#yeehawgust

Hey, y’all! I know August is wrapping up, but as a reminder this blog’ll keep rebloggin’ whatever Yeehawgust-related works you put in the tag as long as folks keep makin’ them. Feel free to use the prompt list for drawing challenge months like Inktober or Huevember as some folks have in the past. Don’t worry about being “late”, what matters is if you’re having fun and putting your work out there.

On another note, since this has been asked: if you want to collect your Yeehawgust pieces into a zine or sketchbook (for sale or otherwise), you’re totally welcome to use the Yeehawgust name and even include the actual prompt-list image if you’d like! Just be sure to include the URL for the blog somewhere so interested folks can come here to see everyone’s work, find the prompt lists, and follow the blog so they can join in next year.

Thanks so much to all of y’all who’ve participated and supported Yeehawgust this year! I can’t believe how much cool art y’all made. I hope y’all enjoyed yourselves and that you’ll join in when Yeehawgust 2022 rolls around.

-Mod CeilingCow

Yeehawgust Day 31: Cliffhanger

A/N: A brief coda for “Saint Hermit and the Bounty Hunter”.

October 1908

Deer Ridge, Montana

Arthur knew that this was the quiet life Sadie had once, and lost, and now probably appreciated all the more for the years and the pain that had come in between.  As he had told Sadie last year, they’d been many people in their lives.  The thing now was that this was who they’d chosen to be, rather than the people the world seemed to have forced them into by taking away everything and everyone, and leaving only a relentless, automatic purpose to give each day any sort of direction.

He’d left his shack behind easily enough.  She’d left bounty hunting behind easily enough.  They’d ridden over the border from North Elizabeth and gotten married in Catawissa, where nobody knew Arthur Bowen and Sadie Griffith-soon-to-be-Bowen, or knew who they’d been two weeks before, let alone nine years.  They’d treated themselves to a fine dinner and posh hotel for their wedding night, because given he planned to only marry once in his life, he damn well intended that to be an occasion fit to treasure.  And for her, he wanted this new start to be a sweet one.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Bowen had headed northwest, determined to look back as little as they could, to move forward rather than in endless circles.  They’d taken the summer and built this cabin up on Deer Ridge, hunted and fished and chopped firewood all to lay in stock for the winter.  Made plans for next year, and beyond, in a way that he marveled at, in a way that Arthur Morgan hadn’t and Arthur Lewis couldn’t.

That easy partnership they’d had years ago and back near Mercy seemed to continue.  The shells they’d put up of the saint hermit and the bounty hunter kept eroding, but strangely he had no fear of it.  She was here, and she’d chosen to be with him, and likewise him for her.  They had each other’s backs then, seen each other’s raw and vulnerable spots.  He could trust her with his heart and soul just the same.

One thing was about to change, though.  She was pregnant.  Hadn’t said anything yet, but something in him knew, some part of him that understood even if he couldn’t fully put his finger on the changes.  She’d wanted children, mourned the loss of the chance with Jake.  As for him, well, he’d told her about Isaac and Eliza.  They hadn’t exactly planned this, but they hadn’t exactly taken any measures against it either.  And from the smiles he’d seen from her when she was lost in thought, he knew she was happy.  So was he.

He closed his eyes sometimes and tried to fight against the fear that he would lose another child, or fail them as he would Isaac.  That there would be something that he couldn’t fight against, and he’d come home again someday to find them dead too.  Just the same as Sadie woke in the night sometimes with a gasp, clinging tightly to him, at the fear of men breaking into the cabin intent on doing violence.

But they’d get by, day by day, week by week.  The bleak worry sometimes might hang them over the edge of a cliff, the abyss of the past yawning dark and horrible below them, but he believed she would always, always hold onto him with all her might to keep him from falling.  How could he do any less for her?  That it was a happiness aware of sorrow and the fear of loss didn’t mean it wasn’t a wonderful sort of happiness all the same.  How long had it been since he’d actually felt the spark of joy and anticipation within him?  So long he couldn’t even recall directly.  But here it was all the same.  They weren’t too old or too damaged to have that for their own, and that notion never failed to make him grateful for it.

For now, he had time to come to terms with the mingled joy and grief.  Whatever feelings she was having about lost chances with Jake and lost years, he would give her that time too.  She would tell him when she was ready.  And then they’d look forward to their son or daughter together.

Yeehawgust Day 30: Spaghetti Western

Foreword to “Red Dead Redemption” 

“None of this is the way you remember it, I expect,” I said to my Aunt Sadie about fifteen years back as we watched Buck Jones on the television defeating the Hundred Hands Gang.  

She smiled at me and said, “Nothing ever is, Jack.  Even when it was happening, everyone saw it differently.  The truth’s got a thousand different facets.  It all depends on the storyteller.  You and Bea know that better than any of us.”

It still amazes me how Buck Jones turned into a real phenomenon.  You can still see his square jaw and resolute eyes, grit tempered by that winning smile, on kids’ lunchboxes, on novels, and on television.

America has always loved Elijah “Buck” Jones, right from that first episode broadcast in to fill space left by programs shuttered suddenly by the Depression, where a desperate outlaw finds his breaking point and is betrayed by his gang for it, and comes out of it seeking a new way of life rather than vengeance.  People took to the bandit-turned-hero maybe even more so than the likes of the Lone Ranger and Marshal Dillon.  Those men are easy to admire, but they almost inspire super-human awe more than love.  Buck Jones was always flawed, and I wrote him that way.  Given the hard times we’ve seen, maybe the idea that there can be grace, that someone fallen can still come out on the side of the angels, appeals to our idea of being truly self-made.  The notion that goodness isn’t inherent, that it’s a path chosen and sometimes earned, helps us believe that we can find our best selves.  No matter what stumbles we’ve made, we need to hope that redemption is possible.

I knew plenty of men and women like that, neither angels nor demons, but those who chose the way of the righteous in the end.  They gave the inspiration for Buck Jones’ many adventures.  They gave their blessing to tell their tales someday, and their children and grandchildren all agreed that it’s a story that should be told.  Some of those tales are my own, including one about a boy, an Italian gangster, and a spaghetti dinner that’s become a well-known part of Buck Jones lore.   

It’s a more complicated story and a harder world than the one of Buck Jones, Hattie Faber, Paulina Morning Star, Robert McQuarry, and so many others.  But this world we live in now is a far more complicated one, full of questions about what “right” truly is, whether we treat everyone fairly, whether the law is always just and right.  So it’s a world perhaps more ready to hear this kind of story where the lines aren’t so clearly drawn. 

It’s been ten years since my Uncle Arthur passed, and he was the last of them.  Fitting as from what I knew of him, he always needed to wait and be sure others were all right before he could let himself rest.  I’ve spent that time since then compiling all of those stories into this book.

There were so many towns over the years that none of them clearly recalled the name of the town where the doctor tended to my birth.  My mother thought it was named Diamondback Junction, but she wasn’t quite sure.  Though I’m not certain that it matters.  If they taught me anything it’s that origins and even history aren’t destiny.  I am who I am no matter the name of that town.      

It’s a story told so far only in the long-yellowed newspaper articles of the 1880s and 1890s mostly listing notorious acts and desperate pursuit by the law.  It’s a story of outlaws, orphans, immigrants, titans of industry, gangsters, bronco busters, tough women, Indians, soldiers, miners, gunslingers, tuberculosis and cholera, gunfights and preachers, railroads and stagecoaches, big cities and boomtowns and wilderness and desert.  All of it a portrait of a long-gone American West where they grew up and lived, and whose dying days I was born into somewhere in Utah in 1895.   

But it’s more than the events of the previous century.  Aunt Sadie was right that the truth depends on the storyteller.  So this is the truth of the Van Der Linde Gang as it was told to me by the survivors who chose to walk away from that life in the end.  

