Usual disclaimer. Also, my heartfelt thanks to James Ensor for his nightmarish paintings and to the Star Wars universe for an awesome name ;)

Chapter 8

"Here's to our little prosperous town," Francis Dahl Jr. announced loudly, lifting his glass of gin, "And may it continue to prosper!"

The three men emptied their glasses, but Isabel felt as if she had already had too much although she hadn't touched her glass at all. The walls of the room were swaying like leaves blowing in a savage autumn wind, and the flames of the gas lamps on the table erupted in a blinding light, throwing up white-glowing flames that reached the ceiling. The men didn't seem to notice.

"It will, my friend," banker Stuart Holmes said, pointing at the young entrepreneur with a fat finger. His face was flushed from the drink. "If Jenkins' idea goes according to plan, it will."

"But how?" Matt Cavendish asked, refilling their glasses, "Through Jenkins' poor little arms business? Or through your utopic visions of a railroad track, Francis? I tell you: the only way forward is through cattle trade, gentlemen."

The banker and the entrepreneur exchanged a smug look. Isabel's sight blurred for a second. It seemed as if the faces of the two men had changed into those of two monstrous creatures, and the light from the lamps added to their deformity by accentuating the shadows around their eyes and mouths. She shut her eyes tight, hoping the vision would be gone when she opened them, but when she looked at her father's guests again, their terrible faces had grown even more hideous and were now bathed in an unreal blue-green light that grew to fill the whole room.

"No, Matt," the fat banker said with a haughty smile, "There's one beast – a dangerous beast – which is much better worth trading in than cattle or arms. And Jenkins knows that well, believe me."

Isabel's father looked at them quizzically. Stuart Holmes and Francis Dahl Jr. sent each other another short glance and started to laugh maliciously, the banker in a deep snorting kind of way, the young entrepreneur with a high-pitched nasal sound. Their voices echoed off the walls and the ceiling which had now completely disappeared into the blue-green haze. The air in the room seemed suddenly thick and moist, flowing around the men and the furniture alike until Isabel could no longer distinguish anything in its cloudy denseness.

The laughter of the two men mixed to a single buzzing sound, hitting her ear more and more rhythmically as it grew in intensity. It's the sound of the insects in the field, she thought, I must have forgotten to close my window. She turned towards the sound, and there he was. Her uncle grabbed her shoulders and drew her close without a word. It was the sound of his heart she had heard. Isabel kissed him, relieved, but as she pulled away from him, the flesh on his face melted away leaving an empty skull with a silver tooth and two big hollow eye sockets. His hand moved up along her thigh as it had done in the kitchen, but when he entered her, it wasn't his warm dry fingers she could feel. Instead, it was the cold sharp edge of a knife, cutting her open from below. Isabel gasped with pain and fear and looked into the empty eyes of the grinning skull.

"It wasn't me," she moaned, trying to catch her breath, "I didn't show them. I'd never…"

Then, everything blurred and drowned in darkness.

A horse whinnied somewhere outside, and Isabel opened her eyes with a start. She lay sprawled on her bed, her nightgown and blanket wound up around her and her pillow on the ground. She must have fought with them all night. It was just a dream, no more than a foolish nightmare, she thought, looking up into the polished wooden boards of the ceiling. She rolled quickly onto her side, opened the drawer of the small cupboard next to her bed and rummaged around for a while between notebooks, pens, a leather purse and the drying remains of the rosebud Butch had given to her. She exhaled with relief. The rock was still there, hidden and safe.

The horse outside whinnied again, this time louder, and Isabel heard the sound of muffled voices, too. She disentangled herself from her blanket and jumped out of bed. The nightgown stuck to her sweaty back, so she pulled it over her head with a hasty movement and flung it onto the floor. She went to the small washing basin in the corner of her room and poured some fresh water into it from a large jug. The water felt nice and cool against her heated skin, and she closed her eyes, delighted by each handful that hit her face.

The men had talked business from the moment Stuart Holmes and Francis Dahl Jr. had entered the house till the moment they had left late at night. She had listened to them patiently but bored, sticking to the rabbit thigh on her plate and wondering whether it had been that one she had landed on, when her uncle had pushed her onto the table. There had been something in their voices, though, that had made her remember every word. An ominous tone, an ironic twitch at the corner of the mouth.

Something was amiss. Something was about to go terribly wrong…

Her father's muffled curses filled the hallway as he went to the front door and flung it open. Isabel dabbed the water off her face and chest and went to the window. It stood ajar, and a fresh morning breeze hit her face as she leaned out to have a better view. The rays of the rising sun were creeping lazily along the ground and up the hills in the horizon, and the weeds and shrubs cast their long shadows towards the west as if stretching their limbs after a long night's sleep.

There were five riders just outside the fences, but they seemed to have no intention to come into the yard. One of them was her uncle. Isabel threw the towel onto her bed, grabbed a long white petticoat and pulled it over her head. She managed to seize an old coat and throw it cross her shoulders as she flew out of her bedroom and down the stairs. The cool morning air hit her bare feet and face as she slipped around her father in the doorway and ran out into the yard. He tried to grab hold of her, but she was too fast.

"Bella!" he called out, but didn't pursue her, "Come back here, child!"

Isabel thought her heart would take flight. She must tell him. She must warn him. She must… She stopped dead in the middle of the yard. Tell him what? Warn him of what? Her father and his guests had been talking about nothing but railways and cattle trade the entire evening, and yet their conversation had left her with a horrible feeling of foreboding.

