Chapter Text
The sound of hooves aproaching from the path leading to the cabin is the first warning John gets. It is also the only one he needs. Standing up from where he was sewing up a hole in his pants by the fire, he goes into the bedroom to fetch his repeater. His double action revolver is already at his side, as usual.
He hears the muffled thud of a rider climbing down from his horse and stepping onto the grass outside of the house.
John leans against the wall next to the front door, listening. The soft clacking of spurs indicates only one pair of boots climbing up the front steps.
The doorknob twists and John rests the butt of the repeater against his shoulder, finger on the trigger. The door creaks and John breaths in slowly.
Hidden by the now open door, John sees the large man who steps inside. He can see broad shoulders, a rifle strapped to the man’s back and a sidearm on his hip. He recognises the guns nearly at the same second as he identifies the familiar shape of the man.
“Oh,” he says. “it’s you.”
Arthur whirls around with a curse and a hand flying to his revolver, though he doesn’t unholster it.
“Jesus,” he hisses upon seeing John. “What in a hell are you thinking creeping up on a man like that?”
John, having relaxed his stance as soon as he recognized Arthur, puts the repeater down, resting it against the wall. He shrugs as he makes his way back to the fireplace to resume his sewing. He only has two pairs of pants, can’t afford to have holes in any of them just because some asshole decided to try and stab him in the thigh. Luckily, the blade only grazed his flesh, leaving more damage to his clothes than any real harm to the man inside of them.
“Didn’t expect you back so soon.” he says in his defence.
Arthur follows him, sitting down beside him on the couch, a little more heavily than the action requires. The movement jostles John just as he is about to hold the needle up to his pants and he gives Arthur a knowing glare. The man just makes a show of being busy toeing off his boots as if he isn’t trying to annoy John on purpose.
“Alright, from now on I’ll make sure to always come home late, lest you blow my head off in my own goddam living room.”
“Well, since we’re being technical, if you come in too late, I might shoot you anyway. You know I get on edge when people come after dark.”
“He gets on edge after dark... You’re always on edge!” Arthur puts his hands up in exasperation but his lips are twisting to hide a smile so John knows he is only joking. That makes John fight a smile of his own, though, he, then, buries his nose into the task at hand to avoid looking at that smile too long.
John hears and sees out of the corner of his eye when Arthur picks up his boots and gets up to place them by the door. He silently rejoices that he didn’t have to tell Arthur to do it this time.
“So...” Arthur drawls from the kitchen. “There’s a job for us. Some folk are looking to employ guards for a wagon train going to Strawberry.”
John looks up as Arthur walks back to sit down next to him. This time, doing so much more gently, he notices.
“That’s not too far,” John calculates. “could be worth it if the money is good.”
Arthur nods and hums in agreement, reclining on the couch and resting his arm on the backrest behind John’s head. His fingers are nearly grazing the shoulder of John’s shirt.
“The money is good. Really good. But... they are to pass through Tall Trees, they said.”
That makes John reel back a bit, but, before he can open his mouth, Arthur stops him, putting his other hand on John’s arm. As any physical contact from the other man usually does, it makes him temporarily tongue tied. The pause is enough for Arthur to rush in with an explanation.
“Look, I know, okay. But after the last mess we got ourselves into, we could really use the pay. Especially the kind of money they’re offering.”
John feels his lungs burning and realizes he started holding his breath at some point. He lets out the air and thinks about their last job when they went bounty hunting. They aren’t bounty hunters, per se, but it is something they will do occasionally when it seems worth the trouble.
The feller, in particular, was wanted for robbing cattle, something both Arthur and himself had done in the past, so they weren’t exactly judging. However, the bounty was good enough and the job seemed easy.
Unfortunately, other bounty hunters got scent of their guy, and said body hunters just happened to be aware of John and Arthur’s own prices on their heads. So, when they eventually crossed paths, things got ugly, as his ripped pants could attest.
They managed to kill everyone but had to cut and run, leaving their prize behind.
So, it ended well for the cow thief, at least, John muses.
“Alright,” John sighs. “When do we leave?”
It turns out the job really isn’t as hard as John feared. The caravan consists of around twelve families and their wagons, making about 50 people, which is a great number of folk to provide security for, but everyone generally minds their own property, so it isn’t expected of Arthur or John to manage that. Besides, the number of people alone is a great deterrent to Skinners, who usually go for smaller groups of travellers and lone stagecoaches.
They have been travelling for a day now without any trouble. John knows better than to jinx himself, but he is glad they took the job.
He is taking lead in front of the wagon train, while Arthur follows at the back. He will admit it makes him a little anxious to not be able to see the man at all times, but it is best that they be at both ends of the caravan, to better keep eyes on any danger.
At least the sun is at a low enough point in the sky, that they will have to set camp any moment now.
