Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

September 5, 1875

The sun slipped down in front of The Walrus Gang as they raced further across the plains.

Blinded by the fierce light and the sand kicked up by their horses, the gang followed the trail left by their traitor as best they could. Although none of them had any lingering doubts as to where the traitor was headed.

They were all bone-tired, beyond the dizzying ache of hunger. They only stopped for water, barely stopped to rest. They were all kept upright on their mounts by sheer fury.

Except for Calico Jack and Anne Bonny. The only two of them to share a horse, they took the reins in turns. Currently, Jack was passed out on Anne's back, his hands held together around her waist by some rope to keep from falling off. It was a sign to their exhaustion: he was completely undisturbed by her long red hair whipping his eyelids as she rode, his cheeks and lips dusted with sand where his handkerchief slipped. But Flint didn't slow the pace any, even when it became obvious Singleton was headed straight back for home.

The edge of the sun hit the edge of the horizon, and they stopped at the familiar old weathered sign pointing straight to Nassau, Kansas.

Anne tore the handkerchief from her face. "Why the fuck is he going back there?" She looked like she would spit if she had any saliva to spare. "He knows we're after him."

Billy Bones pulled his horse up beside hers. His face was cracked and peeling from sunburns over sunburns. He pointedly did not look at Flint.

"He's running scared," Billy said, his voice rougher than the road they traveled. "He's desperate."

Or Singleton had been planning this from the beginning, Flint didn't say.

"Probably rounding up some extra guns," Billy continued. "He needs a new crew, now."

Or he had one already, waiting for him to return with Vasquez's map. Flint kept his scarf over his mouth. The sun continued to sink.

"Then he should have fucking gone to any other town," Anne said furiously, her hands tight on the reins. "We might never of caught up to him if he'd done that."

Vane said nothing, as usual. But in all the time he ran with Flint's gang, Flint had never heard him utter a word. Vane stayed outside the circle now, kept his eyes on the trail just in case the wind shifted and it happened to change.

Jack shifted, his eyes still closed but all pretense of sleep gone. "He's probably planning to meet someone, darling," he muttered into the back of Anne's hair. "While I wouldn't put it past Singleton to be stupid enough to steal from us, I can't in good faith credit him with the intelligence to steal from us and get away with it."

Not only had Singleton gotten away with it, he'd left them alive in the process, when the sensible thing would have been to put a bullet in each of them while they slept. Which implied this was about much more that $200,000 buried in a safe deep in the Rocky Mountains.

Which meant they were probably riding right into a trap.

James "the Captain" Flint -- leader of the most notorious crew of thieves west of the Appalachian trail, personally responsible for countless brutal Confederate deaths during the war -- lowered his scarf from his face.

"Since we know the way," he said, moving his horse to the forefront, "there's no reason at all for us to stop for the night. Is there?"

In a town as wild as Nassau, there was only ever a small window of quiet: when all the fights had ended, when the drunks were all collapsed in dirty alleyways, when the whores had a moment to themselves to count their day’s earnings by twilight. An hour, maybe an hour and a half. Before the farmers on the edge of town would begin stirring in their beds, their wives already up and making coffee and waking the children to send them out into the fields and begin their day’s work. Shortly thereafter the good townsfolk would wake from their slumbers, would rise to the day and forget all about the night’s misdeeds as though they were naught but a bad dream - the gunsmith, the hardware store owner, the sheriff, the grocer, the madame, the barkeep: all settling in to start business as usual.

But an hour, maybe an hour and a half, Nassau would go still and dark in the middle of nowhere, would disappear into itself and become indistinguishable from the night sky.

It was during this hour when the Walrus Gang arrived.

They idled in the street, letting their horses take a much needed drink from the trough. Flint saw his crew exchange looks with each other but none of them glanced in his direction.

Flint eyed the blackened windows, hands clenched tight on his reins. He knew what he wanted to do at that moment and he knew every argument against it. If they started kicking down doors, turning over beds in the dark, they'd just as soon arouse Singleton from wherever he slept instead of find him, and he could escape in the night and be gone forever. It would be foolish to start their search now, when they were all weary and aching, dehydrated and angry.

Flint still wanted to do it. He wanted to yell, to alight, to feel wood splinter beneath his boots. He wanted to disturb the peace for everyone else.

They called Nassau home but they didn't really have one here. They found themselves stopping here often, and had become friendly with several locals, but they had no residence to speak of. They usually stayed in the hotel or the brothel, and neither were an option at this hour. The thought of trying to set up a camp, though, after such a long ride, was close to unbearable.

“C’mon,” said Billy, near Flint’s elbow. “I know a barn we could hunker down in. Farmer Gunn is a friend, and is likely not to shoot us on sight.”

Flint said nothing. Just jerked his head shortly to let Billy lead the way.

Barn was too generous of a term. Shack was probably more appropriate. They lit no candles, and there was barely a moon to guide them. Flint felt more like a ghost than he normally did.

Silently, Jack pulled Anne into one corner with some musty sheets, and even Vane went over to join them, which was a testament to how tired they really were. Vane slept less than Flint.

Billy and Flint watched them curl up on themselves like sleepy children, and Flint caught the small look of longing that passed over Billy's face for just a second. Then his scowl was back, directed at Flint, as usual.

“Are you actually going to sleep?” he asked.

Flint made a face. He felt tired everywhere but in his heart, which beat away at a rabbit’s pace -- quick and on the run. In the quiet of the night, he could hear it thunder in his ears.

“We’re gonna find him.” Billy kept his voice low, but Flint doubted a stampede of wild cattle could wake the three on the floor. “But if you don’t sleep now you won’t last another day.”

“Do you care,” said Flint, and he faced towards Billy despite the darkness. “what we do to Singleton once we find him?”

Now Billy made a face at him. Flint couldn’t help but smile a little at it. “Fuck no,” said Billy. “It wasn’t just your future he stole.”

Flint nodded, and pat Billy on the shoulder. Billy liked to act as though he hated the Walrus Gang, but Flint had seen him empty his pistols into anyone trying to threaten them time and time again. “Go sleep, we only have a few hours. I promise,” he added, feeling Billy about to start, “I will too. I just want to make sure Farmer Gunn isn’t actually going to storm in any moment with a shotgun.”

“Ben wouldn’t do that,” Billy protested. “I told you, he’s a friend.”

“Ben? This the one that’s sweet on you?”

Despite the dark, despite the closest light a candle left on a windowsill half a mile down the road, Flint could still see Billy flush angrily.

“It’s not like that,” Billy hissed, because he wanted to yell. “He’s a friend. Not everyone always wants something from you, you know.”

“No,” Flint agreed. “But isn’t it easier when they do?”

All at once, the strength to deal with Flint seemed to leave Billy completely. He sagged against the door frame for a moment before pushing off with a sigh.

“See you at first light,” he said, wandering over to the others. “If I see you haven’t slept I’m going to fucking knock you out and throw you over the back of my horse for the rest of the day.” He was asleep before Flint could even respond.

Flint went outside the shack and sat down against the side of it. Unfurling the scarf from around his neck, he watched the purple-gray clouds drift slowly away from the half moon, illuminating Farmer Gunn’s crops some but not much else. The rocky formations in the distance to his right were black, hulking shapes like the shadows of monsters, and Nassau to the left hadn’t been disturbed in the slightest by their ride through it.

The clouds were heavy and multiple, though there was no lightning, no thunder. Not yet. Cool night air raised bumps along his forearms, and he idly stroked the long, ugly scar that wrapped itself around his throat. He wondered how much it rained in the Rocky Mountains. He wondered how far spread the settlements along Boulder Creek ran. He wondered if the ground would be muddied or hard-packed, how close the trees grew together, how wide the river spanned. He dreamt he was digging.

He awoke with a start to someone kicking his foot sharply. He shifted his hat which had slipped down over his eyes in his sleep and squinted at Eleanor Guthrie. Her man O’Malley stood behind her, one hand on the reins of their horses, the other resting comfortably on his holstered gun. Farmer Gunn was behind him, anxiously gripping a shovel like a spear.

“What the fuck is going on?” Eleanor said by way of good morning. How someone could be that angry at just dawn, Flint didn’t know.  “The Sheriff is looking for you everywhere.”

Flint put his scarf back on and achily climbed to his feet. His back hurt from the long ride and from sleeping on a fucking wall all night, and his shoulder hurt because it always hurt. It took him too long a moment to stretch through the pain to remember where the hell he was and why.

“Why the fuck is Scott looking for us already?” he asked, looking back into the shack. The others were beginning to stir from their pile. “We only arrived early this morning.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Eleanor. “I fucking heard you. I was awake, dealing with your fucking mess.”

