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Montana, Arthur finds, has a truly desperate capacity for storms.

Whilst he’s been in wetter weather and colder climates, no blizzard nor downpour seems to be able to compare with any real vivacity to the last two weeks spent crawling across the hard-packed dirt of this state, chasing leads and coming up empty. Perhaps it is the lack of progress they’ve made here that lends itself even more to the terror of the place- doesn’t the wind always howl a little harder when you’re losing? Doesn’t the rain beat a little louder, the water a little heavier, as if the skies themselves know what it is to ache with a frustration imbued so deeply that it becomes impossible to dislodge? But these are pointless, poetic wonderings, and Arthur Morgan is no poet.

No, he’s most certainly a robber. And amongst the desolate raging of the wind and the rain he remembers that he is actually in the middle of something.

“Shit!” John curses, most of his voice lost to the roaring of an engine. Arthur watches him land hard on the open flatbed of the freight carriage, his feet slipping on the rain-slick wood, but fortunately he stays put and clambers back up. “Come on, we’ll lose ‘em!”

He’s right. Their horses are fast, but this train is faster and already they’re losing the advantage they’d gained. Arthur passes a hand over his chest, palm sliding against the worn leather of his repeater’s strap, and lifts his right foot out of its stirrup. He hates this part. He’s leapt from horseback onto a moving train probably more than any man should ever have to, but practice has never made a man less confident than here and as he shifts his weight onto his left leg his heart begins to thrum in perfect tandem with the rumble of the locomotive.

John seems to have none of the same concerns, of course. Part of Arthur’s panicking mind can’t help remembering him as a kid instead, leaping between the branches of trees as a kid with equal carelessness, weightless as the wind, always trusting in his ability to land where he looked. Things are hard between him and John. He’d been a boy for so long that Arthur had forgotten to notice that he’d grown into a man, and by that time things had started going wrong and wrong again until he'd vanished, and nothing had been the same between them since.

He’d nearly resigned himself to thinking of the man as a traitor, but only because the word gave a name to the feeling in his chest whenever he thought about him. It must be betrayal, that thing that twists in his throat and his chest and the pit of his stomach. It must be raging fury.

He leaps from horseback to flatbed and lands hard on the wood. It might be grief, but he'll never name it as that.

He rises, and finds himself meeting John’s eye. For a moment neither of them say anything whilst all around them there are hurried, wooden sounds of bodies hitting the floor of the freight carriage with varying degrees of elegance. It’s just John and Arthur, in that second. Just John and Arthur cast out in the storm.

“Alright?” The other man asks. Not a boy anymore, no, but no traitor either. His brow is furrowed and there’s something funny in his gaze that Arthur can’t quite work out- halfway between bristling for a fight and real concern. It’s not the first time he’s seen it, as of late.

But there’s no time for that here. “Get a move on.” He growls in answer, and lifts a hand to adjust his bandana to sit more solidly over his nose.

They make some cruel silhouette as they approach the first car. Six men- but are they men, tonight? With claws of gunmetal grey and their sharpened bandana beaks, the sound of their step is lost to the almighty roar of the world around them. The sound of the steam engine is nearly as loud as the wind, and beneath Arthur’s feet it feels doubly powerful. It is as if man, machine, and nature all are on the hunt in this wild twilight.

“You going to do the honours, old girl?” Dutch calls out, and Hosea lengthens his stride in silent response, slipping aside the door of the passenger car and drawing his revolver as the rest of them duck behind the nearest cover. Arthur doesn’t need to watch to know Hosea dispatches the guard that’s likely sheltering on the other side of the threshold the same way that he doesn’t need to ask where he and Dutch have vanished to when he climbs back to his feet and finds them gone. There is always a plan, with these things. There is an order, natural as the rising of the sun.

It feels natural, anyway. When Arthur pulls back the hammer of his pistol, he finds the storm has numbed his hands so deeply that his fingertips have lost all feeling.

Like that, there is no way of knowing where his hand ends and the weapon begins. Mac is firing warning shots inside, he can already tell. And as dependable as the rising of the sun, Arthur’s feet take him to the gunfire.

The sheets of rain rattle on the tin roof above them, and John begins collecting his charitable donations as Arthur checks none of these fine civilians are about to play the hero and cause any unnecessary trouble. Not here they won’t, certainly: this is third class, and guns cost money that will buy more comfortable seats than these. They still have enough to offer, though. Arthur rejoins John as he shakes his bag in front of a young man in a violently green blazer, who stares at the pair of them aghast.

“I- I don’t-” He stammers.

Arthur sighs, and moves his gun to press right into the skin between the man’s thin eyebrows. “Oh.” He answers coldly. “You

do.”

The tinkling sound of a pocket watch being dropped inside the pile of trinkets in the bag is enough of a response to move the pair of them on.

Some cry. Others yell, as if anyone is about to hear them here, six miles out in Montana wilderness in the bellowing depths of a storm. As if there is even a single guard left- there isn’t, Arthur knows, because Mac and Lenny are gone by now too and the rattling of gunfire has ceased- to come to their aid. Some are angry, but even anger pales beside the steady reassurance of a bullet to the brain, even just as a threat. These people do not want to be robbed, but they most definitely do not want to die. They move on and up, sweeping second and then first class where the seats are cushioned with plush red and the women clutch at pearls they’re about to lose. Most simply hand over their belongings glumly, with a defeated slump in their posture that surely isn’t appropriate for folks of such noble birth.

He’s just helping a young lady rid herself of a heavy pair of emerald earrings when he hears the door at the front of the carriage fly open. His gun is up in an instant, as is John’s, but he recognises the slope of Mac Callander’s shoulders before the man even steps into the light. His eyes are the only thing visible between his hat and his bandana, and there’s a long stripe of someone else’s blood panting a crimson arc across his torso. The shaky lamplight paints him in a truly menacing glare and the woman beside him lets out a quiet, involuntary sob.

Despite the blood, the sight is somewhat relaxing. Mac looks furious, but Mac always looks furious and after so long riding together Arthur is one of the few that can tell when the man is truly aggravated. Right now, even covered in blood, he’s fairly calm. Or at least, as calm as a man can get midway through robbing a train.

“Y’all better be done with this soon.” He calls out, and Arthur nods assent.

“If you’d be a gentleman and give us a hand, we’d surely be done sooner.” He answers.

Behind the bandana, Mac is smiling. His eyes are very cold. This is the joke that passes between them all. They are not gentlemen. Not ever but especially not tonight, where the screaming of their victims is lost to the screeching of machine and the howling of a force far older and Mac brings with him the familiar metal scent of blood.

The woman presses her earrings shakily into Arthur’s waiting hands. It takes little more than a hard look from Mac for the front rows to start offering out their possessions- some even with outstretched hands, like this is that story of the loaves and the goddamn fishes.

“What’s going on?” John asks

Mac shrugs. “Boss says they’ve found him. Old man’s waiting on the two of you and the new kid before they go in.”

The new kid. Boss. Old man.

Mac is more careful than most to leave no trail behind, not even a name. Tonight these passengers will describe rain-slick duster coats and red checkered bandanas, but no arrest warrant will carry their names. It will be as if this place has been cleaned out by the shadows.

Lenny meets them at the end of the next carriage. He looks slightly stiff in his own bandana, which is tied very tightly and pulled up to meet the very bottom of his eyes, as if this whole ugly mess is causing him some discomfort. It probably is. Even knowing all that he does about the kid, it’s easy for Arthur to see how different he is, how unnatural it is for him to slip into the role of burly outlaw the way the rest of them do. Call it his intelligence, his polite demeanour- not that it really matters, anyway, how easy it comes to him. He does his job the same as the rest of them.

“What happened to the driver?” Arthur asks Lenny as the man raises a hand in greeting.

“Same thing that happened to the guards.” He answers. “Mac is- very efficient.”

John laughs. “That’s one word for it, sure.”

Mac, who has no trouble at all with burly outlawlessness, stomps past him and shoulders open the door, hurrying on towards the carriage at the very front.

“Hurry

up,”

he calls over his shoulder, voice raised above the thickening storm.

Lenny catches the door and steps through it, turning back to hold it open for Arthur and John.

“Seems chivalry is alive and well tonight.” John remarks as he goes. “Christ, it’s cold out here.”

He’s not wrong. Arthur ducks his head to brace against the wind and then almost immediately brings it back up again after it nearly robs his hat from his head. Train robberies are surely a little old fashioned by now, a clunky relic of a time passed- but then again, what does that make the train robbers? He shakes such pointless thoughts from his head as he hops across to the final carriage and finds Hosea and Dutch already clinging to the railings beside the door.

“Everything go smoothly?” Dutch shouts, leaning in close so Arthur can hear him.

He nods, watching John tie the sack full of loot safely shut. “Sure. You sure this is him?”

“Private car, sealed. Gotta be our guy.”

“Guard?”

“Already taken care of. If there’s a second one in there, he hasn’t come out and shown himself yet.”

Hosea nods. “If Mister Casters is hiding out anywhere, it’ll be here.”

“Surprised he hasn’t come out to complain about the delay yet.” John muses.

Casters. The man of the hour, the whole reason Arthur is out in this goddamn hurricane. Some mining overlord, fat on the profits of his miserable workers, a lead Hosea’s had them chasing across the state for near enough two weeks now waiting for him and his merry stack of bonds to wander someplace easy for snatching. The profits, he has been well assured, are to be returned to the poor folks toiling in the company town at the first possible moment- whenever that may be.

As for the other passengers- well, that was an opportunity going amiss.

They stand together, crammed shoulder to shoulder on the little platform as Dutch fiddles with the lock on the door. A voice on the other side rises, but it’s impossible to make out any words through the wall.

“Why couldn’t we have just shot it open again?” Arthur asks.

