Archive of Our Own

When they’re done and he’s tidied his clothes again, Dutch Van der Linde touches her shoulder with a smile and says, “We’d be pleased to have your company, Miss Roberts.”

They find Uncle downstairs; Mr. Van der Linde pays for his tab, and they all leave together.

She doesn’t have a horse of her own; she rides on the back of Mr. Van der Linde’s, sitting sideways, holding her bag on her lap. Inside is her spare dress and underclothes, handkerchiefs, comb, and the coin purse with two dollars and three nickels.

They ride out through wide open country with few trees. If she has to run from them, there won’t be anywhere to hide. She looks down at her feet, bouncing in time with the horse’s steady pace. Mr. Van der Linde says something to her. She doesn’t hear what it is, but the tone sounds like it’s meant to be a joke, so she laughs. He laughs, too, shortly, in a self satisfied way, and Abigail is pleased that she reacted correctly.

The camp they bring her to is on a bluff overlooking a little stream, hemmed with just enough trees for shade and shelter. There are other men at the camp, and a woman who must be more than twice her age. Mr. Van der Linde calls them over and tells them her name, standing beside her with a hand on her shoulder, fatherly-like. “Miss Roberts is going to help keep us comfortable,” he tells them. She stands up straight as she can and softens her eyes and mouth and tries to look pretty.

He introduces her to all of them in turn, explaining what it is that each of them does to benefit the group. The last person that he brings her to is a tall man with sandy colored hair and a scar on the chin.

“And this is Arthur Morgan,” he says. “None too bright, I’m afraid, but there’s no better man to have beside you when there’s trouble—not that we want too much of that around here, Miss Roberts,” he adds, with a particular tone and expression.

She nods and murmurs an agreement—of course, no trouble—but it’s strange, she thinks, how he brought up no faults of any kind with any of the others. But the man with the chin scar shows no reaction to the remark. She decides it must be a joke between them; something familiar that doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not her place to know everything.

The man tips his head to her, mumbles a hello, and then Dutch’s hand is going from her shoulder to Arthur’s, and Dutch leads him away, talking in confiding tones, leaving her to stand alone there in the middle of everyone.

It’s not bad, really, being with the gang. The work is tiring but not pointless, and breakfast and supper are guaranteed every day; no one ever stops her from eating or tries to take any food away from her. She helps with the cooking and the cleaning and the mending; she hauls water and digs latrines and sops the sweat from Bill’s brow when he gets a little cut on his leg that fills with pus and lays him up with a fever he almost doesn’t pull out of.

The men aren’t bad, either. Sometimes they get rough, but not on purpose. Not just because they want to hurt her. Ms. Grimshaw is the hardest on her, but when they go into town together and some of the local men ring her in between the general store and the saloon, stinking drunk, laughing and making remarks and touching her hair, Ms. Grimshaw comes shouting at them like a she-boar and scatters them all away, and on the ride back she lays her heavy shawl around Abigail’s shoulders.

Hosea Matthews, who leads the group, second only to Dutch himself, never places a hand on her at all, except to help her down from the wagons and such things, and Dutch touches under her clothes only when everyone else is asleep or when he asks her to accompany him on “a pleasant walk” away from the camp, as though it’s a secret why she’s a part of his gang in the first place.

And there’s something else odd about the arrangement. Arthur Morgan, the man with the scar on his chin, speaks kindly to her when they pass, but he never takes her into his tent. Day after day she expects it to happen, but nothing ever comes of Arthur’s high or low moods. It’s not that he’s deferring to higher-ranking men for a turn with her; she works out that he was Dutch and Hosea’s very first recruit. The particular care that Ms. Grimshaw takes with the upkeep of his quarters proves that he’s an important person to the gang.

She wonders if he wants privacy, like Dutch, or needs to be in the drink first, like Uncle, but opportunities arrive that he never takes. He looks at her and then away, or past her, like she’s not a woman at all. She’s known men who never married, who never went looking for the company of women, but when she tidies around the camp she sees the photo in Arthur’s tent of a pretty, dark-haired woman.

She wouldn’t mind it, sharing the bed of one less man, except that she’s not the only one to notice the distance Arthur keeps from her.

One day, while she’s carrying a bucket of scraps away from the camp to bury, she hears Dutch and Hosea speaking in urgent tones in the distance. She crouches behind a bramble thicket, knowing instinctively that they don’t want to be overheard, and listens to their argument. They seem to be walking quickly together.

“—and you thought finding a girl who looks like Mary would solve everything, did you? My God, Dutch!” Hosea half shouts, the loudest she’s ever heard him raise his voice.

“I don’t hear you complain about her while she’s scrubbing the muck from your boots.”

“That’s entirely beside the point, and you very well know it!”

“What is your point, exactly, my dear?” Dutch’s voice is icy.

“My point is that you can’t bribe his loyalty like you’re tossing a hunk of meat to a guard dog! And with a little girl who can’t read, can’t write, not even old enough to be out from under her father’s roof without a husband. You should have at least consulted me, I could have told you—” They’ve been walking away from her, voices dimming as they go, until she can’t make out the words anymore. The space between them is too open for her to follow without being spotted. She stays crouched behind the brambles, her heart beating quick and hard.

She understands suddenly when she’s here; why Dutch brought her. She was supposed to be for Arthur. The bribe. The meat for the dog. Someone to keep him happy at camp, so he wouldn’t roam too long or too far and risk not finding his way back again. Except Arthur doesn’t want her. Dutch chose a worthless gift.

She doesn’t sleep that night. Uncle lets her stay in his tent because he always falls straight to sleep afterward and doesn’t mind her sharing his pallet as long as she slips away before sunrise. She listens to him snore and stares into the darkness, wondering what to do. This isn’t a good life, she knows that—but it’s too good to give up. It’s better than she’s had ever since she had to start taking care of herself, and better than she could hope for on her own. She’s already found that out.

But if she’s not good enough—what then? How long will they keep her and feed her and let her rest, sometimes, with the last of the morning’s coffee warming the cup between her hands?

She can’t lose this. She can’t. She’ll die. She’s so tired.

It’s hard to find time with Arthur. He never stays in one place for long. When he’s not riding out with Dutch, he finds his own scores to chase. But he makes his way back, sooner or later.

She brings him coffee in the mornings; patches a hole in his saddle blanket; sits near him when he rests after supper, before she’s called away to scrub the pans; fills his water skins so he doesn’t have to go all the way to the creek when he needs to replenish his supplies before leaving camp.

She can’t say whether Arthur notices the extra attention—but others do. Bill makes some dark remarks behind Arthur’s back, and little Johnny lays with her more often, with more hunger and eagerness than she’s seen from him yet.

One day she finishes her chores early, while Arthur is still bent over a little book that he always has with him, making use of the last of the day’s light. He’s sitting on the edge of the half-broken porch of the old, gray, leaning, house they’ve recently taken for themselves. She’s seen him often with the book, but he’s furtive with it, always curling himself over the pages, working by lamplight after dusk or bringing it to the very edges of camp where he can be apart from everyone. Seeing him now, she comes closer, walking quietly so he won’t hear her and put the book away before she gets to him.

“What’re you workin’ on?” she asks. She can see that he’s moving his pencil all across the page, making lines.

Arthur starts, looking at her. He twists his body sideways, moving like he’s going to put the book into the satchel hanging at his side, but instead he only tucks his thumb between the pages and closes the book around it.

“Nothin’,” he says. “Just wastin’ some time.”

