taken my taste, swallowed life, allowed it to traverse my esophagus and drop into my stomach for me to consume. I am not yet fed, there is much still more to live. I will not die, not until I am satisfied.

“You would?” She asked, voice with a startling lack of apprehension to his offer. “No. I would like to live, as long as it’s on my terms. I’m…” She paused, considering, “Well, I am afraid to die, sure, but I’m willing to risk it if it means I might have a chance to make a life worth living for. Dying out here, well, at least I will have seen some things in my life, experienced something other than vapid gossip and domestic confinement. You’re probably right to think it’s hopeless, but, I told you, I am not going back, and if I stay on the trail, I won’t be able to prevent that.”

There was a pause, before she continued, “I remember you saying last night, that you were just the first, ‘because you were the fastest and the best’” She parroted, “ But, I think there might’ve been one ahead of you. I thought there was man following me when I was on the train, I’d noticed him after Independence, and got paranoid enough after Fort Dodge and I got off the train as it was leaving the station, and I thought I had shook him. He wasn’t you- smaller man, he was wiry, less hair, and more grey. Depending on how long it took him to notice I was no longer on the train…he probably isn’t too far behind you though. So I at least have to avoid the trail far enough that I don’t run into him.”
 
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It was easy to forget what a pretty young thing Josephine was, hunting her across the prairie and exchanging tense words with her as a captive. But that first genuine smile surprised Lars, like a second morning sunrise. It made him a little uncomfortable and he focused on the steaming rim of his mug and tried not to dwell on it. Her subsequent somber talk of life and death did not diminish the bright impression that grin had left, and despite himself he felt his admiration joined by a new and unusual affection for her.

He supposed it might have been inevitable; he’d spent weeks studying Josephine Sawyer, her picture, every scrap of information about her that existed in print, a dossier that her fiancées lawyers had compounded for the bounty agents seeking her. When he’d been trailing her and then trying to convince her to cooperate with her return, she’d been an asset, and adversary. Now, he was witnessing firsthand the pluck and heart that had brought her this far, and he couldn’t help but feel his professional detachment slipping and that affection take root.

Shit, don’t make this complicated. Focus on business.

“Sounds like your gut was telling you something, then,” he responded out loud when she was done telling him about her possible encounter with the competition. “Could have been anybody, or nothing at all. Still…”

He frowned at her description of the older wiry individual that had caught her attention on the train. Could have been any of a number of hunters, but whoever it was would have had to have been waiting at Topeka to intercept her. Perhaps they’d gotten news of the job by wire and move into position. Still, moving that quickly and decisively and being able to acquire a target on the move with such a short window would have been an impressive feat. Lars wasn’t sure he could have done as well in the same.

The possibilities were chilling, a prickle on the back of his neck on a summer morning.

“If he didn’t get off with you at Dodge, he’d have travelled on down the line. Might have noticed you were gone and started back to meet you on horseback.” Lars looked around at the surrounding hills, wondering who might be watching them. “He’d have a hard time finding us here, but he’d be looking at trails, passes through the hills…river fords.”

Distant shots echoed from the east, back the way they’d come the night before, and Lars leapt to his feet.

The wagon…that family…
 
If she noticed the effect her easy grin had on him, she did a good job of not reacting to it. Instead, she noted his expression stiffening when she recalled to him the man who’d unnerved her enough to abandon the train. His reaction chilled her a bit, he had been assured and unshakeable so far in their interactions so his wary look around their surrounding reinforced her own worry. She’d even begun to go so far as to reassure him that she had not been followed so closely as Dodge, but the sound of a gunshots echoing off the hills replaced her words.

Goose eggs raised the hairs of her arms, turning her stance to look off in the direction of the shot with shock and awe. His bursting into action was indication enough to her that it was not a typical sound, that he was upset by it, and she ought to be as well. A hunter would rarely loose more than one shot at this hour, if he could see enough to shoot at all, and her blood chilled as she realized the distance and direction was that where her companions had been. “-…They-…that-…” She couldn’t quite put her racing mind to words, and she gave up after a second, instead jogging off toward her supplies, her horse and her rifle. Suddenly, the joke she had made seemed more of a reality- she wouldn’t have time to saddle her horse, and even if Lars were to help her- there just wouldn’t be enough time, with his own horse and supplies to tend to. She grabbed the blanket she had forgotten earlier and threw it across Calico’s back, replacing her bridle and checking the clasps of her reins for security. The only thing preventing her from taking her rifle and trying to mount the mare without her saddle in her quickness, would be that she hadn’t quite figured how she would do so without the stirrups to push off.

Kept from running off quite so haphazardly, she tried to reason and logic the dread from her heart and stomach. “I’m not there-…No one would be so stupid to ambush them without knowing if I was there….No…no…That can’t be them…it must be someone else. A bad hunter…an idiot wasting bullets…” It wasn’t quite enough for her to believe, realizing herself dumbfounded by the crisis and looking at him for direction, expecting that he would know what to do because he’d been the one to warn her of this. There wasn’t time for that either, she knew and trudged forward to follow her initial instinct to run toward the fire.

Recalling the correction he’d made earlier, she tried to apply the advice and get her horse saddled on her own. He’d lifted it upside down onto his shoulder, but she knew she wouldn’t be capable of maneuvering it quite so smoothly. She hooked the right stirrup over the horn as she’d seen done, and one hand at the pommel, the other under the cantle, she lifted the saddle, and brought it alongside her horse.

It had been unintentional, but Josephine had done herself well in choosing the temperament of her mount, Calico had been ridden by several riders before her and was difficult to startle compared to a younger, less experienced horse. She remained still and passive as Josephine took a couple failed attempts to lift before finally successfully swinging the saddle onto her back and adjusting it into the proper location. There was no time to be satisfied, and the next series of steps she at least had more practice at, passing the girth beneath Calico’s chest and beginning to pull her latigo through the ring of the girth, and then back up through its mating ring on the saddle twice over before tying its knot. Satisfied by its construction, she tested the saddles sureness and determined it to be fit, and moving onto securing her supplies without much else decided but that she needed to go and ensure the Graham’s weren’t suffering on her account. “I need to go help them.”

She took off before he would have a chance to persuade her one way or another, riding low, and as soon as she’d woven through the thicket of trees back onto the trail she urged her horse into a gallop, listening for more gunshots- she’d counted at least three.

--

In the dim, damp morning down beside the wide, shallow crick, Jonathan Graham lay on his side, bleeding substantially from somewhere in his midsection, hand grasping at the darkening void of his nightshirt, gasping and sucking in breath to scream. His voice was joined by that of his mother’s terrible screaming, and his younger siblings discordantly crying along with her. The shotgun he’d been lunging for remained out of reach, as it would for the short remainder of his brief life.

Lorraine ran to her son, another bullet zipping past her and skipping off a rock submerged a few feet behind her.

“Oi! I fucking said nobody fuckin’ move, can’t you people fucking listen or do I gotta put a bullet in another one of you ‘fore I’m taken seriously? Ain’t your boy enough?”

Lorraine knelt beside Jonathon, eyes burning as she looked to the bastard who’d shot him, hands feeling for the source of the blood and trying to stem the bleeding. The pool only grew, trickling into the stream and beginning to dye a few stagnant pools putrid red. The man pointed his revolver straight at her, pulling back the hammer without an ounce of regret in his expression or voice. Jonathan’s screaming had subsided to shock and groans, bloody hands leaving impressions as he reached out to his mother.

“Wait, Donny. We still ain’t got eyes on the girl.” A second man had been rummaging through their camp, disappointed that she was not hiding beneath the wagon or among their supplies. “We saw ‘er with them late as evening, didn’t ya?”

“…Yeah!” The killer insisted before thinking twice about it, and continuing, “...Well- er- no- I saw ‘uhm late as last evenin’. S’pose if I think back to it, I didn’t have my eyes on her, specifically, but that’s ‘cause we saw her with ‘er in the afternoon, before they passed behind the rise. She’s ‘ere, boss, did you check the wagon?”

“You didn’t see her last night? Didn’t think to fucking watch until you fucking did, you lazy God damn-…Of course I checked the fucking wagon you stupid sonabitch…” There was tension between the two, the leader gritting his teeth, “I oughta’ put a bullet in your brain, you useless dreg, you better fucking hope she’s around here- we ain’t got all fucking day to look for ‘er, and you already shot your fuckin’ gun off so every c*nt in ten miles of us is up and at ‘um, prone to come down the trail in the aid of the dis-fucking-stressed.” He gave a frustrated shout, shouldering his rifle and ripping down the line of drying clothes from its strand between two trees, as if the Sawyer girl would appear frightened hiding behind them. She was not, and he was only more enraged by it.