“Mess?” Suddenly, Flint felt no pain. Suddenly he felt awake. “What mess?”

‘Your man -- Singleton? He’s dead.” She put her hands on her hips. “Cocksucker turned up late last night with a fucking bullet between his eyes. So I ask again, calmly,  sweetly, from the bottom of my fucking heart: what the fuck? ”

He left the others downstairs in Guthrie's Saloon to eat a quick breakfast while he sat with Eleanor in her office. He knew he should eat too, but at the moment he could only stomach coffee. Even if it was Eleanor's coffee, which always had the taste and consistency of hot tar.

He wasn't about to comment on it, though. Not with the sour look on her face that hadn't left since they rode back into town.

"I'd figured when he rode into town alone, you hadn't parted on good terms," she said. She stood out on her balcony, leaning against the railing. "So I don't suspect you're devastated Singleton's dead."

"Not for the reason you're thinking, anyway," Flint admitted, chewing around his coffee. "Where's the body?"

"At the Sheriff's," Eleanor said.

"Where was he found?"

Eleanor came back inside and sat down at her large desk. She took a sip of her own coffee and didn't even flinch, which was a testament to her strength of character, Flint thought. "One of Max's girls stumbled over him, quite fucking literally, behind the post office long after the sun had set. By the time Max called on me, and I called on Sheriff Scott, his body was cold and looted. No trace of anyone else in the area."

Flint respected Eleanor, and trusted her enough to be telling him the truth, even if it was the last fucking thing he wanted to hear. "He had nothing on him?" He tried not to sound too angry, or too despairing. Just his usual amount.  "Not even a piece of paper?"

Eleanor raised an eyebrow. "By the time I got there, even his boots were gone. Flint, what the fuck is going on?"

Nassau wasn't a completely decent, God-fearing town, but it had made great strides towards civilization ever since Eleanor took control of Guthrie's Saloon from her ailing criminal father. Even though the Guthrie name was only listed on the tavern, the family had their fingers in every business, legitimate or otherwise, that occurred in or through Nassau. Eleanor, unlike her father, saw longevity in keeping things as honest as possible, so she'd appointed a sheriff, kept the violence to a minimum during the day, and only helped launder stolen money and sell stolen goods from the few outlaws she happened to like. It made everyone act real sweet to her, which Flint knew did more harm than good.

Still, bodies dropped in Nassau. Bodies dropped everywhere. But unless someone was ill, in a fight, or collecting money, bodies rarely showed up for no clear reason. And even though the bounty on Singleton’s head wasn't as high as the one on Flint’s, it was still decent cash, so even if the cause was just a drunken fistfight, abandoning Singleton in an alleyway was as good as leaving behind $1000 in clean dollar bills.

“He stole from us,” Flint said.

“Thanks for that kernel of information,” said Eleanor, “but I’m not, in fact, a fucking idiot. I figured that out for myself.”

“I don’t know if it’s why he was killed,” Flint added, and decided to throw her a bone. “But it was very valuable.”

Eleanor paused. “A singular something?”

Flint said nothing, scratching his beard. He wanted to tell Eleanor everything, in a way. But even though she bitched about needing to know everything, he suspected she knew her life would be a lot simpler without the whole truth.

She sighed, stood up and went back to her balcony, and he put on his hat and followed her out. Nassau went about its day, unaware of them looking down. It was remarkable, really, how the small town had changed since he’d first arrived eight years ago. Back then, the days were as dangerous as the nights. Now, there were actual families walking around unafraid. Children running in the streets, men talking and not with their fists, store owners conducting honest business transactions without their hands resting on the barrel of a shotgun. They were only on the second story of Guthrie’s Saloon, and even though the main street wasn’t silent, it still looked peaceful to Flint.

“When your man showed up dead,” Eleanor said, “I was initially afraid it would spark bad blood between us, that you might seek vengeance from Nassau in response to the slight, even if Singleton was, and I’m quoting you here, ‘a coarse, ugly motherfucker.’ I’ve sensed, and I think you have too, that the ground here is shifting beneath our feet. I’ve not made it a secret that I’m trying to legitimize this place, that one day our professional relationship would have to end, and it had been my hope to do it as cordially as fucking possible.”

“I’ve got a lot of respect for what you’re doing here, Eleanor,” said Flint, because he did.

“This is bad fucking timing, is what it is. A bitch of bad timing.” She fiddled with her steel coffee mug for a moment, and Flint let her wrestle with whatever it was, not quite ready to face the reality that his long sought-after chance for escape had potentially disappeared into thin air. Finally, she said, “In two days time, a representative from Kansas Pacific is meeting here with me. A railway station within even five miles of here would bring enough commerce to Nassau and with it, actual prosperity.”

Flint nodded. “But you don’t have the funds to convince someone to build a station near a lawless, rowdy town where people get gunned down in the street,” he guessed.

“No,” said Eleanor, “but I do have the money to convince someone to build a railroad near a slightly lawless, sometimes rowdy town where people only get gunned down in the privacy of their own properties. Do you see my goddamn point?”

Flint did. The West was changing. Outlaws like the Walrus Gang were beginning to be more of a hindrance than a help to Nassau, and it wasn’t long before it could no longer serve as a safe trading post for them. He didn’t begrudge her it. The idea suited him fine.

“Nothing would make me happier,” he said, “to never see you or this town again, despite all the good it and you have served me over the years.”

Eleanor blinked at that, then abruptly turned and went back inside. “I need this dealt with immediately,” she said, going back to her desk. She handed Flint a piece of paper. “I just need to know I don’t have a trigger-happy cocksucker roaming around town, or that I won’t be caught in the middle of a fucking blood feud by the time Kansas Pacific shows up.”

Flint gestured with the paper. “What is this?”

“That is a copy of the list Sheriff Scott has, of everyone who might have had a reason to shoot Mr. Singleton, which is basically anyone who came into contact with him yesterday. Honestly, I’d put myself as a fucking suspect if I didn’t have a sure alibi. Why the hell was this motherfucker on your crew anyway?”

“He was as mean as he looked,” Flint said with a shrug. “No bank teller ever thought twice about handing anything over to him. And he could handle himself with a gun.”

“Well maybe he shot himself in the head and I can get some goddamn rest.”

Flint looked over the list. He frowned. “He went to a fucking circus?”

Now Eleanor shrugged. “Mr. Gates’s Authentic Wild West and Medicine Show, just passed the edge of town near the hotel. One of those touring companies, you know, with Indian dances and...fucking sharpshooters and split whiskey sold as miracle cures. Tonight’s their last night here, although I doubt you’ll have any time to take in the festivities.”

Flint was still confused. He’d known Singleton for almost two years, and in that time he had never seen the man enjoy himself once. “Why the fuck would he go there?”

“How the fuck should I know?" Eleanor sat down behind her desk. "Maybe he went to get fucking shot.” 

For a moment Billy thought, as he watched Flint descend the stairs from Eleanor Guthrie’s office with a paper in his hand, that Flint had actually found the fucking map. He could kick himself for the momentary lapse, looking at Flint’s face. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

He hadn’t even really believed it before, when Flint had first opened that safety deposit box in the back room of the First National Bank of Kansas City. It had been just the two of them back there - Singleton and Anne dealing with the tellers and grabbing the petty cash while Jack and Vane worked over the bank manager into opening the main safe.

The two of them had been working fast, silent, cracking open every box and stuffing jewels, banknotes, stock papers into their bags until he felt Flint -- stop, behind him. Billy would never forget the expression on the Captain’s face, would never forget the slight tremor in Flint’s hand as he wordlessly handed Billy the folded map. The only other item in the box had been Vasquez’s death certificate.

They hadn’t even stopped to empty the other deposit boxes. They just grabbed the rest of the Walrus Gang and high-tailed it out of there.

“So what did she say?” Jack asked as Flint approached. Jack was drinking whiskey even though it was only 9 in the morning, but Billy figured he’d ridden four days out of Kansas City stone sober, and the fact that Jack wasn’t swimming in a whiskey barrel right now was a goddamn miracle. “What happened to him?”

Flint exhaled sharply. “We don’t know yet. They managed to figure out everyone who probably spoke with Singleton yesterday for the few hours he was in town alive. The Sheriff is speaking to all these people and so are we.”

“What the fuck?” Anne snarled. She’d been reclining with her feet on the table, but in an instant she was inches from Flint. “Do we look like fucking Pinkertons to you?”

Flint was perhaps the only person who could remain calm with the full extent of Anne Bonny in their face. “With every second, that map is getting further and further away from us. This is the only lead we have. What the fuck would you have us do?”

