Arthur had always thought his life would end with a bang.
The bang of a smoking gun, a target catching him off guard. An O'Driscoll landing a lucky shot. The bang of a trapdoor dropping open, a hangman's noose cinching tight around his throat.
He had always believed he'd die at the hands of a man. A man he had wronged, had angered, had underestimated for that one crucial moment.
But some part of him knew it wasn't a certainty. Life in his time was dangerous; with their lifestyle, doubly so. A horse's midstep could lead to a dangerous fall, ending his life with the bang of his skull against the ground. A falsely identified plant could bring his heart to a stop, the muffled bang of roots snapping as he harvested it marking his nearing death. A sip too much too drink, a hair too little attention paid, and he could be falling, plummeting until he hit the ground with a bang.
Predators always lurked in the shadows, eyes keen for any sign of weakness, prepared to end a life with a snarl and a flash of fangs. If one were lucky they might be able to fire off a single shot of their gun, but usually these deaths ended not with a bang, but a whimper.
'Wolf brain.'
'You might be the first bastard to ever have half his brains eaten by a wolf and end up more intelligent.'
If he could have, Arthur would have grinned as his own voice echoed in his head; he wasn't a dumb enough man to miss the irony. Maybe, if he came out of this, he would be half as smart as John had ever been, half as useful. Maybe Dutch would love him more, see him as more than just a workhorse toiling in the shadow cast by his golden boy.
He supposed he should be screaming-couldn't quite remember when he had stopped. When his revolver had been knocked from his hand, flung into a snowdrift far out of his reach? When Archimedes had stopped shrieking, going still on the ground?
When he had been rent open such that his blood stained the snow pink and his organs steamed?
The wolves snarls echoed in his ears, seemingly satisfied now that he was downed. They didn't even have the decency to finish him off, to close their teeth around his throat and end his suffering. He found himself wishing, dearly, for someone, something, anything else to come along and finish the job. An O'Driscoll, even, if they would put a bullet between his eyes. A lawman who, for the most part, would have the empathy or, at least, the morals, to finish off a dying, suffering outlaw before taking him in. Even a cougar, at this point. Their attacks were vicious, but their kills were clean and quick.
Wolves, though, were a horrible, slow death. They pulled you down off your horse, grabbing you by your leg and bringing you to the ground, or spooking your horse such that it would buck you off, leave you to their mercies. Either way, you would be stunned, unable to defend yourself as they descended. If you were lucky, you still had a grip on your gun but, more often than not, your gun was still stashed safely on your saddle, which was rapidly getting farther and farther away.
Arthur wished that Archimedes had been such a horse, that he had bucked him off and been done with it. But the Walker had been as loyal as he was, too, too loyal, and had suffered for it. Had faced the wolves head on, fought them with tooth and hoof, had suffered the tearing of his flesh beneath their fangs and claws until the bloodloss made him too weak to stand; dropping, trembling, into the snow, rapidly descended upon by the starving pack.
But wolves, they didn't sink in their teeth and hold on. Didn't suffocate their prey, or break its neck. They worried at it, let its instincts and desperate will to survive work against it. Dealt it numerous small wounds that, in its panicked thrashing, the prey would open wider, the edges messier, hurrying along their inevitable demise.
So while you were still heaving on the ground, wind knocked out of you, they'd lunge. Sinking fangs into your soft parts-your legs, your arms, your stomach, your back. Leap out of reach before you could beat at them, another striking elsewhere while you were distracted, like massive, deadly mosquitoes. And once they were satisfied, they'd wait, standing just out of reach and staring, hulking omens of the dark dancing in faltering vision. Bloodied muzzles licked clean in anticipation of their first meal in days, frosted breath ghosting the air as hungry eyes gleamed in the shadows.
And when you began to weaken, no more a threat than a newborn babe, they would begin their feast. Step in, ignoring the weak thumps of your fists beating at them as they tore into you, eating through clothing as though it were nothing more than paper wrapping on a chocolate bar, eaten along with the bitter treat by a child too excited to take the time to unwrap it.