A few long minutes passed with one man holding them at gunpoint, the other tearing through their camp and throwing their supplies around in a tantrum. Jonathon was beginning to still, Lorraine holding up his head and whispering her pleas to him to hold on, that she was there, that it would be okay.

“Where is she?!” He demanded, spinning to face the father standing with two of his children sheltering beside him, hand braced on each. The rifle returned to his hand, and he held it threateningly at them. “Don’t think I won’t kill all of you, don’t think for a second I’ll regret it. Your son wanted to go for his gun and now he’s food for the worms. You’ll all join him, ‘less you tell me where the fuck that girl who was with you went. No ones gonna be a hero here, not him, not you, not nobody.”

Richard stared wordlessly, not knowing how to explain that the girl had gone missing the night before, fearful that the answer would cause the man to pull the trigger.

Approaching, he kept his rifle pointed until he was close enough to take their daughter, no older than fourteen, by the arm and start dragging her off passed her dying brother and mother cradling his head in the mud, out into the shallow depths of the river. “Nobody’s saying nothing, nobody knows nothing, that what I’m s’pose to believe?” The girl whimpered and cried, trying to pull away from him and reach out for her parents, but still barefoot and in her nightgown, she’d be shoved savagely forward onto her stomach on the rocks, his hand coming to the back of her head, and holding it beneath the slow moving water, before roughly gripping her hair, and lifting so she coughed and gasped the air just above the water.

“Stop! Stop! She’s gone, we don’t know where she went! She disappeared last night, please, please, stop, don’t hurt her.” Richard found himself shouting, Lorraine’s voice joining him in protest, pleading the moment the man had taken hold of their daughter, but he seemed frustrated by their answer, taking a deep breath and submerging the girls head once more, this time for longer, shaking his head as if disgusted by her parents.

“I did you a kindness not startin’ by taking both your boys, but you’re going to make me, ain’t ya? You want to watch your daughter drown? Want her last moments to be spent wondering why her parents are saving some strange bitch over their own blood?” He tutted, his second turning his gun to the father who took a step forward in desperation.

“It’s the truth, please, it’s the truth, she and her horse- they’re gone, she’s gone, please, please stop and listen, don’t drown her, please don’t drown her, just-….please listen, just wait.”

Unlikely moved by emotion, the man did at least pull their daughter out of the river, the girl coughing and retching up water, held up by her shoulders in front of him, as if to show off to her parents. He spat to the side, remaining stood there in the river and menacing the family, waiting for them to relent, and pay up information they didn’t have.

“Donny, you didn’t see the girl here last night?”

“Well-…Boss, I”

“Fucking answer me.”

“No- I s’pose not. S’pose she mighta’ left.”

“God damnit…God fucking Damnit, this ‘as gone to hell. We gotta clean ‘up and we gotta get gone. Someone’s gonna find the bodies, and if we ain’t far ‘nuff gone we’ll hang for it even without nobody to witness, just for being the type of people they wanna’ hang when a family winds up dead. You oughta hang, you dumb bastard…Go on an’ get the Maw over with the Paw. Maybe save a bullet for once in your miserable life.” He started to trudge back toward the shore, dragging the daughter with him.

There was a shot come from the ridge lying out in the shadowy west, high pitched and causing the man in charge to flinch and look to his companion reaching for the mother with his revolver cocked and ready. “Where’d that come from?” He asked, surprised when the answer he got was a series of coughs and gurgles, and he noticed that as Donny turned, blood was rushing from a neat hole in his throat. The man dropped in the mud not far from Jonathon, dying quickly from his wound as he choked on his own ether and had remained conscious only in the first seconds after the bullet had cleared the muscle, sinew, and cartilage of his throat.

Fearful, he let go of the girl and swung his rifle off of his shoulder, spinning to face the west and examining each shadow and space for the assailant.

--

Josephine heard the screaming at the camp before she saw it, the words lost but the terror obvious from the discordant pitch. The camp was nearly 100 yards out, more given the vantage she’d taken on a short rocky shelf provided by the bluff, but she’d seen a sandy-haired man drowning the Graham’s daughter and begun lining her shot up almost immediately. The decision to change to his lackey came quickly, having been teasing the trigger of her rifle with the bossman’s head centered in her site, but out of fear of an inaccuracy putting the bullet into the girl, kept from firing. The other man, heavier set and balding, had started toward Lorraine with his gun, and without the same indecision, she adjusted her position, and pulled the trigger. The shot deafened her hearing, butt of the rifle buried into her shoulder, and she stood with a wide and steady stance. Aiming for his head, there was no immediate splatter, and needing to take cover, she didn’t waste time to observe, assuming she’d missed while dropping off the shelf and scrambling down a rocky path back toward her mare. One hand on the barrel of her rifle, the other kept her balance against the rocks, half running, half sliding down the loose stone. She’d given up any advantage of a surprise, and she could no longer see to know what was happening in the camp. There was another shot of a gun going off- and Josephine cringed, envisioning another one of the Grahams executed upon her mistake.

‘He just killed that little girl- it’s my fault, I killed her…Oh God…I’ve gotten Jonathon killed and now his sister and next…’ She imagined the next shots to follow, one for Lorraine, one for Richard and the youngest son, but the hills grew silent. The whistle and song of birds started when the guns had stopped, taking only temporary flight from their familiar roosts and returning unperturbed by the dying. It was morning, after all.
 
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Lars was on his feet at the sound of gunfire. Though alert, he wasn’t unduly concerned as the shots were clearly a long way off. His concern grew quickly as he watched Josephine set about overcoming her difficulties with tacking out her mare. Urgency clearly augmented her determination where shame had previously not, and she made remarkable progress.

“Dammit, Josephine, whatever’s happening will have already happened by the time you get there!” Knowing it was useless before he’d even spoken to try to restrain his former captive, Lars was himself already stowing his gear. “You’re just going to get yourself captured or shot if you run back there now.” Of course the stubborn woman ignored him and swung onto her horse, and the bounty hunter watched helplessly as fifty thousand dollars rode off over broken ground into the first early sunrise. Swearing fit to make a sailor reach for his prayer book, Lars tightened the straps on his own saddle, unlimbered and checked his own repeater and the loads in his revolver, and lurched onto horseback himself and following her.

Josephine was out of sight by the time he was headed east, but Lars resisted the urge to spur his horse on in faster pursuit. Getting thrown due to a single misplace hoof in the rough ground wouldn’t get him any closer to helping or stopping her, and two horses made a lot more noise than one. He wasn’t catching up to Josephine like this anyway. Facing the rising sun in his eyes was a bad move for any shooting that was about to happen, so he decided to turn a little south and cross the creek further away from the campsite so he could proceed on foot over the hill overlooking the wagon ford from the south.

He'd only just thrown his reigns over a scrub tree and grabbing his rifle from the saddle holster before clambering up the low hill when the shot rang out, much closer. Lars froze and dropped low, looking about at the surrounding hills. The Shot had come from ahead, just over the crest of the ridge he was on. Rather than scale the top and show his silhouette to anyone watching, Lars crouched and scuttled around some rocks midway up, stopping in cover to survey the situation.

The settler’s teenage boy was shot, bleeding and motionless in his weeping other’s arms. Another man was down nearby, big and bald, dirty-looking and dressed for hard riding. A pistol lay in the dust near where he writhe, screaming incoherently as he clutched at a bubbling bloody wound in his chest. His partner, younger and meaner looking, had the family’s girl by the creek, clutching her by her wet hair and holding a pistol to her head. The man’s trousers were wet, and the girl was soaked…it looked like he’d had her in the river until moments ago. Now he was dragging her back towards the wagon, clearly going for cover. Lars spotted movement uphill to his left, and spotted Josephine scrabbling to a different position on the hill.

He also spotted a third man on the hill opposite. Dressed in dun buckskins, the bearded gunman was steadying a rife and tracking the girl’s movement, eye to the sight and grimacing with concentration. The two men that had assaulted the wagonf amily had clearly left at least one of their number in the hills on overwatch. He had the look of someone who knew his way around a long gun, too, and now he was aiming at where Lars at last seen Josephine. He threw himself to the hard stony dirt of the hillside and lined up his own shot. Exhaling, he gently pressed the trigger until the repeater bucked and it’s deafening roar filled his ears.

He missed. A cloud of dirt and rock chips erupted from the ground near the gunman’s elbow and the sharpshooter recoiled, his own shot interrupted. The bearded man rolled to the side, scrambling like a big brown spider towards the cover of a rock outcropping.