“Were you drawin’ somethin’? Can I see it?”

She’s never asked him for anything before. She hasn’t asked for anything from the Van der Linde gang.

Arthur hesitates, looking away. He seems nervous in a way that’s new to her.

She smiles, trying to look harmless. “Don’t worry, I can’t read none of what you wrote in there.”

Arthur finally looks back at her. There’s another wordless pause before he extends his arm and hands her the book, his eyes lowered.

“Nothin’ special in there, just…”

Their hands graze against each other as she tucks one of her own fingers into the spot he’d marked with his thumb, holding the place he’d saved. He withdraws his hand, and she infers an invitation to sit down beside him and open the book to the page he’d been working on.

On the right side is a portrait drawing of a Black man with a ferocious scar running from the bridge of his nose across his right cheek. There are a few lines of words written at the center of the left-hand page.

“Who’s that?” she asks, lowering her voice instinctively, as though the man on the page might hear her. It’s been weeks now since she saw anyone other than the Van der Linde gang. It’s almost startling to see a new, unfamiliar face.

“Feller I met the other day,” Arthur says, obscurely. “He was a poet. I wrote down the poem he told me, so I could remember it…” His voice trails off dimly. He looks like he might take the book back.

Abigail hastily turns a page. It’s all words from top to bottom, with one underlined, so she turns more pages. Two more pages back there’s another drawing: a pocket gopher, its little paws braced wide apart and its tail sticking up straight in an alert pose.

“Oh!” she says, delighted.

Arthur cranes his body to see what she’s looking at.

“It weren’t too far from here,” he remarks. “Gave me a good scoldin’ for gettin’ too close.”

“It looks real!” she exclaims, fascinated by the bright little eyes and tiny, delicate paws. Arthur’s light, scraping pencil marks have mimicked the fine, glossy fur covering its body.

She keeps turning pages, passing quickly over the ones that have only writing but lingering momentarily over each drawing she finds. She sees a dragonfly, some kind of plant that looks like soft, folded lambs’ ears, and a dark cave mouth opening up between the thick roots at the base of a big, dead tree.

“I like to remember the plants ‘n animals ‘n things we see in different places,” Arthur explains, his voice sounding a little stronger as she marvels over a drawing of two stags locked together in a fight. The drawing is very small, only about the size of a silver dollar, and it’s just outlines to show the shapes. The deer don’t have eyes or fur. “Every place is a little different and a little the same.”

Abigail turns a few more pages, and suddenly she sees herself. Two of her. There she is, wearing the dress she was in when Dutch brought her to camp, her hands clasped loosely together against the front of her dress skirt, and there’s a drawing of just her face, her penciled-in eyes gazing at something that isn’t on the page. A strange little shock goes through Abigail’s body, making her neck feel warm. It’s different than seeing herself in a mirror or in the reflection in the wash basin. She recognizes herself, and yet she—the Abigail in the book—looks unlike herself, unlike the way she imagines herself. Her face is different somehow. The look of her is different.

She snaps the book shut, holding it aimlessly in her lap for a moment before she passes it back to Arthur without looking at him. If she keeps looking farther and farther back in the book, she might see a drawing of that other woman. The one in the photograph. Mary.

She doesn’t want to see how much they look alike to Arthur.

“Those are real nice drawings,” she says, as pleasantly as she can. “Someone teach you how to draw like that?”

“No,” Arthur says, quietly. He doesn’t say anything else.

They sit there.

Abigail tries to think of an excuse to leave, politely. She could say she has work to go back to, but it’s not true. She casts her eyes around the camp, looking for something left undone. Or if only one of the other men would decide they want her company and come over to lure her away, she’d be able to go. But she’s on her own, her mind empty as she struggles think of what to do without making everything worse.

Stupid girl, she thinks, bitterly. Stupid, stupid girl.

“Dutch was the one who…” Arthur starts, haltingly. “Dutch taught me to read and write when I, when I was younger. That’s how I got to drawin’. I had to copy down lines, but I was always foolin’ around. I’d start thinkin’ about other things, and instead of writin’ about the Greeks and all them, I’d draw little trees or flowers just so it’d look like I was doin’ somethin’.” He gives a small, strange laugh. “That’s why I started writin’ a journal. I could draw little things and then write about ’em too. You know, I’ll bet—if you asked, Dutch could te—”

“No,” Abigail says, much too quickly. A ripple of dread passes through her. “That is—I—he’s such a busy man, I couldn’t ask him for that much of his time.”

Arthur’s quiet for a moment. “Well, I ain’t no good as a teacher, or I’d…” He pauses and clears his throat, his shoulders moving up and down. “Maybe Hosea could…”

It wouldn’t be so bad, learning from Hosea. She likes the way he talks, the way he tells things. And he speaks to her kindly, and he’s never asked her for any service that she wouldn’t willingly do for anyone. But it would go against the order of things, she knows. It would go against the way Dutch wants things to be. And having said ‘no’ to Dutch in front of Arthur, she feels that she must also do the same to Hosea.

“Oh, Mr. Matthews has better things to do than that… And what good would it do, teachin’ a stupid little thing like me? I wouldn’t—wouldn’t know what use to make of it.”

“You ain’t seem stupid to me, Miss Roberts,” Arthur says, with sudden earnestness.

Abigail looks at him in surprise, finally meeting his eyes again. There’s a little crease across his brow; he looks sure of himself.

“Well thank you, Mr. Morgan,” she manages. Then she swallows and makes her voice stronger. “And thank you for showin’ me the book. I ain’t seen somethin’ so pretty in a long while.” She stands up. “I’d—better go see if Ms. Grimshaw needs me to do anythin’. Have a good night, Mr. Morgan.”

She stands and gives him a curtsy, and then she turns away from him and goes to make herself busy.

A few days later she enters a room to sweep out the hearth and finds Dutch and Arthur already sitting there. She recognizes the body language and expressions that come with a plan being discussed and mutters an apology to them, turning to go, but Dutch catches her eye and waves her over.

“And here’s just the woman we need,” he says, warmly, as she approaches. He stands up and lays a hand on her should but continues to speak directly to Arthur: “Miss Roberts will be your wife; she can use some of the jewelry we haven’t sold yet.”

A shock goes through Abigail’s body, but Arthur only sighs, shaking his head. “Why can’t it be you and Susan?”

“Because I have my own plans, and I don’t want my face to be known around town for robbery.”

Arthur grumbles and rolls his shoulders. “Alright. Well. Have John take her, then.”

Abigail chances to glance at Dutch. His forehead is creased with a deep frown. “John, bless the boy, don’t know how to act around a woman. And he ain’t grown into himself yet. How could such a young man have provided his wife such fine jewelry? It’d raise suspicion.”

“Well, maybe it was an inheritance.”

Dutch’s hand squeezes down on her shoulder. Abigail drops her head to hide a wince.

“I’m offering you an opportunity to make us some money, son. Money that all us need. And you want to give that opportunity to another man? You want that opportunity to go to waste?”

She sees Arthur’s feet shift. He clears his throat lightly. “No, I, it’s just—I’ve never done a job like that before. With a woman. Rather do things on my own. I’d hate to put Miss Roberts in any danger, her bein’ so young and all…”

“There’s no danger,” Dutch insists, with frigid calm. “And it couldn’t be simpler. You go into town; you rent a room at the hotel; you’d like to accompany your pretty young wife around and show her what a fine town it is, but you’ve heard rumors of pickpockets; you want to leave your wife’s jewelry in the hotel’s safe, for protection. When you’re escorted to the safe, Miss Roberts will pull a handgun from her bag, you’ll tie up the clerk nice and quiet, and then you’ll help yourself to everything they’ve got. You can fill up Miss Roberts’ handbag and ride out of town before anyone even notices anything has happened, and there’ll hardly be any fuss at all.”