There’s plenty of that to make for a hell of a read.  But like how Buck Jones’ years striving to be a man worthy of his second chance at life became the part of his tale that grabbed people’s hearts, I contend that the people those former outlaws became after those days makes for the far more remarkable story.  Because this is a tale of redemption as much as anything, and Buck and the rest of them owe much to it.  This is the story of my family, and my wife Bea’s family.  It gives me great pride to finally tell it, and it gives Bea great pride to provide all of the illustrations for it.

John “Jack” Roberts, Jr.

Seattle, Washington

November 1968

Yeehawgust Day 29: Fastest Gun In The West

A/N: An AU where a certain event didn’t happen in Chapter 2, and instead Arthur comes to call on the Downses again after the events of “Blessed Are The Peacemakers” in Chapter 3.

July 1899

Downes Ranch, New Hanover

Archie came into the house, his features tense, but he kept his voice low so as not to disturb Thomas’ restless sleep.  “Momma, it’s that debt collector again.”

Edith felt her heart in her throat suddenly, swallowing hard.  She should have figured he’d come back.  When she’d chased him off last time by telling him Thomas was sick, she’d hoped…but no, the likes of people who’d lend money at such punishing rates of interest and send a bully to collect wouldn’t care.  Oh, Thomas, you gentle, noble fool.  You want to help the world, but did you have to go to the likes of them?

She went out onto the porch, closing the door behind her, making it clear he wasn’t welcome to come in.  She saw him there, swinging down from the back of the fancy white mare he’d been riding.  Bitterness filled her for a moment seeing the sleek horse.  If he could afford such a horse as that, rather than their tired old farm nags, he and his creepy lender Mr. Strauss certainly didn’t need their debt.  

“Mrs. Downes.”  He greeted her coolly, standing there, arms folded.  “I assume you know why I’m here.”

No point with pretense.  “Of course I do.  The answer is no different than it was before.  We have nothing, sir.  My husband’s been in bed ever since two days after you threatened us the last time.  That’s five weeks if you’re bothering to count.  And there’s days I don’t think he’ll ever get out of it again.”  She stood there in front of the door, protecting Archie and Thomas both, shocked at her own anger and boldness, but what else could she do?  Chances were he’d just shove her aside and do what he pleased and ransack the house, but at least she’d told him how it was.  “So take whatever you please, I suppose, you blasted…parasite.  Take it and leave us alone.”

It was only as the debt collector came closer and lifted his head, showing his face rather than the brim of his dark hat, that she saw the marks of strain on his face–the exhausted and hollow eyes, the slack cheeks.  The way his clothes hung loose as if he’d lost weight suddenly.  As if he’d been in bed himself, and she didn’t want to see it.  She didn’t want to think of him as a person.  She didn’t want to think of him at all.

He just stood there, looking at her, but she didn’t get the sense he was trying to unsettle her with a stare.  There was almost an absent-minded, faraway quality to that gaze, as if he was lost in his own mind.  Deciding what to do?  Deciding what he could take from them?  Her eyes dropped to the gun strapped to his hip, breath catching.  The casual way he wore it and the well-worn leather of the holster promised her that this was a man who could use that gun with quick, brutal efficiency.  This was no tale about some swift outlaw gunslinger, though.  This was reality.  “What do you want?  He’s dying.  You think you can beat money out of a dying man?”  He’d told Thomas to sell her, to sell Archie–would he actually take them?  A quiver of fear ran through her, but she did her best to stay upright, spine straight, and to not look away.

The moment broke, and he was the one who looked away.  “Just get out of here.”

“What do you mean?”  She wasn’t going to leave Thomas and Archie to this man and some bizarre notion of being a gentleman by demanding the woman leave so he could do his worst to the man and boy.

He looked back at her, eyes narrowing, and there was a harsh edge to his voice when he repeated, “I said, get out of here.  Get lost.  Take your boy and your husband and be gone in the next day or two, you hear me?  I’m gonna tell Strauss you looked long gone when I got here today.  But if you’re fool enough to still be here after this, and if you make a fool of me, I promise you, it ain’t gonna be nothing nice.”  He shook his head, muttering something to himself as turned on his heel and headed back to his horse.

“Where are we supposed to–”

He didn’t even turn back.  “Ain’t my problem!” he barked as he swung up onto his horse.

She wasted no time, heading into the house to start packing.  Two hours later, Archie told her he’d found a fancy gold necklace in the yard near where the white mare had been.  Whether the debt collector had dropped it accidentally or on purpose, she might never know, but she was thankful for it all the same.  It would bring enough money with what little they had to get them somewhere.

Yeehawgust Day 28: Snowed In

December 1872

Chicago, Illinois

It was one of the coldest winters they could remember in Chicago, so people kept saying as they came into the saloon, stomping the slush and snow off their boots, their cold-reddened faces exposed as they unwrapped scarves.

Winter wasn’t in Elena Melchionna’s bones.  At least not this cold, bitter winter that cut deeply under the skin like the teeth of an angry lion.  Avellino had been cold in December, yes, but not like this.  Here the wind blew fiercely, and the skies opened to pour down snow like the wrath of an angry God, sometimes blanketing the skeletal-like remains of burned blackened timbers where a business or home had stood little more than a year ago.

At least she’d had a place to live all this year, a roof over her head.  That was better than last year when the first snow caught far too many people still left homeless living in the ruins of a city half-burned in October.  She’d been one of them.  Nobody had wanted a dark-featured, slightly too plump Italian girl with no English who’d set foot in Chicago only three months before it burned, and who’d lost her home and only family to the fire.

A girl did what she had to do in order to survive.  She’d found a man at one of the camps that sprung up around the city for those without shelter.  He’d become a protector, even if not a husband.  Jamie Marston didn’t care that her English still sometimes wasn’t the best, though she was learning quickly.  It wasn’t needed for what he wanted her for, whether with him or making money by sometimes going with other men when they were broke.  Sometimes there was sweetness in him too, another orphan alone in this world, who’d bury his face in her hair, and murmuring what she could tell was admiring praise.  She’d gotten past the notion of sin and confession, much as they tried to crop up within her again sometimes.  She’d survived as a woman alone in a world that had no use for such a thing, and that was that.  What price she would pay for that she would pay.

Besides, she had one comfort.  It was only another two months now, and this baby would be hers at least, whether Jamie wanted much to do with it or not.  Much as he tried to sometimes deny it could be his, she knew, and so did he.  This child would be a Marston, and she’d made him swear it would bear his name, whether son or daughter, and whether he would marry her or not.  He’d agreed to that much. 

She almost hoped for a son.  The world was all too often no good for a girl.  But she would love and cherish either.  As for a name, she wasn’t certain yet.  Too many people she had loved that she wanted to honor.  But for a boy, she thought Giovanni, for her uncle, for his bright merry eyes and warm laughter that had made her feel so at home in this strange land.  For a girl, Sofia, her quiet and gentle and sure aunt with a singing voice fit for angels, whom Giovanni had looked upon like the sun rose and set at her command.

She would go and lay flowers at their graves when the snow melted, and introduce them to her son or daughter.  As she sat there stroking her belly, thinking of the future, thinking of Chicago rising from the ashes and hoping for a brighter future for her and her baby as well, she sighed.  For now at least, this room above the saloon was all she and Jamie had.

She saw the snow had begun to fall yet again, and the wind had begun to howl.  No, she couldn’t leave the saloon today, even if she had wanted to do so.  Best to stay here, snug and warm.  Stuffing another rag into the cracked windowpane to seal out the draft, she tucked her wrapper tighter around herself and headed downstairs to see what Padraig had made in the kitchen for supper for both boarders and drinkers alike.

Yeehawgust Day 27: Dust Storm

August 2021

Chicago, Illinois

The way things had gone had delayed plans a bit, but finally, finally, they’d found a house to take on together.  Much as she loved Caro, Harry, Josh, and Maddie, and as much as Arthur loved John and Abigail and Jack, Sadie thought either of them might have committed murder if it had gone on much longer.  Staying with one’s siblings for a time in a new city was one thing.  Staying with them through months and months of 24/7 togetherness in a pandemic…well, if nothing else it had given her and Arthur something to ruefully laugh about together.  She didn’t think she’d have gotten through those earliest days without those texts and Skype chats.