“Marksman on the north ridge!” Lars shouted, all pretense at stealth gone. Hopefully Josephine understood his meaning and would be alert for the sharpshooter, and any others that may be nearby. "If I see iron again you're a dead man!" He kept his repeater trained on the hiding place the other rifleman had found. He thought he recognized the seedy-looking man with the grey-streaked hair that now held the girl between himself and danger, back to the wagon. “Is that ol’ Franklin Barron down there I see? I’ll be damned.” He made sure the mockery was loud in his echoing call. Lars saw Barron stiffen with surprise at the recognition. “Doesn’t surprise me at all ol’ Snake Eyes would shoot the wrong mark on a job. I’m afraid you done scared off my bounty.”

“Listen, you and I both know Larson MacBraid doesn’t waste time on false leads." Lars knew his name carried weight, a reputation he'd helped along with embellishments as well as bona fide acts of murder and mayhem. It helped when the other swinging dicks on the range knew not to mess with you. "Let the girl go and let’s talk about this. I’m tired of kicking around this dustbowl. Maybe we can work together, fork faster and track the Sawyer woman down together? Plenty of bounty to split.”

"This is my bounty now, MacBraid!" The man he'd hailed as snake eyes jerked the girl harshly, no doubt intending her cry to add further emphasis to his claim. "These folks are aiding and abetting, and that boy touched iron! These folks is fair game. You go find your own lead on the Sawyer bitch!" The man's gun wasn't pointed at the girl, but neither was it very far away from a quick death for her. Lars spotted movement behind the rocks the third man had ducked behind, and the beginnings of a gun barrel. He sent another shot that way, and the desired effect was achieved when the protruding weapon was quickly withdrawn. Lars levered another round into the chamber and kept his sights on the rocks as he resumed calling down.

"I don't care nothing for those people down there, Barron!" Lars shouted, "and I'll happily end you and your partner and keep the bounty to myself. Ain't no need for any of that, though. I spotted tracks and a dust trail off to the south not long after you all started shooting up the camp. None of us is getting any closer to her like this. I'd just hate to retire with all that money with the sight of that little girl you got there all bloodied and dead just 'cus you don't know any other way. Now, what'll it be? We gonna posse up, or am I killing your man and then you and crying over your misdeeds on my way back to New York with the bounty?"

This standoff was a powder keg, and he'd lost sight of the fuse. Where the hell had Josephine gone?
 
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“Macbraid!” Barron flinched as another shot fired above him, arm wrapped around the shoulder of Graham daughter, trying to shield himself behind her gangly frame shamelessly, unable to choose between his sidearm or his rifle, questioning Macbraid’s willingness to shoot with the girl between them. “You already kilt one of my men. Wouldn’t be right after that, working with yew. Anyways, odds is still in my favor, still two on one. Splittin’ two ways might suit my partner, might inspire ‘um, avenging ‘is friend, knowing we both get more after puttin’ a bullet in your head. Way I see it, he got same chance of endin’ you as you do of ‘im…”

As if on que, his gunman fired back at Lars, the bullet depositing into the trunk of a tree a foot to his left, the bark cracking and stripping itself around the wound.

The third man, operating no longer in secret, finally let his voice ring through the valley, “The girl ain’t gone! The cockscukers’ lying, Frank, I seen’t her skittering over on the ridge there. She gone to the backside now. She ain’t far!”

Barron cringed, “Shoot that fucker, would ya’?” Frustrated that he’d not been working with men with one functional brain between the two of them, he decided finally that, unless he wanted Macbraid to abscond with his bounty, he’d need to shoot the son of a bitch himself. He released his shield, the young girl stumbling and then rushing back toward her father standing stunned as bullets ricocheted around his,already reduced, family. Shouldering his rifle and aiming it up into the rocks and pines clutching the steep overlook, Barron scanned for Macbraid, knowing his man was doing the same, and backpedaling toward the wagon for coverage.

His mistake was not looking back, not considering that Mrs Graham, her son’s dying breath passing quietly while gunshots and threats carried back and forth around them, was only feet from the shotgun her son had just gone for. With Donny dead, her daughter retreating, and his back to her, the urge to act was overwhelming. The distinctive shot echoed off both encroaching rockfaces, and at such close range it would be impossible to miss, Franklin Barron was felled by Lorraine Graham holding her son’s shotgun in shaky, vengeful hands, his back littered with shot and in a few places passing all the way through his abdomen.

Josephine had trampled her way down the backside of the cliff, kept from tumbling too far and over a ten foot drop with an arm wrapped around a young tree to stop her momentum. She heard Lars, Larson Macbraid as it was, up on the rise now above her, she was just to his backside, but perhaps thirty feet below him now that she scrambled from where she’d taken vantage. Her head tilted up, not seeing him but knowing from how his voice carried it was a matter of turning and looking down for him to spot her.

I ought to wait here and shoot him, the bastard, I knew it… She considered for a moment taking her rifle off of her shoulder and waiting, but realized her strategy immediately flawed. Nobody wanted the low, slanted and pebbled ground. But there she was, listening to another- different sounding- gun go off and after that at least the nasally, superior voice of their leader was no longer heard.

She was blind, pushing herself close to the cliff face, now hiding once more from Lars, Larson Macbraid as he’d said proudly to the other man, as if that meant something. As far as she knew, she was no closer to helping the Graham’s, they all could be dead by this point with the number of bullets that’d been let off. It might have just been her, her and Lars and whatever other hard men were now hunting her alongside him.

Despite keeping against the rise, where it would be most difficult to spot her, she hadn’t made it far before he did chance a look down and they met eyes. She had hoped she looked more scorned than startled, freezing for a second before turning off toward the trees. She was stupid to think otherwise, to be struck by his betrayal, of course he had been play-acting when he ‘let her go’. It was strategy, it was a means to pacify her and she was the naive, foolish idiot to begin to believe it. Plenty of cruel, evil, selfish people could mime kindness and humanity, it’s what permits them to walk amongst polite society. It was no different from James, James was charming, he was so nice…until he wasn’t.

She was discombobulated, expecting her mare was closer but not realizing when she scrambled off the backside of the rise, she’d put some grade between them and now wove between knits of pine trees and the wide open, not knowing if she ought to hide or keep running in hopes that her horse would turn up.

The scant cover of trees ended as she came to an abrupt slope, and she supposed Calico must be on the other side. It wasn’t vertical, nor was it far off, and the young woman would need her hands to get up it. She hadn’t the time to go around, expecting Lars would be lumbering close by now, and if she could gain a handhold, she might just escape.

She’d made it halfway up the first time before the sliver of rocks she’d been holding herself up on began to crumble and she retreated down as to not fall. Frantic, she turned back the way she came with a pounding heart and depleted breath.
 
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A lot of things happened at once. The settler woman went for the shotgun while Barron was distracted, and a deep coughing boom filled the little valley as the bounty hunter collapsed in a bleeding heap. Lars and the third man exchanged another series of shots. They succeeded only in keep one another’s head down. Finally, a frantic scrabbling sound rattled the hill behind Lars. He threw himself down on his back, rifle up expecting to see a fourth bounty hunter behind him.

Instead, his rifle sight fell on Josephine as she practically tumbled away down the hill and up the next rise. Their eyes met for an instant before Lars quickly checked his aim and pointed the barrel skyward. He couldn’t quite make out the expression on her face, but he’d learned to recognize that lifted chin and those squared shoulders. Josephine wasn’t planning on coming along with him quietly. She skittered off, moving quick.

Christ, she’s rabbiting. Lars cast a look behind him; the sharpshooter was out of sight and the settlers were just beginning to come unwound, the father cradling his little girl and trying to pull the crying mother away from their dead son into cover. Lars was torn; if he hurried after Josephine, he could probably convince her to slow down and talk things through with him. He’d probably have to tie her up again, and then what? Might as well have left her bound and comatose by last night’s fire for all the good it would do him.

The settler family was in danger. Even if the third bounty hunter didn’t set upon them immediately, they would be easy prey if he returned with more friends or word got out about their association with the most valuable bounty in living memory. The memory of seeing the little girl persisted, Barron holding her head under water to try and extract information her parents didn’t have. He wouldn’t be the last cruel man who would do the same to get what he wanted from them.

“Goddamit,” Lars hissed to himself, looking down at Josephine as she frantically climbed the next rise despite loose ground and sliding rocks. He made his decision.