“Well, sure, but…”

“I don’t know how to use a gun,” Abigail says, quietly.

Both of them look at her.

“Well, you won’t have to use it at all,” Dutch says. “You only have to hold it, to encourage some cooperation.”

“Now, wait now.” Arthur puts up his hands. “I’m not givin’ a gun to somebody who doesn’t know how to use it. ‘Specially not in that kind of situation.”

“Well, then, take her out and teach her!”

“What, now?”

“I can’t imagine a better time, seeing as how all you’re doing right now is complaining!”

Dutch releases her shoulder and gives her a tiny push toward Arthur. “Go on with you. And take her somewhere far enough away that the noise won’t bring anyone sniffing around here.”

Arthur sighs, and stands up, and gestures for her to follow.

He tells her to gather empty bottles and cans from around camp, anything they haven’t buried yet, and to pack something to eat. By the time she’s finished, Arthur’s saddled up Boadicea. He mounts up, then reaches a hand down and hauls her up to sit behind him.

They ride out without speaking and make their way along until they find a gully that Arthur seems to find satisfactory. Abigail stands in a patch of shade as he lines up several cans along a downed tree trunk lying across the bottom of the gully. Then he draws a rifle from Boadicea and puts bullets into it.

“Dutch said I’d use a gun that’d fit in a bag,” she points out, hastily.

“I know what he said,” Arthur grunts. “But you’re gonna start with this. A gun is— Well, it’s easy to hurt other people; easy to hurt yourself. This,” he hefts the rifle soberly, “makes it easier to remember that you’re holdin’ somethin’ that can hurt. You gotta control it with your whole body. I don’t want you swingin’ some little six-shooter around and blastin’ my knee out because you’re not thinkin’ where you’re pointin’ it.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” she says, galled.

Arthur shrugs. He marks out a line in the dirt with the toe of his boot and beckons her to stand behind it. “Probably not. But John Marston nearly did, and I don’t wanna give anyone else a second chance. Just remember that you shouldn’t never point a gun at anythin’ you ain’t prepared to shoot, and don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you’re gonna shoot. Now put that up to your shoulder—no, like this, see.”

He makes her adjust her grip—shift her feet—swivel her posture—and then points at one of the cans lined up down the gully. “Now shoot.”

She shoots.

She misses.

She’d anticipated the kick from the rifle, but it still catches her somehow off guard. It forces her back a step. She says, “Oh.”

“See what I mean?” Arthur says. “Okay, try again.”

She tries again. A clod of dirt bursts from the floor of the gully.

“You don’t gotta hit one every time,” he tells her; “just get close most of the time.”

Arthur keeps her at it for a long time.

He shows her how to reload the rifle, and what to do if it jams, and how to hopefully keep it from jamming in the first place. A gun needs a lot of attention, like something new born. When she eventually hits enough cans and bottles to satisfy him, he sets them up again all over again and marches her around and around the gully, making her shoot from different positions. It’s important, he says, to get used to having the sun shining on you from different directions. You need to know how to shoot when it’s right in your eyes.

Eventually, Arthur brings out a revolver. At first she’s excited to put down the rifle and handle something with less weight, but she soon changes her mind. Holding the revolver steady and bracing against the kickback is harder without the use of her shoulder. It’s not helped by the fact that she’s so hungry and tired now that her hands have begun to shake. She does worse with the revolver.

Arthur notices, finally, when she fumbles a reload, scattering bullets on the ground. She drops one of the bullets twice more while trying to pick it up. She sniffs, blinking furiously at the ground, scratching through the dirt.

Arthur touches her shoulder, lightly, with the side of his hand.

“Why don’t you take a break.”

She flops limply into the shade, not making any efforts to keep her skirts out of the dust as both of them sit on an old fallen tree, stripped of all its bark and bleached nearly white, to eat and drink.

The food improves her mood instantly, but also gives her the energy to notice how uncomfortable she is. During the training she’d sweated all the way through her underclothes. More washing to do back at camp. Her mood darkens again.

Arthur gets up to feed an apple to the horse and then returns the revolver to her. It’s already been reloaded when she takes it from his hands.

After the food, her aim is much better.

They go through the whole exhaustive process again: how to maintain the revolver, and how to holster it, and how to draw it, and how to shoot from the hip, quickly, if she absolutely needs to. None of it is fun, but she’s pleased by the way he seems to get more excited as she picks things up. He smiles, pumps his arm when she lands a shot; even her misses earn more positive comments. Aw, that one was close.

Arthur seems to have learned that people need breaks from time to time, as well. A second break comes sooner than the first one, and none too soon. Even though he lets her drink her fill from their canteens, Abigail’s eyes are gritty from heat and exhaustion. Her head has begun to ache.

“Be good to get in some practice on a windy day… Not enough of it now; we’d have to to come out again some other time,” he comments. She must give him a look without meaning to, because he suddenly laughs.

She hugs her arms against herself and looks away.

“We could stay out here,” she says. The thought of getting back on the horse is abhorrent. “Go back again in the mornin’.”

“Didn’t pack a tent.”

“I don’t mind sleepin’ outside,” she says.

“Sure you don’t.”

Annoyed heat spreads across her face. “Well, I don’t. Slept in plenty worse places.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything. Abigail chews her food and looks at the ground between her feet.

Things never go right with Arthur. She can’t ever talk to him the way she wants to. She can’t talk much with any of them, really, except Hosea, but it bothers her more when it’s Arthur. Dutch likes it a bit when she doesn’t quite understand what he’s telling her, but it’s Arthur who makes her feel stupid and silly because he’s not the one doing it on purpose. She just gets all mixed up around him.

She wonders if he’ll write about this in his little book. Or if he’ll draw her, like he did before. Or maybe he’ll never do that again, because she saw it and acted like a fool.

She wipes her hands on her knees. Her palms are damp and gritty. Her fingers ache from holding tight to the guns.

“Am I not the kind of girl you like?” she asks, still looking at the ground.

“Huh?” Arthur says. She senses him going still. “Well… no… I, ah…”

“You don’t like sharin’?”

Arthur doesn’t answer.

She turns her head toward him. He’s sitting just a couple of feet from her, on the ground with his lower back against the downed tree.

“You got a girl somewhere?” she asks. “I won’t tell no one, if it’s a secret.”

“Ah… Miss Roberts…”

Arthur levers himself up and moves backward to sit on the log. He brushes his hands over his knees a few times, like she did just a moment before. “You don’t want nothin’ to do with me.”

“Why not?” She slides along the log, closer to him.

“I’m just some mean old dog, and you’re a young little thing.”

She realizes, all of a sudden, that he doesn’t know about Dutch. Dutch and her. “I’m a, a grown woman,” she says, crisply.

“Look at you.” He reaches out and, unexpectedly, brushes the backs of two fingers against her cheek. His hand is rough and warm, like a piece of wood that’s been out in the sun. She pushes it away without any thought. “Still got your baby fat.”

Abigail’s face and neck and spine heat. She clenches her hands in her lap and tightens her lips. “I was grown enough to be survivin’ on my own before Du—before Mister Van—before I joined up with you all, so I’m grown enough to do anythin’ I want.”