Anne snarled, and only stepped away at Jack’s insistent tugging on her sleeve. They were the only ones in the saloon at this time of day, and for a moment no one said anything. Flint handed Billy the list, then reached into his jacket pocket for his tobacco and papers. Billy watched him roll his cigarette instead of looking at the list. Not for the first time since the morning they woke up to find the map and Singleton gone, he wondered if this was all really worth it. Risking so much to find one solitary spot in the Rocky Mountains, for the sake of $200,000 which might not even be there to begin with.

Vasquez’s legend was widely known, but Billy was familiar with the power of stories, and he knew only a part of their power actually laid in the truth. Everyone knew of Vasquez, the prosperous ranch owner in the Texas territory, whose home was burned, his wife raped, his children murdered, and his livelihood destroyed due to a furious gang of white men. Having been left for dead, he swore vengeance on the U.S. Government by stealing from them at every opportunity, all alone. There had never been so prolific a lone thief, without a gang to help, and when he was finally captured in St. Louis last April and hung for his crimes against the government, he hadn’t had a single dollar on him. And so the whereabouts of his stolen loot and the rumors of a map to their hideout became a part of his legend after his death.

No one agreed on who Vasquez really was, who the white men were, why they chose to attack him and his family, if he even had a family at all. There had been a vaquero named Vasquez, and he certainly stole a hell of a lot of money, but those were the only facts Billy knew to be true, and it seemed to him that all this effort was in the aid of chasing a mirage.

And even if it was real, then what? They each got their share of the money and Billy was left with $40,000. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that? He knew Flint had plans. He knew Jack had plans, and Anne usually went along with those plans pretty easily. He had a sneaking suspicion Vane felt similarly to him, for he rarely showed any interest in money or fame, but that didn’t mean he was as without a plan as Billy was.

Flint gestured to Billy, unlit cigarette in his mouth, and Billy held out the list. Flint scowled, knocked his hand to the side, and pointed at the small lit candle on the table. When Billy handed it to him, he lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply, set the candle on the edge of the table, and snatched the list from Billy’s hand.

“We’ll split this up,” Flint said through smoke, looking down at the list again. “I’ll go see the Sheriff, see what he knows, and check over the body to make sure they didn’t miss anything. Billy, stay here in the saloon. He spoke with a lot of people, apparently trying to round up a crew of his own, but see what they say. Jack, head out to the medicine show on the west side of town, he was there last evening. Make sure you talk to everyone. Anne, he stopped at the brothel too in the afternoon, see if he said anything to any of the girls. Vane….go wherever the fuck, I don’t know. Just try to do something productive.”

Billy wondered if Flint was trying to be nice or trying to punish Anne by sending her to Max, but from the sour look on Anne’s face, he knew what she considered it.

“A medicine show?” Jack said, finishing the rest of his drink.  “Was he finally trying to cure himself of his baldness?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Flint said angrily. “Go find out. Not another drink,” he added, “until we find this fucking map.”

Jack rolled his shoulders, placing his hat low over his eyes the same way Anne did. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Flint groused, ashing his cigarette onto the floor. But Jack and Anne were already stomping out the door, Jack raising one hand in acknowledgment.

Vane made no move to get up from his seat, so Billy guessed he’d be sticking with him. Which was fine. Vane wouldn’t question anyone, but he could make anyone unwilling to talk to them very willing, very easily.

“Do you have a problem with the plan as it stands now?” Flint’s fists were held tight at his sides, and Billy thought he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. The paper crumpled sadly in his hand.

“So the plan is I just sit here and wait for people to come in so I can talk to them?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m fine with this plan.”

“There was no one new in town last night other than Singleton, just the regulars,” Flint said with a huff. “You can ask the bartender if you need to.” His eyes briefly flicked to Vane before adding, “Or Eleanor.”

Vane snorted. Billy turned around to see him sharpening his long hunting knife on a thick strip of leather. He looked completely unconcerned by the potential loss of $200,000, and whether he actually didn’t care or was just pretending to piss Flint off was a mystery to Billy.

But then Flint stormed out himself in a cloud of bitter smoke and furious anxiety, and Billy was left to deal with Vane’s silence on his own. He turned his chair to face the other man and was unsurprised to see Vane completely ignoring his existence. After the better part of a week on horseback, racing across Kansas at a frenzied pace without even a moment to pause and think about what was happening -- the sudden stillness in the saloon unsettled Billy mightily.

With a sigh, Billy threw his hat onto the table. Leaning over for the bottle Jack had abandoned, he said, “What a fucking mess.”

Vane hummed, then spat on the blunt side of his blade and began shining it.

“Do you even care if we find the money?”

Finally, Vane looked up at him. His face was as passive as always, except for the single twitch of his eyebrows, as though to say, “Do you? ”

Then they sat for a little while, content in a way to be separate from their gang for at least the morning.

Billy wasn’t sure when it happened, his understanding of Vane’s silent way of communicating. It didn’t bother him (the way he suspected it bothered the rest) how Vane never spoke. Vane understood English, and he still had his tongue, Billy knew, because he’d seen it a few times, when Vane took a drink or licked his lips after a fight or when Billy had spied him with a girl once or twice. He knew Vane could read, but he never wrote, either.

Vane, Jack, and Anne had joined up with Flint about three years before Billy did. Jack had happily explained Vane’s story, so either it was the truth and had somehow been communicated to Jack by Vane somehow, or it was an utter fabrication, a story of Jack’s invention. But Vane had been sitting beside him the whole time during the telling without protest so he must have approved it.

Vane never spoke because his father, a white explorer, had raped his mother, the daughter of a Kiowa Apache chief in the Oklahoma panhandle -- according to Calico Jack. While his mother laid in the dirt, feigning unconsciousness, the white man dressed himself with his back to her, which allowed his mother the chance to grab the knife that had fallen from his clothes. She slit the man’s throat before he even turned around. She then removed his eyes, tongue, hands, and genitals, which Billy didn’t think was customary for the Apache, but as Jack pointed out, “Maybe not, but it seems it was customary for Vane’s mother.”

Although her tribe raised Vane as one of their own, his white blood haunted him, and he vowed never to speak in a white man’s tongue or follow a white man’s law as long as he lived.

Billy made it a point not to believe most of the things he heard about other outlaws -- according to their own legends, Flint had survived a hanging, Anne was a lost Russian princess, and Singleton had been a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. But if this was the truth of Vane’s origin, Billy wouldn’t have been all that surprised.

Vane whistled low and quick, and when Billy looked at him he jerked his head towards the back door, quietly holstered his knife, and disappeared fast out the back like mist. Billy figured he was going to take a piss until he heard a voice behind him say, “Just as chatty as always, I see.”

Billy stood on reflex, and watched Eleanor Guthrie circle around to the back of her bar and pull out a bottle of rye. She also grabbed two glasses.

He approached the bar warily. He never really spoke to her before. He wasn’t important enough. And she made him nervous in the same way anyone who seemed too in control of things did. It was one of the reason he was able to run with Flint -- the man had authority, sure, but Billy had seen him in a fight and knew whatever facade of control he had was a thin one.

“I’m surprised you’re able to get a word in edgewise,” Eleanor said, pouring them both a drink.

He didn’t take it. “I don’t talk much myself,” he said.

The corner of Eleanor’s lip twitched. She knocked back her drink in one swig and said, “Shouldn’t you be out there doing something about your fucking dead man?”

“Flint wanted me here to talk to people Singleton spoke with yesterday.”

“I’ll draw up another list,” said Eleanor, rolling her eyes. “I don’t need you two fucking idiots standing around harassing my fucking customers. Besides, I doubt Charles will want to linger.”

The relationship between Eleanor and Vane had been over by the time Billy had joined up with the Walrus Gang two and a half years ago, and he still didn’t understand how it even started. Eleanor wanting to piss off her father, probably. He didn’t guess it was a relationship based on stimulating conversation, anyway.

“What was it like?” he asked, unbidden. It was always a thought that had itched the back of his mind, and who knew when he’d next have the undivided attention of Eleanor Guthrie. “Being involved with someone who never said a word to you?”

For a second a shadow passed over Eleanor’s face, and Billy thought he’d gone over the line, and that same reflex from before made him want to apologize. But then the moment passed, and she poured herself another drink.

“You never go with any of the girls in town, do you?” she asked instead. She gave an unladylike snort. “With Singleton gone, that’ll be none of the Walrus Gang frequenting the brothel in Nassau. Max won’t be pleased.”