Turning his back on the fleeing girl, Lars crept eastwards around the crest of the hill. He had a good view of the little hollow where Barron and his men have left their horses, coming down the trail themselves from the east and a little away from the ford. Pleased to see there were only three mounts, Lars settled in to a little cleft in the rocks where he had a clear shot either way from his new perch and now had the sun mostly at his back. The sharpshooter only had a few options now: shoot the family some more and reveal his position, accost them by himself which would likely end poorly for him even without Lars lying in wait, or cut his losses and go for the horses.

Lars waited. And waited. The family was now huddled under their wagon, holding weapons and craning their necks here and there, using some sacks of provisions for cover. The day was starting to warm up. Lars started to wonder if maybe he’d made a mistake, maybe the third man had his own horse somewhere or had decided to take off on foot, when he spotted furtive movements in the shady area between the base of the north hill and the trail. It was indeed the gunman from the hill, creeping towards the horses and keeping low to the ground.

Lars held his fire until the man was mounting up, then opened up. The first shot caught his target in the back as he threw his booted foot over the saddle. The horse startled and ran, sending its hapless rider flying into a pinwheeling fall to the ground, where Lars put several more bullets into him.

“Call me a cocksucker, will you? “Lars muttered to himself as he reloaded his repeater. “Suck on that.” Then he raised his voice for the benefit of the settlers. “Listen here, it’s all over now,” he shouted, his voice hard and uncompromising. “The girl they were after is long gone, y’hear? There’s more where those bastards came from, and they’ll know to be looking for the trail. If I were you, I’d forget I ever saw a blonde woman travelling alone, and I’d find some more folks to travel with. This trail is gonna be swarming with hard men from now on. Ya’ll shoot first, if you want to make Santa Fe.”

Making sure not to show himself to the family, in case they took his advice to heart immediately, Lars carefully made his way down the hill and back the way he’d come. By the time he reached his horse, it’d been an hour at least since he last saw Josephine fleeing. That was a hell of a head start, but Lars was no stranger to the long stern chase. He spurred his horse to the southwest, climbing a shallow rise where he had a good view with his field glasses and could look for any dust trails or lost city women.
 
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To the Graham family, it would feel a lifetime passed while they were huddled together under the wagon. The little ones between Ma and Pa, now the eldest, sister holding her little brother and him pressing his face against her shoulder and wiping tears there. Richard had grabbed the rifle and handgun of the scum Lorraine had slain, and she still held the shotgun- though it would do her little good as long guns exchanged above them, and then went silent for more than twenty minutes, nearly enough time for the family to begin creeping out from their hideaway. Everyone flattened as one shot, followed by several more in rapid succession once again boomed through the valley. Everyone stilled.

Then the fourth man, who they never had seen but had heard up plenty on the rise to the south bargaining and exchanging gunfire with their assailants, signaled they were clear, albeit temporarily, from mortal danger. Richard told his wife and children to stay put in a low tone, crawling on his stomach, rifle still in hand, out into the open and looking across the levels of ruddy stone and scrappy trees. He stood there for a moment, giving a gunman the opportunity to fire upon him if the danger remained, but before a minute had passed, he begun to feel comfortable that this disembodied voice of the sharpshooter was true in their benevolence against his family.

Knowing his voice wouldn’t carry so far and clear up out of the valley to him, he instead aimed the acquired revolver, the revolver that had shot his son, up straight into the air and fired it off once as an acknowledgement to Lars, he’d been heard. There was a lot more Richard wished the shot could convey, gratitude, a salute to fellow humanity lurking amongst the savage. He gestured to Lorraine that it was safe to come out, and she did so with the children clinging needily to either of her side.

Her eyes found Jonathon. Cold, limp, his face slack and sinking into the mud, already the earth was beginning to devour him. So impatient to have him, Lorraine’s bottom lip began to tremble and she cried out, prying herself away from her living children who needed her to rescue her dead one from being consumed by the mud, sunk down there wet and cold and his body without a coffin to save it from the crushing weight of the earth around him. “Richard, Richard, help me-…We got to get him out of the mud, Richard, we need to bury him Richard, not here, not where he died.” She knelt beside her boy, digging her hands to pull back the weighty earth around him, and pulling up at him, her own knees and legs being pushed into the mud beside him.

Distressed by their mother’s grief and their own to bout, the youngest looked around, confused by why this was happening. “Thems fellows were after Miss Gray? That mean Miss Gray is in trouble?”

“Miss Gray is trouble, Elliot. It was stupid of us to ever involve ourselves with the likes of her, its my mistake, I should have known a girl ain’t just out here on her own unless she done something real wicked worth running from. She didn’t even give us a warning, didn’t think to say nothing, just disappeared, run off, upset your brother and then killed him. Left us to die- the devil must be in that woman to do something so-…so heinous. God damn her. God damn me for bringing her into our lives.” Lorraine answered from her spot beside her son, Richard coming to her aid and lifting their son out off the muck.

“Lorraine, hush now. Quit your cussing, our boys at the gates of glory and he wouldn’t like to see his Mama cussing over him before he passes to God’s Kingdom. No use talking of Miss Gray, listen to what that fella’ who helped us out said, and let her to the wind. She got judgement coming, same as you and me. And it sound like its coming fast down the trail for her. Let’s wash Jon off in the crick, get ‘im dressed in something fresh, and we’ll take ‘um down the road ‘till we find a coffin-maker and somewhere nice to bury ‘im. Let’s worry about our Jon now. Get gone before we run into that girl’s retribution ‘gain.”

Though her face was taut with grief and anger, Lorraine nodded and quieted, appreciating that she was frightening her living children, and that she didn’t want to curse God while her son’s soul still travelled to heaven. The family broke camp, leaving the bodies of the two outlaws to be dealt with by other’s, let it be men or wolves. With Jonathon stiffening, laid straight out the long way of their cart, they departed on down the trail, grim but eager to leave the horrid place behind.

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Josephine had gone, but she wasn’t getting anywhere fast. She’d gone too far down, been too frantic and less deliberate after she’d fired a shot at a fellow man and like a frightened animal, let fear lead her around the backside of the ridge, where she was covered, but also blind. She didn’t know what had happened at the camp, she only heard gunshots continue to play out without any indication of who’d come out victorious. After trudging the long way around the slope she’d failed to scale, she was relieved to see Calico tied off between two trees in an inclusion against the cliff face. She was nearly to the river, tracking westward when Macbraid took the final man off his horse and stuck him again for good measure. The shots made her jump after the extended silence allowed a dusting of security to settle. She’d only just started Calico into a canter and was leading her off to the west, approaching the bend in the crick, unable to simply return to the path because she did not know who would lie in wait there.

Perhaps, had she more experience with it, she might have been able to place that the final shots were more east of her than north and suspect Macbraid the sole survivor, but she had not ever been party to this bloody business before. She was focused on leading her horse over the rugged terrain, slowed further because she often needed to dismount and progress so on foot to keep herself and her horse from a misstep that would end either should they twist an ankle or become otherwise prone. They had to ford the deeper water because they couldn’t go north where the water was a dribble, barely passed a person’s ankles in some spots. Instead, she was soaked near to her belly button, pants chaffing and clinging uncomfortably to her skin. At least Calico’s rump had remained above the water, and her supplies had only gotten moderately wet upon her mount. The horse’s even temperament seemed challenged when her rider brought her into the water, resisting but eventually allowing herself to be lead, albeit with a few uneasy breaths and expressions of her displeasure in it. Josephine had tried to remain astride her, but Calico would not go until she was lead by the reins.

“Sorry Calico, I know-....I am sorry, I hope you know that. We’re going a strange way, no doubt, but let’s just get around this rise, get some distance at least, and we’ll figure it out, huh? We can’t go north…we could go south but we’re real close to Indian country…Mr Graham had said less then ten miles at this point. On the map, it looks like a short jut into Texas, but that’s the funny thing about maps, everything seems awful close on them. Let’s try west…right? I’ll look and see if there’s a way around this ridge…we just can’t stop yet.” She spoke to her mare more so to give herself the forum to think aloud, knowing her situation was dismal and her lack of plan a sign of further destruction to come. She couldn’t think about that, she had to think about getting away, about where to put her foot down next so that she could keep going long enough to figure her way out, though she was reminded of Larson Macbraid’s words, that there was no way out.