Surviving is what she was doing, but it was the way a stray dog survives: taking kicks and table scraps as they came, not knowing which would be given next, hoping for little more than to be left alone and not menaced by cruel people. She wished she’d been able to make different choices, but she’d made them all the same. She’d picked herself up each day and done as much as she could for herself. If she’d been ten years older, would things have been different? Was she too young now to understand herself? To understand men and the things men did?

There’s a tiny smile on Arthur’s face, but it fades out as he takes his hand back.

“—Didn’t mean to offend, Miss Roberts.”

He’s not going to reach out again. Not today; maybe not ever again. Every decision about what they’ll be to each other will have to be hers, and every action will be hers to carry out.

The thought rises slowly in her mind that she’ll have to tell him the truth, or whatever part of it she needs him to know. She can’t tell him that Dutch had a plan for her; if she does, he’ll argue with Dutch over it, she’s sure of that, and Dutch will be angry that his man knows more than he’s supposed to, and then he’ll be angry at her because it’ll be easier to punish her for the plan’s failure than to blame himself for the idea. So she has to talk about it like it’s something she thought of all on her own, just an idea that got into her silly little head.

Abigail loops her arms together under her knees, hugging her skirts against her legs.

“It’s just that I worry you might not be happy enough,” she says, in a melancholy voice. “If I’m not doin’ a good job, I expect I’ll have to leave. And where else would I go…”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” Arthur says, with rare conviction. “Dutch don’t treat people like that. If you’re with us, you’re with us. We’re all family. We don’t leave nobody behind. Otherwise, Hell, we wouldn’t have Uncle or Marston around.”

An unintended laugh escapes her.

“He ain’t so bad.”

“Sure, if you like yappy little dogs,” Arthur grouses.

What Arthur said, that should be just what she wants to hear. That Dutch is a good man, that everyone in the gang looks out for one another. It ought to be a comfort. But it doesn’t relieve her as much as Arthur wants it to. Oh, Arthur, she thinks, there are things you don’t know; I hope you don’t ever have to find out. There are always things that drive people apart. There are always reasons for someone to be thrown away.

Arthur seems like a good man, but men are fickle. They change their minds when they find something out that they don’t like. They get such ideas about things.

She makes herself sound reassured when she says, “I just get to worryin’, is all. But you know Mr. Van der Linde better than I do. It’s real nice of you to listen to me when I get to talkin’.”

“Of course, Miss Roberts,” he says. Then he looks at the sky and hauls himself to his feet. “Reckon we ought to get back.”

They gather everything up, climb into Boadicea, point her toward camp.

Abigail stares at the ground as they ride. She allows herself two soundless tears, fallen onto her dusty skirts, and then takes a deep breath and smooths all her thoughts into a perfect smooth blankness like the sheets on a freshly made bed.

The next night Dutch waves her over to him from the door of his room. “Miss Roberts, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

From under him, she looks up the ceiling, her mind wandering to different things. In the morning she has to haul more water…

She thinks back to her lessons with the guns, going over in her mind the steps to load each one. She can’t picture her own hands on them; she has to imagine Arthur’s hands doing the work. But he’d been happy when she did it for herself. He’d kept her working hard, but he hadn’t said a mean word to her.

“You’ve a pretty smile, Miss Roberts,” Dutch says, abruptly. “You’re a very special young lady, I can see that, it brings me satisfaction to have you enjoy yourself.”

She blinks, refocusing. She has no idea what he’s talking about.

Her smile?

She’s smiling. She’s smiling, and she has to keep smiling, on and on, until no one is looking at her anymore.

She and Arthur ride out to a town called Clarence two days later. Arthur’s passed through a couple times before, had a drink at the saloon, but most of their information comes from Dutch, who has some kind of plan for the town, though not even Arthur knows anything about it. Clarence is far enough away from their encampment that, as long as they’re not directly followed, no one is likely to track them all the way back; but it also means that Boadicea can’t make the entire return journey in one go without stopping for rest. It might be different if they weren’t riding double, but Abigail’s not a confident enough rider on her own. If she got separated from Arthur, she’d hardly know how to find her way back to camp, let alone evade pursuers. So once again she’s hanging onto Arthur, bouncing grimly along with her back aching.

She has no idea if Arthur understands how unconvincing they look. She hadn’t dared say a word against the plan in front of anyone else; once she was alone with Arthur, it was already too late. It won’t do any good to shake his confidence now. The jewelry pieces Dutch lent her are beautiful on their own, but they don’t go together as a set, and they’re, well, they’re meant to be worn by old women. She doesn’t know how to explain it; she just knows they don’t look right on her. And yesterday, they’d realized that she didn’t have a dress nice enough to suit the people they’re pretending to be. She’d ended up taking one of Ms. Grimshaw’s old dresses and spending the day altering it as best she could so that, at the very least, it wouldn’t fall straight off her. The dress is clearly out of style, but there’s nothing to be done about that. She’d painstakingly painted up her face that morning to make herself look like a more mature woman, and she feels like a little girl who’d gotten into her grandmother’s trunk. Arthur, at least, has run enough cons at Dutch and Hosea’s side to have a decent set of clothes on hand. He doesn’t look half bad, with pomade combed through his clean hair, and she can only hope that people won’t care to look too closely at her.

They ride directly past the Smith Hotel and find a spot around the next corner to hitch Boadicea. Arthur dismounts and then sweeps her down from the horse. They’d already made one stop, not far out of town, to rest Boadicea and share a cold dinner together, making sure that everyone would be refreshed enough for the robbery and immediate escape, but Arthur still lingers over Boadicea for another moment, petting her forelock and feeding her a peppermint out of his palm. She lips at the brim of his hat when he fails to produce a second one. Abigail stands to the side, hugging her arms against her body.

“We’ll be back soon, girl; just you relax.”

He gives the horse a final pat, and then he takes her arm, and they head back around the corner and up the street toward the hotel.

“You remember what we’re gonna do?”

“Yes,” she says, but a little too curtly. Arthur mistakes her tone for nervousness and stops walking. She tugs on his arm to get him moving again. “I remember, Arthur; let’s go.”

Abigail holds her head up high as they walk up the main street, trying to look like someone’s wife, not a girl Arthur had picked up for the night.

The hotel lobby is busier than they might’ve hoped it would be. There are men smoking and laughing together in front of a grand, unlit fireplace, and a cluster of women—their wives—sitting at a pair of divans and talking amongst themselves. At the main desk, a man is leaning on the counter and speaking to the clerk while a couple waits behind him to check in. Arthur guides her toward the desk to wait their turn, as well. At a particularly loud burst of laughter from the smokers near the fireplace, the man leaning on the desk turns partway around, looking behind him for a moment before he faces the clerk again.

Arthur suddenly about-faces as well, pulling on her arm.

“Darlin’,” he says, “why don’t you just sit and rest while I get us taken care of?”

He leads her back across the room, nearly all the way to the front door, and presses her down into one of the upholstered chairs in the corner.

“Man at the desk is a bounty hunter,” he whispers, leaning down to her. “Keep out of his notice.”

She can’t stop herself from glancing at the man again. Right now all she can see is his back, and she’d gotten only a general impression of his face. He looked ordinary, with drooping eyelids.

“Should we leave?” she asks, quietly.

She tries to sound only inquisitive, not hopeful. It’d be a relief to have some pretense not to go through with the robbery. She doesn’t want to put her hand on the gun. But coming back to camp a failure, in her silly borrowed dress and jewelry with all that makeup caked on her face, would be a shameful thing.

