Let me tell you, buddy
There's a faster gun
Coming over yonder
When tomorrow comes
Let me tell you, buddy
And it won't be long
Till you find yourself singing
Your last cowboy song.
Willie WatsonLate May was always a hectic time for New Hanover, and the year 1902 was no different than any that had come before. It was ranch country, had been since the Heartlands were still feral and untilled, and cowpunchers were hard at work all the way across the territory driving their herds, either to pasture or to auction. It had been a good winter, mild and fairly dry - this Spring's thaw hadn't even taken the Dakota River up to the cut bank - and calving had been remarkably prolific as a result. Though some folks took that sort of fortune with a touch of suspicion, even the small-time ranchers felt a little bit like Charles Goodnight that year. There were rumors that the going price was seventeen dollars a head in some places and slated to hit seventeen-fifty, maybe even eighteen, before the usual summertime recession. It was the sort of windfall that could make many lives much more manageable.
As a result of these things, Valentine was a positively buoyant place that May, full of life and sound and people, and John Marston cared for it not at all.
It wasn't the cheer that he hated, of course, but rather the business it drew, and therefore the crowds. He'd had a hard time keeping his head down over the last three years or so, and just a few weeks back, as the last of the snow began to unbend, he'd finally wound up in a place where he thought he, Abigail and Jack could put down some roots for a spell. It was a ranch, about half an hour's ride out of town, where he'd been hired on as a hand and given a little dwelling on the property. The three of them had been what amounted to vagrants since Dutch had run them off in '99, and it wasn't anyone's fault but John's. He'd play the straight and narrow like a good boy for a little while, then he'd fall right off that bona fide wagon one way or another, and back on the road they'd go. Abigail was getting fed up with it, and she wasn't shy about telling him so, either, often in ways that made him feel about six inches tall. It had been a difficult few years in more ways than one.
So the very last thing he needed to be doing was riding through a lively town full of caballeros with lined pockets and cheerful dispositions, all of them hopped up on their own success. A happy man was a friendly man, and a friendly man was liable to want to chaw the rag. And it might transpire that sooner or later, one of those happy-go-lucky vaqueros would realize that Jim Milton, the mild-mannered, biddable ranch hand from just outside of town, looked an awful lot like a scarred-up, iron-slinging hardcase by the name of John Marston who had robbed the local bank a few years back and laid half the town low. Yet here he was. And the reason for this ill-advised visit was waiting for him in the saloon up ahead.
Hopefully.
JOHN tied Rachel to the hitching post outside the bar, patting her withers gently as he did and glancing around him, keeping the brim of his hat pulled low. The sun was low in the western sky, tinting the town faintly crimson as it sank, and the dust of many hooves and many boots passing in the streets hung in the air around him, fragrant with manure and tobacco smoke. The sounds of boozy banter and laughter was already on the rise inside the batwing doors ahead. Not yet sunset and already snot-slinging drunk. These boys weren't wasting any time, that much was for sure.
John Marston strode up the wooden steps to the saloon with the same loping gait that had carried him across countless other dusty towns in his day, a dark, wiry man in a filthy denim vest and a pair of worn jeans, a gunbelt slung low around his lean hips. He pressed the doors back, looking around, but he didn't need to look for long. She was sitting at the bar, head lowered, poring over her beer, her blond hair hanging around her face, trailing loose of the braid that fell down her back, silent amid the bluster and noise of the saloon. For a moment John simply stood there and looked at her, feeling a strange sense of déja vu. It was like he'd traveled back three years, before things had gone so sour.
She saw him after a moment, glancing up from her beer and spotting him walking slowing into the dimly lit saloon, pulling his hat off and holding it against his chest, looking absurdly deferential, as hesitant as a tenderfoot in his wedding chambers. She got to her feet at once, grinning, and strode toward him, both arms held out.
"John goddamn Marston!" she cried, and flung both arms around him. John, surprised, laughed, hugging her back. "I thought I heard a rumor you was still alive!"
"It's good to see you!" John remarked honestly, grinning in spite of himself, drawing back and holding her at arm's length. "Look at ya. Goddamn. Sadie Adler. You look great. Not a crack in you."
It was true; she was just as sprightly and bright-eyed as the last time he'd clapped eyes on her. When had it been? When she had busted him out of Sisika? Had to be.