She got to the other side of the closest outcropping, though it took her the entirety of the morning and most of the time she was walking. By noontime, she was completely spent, needing to rest what seemed like every quarter hour and she didn’t understand her extreme fatigue. Sure, the path was difficult and exhausting, but she’d never lacked endurance. When she needed it most, it seemed like her body was betraying her, slowing down when she needed it to speed up. A little after noon, after another spell of fatigue drained her muscles so completely, she'd even gone so far as to vomit, though with little more than bile and stomach acid to retch up. Ahead, there was a fissure between two cliff faces, and she hoped it to be the passage she so needed to return to the northside of the mountain. It appeared to be hundreds of yards wide from a distance, but as she got closer, she realized it quickly began to taper in, and appeared to be only a few arm spans wide down its length. Josephine had tried to consult her map and quickly realized it was a useless thing to her without being scaled appropriately to see the detail of the ground around her. Mr Graham had the map they’d been using, it’d probably still lay in his waistcoat pocket, probably was covered in his blood after he’d been slaughtered, she grimaced. Guilt had crept along with the woman, how she’d been the cause of their deaths, how she’d brought them to the slaughter and run away in the aftermath. She was a coward, she was a leech, a wretch and all of the worst things a person could be. Made worse because she made them believe it not so, believe her innocent, that she hadn’t been dangerous and they’d helped her.

She continued down the narrow pass with her horse while the revolution of all the things she’d done wrong, all the people she’d hurt and disappointed repeated in her head. The walls were getting closer, she didn’t want it to be true but she saw how with no exit in view and the grade gently increasing, it would seem the cliff faces were to meet, and soon it would no longer be wide enough for her horse to turn.

Josephine stopped, angry and dejected, boiling over with frustrations that nothing could go right, that her luck had turned on its head and now it seemed a divine punishment enacted. “God Damn It!”

“Damn it…damn it…damn it…” Her voice carried off the rock around her and was amplified, an echo mocking her from down the long intercepting walls. This time, when she cussed it was a whisper, under her breath and realizing yet another mistake made out of thoughtlessness.

“…Shit…” She whispered with no repeat, turning Calico back down the long corridor she came, and checking that she’d had a bullet ready to be chambered in her long gun. The sun had passed zenith, she couldn’t see it but from where the shadow ended at the top of the ravine, she suspected it was passed three, but not quite time for supper. Her bottom half had dried in the time she’d been clambering the rough terrain, and she stumbled on, eyes pointed ahead, the horizon and opening now growing ever bigger. She told herself she could rest once she’d made it that far, gotten out of the dead end at least. Calico, though having not been very much ridden, had been exhausted still being lead up and down rocky hills, bearing Josephine’s burden’s and thank God for that, elsewise the girl would be face down and dead-tired miles back.
 
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The girl had guts, Lars reflected as he lowered the field glass from his eyes, a dun silhouette against a cloudless blue sky. Plenty of guts, he was sure. Her flight from the gunfire was no poor reflection on her courage, he thought, seeing as many older and harder men with more experience could drop their weapons and flee when danger erupted in front of them. Nobody knew what they’d do when the guns came out.

No matter how much heart Josephine had, though, she had no experience in open country. No feel for the land, no sense as to the spaces she could travel and the distance at which she could be spotted. With the sun still at his back and sitting high on his horse atop the ridge he’d picked as his surveillance point, Lars had quickly spotted her down below as she struggled across the river leading her recalcitrant mare. The sunlight was brightly reflected on the ripples and the splashing wake of her calico mare. He marked several rises on the other side of the river from her, memorized their shapes, and then urged his horse down to level ground and then cut out at a brisk trot for the nearby ford. He planned to cross quickly and then keep well to her west, periodically climbing to an elevated point and locating her again with field glasses.

It hadn’t been difficult. Josephine had made slow progress, which puzzled Lars. She should have been able to eat up the miles on horseback but for some reason she was lagging. Perhaps the long night and the multiple shocks she’d endured in a short period of time had been too much. Another possibility grew in Lars’ mind as he pursued her at an amiable pace though the dusty rocks and scrub brush of the remote hill country they passed through. Could she have been hit during the gunfight? He thought all of the shots the bounty hunters had sent uphill had been at him, but there’d been a lot and the situation had progressed swiftly into chaos. As his concern grew, so too did his pace.

The looming cliff faces to the west were an obvious impediment to progress, and Lars spotted the wide canyon mouth. He couldn’t see Josephine, but he could see a long way north and south along the cliff base and it was unlikely she’d gone that way unless she’d upped her pace considerably. There were no galloping hoofbeats or dust cloud to indicate a sudden flight, so he approached the canyon cautiously. Had she seen him? Pulled him into an ambush? Her single shot back at the wagon camp had dropped her target, and Lars didn’t want to give her the opportunity to prove her marksmanship was more than beginner’s luck.

He heard her voice from within the twisting rock-lined pathway, cursing. Maybe she was in trouble, and may she’d think Lars was worse trouble. If his suspicions were true and the canyon receded to a dead end, she’d have the advantage if he approached.

“Josephine,” he called out, making sure his voice carried. “You know you made a mistake, and now you’ve got yourself cornered. if I can find you then others will before long, assuming you get out of these badlands without dying any one of the dozen ways that regular folks find their ends here.” He reined in his horse, keeping his gloved hands visible on his saddle horn. Lars scanned the rocks and the ridgelines, trying to spot her or anyone else that might be concealed and drawing a bead on him. The surroundings had gone deathly silent after his call.

“Just like I told you last night, I ain’t trying to drag you back. No tricks. Just come out and let’s talk about this.”
 
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Josephine was perhaps 200 yards down up the crevasse, the ground beneath her a gentle, nearly imperceptible slope unbroken enough to travel by horseback, when it had not been further down its length. Astride Calico, she had her rifle across her lap, traversing the gentle wind of the passage and expecting she would see the exit after the next bend when his voice called from that direction.

“Woah…” She urged her mare to halt, feeling her heartbeat quicken and a chill run down her spine, no less struck by being caught just because she knew she was being pursued. Preparedness did little to dampen the fear upon its eventuality, and she kept still there for a while, considering turning back and down a path she knew would close around her, if only to delay capture. Maybe just where she had been, was the final chokepoint, and she only had to navigate through to freedom. Josephine knew these thoughts to be wishful, childish hopes with no basis in reality, only desperation. He would eventually chase her down, he’d hunted her this far and would not turn back. Then she’d wind up face down in the dirt again, hog tied and forced to listen to him tell her all the bad things he’d done and how she ought to comply before he did worse.

No tricks? She thought sardonically, rolling her eyes in response and nudging her horse to walk on, slow and hesitant around the bend, where she’d be revealed to him from the opening of the passage. She had one hand on her reins, other hand steadying her gun across her lap and she considered that she’d never fired it from horseback, and hoped he’d not made that deduction himself and be wary of her. The last thing she wanted was for him to call her bluff and come pull her out of her saddle.

Her eyes squinted at his silhouette, standing against the backdrop of light flooding outside of the crevice, and she looked for signs of other men, but she saw only him and his horse, growing larger as she came closer, though once they were within ten yard of one another, close enough to speak but far enough she at least could delude herself with prospects of escape, she stopped, eyes swiveling around and then back to him.

“Where are your friends, Macbraid?” She asked, voice sour and combative. “Couldn’t convince them to split me?...Or did you just pick the lucky piece of the fork? If you aren’t trying to drag me back, then why are you still hunting me? You know I heard you, why do you think I’m stupid enough to believe you? If you aren’t trying to drag me back, then what’s it to you if I die out here?” The girl looked poorly, her eyes were bruised with complete exhaustion, a sheen of sweat upon her skin and hair slick with it. She hadn’t eaten anything of substance since midday the day prior, had been in a near constant state of panic for nearing twenty-four hours, and now carried the grief of killing the Grahams as another burden on her narrow shoulders. She hardly had the energy to fight with him, but carried on hollowly, because she knew no other way and like a hunted animal, caught in a trap, would exhaust herself to death writhing and gnawing her binds even if the result was only deeper cuts.
 
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“You heard me what? Say whatever Snake-Eyes Barron needed to hear to not put a bullet in that girl’s head to protect himself?” Lars’ leaned forward, crossed his arms resting on his saddle horn as he spit a wad of dusty phlegm to the side to punctuate his remark. “Lie to the men that killed your friend’s boy, try to put them off your trail? The only ‘friends’ anybody’s got on this kind of job are the men that ain’t tried to double cross you, yet.” He was conscious of the irony his last statement, and he was sure Josephine would settle upon it as well like a ready stone to hurl back at him. “Your fiancée paid for you, alive and unharmed, so you’re the safest person out here on this part of the trail. Everyone else--myself, that family back there, anybody else you come across—we’re all fair game.” The sun was high overhead, summer heat making the horizon dance with heat distortion and both of them sweat profusely. “You’re the Pale Rider, Miss Sawyer, and death follows in your wake.”

