AN: Well folks it has come to an end, thanks for all the support. I really didn't think anyone would have any interest in this story so I'm really happy that there are people who have liked it.
It was cold in the cemetery Raylan noted as dusk settled over Deadwood. He and Seth were sat against one of the grave markers on the hill eating beans that Martha had packed them off with as she had tried desperately to convince herself that stood on the doorstep waving Seth off would not be the last time that she saw her husband.
Earlier in the afternoon Raylan had found Seth at the newspaper office of The Deadwood Pioneer which he realised was only a few doors down from The Gem. Seth was pacing across the rough hewn boards as he thought of what the telegram to the main paper in Yankton should say.
"Is alive and kicking a little too obvious?" He asked a large man with ginger hair and a moustache as a squirrely looking man with curly hair took notes. Raylan could only guess that the larger man was the editor of the newspaper and the quiet man in the corner next to the telegraph was its operator. Seth turned to the larger man and looked at him intently before he grinned, "We want to tempt Hunt and his gang back without them looking like fools for falling in to our trap." Raylan tapped politely on the door frame and all three men turned towards him. The larger man rubbed his moustache as he did a double take and the quiet man stuttered in what Raylan assumed was German. When the room was quiet again Raylan noticed that the larger man had started making notes on a ledger and he could only imagine the headlines he was spinning. As a man Raylan Givens had made the headlines more than once he wouldn't deny that. They were usually something to do with some shoot out he had been involved in; or the fact that he would take a person down if they put a gun to him. The one that he could imagine this man writing however would be the strangest one yet.
"There you are Raylan," Seth said with an almost insane glint in his eye. Which Raylan had to admit was another thing about Seth that he recognised as part of himself. Neither of them backed away from anything, no matter how harebrained the scheme. Raylan had willingly gone against Mags Bennett solo and she was not a woman that many people walked away from and from the sounds of things it would seem that Seth had done similar stunts on more than one occasion. At the thought Raylan felt a shimmer of pride that maybe he had more in common with this Deputy than he thought. "This," Seth said motioning to the larger man who was sat at a desk, "Is Mister A W Merrick and he runs the paper," He turned on his heel then as Raylan tilted his head in greeting, "And this is Mister Blazanov," he finished pointing to the quiet man in the corner, "He operates the telegram." Seth paced for a few more minutes before he spoke again, "The pair of them tell the news; well what little we have in Deadwood and now that we have the telegram we can send it all over, like that god forsaken rail road." Seth muttered and Raylan felt the distinct weight of his iPhone in his pocket. He didn't want to find out what Seth would say to that god forsaken piece of technology. Raylan would be rid of it himself if it weren't so damn useful.
"Mister Bullock says you want to send a telegram to Yankton in as so much to say that Joshiah survived the attack. Is that right Mister..."
"Marshall Givens," Seth corrected Mister Merrick gently.
"A Marshall?" Merrick asked and began to make notes again, "We aint seen any of your kind since those Earp brothers." He started nodding to himself as he continued to write. "Sorry for my excitement Marshall Givens; Deadwood is pretty lawless, no offence," He added as glanced at Seth who had become momentarily stiff. "No matter it's state though I still call it home." At that Raylan looked at Seth expectantly, but the Deputy only tipped his hat in the editor's direction. Raylan hated small talk as much as he could tell Seth did.
"It's quite all right. I was here to meet Deputy Bullock."
"So what do you think?" Seth asked Raylan as he ran a hand along his jaw.
"Alive and kicking is too obvious; Hunt maybe stupid, but he is not that dumb." Seth nodded a little resignedly.
"The Marshall is right about that," He murmured as he ran a hand over his moustache in thought, "But how else will we catch the man?" He asked looking around the office for inspiration.
"You catch him the way you catch any other criminal." Raylan said with a crooked smile, "You appeal to his vanity. Trust me Hunt has it in spades." Seth smiled softly at Raylan in gratitude and the the pair went on to draft the message that would catch Hunt's eye and lead the wayward stray back to Deadwood.
So after an afternoon of intrigue the pair were watching the sun make its way over to the horizon as the cold set in South Dakota and for a moment Raylan wished that he had been wearing his jacket to bed. That way he would have woken up in it in Deadwood; even if the idea did sound like insanity to him. The pair had been silent for a time after they had finished the meal that Martha had packed for them. The only sound being the crickets as they watched the empty road, when finally Seth spoke up,
"Do you think he will come?" Without a second thought Raylan nodded.