Dutch curses as the metal clinks stubbornly. “We already tried that. This one’s not like- ah!”

Arthur feels Lenny tense up from where the kid’s arm is pressed against his. He would do the same if his every muscle were not already coiled tight in some kind of battle against the storm, so instead when Dutch says

stand back

and raises a leg to kick in the door, the only thing that moves is his finger, curling so automatically around the trigger of his gun that the thought to do so doesn’t even need to cross his mind.

Hosea leans back against the railing, guns still tucked into his holsters. Even here, he manages to look at ease, as if there were no better way to spend his evening. “After you.”

Dutch is in first. Mac second. Arthur follows suit, stepping out across the length of the carriage the second he’s out of the bottleneck created by the doorway, and the others make an equal effort to cover the back wall so there will be no getting out. Not that it takes too much work: the carriage is small, and a tight fit with all the guns.

“Hands up, the pair of you!” Dutch barks, because there

are

two of them, entirely unexpectedly. One man who Arthur is deeply hoping is Elijah Casters, and one woman.

Hosea motions for him to keep his revolver on the woman, and he does. From the way Casters grips her dainty hand, Arthur assumes she’s his wife. Someone pulls the door shut behind them and Dutch begins his usual spiel about freedom and fairness and greed. Casters glares daggers at the lot of them, but despite the angry creases in his forehead and the spittle gathering at the corner of his mouth he doesn’t interrupt. The woman seems faintly amused by the situation. Lenny, bless his soul, genuinely seems to be listening.

“Hand ‘em over,” Dutch finishes with his usual charade of politeness. “And you walk out of here a free man. And woman, of course.”

Casters isn’t listening. Of course he isn’t listening- he is busy getting big ideas instead, and in one quick motion he fumbles in his bag and withdraws a revolver.

The rest happens fast. Mac, ever trigger-happy, fires at Casters. He lands a shot to his right shoulder, pretty effectively disarming him, and sends the man reeling sideways into his wife.

Hosea shouts

hold it!

And they obey. For a moment, the carriage goes very still indeed.

Casters curses, breath ragged and heavy. His wife is staring hard, her gaze flicking between Arthur and the bleeding man beside her with a developing look of resolution until she holds up a quick hand. In any other place at any other time, it would say

just hold on a second.

It would say that here, if this was in any way at all a place where that would be a normal thing to say. Arthur has seen a fair few people try to delay a death threat in all manner of ways, but admittedly this one is more bewildering than most. It is only knowing that there are five more guns trained on the pair of them that lets her go ahead with picking up her husband's dropped revolver, a bulky thing that looks even more out of place in her hands than it did in his. She cocks it with some difficulty, raises it to Casters’ head, and fires.

Beside him Arthur feels John startle. Dutch curses quietly under his breath, and Mac shouts for somebody to shoot her, which of course no one does. Arthur is not in the habit of gunning down women who seem to have no interest in killing him.

And she’s not trying to kill him. Or anyone else, for that matter. He knows that even before she drops the pistol to the ground beside her dead husband, and puts her hands in the air in the most casual gesture of surrender that he’s ever seen.

It’s bizarre. It’s unexpected. It might be the strangest outcome of a train robbery in the history of trains

or

robberies.

Even more surprisingly, it’s Lenny who speaks first. “Are you alright there, miss?”

It seems as good a place to start as any, and significantly more eloquent than all the pointing and swearing Arthur was going to lead with.

The woman’s eyes turn away from them and back down towards the bleeding body at her feet. Then, slowly and surely, she begins to smile. It’s not the smug kind of smirk that Arthur so often sees in murderers either- there’s a new openness to her expression and a genuine, twinkling joy in her eyes.

“He’s dead.” She says eventually, which seems pretty apparent but probably still warrants mentioning. “You people can go on and kill me now if you like, I don’t care. So long as I know I’ve outlived

him.”

She punctuates the final word with a light kick aimed at the dead man with the toe of an elegant brown boot, then steps over him and takes a seat expectantly. She seems to be waiting on them to make a decision.

“We ain’t gonna kill you.” Says Lenny reassuringly.

Mac scowls. “Well, we

might.”

“Both of you, hush.” Hosea says. His eyes haven't left the woman. “Gentlemen, go find those bonds, if you please.”

For lack of a single other idea of how to go about navigating this situation, he does as he’s bid. He checks the case on the rails above their heads first, to no avail, then the drawers of the cabinet bolted to the wall. Then he realises that Casters may have the bonds stored in the case under his feet, which gives way to the awkward affair of his searching a corpse for a key.

“You lookin’ for the bonds, sweetheart?” The woman asks, still strangely at ease.

Arthur nods awkwardly and goes about searching pockets without looking directly at her. The quicker they can get out of this situation the better, he feels.

But the woman lets out a sigh. “Ah. The key’s around his neck, but the case has one of them false bottoms so-” She stops when he looks at her, which probably means his surprise is pretty legible on his face, and crouches down to retrieve the key herself.

It’s after a few more seconds of rustling about Casters’ corpse that the case and the key are brought out, and the woman crouches and unlocks it, dumping a mess of inkwells and books to the floor before unlatching a piece from the bottom and unearthing a familiar sheaf of papers.

“See?” She asks, holding them up for Arthur to take.

He hands it over to Hosea, who flicks through them with a smile.

“These’ll do nicely.” He murmurs, with the satisfaction of a man who knows he will no longer have to chase any trains through Montana storms. “We’ll be off now, miss. Our gratitude for your… cooperation.”

Cooperation

is one word for it, sure.

Mac makes a noise of disbelief. “We’re just leavin’ her?”

“She ain’t hurting us none.” Dutch answers, returning his pistol to his holster. He does stoop to pick up Casters’ revolver though, bringing it out of reach. Hosea nods agreement and Lenny steps forward to help her back up to her feet.

“Where’m I going?” She questions, and now Arthur can hear a distinct accent to her voice unlike those odd, affected tones usually employed by high society. She’s not quite the manicured lady Arthur was expecting

Mrs Casters

to be- her voice is rougher, holding the sweet notes of slang he’s become so accustomed to hearing from his own folks instead.

And the manicured ladies of high society don’t shoot their husbands either. Or- maybe they do. Arthur doesn’t know enough of them to be certain.

“Anywhere you like, I s’pose.” Arthur says with a shrug.

She looks between them all once more then steps over to the carriage door and shoves it back open so that she is greeted by the wild Montana storm beyond.

“Well then,” she says softly, almost to herself. “I best be going.”

She turns back only to retrieve a handful of supplies gleaned from the surroundings: a thick coat and hat, although a little wide-brimmed to be resistant to taking flight in the wind, a small selection of packaged foods from a drawer, a packet of smokes and a box of matches from the mess dumped out of the briefcase. She even leans down to rescue a money clip from Casters’ front pocket. A resourceful woman, it seems.

Lenny even goes as far as to help her off the train, which might be a little too much. Arthur steps out with Dutch to watch them go.

“Here.” Dutch calls out, and before Arthur can see what he’s doing he’s already done it, the lump flying through the air and landing squarely in the woman’s grip. Her brow creases, but she holds the revolver as naturally as she can with one hand, the other bunched up in her skirts to keep them from whisking her away.

“Miss-” Lenny tries, then stops. “What did you say your name was, again?”

She watches him curiously for a second, the beginnings of a very small smile on her lips. “I didn’t. Jennifer Casters, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance Mr-”

“Summers!” Lenny supplies quickly. “But just Lenny is fine. You have a safe night now, y’hear?”

“Course.” She answers smoothly. “Sweetheart, I left all the danger on the train.”

And with that she turns and goes, walking very determinedly down the railway tracks, back the way the train had come.

“You think it’s safe for her to wander off into the wilderness in the middle of the night?” Asks John, who has followed them outside.

“Not now that she knows his name I don’t.” Mac growls, but whatever pointed follow-up he was about to aim at Lenny is silenced by a gesture from Dutch.

“It ain’t a few hours walk to the nearest town. She seems a smart girl, I’m sure she’ll find her way.”

“Or she’ll get picked up by a gang of thieves, or murderers, or-”

“We already let her go, didn’t we?” Hosea jokes, and Dutch turns back to the train, John and Mac following suit.

“But

nothing.”

Arthur hears him say. “Lets get moving, someone will have reached the law by now.”

Arthur and Lenny stay looking at the woman, lit by the lights of the train, stalking in full fashionable attire through a storm. As they watch, her hat is whipped off her head and carried off into the night, turning somersaults until it vanishes into the dark beyond.

Lenny swallows. “Maybe we should-”

“Come on, kid.” Arthur interrupts. “Law’ll be comin’, we won’t stick around.”

It’s just as miserable riding back as it was riding out. Dutch’s bravado about the satisfaction of a job well done is quickly and effectively beaten out by a reliable wall of rain that hits them the second they mount up, and doesn’t

quit

hitting them until they are huddled in their tents once again. Dutch and Hosea relay the tale of their unlikely murderer to the rest of the gang, and their resulting questions nearly keep him up far too late before he remembers the excuse of a long ride tomorrow morning that gets them all to leave him be and level their curiosities at Lenny instead. Arthur would feel a little bad about it, but it

will

be a long ride- out of Montana, briefly, just sidestepping the state line to take the stolen bonds to Hosea’s buyer before doubling back to circulate the cash to his miners in town. It’s a good job, a clean one- one that Arthur can almost pretend is evidence of his own good conscience. It’s been a good long while now since he’s had one of those, and he likes to savour them when he can between all the robbing and the killing like he’s nursing a good drink.