"Yeah, well, I guess my mama musta had good genes, because it sure ain't my lifestyle done it for me," said Sadie, beaming up at him and ushering him over to the bar, taking his elbow in her arms. "Come on, grab some seat and knock one or two back, why don't ya? Christ, it's good to see a familiar face."
Sadie gestured to the barkeep. "Two more, fella, and keep 'em comin'!"
"Yes'm," the barkeep agreed, hopping to it. John took a seat at the bar next to her, setting his hat on the table. Sadie lifted her chin toward it.
"My memory might not be so good, but I reckon that mighta belonged to somebody else once."
John nodded, touching the hat with the tips of his fingers almost reverently. "It surely did, yeah. Wish its owner was still around to wear it instead of me."
"Well." Sadie leaned her head back, rubbing the back of her neck. "I think you speak for a lot of us with that one, friend."
The subject of Arthur Morgan hung pregnantly between them for a moment. John cleared his throat at length, drawing the beer the bartender slid him closer and drinking deep on it.
"So how'd ya find me?"
"Jim Milton? That you?" Sadie glanced askance at him, looking amused. "You ain't so good at hidin' yourself, John, believe it or not."
"Is that a fact?"
"It surely seems to be." Sadie sat back, swirling her beer around in her glass a moment before tossing back a mouthful, the dim lights flickering off the fine hairs at the crown of her head. "I heard tell of a pretty man with black hair and a scar across his face first, and I sorta suspected, and then I heard about a feller up in Roanoke killed with a bullet through the forehead, and that's when I figured it out. That you, what did that?"
John sighed, nodding. "Yeah, it sure was. Guess I wasn't too good about hidin' my tracks."
"Well, I guess we can't deny our natures, at the end of it," Sadie admitted, shaking her head. "Abigail and Jack?"
"Fine. Both of 'em. Better'n fine, I like to think." John peered at the musty bottles behind the bar, pensive. "Abigail, she ain't takin' to this new lifestyle as well as I might have hoped, but then again I never hoped for much, so -"
"Ah, well that don't surprise me none to hear," said Sadie, smirking over her glass. "Abigail wasn't never made for the road."
"No, she wasn't. She should be on a homestead someplace." John sighed, rubbing his forehead. "That's what I'm aimin' for, once I'm able."
"Well, knowin' you, I'm sure you'll arrive there."
John looked at Sadie's profile, hesitant, then, with a touch of almost absurd pride, said, "I'm lookin' to buy some property up west of Blackwater. I'm kind of a farmer now."
He'd expected her to laugh, and he wasn't disappointed. It was good-natured, though, and it made him feel a little more confident.
"John Marston shovelin' cowshit," she remarked, grinning. "Now that's a sight I wouldn't never have imagined mortal eyes would see."
"Hey, you'd be surprised," said John, smiling, glancing at her with an expression of ersatz offense. "I can do all kinds of fancy honest shit now, Sadie. I can milk cows, I can harrow fields, I can thresh grain . . ."
"Jesus wept," said Sadie, laughing. She clapped him on the back. "Good for you, Marston. Miracles really do come true."
"What about you?"
"Oh, you know how it is." Sadie ran her finger around the rim of her glass, smirking. "Bounties, mostly. Some other stuff. Good and bad. Hey, you have any interest in bounties?"
John laughed, shaking his head. "Nah, nah. I've gone straight." He laughed, low. "Sort of."
"Oh, Lord. Wonders never cease."
"I guess they don't."
"Well. On that note, let me just get right into why I wanted to see ya, because I never really figured you for the bounty-takin' sort these days, if we're bein' honest. Hoped, but not figured."
John sipped his beer, watching her curiously. "And what's that?"
Sadie leaned forward a little, meeting his eyes. "Two things, John."
"And they are?"
"First one is that I think I mighta found Micah."
"Micah." John watched her eyes, his brow knitting. "Micah Bell?"
Sadie nodded her head, grinning grimly. "The one and only. I got a lead on where he's at."
"How?"
Sadie sipped long from her beer, swallowed, and pursed her lips, looking at her hands, resting above the bar. "One of his old buddies turned up drinkin' in Strawberry. Cleet. You remember him? Scrawny ittle rat-faced bastard, turned up near the end?"