"If he is anything like I believe him to be, he hates to leave a job half done." Seth swore viciously and swiftly under his breath and Raylan had to suppress a smirk. It almost sounded as if Al had rubbed off a little on the straight laced Deputy Sheriff.
"Can I ask you a personal question?" Raylan found himself asking, Seth looked at him a little oddly, but nodded, "How are you not Sheriff? If you don't mind me asking," Seth up at him again and in the remaining fading light Raylan could see that Seth was squinting hard as if he was using the last few rays of light to analyse him from head to toe. Eventually he shrugged and leant back against the grave marker making it crack suspiciously.
"Politics mainly. I don't have a head to play the game how it's supposed to be played." Raylan could understand that. If you were good at your job, you were good at your job. You shouldn't have need to sweet talk your way in to position. What you do in your current job should hold its own merit. To Raylan it seemed unfair; people kept pushing him in to moulds that he didn't fit and the one man he met that fitted that mould of a good officer of the law wasn't given the opportunity to shine. Raylan could see that Seth was good at his job and that the people loved him in their own way; he seemed to Raylan to be the perfect man to be Sheriff. As he glanced at a face that was younger in years than his own, but wiser in so many ways he had to admit that he was being a little biased. He had yet to meet the actual Sheriff of Deadwood. He wanted to ask Seth about him, but it seemed like the other man was deep in thought a brooding look of melancholy contorting his features.
After that the pair fell back in to a silence that was a comforting wall around them; that was until they heard the distinct sound of approaching hooves cutting in to the dirt of the hillside which resounded violently in the still night air. The horse and its rider came to a halt at the top of the cemetery.
"Well what do we have here?" Hunt asked in his Boyd style Kentucky drawl that had the effect on Raylan of nails across a chalk board. He also heard the distinct click of a gun being cocked which shattered the fragile peace that was hanging across the cemetery and the unlawful town beyond it.
"You level that weapon at us and I will put you down." Raylan said softly, but clearly in to the night.
"I think this is what my pose would call entrapment, Mister Law Man Sir." Hunt said in an almost young school boy way. At the sound of his voice both arms of the law ground their teeth in seething hatred.
"I really dislike that man," Seth murmured as he moved his revolver out of its holster.
"Count me double on that," Raylan replied as he stood and turned to face Hunt, "What would you know about entrapment?" Raylan asked the silhouette at the top of the hill.
"Well you set a trap... to entrap me!" Hunt said with a shrug and levelled his gun at Raylan, "But you can't catch me. I am justice. I am the law. I was sent by God to make you Godless law men repent your sins!"
"Is that what we call beating a man to death these days?! Repentance!?" Raylan glanced at Seth and smiled dangerously. "I will have to remember that the next time one of your lot gets hurt on my watch." Raylan laid his hand over his holster leaving his side arm in place. "I met a man like you once. He thought that he had been saved by God and that he was supposed to lead the way to a new age. Do you know what happened to him?" Raylan asked before he carried on, "One night his father killed everything that he was trying to save and his faith was shattered. Something else about him. He was a better man than you could ever be. So come in quiet Hunt for the murder of Josiah Gutterson and at least you will be some sort of saviour to those of your ilk." Hunt laughed and it was the laugh of a deranged man; the laugh that Boyd had before Raylan had shot him. It was the laugh of a man that screams "fire in the hole" before he uses an RPG on a church. It was the laugh of a man that has nothing to live for and nothing to lose. In that moment he felt Seth stand as if he knew deep inside that what Hunt wanted more than anything else was to watch the world burn.
"Do you really think that I came back here so you could clap me in that post office and then lynch me in the street?" Hunt asked almost hysterical. "In that newspaper report it said that the Deputy that me and the boys hit was alive, but not awake. I didn't want him waking up and ratting me out."
"You are too late on both counts," Seth said with a bitter edge to his voice. "Deputy Marshall Josiah Gutterson died not long after you left him on the road side, but in his dying breath he told us who had left him in that way." Hunt swore at the top of his voice and would have given Al a run for his money from the colourful language he used.
"Well what are you waiting for?" Hunt asked as he reared his horse. "Three dead law men is nothing to me." He laughed and it was a hollow sound as he made the horse gallop across the grave markers towards them.
Seth had his gun out and levelled it at the moving target his hands shaking as he tried to make his aim steady. Raylan knew that no matter how well Seth shot on a normal basis he wouldn't hit the wide side of a barn the way he was shaking, but much to his surprise Seth didn't even attempt to fire at the man that had killed his junior officer, but that was because he was in no danger from him; Raylan realised at the last moment.