Billy shifted but said nothing. He didn’t know why Flint or Vane didn’t go to Max’s, but he himself had no interest in the girls at the brothel, or the girls in this town or any town. He found the lengths people went to in the name of passion ridiculous, and the urge to couple, when it presented itself, was fleeting and often unnoticeable. Some days he thought he should have joined a seminary, but he was just as uninterested in God as he was in sex. But then some days he thought -- if he wasn’t interested in those things and he didn’t care all that much for riches or glory, what the fuck did he want?

“It was intense,” Eleanor said quietly, looking into her cup. She looked young. She looked her age. He wondered when it last was anyone had thought to ask her something personal. “It was animal. I’ve only ever truly liked myself in the moments I was with him, and every time before or after I felt like a goddamn fucking fool.  But you start noticing looks, with a man like that. He started to look at me like he fucking loved me. But I knew he’d never actually fucking say it. And even though I’ve learned that most of what men have to say is fucking useless, the silence got too heavy for me.”

There was a loud crash in the alley where Vane had disappeared. Billy jerked towards it, but then looked back at Eleanor, suddenly unsure.

She hadn’t reacted to the noise. She was staring at Billy curiously. He didn’t like it at all.

“One day you should find someone to fall in love with you,” she said finally. “All you outlaws should. Then maybe you all would finally understand the real desire to run.”

There were more loud crashes behind the saloon, now with upraised voices. “Would you like me to go deal with that?” Billy asked.

“Pretty fucking please,” said Eleanor. She finished her drink and took the bottle with her as she head towards the stairs. “I’ll go make up that list for you.”

Vane already had both guns drawn when Billy stepped out into the alley, which wasn’t surprising. Ned Low and his gang had most of their guns drawn as well, which also wasn’t all that surprising. The fact that no one had fired yet, however, came as a bit of a shock.

A thin trickle of blood ran down the corner of Vane’s mouth as he looked over his shoulder at Billy. He didn’t lower his weapons but he did take his fingers off their triggers.

Ned’s man on the ground bled more profusely. Billy watched him half-crawl off the floor to stand behind Ned.

“Mr. Manderley,” said Ned Low in that bland voice of his. “We were just talking about you.”

Slowly, Vane’s fingers returned to their triggers.

“We were just discussing which of the Injun’s gang we were going to kill first,” continued Ned, “once we’re finished with Mr. Singleton.”

Billy made an effort to control his face, to keep it as passive as possible. He wasn’t as good at it as Vane, but then few were.

“What could we have done,” Billy said calmly, moving to stand beside Vane, “to warrant such ire from the Fancy Gang?”

“Don’t fucking call us that,” said one of the men behind Ned.

Ned Low was known for robbing stagecoaches and for being a ruthless fucking asshole. One time a witness gave an account of his experience to the papers, and his description of the men’s attire, from their bowler hats to their waistcoats and pocket chains, was the most lasting image. The papers dubbed them the Fancy Gang and it stuck. After that, they never left any more witnesses.

Ned Low took a step forward. The man at his side, Billy thought was named Meeks, watched him warily. He was one of the few who hadn’t drawn a weapon.

“Your man Singleton tried to recruit some of my men yesterday.” Ned cocked his head to stare at Billy with his one milky blue eye. “I take that as a great insult. My men are loyal to me. They have no interest in joining up with a man as weak-willed and holier-than-thou as Captain Flint.”

As far as Billy knew, Flint never even had a conversation with Ned Low, because if they had spoke Ned would never think to call him “weak-willed.” The other accusation, Billy could admit held some truth. Flint made it a point to not interact with other outlaws if he could help it. The Fancy Gang was one of the more serious crews to frequent Nassau, true, but if they offered Flint nothing he could use he had nothing to do with them. Billy knew Flint better than most, and even he thought the man kept himself a step away from everyone else.

“Singleton’s not our man anymore,” said Billy, seeing no reason not to tell him. It’s not like it wouldn’t be all over town soon. “The only man Singleton belongs to now is Jesus fucking Christ. He’s dead.”

“Huh.” Ned seemed to think this over for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Guess we’ll just skip over him and go right to you.”

“Why?” Honestly, Billy was tired. The few hours of rest they had last night was not enough to deal with these needlessly overt displays of masculinity. “His actions had nothing to do with us. What would be the point?”

“If you think I need a reason to want to kill you, Mr. Manderley, you haven’t been paying attention.”

“To you?” Billy smiled, but not nicely. “Guess I haven’t.”

Vane snorted. Ned’s blank face twitched into something close to rage, if Billy thought him capable of real emotion.

“Singleton promised my men riches if he joined them,” Ned said. “That might be a reason.”

For fuck’s sake. Fucking Singleton. Not for the first time in his life, Billy wished men had the capability to die twice.

“You’ll have to speak to the man who killed him.” Billy rested his hands lightly on the guns in his holster. “But a lie like that seems to me the kind of lie to get a bullet between your eyes. Doesn’t it?”

They all stared at each other. Billy’s hands rested a little firmer on his pistols but he left them holstered. Besides Ned and Meeks, there were four other men, all armed to a degree, but Billy equaled two of them put together in size, and Vane matched them all in fervor. Flint would be pissed to all Hell if they wound up dead, but Billy honestly didn’t give a shit.

Then Meeks put his hand on Ned’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to be applying any pressure on his arm, but he quietly said, “Come on, Ned. Not in Nassau. You heard what Scott said. He won’t let you out again as easily.”

Ned thought about this for a moment, then easily holstered his guns. Everyone did the same slowly, but Billy didn’t relax any. He knew the men in front of him were just as dangerous without anything in their hands, just as he and Vane were.

So there was also little surprise when Ned Low reared back and struck Vane in the face. Vane was right there to meet him, taking him down at the waist. Billy watched them roll around on the ground for a second before two of Ned’s men tried to take him down.

A fist got him in the gut, and it hurt, sure, but Billy was able to grab the man by his silk waistcoat and hurled him across the alley, just as another guy leapt on his back and tried to choke him with a forearm.

Billy knew it was unsportsmanlike, but he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Seriously? Seriously. He grabbed the guy on his back by the head and flipped him over his shoulder. Fucking Singleton. He couldn’t believe he’d actually allowed himself to think Flint was leaving him the easier job.

Someone got a lucky punch across his cheek, and for a second he saw stars. Then he ducked under another fist and gave one in return. He heard a nose break under his knuckles, and he didn’t consider himself the type to revel in violence the way Flint, Anne, and Vane did, but that sound was his favorite. He could see Meeks and the man Vane had beaten earlier keep watch at the mouth of the alley. He could not see Vane.

A shot rang out in the cramped space, the familiar smell of gunpowder filling the air. Everyone froze and Billy’s immediate thought was of Vane’s well-being. He didn’t feel shot himself. He had a hand around someone’s throat and another man on his back again and he did not see Vane.

He looked over his shoulder as Eleanor Guthrie cracked open her rifle and began to reload. She stood in the backdoor of her saloon, and she looked pissed.

“This is you fucking handling it, is it?” Eleanor asked Billy.

Billy shrugged. It kind of was. He dropped the man he was choking to the floor and shook the other off his back. He turned around to see Vane straddling Ned, which made him blink. They both had their knives out, though, and they were no longer moving and applying pressure to their blades, but neither removed them from the other’s person. Vane looked like he’d been trying to remove Ned Low’s head. Ned’s knife was slicing into his forearm, but had only succeeding in tearing his jacket.

“Charles?” said Eleanor, stepping fully into the alley. Her gun was still trained outward. “If you don’t mind?”

Vane didn’t look at her, but between one second and the next he was standing beside Billy. His lip was still bleeding and now he had a cut under his eye, but that seemed to be all the damage, apart from the jacket.

“Must be nice,” said Ned, picking himself off the floor, “having a loyal Injun at your beck and call. I suppose you must pay him in hooch and cunt, yes?”

Vane started forward, but Billy grabbed him by the elbow, and anyway Eleanor had already fired a warning shot over Ned. Buck sprayed the wall of the grocery store next door, and Billy hoped to God on the other side was only produce. Ned was showered with sawdust and his one good eye went wide.

“Do you know what the Sheriff would do to me if I were to put you down right now, like a sick dog?” She had already begun to reload again.

Ned Low wiped dust and blood from his forehead, sniffed, and said nothing. He still held his knife.

“Absolutely nothing.” Eleanor leveled the gun again, this time taking aim directly as his heart. “You told Scott you were leaving Nassau. Don’t break your promises, Ned. Girls hate it when you break promises.”