John guides the wagons into a clearing big enough to comport their camp and brings his fingers up to his lips to sound a whistle signalling a break.
The wagons stop and children start running off as their parents begin to set camp. John hears galloping and looks up to see Arthur riding his way. The white mare trots over until she stops by Gunsmoke and playfully bumps her head against John’s horse. The Missouri Fox Trotter has all the good traits of a confident stallion, but he is unusually calm for an ungelded horse, which suits John just fine. He will occasionally rib Arthur for riding a spooky horse, but he will always admit the White Arabian is an elegant and loyal animal.
Besides, he loves the mare almost as much as Arthur does.
“Hello, Moby, how’re doing, girl?” he coos, reaching down to pat her neck.
“You take your grubby paws off my girl, she is a lady.” Arthur pretends to complain.
John rolls his eyes. But as he is replying that Arthur wouldn’t know a lady if she fell on his lap, a shout rings out.
“Mr Milton! Mr Kilgore! Come, quick!” one of the men in the caravan calls with urgency.
They both share a look of unease before spurring on their horses.
The smell is beginning to settle in the air around them. John looks worriedly over his shoulder at the line of trees surrounding the camp.
“Poor bastard, probably been dead a while and no one noticed,” Arthur winces and mutters matter-of-factly, so only John can hear him. He wants to tell his friend not to bother, he doesn’t believe anyone could hear them over the widow’s grief filled cries.
In front of them, a small group of people hangs around one of the wagons were a young man lies in his cot, dead from some disease. A doctor, old and smelling of shine, came by from one of the wagons to give the verdict. Cholera.
“We need to bury him before he starts attracting parasites. Or bigger animals”, John tells Arthur.
“Christ, John, give the lady a momen-”
“We need to bury him”, John says louder, turning to the group, so the woman can hear him.
The widow stops mid sob and stares at him with a frown.
“What he meant was,” Arthur cuts in, steeping forward towards the woman. She is still inside the wagon, so they have to look up to talk to her through the back opening in the cover. “It isn’t right to let him just lying like this. We should give him a proper burial as soon as possible.”
“A proper... But, how...? Do we have a priest?” she asks wiping at her cheeks.
“Uh, I mean, as proper a burial as we can, ma’am.” Arthur steps up with one foot onto the tail board of the wagon and lifts himself up so he can talk to her properly. This way, he is actually standing taller than the woman and John sees her looking up at Arthur with big wet eyes. Only then she seems to really take in the man in front of her and, when she does, her lips open slightly on a breathy “oh”. John feels his forehead pulling into a frown at the look on her face.
Arthur awkwardly pats her on the shoulder and John would have snorted at the man’s lack of social skills, if it weren't for the way he sees her lean into the touch.
“Cholera really is a nasty thing, I’m sorry you lost your husband like this, Mrs...” Arthur trails off.
Hearing Arthur say that, John is instantly reminded not to be so paranoid about the woman’s intentions. She just became a widow, after all.
“Oh, it’s miss Gillis, sir. And he was my brother, not husband. I’m unmarried.”
As she speaks, her cheeks become ruddier and her eyes impossibly larger.
“I’ll get the shovel.” John informs grouchily, turning around to find his horse.
The three of them stand facing the unmarked grave in uncomfortable silence, a few polite feet away from camp. Or, at least, John feels uncomfortable. He just spent the best part of an hour digging a 6 feet deep hole in the ground. His back is killing him and somehow there is dirt inside his boots.
Miss Gillis is standing between the two men, at the foot of the grave, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Now and then she will let out a whine of “Oh, Jamie...”
The sun is nearly setting and all John wants is to get something warm in his belly and to rest his tired body. He looks at Arthur over Miss Gillis head, trying to will the man to cut the ceremony short with his eyes alone, but Arthur just shrugs back as if saying “What do you want me to do?”.
John glares harder.
“Miss Gillis”, Arthur clears his throat. “It’s getting late. We shouldn’t stay alone in the open like this for long. This is Skinner Brothers country, after all.”
That gets a response from the young woman.
“Oh, God!”, she gasps swivelling to look at Arthur, her brown locks bouncing perfectly around her face, “Are we in danger, Mr Kilgore?”
John will blame his tiredness and ill temper but he really feels like the woman is playing up the damsel in distress act to get a reaction from the man. And Arthur, honorable bastard that he is, seems to fall for it, as it is clear by the way he rushes to assure her.
“Not if we stick to the group, Miss Gillis, we’re not.” he touches her elbow briefly and then looks at John. “Right, Mr Milton?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, no need for such formalities. You can call me Mary,” she smiles at Arthur and acts as if John isn’t even there.
Arthur nods and says “Okay, ma’am”, apparently clueless to the woman’s advances and John rolls his eyes at his friend’s moronicity. Though, he has never been so happy for Arthur’s cluelessness.
