One morning when Arthur had returned once again, he and Eliza were awakened by the sound of a rooster's screeching the news of another daybreak.

Arthur groaned and turned on his pillow, bringing his arms over his head. "Remind me why we have chickens," he mumbled into the pillow. He heard her laugh and felt her lips on the back of his shoulder.

"Because eggs are good eatin'. That reminds me…" Still in her nightgown with her hair loose, she rested her chin on his bare shoulder. "I need you to help me catch one today."

He groaned again.

"While you're here! It's my least favorite thing. I need your help while you're here."

He whimpered and whined.

"Come on!"

"Eliza..." he moaned. "Why do you need to catch one? I thought you were usin' the eggs!"

"Sure…but we have a rooster to make more chickens…because I thought you liked my fried chicken." She smiled as she watched him pick his head up off the pillow. "Come on! Up! You wake Isaac, and I'll get breakfast ready." She slapped his shoulder a couple times before moving to leave the bed.

"You sure are good at askin' nice," he drawled in a grumble as he turned his head around on the pillow to face her.

She stayed in bed a moment longer and looked back at him, clucking her tongue. "Oh, I'm sorry…I meant to order you," she said sweetly, and her smile widened when she saw him roll his eyes. She slowly climbed atop his back. "You like it like this better?" She rested her palms on his bare back and kissed between his shoulders. "Out of bed…" she said gently and returned her lips to his skin, smiling when she saw his small grin, "wake Isaac…" she kissed him again, "catch us a chicken. In that order." She suddenly bounced on him, causing him to groan loudly. "Up! Let's go!"

She climbed out of bed, dressed, and went to the kitchen. A little while later she saw Arthur come out dressed and go to the baby's room, coming out with Isaac on his side, with his big arm under his bottom.

"I don't think he's too sure about openin' his eyes to see my ugly mug instead of his mama," he chuckled.

She looked over and tried not to laugh when she saw Isaac looking at him with something like a perplexed stare. "At least he's not crying." She immediately opened her mouth wide. "I didn't mean it like that. Really, I didn't! I meant it as a good thing! He could be, but he ain't!"

"Yeah, yeah, I getchya."

When Isaac caught sight of her, he immediately leaned forward and reached both arms out to her.

"Oh, you hungry? Come on, let's eat," she said bringing him into her arms as she turned and set a plate on the table before Arthur. "Boiled today 'cause I had 'em ready to peel, and it was fast. Salt's there," she pointed to the table. She turned twice more to transfer her own plate and a bowl of porridge to the table with her free hand before sitting Isaac in his little custom wooden seat at the table.

Arthur sat in the chair beside her but found he was more interested in watching them than in eating. She began tearing pieces of egg white from her eggs and giving them to Isaac, and feeding him spoonfuls of porridge before ever taking a bite herself. Isaac would reach out for the egg white, bend his stubby little fingers around it, and haphazardly stuff it into his mouth and munch on it, which was when Arthur would catch a glimpse of his beautiful budding teeth. Eliza nibbled at one of her eggs, but she wasn't getting far. It was almost like she was subconsciously saving all of it for him, in case he was in the mood to eat that morning, which he appeared to be.

"Don't you got anymore eggs boiled?" Arthur asked, not wanting her to go hungry.

"Oh, sure, I just need to peel them," she said, taking a sip from her mug of coffee.

She kept one hand free for the spoon in the porridge bowl, giving Isaac a scoop here and there, and he'd smack his lips and mumble approval again. He clearly liked both being fed as well as the illusion of independence that came with putting his food into his mouth himself.

They were something like a symphony, the two of them; and as he tried to eat his own food, Arthur wondered if they were like this every morning. Eliza was by now a master conductor. And by no means did it go unnoticed or under-appreciated by his young son.

"Ma… Mama," Isaac said with his hands outstretched to her face.