"I told you Hunt if you level that weapon at me; I will put you down!"
"Do your worst Marshall and I will do mine," Hunt replied and Raylan heard the rapport of a gun crack through the cemetery. The bullet missed him by a mile as Hunt leaped off his horse still walking straight towards him.
When they were stood ten feet apart Hunt screamed his frustration in to the night,
"Why can you never just die?" Raylan shrugged an uncaring shoulder his hand still resting on his gun. Hunt pulled the hammer back again levelling the gun at the centre of Raylan's chest and everything that had happened in the last two years in Kentucky came flashing back at him. The feel of Ava's skin under his hands and the smile on her face as she looked at him. The look of shock on Boyd's face when he found her bleeding on the couch, the white supremacists, the new church he set up to save the lost lambs, the mining company, the death threats from the Bennett's, Arlo, Art, Winona, Rachel and Tim. The drugs from Miami, the review board, Tommy Bucks the man that had started the whole thing off in the first place. The motel that he could never seem to leave. Everything hit him in jerky flashes of colour like an old school movie on a carousel. The feeling almost left him breathless, but he still managed to slip his gun out of his holster and take a shot at Hunt before he could manage to get his gun off. Hunt fell to the ground as if the puppet master had cut his strings. Raylan sighed and put his gun back next to his badge as the red of Hunt's blood blossomed through the dirty white shirt he was wearing.
"What should we do with the body Sheriff?" He asked and Seth said nothing as he had seen the panic flare in Raylan's eyes in the seconds before he shot Hunt. Seth had never witnessed a thing like it; it seemed to him in those short few seconds Raylan's life had flashed before his eyes and he steeled himself to carry on living. It was a miracle that things like that could happen. He was still staring at the older man when there was a cough off to the left of them and they looked at Hunt who was lying on his back with a grin on his face.
"Next time Marshall aim for the heart, it's what your taught is it not?" He asked before the sound of the revolver going off made all other sound dead and made the other gun shots that night sound childish and small and the burning heat that seared Raylan's skin made him scream. He had been shot before, but they had all been flesh wounds. This one however was a lucky shot that went through his chest making him sink to the ground as Deadwood faded in to nothingness and the darkness swallowed Raylan whole.
Raylan sat up in bed a scream ripping his vocal chords to shreds; he placed a hand over his heart where the bullet had entered the skin and felt that he was whole and hale. He looked over at his phone and noticed the time. He stood up and felt a little dizzy, maybe he had overdone it with the Jim Beam last night as he saw the empty bottle on the floor by the bed, but that alone did not explain the dream he'd had. Raylan stumbled in to the shower praying that the hot water would clean away the despair that was racing over his skin at feeling his own death hanging over him.
The motels showers were about as good as a chocolate fire arm and by the time he had finished he wondered why he'd ever believed that the power shower could help. He switched on the little kettle that the motel supplied and made a thick syrup like coffee to coat his insides with caffeine and left the motel before he had the inevitable phone call from Art asking him all too politely to get his ass back in to the office so he could question him about his recent bout of stupidity.
"You look like shit!" Tim said as Raylan walked through the door and he tried to not laugh as he looked in to the sharp shooting blue eyes. Tim wasn't dead of course he wasn't, Tim was never in the firing line he was miles behind it with a sniper rifle. Tim stood up from his dead and cocked his head to the side as he looked at the rumpled state of Raylan, "You should sleep better," he said as he walked towards Raylan with a file.
"I will take that under advisement Tim." He said and cuffed his playfully in the shoulder surprising both of them, "Don't ever change," Tim grinned at him lopsidedly,
"Wasn't planning on it," he replied, "Oh Art wants to see you," he finished with a shrug, "You might want to plan what you are going to say to him about Boyd." Raylan laughed and from the end office Art could be heard moving around his desk as he made his way to the glass door to open it,
"Is that you Raylan?" he asked as if he were a father scolding his eldest child.
"Reporting for duty," Raylan said with a smirk as he took his hat off his head and placed it on his desk.
"Get your ass in here, the Marshall's service wants to know what in the hell you were doing out with Boyd Crowder last night and why you look like crap heated to one hundred degrees in the midday sun!" Raylan ran a hand through his hair and sighed, it was going to be any other day and for that he was grateful.
He'd think about Deadwood and what all that meant later, now he had a job to do. One that he was good at for the most part.