"I don't suppose you're here for the show."
The voice was familiar, the tickle of recognition sparking in Jack's brain. He turned a sidelong glance at A'way, scrunched his brows together in confusion, blinked, and stared. For a woman she made a decent man, done up in the style of the time. There was a war within the outlaw as he looked on her, one part appalled that a woman would dress as a man, and the other relieved she hadn't tried to make herself out as a woman of means.
There wasn't enough makeup in all the West to cover up her savage heritage, and no one would believe one of her kind had money without treachery.
"Not bad," he whispered out of the corner of his mouth at her, turning his eyes back to the stage and the settling people "Dressing like a man suites you, I seem to be taking you more seriously already." The play would be divided into acts. He'd watch the first, slip out in the intermission and ambush his quarry when the show resumed. He didn't fancy himself a John Wilkes Booth, but the comparison was eerily apparent.
When he shot the man, though, he wouldn't be a damn fool and jump down to the stage.
"Mister Jack," Lonnie gave a short wave when he fell into the seat besides A'Way, "Aint never been to no theater show before, reckon I feel better if I was to set up near the train for tomorrow." He seemed uncomfortable in his new clothes, always shifting and stiffening, as if trying to fit into the clothes rather than letting the clothes fit him. "Shows're for fancy people, and I aint so fancy, sir."
Jack resisted the urge to slap the man. Riding out with convicts, a priest, some gunsmith, and this fellow was the most ragtag posse he'd ever been party to. Lonnie would serve his purpose getting them on the train, but probably best he get left at the next station. The boy only invited trouble and it was starkly apparent he did not belong among them.
"You look like a dandy," A'way returned with a sweet smile, wrinkling her nose at the passage of a woman reeking of rose and rough, underlying, sweat "Dressed up like a Popinjay, aiming to seduce our man tonight?"
Jack ignored the jab, calloused fingers minutely adjusting his outfit as he spoke, "Our target is up in a box seat. At intermission I will be paying him a visit to ask about our mutual friend."
A'way nodded, "Do you mean 'we' will slip away at intermission?"
"No. The passage of two men where they ought not be is far more conspicuous than one. Stay and watch the boy, I would be loath to lose our train ticket on the eve of our departure."
Her eyes smoldered and she gripped Jack's forearm with surprising strength, "I am no sheepdog."
"No," Jack answered her, grimacing, "You are more a wolf, far too accustomed to doing alone and unable to consider instruction." Out came a knife from the folds of his coat, glittering wickedly as it pressed against her hand. After a moment, A'way let him go, but her scowl remained.
"You do not command me."
"No? Than find Johnny on your own. There will come time for killing down the line from here, but we need to actually get down the line. Lonnie has a powerful curiosity and I do not need him wandering away. If I need your help, I'll whistle."
Lonnie had not paid any attention to the exchange, his eyes roving over the colored fabrics and smiling faces as though seeking a place for that curious gaze to land.
"Five minutes till Act One!" came a voice from the back and the murmur of voices rose into an excited roar before falling back again. A'way turned her eyes to the stage with a grimace. In antithesis, Jack was smiling, slipping the knife back into his jacket.
They waited for the show to start.
The greycoat relaxed visibly when the Stranger let his hand drop away. Before they turned from the trainyard, the moustached deputy tipped his hat at the preacher with a nervous smile. "Mighty obliged, Preacher. Best we don't call upon your services for buryin folk today, I reckon."
Hal smiled back, a hollow mirror of the deputy's before turning back to the wagon. The boy clamored out from underneath and returned to the seat, still quaking with the excitement of the incident and ready to be away and back to the safety of the morgue…strangely enough.
"Preacher!"
Hal turned to see the Greycoat dismounting, and walking up to him. His muscles tensed as the deputy reached into that grey coat and emerged…with a long slip of crumpled paper. He held it out to Hal with a smile and the priest gingerly took it, glancing over the scrawling. It was a ticket to the show at the Zeus. Faust.
"If you hurry," he said, "You'll still get in just fine. Seats might be tight but the Zeus aint never overbooked."
"Thank you," Hal said quietly, remembering the burning figure standing at the door in his vision, "Aint no need for a gift though, just doing the Lord's work."
But the Greycoat heard none of it, already turning back to his horse and the Stranger. Both set off into the dwindling crowd of people as the boy looked up at Hal with a gap-toothed sort of exctiment. "Aint you the lucky one, Preacher! I reckon I can drop ya off at the door on our way back, now that our business is done."
As he said the words, two rail men hefted the coffin roughly from the carriage, carrying it over their heads to a boxcar and sliding it in. "Rail car eighteen, Preacher," one called out to him, pulling the door shut, "You can claim your corpse at the next station."
Grymm did not need to prowl long. The smells assaulted her from every store-front, every man and woman swirling around her. They smelled of death already, the quiet molder that snuck between their clothes and skin, settled in their hearts. Death had claimed this town and now the squatters thought to call it their own. But to the coyote, the smell of blood perched on shingles of every building, sprouted like rivers from the ground.
And it might have all been blood….save for the sharp acrid smell of brimstone that ebbed from the Zeus.
And in her horseman eyes she saw the Chained Man, the Burned Soul, the Arrogant, The Fallen.
