Arlo Briggs's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Ruby was right. By noon the six men were hunting Arlo through Thornwall. He heard their boots on the planks and ducked into a dead alley. His reputation had spread, just as she promised. Now it might get him killed before it ever got him into the gang. Ruby found him first. She stepped into the alley like she'd known where he'd run. Her gypsy belt chimed, and she pressed a hand flat against it to silence it. "Six men, one of you," she said. "That's not a fight. That's a funeral." "Then help me," Arlo said. She pulled a boarded brothel's loose plank aside and shoved him through the gap. Inside, dust hung in the dark. Broken chairs lay where someone had dropped them years ago. "They'll check every open door," she said. "Not one that's nailed shut." Arlo caught his breath. "I can't hide forever. If they corner me, I'm done." Ruby drew a folded letter from her belt. The edges were burned. A wax seal held it shut. "Then don't hide. Turn them on each other." She handed it to him. "I wrote it myself. It names the loudest one as a snitch who sold gang secrets. Plant it on him." Arlo read the smeared lines. Half the words ran together, blotted out. But the meaning held. A man confessing betrayal to the law. "They'll kill him," he said. "Better him than you." Ruby didn't blink. "He's the one who laughed hardest." Arlo remembered that laugh. It had followed him out of the saloon for six months. He folded the letter into his coat. He waited until dusk. The loudest man drank alone at a trough behind a feed store, pistol loose on his hip. Arlo walked up slow, bumped him hard, and slid the letter into his back pocket as the man shoved him off. "Watch yourself, boy," the man said. "Already did," Arlo said, and walked. An hour later, the other five found the letter. Arlo watched from the brothel's gap. The five dragged the loud man into the street. He shouted that it wasn't his hand, wasn't his seal. Nobody listened. Fists came first. Then a gun. The shot rolled flat across the dark, and the loud man dropped and did not move. The five stood over him. One picked up the burned letter, turned it, and frowned. He held it to the lamplight. Then he looked at the seal again, longer this time. Ruby appeared beside Arlo. "It's done," she said. "One less man hunting you." Arlo watched the man study the seal. "He doesn't believe it." Ruby went quiet. "That seal," she said. "It's the boss's mark. I lifted it off a letter in his desk." Her jaw set. "They'll trace it back. To me. Or to you." The five turned from the body and started checking doors, one by one, down the street.