He falls asleep with the howling of that wind at his back and the faintest sounds of chatter hanging in his ears. The memory of Jennifer Casters is still gleaming in his mind.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It’s five in the evening and it’s January, so naturally it is pitch black outside. It’s been four days since the robbery when they find a rain soaked creature curled up like a dying animal on the roadside: black clouds take the whole lot of them by surprise and by the time they are out of range of the law patrol they’re evading, they’re all soaked to the skin. The bitter sentiment pervading the gang is the intense hope that firstly, wherever those deputised sons of bitches are searching, they’re hopefully even more miserable than the van der Lindes are, and secondly that the water will wash their tracks away. Arthur hopes at least one of the two are true, but secretly doubts both: the trout in the riverbed are likely drier than he is now, and the canvas covers of the wagons flap so outrageously in the wind that it is constantly bouncing water onto everybody else.

Recently, the weather has been causing a tension in his shoulders and a light aching in his right knee. It is an uncomfortable revelation for a variety of reasons, but he’s been listening to the old fellers of the gang complain about this for about as long as there has been a gang for said old fellers to run in, so there’s no disguising the discomfort as anything other than it really is. His knee only repeats what he knows in his heart to be the truth.

He is getting too goddamn

old

for this.

The weather has him in a sour mood even before John moves up beside him, one hand clamped down hard over his hat.

“We’re gonna stop soon, but there ain’t hardly any food left.” He shouts over the rain.

The way it’s phrased- the way

everyone

seems to phrase things to him recently- raises Arthur’s hackles. “The hell do you want me to do about it?”

He’s certainly not going looking for game in this, that’s for sure. There are better hunters amongst them, but finding life in a storm like this will surely be impossible.

John just raises his free hand up in a loose approximation of a shrug. “Nothing to be done. Dutch just said to tell you and Hosea. Guess don’t get your hopes up for supper.”

Arthur doesn’t answer and John vanishes, melting back into the barely-distinguishable moving mass of wagons and riders behind them, cloaked in both the darkness and the sheets of water being thrown from the heavens by the bucketful. He sighs, and rides up to meet Hosea.

If the rain is getting to be a nuisance to him, then it’s downright cruel on Hosea. The man’s had a bad cough on his chest for far longer than Arthur ever wants to think about, but in the bitter rain it only gets worse and today there is not even the promise of a score to chase away the misery of sickness. He rides up front, just behind the two folks who are leading the way.

“Dutch says we’re real short on food.” He shouts over.

Hosea glares at him. “What can anybody do about that now?”

Whatever Arthur was working up in response is immediately forgotten as Hosea begins coughing again. The noise works a knife into his gut- this is bad, worse than he’s seen before. The man certainly shouldn’t still be riding, but earlier attempts to have him sit in the wagon were dismissed with such contempt that Arthur doesn’t want to try again.

“That’s a person.” The old man chokes out, once he’s done.

Arthur can’t even begin to fathom what he’s talking about. “What?”

Hosea opens his mouth, winces, then closes it again and raises a hand. Arthur follows the line of his pointing finger and finds a dark and huddled shape appears, as if cut out from the very gloom.

“Alive?” He calls out.

Hosea only raises his bent shoulders in a passable impression of a shrug, and Arthur’s calling the whole lot of them to a halt before the gesture’s even over. He slides from his saddle- slides, really slides, rain-soaked as he is- and behind him he hears two other people dismount at the demand of Dutch.

It turns out to be Bill and Sean, who catch up to him as he’s trudging through the mud to the roadside.

“What’re we doing?” Bill asks.

It’s pretty indistinguishable, once you notice it. Arthur raises a hand just as Hosea did. “That’s a person.”

“It’s a- oh, shit.” Sean exclaims, and they’re engulfed in a sudden wash of light as he ignites the lamp he’s carrying. “All the way out here?”

“All the way out here.” Arthur confirms, dropping into a crouch. It’s not until Sean joins him that he can properly see the woman’s face- because it is a woman, long dark hair plastered all across her face- and he tries to look non-threateningly at her.

“Evenin’, miss!” Sean shouts over the rain.

The woman doesn’t give any indication she’s heard him, her eyes fixed on some middle-distance only she can see. Every muscle of her body is stiff, and her breathing is shallow and loud enough to be audible.

Arthur reaches out and places a hand on her upper arm, as gently as he can. “Miss, you need some help? We can get you- well, not dry, but drier than this.”

She doesn’t answer. Bill and Sean mutter amongst themselves behind him, and still the woman stays frozen in place.

“Here.” Arthur says, reaching for his coat. His fingers hesitate only barely before pulling it down over his shoulders: the wind is biting and the rain is a tricky accomplice, but he’s already numb in his fingers and toes and already sodden anyway. It’ll be miserable to bear the weather in his shirt, but it’s miserable anyway.

He’s just about to shrug it off when a hand fastens tight over the coat and wrenches it back up into place. He turns with confusion and then annoyance when it’s John he finds standing there.

“What are you-”

“Don’t bother with that thing, it’s probably heavier than you are.” He says, patting Arthur’s coat. “No offence, miss.”

He’s carrying his own pile of fabric, and when he holds it out Arthur recognises it as one of the coats from their meager spares pile, probably too full of holes or stains to be used in any situation except the direst ones. He should’ve remembered that.

The woman just stares straight ahead. Her teeth are chattering too hurriedly to choke out any words in between, but she reaches out and grabs the coat when it’s handed over, wrapping it around her shoulders without lifting her head or showing any other indication that she’s alright. She doesn’t thread her arms into the sleeves or button it up at the front: once it’s over her, the woman’s hands fall back into her lap and she goes still once again. Arthur shoots John a look.

“I would’a given her my coat.”

“Yeah, that would’ve been a big help. This one’s still dry.”

“And probably belonged to some dead lawman!”

“Yeah, probably.” He agrees dully. “So does everything else we own. Christ, I was only trying to help.”

And with that he stalks off again, back to the caravan to pass along the message of the found woman and Arthur’s surliness. He can’t hardly explain it himself, either: the anger that flickers to life occasionally, around John. That he doesn’t want John’s help, or maybe that he did want it, as a lot of people wanted it, all them years ago when it was not given. They’d all learned to live without John’s help, then. They had to. It is only fair that the man should be made to see that, even if Dutch and Hosea were so quick to welcome back their prodigal son.

He turns his attention back to the woman on the ground, who Sean and Bill are attempting to persuade to stand.

“Maybe she’s deaf.” Bill suggests.

“Deaf or dumb.” Sean agrees, too loud to be tactful. “Madam, if you don’t get up, you’re gonna freeze out here, you know that?”

He leans in close and mimes shivering, rubbing his hands up and down the opposite upper arms vigorously. In all honesty, it probably isn’t too much of an act. “Too cold!” He shouts, even louder.

Then again, no one’s ever described Sean MacGuire as tactful. Arthur hauls him back by his collar and tells him in no uncertain terms to go and find someone, preferably a woman, to show the poor freezing lady that she is not about to be hauled off by a bunch of lawless cowboys.

“Don’t you worry, madam.” He says as he goes. “We won’t touch a hair on your sodden head, that I know for sure.”

Bill keeps quiet, fortunately. Arthur scrubs a hand over his face and tries to focus. He gives rousing her another few tries, and whilst her head finally moves at the sound of his voice and her eyes- oddly familiar, though he hardly notices that- flick up to meet him, she doesn’t get to her feet. Perhaps she has forgotten how. It would not be the first lost soul they’ve caught at the mercy of the elements, and he’s seen wind and rain silence even the soundest of men if given enough time to, like the breeze can blow away the feathery parts of a person’s soul and leave only the crow-picked bones behind.

“It’s alright now,” he winds up telling her, crouched low in the mud as she stares at him. Wet hair obscures most of her face. “It’ll be okay.”

Sean, for all his shortcomings, at least had the good sense to fetch Miss Grimshaw. Arthur heads back to his horse and lets the delicate work fall to those best suited for it.

*

It’s almost a miracle, the appearance of the windmill. Folkloric, like some scene out of one of Jack’s fairytale books or perhaps one of the gothics that Mary-Beth is so fond of lately. One moment they are adrift, lost in a storm so vile that it nearly sweeps the horses off their feet, and the next they are saved.

“Look!” Dutch bellows, casting one arm out in front. For a moment Arthur thinks he must be mad- there’s nothing ahead of them but bleak countryside, as there has been for so many hours that he thinks there must be nothing left on earth but that, just mud and rain and that awful, barraging wind.

But then. A shape on the horizon. The longer they all stare at it the less sense it seems to make- jagged, long-limbed, gangly where a building should not be. On a sunny day they would have no trouble with it, but here the weather has turned the land to the senseless shapes of a nightmare, and Arthur keeps a hard wrapped tight around his reigns as if confusion will be the thing to finally blow him out of the saddle and carry him away into the gloom. So they approach, because in that moment they are what Dutch always claims them to be, pilgrims of knowledge, men bent on a quest to understand the unfathomable. And then, all at once, they pass beside an enormous tree and the great monstrosity comes into startling clarity.

“A windmill?” He shouts, to no one in particular. “Why the hell is there a windmill all the way out here?”

“Are you that goddamn stupid?” Someone answers, and he knows it will be John before he’s even twisted round in the saddle to look. “We’ve been riding through your answer for the last three hours!”

As if on cue, a gust of wind threatens his hat again and he clamps a hand down on top of it, spurring his horse into movement with a snarl. He catches up with Dutch and Hosea fast, and now he can see how stooped Hosea is over his saddle, head bent against the rain and shoulders shaking with coughs.

“We going in?” He asks Dutch.

“Well we’re not staying out here!” They’re closing the distance between them and the building fast. With a destination finally in sight, hope brings both men and horses to greater speed. “Place looks empty, but I’d appreciate it if you grabbed some people and checked before the rest of us come in.”

