Arthur.
As exhausted as he was following the move to Fairvale, the isolated field in Ambarino Tine'd chosen for the gang, Arthur'd had a bad sleep.
Tine had approached him the evening before, after the sun had long gone down and all but a handful of gang members with it. "Hey, warm fella," she smirked, her fingers trailing along his upper arm, which he followed, astonished. "Was looking for you to take the frost out of my breath." As if to emphasize her point, she pursed her lips and blew, the vapour streaming from her mouth faintly visible in the firelight. And beyond it, Dutch, hunched in his overcoat, gazing into the flames.
Arthur sighed, conflicting feelings battling within him. "Maybe not tonight, Tine," he said, avoiding her eyes. "Things is complicated enough." He'd been so ready to claim her as his own just a short time ago, but that seemed another age.
He saw the flash of something in her eye, but it vanished just as quickly. "OK, then," she said, and walked back to her own tent without another word.
When day broke, he crunched through the dewfrost that had collected on the ground and lined every blade of grass, every lupin petal. It could have been that he was just used to the Lemoyne heat - to say nothing of his time on Guarma - but it was quite cold up here, where the sun took its sweet time to rise over the mountains. He thought of the women, Strauss, Uncle, Bill; many of them sleeping directly on the ground. They'd need beds, bedding, heaters. He knew what a disaster Beaver Hollow was, but saw problems with the site Tine had picked, too.
Arthur whirled at the hiss of a whisper behind him, spotting none but Lenny, hurriedly trying to pull his saddlebags over his Maggie's rump without notice. Lenny caught Arthur's bald stare and his dark eyes grew guilty, looked to the tips of his boots. Arthur stepped quietly over, his palms open as if to convey that he didn't mean anything by his quick movement.
"Where're you off to?" He said casually. Lenny's eyes glanced up again, then back down, liquid with regret. "Len?" Arthur asked again, resting a hand over the nearest saddlebag. It was packed full, bulging with Lenny's belongings. Arthur chanced a look back to where the young man's tent had been the night before, only to see it gone, a telltale square of frostless grass where it'd sat pitched. Shame filled Lenny's face, his lower lip quivered, once.
"I only thought-" Lenny began, and Arthur felt his heart lurch, moved his hand to Lenny's shoulder.
"It's OK, Lenny," he said, firmly, hoping to assuage him of his guilt at leaving.
"I mean-"
"You don't have to explain, it's all right."
Lenny gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. He forced himself to meet Arthur's steady gaze. "I just thought we was doing something, you know?"
I rob, I kill, I make money so that we all can live. Those are the only ideals we practice. Tine's words from the cabin in Lakay hung over them both. "I know," Arthur nodded, patting Lenny's shoulder before releasing him, making a waving motion back towards the road they'd followed in. "I don't hold it against ya. Be safe, now." Lenny saddled up and took off, a small dot against the rising sun that grew smaller, then vanished.
*
Dutch seemed in halfway decent spirits when Arthur met him in his little stone cabin, a fire crackling merrily in the little hearth, the smoke from a cigar parked in his fingers perfuming the air.
"How's everyone keeping?" He asked as Arthur shouldered off his overcoat, the air close in the small, single room.
"Cold, mostly," he tried to laugh, but the sound caught in his throat; he coughed instead. "We're gonna need pallets for folks, get 'em up off the ground. And, uh-" He hesitated, Lenny's guilt-ridden face burning in his mind's eye. "Lenny's gone."
"Lenny," Dutch repeated, his face screwing up. He forced it back to neutral, but his voice was tight. "Ain't that a shame. I will miss him."
"And me," Arthur nodded, leaning against a barrel to retrieve his cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
Dutch huffed a sigh, pitching the end of his cigar into the fireplace. "Can I trust you, Arthur?"
"Always."
Dutch leaned forward, weaving his fingers together between his knees. "I need you to watch that Miss Nilsen for me. Hosea weren't sure about her and I'm beginning to agree with him."
Arthur felt his eyebrows climb up his forehead. "You mean all that Bronte business? We know it weren't her."
"Maybe she faked it," Dutch said, and before Arthur could counter, added, "And don't you find it odd that the Pinkertons are waiting at Shady Belle, and she's missing?"
"Then why'd she come back? It could have just as easily been Molly-" Dutch's careful expression soured at the mention "-she weren't there either." Arthur chuckled, trying to diffuse Dutch's befouled mood. "Hell, none of 'em were, they all had the good sense to take off. Thankfully," he added, quickly, at the end.
"And that outburst the other day, about the money, in front of everyone," Dutch continued as if Arthur hadn't spoken at all. He fixed Arthur with a stare, his irises almost black. "And you know she killed that woman, back in Blackwater."
Arthur's eyebrows raised further still, his mouth agape. Dutch nodded, sombre. "Weren't nothing I could do to sway her, Arthur. The devil lives in those pretty blue eyes." His gaze was steady and honest, but there was something malignant behind it. Whether it was lies or hatred, Arthur didn't know.
"You'll watch her for me." It wasn't a question, and Arthur felt he could do nothing but nod and leave the cabin, pulling his coat back on as he did so.
The camp was more lively then, a few members huddled together before the roaring campfire, numbed fingers wrapped around coffee mugs. Jack, bundled to his eyes, toddled around the camp, flopping onto the grass for laughs. Arthur spotted John and Tine in quiet conference at the mouth of her tent, smoking and looking furtively about them.
He made to walk by, but Tine smiled brightly, reached out and seized his sleeve. "We can trust Arthur with this, of course," she said to John, who pitched his cigarette into the grass.