But it won’t be her decision, either way.

Arthur’s brow knits in thought. “No,” he says, at last. “I think we can still make it work. We’ll just have to stay the night, do the plan in the mornin’ instead. He’ll probably leave early, and then we can be clear.”

“We’re gonna stay the whole night?”

“Sure,” Arthur says, easily. “No one’s expectin’ us until tomorrow, anyhow. If Dutch’s haul is so great, it’ll make up for the room.”

He pats her hand distractedly, shooting another glance toward the desk. “Keep an eye on him for me. If we’re gonna stay, I’m gonna go get Boadicea stabled up.”

She keeps her head down, her hands folded demurely over the bag in her lap, but knows how to watch and listen no matter what she’s doing. The bounty hunter with the droopy eyes doesn’t seem to notice her at all. By the time Arthur gets back, he’s already been led up a wide staircase to the second level of the hotel. At the top of the staircase, he goes to the left. She hopes that their room will be to the right.

After the couple who’d been waiting ahead of them have also been led up the stairs, it’s Arthur’s turn to speak to the clerk. A moment later he looks back at her.

She stands instantly and makes her way to him.

“We’d be happy to show you to our safe,” the clerk is saying, as she reaches Arthur’s side. The clerk taps on a little bell hidden behind the desk, and another man presently appears. He and the clerk exchange a short explanation, and then they’re asked to follow.

She instinctively takes Arthur’s arm as they’re brought down a hallway, though they go less than half way toward the back of the hotel before the porter takes out a ring of keys to unlock an unmarked door.

They step into a small room, separated in the middle by a counter with a section that lifts up on a hinge, like Abigail has seen at banks. There’s a ledger book lying on the counter, and a safe is embedded in the wall opposite the door. The porter shuts the door behind them and lifts the counter to pass to the other side. As his back is to them, she and Arthur exchange a swift glance with one another. The set-up is perfect. They’re completely separated from view, and hardly a sound reaches them from outside the room.

The porter consults the ledger, then turns his back on them once more to open up the safe. It’s filled with rows of numbered boxes: smaller at the top, bigger at the bottom. He selects one of the smaller boxes and pulls it from its slot by a handle. He places the empty box on the counter and looks at them expectantly.

Abigail only stares at him, suddenly unsure what to do. This is the moment when she was supposed to pull the gun, only now they’re not doing that—not yet. They hadn’t planned to actually hand over their own jewelry. Should she? Can she? What if they can’t get the jewelry back? What if they have to run away and leave it behind? And Dutch—

Arthur steps behind her. Her hair is pinned up; his fingers brush through the few loose strands as he picks delicately at the back of her neck, unfastening the heavy necklace clasped there. She comes back to herself, slips the bracelet off her wrist, removes one of the rings from her hand. She remembers not to touch the wedding ring.

Her fingers waver a little as she places the jewelry onto the counter. The porter writes an entry in the ledger, places the jewelry into the box, and fits the box back into safe. Then the safe is closed and they’re brought out of the room.

“Shall I bring your luggage to your room?” the porter asks.

“Oh—the—not here yet,” Arthur says, with a cough. “Have it sent up later, that, that’s fine.”

The looks at them questioningly, but all he says is, “I’ll show you to your room.”

Their room is, indeed, to the right of the big staircase.

It has the biggest bed Abigail has ever seen. She pushes onto the top of it, and her hand sinks down and down. There’s a great stack of pillows. Those are even softer.

The room is heated by gas, and there are gas lights as well.

She sits on the edge of the bed, then stands again immediately. It’s the only one in the room.

“Couldn’t ask for two,” Arthur mumbles sidelong, not facing her. “I’ll take the floor.”

“It’s plenty big. You take one side, I’ll take the other, and there’s plenty of room for Boadicea right in the middle.”

That makes him smile. “We’re all bein’ put up in style tonight. Now, let’s see here…”

He tugs the heavy drapes aside to peek out the window, surveying the street. As Abigail looks around the room, she catches a glimpse of herself in a mirror attached to a dressing table. She’d only had Ms. Grimshaw’s little hand mirror to do her makeup, and she hadn’t been able to see a full view of herself in the dress. This mirror is bigger, clearer, and she can see herself from head to toe. She looks like a right little fool. Her makeup is smudged where her face had knocked against Arthur’s shoulders as they rode, and the dress is still baggy in places. But with the jewelry off, she feels physically lighter, unburdened.

Releasing the drapes, Arthur dusts his hands against one another. “Well. We should get some sleep, so we can be ready for tomorrow.”

This pulls Abigail’s attention from the mirror. She frowns at him. “Arthur, there’s still light out. It’s too early to sleep. I’ll just toss and turn and then I won’t sleep at all.”

“Really? I can get to sleep just about any time.”

“I hardly never see you sleepin’ around camp.”

“Well, I don’t always feel like sleepin’. There’s stuff I gotta do. But I can sleep if I want to.”

“We should go out,” Abigail says, impulsively. “Look around the town. It’d be nice. We got nothin’ else to do.”

“We shouldn’t let people see us,” Arthur warns.

“Well, we don’t gotta go inside anywhere. We can just look through windows. No one’ll notice us if we’re just walkin’. And Dutch is interested in somethin’ in this town, ain’t he? Maybe we can bring him some news. Could help with the plan.”

He considers it. Abigail can see that she’s won even before he picks his hat off the hook where he’d hung it and says, with gentle exasperation, “Well, let’s go out then, dear.”

It’s a pleasant, busy evening. Hansom cabs and carriages roll through the streets, and there are many people out on foot. Abigail hangs onto Arthur’s arm as they wander up the street from the hotel. For a man who seems to be always worried about getting things done, he has a slow, measured stride that’s easy to keep up with even in Ms. Grimshaw’s old stiff borrowed boots. At least they fit better than the dress.

She’d redone her hair and scrubbed the makeup from her face before they’d left the room.

It’s nice to look in through the shop windows. She can just look, without feeling any shame about walking away without buying anything. She stands outside a milliner’s shop for some minutes, forming opinions about the displays and watching shoppers look at themselves in mirrors, turning this way and that.

She’s never owned a hat since she was just a girl. She doesn’t have a dress to go with one, but the feathers look so bright and fine. She’s never seen such birds as got feathers like those.

“You know,” Arthur begins, “if we get this job done, some of the take is yours, by right. You’re expected to give a piece of it to the donation box, so’s to help everyone, but you take what’s left. You do the work, you get the money; that’s our rule. Not sure anyone’s told you that.”

“—No, no one’s told me.” She thought they were bringing everything back to Dutch. It had never occurred to her that any part of it might be hers. She glances through the milliner’s window again, then turns away and guides Arthur farther down the street.

A hat—what a waste that would be!

With his other arm Arthur makes a little motion between them. “Don’t know what we might find in that safe, but it’ll be a fifty-fifty split between us.”

She swallows. “I don’t wanna take nothin’ away from you. I’m hardly bein’ a help…”

But Arthur shakes his head adamantly. “No, this wouldn’t work without you along. I’d have to rob them the old-fashioned way, and I wouldn’t do nothin’ like that right in the middle of town. So, a half split with you is better than nothin’ on my own.”

Abigail looks ahead, almost breathless. She’d been satisfied to have a place to eat and sleep among Dutch Van der Linde’s gang; the prospect of having her own money makes her head feel like it might float right off her shoulders. At her side, Arthur goes on talking, keeping his voice low as they make their way along the street.