Arthur agrees then peels back, finds Charles and Javier riding in line. It takes nothing more than a quick gesture to get them to follow him, and they outpace the rest of the caravan fast and leave their horses’ reins to a fencepost.

Up close, the place is most certainly abandoned: nearly derelict, shut up and left to the cruel mercy of the wind many seasons ago. Still, Arthur goes in gun first, just as the other two do, and they keep them up even when the front door yields to nothing more than dust and cobwebs beyond.

“You reckon we’re okay?” Charles asks.

“Nobody would live here.” Javier answers disdainfully, kicking at some litter. “And half the roof has caved in.”

Despite that, there’s not a lot of rain getting through. One corner will have to be steered clear of, and the size of the place means it will be a tight fit, but it’s a roof where before there was none, and a hearth for a fire too. Arthur’s no believer in fate, but something about this place- run down, yes, but empty and waiting to accommodate them- feels predestined somehow.

Even more so when Charles clears his throat. “There are stables, too. They seem in okay condition. Saw ‘em when we were riding in.”

“Even better.” Arthur says, staring up a ladder. There’s some kind of attic space beyond that he doesn’t fancy sticking his head into, so he turns around and finds a tiny kitchen behind the sole main room. There’s one cabinet left, but it has no door, and a battered-looking table stands guard with a lone chair beside it. Like the other room, the floor is awash with a layer of dirt and dust. He hopes, in all their collective panic, that someone had remembered to bring a broom.

He helps Charles with the horses whilst the others get their belongings inside. It doesn’t seem worthwhile to remind anybody that they’ll only be moving them back the next morning, so he keeps his mouth shut and sloshes back and forth through the muck to bring all the horses under cover.

Stables

is a little too generous, but it’s shelter and there are places to hitch reins to so it could be far worse. In fact, it feels oddly convenient in a way that nothing has felt convenient since they came into this storm-battered nightmare state.

“Alright?” Charles asks him as they work.

Arthur huffs. “Half drowned, maybe, but otherwise fine.”

“Good.”

“You?”

“The same. Hosea hasn’t stopped coughing since he got inside, though. Whatever he’s got, it’s nasty.”

Arthur doesn’t think too much about what Hosea’s

got,

because he’s been coughing like this for months and the only sickness that stays that long is one that takes you with it when it goes. “The weather isn’t good for him. The cold. The rain.”

Charles frowns, hauling the saddle off of Boaz. He hadn’t complained about being left to do all of this work when the others fled inside, just put his head down and got to it. Arthur can appreciate that, as a man who is also stuck guiding horses through mud.

“Montana might not be the best place for land, then.” He says. “Might need to head a bit further south. California, maybe. It’s meant to be golden there. They have oranges.”

“Oranges.” Arthur repeats, and finds himself smiling at the thought. “Sure, I’d take an orange.”

California dances in his mind like some drunken dream as they finish working. Crates of oranges stacking up, skin flushed and shining under a golden sun. He’d take dust over mud any day. Hosea wouldn’t be so thoroughly wrung out by the air, and they’d live in some great green hills where no storm could ever catch them again.

California will have to wait, though. By the time the horses are settled his hands are completely numb and they spend two minutes each trying to knock the mud off their boots in the awful shelter of a dilapidated porch roof.

*

Inside, Arthur tries to navigate a room full of people and fails quite spectacularly. The people fit. But that’s it. And they have, of course, hauled their entire home inside with them.

“Move!” Grimshaw berates, smacking at his arm. “I am

trying

to set up a kitchen.”

He goes to tell her there’s already a room for that, but one of his only saving graces in this world is his ability to keep his mouth shut so he just moves on past instead. He’s not sure what happened to his cot, or any of his personal effects- they’re here, somewhere, because he loaded them onto the wagon himself, but he’d rather trample back out into the rain than fight his way into the mess of crates and boxes taking up the back of the room.

Well, he might not go that far. But he avoids it nonetheless.

“Arthur?” Someone shouts, and he turns to find Mary-Beth. “Gee, you’re soaked to the skin. The lady we found on the road is askin’ for you.”

“What?” Oftentimes, he gets the feeling that he should know more about the goings-on of this place than he does. It’s hardly his fault nobody bothers telling him anything.

Mary-Beth is shouting some placation to Grimshaw about work. She turns back all in a hurry. “You remember the lady? On the road? Like, an hour ago?”

“I remember.”

“Well, she said she’d like to speak with the feller that found her and that’s you.”

“Alright.” He answers, because that makes a little more sense. “But- wait, Mary-Beth?”

“What?”

“Where is she?”

The woman sighs impatiently. “In the kitchen, Arthur!”

There’s no door to the smaller room, but the doorway is so narrow that it affords some semblance of privacy anyway. Arthur steps inside and finds the girl- because she must be a girl, no older than Lenny- leaning up against the lone cabinet with her hands braced behind her. She looks remarkably drier than before, and her hair has been brushed back in some improvement of where it was plastered over her face the last time he saw her.

“Evening, miss.” He bids. Something’s odd about this woman. Something that makes him pause, then study her face a little closer.

“Mister, I don’t know if-” She stops, bites her lip, starts again. “What I mean, is-”

Her voice is even more recognisable than her face. He’s heard it before, amidst another storm, in a beautiful train carriage full of blood. Yes, her voice is the same even when the rest of her, now so bedraggled, has changed entirely.

“Wait- I know you.”

Her eyes widen, and Arthur barely registers she’s moving before she’s slamming into him, pressing a hand over his mouth. He’s silently grateful that the walls are hiding them from everyone else’s view.

“You don’t.” She says, and all of the grace and properness has fallen out of Jennifer Casters’ voice now. It’s been replaced with an almost hysterical terror. “No, you don’t.”

He has to fight his way out of the palm of her hand to reply. “I don’t- what do you mean, I don’t? You’re-”

“Who I

am,”

she snarls. “Is nobody’s business here.” She drops the hand only to bury it in his coat with her other one, pressing him with some force into the wall.

“They won’t condemn you for bein’ a killer, Mrs Casters.”

“It’s not Casters anymore.” She retorts, with a sharpness that suggests it never really was. “And it’s not- it’s not about that. I know what you are. I just don’t want folks to know I-”

“That it’s what you are too?”

She levels him with a frustrated look. “What I mean is, I’m no Casters. Just a Kirk now, like my momma named me. Jenny Kirk.”

Arthur has no inclination to lie to his gang, but he knows what it’s like at least to have parts of you you’d rather not look at. Turns of the heart that you’d rather not precede you, when meeting a group of people that have saved your life. So he nods and Jenny steps back, letting her hands fall off of his chest and down to her sides.

“I can tell the others that was on the train with us to keep it quiet. I doubt any of them have recognised you yet, drowned as you looked when we picked you up.”

He

certainly hadn’t, anyway. But she’s sure as shit recognised him.

“Dutch,” he mutters, having slipped across the main room to the man’s side. “Go into the kitchen. Get Hosea and John, too.”

Dutch raises his eyebrows. “Whatever for?”

“New girl wants to tell you something.” He answers, which is mostly true. “Don’t make it obvious.”

It’s not hard to be subtle with so much activity going on. Everyone is trying to stake out a place near the hearth for their bedroll, and everyone is complaining about bringing the rain in. Charles is trying to start a fire, but they can’t have much in the way of fuel. Mac is halfway up a ladder when Arthur finds him, head poking up into some kind of attic above them where the windmill must fix on from the outside.

“Hey!” He hisses. “C’mon down, Dutch wants to talk to you.”

Also a lie, but it does the job. Mac climbs back down begrudgingly.

“Plenty o’furniture up there!” He shouts, which momentarily bewilders Arthur until he sees Charles rear back with a thumbs-up. “Plenty o’holes in the roof too, so I don’t know how dry it’ll be. Davey’s gonna look.”

Davey, who up until this point has been trying to stamp the water out of his coat and boots, scowls. “When did I say I was gonna do that?”

Arthur supposes you don’t stop telling your kid brother what to do even if said kid brother is now thirty years old. “When I goddamn told you to. Boss wants to see me.”

“Is it about-”

Mac shrugs. “How the hell should I know?”

And with that he stamps away. Arthur thinks he might’ve told the wrong person to be subtle about it.

When he’s back in the kitchen, Jenny is gone. The others have arranged themselves around the dining table, Dutch sat in its single rickety chair. Arthur has no doubt both pieces will be sacrificed to the fire by morning.

Hosea has a hand on the table. “I don’t know why she doesn’t, but the point remains-”

“You wanted to speak to me?”

“What?” Dutch asks, then waves a hand dismissively. “The lady did, really, but she’s gone. Someone was shouting her, something about blankets.”

“So what?” Mac asks blankly.

“Well, come here and listen. The woman we found earlier-”

“Is the one that shot her husband on the train, yeah. I figured that.” He says, scratching at the back of his neck with a wince. He doesn’t seem too shocked by the strange glance of fortune, but it takes quite a lot to surprise a man like him.

“Mac!” Dutch admonishes.

Hosea sighs. “Well, did you tell anyone?”

The man only shrugs. “Who the hell would I tell?”

“Davey.” Says John.

“Davey.” Says Arthur.

“Davey.” Says Dutch.

“You could’ve mentioned it to anyone!” Lenny says conciliatorily. “...But you probably told Davey.”

“Yeah, but he don’t count. He won’t say nothin’ so long as I tell him not to.”

For a moment they stand, everybody looking in a different direction and waiting for action to begin. When it doesn’t, Arthur looks to see Mac’s eyes flicking between them all.

“What?” He asks eventually.

Hosea’s hands go up with a small cry of exasperation. “So go tell him!”

With a grumble he acquiesces, and everyone bar Lenny and Arthur follow him out, probably to provide some semblance of order to the chaos in the main room.

