Arthur Morgan's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

They rode two days upstream, away from the burned post. The land opened into low prairie dotted with feathery ferns. Arthur kept the convoy moving slow so the wagons wouldn't throw dust a scout could read. He thought the quiet meant they were clear. He was wrong. Violet spotted the peddler first. She rode beside Arthur on her brown mare, the horse's ears flicking back down the trail. "That wagon's been behind us since the creek fork," she said. "Stops when we stop." Arthur looked back. A peddler's cart trailed them, cans and kettles swinging off its sides. The man on the seat wore a wide grin and no goods worth selling. "You read him," Arthur said. "What's he want?" Violet studied the cart the way he'd taught her. "He keeps looking at your face. Not the wagons. Not the horses." She frowned. "He's not selling. He's counting." John rode up from the rear, dust on his beard. He was the hard, quiet man who rode with Arthur's gang, the one who'd pulled Violet into the trees when the post went bad. He'd seen the cart too. "Peddlers travel every trail," he said low. "But that one's memorizing your face. He'll sell your name at the next town for coin." Arthur weighed it. Killing the man would spread his face further, same as the post. But letting him ride off meant every bounty hunter on the prairie would know their line of travel by week's end. "No shooting," Arthur said. "Not in front of her. Not again." He handed his reins to John. "Take Violet ahead. I'll deal with him plain." He turned his horse and rode back alone. The peddler pulled up, grin fixed. "Fine morning, friend. Need pots? Powder? Word travels cheap out here." "I know what you're selling," Arthur said. He didn't reach for his gun. He reached for his satchel and dropped coins into the man's palm, more than any word of him was worth. "You never saw a face. You met a mule trader named Callahan, headed south for Blackwater. That's the story you carry." The peddler's grin thinned. He looked at the coins, then at Arthur's steady hands, and understood the trade. "South for Blackwater," he repeated. "Never saw a thing." He turned his cart and rattled back the way he'd come. Arthur watched him shrink down the trail. Bought silence, not earned. He rejoined the convoy. Violet had seen it all from the rise. "You paid him," she said. "You didn't kill him." "Some mouths you close with lead," Arthur said. "Some you close with coin. Reading a man tells you which." She nodded slow, filing it away. But Arthur's stomach turned cold. A paid man could still talk. He'd planted a lie pointing south, and if a hunter believed it, they'd search Blackwater. If the peddler sold the truth instead, the lie would mark Arthur as the man who'd tried to hide it.