Ned looked at his men. None of them seemed quite prepared to die for him today. Silently, he straightened his waistcoat, picked up his bowler hat, gave them each one long last look, and then the Fancy Gang filed out of the alley.

After a moment, Billy let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Jesus fucking Christ. Why isn’t he our main suspect?”

Eleanor rested her gun on one arm and pulled a paper out of her pocket. “He was in the drunk tank all last night. Scott picked him up from here when he was starting fights, probably due to whatever the fuck happened with Singleton, but Singleton had been seen alive after the Sheriff had locked him up for the night.”

“What about one of the others?”

Eleanor shook her head. “The rest of the Fancy Gang had slunk off to Max’s for the remainder of their evening, and Max confirmed it. And anyway, Ned isn’t the type to pass off the dirty work to someone else. Because he’s a fucking lunatic.”

Eleanor and Vane were specifically not looking at each other. Vane was inspecting the rip in his sleeve. Billy looked down at the list. At least he recognized most of the names.

“Anyone else particularly pissed about Singleton’s offer?” Billy asked. “Or did anyone seem particularly interested?”

“That, I cannot tell you. You’ll have to ask them yourself. Without fists, this time. Use your fucking words.” The for once went, ironically, unsaid.

Vane twitched slightly and made eye contact with Billy. He seemed to be trying to communicate something to Billy, which Billy thought he got. Vane’s eyes swept over him once, checking for injuries, before leaving the same way Ned Low did.

“You heard Flint!” Billy called after him. “Something productive!”

Vane half turned as he walked and gave Billy the finger.

Once he’d disappeared (fortunately, going the opposite way the Fancy Gang went out the alley), Eleanor sighed heavily.

“You know,” she said, apparently having decided Billy was as good a confidant as any about this, “I always got the impression that he was embarrassed for falling in love with me.”

Billy was the last person anyone should turn to as an authority on love. But Vane never struck him as a person who felt that much shame. It seemed to Billy that Vane took responsibility for every single action he ever took. It was one of the few traits Billy admired. He wasn’t about to argue with her though, so he said nothing.

That didn’t seem to make her any happier, however. “No wonder you two get along so fucking well.”

Billy scratched the back of his head. He hadn’t realized they did. He wished he had something to say to that to avoid angering her more, but he really couldn’t think of anything.

Eleanor sighed. “Whatever the fuck this is all about,” she said, heading back inside her saloon, “I hope to God it’s fucking worth it.”

For lack of anything else to do, Billy followed her. He looked down at his long list of suspects, unsure where to even start. Anne was right, they weren’t Pinkertons. His stomach hurt.

“Fucking Singleton,” he muttered to himself. “You couldn’t have just waited a few more hours to die?”

Flint stared down at the corpse. Singleton’s skin looked waxy and gray, his eyes were closed, and the hole in his forehead was black and twisted, but Flint still had to fight the urge to put his hands around his throat and strangle him.

Instead he lit another cigarette. He shook out a match and, holding the cigarette between his lips, began patting down Singleton’s body.

“I know you don’t think much of my position as a law enforcer,” said Sheriff Scott behind him, “but I actually did think to do that.”

Flint rolled Singleton to one side with some effort to feel his back pockets. “Peace of mind, Sheriff,” he muttered. “Peace of mind.”

He continue to handle Singleton until the light taps started to turn more aggressive, and he made himself take a step back. In life, Singleton had been so imposing, with all his scars and muscles and endless anger. Now, taking in the sight of his bare feet, the toes gnarled and blue, he already looked a skeleton to Flint.

“Are you ready to actually discuss what’s going on now?” Scott asked. “Or would you like to continue abusing the dead?”

Flint inhaled deeply. The cold burn of the smoke lingering in his lungs left him light-headed. He should have eaten something. “Lead the way,” he said. He didn’t look at Singleton’s body again.

They left the storage room that housed Singleton’s body, normally reserved for chains and guns. Even if Singleton was a traitorous son of a bitch, Flint thought he would have appreciated the final resting place. Scott’s office sat adjacent in the back of the building. The front of the room held the only three jail cells in Nassau. Although he knew Scott wouldn’t lock him up, being this close to the iron doors made him feel on edge.

“So he stole from you,” Scott said, sitting behind his desk. It was spartan, like the rest of his office. A pile of wanted notices and arrest warrants from other places come down the wire, handwritten scrawls from neighbors complaining about other neighbors, death threats from nearby counties disapproving of his title. The people in Nassau were accommodating folk. When it was lawless it abided those rules, and now that it sat lawful they changed with the wind. They did as Eleanor Guthrie told them to do, which was to accept Scott in his position, but her reach only extended so far.

Scott and Eleanor were pretty unified. His role as law enforcement was limited, not because of the color of his skin but due to Eleanor’s own less than legal activities. He handled the drunks, the land disputes, the petty thefts -- anything within the city limits. The Walrus Gang, and any other gangs Eleanor deemed acceptable to do business with, were out of his jurisdiction. As far as he was concerned, Nassau was the beginning and end of his line of duty. For now.

Unlike the rest of them, though, Sheriff Scott was never a criminal. He saw the right way to do things, and the right way for Nassau was unquestionably a railway station, not the possibility of stolen money in a deep hole in Colorado.

So Flint didn’t tell Eleanor, but to Scott he said, “He took Vasquez’s map.”

“Fuck. ” Scott actually looked somewhat impressed. “How the hell did you come by that?”

Just because Sheriff Scott wouldn’t arrest them, didn’t mean Flint was just going to admit to any criminal misdeeds. “I stumbled upon it by luck in Kansas City.”

Scott snorted. “Does Eleanor know about this?”

“No.”

“Good. Make sure it stays that way.” Because while Scott wouldn’t be tempted by a legendary $200,000, Eleanor definitely would be.

After a moment, Scott said, “And you’re sure of it’s legitimacy?”

“I have no reason to question it.”

“No,” said Scott. “Only your life, and the lives of your men.”

“No one knows we had it except us, you, and Singleton. And possibly whoever killed him, although they may not even realize what they have. This is still completely in hand--”

“Hornigold was in town yesterday.”

Flint choked on smoke. "What the fuck, Scott?"

Without letting him catch his breath, Scott added, "And he was seen speaking with Singleton shortly after he arrived yesterday afternoon."

Flint threw his cigarette to the ground and stood up. He felt like he was buried to the neck in an ant hill. His skin was crawling. He itched to run.

It's not that he was afraid of Hornigold and the rest of his Pinkerton team, sworn to hunt them down for the last year ever since the Walrus Gang had robbed Hornigold's own bank. While Hornigold was inside making a deposit. Ever since then he had made it his personal duty to bring them to justice. He'd even gotten close a couple times, which Flint knew only furthered his ire. He was more of a nuisance, really, but goddamn it, they're so close to everything they ever wanted.

"Hornigold," said Flint as he paced Scott's office, "wasn't on Eleanor's fucking list."

"She doesn't know," Scott said simply. "I know you all see me as her puppet, but it isn't actually customary for a sheriff to inform the local saloon owner when the Pinkerton Detective Agency was in town."

"Jesus fucking Christ." Flint's shoulder hurt. His throat ached. There was too much to consider and so his mind felt like it was crawling with ants, too. "How do you know they weren't the ones to kill Singleton?"

"And leave without his bounty? That's so unlikely I'd call it an impossibility."

He took his hat off and dropped it on Scott’s desk, overly warm. "Tell me exactly what happened."

Scott sighed, leaning back in his chair beneath the window. Sunlight caught on the tin badge pinned to his chest, flashing Flint in the eye until he blinked away.

"The Pinkertons rode into town yesterday morning." Scott reached for a cup on his desk. "Hornigold came in to see me when he arrived. Asked if we'd had any suspicious characters in town recently. Any outlaws looking to trouble the Kansas Pacific deal. He didn't mention you by name, but when I told him Ned Low and his lot were here he was uninterested."

Flint perked up. "Low's here? He's hated my crew for awhile."

Scott took a long sip of coffee before shaking his head. "He was in here all last night, drunk. A mild stabbing situation."

"And you let him out already?"

"Featherstone insists he merely tripped on New Low's knife. Twice."

Flint closed his eyes. He was so close to being done with this. "So Hornigold left here?"

"A little while later I saw him, that Dusfresne, and Singleton chatting by the stables. I was starting to approach them when Singleton saw me and walked away, looking powerfully angry. I was expecting the Pinkertons to give chase but they were too busy conversing too low for me to hear. Then they said they were riding out, saddled up and left. Around then Singleton headed to the saloon, trying to round up a new crew."