“This is gonna be good.” He says, half a groan. “Davey

already

knows. How she wants to keep a secret in a place like this…”

“It’ll be fine.” Lenny says. “She’ll probably tell them herself soon. Sometimes it’s better to introduce yourself as something other than a murderer, you know? I get it.”

Jenny reappears after that, holding a bundle of blankets under her arm. “Sorry. Miss Grimshaw- she’s quite full on, isn’t she? Good grief. Good luck, though, cause she got me a blanket which I wouldn’t have otherwise. Did the other guy hear?”

“Mac?”

“I don’t know names. Short, blonde, mean.”

“Yeah, don’t let him hear you call him that.” Arthur chuckles. “Everybody’s keepin’ it quiet.”

Jenny sighs, shoulders slouching. “Good. Just- for now, that’s good.”

Arthur leans up against the sole remaining counter, flexing his hands to try and put some warmth back into them. “What happened to you, if you don’t mind me asking? I thought- well, I thought you got home, at least.”

Miss Kirk laughs. “Tried. Got to the nearest town and the law found me. Wanted to know what I was doing without

him.

Then, you know, word got to town that he was dead, and after that they wanted to know

exactly

what I thought I was doing.”

“I’m sorry, Miss.” Lenny says.

“Don’t call me miss. I’m not thirty.” She snaps, then tips her head back and exhales forcefully. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude, no sir. Just tired, that’s all. S’been a long time since I could relax.”

Arthur hums in agreement. “Four days, since the train.”

“And how long since I was wed?” She cuts back, before smoothing a hand over her forehead and taking another deep breath. “Just Jenny is fine, Mr Summers.”

“Surely you can see your hypocrisy there, Miss- Jenny. If I’m to call you Jenny then you must call me Lenny.”

“

Hypocrisy,

you’re a fine talker.” She answers, and Arthur suddenly feels as though he should be anywhere but here. “If we must, then.”

“Yes, if we must.” He answers, suddenly quieter.

Arthur clears his throat. “Right, well. Helps that you know who we are, believe it or not, because you know at least what you’re getting into here.”

“I don’t- who are you?”

There’s a bit of a confused pause before Arthur responds. “We’re the ones who robbed the train.”

“Yeah, thanks, I got that.” Jenny says, rolling her eyes. “I

mean

, I don’t know any of your names or anything, except for Lenny’s. And

he

told me twice, so he’s got the whole rest of you beat.”

There’s a silent debate between Lenny and Arthur then, contained in one look over a few seconds.

Chances are she doesn’t know- why- why not- could we- all night?

They tell her, anyway. And

chances

be damned, because she knows exactly who they are.

*

“Dutch van der Linde?” Jenny calls, swinging around the doorframe and stepping into the main room. Dutch turns, hands full of bedding. “

You’re

Dutch van der Linde?”

The whole rest of the gang go quiet and a little stiff, the way they’ve all learnt to do when anybody pulls out Dutch’s name like it’s some kind of title.

The man himself straightens up, eyes narrowing. “You heard of me?”

“Guess that’s one way of putting it. I went and heard about what you took your boys to do way out west, with that oil well? Jesus, that made me holler when I heard it. That was a good job you did there, but they didn’t like it much.”

“No,” Dutch answers lightly, the beginning of a smile tugging on his lips. “No, they didn’t like it much.”

The tension eases. It’s at about this moment that Jenny seems to realise she is commanding the rest of the room’s attention, and at the same time the rest of the room is seeing her speak for the first time. Even from where he’s standing in the kitchen, the situation seems rather daunting to Arthur.

“Well, howdy.” Is all she says, eyes still sparkling. She does not seem particularly unnerved by the attention of twenty people on her, nor concerned about holding the gaze of so many folks she knows to be criminals of the worst kind. “My name’s Jenny Kirk. I wanted to thank those folks that saw me shivering in the mud, and then the rest of you for taking me in and warming me up. Means a lot, you know. I haven’t really got much of anything else to say, just wanted to say my thanks and that’s all.”

The rest of the room stare at her. It would be long-winded and pointless to introduce the rest of them all in one go, so no one offers a name in return and for a second Jenny just stands there, looking on.

“You’re very welcome, ma’am.” John pipes up after a long moment, from where he’s sitting beside the Callanders. He clears his throat and drops his gaze back down to his lap, but it does the trick of breaking their little silent spell and folks go back to their own business. Uncle raises his hand in greeting, and two of the women stand up and cross to her side, already asking their usual flurry of questions that precedes them making friends. It’s in moments like these that they most resemble a normal group of travelling folk, the girls clinging to each other’s arms and a reverend in the corner beginning a sermon for a half-dozen of their more religious, but you can see the cracks in the picture just as quickly as there becomes a picture. After all, reverends don’t normally quote psalms whilst swaying to and fro. The discussion of men doesn’t usually entail them cleaning their guns. And Arthur’s not been privy to a lot of conversation between proper ladies, but he’s fairly certain

have

you

ever killed anybody, Jenny?

Is not the kind of thing that is regularly slipped in between names and hobbies.

Jenny just laughs at that one, and Tilly and Mary-Beth laugh too. Arthur doesn’t miss the way she looks over to John, Mac, and Davey as she does it, though. Like she’s wondering how long her secret is going to stay put, or if it ever did in the first place.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Dutch and Hosea waste very little time, as always. For as long as he has known them they have never been people to put off for tomorrow what can be done today, and despite the fact that whatever problems they have with their food situation cannot be fixed until the weather breaks, Arthur knows before he enters the little kitchen again that they will be plotting to fix it nonetheless.

“You really wanna think about this now? You ain’t even dry yet!”

Dutch sighs, and flattens the map out again. “Some of us don’t want to go to sleep thinking about this, Arthur. Two crates of potatoes were left behind-”

“Who’s fault is

that-”

He mutters, because Pearson is an excellent cook and utterly abysmal under pressure.

“-And I don’t even want to think about what else we could’ve lost.”

“I can tell you, if you want to know.” Hosea says, eyes flicking over the clipboard that usually sits by the stores. His tone is grim. Arthur’s heard him more cheerful at hangings. Hell, Arthur’s heard him more cheerful at his

own

hangings.

Dutch squeezes his eyes shut like he’s trying to ward off a headache. “No, I don’t think I do. What’s gone is gone, we ain’t hardly gonna get it back in all of this. We just need someplace to restock, but…”

Arthur doesn’t need to look at the map to know they’re out of options. They’d been too conspicuous in the closest town, the one the train left from, when they were sniffing around looking for information. The only other place is the mining town where Casters is from and there’s not one of them that can risk showing their face there, either. Not after they’d spent so long outrunning them in this downpour.

“Why don’t we send some people out further? Past those towns, I mean. There was another one somewhere, I remember.”

“It’ll take far too long for the caravan, and every second we’re exposed-”

“I ain’t talking about the whole caravan, just a few riders. On good horses, they might make it there and back-”

“With no map and the law still patrolling? They know we took the bonds. They think we killed Elijah Casters too.”

“Well that can’t be helped-”

“I’m telling you, if we send anybody north they will likely be caught. There are bounty men too, remember? Soon as they heard our description they’d have been on the next train over.”

Bounty men have grown more and more frequent, as of late. In better times, Hosea likes to joke about the flourishing opportunities of the job market, but these are not better times and so he just keeps watching the map instead, his eyes flicking over hopeless routes.

“So that makes our only option-” Dutch continues, his hand dancing down. “The mountains.”

“Absolutely not.” Hosea responds, on the tail of Dutch’s breath. “We won’t make it over.”

Dutch tilts his head in consideration. “We might.”

“We have twenty five people, and no food. And it’s January. What kind of odds are those?”

“With faith-”

“You can go out there then, and tell those people they will be eating faith for supper.” Hosea retorts. “Because there isn’t anything else, and if we try and make it through the mountains there won’t be for another few days too.”

His voice gets very strangled in the final few words, and when he stops to take a breath he breaks out into another coughing fit. Hosea’s illness, much like the bounty men, has been getting worse and worse the longer they go on. Arthur can’t help but think of a frayed rope with far too much strain on it. The food. The law. The bounty men. The man that hacks and coughs on the rickety chair.

Dutch rushes to his side, and Hosea wastes a precious breath on telling him exactly what he can piss off and do. Dutch smarts, visibly restraining himself from arguing back, and instead places a hand between Hosea’s shoulder blades and moves it back and forth, smoothing his features and his temper into something placid.

It’s about then that they are interrupted, but with the whole gang on the other side of the wall Arthur had been figuring it was only a matter of time.

“I don’t mean to intrude.” Jenny says, leaning back against the doorframe. “If you want me to leave off, I get it. You don’t hardly know me, and you sure as hell don’t trust me.”

Dutch steps away from the chair, clearing his throat. “Let us be the judges of that, please. What was it you wanted?”

“To help.” She answers, casting the barest of glances over her shoulder and stepping inside. “We could go- there’s a place just south east of here, if we are where we think we are. Could go there.”

“What place? It’s not on the map.” Hosea’s voice is hardly even croaking, for all the hacking he’s just done. The speed of his recovery would be admirable if Arthur wasn’t well aware of how much practice the man has with lying.

Jenny cocks her head and asks to be shown where exactly

they

are on the map, and whilst Arthur knows Hosea’s answering point is an approximation at best he also knows the man is a talented enough outdoorsman for it to be a fairly accurate estimate. The woman nods and places her finger on the spot he leaves behind, then lifts her left hand to find another spot a little further down.

“By my best guess, it’s here.”

“There ain’t no town listed there, miss.” Dutch offers.

She shakes her head. “No, there wouldn't be. Folks there keep to themselves, I reckon they like being off the map the way they are. It’s not a town, anyway. Hardly even a village, but there’s plenty of homesteaders we can trade supplies off of if we’re polite and- what did you say earlier, sweetheart? Im- inconspicuous, or something. If were inconspicuous they won’t hardly care.”