"Trust me with what?" He tried to sound casual, his chest clenching at the conversation he'd just had, confronted with the very blue eyes Dutch had warned him against.
"We're after Bronte," she said conspiratorially. "Always pays to take revenge on a rich man."
"Never pays, you mean," Arthur said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You can't be talkin' about this. We're spread thin enough as it is. Gotta focus on staying alive out here."
"Never felt more alive, Arthur," she winked.
"We should have gone after that bastard months ago," John added, standing taller. "You felt the same, then."
"Was before we had the Pinkertons on our backs, before someone got his ass in jail," Arthur retorted, a spike of aggressive jealousy at John and Tine's renewed closeness.
"Oh yeah? Why'd you break me out, then?" Tine's focus shifted back and forth between the men, amusement building on her face.
"Glad you're enjoyin' this, Teeny," Arthur's use of the nickname was reluctant, but it brought a familiar comfort to him, and to her, a rosy blush erupting across her cheeks. John scowled. "I'll take you down to Saint Denis. If you're after killing Bronte, we best find out more about him."
He'd told Dutch he'd watch her, after all.
*
Arthur privately relished every mile south to Saint Denis, the cold increasingly behind them. They made camp just east of Emerald Ranch and, despite his protests the night before, shared a tent with Tine away from everyone else, her warm body ridding his bones of the last of their chill. But he woke up feeling guilty, like he'd gone behind the gang for his own comfort.
"You're quiet, cowboy," she teased the next day, turning in her saddle to smirk at him.
"Lot on my mind," he mumbled back. She pulled up on Darling's reins so that Buster naturally joined them on the trail, looked sidelong at Arthur.
"It's four," she said plainly.
"Ain't half-past nine, what d'you mean?"
"Two plus two, Arthur; it's four." Her smile was wicked, and he laughed despite himself, rolling his eyes.
The gravity of their undertaking hit when they approached Bronte's house, slinking along the side street as to avoid notice by his guardsmen.
"Won't be able to get him, here," Tine whispered. "Could try the brothel, instead? It's where they kept me."
The news, delivered matter-of-factly, winded Arthur all the same. There was still so little he knew about the time Tine'd been away from them, what she'd gone through. She'd taken to holding her bad arm to herself much of the time, her hand resting on her opposite shoulder. Even in the tent the night before, she'd angled it away from him, her back across his bicep instead of nestled into his chest.
He chose to nod instead of risking speaking around the lump in his throat, and they progressed towards a poorer end of the city, hitching their horses so that they could walk through an alley. A wooden door, unadorned save for the rose carved at eye-height, greeted them at the end of it.
"What's the plan?" he said, growing nervous at the door. Tine grinned.
"Say, 'I'm here for some pus-'"
"Good lord, Tine," Arthur cut her off, blushing scarlet as she laughed again at him, clutching at her stomach. "Be serious," he tried again, she almost immune to chastisements. "We can't just walk in there, they know what we look like."
"Let's peek, then?" She pointed to where the wall halved, indicating a courtyard beyond.
"Can you climb up?"
"With help." Her face was determined, so Arthur pushed down the sickening feeling that surfaced when she painfully straightened her arm, reaching for the edge of the wall and accepting his boost up. He joined her soon after, her arm already returned to the shoulder, Tine panting disproportionately to the minor effort it should have taken her to scale the wall.
The two straddled the wall, hunched low. They were in plain view of the courtyard, but its few occupants were otherwise distracted; smoking from long, ornate pipes, stroking each other.
In a bay window overlooking the yard, they witnessed one coupling taking feverish place, a woman's knees up around a man's back, two well-dressed guards trying to look invisible - despite their large frames - in the corner of the room.
"Bronte," Tine hissed, pointing to where Arthur would much rather look away. The woman's arm wrapped around Bronte's slim neck and he hauled her up, in their full view. The flush across her apple cheeks obscured her freckles, but Molly O'Shea's red hair was unmistakeable.
"Shit," Arthur said, leaping from the wall and beckoning for Tine to do the same. She hesitated a moment, looking back to the window a few times before following suit. Arthur caught her and slowed her fall, then the pair ran for their horses, in disbelief of what they'd just seen.
*
Tine had tried to joke about what they'd witnessed on their ride back to camp, by their small fire when they stopped for the night, but Arthur refused to be baited, a slow roil in his stomach. He'd been reckless enough leaving with Tine, and what he'd seen would do nothing for Dutch's temper. He'd been burdened with delivering a lot of bad news, lately, and wasn't up to much more.
They returned to camp by dusk, Arthur leaving Buster, and Tine and Darling next to him, to talk to Dutch and get things over with.
The leader took the news with eerie calm, his expression unmoved. "And you didn't kill her?"
Arthur spluttered in surprise. "Kill her, Dutch, I..." Dutch remained passive, grinding the remainder of his evening cigar into the log where he sat, then rose to standing, offering a friendly wave to a passing Mary-Beth and Tilly.
"You know the rules," he said. Arthur backed away, returning to his lean-to, trying to keep his horror to himself.
That night, he pulled his journal from his bag, hoping to look through it for guidance as he'd always done, to reconcile the various Dutches and Tines that battled in his memories and discover which ones were true, to trace the threads back to how he'd gotten here.
But he'd barely written anything in months; his drawing of the lace pattern on Tine's dress from way back at Clemens Point innocuous and damning on the page. The empty pages unnerved him, as did the very real possibility that Dutch had lied to his face about Blackwater, about Heidi McCourt.