Eliza looked up from her food at him. "Yes, baby." When he puckered up his lips and leaned forward, she came close and kissed him on the mouth, to which he smiled wide.

Isaac sat back in his seat for a moment, but quickly leaned forward with puckered lips and outstretched arms again for another kiss. When she didn't notice his gesture, he called for her again.

She leaned forward and kissed him with an exaggerated smacking sound as he took her face in his hands, and he let out a little giggle.

He didn't let her get far before he was reaching out for her with puckered lips again.

"Oh!" she gasped and planted a sloppy kiss on him with boisterous munching sounds, and he threw his head back and cackled. This time he didn't let her take her face out of his hands. "He realized recently that he likes kisses," she chuckled.

Arthur smirked. "You're gonna turn 'im into a pansy."

She rolled her eyes. Well, he's got only a mother around… she thought and almost said it aloud, but bit her words back. "No, Arthur, this is just what little children do. Love is all they know. Well…that and a little mischief. Huh? You can get into a little mischief, can't you?" She let out a breathy chuckle when he puckered up yet again. "Aw, you like my kisses, don't you?"

Arthur felt himself smile at the show of affection between them. His eyes slid over to her as she finally sat back in her chair. "You know who else does…"

She turned and looked at him, a grin slowly appearing on her mouth.

In the matter of a moment, he rushed her and took her off her chair, pressing her up against the wall in the corner behind Isaac.

Isaac heard the foot of the chair scrape loudly against the floor and turned his face to look around, but when he didn't see anything, he contentedly went back to his pieces of egg that his mother had put on the table before him.

"Don't grab onto the shelf like that; you'll tear it off the wall," came a whispered chuckle from behind him.

Eliza switched to clutching his shirt in her hands as he kissed her breathlessly, hastily, and messily like he was prone to do when he got in a passion. She could feel him pulling up the fabric of her skirt and sliding his hand up the inside of her thigh, and she could already imagine the feeling of his hand when it reached its destination.

She broke her mouth away from his and gasped as she caught his hand, preventing it from going any further. "Arthur!" she looked into his eyes. "You won't make me forget about catchin' a chicken! You won't!" She laughed as he hung his head a little and cursed under his breath, confirming her suspicions.

He looked back up at her with a gleam in his eye. "We could still finish if you want."

"No! Isaac's sitting right there!" she whispered.

"Yeah, so…" he whined in a high tone as he kissed her neck. "You can keep quiet, can'tchya? What he can't see won't hurt him. We are his parents, after all. This is just what parents do," he said wryly, intentionally mirroring her words from moments ago.

"No," she breathed a laugh, hardly finishing the word as she gently pushed him. "I didn't feel right about it to start with. No. Come on, come finish breakfast," she said as she managed to come out from where she was tucked by him. She took a breath, swiped a wisp of hair from her face, and fanned herself as she went back to sit at the table, leaving him where he stood with a hand on the wall.

He groaned as he came and plopped back down beside her, realizing with dread that there was no getting out of this today.

.

When the three of them had gone to the big fenced area where the chicken coop resided, Eliza sat Isaac down on the grass outside the fence as the two of them went in. Arthur took no joy in the undignified chaos of scrambling and chasing after the chickens, who'd turned out to be better evaders than he'd realized an animal could be; though it seemed joy was exactly what Eliza was taking from it.

"I thought you said this was your least favorite thing," he grumbled.

"Chopping the head off is. 'Sides," she said looking down at Isaac, who was giggling and clapping. "We've got extra entertainment today with you here to help us."

At first he half-frowned, but he couldn't help but smile at the sound of Isaac's whooping screams and cackles.

They continued to chase in the sunlight as the chickens expertly dodged and averted them, causing them time and time again to bend and suddenly lunge in vain. Isaac would laugh, which caused Eliza to laugh, which extracted a few exasperated chuckles even from Arthur.

"Look at us," Eliza said, finally straightening after a while and catching her breath with a hand on her hip. "All we need is a banjo," she laughed.