But now here they were, and this was their house.  A bit of an as-is fixer upper, especially given it had been sitting vacant with the snowbird owners going back and forth about making their seasonal-turned-years-long move to Georgia permanent.  But what wasn’t a bit of a work in progress these days?  She and Arthur had already pored over swatches and websites and plans, Arthur sketching things out with that surprising skill of his.  They’d spent more than their share of time in Lowe’s debating paint and arguing about the merits of various faucets and cabinets for the kitchen, but agreed that a good stove and oven were a top priority.

They’d finally gotten the keys and the closing signed, and now here they were, staring at a house that was theirs, and desperately in need of a deep cleaning before actually doing anything with all those grand plans.  She eyed Arthur.  “Well, guess it’s time to evict the dust bunnies.”

“They’ve definitely been busy breeding these past years,” he agreed with a shrug and a laugh.  “Living room first?”

“Oh, no, no.”  She gave him a wink.  “Bedroom, honey.”

He shot back a knowing smile.  “Because it’s very practical to start upstairs and then move our way down so we ain’t tracking dust through a clean downstairs?” 

“Utterly practical.  I can’t fault your logic.”

“That is, of course, not the only reason to want the bedroom done first.”

“Of course.  I want to sleep somewhere comfortable as soon as possible.”

They’d spent plenty of time picking out a bed.  God, the idea of the sheer luxury of a new queen sized bed, especially after nearly two years now of the old twin bed at Caro’s with its saggy mattress?  Her back and hips, if nothing else, told her too many mornings that she was far, far closer to forty than twenty, and she couldn’t sleep like that indefinitely.  And the idea of having Arthur there every night…even better.  

It wasn’t like how it had been with Jake all those years ago.  They’d finally moved in together a few years out of college.  It had been a matter of mismatched furniture from Walmart and Goodwill and Craigslist, a mishmash of dishes and kitchen stuff and linens, that followed them from apartment to apartment and then to a house, slowly replacing a piece here and there as it wore out.  It had been like that still, even well into their thirties despite having enough money, because by then the whole thing was comfortable in its mismatched coziness.  But they’d never quite gotten to plan a home from the very start like this.  She was glad she and Arthur would get that experience together, to have something different from how it had been with Jake, and she suspected he was glad to have something different from how it had been with Eliza.

They’d come well-armed with plenty of Pledge and rags and a vacuum and Swiffer dusters.  Soon enough a storm of dust filled the air as the great dust bunny eviction began, and even though they’d be sticky and dirty and sweaty by day’s end, she knew already they’d look at their work with a hell of a lot of pride and satisfaction, starting to make this place their own.

Yeehawgust Day 26: Vultures Circling

August 1870

Gerhardt’s Pass, Oregon

Beatrice wasn’t sure whether it had been one day or two since the doctor had come.  She’d seen the look in his eyes, heard the hushed tones with which he murmured to Lyle over in the corner, and with Lyle cursing as he left the wagon and the pallet where she lay, she’d known what she already felt deep in her bones.  

The fever and the pain that had once consumed her had faded, felt now at some peculiar remove like hearing music from another room.  It would all be over soon, and that was a relief.  The vultures might be circling, so to speak, and she’d seen so many of them in the five years since they’d arrived in America.  She felt them watching her now just at the edge of her vision, not certain whether they were real or phantoms, and not certain whether it mattered.  Exhausted as she was, she could only accept it.  This was her end.

A part of her wondered whether she had caused this by her thoughts.  The nervousness and sometimes despair over being pregnant again, worrying what she would do.  David and Arthur both had readily crossed Lyle’s temper, for all David had been just a baby yet when he died.  Having lost two already, she knew the signs.  But this time, the bleeding hadn’t stopped.  Maybe it was being four months along this time that had done it.

We go together then, you and me, she thought towards that child that would never be, now finally able to offer them nothing but love and tenderness rather than having it mingled so heavily with trepidation and fear.  Perhaps we shall see David, and your other brothers or sisters.

But peaceful as that notion was, that still left Arthur.  He’d be alone with Lyle after this.  Lyle had gone to town hours ago, awkwardly grunting something about getting supplies.  She suspected it was only that he couldn’t sit here and watch her die, and that he’d be at the saloon nursing his sorrow.  Hard-handed and angry as he sometimes was, there was a peculiar vulnerable and tender streak in him all the same.  She was only thankful Lyle had taken Arthur with him.  He’d chased Arthur off most of the time since Beatrice took to bed, growling for him to go find something useful to do.  Sparing him the experience of it, she supposed.  She thanked him for that.  

She’d managed to talk to Arthur last night, though, when he’d crept in after Lyle went to sleep.  Given him the portrait of her taken earlier that year in Wyoming, and showed him the papers she’d hidden behind it.  Papers neither of them could read, but papers that would hopefully be the key to a better future all the same.  The ones that officially made him an American boy, not just another immigrant child.  He would belong here.  He already sounded far more American than Welsh, and she was grateful for that.  She could only hope he’d have the chances she’d wanted for him, even if she wouldn’t be here to see it.      

In the end, that was all she could do for him.  It seemed so little, and she was afraid for him all the same.

Hearing the creak of someone climbing in the wagon, she couldn’t help her surprise.  Lyle had come back so soon?  No, that couldn’t be.  But she heard footsteps approaching, and she heard the scrape of glass and the hiss of a match, saw the brightening behind her closed eyes as someone lit the lantern that had gone out awhile ago.  It hadn’t mattered to her, but now that there was light again, she opened her eyes to look at who had come to call.

She didn’t know either of them by sight, fair-haired and well past her own twenty-eight years. Neighbors?  No, they were far from anyone.  Lyle had made certain of it.  Who else would simply climb up into the wagon like this?  KInd strangers, perhaps.  “Are you looking for Lyle?”  It always seemed to come down to that.  She closed her eyes again.  “He isn’t here just now, and I’m sorry for whatever he’s done, but I’m afraid we don’t have much for the taking.”  Money ran through her man’s fingers like water, fast as his quicksilver dreams of riches.

“Should we…”  The woman spoke, her voice soft. 

She was too tired for this.  “Are you missionaries, then?  I suppose the saving of a soul becomes even more important at the very end.  There’s no need of that.  I’ve made what peace I might with my God, I assure you.”  Even if she’d come so far from the girl who’d attended chapel so faithfully back in Aberdare.

The man finally spoke up, his deep voice low and gentle.  “No.  You don’t need to worry about missionaries.”  The words in Welsh, no less, and the familiar lilt of it lifted her spirits in spite of herself.  “Mam, it’s me.  It’s Arthur.”

Now that snapped her to attention, and she opened her eyes, finding she had some fury to spare yet for someone who’d tease her like this as she lay there dying.  But she saw those eyes looking at her with a sad, knowing tenderness–that familiar blue-tinted green, the eyes she saw whenever she chanced to have a mirror.  The ones she saw too every day in her boy, her Arthur.  His hair–it was dusted with grey, yes, but the same dark blond as hers.  Lyle’s brows for certain, and something of the cast of his cheekbones.

Her boy had just turned seven last month, and yet she’d swear he also sat here beside her now, a man of at least forty, perhaps fifty.  She looked at him, and something in her knew him, something deeper than blood and bone, an echo within the soul.  “So you are.”  She didn’t know how it could be so, only that it was.  She drank in the sight of him.  Such a large man, tall and broad.  He hadn’t gotten that from Lyle, perhaps instead from her own father Dylan, such a large man he’d been permanently stooped long before he died from working in the cramped mine tunnels.  Seeing the marks of age on him, the lines etched into his face, and the scars–the small nick on the bridge of his nose, another on his right cheek, and a large one on his chin only somewhat hidden by a short-cropped beard.  Child-Arthur was healing a similar cut on his nose even now, earned by tumbling off the wagon while playing out a week ago, and by the look of it she’d known it would scar, just as it had on this man.  She glanced past him to the woman.  Tawny hair, a riot of freckles, amber eyes, a large scar on her right brow.  Watching Beatrice just as carefully as she was watched.  She asked, speaking in Welsh and managing some good humor, “Well, my boy, who is this you’ve brought with you?”  But she already suspected.

