The Angel Butcher of Rio Bravo: An RDR2 Story

xxxviii. That which hurts worst of all

John.

John only half-guided Old Boy to pick over the uneven forest floor after the giant rump of Bill's Ardennes, distracted. He still felt a buzz on his lips from where they'd met Tine's, earlier that morning.

He'd watched her tack her horse, mostly one-handed, Arthur apparently embittered and refusing to help her. John's view was eclipsed by Abigail pressing a furtive kiss to his cheek, another whisper to be careful.

It was that hissing voice that stirred John in his saddle, made him remember the task at hand. He perked up to his unfamiliar surroundings, squinting at the tall oaks looming around him, their thick canopy throwing their surroundings into darkness. The dappled sunlight cast by the birches he'd seen while riding to the train tracks with Arthur were conspicuously absent.

"Hey, Bill?" He called ahead, watching the large man quarter-turn in his saddle. "Don't know that these are the right woods."

"Since when do you read a map, Maggie-Ellen?" Bill said snidely back.

"Maggie-Ellen?" John halted Old Boy and slid out of his saddle, fishing for his map in his bag. "Do you mean Magellan, you horse's ass?"

He continued to look for the map, chuckling to himself at Bill's expense, hearing the man's boots hit the ground not soon after. "Oh, Prince Marston, all educated, my apologies," Bill groused, kicking at a rock in the dirt. "Things are changin', you know. You ought to be nice to me."

The map secured, John unfolded to where Fairvale was and traced their desired path with his finger, trying to locate the sun amid the dense leaves. "How about I'll be nice to you when you don't get us fuckin' lost, Williamson-"

But the rest of John's complaints were cut short as he was tackled to the ground, a bag pulled over his head reminding him of what darkness could really be like.

*

Bill, that bastard.

John was tied up and thrown over the back of a horse - maybe Bill's, maybe not. He was unsettled by his circumstances, of course, but also the immediacy of his being jostled by the horse's hindquarters under him, not to mention the smell of being so close to its posterior.

He couldn't be sure how much time had passed in that shaky discomfort, his entire body tense and trying to stay on the back of his captor's beast without the use of his arms or legs. He used almost every available minute of the ride wondering how Bill, certainly thick-headed, could nonetheless turn on the gang; he easily the most loyal, too. John tried hurling insults from within the bag that he knew would rankle Bill into revealing himself, but the captor remained unmoved, only once reaching back to crack the butt of their gun into John's nearest shoulder.

The horse eventually stopped. John's insides seemed to slosh within him before also growing still. He felt himself hauled from the horse, then marched-dragged with his bound ankles along a hollow sounding surface. He could smell water, fuel; heard the cries of seagulls overhead. And then: "You got one, how about that?"

"Real nice," Said a man's voice, hovering by John's left ear. "They'll be collecting the others, soon."

"I hope so," the first man who spoke sounded like he was in front of John, and even through the dense weave of the bag over his head he noted the change in light - bright day for a dim interior. "Were the same two who broke this one out, the first time. Don't want to give them any opportunity."