Arthur Morgan's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

The wagons had rolled two hours when Arthur saw the dust behind them. A single rider, low and steady, gaining on the flat. He knew the shape of that horse. It was the bounty hunter who'd found the overlook. The man hadn't gone for reinforcements. He'd come alone, fast, before the trail went cold. Arthur pulled his brown mare alongside Violet's wagon. "Keep the team moving," he told her. "Don't look back. Don't stop for anything." She nodded, jaw tight, and snapped the reins. He watched her hands. Steady. Good. He turned the mare and rode back to meet the dust. Dutch wheeled his horse around and fell in beside him. He had been near the front of the line, and he moved without asking a single question. "One man," Dutch said, reading the trail the way he read everything. His voice went quiet and flat. "He should have brought more." "He wants the reward himself," Arthur said. "Then he made a poor choice." Dutch drew his revolver but did not raise it. "We talk first. A gun is a last door." They reined up on a low rise and waited. The rider came on, then slowed when he saw two men instead of fleeing wagons. He stopped forty feet off, hand near his hip. He was younger than Arthur expected, sweat cutting lines through the dust on his face. His eyes flicked between them, counting. "That girl driving the wagon," the hunter called. "She yours, Morgan? Nice thing, teaching her the trade." Arthur felt the words land in his chest. He kept his hands loose. He studied the man the way he'd been studying men his whole life. The twitch in the shoulder. The weight shifting to the back foot. This one meant to draw. There was no reading it wrong. Not this time. "Ride home," Arthur said. "There's nothing back there worth dying for." The hunter smiled and went for his gun. Arthur was already moving. His shot took the man before the barrel cleared leather. The rider folded sideways and dropped into the grass. His horse bolted. The sound rolled out across the empty country and faded. Dutch lowered his revolver slowly. "Clean," he said. "You read him true." Arthur sat still, breathing. He hadn't misjudged. The man had been exactly what he seemed. That should have felt like something. Instead he looked back down the line at the small figure on the wagon seat, and his stomach turned cold. They buried the hunter shallow and scattered his horse. But Violet had heard the shot. When Arthur rode back, she was watching him, reins slack in her hands. She had seen the whole thing from the rise. "Was that the first lesson?" she asked. Arthur didn't answer. He climbed onto the wagon and took the reins from her small hands. The threat behind them was dead. The one in front of him had just opened her eyes.