Arthur Morgan's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

By morning the gang moved again. Arthur rode beside the wagons with Violet's lessons half-taught in his head. He'd start her on a face, on a stranger's hands, and then Dutch would call the break camp early. Every night a new patch of ground. Every lesson cut short. A girl couldn't learn to read men from the seat of a rolling wagon. At the next stop Arthur found John saddling his horse. "How long we got here?" Arthur asked. "Two days, Dutch says." John cinched the strap tight. "Then we push north again." Two days wasn't enough. Arthur looked past the wagons to a stand of trees where a cold creek ran. "I need somewhere she can practice. Somewhere folks pass. She learns nothing watching the same tired faces every night." John frowned. "You want to walk a twelve-year-old into a town? With your face on posters?" "Not the town." Arthur nodded toward the trees. "There's a trading post down that creek. Trappers, traders, drifters. All strangers. She watches from the brush. Nobody knows me there." John didn't like it. Arthur saw it in his jaw. But John swung up into the saddle. "Then I'm coming. Somebody's got to watch the road behind you." They rode out slow, Violet on the brown mare in front of Arthur. The journal rode in her coat. At the post, wagons stood loose in the mud. Men bartered pelts and argued over coin. Arthur pulled up in the trees and helped Violet down. "Sit here," he said. "You got all afternoon. Nobody's chasing us off this ground. Write what you see." She opened the worn journal on her knee. For the first time her hands weren't rushed. She studied a trader haggling, then a thin man lingering near the horses. Her pencil moved. "That one's lying," she said. "He keeps touching his mouth. And he came in with no pack. Nothing to trade." Arthur followed her eyes. The thin man's coat sat heavy on one side. A pistol, maybe. His gaze crossed the crowd twice, counting. "He's not here to trade," Arthur said low. "He's here to find someone." John had seen it too. He drifted his horse between the man and the road, easy, blocking the exit without a word. Arthur crouched by Violet. "You did that. Not me. You read him before I did." He pressed her shoulder. "Now we leave. Slow. Don't run." They mounted and walked the horses back into the trees. No shot came. The thin man never turned. On the ride back Violet held the journal against her chest, a full page filled. She had a place now, a way to practice on real strangers. But Arthur's chest stayed tight. The man at the post had been hunting a face. Word of Arthur Morgan had reached even the trading grounds. The lessons had ground he could use at last. And the men looking for him had grown into more than one.