They head back but John is still in a foul mood by the time the two of them are sitting by their small fire about to have supper.
Arthur pours a plate of heated beans and offers it to John. However, when John reaches over to take it, Arthur’s hand grabs his wrist and gives it a small tug. John frowns at the man, but Arthur just smirks.
“Are you going to mope all night, boy? We did a good thing helping that lady, no need to be all sour about it.”
John pulls his wrist back half-heartedly just to give the impression of putting up a fight. Arthur seems to know he doesn’t really want to be let go and keeps his grip.
“I’m not moping, I’m tired. I did most of the digging, you know.”
“We took turns! There was only one shovel.”
“Convenient.” John replies but he is already smiling.
“Oh, shut up,” he pulls John with more force until the man just lets himself be manhandled so they are sitting with their shoulders touching. “Now eat your goddam dinner.”
John chuckles and accepts the plate.
When they go to sleep that night, lying side by side on worn bedrolls, John doesn’t even remember why he had been upset in the first place.
It is well into the next morning and the wagon train is moving again, when John sees Arthur riding his way coming from the front of the caravan.
He frowns, knowing it is too early to be time for them to switch places.
Arthur commands Moby to go around John until she can stop by his other side, facing the same way as him.
“Hi, pretty boy,” Arthur praises the horse. “... You too, Gunsmoke.”
John punches him on the shoulder.
Arthur just snickers, pulling the mare a few steps to the side before coming back.
“What do you want?” he gripes to hide his flustering at Arthur’s joke.
The other man sobers at that. Arthur is usually the less serious of the two, and if you asked him, he would probably say it’s because he thinks John needs some cheering up from his near constant state of sourness. But John personally thinks Arthur just got tired of being unhappy some point along the way and, as if sorrow was an old and moldy winter coat, he just shrugged it off one day when the sun came out.
John has no idea what made winter leave but he will always hope it stays away.
“We have a problem.” Arthur states.
John looks around at the forest surrounding them, somewhat expecting Skinners to come jumping out of the trees.
“Miss Gillis... She, uh, she can’t seem to find the money her brother had saved for paying their helping boy.”
John twists back from where he was looking over his shoulder and just stares at Arthur like he is a brainless idiot.
“How is that our problem?”
“You know, John, you’re too young to be this cynical,” Arthur reprimands.
“And you’re too old to be this stupid!” he replies loud enough that Moby neighs and shakes her head back irritably.
Arthur raises an eyebrow at the outburst and John feels his cheeks heating up. He hadn't meant to sound so mad, he was actually going for the teasing back and forth they usually had, but he guesses the stress of the job is getting to him.
That and Arthur falling all over himself to help this woman they don’t even know.
“I’m... Sorry. I’m just. You’re too much of a good person and people take advantage of that. I’m just tired of seeing you being used, is all.”
Which is true. Arthur is the best man John knows. When they first met, Arthur had been a young man under the tutelage of the infamous outlaw Dutch Van der Linde. At the time, John had been a scrappy kid, with less than stellar morals. He had been living on the streets for years, robbing and hustling just to stay alive. So, he hadn’t really minded when Dutch took him in and taught him how to be better at stealing and tricking people. John thought it was all very useful.
But Arthur hadn’t been happy with that at all, thought John was too young to be doing those things. He and Dutch fought a few times over the subject, until one day, John got hurt while trying to rob a house and Arthur just packed their things and left with a young John in tow.
John, who, at the time, already nourished a great deal of admiration for the man, followed with no complain. He never regretted that decision and he knew he never would.
Arthur features soften and he lifts a hand to the younger man’s shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly.
“John, she is just a grieving young lady, she’s not a threat.”
“I guess,” he sighs. The problem is that Arthur is too good to expect the worst of others. Meanwhile, John has been deep in the waste of humanity since a very young age and he knows you don’t have to look menacing to pose a threat. “But don’t give her any money,” he pleads.
“I’m not giving anyone our money. We’re not exactly swimming in it. Not until we get paid, at least.”
“So? What are you proposing?”
“I think I should try to speak with the helping boy.”
“And, what? Convince him to work for free?”
Arthur winces at the improbability of that working out well.
“I don’t know... I gotta try, at least.”
“If you say so,” John shakes his head. “goddam good samaritan.”
It’s early evening and John is cooking their meal by the fire, when he sees someone approaching out of the corner of his eye. He looks up and sees Miss Gillis walking their way in her frilly dress.
He must do something with his face because Arthur, who is sitting facing him, straightens up and looks behind his shoulder. When he spots their visitor, he looks back at John with a strange expression that seems half nervous and half determined.
John feels a headache settling in.
“Miss Gillis,” Arthur greets her, standing up with a little dip of his hat like they are in a fancy ball and some duchess just pranced in. “to what do we owe the pleasure?”