If she hadn’t already believed, that shy smile, that half-lowering of his gaze, would have told her.  “This is my wife.  Sadie.”

“Pleasure to meet you.”  Her Welsh was less polished, her accent more obvious to Beatrice’s ear, but it surprised her all the same to hear it.  Had Arthur taught her?  There were a thousand other questions.

But she licked her lips, needing now to ask the important question: “Why have you come?  And…how?”  She switched back to English for it.  He was an American, her boy, and she would have him be so to her at the end.  She’d fought hard for that.  It was good he hadn’t forgotten his Welshness entirely, but some things needed to be kept close and secret.  She knew that full well. 

“How?  I don’t know for sure.  There’s some red-headed fella named Sinclair who’s gonna have some explanations for this.”  He leaned in, and reached out to take his hand in hers.  A large hand, work-roughened, so unlike the small hand she still took sometimes to hold onto him in crowds and the like.  “Why?  That’s a question that’s got more answers than I know what to do with, really.  Cause I…”  He sighed, shook his head, and the aching look in his eyes told her too much.

“I know there’s no return from this, <i>fy ngwash i</i>.  It’ll be soon enough.  I knew it last night when I gave you those papers.  Did you have the use of them?”

“Sort of.  We ended up in Canada, so uh, proving I was born in Wales actually helped us there.”

“Not America, then?”

“There was better land in Canada.”

“So you’re a farmer?”  She couldn’t help but brighten at that.  She’d wanted something like that for him.  Something peaceful, gentle, nothing like Lyle’s life.

“Horses, mostly.  Some sheep, cattle, and the like.  It’s a good place.  A pretty good life.  And the rest, well…”

“You’d best tell her, Arthur,” Sadie said, her voice full of the twanging accent she’d heard in New Austin and some parts of Texas.  “She’ll see it eventually anyhow.”

He sighed, shoulders sagging.  “I reckon you will at that.  It weren’t…all what you hoped for me, Momma.  Daddy ain’t gonna live but another four years past this.  Gets hanged for horse theft in San Francisco just after Christmas.  After that, a lot happened.  And it took me a long time to get things right.”

“Then tell me how it was, son.”  She heard the tone of both inflexible command and gentle invitation in her words, and knew it for the way she spoke to him sometimes as a mother, asking to know the truth of something.  Usually when he’d done some petty mischief or theft that she knew was Lyle’s influence on him.  You must tell me, and perhaps I’ll tell you that it was wrong and why, but I won’t hate you for it.  Because I love you enough to want you to know what’s right.  She saw that conflict in him already, a boy who could steal candy from the store and shrug about it, but who’d come home the next day taking a beating to save a stray cat from being kicked to death by some older boys.

So he told her.  And perhaps it wasn’t the worst she could imagine after hearing Lyle was dead when Arthur was eleven.  But it made for no pretty picture.  Hearing he’d been taken in by criminals, and ones far better and more sophisticated than Lyle could ever be, something broke within her heart.  She’d wanted so much better for him.  But even as he didn’t quite look at her, he kept talking.

He told her of the gang he’d been in, of seeing no other life or future for himself.  Told her of a little boy named Isaac, her first grandchild.  You’ll meet him someday, long before you should.  He’s such a good kid.  I know you’ll love him, and he’ll love you.  Told her of nearly three decades of mistakes and failures after this.  She might have thought it was a life of only regrets, but then he told her of a new life he’d made, of Sadie, of Canada and the children who had lived, grandchildren she would never see: Beatrice, named for her.  Matthew.  Susanna.  Andrew.  

She felt that pull, as if being summoned.  Light fading, like a fire dimmed now beyond embers.  Arthur must have seen it as well, because he stopped telling her about little things, and reached out to take her hand.  Beatrice felt someone else take her other hand–Sadie, then.  “I don’t exactly know how we got here,” he said quietly.  “But I know how it was that day.  I came back with Daddy and you was gone already.  And…that always stayed with me.  That I wasn’t there.  And I know how it is.  Nobody ought to die alone like that.”  There was some kind of knowing weariness to his voice at that, a question she would never be able to ask and he would never be able to answer for her.  “So here we are.”   

So much that would be left unsaid, but no matter.  She would see in time.  She would see all of it, and there was comfort to it, because now she knew her boy would be all right in the end.  That he would remember her too, that he loved her.  That put her fear to rest, and so now she could rest.  There were no vultures now, only the final words of love and farewell spoken, and the reassurance of the hands holding hers as everything faded into peace. 

Yeehawgust Day 25: Parched

March 1911

Sisika Penitentiary, Lemoyne

Unfortunately, twelve years wasn’t quite enough to make sure that anyone who’d been here during his first stay here in Sisika had hopefully moved on.  There weren’t that many of them left, but there were enough to recall and recognize him–the distinctive scars sure as shit didn’t help that.

They remembered him, and mostly they remembered the spectacular prison break that John Marston’s friends had pulled back then, Arthur and Sadie pulling off the damn near impossible and doing it behind Dutch’s back besides.  He could have told them, Don’t bother, they won’t be coming for me this time.  Arthur and Sadie wouldn’t, couldn’t, know.

But they took no chances, and so his time as a guest of the government was spent mostly in this small stone-walled cell with no window.  He could tell when it was hot out, because he started to feel like an unfortunate loaf of bread in a hot oven, until he was so parched he would have done just about anything for more water.  He could tell when it was rainy, because the walls would grow damp.  That meant, as far as he could figure, that there was an outside wall there, for all the good it did him.  He hadn’t seen the sun in–he didn’t know how long.

He hadn’t seen Jack and Abigail in even longer.  Back then, bad as Sisika was, he’d at least had work detail, backbreaking as it was, to keep his mind off things.  He’d never been the sort to sit and daydream and get lost in his own thoughts like Arthur.  But there was no world around him now to occupy him, and no world inside his mind to retreat to safely, so all that he had was the numbing passage of time without measure or meaning.  Nobody beat or shouted at him like they had then.  They just ignored him and left him in this dark lonely cell, and oddly, that felt curiously even more painful to endure.  He would have killed to hear Abigail’s laughter, Jack’s chatter about those endless stories of his, even Uncle’s bullshit.  The murmur of the guards out in the hall was the closest he got to knowing that other people existed most of the time. 

He’d come to live for the times they shoved a tray of food through the window, or the door swung open so they came in and left him with a bucket for washing, or took his bucket of piss and shit away.  It proved he hadn’t gone completely crazy in here.

He’d known the outlaw life would catch up with them someday, known the good couldn’t last, because that was how the world was.  He expected a hemp-rope necktie soon enough.  He’d delayed and escaped it for years already.  He’d escaped Sisika then, when he probably shouldn’t have, and some part of him felt like there was a piece of him that had never left.  Like he’d just picked right back up where he’d left off then.  But he didn’t know what they’d done to his wife and his boy, and that was the thing that gnawed at him.  

He’d failed them again.  Like he’d been failing them all these years, ever since Abigail joined the gang and he’d been drawn to her laughter and smile and her bright blue eyes and her lousy, earnest attempts at cooking.  He’d never quite done right by her.  Never quite done right by Jack either, much as he wanted to, but he always seemed so far out of reach.

At least this time would be the last time he’d fail them.  There was that much grace to the whole thing.