They had talked. Flint tried to think. Then Hornigold had left, and Singleton became noticeably desperate. Was he looking for a crew to help dig up the safe? Was he looking for protection? Obviously some sort of trap was being set, but was Singleton the bait or Vasquez's money?

"I think you're beginning to understand," Scott said, "why I'm urging you to forget this. You're not going to find your El Dorado at the end of that map, Flint. You're only going to find yourself in front of a firing squad."

That made Flint huff. "Don't you mean on the end of a noose?"

"We all know your legend, Captain. I don't think Hornigold would leave it to chance."

Flint let the nickname slide. "I can't believe you're encouraging me to continue the career I'm in now that neither of us choose to acknowledge in the other's presence." He scratched his chin. He wished he hadn't thrown away his cigarette. "What would you have us do?"

"This money is even a bigger legend than you," said Scott. "What is it you think you could accomplish with it, if the damn thing exists?"

Flint had in his mind a vision of his future, and it had evolved over the years. During the war, running through the mud and viscera of his fallen brothers, he imagined himself on a ranch somewhere near a town like Nassau, living a peaceful existence with a herd of cattle and few neighbors. After all the events of Glen Rock, he pictured himself drifting in a rowboat out to sea, the waves gently rocking him into oblivion, until he burnt up to dust and he disappeared into the mist.

Now, over a decade into this thing he created, with Miranda cold in the ground and the blood they’d shed threatening to choke him -- his future was a cave, high in a mountaintop. He saw himself as a hermit out of the Middle Ages, clad in just a long shirt, a dirty beard dragging through the earth. He would eat berries and sleep on top of a rock in the sun like a lizard, crawl beneath it at night when it cooled. He'd let birds and insects live in his hair and he'd let moss grow on his back. He wanted to feed himself to a forest.

"This is a way to escape," Flint said. "A way to finally rest. Can't you see that?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Scott never looked particularly friendly towards him but now he shuttered up completely. "No," he said coldly. "I'm just a black fucking sheriff in fucking America, holding an extremely tenuous position granted to me by a white woman who doesn't even have the power to fucking vote for me herself. I don't get the luxury of finally resting unless I'm ready to die, and to be frank with you I’m not particularly keen to do that. Resting is just another way of giving up, and you don’t need money to do that."

Flint understood, but he didn't see it as giving up. He saw it as finishing what someone else started eleven years ago. He wanted to apologize to Scott, or maybe try to explain, but he knew it wouldn't be accepted or appreciated, so he said nothing. He looked out the entryway at the three vacant jail cells. He tried not to notice how dark and cold they looked, like caves.

Scott put his coffee down and walked over to him. He leaned on the other side of the door frame, and he no longer looked as ornery as he had a moment ago.

"There are a whole people out there who can tell you that escaping never feels like rest," Scott said. "And freedom is rarely, if ever, free."

"I know that," said Flint quietly. "I do."

He felt Scott looking at him hard. He felt restless, empty, skinned - an old tree shaved down and hollowed to be used for something pointless or degrading, like an umbrella stand or an outhouse.

“What are you going to do now?” Scott asked.

Flint let out a long sigh, rubbing his face hard. “I’m going to see what the rest of my crew has round up,” he said. He walked back to the desk and picked up his hat. The worn black leather against his dry hands made him feel steadier than he had a moment ago. It wasn’t until he saw all the pieces on the board could he make his next play.  “And then I guess we’ll go from there.”

“Just make sure wherever it is you go,” Scott said, coming around to sit back in his chair, “it doesn’t end with Nassau burned in your wake.”

“That won’t happen unless I find out you or Eleanor had something to do with this.” He put the hat on and smiled. “That won’t happen, will it?”

Scott didn’t look pleased. “Just hurry up and get the fuck out of my town,” he said.

Flint started to move but then he stopped, looked back at the closed door where Singleton lay. “You should take the kill,” he said suddenly. “Collect the bounty. I think it was about $1,000. Keep the money, or put it towards the town, I don’t know. Would look good for when Kansas Pacific comes around.”

“Thanks for the advice,” said Scott. He held up a piece of paper. “But I’ve actually been working on that telegram to send off since last night.”

Flint titled his head in acknowledgement. On his way passed the cells he called back, “Oh, and if you taking the credit and the money draws the real killer to your doorstep, you be sure to let me know.”

He was almost out the door when he heard Scott mutter, “Motherfucker.”

Flint smiled to himself. He walked back to the saloon to see if Billy had any news. He finally felt like some breakfast.

April 27, 1854

She boarded the train the way all the other children did - in one massive, uncoordinated wave. Everyone was pushing and shoving from all sides, desperate to get on. No one knew exactly what was going on or where they would end up or why, but everyone knew the importance of getting a good seat: all to themselves, on something like a cushion instead of the floor, not next to someone with lice.

She didn’t understand what was happening. No one had been able to explain it to her. One moment she was in her village, kissing her neighbors and her friends and her Rabbi goodbye, heading with her mother to meet her father already living in Newyorsity. The next moment she was in the hold of a huge, creaking ship gripping her mother’s clammy pale hand as she whispered all about the magic of Newyorsity even as she slipped off forever into the night. And in a blink she was being held back, held down by the other passengers as she screamed, as she kicked, as they threw her mother’s wrapped body over the side. And then only moments later she was standing on a dock, and her father was not.

It had only been a week she had lived in the strange large building that was full of other mean, dirty children but not full of food, before she was rallied into a carriage and sent to a train station, to be sent -- who knows where. All she could gather was they were leaving Newyorsity, and she was fine with that.

Now, she squeezed her way through the aisle of the train, listening to the incomprehensible talk around her. She wanted to cry but didn’t. She told herself, after watching her mother’s body slip beneath the sea, that she wouldn’t do that kind of thing anymore.

“Hey, I like your bonnet.”

She didn’t know why she turned to the voice but she did. She saw a short, messy boy smiling at her, sitting near the window on a long bench. He had no front teeth, and his hair was a wild bird’s nest. He was also alone.

“Wow, and look at your hair,” said the boy, awed. “I ain’t never seen hair that red before.”

She said nothing. Someone bumped into her from behind, pushing her closer.

He blinked at her curiously. “You don’t speak English, huh?” He guessed. Then he brightened. “Hey, I could teach you! I’m really good at it!”

He gestured to her to come closer with one hand, the other digging into a ratty knapsack. She went closer, sat down gently beside him.

He looked at her with a sly smile. “I’ve got a book ,” he whispered conspiratorially. He dropped it in her lap.

She didn’t understand the words, but the book had pictures and so she knew the story. It was Noah, building his ark and gathering his animals and herding them onto his ship as big storm clouds drew overhead. She didn’t like looking at the drawing of the ark, so she covered it with one hand. She liked the animal drawings, though.

The boy was still talking.

“This is my favorite story,” he said. “Look at all the animals! They all got someone, see? They all got a partner, to be with during the flood, so that’s all right. Which one do you like best?” He trailed his hand over the long line of animals marching up a ramp into the ship she still covered with her palm.

She let her fingers follow his, before stopping on the two lions. They were at the front of the line and they looked serious, fierce, important.

“Those are my favorite too!” The boy crowed, then looked around sheepishly as people turned to stare. “You kinda look like a lion, anyone ever tell you that? What about me, do I look like a lion?”

He puffed out his chest and made a stern face. She smiled at him, and the boy smiled brightly back.

“Me and you can be lions,” he decided. “Hey, where are you from, anyway?”

She blinked at him. She could tell he’d asked her a question.

The boy frowned. “Where. You. From. You.” He pointed hard at her.

She put a hand on her chest. “Anna,” she said slowly.

The boy sighed, but then smiled again. She decided she liked his smile. “My name’s Jack,” he said.

Jack held out his hand, and Anna took it.

________

September 6, 1875

“Fuck you, Jack,” Anne said, spitting on the ground.

Jack pushed his hat back and pouted. He hadn’t bothered to shave in days and his beard was coming in oddly on the sides. It made her want to take a knife to him more than usual. “I was only thinking you might wish to switch assignments,” he said. “I just thought you would like to see the circus, I know how much you love frivolities.”

Anne scowled at him, although most of it was hidden behind her hat. She knew he saw it anyway. “Yeah, I know what you fucking thought,” she said poisonously.

They were standing in the shadow of the brothel. He looked up at the wooden front. They never discussed the brothel when they were in Nassau or when they were elsewhere either. They both knew Jack never frequented it, but they both knew Anne had, once or twice. She knew everything there was to know about Calico Jack, but watching his face as he looked at the building front, both of them knowing who exactly sat inside -- she still had no idea what he thought about it.