"Yeah, I remember him," John muttered, low, scowling. "Don't I ever."
"Well, Cleet's wanted for killin' a woman. We get to him, we get to Micah. And John, Micah won't be far behind. You know as good as I do how he sticks close to his cronies. He likes his little security detail, the fuckin' coward."
"And you wanna go after him."
Sadie snorted. "You bet your skinny ass I wanna go after him, John. After what he did to Arthur? To everybody?" She shook her head. "I tell you what, I tried to kid myself for a little bit after I realized I was lookin' at Cleet on that wanted sign, that maybe I ought to leave well enough alone, that enough time had passed for everyone to just move on down the road. Lasted about a day before I saw sense. Arthur saved most of our necks more times than I can count, he didn't deserve what happened at the end. And it was all because of that son of a bitch Micah. He's got it comin', John. And I know good and well you wanna see him pay for what he done just as bad as me," she added, looking over at him shrewdly. "If I feel this way after knowin' Arthur less than a year, I bet you got it a damn sight worse having known him most of your life."
John turned his face from hers, staring at his hands, chewing his lips. She was right, naturally; he'd thought of Micah nearly every day over the past three years, had done a fair amount of searching himself, though none of it had been fruitful and his family's presence had hampered much of it. There'd been not so much as a whisper of the man that he'd discerned, and Lord above knew he'd looked, had scoured newspapers and wanted ads and monthlies. He wondered distantly what he'd have done with this information if he'd come across it before Sadie. Probably lit out after the son of a bitch then and there.
"Abigail ain't gonna like this," he muttered, low.
"Well, she'll like the next bit of this even less, knowin' her."
John glanced sidelong at Sadie, uneasy. "And what's that, exactly?"
Sadie polished off her beer, throwing her head back to do it, her throat working, then slammed the glass onto the counter. She gestured at the barkeep, who began to fill her up another. She pulled a pack of smokes from her breast pocket, mouthed one out and lit it with a match that she popped alight with her thumbnail, waving it out over the bar and flicking it away.
"The second part," said Sadie, smirking around her smoke, "is that I'm pretty damn sure Rane Roth is alive."
John stared at her a long moment, saying nothing, feeling a curious lightness in his chest. He was abruptly aware of his heartbeat, quick beneath his shirt.
"Rane Roth," he said at last, a little faint.
"You remember her?" Sadie smirked at him knowingly over her smoke. "I bet you do."
"'Course I remember her. She died with Arthur up there on that mountain. Shot up by Micah, from what I heard tell."
"Well, I heard as much, too, I'm sure we all did, but here's the thing." Sadie leaned forward, clutching her drink and meeting John's gaze. "The Pinkertons, now, they reported her and Arthur both dead. It's official, they got obituaries and everything. There's even a statement a bunch of boys made on the record about seein' their bodies together on that mountain. Both of 'em dead as doornails, half frozen in the snow. Didn't wanna carry 'em down because they were on foot and short on men, and it was cold as a witch's tit."
The image of Arthur and Rane, shot up and cradling one another in dead, presented itself to John in rather lurid detail, and he felt a sinking stab of guilt. He cleared his throat, sipping on his beer and eyeing Sadie, trying to put this thought away.
"So what about any of that makes you think she ain't dead like they say?"
"Well." Sadie settled back in her chair, grasping her beer in one hand and looking at him. "I been hunting bounties for a good long while now, John, at least since Dutch ran us all off. And like any job, I get competition. Sometimes names, they start rising among the rabble, either because they're real good at what they're doin' or they're real bad at it, usuall. I started hearin' about a woman huntin' up outlaws about six months ago, and I was interested because there ain't many ladies in my line of work, not since Black Bell some decades back."
John nodded. His heart was still beating rather quickly, and he was listening intently to Sadie, his brow furrowed. "Sure."
"Well, I did some askin' around, at first because cash was gettin' snatched right out from under my nose and I was starting to get kinda pissed. Lots of 'em in Ambarino and the like, in the more desolate places. The tough ones, in other words." She sipped her beer, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "According to the street, seems there's a girl running around taking out men wanted by the law with a sword rather than a gun. That was my first clue, because I ain't never seen a woman swinging a blade before I met her."