He heard the jingle of keys in a guard’s hand, the click of them turning in the lock, and then the screech of metal in need of oil as the heavy door swung open, letting in far too much light compared to the dim beam of it through the door slit.  Time to give him a bucket of water and a bar of soap again?  God, he could use it.  He couldn’t smell himself, but he felt the filth on his skin.

Closing his eyes against it, feeling as blind and grubby as a mole, he recognized the voice of Agent Ross.  “Well, Mr. Marston, it’s your lucky day.  I’ve got a deal to offer you that I’m sure you’ll be interested in accepting.”

Yeehawgust Day 24: El Chupacabra

October 1903

Torquemada, Nuevo Paraiso, Mexico

The dead had walked for six months now.  In that time, Arthur had wryly been thankful for yet another reason that he and Sadie were here in Nuevo Paraiso.  After all, where the only people they had killed were a handful of Del Lobos who’d come at them.  Being back in more northerly places with much bloodier memories, and possibly seeing the faces of people whom he’d been the death of once already, and having to put them down again, might well have been too much.

It wasn’t exactly the peaceful life he’d long envisioned, but at least the fight was now for something good, something clear and fine.  They fought to protect the living and to give the dead rest again, and he could accept that.  He was certainly helping people by this, and that helped balance his very lopsided scales somewhat.

And for today, he and Sadie were out hunting.  Not for the undead, though their eyes and ears were keen for that, but for food.  The people of Chuparosa, thankfully safe within their gated adobe walls, always needed feeding, and nobody was fool enough to go out alone unless they wanted to become undead.

Bea and Mattie were safe back home, under Karen’s watchful eye.  Some said that for both parents of young children to go out together was foolishness, giving Sadie a glance that invited her to stay home as they thought a woman clearly ought but both he and Sadie knew there was nobody else either of them would trust more in the danger of the desert and the risen dead than each other.  Going out together meant they both came back alive.  That was how it had long been between them, and how it was, and that was that.

“I swear,” he said, tracking a herd of goats, their shaggy coats indicating they’d run wild for a while now, “if I ever find out there’s some bastard who started all this–”  

“Nobody knows,” Sadie pointed out.  “Some fool touching some cursed artifact, or making dark deals with the Devil, or if it’s supposedly just God’s judgment like the preachers keep ranting, who the hell knows?  Until we know that, ain’t no fixing this.  All I know is we’re alive, and I aim to keep it so.”

“That’s the way of it, just about,” he acknowledged, and suddenly something in the middle of the goats caught his eye as the goats scattered, bleating and screaming.  A wolf?  Quickly snapping to it instead, Sadie beat him to the shot, and the thing dropped in its tracks.

Heading up to it, he could only stare at it.  “Jesus, that thing looks like a wolf humped a boar and a porcupine.”  The ridged back and pointed snout, the quills, and the grey-green skin and eyes that were an unsettling red even in death, told him that like much these days, this was no natural thing.  He’d heard people talking about these beasts.  Chupacabra, they called them.  The goat-sucker.  The sharp, bloody teeth and the goat it had dropped with one bite certainly made some eloquent argument for that name.  

He sighed, reaching for it to skin it.  The goat they could use, for certain.  They couldn’t eat the meat of the chupacabra, because it would make them sick, but the pelt and claws and the like would fetch good money as a curiosity from someone.  There had been some Harvard or Yale–maybe Princeton–professor down here making noises about wanting to collect specimens.  If he hadn’t gotten eaten yet, maybe he and Sadie could sell it to him.  He glanced over at her, unable to resist a slight smile.  “You ever miss them days when the strangest thing that happened to us was outrunning Pinkertons?”

She laughed, patting him on the shoulder, before crouching to skin and butcher the goat.  “Sure.  Though at least the shamblers are dumb.  That’s a comfort.” 

Yeehawgust Day 23: Tall Tales

February 1884

Council Bluffs, Iowa

A raw wind blew down the streets of Council Bluffs today, still full of snow after the blizzard, and they’d be a mucky, muddy nightmare even after.  There was frost on her window even now, and all the girls and women at Hattie McCormick’s, Hattie herself included, had bundled up in heavy winter woollens to help conserve the dwindling woodpile.  Seeing her fellow painted ladies in their sweaters and thick woolly socks, hair messy and eyes still crusted with sleep, rather than dressed to entice, Ruth Roberts knew it would be a quiet day, and a quiet night.  Men usually weren’t so desperate for a poke that they’d trudge through that kind of shit.  Just meant in a few days or a week when everything got cleaned up, they’d be back and even more eager for the delay.  But until then, she’d enjoy this little vacation.

She headed downstairs, seeing Abigail sitting on a stool at the bar while Uncle leaned on it, telling her, “…and that’s when they told me they’d trade me for this gold mine they’d found–”

“Filling her head with nonsense again, old man?” she said, but without much bite to the words.  Uncle was a lazy bastard most of the time, and nobody knew his real name, but he made a good bartender, and he’d proved oddly attached to Abigail.  Not in an alarming fashion, more in a pathetically incapable and cluelessly affectionate sort of way like a man with a puppy, but he’d followed Ruth and Abigail here from the Lamplighter and she suspected when she got too old for Hattie soon enough, he’d follow them too to wherever came next.  He’d assigned himself as Abigail’s protector, told Ruth that once, and sometimes she wanted to laugh, but sometimes she was touched by it.  Abigail was a girl growing up in this life, with nowhere else to go.  She’d probably be working herself far too soon, as much as Ruth wished with all her soul for her girl to have something different, something finer.  

To have a man who might have been as randy as any but who didn’t want anything from her could only do her some good.  It wasn’t as though she had a father around to give her anything more than that beautiful thick dark hair, whoever he had been.  And he didn’t try to get anything from Ruth either by his interest in Abigail, so she’d accept Uncle’s supposed help for what it was–not much, but certainly nothing harmful.

“Ain’t like there’s much else to do,” Uncle pointed out, nodding to the iced-over windows.  “Bad as that wind is with the cold?  Any man walking here today’s like to lose some toes or fingers to frostbite.”  He cackled, giving Ruth a knowing wink as he slid her a bottle of beer.  “Or maybe his pecker if he’s got a stiff one.”

She supposed there were places a little girl of nearly seven didn’t casually hear about things like stiff peckers, but growing up in a cathouse didn’t exactly allow for that, much as Ruth tried to keep as much of it from her daughter as she could.  It would be a losing battle eventually, but still one worth the fight.  Abigail piped up, blue eyes shining bright with glee, “Ma, Uncle’s telling me all about the gold mine he lost in a poker game!”

She sighed, shaking her head, but smiling all the same.  “Sure.  Go on with your tall tales, Uncle.  But don’t you be trying to sell her no gold mine neither.”  Girl’s got to know there’s more out there than this way, this life.

“It was only gonna cost her two cents to be my partner, Ruthie, I swear it,” Uncle replied, holding his hands up in mock surrender.

She took the beer and sat down, ready to hear whatever utter nonsense Uncle would tell Abigail.  Hell of a story, and probably not a grain of truth in it, though it wasn’t as though Ruth could read to tell her any stories of her own.  For a slow winter’s morning, tall tales and ridiculous yarns would serve well enough.

Yeehawgust Day 22: Snakebite

December 1875

Tumbleweed, New Austin

Arthur well understood by this point that they were supposed to look after the littles, Jake and him.  Though Sadie, of course, would insist she needed no looking after, even at seven, and nine-year-old Henry alternated between worshipping the two twelve-year-olds and insisting he was old enough to not be treated like a baby.  Only five-year-old Caroline went along with things peacefully enough…at least until she got a notion in her head and wandered off, chasing whatever it was that she did.

He and Jake had been poking curiously at some bones bleached in the desert sun, trying to figure out what kind of beast had been there, and turned back to see only Henry and Sadie there studying them too.  “Where’d Caro go?” Jake asked, a note of alarm in his voice.

Sadie looked around.  “Dunno.  Ran off again.”