He sighed, still not looking at her. “You know how vital the recovery of this map is for us,” he said quietly. “It’s -- potential. A real future. If Singleton fucked that up for us I may have to kill myself just so I can find him in Hell and murder him a second time.”

Anne rolled her eyes but said nothing. Whenever Jack spoke about the future it caused an uncomfortable turn in her stomach, like seasickness -- something she hadn’t felt in twenty years. Around the same time she was discovering that kind of nausea was when she learned the pointlessness of hoping for a better future.

“Fine,” Jack said with another sigh. “I’ll go to the damn show.” He turned to her again. He quirked his lips briefly, and his eyes were as kind as they always were. He quickly brushed two fingers against her cheek, knowing to move them fast before she could jerk back.

He headed back down the street. The tents of the medicine show piled up about a mile in the distance. “Don’t get distracted now,” Jack said without turning around.

“Don’t get fucking drunk,” she called out after him. He didn’t react but she knew he heard.

Entering the brothel, she thought maybe she should have taken Jack up on his offer to switch. It was just natural to her to disagree with most things he came up with. When it was the two of them against someone else’s idea, they were always united, but when Jack started spewing his bullshit to her, she called it like it was.

But she felt too on edge for this. She hadn’t slept enough. Flint had called them out from that last bank once he’d found the map, before she got to hit anyone, and the aborted violence made her feel hopped up and itching to hurt, like being interrupted in the middle of fucking. She wasn’t in the right mind to deal with this.

The whores of Max’s were lounging around the ballroom (a pun if there ever was one, and puns were one of the first things Jack had taught her) in various states of undress, and all over the place - at the tables, the stairs, the floor. They were eating, doing each other’s hair, applying makeup with hand mirrors, joking around with each other. Without any men to ruin the picture, they looked like a family.

They all stopped when they saw Anne.

“You all here, then?” Anne said into the silence.

No one responded.

“I asked you all a fucking question,” Anne said, stepping further into the room. Her hat hung low, and her hair covered part of her face, but she still could see everyone in the room. “You all here? Any other girls upstairs? Wanna get this over with quick.” She could meet Jack at the medicine show, hopefully keep him away from a bottle and hopefully without seeing anyone else.

They stayed quiet until Anne rested her hands on her guns. Then one of the women, her blonde hair half curled, said, “This is all of us girls. But our madam--”

“Only want to talk to you,” Anne cut her off. They followed her movements around the floor like she was a snake about to strike. “I want to know which of you cunts had Singleton last night, and I want to know now.”

No one responded, but she caught a few eyes darting quickly to a brunette sitting on the stairs. Her corset was only half tied and the only makeup she had on was a dark red lipstick. She also noticed a few of the girls look at her and rolled her eyes.

“I’m not supposed to say anything,” said the whore.

Anne approached her swiftly, gun already in hand. She liked the way the whore’s face changed when she stuck the barrel under her pale chin.

“I ain’t much of a talker,” Anne said. “But I think you get my fucking point.”

The whore swallowed heavily, but before she could say anything a door on the second landing creaked open. Soft footsteps approached the top of the stairs. Anne didn’t look.

“Idelle,” said the lilting voice above her. “Go get some lunch. I will answer any questions Miss Anne Bonny has for us.”

“So you fucked Singleton last night too?” Anne snarled, turning upwards, unable to help herself.

Max smiled down at her. White afternoon light shone down a window in the roof, dust still dancing around her from her approach. Her hair was pinned up neatly, her face plainly painted, her clothes modest -- except for the deep red shade of the silk, and a single curl twisting down beside one ear.

Every time Anne saw her, she felt like Lot’s wife. Curiosity at what Max was -- was to her -- always made her look, and she always became a pillar of salt from it: fragile, pale, soon to disappear in a gust of wind.

Anne’s grip on her gun tightened.

“Come, now,” said Max softly. “We have much to catch up on.”

Idelle slipped away as Anne watched Max retreat to her office. She heard Jack’s voice  in her ear don’t get distracted now as she slowly holstered her pistol and ascended the stairs.

Max’s office was all windows and sheer curtains. The french doors leading to her bed were wide open, and Anne saw the sheets were unmade. Resting against her desk was a painting. She looked at it for a long moment, and even tilted her head, but all she saw was a blur of purple and orange.

“What the fuck is this supposed to be?” she couldn’t help but ask.

Max ran her fingers along the painting’s frame, smiling. “A customer paid with it. He had just come back from exploring the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” She looked slyly at Anne. “One of the most beautiful, I mean.”

Don’t get distracted now.

“Cut the bullshit,” Anne said. “I’m only here about Singleton.”

“But it’s been almost four months since we last saw one another,” said Max. “I’ve been saving up all my bullshit for you.”

“I’m going to go downstairs and start removing that whore’s fingers one bullet at a time,” said Anne, “unless you fucking tell me what I want to know.”

“Of course,” Max said with a sigh, sitting down behind her desk. She let out a small cough, and Anne tensed, waiting for it to get bigger, but she seemed to catch herself. Max had moved from Louisiana a few years back on doctor’s orders, wanting her to get away from the wetness, but Anne didn’t think the dry season and all this dust did her many favors.

“You might as well sit,” Max said after taking a sip of water. “Your man is still going to be dead once I get to the end of this account.”

Anne kept herself stiff, standing. If she sat, she’d have a clear view of Max’s bed. That, she knew, would almost certainly be a distraction.

Max considered her. Anne knew she was taking in her tired, drawn face, her mud-streaked clothes, her dirty hands. Her fingers twitched with the old yet strong desire to clean them. Suddenly she felt every bit of grit on her like the weight of a thousand stones.

But then Max said, musing, “Unless there is another reason you wish to find Singleton’s killer. A reason that has nothing to do with revenge.”

“Fuck Singleton,” Anne spat, and then she wanted to kick herself.

Max smiled, looking down at her desk. “So he had something. Or several somethings. Something, I assume, which did not belong to him.”

Anne grit her teeth and said nothing.

When it became clear that Anne wasn’t going to slip up again, Max leaned forward at her desk. Anne couldn’t look at her without also seeing the Grand Canyon. “Fine. Singleton came in here last night, drunk to high Hell, having been kicked out of Guthrie’s for the evening for causing too many altercations. He went straight to Idelle, but was too drunk to do anything other than drink more. I had her tell me what he said, but she insists he told her nothing specific. He said he had more money than Grant and could buy her the world if she wanted. She said he was afraid, and he kept saying all he needed was one man. She said she didn’t think he acted like he knew he was going to die, but she thought that when the bullet hit him between the eyes, it wouldn’t have surprised him any.”

Anne nodded. “And what did she say to him?”

“She suggested he head to the medicine show on the edge of town,” said Max. “That that was where men go to look for their miracle cures.”

So he went to the saloon, then here, then the show. Without knowing what the others have found, there’s no way to know what happened for certain, but she felt close to something. She hoped to God Jack wasn’t getting drunk right now.

Anne was about to leave when Max said, “Tell me. If he hadn’t of stolen from you, or if you find whatever it is he took, were you ever planning on coming back here?”

Anne looked down, hiding her face. Her eyes caught that painting again. Now that she knew what it was, she could kind of see what it looked like.

Jack’s plan for the money was a simple one. As soon as they had their collective share, they would strike it out away from the rest of the Walrus Gang and never pick up another gun again. Stealing had only ever been a means to an end, he said, and had said ever since the day they were left on their own -- Jack causing a ruckus on that train somewhere in Ohio, where they’d meant to leave him without Anne to go work on a farm somewhere, Jack hollering and kicking so no one would see Anne leaping off the other side of the train, the two of them never making it to that farm, Jack accidentally leaving his only book behind in his seat but he got Anne instead and he insisted that was a better trade, even though he looked heartbroken.

Jack wanted a life of prosperity for them. He wanted to see Anne sleeping on a beach in the sun. He wanted to see her sleeping on a bed of goose feathers and silk in a plantation. He wanted to see her sleeping easily.

Anne knew all this. But she didn’t know who she was without a gun in her hand, without someone to hurt, to frighten, to fight.

“No,” said Anne quietly. “We’d never of come back here.”

She pretended not to see the wetness in Max’s eyes. “Where were you two planning to go?”

Anne shrugged. “Jack’s always talking about Mexico.” The only way Anne had been able to stay upright on their long ride after Singleton was the thought about Mexico. She’d seen it in a picture once. It looked nice. But her idea of it filled her with an unknown dread.