And Arthur had fought, too. His gun had been in hand when he'd been pulled off, a single bullet left in the chamber after his desperate attempts to frighten them off and then, when they gave chase, his best attempts to strike them down. But the pulsating mass of flesh and fur had absorbed the handful of bullets his gun held, their hunger so great they fought through the pain. And when he had been pulled down, fighting a losing battle against gravity, from his saddle, the force had sent his Revolver flying, vanishing into a pile of snow.
They had been on him, then, and he had regretted everything he had ever said to John about wolves. That the man had survived such an attack, had managed to live several days being harried by wolves; he had to be the strongest man that Arthur had ever met.
Stronger than Arthur could be.
Their teeth had sought purchase in his flesh, and no matter how fast he was, how quickly he moved to grab them, to throw them away, they were dancing out of reach. He would try to grab one that was worrying at his leg, only for it to leap back, and one to bite at his shoulder; that one would soon be replaced by another at his back. Arthur had tried to stand, more times than a child learning to walk, but every time a heavy weight had attached itself to him-to his back, his arm, his torso- he was unable to keep his balance, crashing back into the snow, brought back into the wolves reach.
And wolves, when they feast, they start on the soft bits. The calves, the upper arms, the stomachs. Where there is excess skin and fat, less vital things that might be severed, or consumed, or destroyed, bringing an end to the suffering of their prey. They were not purposely cruel-Arthur knew that, would never accuse them of it even as he lay at their mercy-they were merely obeying their instincts, doing what was safest. Darting in and out made it less likely for you to be hit. Consuming your prey immediately after it was down gave it less time to cool, to begin to go bad-gave you more time before other, bigger predators scented the blood and came running.
The wolves snarled and snapped above him, jostling each other in a fight over the choicest parts of him. One was sent away, squealing, and sulks back in with its tail tucked to gnaw at his heel, the wolf who had struck it beginning to tear at his calf. Idly, he thought, 'this should hurt', and he twitched his leg in an attempt to pull it away. But a numbness had set in some time ago, brought on by blood loss, or perhaps some desperate attempt by his brain to make his passing peaceful. The wolves were unbothered, following his leg as they continued their feast.
A wolf stood before him, then, and he eyed it warily. It had easy access to his stomach, unprotected as it was. Already, there was a gash there, still healing from a bullet that had grazed him a few days gone, stitches torn out when he fell from the saddle.
The wolf was on him, then, and panic that had long dulled bubbled freely in his chest. Its fangs tore through his jacket, fur and fabric slowing it for only a moment before it was gulping down mouthfuls of bandage and flesh, uncaring of the weak writhing of the man beneath it, torso arching as he attempted to get away. Heels dug into the ground, but a wolf snarled, grabbed one in its teeth and pulled, yanking him off balance and flat onto his back. The wolves that had backed away, disgruntled by his second (fourth? Fifth?) wind, quickly descend upon him like vultures upon a half rotten carcass, picking at the scraps of meat that still clung to his heel, his legs, his hips, his shoulders. The meat on Arthur's stomach, with the tender flesh and precious innards, was a treat first reserved for the hulking beast before him.
It tore into him, powerful jaws making short work of his ribs, the air filled with the crunching of shattering bones. He had seen wolves, coyotes, all manners of scavengers pick at carcasses, seen them empty the body cavity of the most nutritious parts, but so dazed was he, mind clouded, that he didn't realize what it was about to do.
A blunted muzzle vanished into the gaping wound that remained of his stomach, and there was a sickening pulling sensation-he spasmed, his mind screaming that something was wrong even as he continued to fade, and his intestines unraveled on the ground, mesenteries and fascia having been torn as the wolf destroyed his ribcage.
Hysterically, as he watched the wolf begin to chew on his entrails as though they were little more than particularly long pieces of jerky, his mind went to spaghetti. That was what Jack had called it, wasn't it? Their boy had drawn it, excitedly, not long after coming home, in hopes that Pearson would be able to replicate it, and everyone else would be able to try his new favorite food. His innards looked nauseatingly similar.