“Well, we’d best go find her,” Arthur insisted, all sorts of visions of Caro being turned into bleached bones herself out here in the desert.  Too many bad things out here to be cautious of, and that was for sure.  Thirst for sure.  Snakebites from the rattlers ready to defend their territory.  Running across men worse than his daddy had been who might not be kind to a little kid, and Momma and Aunt Elsie and Aunt May and Uncle Rob were all worried about things stirring up here in Gaptooth Ridge.

He’d seen some things traveling with his pa before he’d gotten killed over a poker game in the Tumbleweed saloon.  Knew bad men well enough, he guessed.  But there were things about some of those men he’d seen hanging around Tumbleweed of late that set a low note of alarm even in him.  The way they wore their guns, the way they looked at things, the easy swagger in them like they thought they owned the whole town and the whole county besides, told him these weren’t men who’d do no more than try to rob up a store.

Jake didn’t think it would amount to much.  But Jake was a good kid.  A preacher’s boy.  Someone who grieved his pa’s death earlier this year so much, and Uncle Will, Will Adler, had been pretty near to a saint.  Good enough to try to be a fine pa to Arthur, along with Rob Griffith.  Good enough to take in Beatrice Morgan and her son and call them kin these past six years.  He missed Uncle Will too, but he didn’t say so too much.  It would feel like stealing that grief from Jake, from Will’s actual son.  Claiming something he had no right to have, and his own father had left him with nothing but a name, a battered hat, and memories of a loud voice and angry blows.  He almost envied Jake in some ways to have a father to mourn, and how messed up was that? 

He knew he didn’t come from that kind of blood like Jake did.  Lyle Morgan might not have been that dangerous compared to the men coming down from Rathskeller Fork, but he’d been bad.  Arthur was trying, doing his best to be something different.  Most days it seemed possible enough, but he supposed he could never be as good as Jake.  But at least he knew enough to help protect the younger kids from what was maybe coming here.  Assuming they hadn’t lost Caroline, anyhow.  Swallowing his panic, he said, “Sadie, you come with me.  Jake, you take Henry.”  That was the thing sometimes.  Jake didn’t like to make those kinds of decisions, so he and Arthur worked well together as a team there.

They found Caroline in the shade of a busted-up old wagon, studying a lizard.  She looked up at Sadie and Arthur and beamed, pointing at it.  “See?  It’s a dragon!”

Tiniest dragon ever, Arthur thought, but he couldn’t help but smile at Caro’s imagination, as ever.  “Sure is,” he said.  “Don’t want to get too close to it.  Dragons like stealing little girls, I hear.”  Caro gave a shriek of laughter at that, giggling in that happy, openhearted way she had.

“They take princesses, silly.  Not a princess.”

“No, you ain’t a princess, you’re just silly yourself,” Sadie said, rolling her eyes, but smiling at her sister all the same.  “Come on.  Let’s go home.”

Yeehawgust Day 21: Barkeep

January 1920

Deer River, Alaska

“Well,” Sean said with a sigh and a raised glass, “Prohibition, eh?  Here’s to the end of fun for the rest of America.”

“They just get to experience what we have for the last two years,” Karen pointed out dryly.  The territorial legislature, in all their almighty wisdom, had voted to ban alcohol here two years ago.  “And I’m sure they’ll figure out the same way to deal with it, just like here.”  Runs over the Canadian border, fishing boats bringing booze in from Canada as well, and stills popping up everywhere like some kind of drunk mushrooms.  “Dry ain’t ever gonna be dry.  It’s human nature.”

It didn’t hurt that the law was so thin on the ground up here in Alaska that people were mostly left to their own devices, which was how many preferred it.  It was certainly how the former Van Der Linde Gang preferred it, and though she expected the law would still think of them that way, she hadn’t thought of them by that name in years.  They’d left Dutch to find that peaceful place away from everything that they wanted, and they’d come and found it here.  Dutch?  For all his talk about an unspoiled haven for them to make their own, it seemed he’d wanted something different in the end.

The law had finally caught up with him nine years ago.  News made its way slowly to Alaska sometimes, especially away from bigger towns, but it made it here all the same.  It had been so long, but still–there was a finality to that news.  The end of something, grieving more the idea of Dutch that had turned to ashes more than the man he’d proved to be. Because now there was no chance Dutch could ever live up to the sparkle and shine of that promise, mere fool’s gold that had fooled them all.  She’d seen Arthur on the front porch of his and Sadie’s cabin that night, looking out into the distance, and seen Sadie there with him, her arm around him.  Of course he’d take it hardest, as he had back then.  He’d been with Dutch the longest.

But they’d made their choice twenty years ago, and they hadn’t regretted it.  Sean got that grin of his that she knew meant some outrageous idea was about to happen, and she couldn’t help but smile herself at it, waiting for what he’d say.  “Lenny and Tilly are clever ones with designing things, and Arthur and Sadie are good at tinkering just about anything up.  We all know it.  We’ll get something built.  But just enough to keep us with a bit of life, that’s all.  Don’t want no trouble, hey?  We saw how being in the moonshine selling business goes rotten with those Braithwaites back in Lemoyne.  No thank you, sir, to all that.”    

She reached out and ruffled his hair, as much grey as ginger now, her fingers instinctively seeking and finding the scar that marked where a Grey bullet had creased his head long ago in Rhodes.  An inch further over, Sean not turning to answer Arthur–that was the difference between life and death. She still remembered how shaken he’d been at camp that day, talking about how close he’d come to being another casualty of the day.  Sean being Sean, his irrepressible high spirits came back eventually, but seeing him that shocked and sober had stayed with her. 

Yes, better to not end up in some kind of war like the Braithwaites and Greys.  They might want to thumb their nose a little at stupid laws, but there was the difference in that and deliberately waving a red cape in front of the lawmen.  They’d learned the latter at painful cost in those dark days of 1899.  She teased him, “You gonna be our barkeep, Seannie?  You talk enough to be one.”

Yeehawgust Day 20: Tombstone

June 1875

Tumbleweed, New Austin

Two weeks ago his father had gone to sleep, and just not woken up.  That was all there was to it.  As simple as that, like a blown out candle.

But that was the thing that gnawed at Jake.  He hadn’t been sick.  He hadn’t been injured.  He’d said goodnight to Jake with his usual smile, after talking about that Sunday’s sermon a little, and about the fence on the back northern border that needed mending.  So normal, so ordinary, none of them knowing that there wouldn’t be any tomorrow.

Doc McPherson said his heart seemed to have just given out, no other real explanation for it.  His ma had looked at the doctor incredulously.  He was only thirty-five.  That kind of thing shouldn’t happen to a man that young.  But it had.  He had a flicker of fear that it might happen to him too, that he’d die young of some bad heart.

His pa would have maybe had something to say about God’s plan in all this.  Tried to make some kind of sense of it.  Jake had seen him be a wondrous comfort to people, both with the burying and the consoling.  But there was no comfort now without him.

They’d had to bring in a preacher from Armadillo named Alsop to bury Will Adler, and the church here in Tumbleweed stood empty for want of a preacher while they looked for another one.  Burying people was nothing unusual, but burying the preacher was–it left a void in the whole town.  Jake had heard people say something about it being one more mark against Tumbleweed.  Armadillo and Tumbleweed kept up in the apparent horse race to be granted a railroad spur whenever the government bothered with the back end of New Austin for it, and losing the Reverend Adler made people fear it was one more sign that Tumbleweed was falling behind its neighbor.  That its promise was nothing more than fool’s gold.

He was twelve now and that was old enough to hear people saying those kinds of things.  Looking to him too, to see if he had his pa’s calling.  I’m just me, he always thought desperately.  He was twelve and that wasn’t nearly old enough to be a man, much as he’d wanted a couple months ago to start to be reckoned as something more than a boy.  But he was the only surviving child, and the Griffiths were all younger than him–Henry, Sadie, and Caroline–so there was nobody to look to for him.  Even if he’d bawled his eyes out on Sadie’s shoulder last week.  Uncle Rob, of course, but he could sense the other man’s hesitation, not wanting to be too presumptuous as to step directly into Will Adler’s boots.  How was he supposed to figure all this out?