"Aw hell, Sadie," said John, drinking again and glancing away, his brow furrowed. "That coulda been anybody, there ain't but just the one sword in the whole damn world, you know -"
"Oh, quit it with your bullshit." Sadie cast him a reproachful look. "You tellin' me you met just a whole slew of acquaintances over the years that liked to kill fellers with a blade rather than a gun, like it's a thing to do? All of 'em young women, no less? Fuck off with that nonsense."
"All I'm sayin' is that it ain't proof of nothin' on its own."
"Well, it sure ain't, which is why I learned some more." Sadie sipped her beer again, glancing at John. "You wanna hear what I found out, or you want me to stop? I'm happy to let you go back to your family without -"
"What else did you hear?" John interrupted roughly.
"Alright. Well, I met a man in Saint Denis who told me she chased him down on a contract but let him go at the end because he gave her what she was owed by the bounty. He said she had dark hair and she was riding a black horse, and she was real pretty. So pretty he felt like he was goin' crazy lookin' at her, I believe he said, like he was seein' an apparition or a succubus rather than a woman. Now I ain't too keen on ladies myself but if that ain't the way a man would describe Rane Roth, I'll smile and kiss a pig."
John ran both hands down his face, letting them linger in front of his mouth, staring at her. "Jesus."
"I asked around a little bit more, and as luck would have it, I happened on a shitfaced-drunk Pinkerton one night in Rhodes who was happy enough to open his gob, and that was the real Golconda. Name of Huxley, real young green feller. Don't ask me how I found anything out from that fucker," she added grimly.
"I wouldn't dare." John was still listening intently, his face still, his shoulders set. "What'd he say, Sadie?"
"Well, he was there," said Sadie slowly, and paused to drink long on her beer. "That night. Came across her and Arthur with the rest of his outfit while they were chasin' Dutch. He said the whole mountain was covered in blood from where she'd been gutshot, and they thought of puttin' a bullet in her head - mercy, you know, her bein' so close to dead anyways - but their big man told 'em to hold their fire and let her die slow, on account she was such a pain in their asses of late. Janky bastards," she added, low, and spat onto the floor, her nose wrinkled. "So they left 'er to it and moved on. Left a dying girl in the dirt next to her dead man. If that ain't cruel, I can't say that I know what is."
"How you know he wasn't full of shit and just tryin' to get into your pants, Sadie?"
"Well, I asked him to describe both of 'em to me, for starters, and he did. Real damn well for somebody who'd only seen wanted posters, I might add. Right down to what they were wearin' that day, and if you try to tell me you don't remember all that little shit as well as I do, I'll call you a goddamn liar."
John nodded, biting his lip. He did. Vividly.
"Huxley said that according to what he'd been briefed on, she fell in with some Wapitis after Arthur died. Sort of became a nomad, rambling around and doing things for the tribe, killing men and animals. After a little while she broke off, went off on her own and started taking bounties. Pretty soon she got herself a reputation and really started to bring in the cash, especially out east. She pert set up shop." She leaned towards John, nudging him gently. "Killing silently, that was her specialty. Sneaking up and gutting 'em with her sword. That Pinkerton feller, he said she's going by Claire Gray out east, but the boys in the agency started calling her Blackguard, on account she never shores up anywhere, just stays out there sleeping rough and killing folk and leaving no tracks. Takin' all my good bounties and gettin' to 'em first, I might add."
John exhaled roughly. "Jesus fuckin' Christ."
"That Huxley feller said that she was likely gutshot by Micah, not by none of the Pinkertons," said Sadie, low. "Now if you know Rane like I know her, she's on the hunt for him, same as we are, not just for her own ass but for Arthur's."
"I don't have the slightest doubt."
Sadie leaned toward him. "I think I know where she is, too. And I think we oughta find her, and end this shit together. All three of us."
"How the hell you know she'd wanna?"
"You don't think she'd wanna help us kill the man that murdered Arthur?" Sadie laughed grimly. "She'd see Micah in his grave quicker than she'd blink and you know it. She loved that man better than she loved life."
"Okay, well how the hell do we find her without spooking her off?"
Sadie laughed, fingering her beer. "Oh, I think I know just how to do that."