He urged his horse closer, slowly approaching until he was alongside Josephine, close enough to touch her though he made no move to. He ignored the rifle clutched in her grip. His face, unshaven and lined with fatigue and years, was stoic, though his eyes seemed to hold a depth of knowing, veined with regret.

“Look at yourself.” His voice was lower now, like he was coaxing a spooked horse. “You done run off into the middle of nowhere, you don’t know where you’re going or what you’ll do when you get there. How much water you have with you? Unless you’re ready to die out here, I reckon you’ve got little else to do but trust me, at least a little. I think we both know that if I wanted you’d I’d have you half a dozen way by now.”

Trust him to do what? Lars didn’t know himself at this point. He’d abandoned the idea of trussing her up and riding with her to the nearest railroad station. She’d made it clear he couldn’t intimidate her into compliance, and despite his insinuations to the contrary Larson Macbraid had never been that sort of man. He just didn’t care enough about his own honor or reputation to refrain from lying about it. Josephine was like a high-spirited horse; breaking her would ruin the product, but let the horse run itself down and it might be more pliable to being led where it needed to go.

“Whatever it is you think you’re going to do, you won’t do it out here. The trail’s off to the north, why don’t we head that way, make camp somewhere safe, and get some real sleep without worrying that one of us is going to try to kill the other?”
 
His explanation caused her pause, atypically silent as she thought and tested the seams of his words for threads of deceit. She pressed her lips together, instinctively distrustful and expecting that she was being tricked, having learned how harsh and deceptive life could be and rightfully defensive. But his answer was reasonable, and her eyes lowered to the ground, swallowing before she spoke. “…Didn’t do her any good... Those men still killed her and her whole family because of me. Like you said they would.” As he continued, she was only further deflated, having realized much the same. She’d only been surviving by the skin of her teeth, and now that she was a plague to those around her, Josephine was sure to die. Die alone, someplace where her body would be picked clean, and bones scattered before anyone would discover the dead girl who’d gone missing so many miles away.

He came closer, and she stayed put, leaving her rifle balanced across her knees and running both hands down her face, wiping away sweat and trying to relieve the pulsing headache between her temples. She looked at him through the gaps in her finger, clenching her jaw and listening as he took a soothing tone. What choice did she have, but to trust him? Like back in the canyon, the walls drew ever closer, and no matter how wily or how cunning she might be, Josephine was running down an ever-narrowing corridor. What she had done to the Graham’s, that was already too much for her to accept in exchange for her own freedom. Her life wasn’t worth it, free or otherwise.

She dropped her hands to her saddle, letting them lay limply. “Okay.” She answered, having no option but to relent. She could insist on being left alone to die, and there was a part of her that considered it, but a larger part, while exhausted, still sought survival. Ensuring the block of her gun was disengaged, Josephine stowed it as it would do her no good any longer- he clearly knew she was unwilling to discharge it since he came riding up alongside her. Her expression was strained, and her acceptance dead and flat. But it seemed final, unable and unwilling to argue against him and following as a last resort.
 
“The whole family?” Lars’ brow furrowed at Josephine’s assertion. She’d clearly not seen any of the rest of the gunfight before she ran for it. “Naw, girl. Except for the boy they’re all fine. The mother made for Barron herself, took him down with the son’s shotgun. I got the sharpshooter on the hill when he went for his horse.” He turned his horse about so he was riding alongside her, gently nudging their pathway to the north. “Some things you can take the blame for, but some you got to release.” He paused befor continuing, “You probably saved their lives.” Lars let that sink in as they rode on.

“Look here,” he gestured at a shaded crevasse ahead. “It’s hot as blazes. Why don’t we get ourselves and the horses out of the sun and start moving again in a few hours. I’ve got some water, but we’ll need to find more soon.” He didn’t add that she looked half-dead.

Without waiting for her assent, Lars swung off his horse and let it into the shade. He reached to offer a hand to Josephine.

“No sense in hurrying right up to whatever hired guns are waiting for us on the trail. Nobody will find us out here except for the scorpions.”
 
Josephine was confused when he insisted that the Grahams were, in fact, still alive. All of them, except for Jonathan – the boy as he called him. She swayed gently to the rhythm of her horse’s easy stroll, following his lead with subtle cues given with her heels and tension on the reins. As far as riders, she had a comfortability with her horse that hinted at least some experience prior to this excursion west, but how she’d dallied and failed to track further across this rough terrain with her ample head start on him, confirmed that she likely gained it in a well maintained and flat pasture. Out here in the real world, with its cliffs and its ravines, its sudden juts and constant interruptions of nature, she took each step like it was her first, unsure and unsteady.

She didn’t know how to respond to this realization, disbelief softening the muscles of her face and allowing bitter-sweet relief from at least some of the disdain she held for herself. Not nearly the lion’s share, but a touch of buoyancy returned to her soul as counter to the heavy weight swallowing her down into the deep. It was her fault they’d been targeted to begin with, Jonathon was still dead because of her, but his words did bring comfort she no longer thought possible for her. What did he mean, that she had saved their lives? He claimed Lorraine killed ‘Snake-Eyes’, and he’d taken out the third man, but never mentioned the stout man who’d been going for Lorraine when she’d missed. She had missed, hadn’t she?

The girl was picking his words apart and collaging them together with her own remembrance, trying to reason why he would say that she’d saved their lives and always returning to her shot that she thought had begun the slaughter. She was thinking of this when he suggested they ought to rest, nodding mechanically, as if she agreed with him, but she was still perplexed when he then held up his hand to help her down and took a few moments to catch up into the present. Taking his hand briefly to aid in dismounting, she surprised herself to find use in his steadying, her own legs wanting to buckle and stumble otherwise upon meeting the ground. This embarrassed her, resenting herself and her weakness, she shouldn’t need his help, yet it would seem at every junction, she did. She must have been exhausted, she decided, that her sufficiency was being worn down and would replenish with rest. She pulled her hand back the moment she felt sure her legs were beneath her, clenching it against her side and looking away from him abashedly.

Calico was tacked off beside his own horse, Josephine petting her side and patting her assuringly. She couldn’t help but ask now, he’d know the answer and had left it ambiguous because he thought she already knew. She was fearful of ridicule should she be wrong, that it was a set up to mock her, even if his character hadn’t foretold he was the sort of person to do that. “The portly man, the one down in the camp with Barron. You didn’t say who killed him. I shot at him- but I thought I missed- I didn’t see where I struck him. I admit-…I never seen a bullet hit a man before, but I had thought….I don’t know, that I’d have known if I blew his head off. That it would have exploded or-…- or something.”

Facing him, Josephine studied his face, words earnest as they were naive, her hands gesticulating as she spoke, miming an explosive motion out in front of her. She confirmed what he assumed, that she’d taken a lucky shot- that she’d been so inexperienced and green, she hadn’t a good reference for telling if she’d made it outside of her imagination of what she thought might happen.
 
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“Ain’t like that.” Lar’s words were distant, his face gone flinty as the surrounding hills as he helped Josephine down. “The bullet that rifle puts out ain’t much bigger than the end of your finger once it’s left the casing. It’ll make a mess when it hits, but nine times out of ten a body just folds up when it’s hit. Lot’s of time them’s as caught one don’t even know it for a bit.” Lars started seeing to the horses then paused and looked over at Josephine. “That man was dead only a minute or two after he hit the ground, girl. You hit him square.”

He left the horses with long leads so they could forage among the sparse scrub around the outcroppings then took his spare canteen off his saddle and brought it over to Josephine.

“Don’t drink too much. We might be able to water the horses in the evening when we get to where the river turns our way.” He looked about, scanning the horizon and grateful for the shadow that offered a concealed position to see any approaching riders. “I’d hate to think of who all the shooting might have attracted. We'll need to be careful. No fire tonight."
 
After he spoke, Josephine examined the width of her index finger, bending and inspecting the size against the imagined bullet. It was not lost on her that his words and expression had subtly shifted in tone, reservations befalling him though mild in effect. She didn’t doubt his expertise, he spoke as someone with immense knowledge, more knowledge than a person wanted when it came to the topic of death. Fresh to it, she would find excitement in something he’d long since discovered hollow: killing. It wasn’t so much that she’d become sadistic or bloodthirsty, but when he looked back to her and let her know she’d ended her first life, her expression was barely contained contentment, corners of her lips twitching as she struggled to place the prideful feeling that accompanied the shocking revelation.