“Jewelry and things, you gotta find a buyer, someone who’ll give you cash or somethin’ else. If people know you’re desperate, or you don’t know the worth of what you’ve got, they’ll try to give you less than they should. So, you gotta know how to make a deal.” Arthur glances at her. “’Course, you don’t gotta do all that yourself. We know people here an’ there. Hosea, he handles a lot of that business. He’s good at makin’ deals. He takes a bit of the cut and gets it all done with. Worth it, in my opinion, not to have to spend time talkin’ around and around about it.” He shakes his head to express his disinterest in the process.

“Mr. Matthews has a nice way of talkin’ to people.”

“That he does. Well, one of us can take you into town if you want to do shoppin’. Or you can send money along for anythin’, but if you want—dresses, or—other things you gotta wear—don’t expect me to know what’s right.” He tugs the brim of his hat slightly lower, embarrassed to even broach the subject. “We usually leave a name at the post office, so you can order things in, but sometimes we gotta move on, so be careful about that.”

She nods, trying to show that she’s following along. “You don’t usually say so much about anythin’.”

Arthur scratches his jaw. “Well, like I said, I don’t think anyone’s explained everythin’ to you. Takin’ on someone who don’t even know how to shoot… Dutch’s never done that before. Not that I’m speakin’ ill of you, Miss Roberts,” he hastens to add. “It’s all just—different.”

They pass more shops, more townspeople. The air gets cooler, the sky dimmer. Early crickets start to whir their songs. They find a little green park, with hedges and a gazebo. Not ready yet to return to the hotel, she sits at a bench with Arthur beside her. A cluster of women on bicycles race past, laughing. One of them holds a hat trailing a long white ribbon held straight up in the air above her head.

For awhile they just sit. It’s pleasant to only sit for awhile, without any expectation of having to do anything. She closes her eyes, listening to the crickets.

“Arthur,” she asks, after a time, “what do you want to do with your money? From everythin’? You’re always off workin’, doin’ jobs. What’re you savin’ up for?”

Arthur shifts his feet, gazing ahead with a creased forehead. “Well, you always need money for somethin’. Everythin’ takes money.”

“Sure, but what do you want most? You wanna settle down somewhere?”

He looks at her for an instant, looks away again. “Me? No; no. I—ain’t cut out for settlin’. Even Hosea couldn’t do that. There was a time when—” But he suddenly clears his throat, cutting himself off, and frowns more deeply. “Miss Roberts, I don’t want you gettin’ cold out here.”

She’s not cold at all—but she nods, accepting his arm when he stands up to help her from the bench, and they walk wordlessly back the way they came.

Arthur stays quiet while he sorts through and checks over everything they brought with them. They hadn’t packed much, wanting to travel light and not dawdle anywhere longer than necessary, but Arthur can make a chore out of anything. Abigail takes down her hair and occupies herself by sitting at the one of the windows, just watching people going by in the street. She keeps thinking, I should be doing something, but there’s nothing else to do with her time.

Eventually, it becomes unavoidable.

“Arthur?” He looks up when she speaks; he’s started writing something in his little book. “Can you help me with these buttons?”

He stands up but only looks at her blankly. “Buttons?”

She nods. “On the dress. They’re on the back…”

The dress is meant to require help. It was made for a lady with money, a lady who had help. Ms. Grimshaw had buttoned her into it in the morning.

Arthur seems bewildered. “The dress…? What’s wrong with it?”

“I need to take it off so I can sleep,” she says, patiently.

Arthur looks at the bed. An expression of realization dawns on his face, and then his eyes start to dart frantically. “Miss Roberts, I, I can, I can find somewhere else to sleep…”

“You can do what you want, but I need help with the buttons.”

Miserably, he steps forward to help. He has to try several times with some of them, but all the buttons come undone at last. She exhales, stepping out of the dress and gathering it up to hang. She adds the petticoat slip, corset cover, and corset, leaving her in her pantaloons and chemise. She hauls back the thick blanket on the bed and crawls underneath.

A bed! She stretches her toes from sheer delight. Everything is warm, soft, clean. She feels that there can be nothing wrong in the world.

“Arthur, come here, this is so nice. Feel this bed. You ever stay in places this nice?” She pats the bed encouragingly, like she’s calling to a little dog to hop right up.

Arthur hesitates, but he comes closer. “Few times. With Dutch and Hosea and Annabelle and Bessie. Rather not spend the money just to have—” he looks around, somewhat contemptuously; “fancy wallpaper.”

“Well, it’s not just wallpaper. They got hot baths, they keep the rooms all warm, someone comes and changes the sheets up… Wish we could get a nice bath. Feel these sheets.” She turns down the blankets on the other side of the bed. Arthur, obediently, touches the sheets.

“They’re very nice,” he agrees. He still won’t quite look at her.

“Arthur,” she sighs. “I seen you in your union suit before. Come on to bed so we can sleep.”

“Miss Roberts…”

“Come here. I won’t even look.” She pointedly rolls herself over, putting her back to him.

It takes another moment or two, but finally she hears Arthur shuffle about the room, turning out the lights and then hanging up his clothes. The blankets stir and the mattress dips under his weight as he sits and inserts his legs. There’s creaking, shifting, rustling, and at last Arthur tucks himself into place and goes still.

So still. He’s lying stiff as a board at the very edge of the bed. She lets him lie for a few minutes in the dark, then turns herself around again, propping herself on an arm. “I can’t stop thinkin’ about that safe down there. Dutch was sure right.”

As hoped, Arthur instantly cheers. His laugh comes out, low and pleased. “I shouldn’t have doubted him. They’re practically beggin’ to get robbed like that. Just bringin’ us right in there with ‘em, openin’ the safe in front of us…”

“Bet that’ll change after tomorrow.”

“Bet so.”

“What do you think they’ve got in there?”

“Dunno. Probably mostly jewelry, like yours. Maybe some cash, some bonds. Jewelry’s not bad, though. I talked about havin’ to find a buyer, but sometimes it’s better’n cash. Can ride out inflation, doesn’t get burned up or torn up… One time we had a cash box, buried it somewhere for safekeepin’. A badger or somethin’ found it while it was tunnelin’, pushed it around. Then there was some spring floods. By the time we got back to it, box was all full of water and mud. We washed some of the bills out and hung ‘em up to dry, but we lost a good few hundred.”

“No!”

“It was a lean time for us,” Arthur says, voice warm, like he’s recalling a fond memory. “But Dutch got us through.”

“It seems like Dutch has done a lot for you.”

“He has. He’s—well, he ain’t like a father, exactly, but he raised me up, from a certain point, and he taught me more than just about everybody else. Don’t know where I’d be without him.”

Maybe with Mary, she thinks, but she presses her lips together to avoid saying it. Arthur’s in a good mood now, reassured that everything is going just the way it’s supposed to. That’s all he wants.

“Arthur…,” she begins, but she stops, understanding all at once that there’s no question or argument that will work; he won’t do anything, himself. She only needs to do it for him. He’s a man, after all. He’ll go through with it, all the same.

She slides up to him, moves on top of him.

They’re away from camp; no one will know, the way she needs them to. But it’s all right. Dutch will see it.

She pulls off her chemise. It’s plenty warm under the blankets, even without it. She finds Arthur’s hand and guides it to her side.

“It’s all right,” she tells him.

Arthur looks at her face. His mouth is a little open, and his hand, resting on her skin, gets humid.

“You—don’t gotta—”

“It’s all right,” she says, again.

His eyes drop, moving down her body, then snap back to her face. His thumb presses lightly into the edge of her ribs, and he starts to frown.

