Caroline

Gallants Swallow: 2

I stood on the saloons porch after the man left. The sun was barely peaking over the horizon, I decided it was best to return to the hotel to see if Deak or Rodriguez was awake. I doubted it. I began walking to the hotel when a nun grasped my forearm, this startled me and I swung around and had a Mauser barrel pointed at her forehead. I looked into her frightened eyes.

"Forgive me, sister." I holstered my weapon, she smiled.

"Have you seen a blind nun by any chance?" My heart sank to my stomach and tears stung my eyes.

"I haven't, I'm sorry."

"She was supposed to deliver provisions to the orphans we house, oranges, they've been asking for oranges."

"I haven't seen anyone." I lied.

"Well, she's from Belle Haven. If you see an elderly nun with white eyes, tell her to come the Gallants Church." She gave me a warm smile that was retorted by a facade as I knew the date of the nun in question.

I hung my head in disappointment and disgust. All my life, all I did was kill. It taught to me as a need to survive. I've been killing since my father was shot, and even before. I was in diapers cleaning guns. But, now that I've grown, now that I have this moment where I'm by myself, alone with my thoughts. I can't help but feel like all killing has done is eaten my humanity alive. My morality is Gallants Swallows' ever dropping canyon, the deeper the pit, the less morality. I've lost my humanity as well, it feels like. The Pinkerton had a point: "It takes a big man to burn down an entire town in a panic."

"In a panic" is exactly how you'd describe the response we gave to the ambush at New York. Once Klara and I blew the back of the bank and got the money, the swarm of bounty hunters and, supposedly, Pinkerton attack us from the perimeter. Klara nearly died if Deak hadn't found the gatling. After Klara and I escaped, we ran to the stage we had set up outside of town, pa and Davis were already there, and waited for Deak to regroup. Once all together, we detonated the two hundred sticks of dynamite we had set up along the perimeter of the city. Killing and destroying everyone inside the buildings, or scattered on the streets.

I let out a long, exasperated sigh. I was disappointed in myself, or what I've let myself become. Killing isn't the way to victory, it's a path to damnation. I was never a religious man, I always respected religious figures however, but I never believed in "the light of God" or that Jesus was some saviour of us all. I believed that men killed men, and that surviving was more important than some entity, or more important than my own humanity. There's been so much blood on my hands, literally and figuratively. So many lives taken by my Winchester, double barrel, or Mauser. I knew soon, my life will surely be taken by a bullet as well. It was the way of the world. What comes around, goes around, and what you do to others comes directly back ten times as worse. I'd have buzzards eating my intestines before I saw Caroline fully grow up.

I shook each thought out of my head until my mind, and emotions, were back to the blank canvas in which I had become custom to. I took a breath and made my return to the hotel.

Upon arrival, Rodriguez was awake and sharpening his knife. "So, you went for a paseo? A walk?" Rodriguez greeted me.

"Sure."

"How's the town?"

"Strange. I need to talk to Deak when he wakes up." I walked across the room to a sink and mirror, I patted my neck and armpits with a rag to remove the sweat and rain.

"You can't share with me?" He must've gotten offended that I was withholding information from him about the Pinkerton.

"There are some things about us you don't need to know." I tossed the rag into the sink and leant on the wall, Rodriguez stood up to lean on the bed frame, facing me.