There, the seemingly endless intestines the wolf gulped down looked a great deal like the squiggly lines of the pasta drawn by a child's hand. His blood, that had blushed flushed the snow a rapidly darkening pink could be mistaken for the sauce, which Jack had colored with fingers coated in the red dust that covered everything in Lemoyne. And there, those dark chunks of organ (he didn't know which ones they were, and didn't particularly care to, either) that the wolf had begun to sample shared a striking resemblance with the smeared thumbprints their boy had called meatballs.
The world around him was beginning to fade, and he was certain he must surely be more skeleton than man, only held to life by that sheer willpower that had gotten him through firefights and torture but, at the moment, was prolonging his death into something even the Devil would decry as inhumane. It felt as though he must have been laying there for hours, time slow and sluggish as it always became during a firefight, any time his life was at risk, although he knew it could have only been a minute or two.
How incredible, the lengths a life could change in only a minute. He had always tried to give men swift deaths, to end their suffering in seconds, often before they even knew he was there, or that the man they were speaking to had a gun. So how was it fair that he had to suffer so? But then again, when had his life ever been fair?
His mother, torn away from him when he was so young, by an illness. His father, a cruel drunkard, hanged when he was only eleven. Mary, still breathing, but undeniably cruel in the way only a lover could be. Mary and Izaac, his diamonds among a mountain of dirt, buried for naught more than ten dollars-and he had done the same as had been done to them for far, far less. Mac, shot so he fell free of his saddle, heel catching such that he was dragged by his own horse 'til he died. Jenny, neck snapped as a lawman's noose caught her while she took a corner, her horse's hooves slipping and pulling hard enough that she might as well have been hanged at the gallows. Davey, shot in just a way as to suffer the slow death of a man bleeding on the inside: that horrible trickle-way of bleeding that told you immediately that there was a massive gush somewhere inside. Sean, full of life and like an annoying little brother, shot down in front of his eyes.
And he wouldn't even get a grave, he realized, the wolf chewing at something that left him fighting for breath, the others gnawing at bone. His heel crtch!'d, and a wolf worked at getting to the marrow. Wouldn't be able to face West, remember the good times they'd had. Hosea and Dutch, they'd never be able to find him. It wasn't unlike him to leave Camp for up to a week at a time, even more common now with strife thickening the air at camp far more than the swamps ever could. Even if they sent Charles after him, he would be nothing more than scattered bones, likely buried by the next snowfall. Would they think he had abandoned them? Up and left, as John had? Gone while the goin' was good, abandoned his family just because things were getting tough?
The thought churned his stomach more than the pain ever had, and he retched-but nothing came up, the contents of his stomach having joined his blood on the snow. His heart raced, and he gasped fruitlessly, unable to catch his breath, and even the animal part of his brain that had begun to take over was horrified when it realized it could see his heart lurching sluggishly in the snow, desperately trying to make each pump count but slowing all the same. His lungs, laid out not too far from his heart, barely twitching with each desperate pull for air.
A wolf shifted, trying to push through its pack to find a more prime spot, one with more meat still left on the bone. Its paw squelched on his heart, and Arthur gurgled, chest jerking upward; he lay still, head lolling to the side, blue eyes glazed and blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Arthur Morgan's suffering had ended.
The wolves, merely animals who were as desperate to survive as he had been, unable to feel regret for ending a life in such a manner, continued to feast. They nipped and growled, shoved one another aside as they stripped the corpse of its flesh. A fight broke out over the coveted heart and lungs, a scrawny yearling sending a grey-muzzled bitch squealing with a bite to her nose, before gulping down his prize.
When they had finished, they would retreat some five hundred feet or so, far enough away that they would be safe from the more dangerous scavengers, but close enough that they could return if they wished and try to wrestle the marrow from its bones. At sunrise, they would set out, beginning their twenty mile lope to return to their home territory, having traveled far more than that in search of food. Come the next week, they would do it all over again.