“A homestead?” He questions.

“A dozen homesteads. There’s good land there that folks flock to.”

“And how’d you know that?”

“Cause my daddy was born there. My grandparents owned a farm there a long while ago.”

Hosea taps the spot on the map with the back of his knuckle absently. “Didn’t get handed down to you?”

“Creditors ain’t the most giving folk.” Jenny says.

“Ah. I’m sorry, miss.”

“So what. Don’t matter to me none. Just saying it’s a place we can go if you’re wanting food and bullets. It ain’t no general store but they’ve got basements full’a stuff I betcha. I betcha cause my grandaddy did before he had to sell it all off.”

“Well, there you go then. Hosea, will you ride out tomorrow with a few of the others? See what you can find.”

“Dutch, I don’t know if he’s-”

“I’m fine, Arthur.” Hosea cuts across sharply, that exposed nerve of irritability flaring up the way it always does when he gets sick. “I’ll see what we can rustle up first thing.”

Arthur leaves it after that. Dutch gives him an odd look and turns away.

By everyone’s watches it isn’t yet suppertime, but the premature twilight has them all thinking of dinner anyway. Or maybe that’s just the nervous knowledge that there isn’t enough food

for

dinner, the familiar memory of falling asleep on a growling stomach that they all know too well. Either way he can see eyes on Pearson, and can hear the man getting antsy even before he opens his mouth.

Hosea’s been talking to him, still holding the clipboard, in low tones. Their conversation only becomes intelligible when Pearson raises his voice.

“What you want me to

do

with this is-” He shakes his head, at a loss for words. “I mean, it’s fairly impossible. I can’t feed this many people with what we’ve got.”

“So some of us’ll have nothing, is that it?” Bill growls, ever fuel for a fight.

Pearson lets out a half-bitten sigh. “

No,

that's not what I’m saying. But-”

“Mr Pearson-”

“It’s half a meal, is what it is. If that.”

“We have managed with worse.” Hosea says, attempting to be gentle. “There’s no need to get so riled about it.”

“Well you try it!
You try cooking for a group of people that’ll whinge no matter what you put in front of them, with nothing but one fire and two pans to make it in!”

“Yeah, you try it.” Sean says. “Could probably fry up somethin’ better than that slop you usually give us,”.

“Yeah, we ain’t your pigs, Pearson!” Karen crows, and the pair of them dissolve into laughter.

Hosea rolls his eyes. “Everybody who doesn’t have a hand in the bringin’ in of food in this gang should not trouble themselves about how it’s cooked.”

“Or

if

it’s cooked.” Someone mutters.

Pearson slams down his pan loud enough to echo. “If you’ve got a god-damn problem-”

“Watch out,” Karen says, grabbing Sean’s arm. “He’s gonna show us how they

deal with things

in the

navy.”

Sean laughs.

“

You should be fine then, Karen. It’s us fellers that better watch out.”

“Oh, you fast-mouthed son of a bitch.” Pearson scowls. “You’re askin’ for a shooting!”

“Go on then.” A new voice says, and people avert their gazes. “If you want a fight, Mr Pearson, you can have one.”

Mac doesn’t really joke about these things. And he also doesn’t lose. Pearson stiffens and his face twists up into something real ugly, but he gives up provoking further argument.

Karen shuffles away from Sean and leans over to Tilly.

“Mac would do it, too.” She stage-whispers.

Tilly laughs. “Mac’d do it just so we had something to eat tonight.”

“Ain’t it your fault that we haven’t got any food anyway?” Uncle chimes in, with the perfect timing of all his terrible interjections. “I’ve heard tell of two crates of potato left abandoned in the rain-”

“Alright, everybody shut up!” Arthur says, shouting above the rising din. “Sean, can it before somebody shoots you. Karen, you too. Mac, relax. Mr Pearson-

please

just cook us some supper.”

“There won’t

be

enough supper-”

“I don’t care. Just cook. We can figure out our goddamn rations once it’s done.”

He lets Hosea step back in, and begrudgingly Pearson starts setting out vegetables and looking for his knife. His grumbling doesn’t cease though, and Hosea’s dry recital of the clipboard does little to dissuade him from complaining.

“Hey, Arthur.” A voice in his ear sounds. “Hey, you want’a come on over an’ play some cards? Me and Mac and Karen are havin’ us a game.”

“I ain’t playin’ poker against you, you cardsharp.” Arthur returns, because he’s played enough hands (and lost enough money) against Davey Callander to ever want to offer up any more time to losing a game.

Davey huffs. “But Mac’s playin’, which means we’re doing it fair an’ square, and it’s not like it’s just you and me against each other. Hell, we could probably get Javier and Sean in if you like, make it a proper game.”

Mac’s the only person in the world who can tell when Davey’s cheating at cards, so his presence is somewhat reassuring. But still he hesitates.

“Or would you rather stay here and listen to these old coots argue about biscuits and tin cans?” Davey finishes, looking triumphant.

He wouldn’t, actually. He doesn’t bother bidding Hosea and Pearson goodbye.

They’ve set up their game on a low table that wasn’t there before- something scrounged out of the attic, no doubt- in the waterlogged corner of the room. One of the ground sheets has been put down to stop the people sitting around it from getting soaked through the floor again, but more than that it’s the only place in the building that isn’t already overpopulated.

“Okay, Arthur?”

“Fine.” He answers. “You can’t keep riling up Pearson, you know.”

“What’s he gonna do? Stop feeding us?”

“Probably for the best.” Davey mutters. In all actuality, Pearson’s cooking is better than anyone else’s, and he’s got the knowledge and practice to come up with surprisingly creative meals on their incredibly limited diet. Sometimes people just need staple things to complain about- the food, the weather, the on-again off-again relationships that spring up and die out between folks faster than they can sleep off the drink.

Mac deals and they begin, tossing loose change into the middle without too much care. It’s not like they have anything else to spend it on out here, anyway. Arthur nearly wins two hands, then wins the third and loses the fourth horrifically. It’s as they’re dealing for the fifth that they’re interrupted.

“Mind if I join?” Jenny asks. “I haven’t played a game of poker in a good long while.”

“You got money to bet?” Mac shoots back.

She doesn’t take offence to his tone, which strangers usually take as bristling for a fight, but digs into her pocket and holds up a money clip. The one she’d taken from her husband’s corpse, Arthur recognises, even if much depleted now. “Sure thing. Deal me in?”

She holds her own, surprisingly enough. Arthur doesn’t know many rich men’s widows, but Mary had always been above such brash games and he’d figured that went for the rest of proper etiquette too. But, much like the accent that’s becoming more and more pronounced in Jenny’s voice, she strikes him less and less of one of the type. They play until Karen’s out of money, after which Arthur withdraws too in an attempt to keep at least a scrap of his cash, and Mac plays two more hands with them until he stands up too.

Jenny doesn’t. Jenny seems entirely at home playing, and in no mood to finish up. Davey has noticed this, obviously, and is nodding along with the lackadaisical conversation with barely contained glee. Mac’s the only person who can ever seem to know when he’s cheating, but in the spirit of a Callander he only ever calls his brother out on it when he’s got a stake in the game. Arthur could be fairly sure it was an honest round when they’d all been playing together, but now…

“Come on now, that ain’t fair.” He murmurs.

Mac looks over. “What ain’t?”

“She’s our guest. Can’t be lettin’ your four-flusher of a brother rob the poor woman blind.”

“And what was we doin’ the first time we met her, again?”

“That was different.” He says. “Now-”

“Can you boys hush up?” Jenny says, evidently irritable. “Christ, can’t hear myself think over all your god-damned whispering. Like a pair of old women.”

Mac smirks just as Davey does the same. Arthur’s known good men and bad men in this gang, and he reckons the Callander boys usually land somewhere firmly left of the middle. But he does know they won’t let Jenny win, especially not with her money in the equation. As the hand plays on and another is dealt, and Jenny’s money clip slowly runs empty, Arthur begins to wish they’d never let her play at all.

“Well lookee here.” Davey croons softly as the cards come face up onto the table. He doesn’t look down at his own hand, probably doesn’t need to. It’s fairly obvious he’s going to win if the way Jenny curses has anything to do with it.

“Why don’t we play another hand, huh?” She tries haplessly, clutching her own cards into her chest as she stares at the ones between them.

“I don’t think so, little miss.” He says. “Seems you’re outta cash, and I don’t risk my neck for free.”

With that he lays down his cards flat, and somehow he has acquired four of a kind despite the fact he’d had that not two hands earlier too. Sixes blink up at him, hearts then diamonds then clubs in his set and the six of spades in between on the table. Apt, Arthur thinks, because if anything was the devil’s game it would be poker with Davey Callander.

“That makes four of a kind.” He says sweetly.

And for a second, Jenny doesn’t move a muscle. The sick, sour feeling Arthur’s been nursing rises up inside of him and would’ve overtaken him if not for the sudden quirk of Jenny’s lips. Davey pauses in his silent gloating and the spectators all freeze up at the sight of Jenny Kirk evidently trying to contain her glee.

“I’m not out of cash,

little mister.”

She answers tersely. “Seeing as I’ve just won all of yours.”

And she’s holding a straight flush. Javier’s eyes go wide, and Sean and Karen let out hollers in unison. Even Mac, who’s usually impossible to read, catches his lip between his teeth as his brow furrows. He finds himself giving her a slow round of applause, because it must have been some luck to win against a cheating gambler and whatever she was doing, she outsmarted the whole goddamn lot of them.

As the cheers die down, Davey studies her curiously. Not angry- no, he’s played enough cards to be a good loser- but slow and steady when he speaks. “How’d you do that?”