He didn’t want to appreciate God’s mystery, or to feel the urge to take up a preacher’s mantle.  He just wanted his father back.  He wanted to talk about sermons, or even mend that stupid fence together.

But all he had was a plot in the churchyard with New Austin earth that still bore signs of the burying and hadn’t fully settled yet, and the granite tombstone that had finally arrived yesterday.  Elegant scrolls bordered the words: Rev. William George Adler Husband, Father, Shepherd 1840-1875.

Shepherd.  He felt like a lost lamb in the harsh desert wilderness himself right now, all right, and the lump rose in his throat at that thought, knowing the reassuring shepherd wasn’t coming for him to guide and protect him.  Not anymore. 

Yeehawgust Day 19: Show Pony

September 1905

MacFarlane’s Ranch, New Austin

Six brothers, and now five were just headstones at the chapel east of Armadillo, alongside their mother, and the sixth might as well be dead. 

Hank MacFarlane, 1881-1893.  Hank, her brother, her twin.  Gone somewhere for once she couldn’t follow, and watching him cough himself to death over nearly a year had terrified her even more than her mother’s dying.  She’d been frightened of Arthur Griffith for a moment years ago when she’d met him, hearing he’d had TB, and then resented him for a moment for his survival, but she could only admire him now for that strength.  Imagining who Hank might be now, had he been lucky too.  Hank made for a loss that she still felt like a gnawing absence in her soul, because what was she without her other half?

Owen MacFarlane, 1882-1896.  Owen, always trying to keep up with her and Hank, insisting that a year between them was nothing.  Full of energy, full of ideas, full of dreams, she’d secretly loved Owen next best, even as much of a pest as he could be.  Then the cholera came and he was gone, like a flare of wildfire, compared to Hank’s slow dying.  That was Owen, always in a rush.

Cole MacFarlane, 1878-1899.  Bossy Cole, the oldest of them, and always acting like it, but he’d always had some smiles for Bonnie, even as she loved and hated how he’d try to ruffle her hair and then slip her some candy.  He’d gone to Valentine for the cattle auctions that summer.  Avoided a massive shootout between outlaws, apparently, but got into a drunken argument that turned into a duel, and he’d come home in a pine box that the sheriff of Heartlands County up in New Hanover had gently suggested Pa not open, to preserve the memory of Cole as he was.   

Ethan MacFarlane, 1884-1903.  Big, dumb, but well-meaning Ethan, who got even dumber after some liquor.  Dumb enough to try to milk a cow in the middle of the night, and the cow turned out to be Hector the bull, and that was that.  Amos and Bonnie had found him the next morning and brought him home wrapped in canvas.  After seeing the mess that was left of Ethan from the herd’s hooves, she was glad she hadn’t seen Cole.

Gus MacFarlane, 1883-1905.  After Cole, and especially after Ethan, and Pat’s leaving, some pitied the MacFarlanes their losses,and some made snide jokes about their delicacy or their apparent bad status with God that they hadn’t been deemed fit to survive.  Gus had been the last one left after Pat had said to hell with New Austin and left for New York.  Gus, who’d always had a chip on his shoulder and something to prove as the last MacFarlane boy in New Austin, and been so hellbent to prove himself a man tough enough to survive that he’d gotten killed in a bar fight up in Blackwater over a two dollar hand of poker.

And that was that.  Six sons and a daughter, and Bonnie was the only one left.  She could tell the ones who came to call at the ranch with an eye to the woman–getting a little long in the tooth at twenty-four to be unwed–who’d presumably had the mantle of her father’s heir descend upon her shoulders.  A rich enough inheritance they’d even overlook that little scandal of her elopement with Nate that had been quickly annulled, dismissing it as a motherless girl’s youthful folly amidst so much grief. 

She knew the look well by now of someone eyeing her as a prospect as a wife or a daughter-in-law, like inspecting some primped and polished show pony.  She sometimes debated braiding ribbons into her hair, and showing off her teeth in too-wide smiles so they could see them, as a snide joke of her own.  But none of them would be clever enough to see they were being mocked, so what was the point?  

She was the last MacFarlane left, and she swore that she would survive, no matter what it took.  And she would do it on her own terms.  

Yeehawgust Day 18: Gambling Den

May 1877
San Francisco, California

One lesson Arthur had learned two years ago was that Saturday night outside the various gaming hells, cathouses, and bars of the Barbary Coast could always be relied upon for some decent pickings.  There would always be drunks tossed out into the alleys, careless idiots not watching their pockets from gambling winnings, and the madam and painted ladies at Kissing Kate’s were more than amenable to let a skilled pickpocket sneak in a window and make off with a man’s wallet while he was busy.  The poor bastards were always sailors who’d wake up drugged to shit in some alley the next morning courtesy of Kate’s special brew, and they knew if they tried to complain about it, people would just laugh at a randy sailor so eager for a poke he’d been robbed during.  Not to mention they were almost never in town long enough to have time to complain before they shipped out again anyhow.

They’d made out decent uptown already, him and Benji, picking off some of the swells as they came from the theater, and the Barbary Coast was generous tonight as well with the harbor full of ships, and many working men having been paid today.

Feeling cocky with their success and aiming for a treat, he distracted a roasted chestnut vendor by lurking a little too close, and got a kick aimed at him for his trouble.  But the deed was done and as he scurried off, yelling back, “Didn’t want your stuff anyway, old man, probably tastes like it’s been rolled in horseshit!” Benji snagged a bag of chestnuts behind the man’s back and gave Arthur a quick wink before hurrying in the other direction.

They both found their way back to the largely-abandoned tenement, and it was child’s play as usual to get up to the roof by climbing over the buildings beside it, finding the board they used as a narrow footbridge and putting it down to cross, then pulling it after them as safe as if they were in a castle with its drawbridge up.  It had taken them the better part of three months to find various odds and ends of canvas, fruit crates, ropes, tin, and other bits and pieces to make their lean-to, but it kept them safe and dry.  Much better than sleeping down in alleys as they had before, scrapping with other kids most every day for the best spots.

He didn’t like to remember the days he’d been entirely alone, before he and Benji agreed to have each other’s backs.  It didn’t matter.  They had each other now, and Benji Davidson was the one person Arthur could rely upon in this world, and that was all he needed.  The rest could all go to hell, so far as he was concerned.

Sitting on the ledge of the building, Benji held out the bag of chestnuts.  They’d cooled enough that they didn’t burn Arthur’s fingers, and he joked, “Hope you didn’t shove that down your pants right after you took them, or you probably got a whole different bag of roasted nuts right now.”

“Shut up, at least I got a sack of nuts to brag about, little boy,” Benji said, throwing a pebble at him, but cackling at the joke all the same.  Not a chestnut.  Food was something they could never waste.

Tomorrow?  It would be more of the same.  Hunting for food, scrounging to survive, looking for marks.  Day after day, and he didn’t know where it all ended in this life they were living.  Probably with a bullet or a rope in the end if they didn’t get caught and dragged to reform school first, and he wasn’t sure which fate would be worse.  He didn’t bother to think about the future.  No point to it.  They lived day by day and that was the way of it.  But until the inevitable, he had Benji by his side, and tonight there were full pockets and a treat of chestnuts, and once again they could sit here at night on the ledge like a pair of kings enjoying a view of the city and the stars that anyone would envy.  That was enough for now.

Yeehawgust Day 17: Sierra Madre

January 1888

St. Denis, Lemoyne

Having been here in St. Denis for a month, morning coffee and discussion with Sister Calderón, his distaff counterpart in the church’s charitable ventures here, was fast becoming one of the favorite parts of Aldred Dorkins’ day.  It didn’t hurt that Calderón reminded him somewhat of his Aunt Milly–no nonsense but with that gentle, teasing air.  Their discussions so far had ranged from the practical to the theoretical to the whimsical, and every morning was its own particular pleasure.  He counted himself lucky to have a partner such as her in his first assignment with his order.