Finally, Arthur stood straight, his back and arms slack from exhaustion and the futility of it all. "Oh, hell." Without even looking and in one smooth, syrupy motion, he pulled his six-shooter off his hip and gunned down one of the chickens at his side, the shot ringing loudly through the air, the smoke lazily rising in a cloud from his gun. Every other chicken leapt and screeched, scurrying away into the henhouse.

At the sudden boom of Arthur's shot, Isaac jumped and cringed. He opened his mouth wide in shock, a look of terror knitting his brows together as he looked up at his mother and waved his hands at his ears.

"Oh, honey," she said, reaching through the fence boards and picking him up. When she pulled him up into her arms, his face was taut with fear, his mouth pulled down in an exaggerated crescent moon. "He's never heard a gunshot before," she said quietly, looking down at him and stroking his head.

"Oh, no. No, no," Arthur said as he watched him suck in big, fragmented gasps of air, knowing he was just on the cusp of letting out a ripping wail. "Don't do it, little 'un. Don't break my heart." He quickly holstered his gun. "Hey… Here, here," he said holding his arms out and taking him. "Come here, son," he said bringing his forearm under his bottom and looking at him. "Yeah, you're all right."

With big, bulbous tears still gathered in his baby blues, Isaac gazed with a trancelike expression into his father's face. He hiccupped and reached out, clumsily putting his hands on his cheeks. When he blinked, the tears rolled down, but he was calm as could be. Arthur reached up and wiped the tears away with his thumb. "Good boy, you're okay," he whispered. Smiling, he kissed him on the cheek, and Isaac's face relaxed into a grin. Arthur dipped his head to the side and blew a spurting kiss into the crook of Isaac's neck, immediately spurring a bout of roiling, squeaking cackles from the little one—so rapturous was his bout of laughter that he threw himself back, and Arthur had to compensate and catch him so he didn't fall.

Arthur smiled wide, feeling his shoulders release of tension. He looked at Eliza, who had a loose smile hanging on her mouth and a bright, hazy gleam in her eyes. "See? That easy. He's all right. Ain't you, bud?" he said, looking back at him to see he was still smiling and hadn't taken his eyes off him. He watched as Isaac fumbled to get his hands back on each of his father's cheeks as he leaned forward with a pucker. Arthur looked back at Eliza with a furrow to his brow.

"You better kiss him," she said in a tone only feigned as serious. She watched as Isaac leaned forward fast, and Arthur kept looking back at her with a lost, incredulous expression. "You have to kiss him!" she pointed.

Finally, he quickly pecked him on the lips. "There—you happy?"

Eliza felt a grin spread on her own lips as she watched her son smile brightly. "That's exactly what he is. Exactly what he is."

Arthur wheezed a laugh and shook his head. "Here, why don't you take him back on the other side of the fence. I got an idea."

She took him in her arms, ducked with him through the fence boards, and sat on the grass facing the chicken pen with him in her lap. They watched as Arthur ducked his head and arms into the chicken coop, coming out and carrying something to them in his hands. Remaining standing, he lowered his fist and opened his big hand to reveal a tiny, fluffy golden chick. He watched and smiled as both their expressions lit up like a star-lit sky.

"Look!" Eliza gasped. "What's he got, baby?" She reached out and scooped up the chirping chick, bringing it to her lap in front of Isaac. "Look at that," she breathed, taking his little hand in hers and stroking it across the chick's fluffy back. "Gentle," she whispered. "See? We have to be gentle." She watched Isaac gaze at the noisy chick; and when he smiled, she beamed up at Arthur.

He smiled at her and blinked softly before she looked back at their son. He watched them quietly coo to each other and the chick, and he felt himself relax and breathe easy in the moment. He grinned to himself as he opened his hand and looked down at the tiny chick he'd reserved for himself. He stroked it with his thumb for a few moments before looking back up.