And suddenly, taking in a little stageshow seemed a nice change from the overwhelming presence of Death in this place. All these corpses, dancing on marionette strings. Each and every one of them would die, and soon. Calamity was coming to St. Clare before the year was out. The soil cried out for their bodies and the sky roiled above them.
Fate was dancing on their graves…and none of the fools knew they were buried.
The Hessian and Felicia laid low in a ditch while the rail men loaded up their luggage. Out of fear for being caught, Felicia remained close to the outlaw and out of something close to hunger, The Hessian kept protectively close to her. It was only after it started to dim, lights fading into the red-pale of the desert did the Hessian and Felicia move back to the trains. Without so much more than a glance at which rail car it was, the Hessian opened up car eighteen and ushered Felicia inside, shutting the door before her dog could follow. It was dark, the dank dark of hopelessness, of trapped creatures.
"Sh-Should we be in here?" Felicia asked Hessian, fumbling for the way back to starlight evening, "We're supposed to board the train come morning."
The Hessian did not speak, listened, heard nothing, and turned in the darkness. He could not see her, but reaching out he found her hair, curling his fingers through it before letting it fall down her face. Comforting, caressing, before clamping over her mouth. Felicia screamed in that hollow place, her voice only a muffled murmur. She struck out with her arms and feet, a nervous energy…every bit as confused as it was desperate. Her hand went for her gun, but the Hessian was there, pinning it back against the cold metal of the boxcar door and pulling it free. She heard it clatter far away to her left, too far, far too far, and so she struggled harder, wildly. But she found tough skin and knotted muscles and, finally, a rough swelling in the Hessian's groin that did not give when she struck at it.
"Aint good for much, are you?" His voice was syrup sweet, almost gentle had the circumstances be different "Reckon no one'll ask if I say you ran away..." She tried to speak, found her voice carried no farther than the confines of his hand. She felt her clothes tear, rough fingers stripping her of her dignity, her purity. There was no ceremony to it, no warning. All action and primal strength…and that voice, that sweet, sweet voice, whispering in her ear.
"I'm gonna eat you alive."
Stranger got no farther than the doorway. Quick as a rattlesnake, he drew his pistol the moment he heard gunmetal, swinging it instinctively toward the source. The Greycoat behind him had not even begun to raise his gun by the time the Stranger had stopped, a quivering dead-man's aim on the man who had the drop on him across the room. Crow sat behind his desk, gun out and steady at the Stranger's heart. The Stranger had his trained on Crow's head.
"Evening, Stranger," Crow drawled, "Shooting a man in the head aint a pretty way to go."
"I know better than to aim for your heart," The Stranger said coldly, "Waste of bullets to aim for what aint there."
There was a silence between them, thick as any fog or sandstorm rolling up from Nevada. The Greycoat who brought the Stranger in quivered, unsure of adding his life to the roil between two legends. Luckily he didn't have to. Jeremiah Crow chuckled, a small hitch in the cold grimace on his face and then it split into a wide grin, laughter boiling up out of him and shattering the tension. He put the gun on the desk and indicated the Stranger should enter. Twisting the gun back to its holster, he did, his spurs ringing softly with each step.
"The years have been kind to you," Crow complimented, leaning back in his chair, "But then and again, who would know with your self-bandaging obsession."
"Same charm," The Stranger answered, with neither mirth nor threat, "The years have not been so to you. Offended Father Time?"
It was true. Time had carved canyons in the Sinspeaker's face, spidering out from the edges of his eyes and collecting around his smile. As age always did before, no man was safe from its touch…no man save the Stranger, and now he was acutely aware of it. A hand unconsciously strayed to his face for a moment, only one, as he wondered what lay beneath that. Did he have a man's face anymore…or was he only carefully sown brambles in some horrifying parody of humanity? The thought was not a pleasant one.
Jeremiah nodded to the man in the door, sending the Greycoat away. Alone, the two of them stared across the desk. There was intensity in Jeremiah, of that there was no doubt…but whether the Stranger felt ill at ease or anything at all was impossible to discern from the two hollows in his bandages. The silence lasted a second longer than what was comfortable in a conversation before Crow spoke. When he did, the jovialty had left it. In the years Stranger had known the paladin Jeremiah Crow, there had been no give in him, no shiver. Even when he gunned down the innocent in days long past, he had never showed a single hesitation to his cause. But there was something different in him now, an exhaustion age and too many things seen placed on a man's shoulders. Jeremiah had the same eyes, cold chokeberry…unwavering, unyielding, but his body was failing him.
And for a man with a spirit like that…maybe it always had.
"You ride into my city," he began, "You don't expect me to know about it? Stranger, your mummy face is on every ransom board form here to Kansas and you think you can just trot in and flaunt that?" The Stranger said nothing.
"You did me a favor five years back with the Wallace gang, but that don't mean you leave with a pardon. I might've been inclined to overlook it, but soon as I found out you'd ridden into town I sent some boys into the foothills seeing where you camped from."
A hand trailed to the gun on his desk and the Stranger tensed. Once he thought he was immortal…but then, he'd never been gunned down by twenty men before. All of Crow's paladins…did even he get up from that?
"We found a camp alright, near seven people up there…now, that might not be you but it got me real curious…thought I'd have you stop by for old time's sake." His smile was disarming, his eyes were a hawk's, seeking weakness, fear, anything to latch his talons into.
"Tell me, Stranger," he said, "Who'd you ride in with?"
Yes, Papa,