“What, win?” Jenny echoes, sorting the bills into her clip and pocketing the change. “If I gotta explain the rules to you, mister, then you haven’t got no place gambling money on the game.”

Arthur clears his throat. “What Davey means is, how’d you beat him? He was cheatin’, or I assume he was.”

“He usually is.” Karen glowers from beside him.

“Yeah?” Jenny asks, leaning in with a conspiratorial whisper and a matching grin. “So was I.”

Arthur retreats to the rickety porch for a smoke, after that. It’s still blisteringly stormy outside, but the cool air chips away at the stress of the crammed conditions inside and the roof provides just enough cover for him to light a cigarette in peace. He sits on the top step, elbows braced comfortably on his knees, and tries to pick shapes out of the darkness. That crease in the rain, that could be the thick tree they’d passed on the way in. To the left should be the ruined remnants of a fence. The longer he plays the game the more detailed his vision gets, his mind moulding landmarks out of nothingness until he’s quite convinced he can see perfectly fine. The

scrape-thud

of the front door going again jolts him out of his wondering, however, and as he drops his focus the shapes melt back into the night fast enough that he’s hardly sure they were visible at all.

He casts a quick look over his shoulder, for some reason expecting Charles, and is crudely disappointed to see it’s just John, fumbling with his own pack of smokes and not quite looking in front of him. When he does, and notices Arthur already there

And it’s terrible, really, that they’re both out here. Because they both would risk being swept up in the storm for a smoke, that they’d both leave behind the warmth of indoors at the exact same moment because they have the identical feeling of closeness pushing them out. It drives him crazy, how much of himself is in John. Two men who share no blood, but Dutch would always say family’s worth more than that. Arthur thinks John might turn around and go back inside, for a moment. From the look on his face, so does John. But after a pause the other man comes and joins him, sitting on the top step just far away enough that their shoulders don’t brush.

“That new girl is magic, you know that?” He starts off conversationally, rummaging in his pockets for a match.

It’s not anything out of the ordinary for Arthur to hand John his own set of matches. Not kindness, nothing to get excited over. Just getting him to quit flapping about. “Just saw her beat Davey at poker. I believe it.” He answers.

John blanches. “Davey? Like, alone?”

“Seems the Callander’s not the only one who knows how to cheat at cards. What else has she been up to?”

John has a trickier time lighting his smoke, and whilst he watches one-two-three matches get discarded he remembers his own is burning out between his fingers and takes another long drag as John curses.

Eventually, once he succeeds, he replies: “Settled Jack in about two minutes flat. Abigail was- I mean, she ain’t been well recently. Sound of him screamin’ and wailing sure wasn’t helpin’ her, then along comes Jenny and all of a sudden he’s gone all quiet.”

Arthur hadn’t known Abigail wasn't well. For a woman he allegedly can’t stand the sight of, John pays closer attention to her than anyone else.

“How’d she manage that?” He asks.

“Says she’s got practice.”

This gives him pause. “

Children

?”

He can’t quite imagine that, somehow. Firstly because Jenny is still very young, but mostly because women with children rarely shoot their breadwinners in the skull and run off into the night. Not unless they are pretty shoddy mothers, that is.

“Nah. Nieces and nephews, she said. God knows who we’ve found here.” John finishes, and sets his attention back to his smoke.

Arthur can’t think of any decent reply, so he lets the silence sit. It must be some kind of tragedy, having nothing left to say to a man who’s meant to be your brother. But it must be some kind of tragedy to feel like you have to fill the silence, too. Still, he waits, even after the cigarette is stubbed out and his hands have started to go numb once again. From inside, the muffled sound of conversation lulls and is replaced by the sound of guitar, inaudible if you weren’t so used to listening out for it. And then, whilst Arthur is trying to pick out

“Is that- who’s that singing?”

“She knows cards, babies,

and

Spanish?” John scrubs at his face with both hands. “Who

is

this woman?”

They find in the main room Javier and his guitar, accompanied by an unusual flurry of movement. Javier sings very often, especially on nights where things are lonesome or dull otherwise, and it brings some lethargic cheer to the lean and dreary times. When they have reason for celebration Javier sings faster, livelier songs with more familiar words, and the rest of them join in and stamp their feet and clap their hands in time with his guitar. It takes a very good day or a very drunken gang for anyone to really get up and dance, but that’s what’s happening here.

Dancing. Jenny Kirk has them dancing.

It’s a little ridiculous. There are far too many people in far too cramped a space for it to be comfortable, and too many people are still sitting for it to look anything other than ludicrous. But Javier is playing, and tonight he is not the only voice singing the words to his music because in the middle of the room, hardly visible behind the flurry of movement, Jenny is singing along and spinning about with whoops and hollers of her own.

“Why’re we doin’ this?” He asks Sean, the closest one nearby.

The man just laughs. “S’fun, ennit? And better than moping around thinkin’ about how we’ve got piss-all for dinner, too.”

“Fair enough.” The reminder sets his stomach to growling. Perhaps he needs to join in.

He doesn’t, funnily enough. He picks his way through the little crowd and settles himself on the floor, and waits for the bowls to be handed around. Javier doesn’t stop playing until there’s a hot meal- or half a meal, really, because they left two crates of potatoes behind and the remainder is pretty meager- on the floor in front of him. Jenny doesn’t stop dancing until then too, breathless and thanking Pearson profusely for her bowl. It strikes Arthur then that these people have likely worked up a hell of an appetite jumping around like they were, but then again there have been no more arguments.

Arthur cleans half the plate before he remembers he needs to savour it, and spends the rest of the time putting one forkful after another into his mouth with almost distressing slowness. He tries to pay more attention to the conversation instead, to take his eyes off of the nearly-empty bowl, but only Javier and Jenny are still talking.

“You know Spanish?” He asks her.

She shrugs. “A little. Enough to have a polite conversation anyway.”

“Thought you were Scottish?”

She laughs. “Scottish by name and French by mother and American by upbringing. Nearly German by marriage, before that whole thing ended. I’m from all over, sweetheart, just like anybody else. But I had friends who spoke no English- neighbours, you know? Helped to be able to ask to borrow some butter.”

“Debías ser muy buen amigo de tus vecinos,” Javier mutters. “Ya sabes cariño, hermosa, dulce, amor…”

Jenny smirks. “Some I liked more than others.” She answers. “Tenían un hijo muy hermoso.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

To keep his hands busy, Arthur finds out his journal and a pencil. It keeps his mind occupied too, and off of the thoughts of more food, of which there is none.

Tomorrow,

he promises himself idly, putting the pencil to the page.

By tomorrow morning we’ll be fed and dry.

For now, he draws. There’s a whole load of interesting parts scattered about the windmill that had caught his attention, but he knows his subject without needing to decide upon one. She’s sitting right across from him after all, knees drawn up to her chest with her bowl sitting in the space between, and she watches the conversation like she’s making notes on it.

“I miss my sister,” Javier is saying. “But I wouldn’t go back to her. Most of the time it hurts to think about, because I know she would not like to see the man I have become.”

Arthur sketches the curve of her hair, still a little bedraggled. He’s getting to the end of this book, he’ll need a new one soon. And his pencil has seen better days too.

Around him, the conversation tilts back to Jenny, the way it always does with new people. Everyone else already knows far too much about each other.

“How about you? Do you have any family?”

Any family left alive,

is the proper question. Jenny seems to hear the unspoken part anyway.

“Sure. I got two sisters, both older. Both married too, for shame, so by that means I got two brother-in-laws too.”

“Must be busy.” Karen offers.

“Busier than you’d think. I used to live with one- Catherine, the oldest- and her lot. Christ, it was tense. She was so

worried

about everything all the time.”

Sean scoffs. “More worried than you?”

“I couldn’t care less about most things. I guess that sounds pretty vague, but you know what I mean. She was always fussing about everyone sleeping enough and eating the right things and wearing clean clothes. I felt like her fourth child, some days, the way she’d speak to me. Never used to be like that, but I guess once you become a mother you can’t go back.”

Arthur looks at John just as John looks at Abigail, and the two of them are too preoccupied pretending they weren’t looking at each other that he gets away with it too.

“People change.” Charles supplies, his voice sounding heavy. “But- I don’t know. She might be happy, at least. That’s not such a bad thing to change for, living a life you’re happy about.”

“Yeah, she must’ve been really pleased to be rid of me.” Jenny answers, frowning. As quick to unhappiness as she is to joy, it seems. The conversation sticks and stutters for a moment, but eventually Karen relays some long and filthy story about pretending to be the sister of an esteemed glass salesman that gets the rest of them laughing again and the awkwardness is forgotten. That’s always the way, with them. They live too close, all on top of one another, to not go trampling all over one another’s spiky parts. Jenny seems to understand this well enough, laughing along at Karen’s hooded eyes and description of

glass-blowing, sir, it’s an age-old technique,

but Arthur doesn’t miss the way she excuses herself afterwards, slipping away into the poky kitchen again like she’s revealed more than she wants to.

He doesn’t follow her. He’s learned that much about people’s rough edges, after so long living with the gang: best left alone, if you want to keep friends. It’s not until much later that he catches sight of her again, and this time he

does

wander over- not for any more details into her personal life, this time. No, this time it’s because she’s playing chess against Dutch van der Linde, and she’s pulled enough surprises off over the course of the night for him to be sufficiently intrigued as to the outcome of their game.

It’s already begun, as has their discussion, but they’re not far in. Arthur tries to find a place to stand where he doesn’t look too obvious. Watching the game isn’t against any rules, but it would certainly be odd seeing as for the large part of his adult life he has detested the game and refused to play it. Losing to Dutch as often as he did in his adolescence will do that to a person. So he leans against the wall, and he cleans his revolver with a cloth as the loosest kind of pretence as he listens.