Josephine never thought herself a killer, but there was something satisfying in the evidence that she wasn’t completely helpless, that she was not fated to be perpetually the victim and was capable of being the enactor rather than the affected. “Heh…” She hummed, not quite laughing but feeling close despite not being able to place where the humor existed. “…Wish I would have watched a bit longer then, huh? Weird thing to find out thereafter…”

“Thank you...I won’t.” He’d been the one to give her water twice now, and she considered that while she swallowed two mouthfuls before minding the limited amount and screwing the lid back onto the canteen. She observed him looking, and looked out to try and guess what exactly it was he was observing, what he could gleam from the landscape that she might understand too. Maybe he was looking for the path out of here, or a landmark known to him that would give them direction, Josephine couldn’t quite decide, wishing she did, wishing that it all didn’t look very much the same to her no matter where she looked.

The girl settled into a seat with her back against the rise, cross-legged and resting her elbows on the inside of her knees, her chin into the palm of one hand as she switched between watching him and what he was watching curiously. “Have you ever been shot?” She asked tangently to his stated concerns, relating back to his earlier talk of bullets and shootings. She didn’t wait for him to respond before continuing with more relevant questioning. “You said earlier we’d make camp somewhere safe-…How do you suppose anywhere is safe? All the action happened up on the trail-…how are we supposed to travel it without trouble. Won’t someone eventually kill you and take me?” She wasn’t asking to be oppositional, as she might have the night prior, but from genuine concern.

“Or do you bounty hunters have some sort of, honor-amongst-thieves, sort of ethical code that it’s only open season to raze and murder and brutalize everyone and anyone until one of you captures the bounty? A sort of impunity, finders-keepers sort of understanding.” She joked dryly, thinking herself clever though it was still to be seen if he thought so too.
 
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Finishing his survey of the horizon without noticing anything untoward, Lars eyed Josephine with a speculative look on his face. This cavalier attitude Josephine displayed at the revelation of her lethal shooting surprised him, despite all of the previous quirks the young woman had shown him. It was as if there were two faces to her, one like a frightened rabbit and one that had the bloody fangs of a coyote. It wasn’t clear to him which would be facing him at any moment. The way she practically glowed after learning she’d killed a man was so foreign to his experience, though, that it made Lars wonder whether he’d missed something big with his research and observation of Josephine and her habits.

“He died ugly, sucking air into the wrong hole.” Lars wasn’t sure why he told her. To give her the pleasure? To try and jostle her with the reality of what it meant to go down with a bullet through your chest? “Bullet went in the chest and must have rattled around in there. He drowned in his own blood.” Lars dropped the issue then and lounged on a somewhat smooth rock face, twisting this way and that until he was comfortable enough.

“Sure, I been shot. More than once. Ought to be dead, more than once.” If Josephine had been hoping for show-and-tell, she’d be disappointed as Lars didn’t volunteer any more information than that. “And sure, ain’t nowhere safe. But there ain’t so many men on you that they’re going to divide up every sqaure patch pf badland like some prospector’s claim map and look for us everywhere. They’ll do what I’d do…figure the places you’re mostly likely to be and when you’re like to be there, and swarm all over those like flies. They’ll ask around, spread promises, threats and money to get eyes and ears looking every which way. They’ll team up, for a little while, and some of them might fall out here and there but for the most part they’ll run in groups like the ones as got your friends back there.”

“Honor?” Lars spit and settled back, tilting his hat over his eyes. “They’d kill someone that didn’t have you just to keep them out of the competition. Your fiancée has promised fifty thousand dollars for your return, Josephine. Ain’t nobody out here going to worry about playing fair when that kind of money is on the line.”

Lars stopped talking and forced himself to try and relax, arms behind his head and hat shading his face from the sun’s reflected glare. He pondered the trail from here, where they could water the horses and refill their own stores. It was a solid week’s travel to the next town down the trail—if you could call it that—but the railroad didn’t extend much further southwest than where they’d gotten off at Dodge City. If he was going to try to get her to agree to return to New York, continuing further west would be a fool’s errand unless they cut far north across hostile, mostly unmarked wilderness to catch a northern branch of the Atchison-Topeka-Santa Fe line. It would likely also be the first axis Josephine’s other pursuers elected to search for her along. If it became obvious that she was with Lars, though, he figured once the other hunters learned of that they’d cluster around the railroad stops and try to catch her headed east.

It was a conundrum, but solving it wouldn’t get them out of their current dilemma. Lars seemed to have won her over to the idea of riding with him, at least for now, but before Josephine could make any real decision about her future they’d have to have a plan for their immediate survival. The first step of which would have to be to head back to water by the next sunrise, or they and the horses would start to seriously suffer.

“We ought to rest a bit. Once we start moving again we’ll need to go quick, and we won’t be able to stop again until we’ve watered up and gotten away from the trail again. We’ll be riding until dark.”
 
“Good.” Was her only answer as he elaborated more details of how the man she’d shot had died. She sounded more sure about it than she felt, reminded once more of Jonathon and how he, too, had died ugly. There in the mud, moaning and sputtering and bleeding until there was more blood out of him than in him and his face was smeared with a salve of it and the rich earth he’d succumbed to. The pleasure she’d gained was extinguished, and now the taste of ‘good’ was sour breath in her mouth. There was no sweetness in the suffering of your enemies when you remember your friends still dead beside them.

Her eyes perked up with intrigue as he affirmed he’d been shot before, and she was a little let down when he’d kept his cards close to his chest, more than a bit curious of how and where a man could be shot, multiple times and survive. She understood from his answer, however, that he wasn’t interested in sharing. If he had been, he’d taken the opportunity to brag and reinforce to her his repute and toughness, lifelong markings of survival and denoting him a man of grit. She’d had plenty of men with lesser scars nearly fall over themselves to tell her about them, about just how bad it’d been when it was bloody and the exciting ways in which they got them. Josephine bit her tongue, she wasn’t about to ask and have him find amusement in her interest, she didn’t need him to think she was being coy.

“He’s not my fianc-…Fifty thousand?” She began to correct him but interrupted herself, scoffing and shaking her head, “That must be a joke…He must really think I’m dead, then, and is playing the part a desperate lover exhausting all avenue- he can’t intend to ever pay that out. He’s preening-…for someone. Probably looking for sympathy from the press or the heiress he’ll intend to replace me.” She sounded disgusted near the end, even frustrated. “…That would be like him, to put out an absurd bounty that he could never pay to show off his wealth and devotion to his next target. Ha! Maybe he’ll land someone higher on his list than me because of the theatrics…If it didn’t make me so sick, I could almost be impressed.” He was right they needed to rest- but it was difficult for her mind to not begin gnawing for the marrow, working over the size of the bounty, and why James would offer a number that, from her perspective, he could never pay.

Luckily, she was close to delirium with her exhaustion, and at some point while laying on her side, glaring at nothing and playing through scenarios at home that lead her to her current position, her eyes had closed, as if to blink, but did not reopen. It would be obvious from a distance her prone, half curled over position, jacket bundled under her head with arms wrapped around it and hat knocked off to her side, that she was sleeping deeply.
 
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Josephine’s comments before she dropped off to sleep stuck with Lars. He gnawed and worried at them mentally instead of drifting into his own restful slumber—God knew he was wore out enough, chasing the bounty down for days as he had—and he couldn’t help but turn her words over and over in his head. Her scorn at the amount offered for her return had been real, he thought, a fact which greatly troubled him due to her familiarity with James van de Broek. Who else would know better whether or not he had the accounts necessary to fund the largest individual bounty that anybody could remember?

Could what she was suggesting be true? Could that blue blood scion be bluffing with chips he couldn’t cash out? The lawyers and agents that served as intermediaries had been the ones to deliver the contract and its terms. The advance money they’d laid out for him to even pay attention to the unusual contract had been real enough, so Lars hadn’t pondered too much whether or not the other party had been acting in good faith. He had a reputation to keep, but so did those agents; if they ever reneged on a deal, no reputable bounty hunter in the know would ever deal with them again. The job was too dangerous to take contracts on speculation.

Nothing to do for it now. Lars hadn’t made a career by vacillating in the face of uncertainty. He favored picking a course and sticking to it until it reached it’s conclusion, or circumstances required a significant deviation. Whether or not Van de Broek might renege on the payout wasn’t important unless and until Lars could get Josephine back to New York. They’d all deal with the consequences of his willingness to pay, or lack thereof, when it became an issue.

Unable to sleep himself, Lars simply waited and listened to Josephine’s deep breathing. He’d never lacked for patience, and this idle time wasn’t unwelcome after the comparatively frenetic pace of events of the last couple of days. Travel across the untracked expanses of the western territories was often filled with tedium, but Lars didn’t believe he and Josephine would be on the trail long without interruption. Best to soak up this respite while they could.