Seeing as John is busy stirring the pot and he doesn’t deem necessary for both of them to be standing around twiddling their thumbs, he remains as he is.
Miss Gillis, though, only has eyes for Arthur and probably wouldn’t have noticed John either way.
She looks at the man with such deep sorrow in her pretty brown eyes that, for a moment, John fears someone else died.
“Oh, Tacitus,” she laments and John slants an incredulous look at Arthur. Since when are you two on first fake-names basis? “I am so ashamed to ask for your help, but I’m afraid I have no other choice!”
“Sure, Miss Gillis,” Arthur frowns, concern written all over his features. “We are here to help, Mr Milton and I.”
John wants to remind him that, no, it’s really not their job to solve these folk’s financial problems. Their job is to keep these poor bastards from being flayed alive by Skinner Brothers. Getting involved in their personal business will only derail them.
But Arthur seems to be caught really badly into one of his altruistic moods, so John just grumbles into their supper.
“Tacitus, please, call me Mary. You have done so much for me, I feel like we’re more than just acquaintances by now,” she gives him a sweet smile, before a look of pain falls over her pretty face. “Oh, Tacitus, I fear I’m still in trouble. I know you spoke to Jimmy, my helping boy, but I’m afraid he will not be convinced. I was hoping he would wait to get his payment until I could send a letter to Daddy explaining the situation. And then, I’m sure Daddy would send the money in no time, but Jimmy is irreducible. He wants the money as soon as we cross the Montana River, like my brother had agreed. But I don’t have the money and I don’t know what will be of me if he finds out... Oh Tacitus...”
She buries her face in her hands in despair.
John looks up at Arthur, pleading him to not fall for a pretty girl’s act, but Arthur isn’t looking at him. The man steps closer to Miss Gillis and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. By the concerned and determined look on his face, John already knows there is not much he can do to change Arthur’s mind now.
“Don’t you worry,” he says. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you, Mary.”
John realizes too late that he burned the beans.
“I’m gonna ask her to marry me.” Arthur says as they are saddling up to start a new day of riding.
“What?” John asks distractedly. He can’t find his hunting knife, though he is sure he left it in his saddlebag. “Did you see my knife?”
“Other side.”
“Oh,” John circles around Gunsmoke to get to the other bag, where, sure enough, he finds the knife. “What did you say?”
Nearby, people are finishing hitching their oxen to their wagons and children are yelling, excited to be moving again. John mounts his horse and watches Arthur do the same, before the man clears his throat to speak again.
“Mary. I’m gonna ask her to marry me. You know, she needs someone to provide for her and I’m at the age where I’ll either settle down, start a family... or I won’t. And she is a nice lady... Nicer than I’d ever deserve, that’s for sure. So. Figured I’d kill two birds with one stone, I guess.” He chuckles awkwardly. “That is, if she’ll even take me. God knows why she would. But I reckon I would give it a shot.” He ends the sentence in a weird tone, as if he is asking himself, or maybe John, but John couldn’t give him an answer either way.
Honestly, he doesn’t think he got much of what was said after “I’m gonna ask her to marry me”. His heart feels like it turned to ice as it drops down to his gut, leaving frostbite in its wake. All he can hear are those seven words as he stares at his hands in his lap, grabbing the reins too tightly.
“But if she is crazier than I think she is, and says yes. Then, I don’t want you to worry about the future,” Arthur keeps talking and John tries to listen over the drumming in his ears. “The money we’ll get from this job will be enough to keep you settled for a good while. And, I dunno. I guess we could all move to Saint Dennis. We’re not wanted men there, at least.”
The absurdity of that statement is enough to pull John from his stupor, at least. The fact that Arthur would think it remotely possible that John could go live with him and his wife, while he raised a new family, like John was the cool uncle who came by on weekends, makes John laugh bitterly.
“Sure,” he says, the lump in his throat making his voice even raspier than normal. John knows that when people look at him, they see a scrappy young man with wild hair and calloused hands. And when they speak to him, more often than not, they find him too argumentative or downright belligerent. John is self-aware enough to recognize his own defense mechanisms and to embrace them.
What he usually likes to ignore is how it feels like beyond those mechanisms, what it really feels like to be John. Because, if he is being honest with himself, he just feels like a stupid kid with a too strong grip around a heart made of glass. Afraid of everyone around him and overzealous with the flimsy little thing in his hand, his fingers always squeeze too hard and the glass breaks, cutting deep into his palms. He can try to hide his fists in his pockets so no one will see the blood, but he knows he will eventually have to swallow down the jagged pieces to hide away the evidence.
“Don’t you worry about me.” John finishes as he spurs his horse to the front of the caravan before Arthur can say anything else to add to the cuts.