That was when he saw them: instead of Isaac and Eliza, the rotting bodies of two old men he'd shot recently in a botched robbery strewn out on the ground in their place—empty expressions in their dead eyes, flies buzzing and spinning around their gory wounds and all.

Arthur woke with a horrible start and sat straight up in bed, panting and gasping. His dream reliving the events of the day had quickly devolved into a nightmare. As he huffed and tried to catch his breath in the dark, he glanced to his left and noticed the curve of Eliza's hip under the sheet beside him. She was already stirring.

"Arthur?" Eliza whispered groggily as she rose on her arm in her nightgown. Only when her eyes adjusted to the moonlight did she realize he was trembling ever so slightly, and her breathing stilled. She looked closer and noticed the beads of sweat gathering on his temple. He wasn't making a single sound, but he wouldn't look at her. When she reached out a hand to his arm, and he flinched and actually scooted away from her a bit, she began to be afraid for him. "Arthur, what…?" she whispered. "Talk to me." She felt so pathetic when her own voice broke just a little. She rested her forehead against his tense, hunched back, feeling the soft fabric of his nightshirt. "A nightmare…wasn't it?" She took a breath. "Sometimes I get them too. About my mama and papa, when they were dying. About…I guess about my fears for the future." She turned and pressed the side of her face against him. "You can tell me," she swallowed, shaking her head. "But know…just know I won't ever make you."

Arthur brought a hand to one half of his face. He hadn't realized fear could seize him so thoroughly as it had moments ago, when he'd realized all at once that she was lying right next to him—him, a person who could do that to others. Oh, Eliza, you don't even know what you're asking, he thought firmly. The truth was she was so young and innocent. He knew violence, brutality, and their result to be so foreign to her, and he wanted to do what he could to keep it that way. But it meant that she would never understand this part of him. If she ever did, she might just be abhorred at what she found.

Eliza watched him slowly turn to look back at her in the darkness. His expression was a mix of many things she couldn't quite decipher and name so late at night, but she knew she could recognize melancholy, uneasiness, loneliness, and perhaps even something like regret. She felt a breath leave her as she reached up and brushed his hair away from his eyes. She was glad when she saw his back and shoulders ease at her touch. Think you can try to sleep? she'd wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come out.

She brought her hand to his arm near his shoulder and gently pulled him back towards the pillow. When she succeeded, and he turned on his side facing away from her, she kissed his shoulder and slipped her arm under his to bring her hand gently to his chest. She closed her eyes with a pain still in her chest but a small, grateful smile on her face when she felt his hand rest over hers.

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Dear Readers,

I'm taking another moment to truly thank each of you for reading faithfully, for your reviews and comments, and for sharing your thoughts and engaging with me. It means so much, and it makes this more fun than I'd hoped it would be.

I also need to let you know that I'm in the process of moving to a different state (from the "Wild West" to "the Heartlands," as I like to say!). Due to this, the next several weeks will inevitably be very busy, hectic, and a tad unpredictable for me. I'll also say that I really don't like feeling pressed for time and rushed to upload when I have a little bit of extra time. I take it pretty seriously; I like to have a rough draft (or a "skeleton"), write it out more thoroughly, then edit once and re-edit for a total of editing at least twice. I do it for these reasons: I enjoy it, I don't like the lesser quality when I don't do it that way, and I take the gift of your time seriously. With all that being said, I'm letting you know I can't guarantee how regularly I'll be able to upload chapters for the foreseeable future. I will upload new chapters when I can.

Please understand that this does NOT mean I will be abandoning this work. I have absolutely NO intention of abandoning this work. I will see it through to the end, believe me. I have already written a lot of it; it's just not as fleshed out as I need it to be before uploading. And I have ideas for more that needs to be written. I also have plans for a third (though shorter) finale piece to this series. As you can see, I'm very invested! No abandoning here. Please stick it out with me, and I don't think you'll regret it.

Thank you so much again!

Sincerely,

Rosie