Butch and his men descended from their horses as she approached them slowly. Her uncle had replaced the short jacket he had been wearing yesterday with his long travelling coat which was now flapping lightly in the morning breeze synchronically with a large feather of an eagle in his hair. His horse nodded vigorously and scraped at the ground with a huge hoof as he threw its reins into the hands of one of his men.

"I thought you'd left," Isabel said, stopping right in front of him.

"How could I leave without sayin' goodbye to my beautiful Niece?" Butch answered, his thin lips curling in a lopsided smile.

She sighed, wishing that she could believe all his lies. Her uncle had never been fond of lengthy goodbyes. But today, there was a playful light in his cold eyes, and an air of excitement and restlessness lingered on him and his men alike. She sent the others a sideway glance. She recognized most of them from the day she had stumbled upon the gang in the fields: the old man with the long grey beard, the big Mexican, the funny looking scrawny guy.

"My boys," Butch rasped by way of introduction, following the direction of her glance. "You've met most o' them except Ray," he continued, pointing at a stoat guy with broad shoulders, "He's our gunman. We call 'im GunRay."

Ray put his short double-barrelled shotgun across his shoulders and tipped his hat, sending Isabel a curt smile. She greeted him with a nod.

"The ol' man is Barret," her uncle went on, "He's a moonshiner, used to be our scout…"

"What?!" Barret asked in a squeaking voice, squinting at Butch.

"… but now, he's deaf as a stone. Still makes the best mountain dew 'tween here an' ol' Mississippi river, though, if you ask me."

His men nodded in consent, grinning.

"The big oaf is called…"

"JE-SUS!" Jesus belched loudly, hitting his ponderous belly with a massive hand.

The outlaws erupted in a cascade of laughter, and even Isabel joined in, suddenly forgetting her worries.

"That's 'im alright," her uncle said with a sigh, "An' this creature here is Skinny. He's a damned coward, but he can suck a dick as well as any whore."

The scrawny guy pulled off his hat, leaving only a lace-trimmed, sweat-stained and rather worn bonnet on his head. His mouth split in a huge gap-toothed smile, and he looked at Isabel with a proud expression on his face. She glared at him sceptically.

"Don't worry, love," Butch said teasingly as he saw her expression, "We only use 'im when there ain't no ladies around."

"What about the boy?" she asked, looking back at him, "There used to be a boy, too."

"Yeah," Butch said, scratching his jaw with a filthy finger, "Frank, Frankie, our new scout. He died last night of a snakebite."

"With all due respect, Butch," the gunman said and cleared his throat, "he died of one o' your bullets."

"He wouldn't have lived to see another sunset anyway, Ray," her uncle answered glumly, "You know that as well as I do."

"What?!" said old Barret.

"Tomorrow would have been 'is 14th birthday," Skinny said sadly, watching his hands turn his hat absent-mindedly, "We'd all clubbed together to pay for 'is first woman. He could 'ave had a whore in ev'ry town from here to Lubbock for that money, but he had to go an' turn up 'is toes even before he could get a single lay, poor fella."

For a moment, a solemn silence fell over the gang. They all looked down and shuffled their feet.

Isabel inspected the face of her uncle. Suddenly, she wanted to scream at him and hit him and tell him to stop the insanity he called his life. She wanted to make him stay with her forever and ever. Instead, she crossed her arms and looked into his eyes.

"I've heard the rangers at Austin are hunting down the last of the outlaws there," she said matter-of-factly, "And down in Colby, Daniel Reid has taken his father's place as a ranger."

"Ha! Dan Reid, that dumb piece of shit!" her uncle laughed bitterly and spat on the ground, "He wouldn't know an outlaw if he had one right up his tight little ass."

The mood of the gang lightened, and they laughed with their leader. Isabel grabbed the collar of her uncle's coat and dragged him away from his men. She sent an anxious look over her shoulder. Her father was still watching them from the porch.

"Will you come back to me?" she asked in a low voice, slipping her hands discretely around Butch's waist inside the coat.

"But honey," he answered with a hoarse sarcasm, looking down at her through cruel half-closed eyes, "You know that my heart is all yours."

Isabel dug her fingers into his side roughly, making him wince. She'd had enough of all his bullshit.

"Listen, Butch," she said angrily, correcting the collar of his dirty shirt with shaking fingers, "You'd better come back to me, and preferably not in a wooden box. D'you hear me?"

His sarcasm faded away, and he lifted her chin with two fingers, inspecting her face. She stared into his harsh blue-grey eyes, her anger suddenly gone, and wished that she could kiss him goodbye without being watched by her father and the outlaws. As if he had read her thoughts, he took her head between his hands and pressed a hard warm kiss onto her forehead, his stubbly chin scratching against her brow. She closed her eyes and savoured every second. Then, he drew her close and pressed her head to his chest. She listened to his heartbeat, wrapping her arms around him tightly.

"I'll do my best, sweetheart," he whispered, "I'll do my very best."

She watched the gang ride off, her eyes following them until they became small dark dots against the hazy horizon. Her uncle's reassuring kiss had somehow settled her worries and brought calmness to her troubled mind. She squinted at the distant figures, watching them disappear in the desert haze, and smiled.

"Go, Butch," she whispered to herself, "Go and be what I cannot be. Go and be free."