He’d gotten used to the taste of chicory with which St. Denisians took their coffee.  He could get used to many things, or so he hoped, but it all seemed so much.  Calderón must have sensed something, because she looked at him across the table there in the ramshackle little church here in St. Francis, and said, “Well, Brother Dorkins, you look much like a man who’s considering the daunting idea of eating an elephant one bite at a time.”

He felt himself blush, because she’d read him correctly.  In a way, that made things easier that she could see something that was within his heart and prompt him gently with it to coax it out of him.  It was a skill of hers he envied, and could only hope he could develop for himself.  “I’m not…”

Sometimes here in St. Denis he felt every bit of the young country bumpkin, a twenty-two-year-old man who’d never been further than the next county away from his parents’ farm in Maryland east of the Chesapeake, until two years ago.  Until he’d gotten his calling and talked with his Uncle Jim–he could never quite be a Brother to Aldred–and left to join the brotherhood.

“This place is everything,” he said finally, looking up at Calderón, trying to seize the words.  “It’s so large in this city that there’s room for so much.  It can be overwhelming.  All too often, I feel…very lost and small.  And unsure of what place I have in God’s plan.”

“In this city there are people at their best, their most energetic and creative and wonderful.  But also very much the worst, with so much cruelty and callousness.  It’s an adjustment.”

“Were you from the country yourself?”  Lives before service supposedly didn’t matter much, perhaps, but he found himself curious all the same.  Maybe she understood.

She gave a quick smile, and there was a spark of humor in her eyes.  “Oh, I grew up in the country as a child, and I was very much a nomad after that for a time.  Texas, New Austin, Michitlan, Nuevo Paraiso.  The Sierra Madres and the Llano Estacado, we saw it all.  But none of that prepared me for St. Denis.”

She didn’t offer more details about that nomadic life, and as curious as he was, he wouldn’t ask.  The most important thing was her acknowledging she’d come here as overwhelmed as he was.  “How did you find your way?”

She nodded, and looked at him, something level and direct and wise in her dark eyes.  “I walked outside that door,” she pointed to the scarred and battered wooden door at the back of the church, “determined to find someone who needed my help, and to not come back until I did.  I realized I couldn’t fix the world, Brother Dorkins, and I couldn’t fight some things by myself.  That can make a person lose faith if that’s all they can see.  But if I could help one person, and then another, and another, and another, that gave me direction.  It lets me see the beauty in people that’s far too easy to lose if your sight is fixed on impossible horizons.  And if we fight to save the world one person at a time, isn’t that even more our showing them God’s love?”  

Realization blossomed within him, warm and bright and wonderful.  Yes, that made sense of it.  It made this city into something that was no longer frighteningly large, into a place of people rather than buildings and cobblestone streets.  People who were poor, and grieving, and afraid, and alone.  People, individual people, were something he could help.  An entire city, he couldn’t.  But she was right.  One by one, each person he could help would make the world a better place.

Finishing his coffee, he stood, giving Calderón a grateful smile for her patience and wisdom.  “Then it seems like I know where I’m headed for the day.  I’m off to go find someone I can help.”   

Yeehawgust Day 16: Fossil Hunting

Blackwater Ledger, February 7, 1900

REMARKABLE FIND OF PRE-HISTORICAL CREATURE, POSSIBLY THE FIERCEST SPECIMEN TO EVER WALK THE EARTH

Another of the astonishing dino-saur specimens of an antediluvian age has been wrest from its silent tomb of rock to since again see the light of day.  It is based upon discovery of numerous specimens including some from our very own West Elizabeth, for which the creature now bears its name, Totalisaurus westelizabethus, or the ELIZABETHAN MEGASAUR.

Paleontologist D. MacGuinness has finally shared his find with the world, after the labor of years.  He describes the creature thus in his written notes accompanying the photographs and diagrams of the specimen: “It must have been quite the terror in its day, you must admit!  The megasaur must have been able to maneuver in any environment, given its fins for swimming, and the long spines that clearly were the bony supports for wings.  Then it also had three pairs of legs for outrunning most anything on any terrain.  The large tusks and clawed feet also indicate a fierce predator, though the antlers have intriguing possibilities of what its fights among its own kind for dominance must have been like.  The other creatures around it must have given thanks for whatever saw the end of the megasaur, because there must have been very little chance of escape from such an overwhelmingly capable animal in so many environments.  We’ll never see its like again on this earth.”

The latter comment seems to be the sentiment of many, although unlike Mr. MacGuinness, the relief that we shall never see the likes of the ferocious Elizabethan Megasaur in this world stalking us as prey regardless of air, sea, or land are palpable.  One passerby, spotting the photo as this article was being written, stopped to question about it and then commented, “My God, count me glad that thing’s been dead for a real long time.  I don’t like to place bets that even a high powered rifle would take it down.” 

Yeehawgust Day 15: Transcontinental Railroad

May 1869

Tumbleweed, New Austin

Hearing the clanging of the wooden spoon against the leg of the table again, May Griffith sighed and leaned down, pulling up the tablecloth and peering into the cave-like shelter.  “Sadie, for the love of all that’s holy, will you please–”

Amber brown eyes, so like her own, peered back at her from the shade, and Sadie gleefully said “No!”  Punctuated it with another thwack of the spoon against the table leg for emphasis.

Sadie, at a year old, had learned three words.  Namely, Ma,Pa, and her current favorite, No.  Probably learned because she’d been hearing it so much these past months from both her parents, as well as Will and Elsie Adler on the frequent occasions the two families got together for dinner in the afternoon.  

Everyone said boys were the trouble.  May gave a derisive snort at the idea.  Henry, at three, wasn’t nearly so much of a handful as little Sadie with her willful curiosity.  And Elsie’s Jake was as sweet as could be at six, though she hoped like hell that stayed with him when adolescence and manhood came upon him. 

She heard the sound of Rob’s boots on the floor, and heard his low chuckle as he said, “We got a budding musician, I see.”

“A real stubborn one.”

Rob winked at her, and she couldn’t help but smile.  “Stubborn as her mother.  Whoever the lucky fella turns out to be, that husband of hers is gonna have quite the fine adventure.”

“Rob Griffith, you–”

He laughed, leaned in, and kissed her cheek.  “No complaints on my end.  And I figure any man who ain’t sensible enough to not try to bridle our Sadie won’t be worth the bother anyhow.” 

She gave up on it, and accepted the wooden spoon music, such as it was.  Given the things Sadie could be getting into, this one was relatively harmless.  “What’s the news in town this morning?”

“They connected the rails in Utah two days ago.  We got us a true transcontinental railroad now.”  He handled his tin mug easily, despite the two fingers on his left hand lost in a skirmish in North Carolina just before the end of the war. He’d come home to Pennsylvania, and to her.  Far more than many women had got.

He was here, and they were making a life together, in a world where all sorts of things seemed possible with the carnage of the war done and over.  What a thing that news was.  “Hope they start building a spur here to Tumbleweed soon enough.  Ain’t gonna make for much of a cattle town like they promised us without the rail nearby.”  It was hard land here in the desert, even for ranching, so unfamiliar from the green hills they’d both grown up in, far too close to a town called Gettysburg that nobody had heard of until six years ago.  

But if they became a cattle town here in Tumbleweed, that would keep things steady and sure.  The stockyards would always need cattle, and so long as the trains came here, cattle ranches and cattle trails would follow.  America had proved it could build a railroad coast to coast–building one to here in New Austin would be child’s play by comparison, and Tumbleweed only made sense as the place to pin the western part of the state’s future.  She poured herself a cup of coffee as well, letting herself savor Rob’s news, and the hopes they both had, now seeming all too real.