“You gettin’ enough to eat? There’s hardly anythin’ to you…”

“What was that you said the other day about ‘baby fat?’” she snaps.

He grimaces slightly. “Miss Roberts, you can just go ahead and get some sleep. You don’t—”

“Arthur, I ain’t tryin’ to take you away from Dutch or nobody. Don’t you trust me?”

“No— I mean, that’s not—”

“So what is? You just keep sayin’ you’re so bad, but I ain’t seen what’s bad about you. You’re— You’ve been kind, you look after everybody, you work hard…”

“It wouldn’t, wouldn’t be right,” he falters.

“What do you mean? What wouldn’t be right?” Her voice gets louder, accidentally.

Arthur looks at her with some panic. “It wouldn’t be right,” he says again. “You’re just a girl, and— You don’t want someone like me— And— It’s not right—”

“I’m just a girl? It’s not right?” Somehow she’s gotten louder again. Hush up, keep your voice down, she tells herself, but she can’t, all the air in her is bursting up through her chest and throat, she feels over-full and breathless.

“It’d be wrong to—”

“Wrong?”

Arthur’s eyes are startled-huge.

“I’m no good, no good for you, I don’t want to cause you no trouble, I don’t want to do you no wrong, you’re a sweet girl, it wouldn’t be right—”

“Wrong? It’s not right? It’s not right?” She really is shouting now. She feels like she’s at a water pump, the bucket already overflown, but she pumped the handle too much already and the water has to keep coming out no matter what she does. “If it’s wrong, why don’t you stop them? Why don’t you stop them? Why do you let them? If it’s wrong? What’re you protectin’ me from? If it’s wrong, why not tell them, tell them it’s wrong? Why are you tellin’ me? Tell them it’s wrong, not me! What am I supposed to?”

She lowers her head all the way down, down, and touches it against his chest. Then she draws up and brings her head down harder. She imagines doing it again and again. Against Arthur. Against the wall.

She saw a girl do that, once. She was just crying, and then suddenly she got quiet, turned to the wall, and struck her head against it as hard as she could. Abigail never forgot the sound. The girl fell down on her knees, and then someone came and grabbed her and took her out of the room. Abigail never saw her again after that.

Arthur grabs her arms, pushes her back. Not away from him. Just holding her back, at arm’s length. They stare at one another.

Abigail bursts into tears. A miserable rush of things comes out of her all at once. She brings her hands up to her face but it hides nothing, stops nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she bawls, pathetically. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m, why I’m cryin’. Nothin’s wrong, I just, I just…”

Arthur doesn’t say anything. But he lets go of her arms. Slowly, he sits up. Then he reaches out for her and, slowly, so slow, he draws her against him, holds her against him, a hand resting light on the back of her head, an arm light around her back, holding her to his shoulder, like a babe, a crying babe, and he says shhhh, shhhh, sounding scared, but he doesn’t make her go away, he doesn’t make her stop, and she cries until it’s all gone and she’s just making a baby’s little hiccups, without weeping, and she falls asleep on his wet, gritty shoulder and remembers nothing else until morning.

Four hours away from town, they stop to water and rest Boadicea. Abigail’s legs shake under her skirts as her feet touch the ground; she has to lean up against Boadicea’s flank to keep herself up. She’s desperately hungry. They’d eaten early the previous day, and she hadn’t had an appetite for the rest of the evening. Nerves had kept her away from breakfast as well. With Clarence a mile behind them, her knees and teeth had suddenly begun to clatter. When Arthur hands her some of their provisions—dried meat and a dense, day-old biscuit, wrapped in newspaper—she eats them without even taking the time to thank him.

They can’t risk a fire, but Arthur opens up a can of creamed corn, and they sit down together to eat it cold. He pours half—more than half—of the can into a battered tin cup for her. She drinks it right from the cup, while he eats straight out of the can.

It was— It it had gone— They’d done it.

It’d happened only a few hours ago, but it seems already like an old memory. Like a dream from which she’d been woken abruptly, she can’t remember all of it, though it’d just happened, and all the pieces she’d held onto feel distant and nonsensical and faded at the edges. Many times during the ride out of town, she’d opened up her bag to look inside and see that it was really there, the jewelry, the money…

They’d woken up early but stayed in the room until late in the morning, waiting out the odds that the bounty hunter had already left town. They hadn’t said anything about the night before. They’d barely spoken a word at all. Arthur went out to get Boadicea ready.

She’d been embarrassed to wear the same dress again. Rich ladies had more clothes to wear.

In the room with the safe, her hand had shaken bad. It made the gun rattle.

As easily as if they’d practiced it, Arthur had taken it from her. She’d taken things out of the safe, instead of Arthur.

The bigger boxes had separate keys. The clerk wasn’t carrying them.

They hadn’t gotten as much as Arthur hoped.

It was so much.

Each time she opened her bag, she thought it would all be gone.

They finish eating. Arthur buries the empty can in a little hole and puts a rock over top. She stands up, and Arthur suddenly shakes his head and makes a gesture like he does when one of the horses startles.

“You look like you’re ready to drop,” he mumbles, looking at the ground. “Sit for another minute. If anyone comes along, we’ll see.”

Her face and chest get hot, but she keeps her mouth shut. She does need to sit. She needs to breathe.

They’d stopped at a little rise, with mostly open ground along the way they’d come. No one could sneak up on them, or even come in their direction, without being noticed. It’s nice on top of the hill. They can see so much of the sky.

Arthur stands with Boadicea. He pets her nose, and she shifts her weight from leg to leg and lets out a long, dusty sigh. Arthur summons up another peppermint to feed her. Abigail unpins her hair and shakes her hands through it.

Abruptly she stands up. “Arthur, help me with the buttons.”

Arthur turns a confounded look on her. “We’re on the run, Miss Roberts. We might have to go soon…”

“I don’t need a dress to sit on a horse.”

Arthur comes slowly up to her. She turns her back to him, and his fingers work carefully at the dress. It loosens from her.

As soon as the dress is off, her head feels clearer. She lets it drop to the ground, carelessly. Ms. Grimshaw won’t wear it again, and Abigail doubts that they’ll do her up in it a second time. She’ll give it a good wash if she must, but this is likely its last day to be worn. She stretches her arms above her head and shakes her head to and fro, loosening her neck.

“Do you wanna look at what we got?”

“I got enough of a look at it. Don’t wanna pull it all out now. We’ll sort it out better at camp.”

“You’re not worried I’ll hide some of it? Keep it for myself?”

Arthur gives her a gently bemused look. “No; I weren’t worried about that.”

Abigail sits again. She pats the spot next to her. “Arthur, come sit.”

Arthur scans the horizon one more time, but he comes to sit. There’s not that much space on the flat rock she’s chosen; he has to be near to her. She leans her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes.

“Not sure that I wanna do that again,” she mumbles.

Arthur gives a little laugh. “Shook like a leaf the first time I held somebody up. Puked afterward, too.”

“Did you?”

“Had a drink to settle my stomach, but it, well, it didn’t help so much. So you’re doin’ better’n me.”

“I don’t know if I can get used to it. I want to be a help and—to give back, for everythin’—but…”

“What you do around camp is already helpful. You don’t gotta be out shootin’ places up. We’re outlaws, but it’s because there ain’t no place for us, not because we wanna be shootin’ folk in the back. We do what we do because we got to, so we can—survive, and be free from everythin’, not because, because of greed.” A note of conviction comes into his voice, but then he shrugs his shoulders, embarrassed. “I don’t know how to say it right. Dutch can explain it better.”