“Mexico,” said Max wistfully. She got up and walked to one of her large bay windows, which overlooked no bay. Just brown dust and flat buildings. “I have heard the waters in Mexico are bluer than the sky. Bluer, perhaps, than even your eyes.” She gave Anne a small smile. “I miss the water. There’s nothing like here it in fucking Kansas. Ponds, lakes -- small, dark, earthy things, ugly, with that horrible nothingness for taste. I miss the salt on my tongue.”

Anne started, turned to face her fully. Max was looking outside again and shone in the sunlight, like she always did. The nape of her neck, where it met the delicate line of her hair, looked closer to the sloped edges of the Grand Canyon than any fucking painting could.

Anne approached her, and when Max turned to her she cupped the back of that neck and drew her in for a kiss. Max opened her mouth immediately, and Anne caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She brought her other hand to Max’s breast. Max didn’t dress like a whore anymore but Anne could feel the faint impression of lace from her undergarments beneath the fabric of her gown. Anne knew Max liked her fancy brassieres and the like, saw them as things she kept for herself only and the few she deemed worthy enough to know of their existence. She rubbed her thumb in pressing circles until she felt Max’s nipple harden, and Max’s shivered into her mouth.

Max drew back with a sigh, her cheeks pink and soft. Her hands had become tangled in Anne’s long hair. “Don’t you have somewhere to be right now?”

“Yeah,” said Anne. She dropped her hand from Max’s neck to her waist and began walking her back to the bedroom. “I do.”

Anne loved Jack. Jack had seen everything there was to see with Anne -- had seen her at her darkest, her most evil, her most vulnerable -- and still looked at her with unrestrained and unparalleled awe, and sometimes she needed that to keep going. But Max only ever saw who she was in each singular moment. Anne lost her history with Max and when Anne was with her the only thing she ever felt was wanted, and sometimes Anne needed that too.

It was Anne leading them to the bedroom, but as always it was Max laying her down onto the bed.

It was a few hours later when Anne emerged from the brothel, late in the afternoon, and she was trying to come up with a convincing argument to tell the Walrus Gang for why she had been gone so long and how she absolutely had not been distracted and no, she didn’t know where the fucking map was.

But then she rounded a corner onto the main street, and saw Jack, slumped on the wooden stairs leading to the post office. Vane stood beside him, arms folded. He looked fucking livid, and when he saw Anne approach he somehow looked madder.

Anne was a few feet from Jack when she smelled the overwhelming liquor smell.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said.

He looked up at her blearily, finally noticing her arrival. “Hello, dear,” he said weakly. His hat was gone, as was his left boot and his handkerchief. His nose was bright red which Anne guessed was from the hooch, but then she saw the drip of blood out one nostril and the fresh split of Vane’s knuckle and guessed otherwise.

“For fuck's sake, Jack. What the fuck happened?”

“Well,” said Jack. He tried to stand up once but failed and then gave up completely. “Well. I’ve made a mistake, certainly, but rest assured, darling, it was all for the sake of our great success. I swear to God almighty himself, when you look at it from a very specific way, I’ve done an excellent job here today.”

When he finally told her, Anne punched him in the nose too. 

Flint had spent the better part of the day sitting in the saloon, talking with men he despised. He had just met most of them for the first time and thought he would despise them before actually speaking to them, and was happy to discover his assessment of them was completely right. What a bunch of fucking morons.

This was another argument he should have made to Scott about getting out of this life. All his assumed associates were a bunch of jackasses. He wished he had time for a bath.

They’d learned nothing new from the horde of men Singleton had accosted the day previous. Most of them were able to assert the man had left just before the sun had set, drunk as a skunk and verbally assaulting every man who refused him, which was all of them. Or so they claimed. Flint thought some of them might have been interested in whatever it was Singleton had offered them, but while they had been still mulling it over, Singleton had turned up dead and that pretty much made up their minds for them.

A few people claimed to see Singleton heading to the brothel after leaving the saloon, so Flint hoped Anne got lucky there.

He and Billy had sat in an almost companionable silence at the saloon. He appreciated the fact that, barring Jack, none of his crew were big conversationalists. Flint got to eat. He felt an almost calm about the whole thing that he mostly attributed to sleep deprivation and a form of hysteria. If the others hadn’t turned up anything, their next moves were limited, and in a way that was soothing.

It was in fate’s hands whether or not Flint decided to burn Nassau to the ground. Scott and Eleanor were right in fearing that was always a possibility, however slight.

So it was with something of an easy comfort did they finally leave the saloon late in the afternoon. Most of it was relief to get away from his contemporaries, so called cowboys and outlaws who couldn’t tell their peckers from the wrong end of a pistol barrel. But he’d eaten a real meal, and Billy didn’t seem to want to pressure him about what happened next, so he allowed himself to feel cautiously optimistic.

Until they’d walked only a few minutes and came up on Jack, Anne, and Vane -- and the optimism went the way it always did, vanishing without a trace.

“What the fuck is going on?” He tried to keep his voice low and calm.

Jack looked up at him like a beaten dog. He had Vane’s handkerchief held under his nose, but Vane wasn’t looking at any of them. Anne seemed like she was seconds away from strangling Jack, and Jack smelled like he’d taken a bath in rye.

“I fucking told you --” Flint started.

“I know, please --”

“Just tell us what the fuck is going on,” said Billy.

“Jack lost all our fucking money,” said Anne.

“Please, darling, let me tell it. You won’t say it right.”

Flint, deep down in the very center of him, was actually a good person. Which is why he didn’t punch Jack in the nose when it already looked broken. He punched him in the eye instead.

“Ow, fuck! ”

They’d only made about $3,000 from the bank in Kansas City before they’d found the map and hightailed it out of there, and then the next morning they’d awoken to find Singleton and the map gone. In the haste of success and then rage at the loss, the money Jack and Vane had liberated from the Kansas City safe had stayed in Jack’s purse, as all other thoughts had been elsewhere.

If it was gone, then the last week would literally all be for nothing. He couldn’t believe Anne hadn’t strangled him yet but now she was gonna have to wait in fucking line.

“Please!” said Jack, scrambling up the steps away from them. His voice was hoarse; maybe Anne had choked him a little. “Let me explain!”

“Fucking explain then,” said Flint, approaching. No one protested, not even Billy, which was a testament to how richly deserving Jack was to die.

“I went to Mr. Gates’s Authentic Wild West and Medicine Show,” Jack said quickly, hands held out in front of him, bloody handkerchief waving in surrender, “and I spoke with the aforementioned Mr. Gates, who offered nothing substantial. Exactly, in fact, what he told Sheriff Scott, which was that an angry, drunk Singleton stormed into the tents at the very end of the last show the previous evening, said nothing to no one, and then left.”

“So your last act on this Earth resulted in a resounding nothing,” said Flint. He reached for one of his pistols. “I’m glad we cleared that up.”

“Wait! As we were talking a man walked by. One of the show hands, name of Logan. Said he saw our Mr. Singleton heading into the tent of the show’s sharpshooter. When Mr. Gates asked him why he didn’t tell the Sheriff this information, Logan said no one asked him.”

Flint blinked. “A sharpshooter?”

Jack nodded furiously. “So I went to see the sharpshooter. An obnoxious little shit, real piece of work. Kept insisting he didn’t know anything about it, had never seen Singleton before, but I could tell he was lying. And when I saw the pack of cards in his room, I offered him a little wager. If I won he told me the truth, but since I had no truth to give to him, I could only offer him cash.”

“Cards? ” Billy said behind him. “But you cheat at cards!”

“Evidently, so does he.”

“So you learned nothing then?”

Jack smiled. Blood had dripped down from his nose and stained his teeth. “When a sober man is winning against a drunk man, ego tends to prevail every time. He let things slip. I swear to you this, Flint, if I’m wrong you are free to cut me down where I stand -- this is the man who killed Singleton, and what’s more, this is the man who has our map. I am certain of it.”

Flint couldn’t actually kill Jack. Doing so would provoke Anne, despite her anger towards him at the moment, and if Flint killed her Vane would attack, and frankly he didn’t think Billy would stand for the murders of any of them. He thought Jack might have known that. He asked, through clenched teeth, “Who is he?”

Wordlessly, Jack reached into his jacket, pulled out a rolled piece of paper, and handed it to Flint.

It was a painted poster from the Wild West show. In the center stood a man with long, curly blonde hair he hoped was a wig, and a big sandy beard. Possibly it intended to make him look Herculean but only succeeded in making him look like a coiffed poodle. He stood backwards on a proud white steed, shooting two big guns into the air, and he wore a bright blue shirt, an eyepatch, red boots, and a wide, toothy, shit-eating grin.

“Who the fuck,” said Flint, “is Long Joe Silverado?”