The sun had sunk midway through its descent into the west before he finally stirred. They’d have time enough to cut back to the river and then move on to find cover for the evening. They could refresh the horses and refill their own stores in a short time, and it was unlikely that anywhere except the river fords would be watched by possible pursuers. Lars stood and resettled his hat, unshaven face uncharacteristically soft as he looked down at the sleeping bundle that had only a few hours previously been spitting piss and vinegar at him and the rest of the world. A deep pang of sympathy, unwanted and unsettling, cut through him at the thought of what she’d been through and what was likely ahead for her. He was struck by an irrational desire to just let her sleep and figure things out in the morning, but he knew that would leave to little margin for their own survival and the horse’s resilience. So instead he scuffed the dirt under her with one foot, barely tapping her shoulder with his boot tip.

“Time to go, girl.” He voice was firm, betraying none of the uncertainty he’d just experienced. “Water ain’t going to find itself, and we’ve got a ways to ride before dark.”
 
“…Hmm?” She murmured breathily, seeming for a moment that she might stir and then drop right back to sleep for how tight a hold on her exhaustion had taken, but her eyes opened, lucidness returning quickly when she noticed his shadow over her. She blinked her unfocused eyes rapidly, squeezing them for a few seconds and rubbing the tiredness out of their corners while she was reoriented to the waking world. The almost morning glow of the afternoon sun did little to lessen her confusion as she pushed herself up, brushing off her legs and noting the red-patterned impression the grass had left on both her forearms. A matching pattern was less pronounced along the peak of her cheek and brow, fading quickly as she stood and felt sheepish about how deep of a sleep she’d succumbed to. She placed a note of judgement in his tone, found disapproval where there’d been none, and made great effort to prepare herself quickly, as if that would lessen the show of vulnerability she conflated with rest.

With him taking lead, her efficiency in travel was much improved, and Josephine found herself impressed by his uncanny ability to understand and traverse the unpredictable terrain. They made it back to the river with the twilight enclosing around them, guided to the dark reflection and gentle sound as the last bits of color drained out the western horizon. It’d been a small victory after the hopelessness that had begun that day, and Josephine had never been so thankful as she was when she’d splashed a few handfuls of crisp stream upon her face. It’d been an ecstasy made the cold of that night pass more easily, even without a fire and the sun’s heat dissipated quickly off the once sweltering landscape.

The next morning came and went without gunshots, without any signs of life beside the two of them and a half dozen prairie antelope they’d spotted grazing in the tall grass that lie to their north. Lars had spotted them first with his field glasses, before pointing them out and handing them off for her to look. Josephine had seen the pronghorned creatures before, but fleetingly from the window of the train and at great distances; so she found them notable when given an opportunity to observe. When finally, some unperceivable danger had first one antelope stiffening, and then the entire herd leaping through the grass off into the distance, she was disappointed that the tranquil moment had passed. Like the herd, she and Lars were quick to continue moving, not wanting to linger and wait for danger to make them scatter.

Though the question occurred to her, Josephine did not broach what the specific details of their heading, long after she knew she ought to. She had no plan, or even hope to develop one, and though she felt in her bones she’d live to regret it, she was relieved to let herself be led after months of being inundated by choice, each more challenging and consequential than the last. While they were in the wilderness, she decided, there was really no trouble in following him. It wouldn’t be costly, she suspected, until they reached a railroad, until then- ten miles east was just as good as ten miles west.

He seemed to know something she did not about where passage could be made and where it could not from a distance, an intuition that told him if they should go this way or that, where it was safe to stop and where it was best to keep moving. She admired him and was impressed by his skills, wanting to know how he knew one way from another, and by the third day, she’d begun to question decisions unabashedly, not challenging it but wondering: Why? How did he know, how could he tell?

Chapter II

It was late into their third day of travel, the first two having been with a perfect blue sky and beating sun, but on the third, clouds had moved in from the west. The wind had picked up after noontime, and fat pellets of rain had dropped first in lonesome slivers, before becoming a consuming blanket, forcing them to seek shelter and let the storm pass. The trees provided some relief until they found a cleft in the jutting landscape, an alcove of dry earth nestled within it.

Josephine came running out from the rain, her saddlebags haphazardly held under each arm, a mixture of a laugh and a yell barely heard over the sound of thundering rain. Supplies rescued from the backs of their horses whose best cover would be the trees, the girl panted, shook, and wiped the water off of her face and arms. She was excited by the sudden weather, hair in limp soaked strains across her shoulders and down her back, hat hanging by a string tied around her neck, having been soaked through and useless as it was. Though her teeth were beginning to chatter and goose-eggs were raising along her arms, Josephine did not note her discomfort; instead turning, looking out into the downpour, and shouting- though she’d doubt he’d hear her with how loud it was, especially out in the rain.

“Hurry up, Macbraid! You’re going to get struck by lightning!”

When he joined her, equally soaked to the bone, she remarked in a singsong, knowing tone. “Don’t you wish you would have packed light now, like me?” She said this knowing- as did he- that she was missing several crucial, overlooked pieces of equipment like a cook pot or extra canteen for water. That didn’t prevent her toothy smirking and laughter- having been talking since mid-morning that she hoped it would storm and now she was stupidly content despite convention dictating otherwise when one was caught in a storm.

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“Wish you’d packed something besides a rifle and an attitude,” Lars grumbled as he unrolled his bedroll and tucked his blankets underneath his leather saddle that he placed on a low tree branch to keep water collecting. Tossing a rope to Josephine, he showed her how to tie off his oiled canvas tarp to nearby at an angle to protect them from the worst of the rain as they huddled in the little cut. Thankfully it was summer and they didn’t have to worry overmuch about catching an ill humour, though Lars’ sense of humor had grown quite threadbare over their several days of overland travel to this point. The sudden torrential downpour had halted their already slow progress, their passage through the untracked Kansas hinterlands slowed by his companion’s unfamiliarity with long rides over rough terrain. If they had been traveling under other circumstances, Lars might have found her manic energy and endless curiosity endearing. The threat of skilled hunters that might be waiting for them over the next hill or around the next bend in the trail just made her inexperienced enthusiasm somewhat irritating.

It wasn’t her fault, Lars reminded himself for the hundredth time as he huddled next to Josephine under his tarp. She’s fled her prior life only weeks before, ending up further into the western wilderness than all but a few pioneers would ever make it. Then he’d plucked her from the comparatively friendly wagon travel arrangement she’d maintained with the settler family, leaving most of her supplies including all but a horse blanket for her bedroll, and then she’d been quickly plunged into a lethal firefight and taken a man’s life after watching her own travel companions lose their son to the bounty hunters that would have taken her instead had Lars not gotten to her first.

Thankfully, his tobacco pouch had stayed dry. Lars rolled a cigarette for himself then offered one to Josephine. He lit up and puffed contemplatively, watching the storm. Together they looked out over the plains around from their little squat in the Kansas border hills, the undulating landscape now deluged with the sudden summer thunderstorm. It was shaping up to be a real belly-washer with curtains of rain pouring from a cloud-darkened sky that were already forming little rivers on the dry ground. This would make travel difficult for the rest of the day, he decided, and they’d need to go ahead and make camp once the rain stopped and they could manage their gear without it getting completely soaked. They’d have to risk a fire tonight, something he’d been avoiding, to dry out their gear and clothes and ward off sickness.

Lars felt the urge to discuss their destination rising up in the gulf between them. He'd really rather just smoke and sit in companionable silence, maintaining the stoic demeanor he’d kept during their several days travel. He found he’d lost most of his stomach for just dragging her to the nearest train station, trying to bully her into accepting her fate. Still, there was a lot of money on the line, and until the bounty was formally claimed there would be no end of the hunters on Josephine’s trail. He’d procrastinated enough, Lars decided, exhaling a cloud of fragrant tobacco smoke before he finally spoke.

“We’re close to the trail, still,” he began obliquely, making as if to examine his burning cigarette end intently. “Could go a couple of ways. Could continue west up to Pueblo or down towards Santa Fe, but that’s a long ride and we’d need to find somewhere to resupply and get you proper gear. And then what? Wait in a saloon until they come to get you? Go squat in the hills until you die some other way?” He turned the cigarette in his hands and eyed her. “All so you can keep running? What you’re running from ain’t behind you, girl. It’s in front of you, all around you,” he gestured out at the desolate storm-wracked landscape around them. “Whole world is trying to kill you, Josephine, just like everybody else out here. Just so happens that it has your name.”
 
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