“You said it just right,” she murmurs. “I understand.”

She slips her hand into Arthur’s. He’d taken off his riding gloves while he tended to Boadicea. His fingers are big next to hers, tanned dark, rough. She examines the scars on the back of his hand and the short, dry fingernails. She’s been wicked to him, but he hasn’t laid a hand on her unkindly.

She breathes the air and listens to Boadicea contentedly cropping the grass nearby. There’s sun warm on her face and shoulders. They’re bringing back a fine little haul, according to Dutch’s plan, and there will be food waiting for them at camp.

“Do you think I’m rotten, Arthur?”

“—No. No, no, I don’t think that.” He clear his throat slightly. “I think you’re—very sweet. Got a good heart in you.”

“I think you got a good heart, too, Arthur.”

She turns her head to the side. Her other hand comes up, reaching over, and turns Arthur’s face toward her. She leans up and kisses him on the mouth.

“Arthur,” she whispers. “Arthur…”

She kisses him again, and he draws back a little, and she says, “Please.”

She feels the shudder that runs through him. His throat clicks as he swallows. And then his mouth moves against hers.

He gave himself a close shave for the job, but a short crop of stubble has already grown in. His chin scratches lightly against her as he angles his head.

A hand sinks into her hair, but he moves his fingers carefully, not pulling.

She brings him down onto the ground. Why not the ground? She said she didn’t mind it.

His hat falls onto the dry grass. His hands go to the backs of her thighs, then rest behind her waist.

She’s the one to open up his pants. It’s easy. She hardly has to think about it.

She’s wearing split pantaloons. She slides over his hips and lines them up together.

Arthur makes a noise like she’s kicked him.

He’s big enough that her eyes water up immediately from the stretch of it. She drops her head to keep him from seeing, because he’d probably think that something was wrong. Under the guise of pushing back some hair from her forehead, she dabs a hand quickly against her eyes.

The corset keeps her spine straight. She sits high over him, unable to curl down to kiss him again. She doesn’t like to kiss men much; they’re always so hard with their teeth, their breath sour. Yet there was something sweet about it with Arthur, the cautious way he’d moved his lips, like he was holding back something that he thought might leap out and hurt her.

Beneath her, Arthur grunts like he’s the one in pain, his head digging back into the ground, his teeth flashing through a grimace. The sun’s in his eyes, the blue of them flashing sometimes when he raises them to her. She leans on his shoulders to give herself a way to move, back and forth.

Sometimes when she does this, she doesn’t feel much of anything. She thinks about other things, and she only comes back when the heaviness, the ache, the heat goes away. Then she examines herself for problems that she might have to do something about. Is the pain worse than usual? Does it hurt in different places? Can she breathe all right? Is there blood? Did they finish inside?

But now, right now, she’s here, with Arthur, with herself, noting things that are usually far away. The air smells like dry grass and warm stone. There’s paler skin just at the underside of Arthur’s neck where his jaw shades it from the sun. Her own breath whistles slightly when it comes out of her. A bird is calling somewhere, pip-pip-pii. The driving pressure between her legs makes her mouth quake, blood pulsing in her face and neck. She’s shocked by how much there is to notice. She crumples his clothes in her hands, creasing the fine, stiff fabric he’d been so careful with.

She doesn’t expect it to last long. It usually doesn’t, and Arthur hasn’t a woman in— It’s been a long time for him, she imagines. She’s expecting it, when Arthur curses and bucks in a telltale way. Then, with a surge, he lifts her off him, and she looks down to watch his cock jump and twitch as he spills seed onto himself. She feels a warm wetness roll down the inside of her thigh.

Arthur places her on the ground. She stretches out an arm for the abandoned dress.

Arthur sits up next to her, struggling with his jacket. Then he’s spreading it out on the grass, crushing it under his own knees as he reaches for her, asking softly, c’mere.

He sits her on the jacket, half supporting her with an arm at her back, and then his hand is between her legs, reaching through the gap in her pantaloons, rubbing her. The whorls of his fingers are tough as tanned leather, but he doesn’t press painful-hard like some men do. Abigail grabs at him aimlessly, clinging to his shoulder, her legs pressing shut around his hand and then letting go. His nose is almost at her temple, his breath stirring the fine hairs that spill past her ear, whispering, easy; easy; you’re all right…

He doesn’t push his fingers inside her, just keeps them moving, and Abigail starts to breathe like she’s plunged into cold water, in high, frantic little hitches. She squirms on the jacket, her legs moving restlessly as something in her winches tighter and tighter. She turns to him, crying out into the humid shelter of his neck as the ache between her legs builds to a strange sensation that fills her whole body, like she’s been crumpled up into a ball and then unfolded again. For a few seconds she stops breathing.

Then Arthur stiffens up beside her. “Somebody’s down there…”

She rises to her knees. Like a pair of prairie dogs they gaze down the hill. There’s a figure on the horizon, moving at a steady canter. Not directly toward them, but not away from them either.

Arthur gets up. He helps her stand. She grabs the dress, the bag. He lifts her onto Boadicea, mounts up as well. They wheel about and drop down the far side of the hill.

In the late afternoon they stop at a creek, hugged by beech trees on each bank. In the shade, as Boadicea drinks, Abigail steps into the dusty, enveloping dress, and Arthur does up the buttons. She looks down, and for the first time she notices that she is still wearing the wedding ring.

For some reason, she starts to laugh. It catches in her throat, makes her shoulders jump as she tries to hold it down.

Behind her, Arthur stills. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin,” she tries, but when she opens her mouth the laugh comes out, and another follows it. She covers her mouth, laughing helplessly through her fingers.

Arthur lets out a chuckle, like the kind people do when they don’t understand what’s going on. She turns to him, and when he sees her face his mouth twitches and he smiles, his lips together, but another short laugh pops out of him, and then it overtakes both of them at once, and they lean up against the beech trees, holding their sides, laughing together like they’ve got the Devil in them.

They tell her that she’s a real Van der Linde now, a true outlaw, a wild woman of the wild west. She’s toasted, her cup filled. She sips only a little, but it makes her face and stomach warm. Dutch’s gramophone scratches out a song as they dance. Arthur holds Ms. Grimshaw’s hand through a twirl; Pearson trods on her toes. She doesn’t even feel it.

Later, in Dutch’s room, he gives a strange, low laugh and murmurs, “Well, you’ve gotten up to some merrymaking, indeed…”

Arthur keeps leaving camp, the same as before. Never mind, never mind.

She’s kept busy, all the same. It makes no difference.

He comes in one day, comes to her directly. She’s laboring over the stew pot, scouring rust spots with a handful of sand.

“Brought you something,” he says, presenting a flat rectangular box the size of a handkerchief, about an inch thick.

She stops to wipe off her hands. They’re greasy and wrinkled when she takes the fine little box from him. She tugs apart the thin ribbon tied around the box, lifts up the lid.

“They might’ve got a little melted,” he mumbles.

It’s a box of chocolates, somewhat shaken up. She looks up at him wonderingly.

“—You need to get more to eat. Thought you might like ‘em,” Arthur explains, rubbing the back of his neck. “Don’t let Marston get none.”

She puts the lid over them again and reties the ribbon. She says, “Thank you.”

When he leaves the very next day to do business with Hosea, she hides out in the trees beyond camp with the box of chocolates and eats them, all of them, until she curls onto her hands and knees and is sick in the dirt.