“We were thinking we could settle down, though.” Dutch is saying. “Find us a piece of land, somewhere safe.”

“I don’t know if folks like you can ever be safe.” Jenny answers conversationally. “Christ, even I’ve heard of you, and I hardly know anything.”

Arthur’s suddenly glad Hosea’s not here. The man doesn’t need any more ammunition for his internal

or

external arguments.

Dutch only hums. “Perhaps. Nobody knows us this far out, though. We could set up somewhere more permanent.”

“Or we could ride and ride and never stop until we run outta land and fall off the edge of the world.”

He chuckles. “Oh, there’s a

we

now?”

“I’d like to come along.” Jenny answers lightly, with a shrug. Arthur doesn’t miss the way her eyes flick up to Dutch’s face as she says it, though. “If you’ll have me, I mean. I can learn pretty much anything you’d need someone to do.”

“I thought you had family?” Dutch counters, taking a pawn. “I heard tell of sisters. Nephews and nieces, too.”

She smiles, but it’s a bitter thing. “Wouldn’t do to go back. Not after they found Elijah like that with his head blown off- I don’t know. It’s a long story, but me gettin’ married off to him was a kind of deal. If I swan in without a scratch on me word’ll get round, and it’s gonna look like I backed out of it in a real nasty way.”

She picks up a piece and moves it, and Dutch’s brow creases. Arthur knows that face, and considers letting Jenny know ahead of time that she’s just lost the game.

“I suppose.” Dutch replies, voice betraying none of his excitement. “I’ll speak with the others, but there shouldn’t be any reason for you not to join us. As long as you know what you’re getting into, I mean. We are good people, but murderers and thieves too. I am large, I contain multitudes, as Whitman put it.”

“Who?”

Dutch waves a hand. “Doesn’t matter. We’d be glad to have you.”

Jenny smiles- a sudden, bright thing, not like the ones she’s been flashing all night. This one, unseen by Dutch, feels somehow more genuine. It’s gone by the time the man moves his piece and meets her eye again.

She falters. “What?”

“That’s checkmate, my good lady.”

“What- already?”

Arthur privately agrees with the surprise. Chess against Dutch van der Linde is often an hours-long debacle and usually ends with any strategy you developed being carefully and completely destroyed in a matter of a few turns. It’s not advisable for the weak of heart.

“Seems your good luck has run out.”

“Not luck.” Jenny answers. It sounds remarkably honest. “Hell, I’ve never been any good at this chess lark.”

“Oh really?” Dutch teases.

“I didn’t bet you any money on it, did I?” She returns, a little sharp. She seems to realise it too, standing quickly and smoothing down her skirt with a sweet smile. “Go talk to your friend Matthews. I want to know if I’ll be joining you in the morning.”

“She’s certainly lively.” Hosea says, later still. Enough people have settled down to sleep that everyone’s conversations are conducted in whispers. “I’ve never seen a soul so bent on a mission to befriend as many people as possible.”

Once again Arthur finds himself in the kitchen, which seems to have become some evolution of

Dutch’s tent

given that he, Arthur and Hosea are the only ones who venture in it and most plan-related discussions seem to be happening in here. It’s too small for anyone to be bothered sleeping in, and away from the hearth it’s cold too. Means they can converse in low murmurs instead of whispers, and not worry about eavesdropping any more than they usually do.

He huffs, remembering the chess game. “I have. We’re all here followin’ Dutch, ain’t we?”

Hosea looks over at him smoothly, the barest hint of concern on his brow. “You reckon she’s running some con on us and we don’t know it yet?”

“Nah.” Arthur answers, draining the rest of his beer in one. “If you ask me, she’s just a young woman with a lot riding on us taking her in and giving her a life and livelihood. But if she

is

running a con- well, she’s good enough at it to belong with the rest of us.”

The other man laughs and returns his eyes to the window, cracked and filthy, which rattles in its pane and betrays nothing of the world outside. Whether that’s the miserable weather or the dirt on the glass it’s impossible to say- likely a combination of the two- the only thing Arthur can see are their own reflections, staring back. He wonders if that’s what Hosea is looking at with such intensity, or maybe he alone can see out into the dark beyond.

The thought makes him queasy. He bids the old man goodnight and goes out for another smoke.

John’s not here this time, thank God. But neither is he alone.

No, instead there is one lone figure leaning up against the fence, shoulder bracing against the only pillar left intact.

“Thought you would’ve had enough of the weather by now.” Arthur calls out, startling her from her thoughts.

Whatever Jenny replies is lost to the wind. He steps up beside her, and sees her bare hands are clutching at the wooden railing tight enough that the knuckles are pale. The backs of her palms are purpling in the cold, by comparison.

“Besides, I’ve lived here long enough to be used to it howling like this.” She concludes.

Arthur doesn’t bother asking her to repeat the first half. “You’re from Montana?”

“I’m from the company town.” She sighs, gesturing northwards. “So really, I haven’t gone very far at all.”

“Married to a man like Elijah Casters?” It’s not unheard of, rich men finding poor women to catch up in weddings, but it’s unusual. More like something out of a story.

“Like I said, there was a deal worked out.” Jenny says. “I saw you watching our game, Mr Morgan. You’re too tall to be sly.”

Arthur huffs. “Guess I’m sorry for eavesdropping.”

“You don’t sound too sorry.”

“I know what you’re doing here, you know.”

It comes out louder than he meant to. Jenny keeps her eyes right in front of her, watching the rain cut slivers into the darkness. When she speaks her voice is as cold as the January wind.

“Oh really? Must have keen eyes to spot me doing something, seeing as even I don’t know about it yet.”

“Winning Davey at cards. Losin’ chess to Dutch.” It’s fairly masterful, the way she’s been making the rounds. Winning when she’ll be applauded for it, and losing when it would’ve rubbed Dutch the wrong way to have been beaten. “Looking after the kid that everyone’s got a soft spot for. You want to run with us a whole lot more than you’re letting on.”

“S’that what you think it is? I play a couple of games and get a kid to quit crying and you’re convinced I got some grand plan to fleece you all?”

“It’s not a bad thing. It’s just- I admit, I ain’t that sure why you’d be so set on runnin’ with us.” He says.

Jenny lets out a short, curt sound that could be a laugh, if you were trying to pretend. “That’s because you’re a man with a gun. It doesn’t make a difference to you who likes you and who doesn’t. For me, it’s different. Can’t go home. Can’t start out on my own.”

He’s been told this before, by Tilly and Abigail and Miss Grimshaw and any number of other women on different days, in different ways. “Still, we’d drop you to a town. Wherever you like.”

“To do what? Marry some other awful man? Bear children I don’t want and stir stew all day?”

“I don’t know. There’s more to living than marriage and children.”

“Here there is.” She takes a long breath in and holds it in her chest. Arthur should’ve offered her a cigarette. “You know, Mr Morgan, if I’d have known you’d get on my case this way I’d have put more effort into impressing you. You want to sleep with me?”

The last sentence is so bizarrely unexpected that for a second he coughs and splutters, entirely sure that he’s made it up. “What- Sorry?”

“Well, do you?”

“Jesus! No, that wasn’t what I was tryin’ to say. Did you think I was-

blackmailing

you?”

Jenny tuts. “You wouldn’t be the first. What

do

you want then?”

“Not that- nothing!

Jesus.

I was just tryin’ to make sure you understood what you were gettin’ yourself into here. Locked up in a windmill like this we seem like pretty genteel folk, but out there it’s different. Things get ugly. There’s blood and hate and death everywhere you look.”

“Same as anywhere else, then.” She answers with a tight shrug, hands still on the fence. Perhaps she’s worried she might blow away in the breeze if she lets go.

“You see a lot of civilised folk pulling guns and murdering fellers in the street?” He answers, more than a little lost for words.

“I suppose not in that sense, no. But there’s enough death and hatred in any place to make Jesus weep. Every home and street and working-place. It doesn’t get sweeter when you coop people up in walls and roofs and put them to work in a mine. People are still people.”

She stares out at the storm with the look of someone who shot her husband in the head. Arthur doesn’t know what it takes to put a person in that position, and he wagers he’s never going to either.

“You still hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like that, living with us.”

“I’ve been hungry for years, Mr Morgan.”

“It wouldn’t be advisable to have someone like you walk free, that’s all.” He says instead, like an apology. “You’d know too much. Folks might be worried you’d try and turn us in.”

“Can you believe you saw me on that roadside? I thought you were a dream.” The words are bright and cold and entirely unexpected. People don’t usually think Dutch’s boys are a dream unless they’re liars or prostitutes, but then again this has been a long and strange night.

“Seems like some good fortune that we did, cold as the night has been.” Even now the wind hasn’t let up, and the rain comes through the holes in the dying ceiling. There’s a strange look on Jenny’s face. Not for the first time tonight, Arthur wonders what it is that people are looking at, out into that wild stretch of land so quarrelled by storm.

“That’s twice you’ve saved my life now.” Jenny says. “Even if I hated it, living the way that you do, I’d still owe you my silence for the rest of this lifetime and the next.”

“Do you think you’re gonna? Hate it, I mean?”

She finally lets go of the railing then, and turns to face him.

“You know what?” She asks, and she’s all smiles again. “I think I’m going to like it just fine.”

Arthur watches her slip back in through the front door, watches the wooden panels rattle in their frame behind her. He thinks of the mad dancing, the cheating at poker, the losing at chess. Being just as quick to anger as you are to joy. Settling the kid that isn’t yours except for when he kind of is, by means of his mama needing more hands than she’s got. Talking about the family that lives in your past in the long hours between supper and sleep. Staring out into the storm, looking for something you aren’t even sure is there.

He thinks she fits this place well, all things considered. Even if she took the long route round to joining them.