The Angel Butcher of Rio Bravo: An RDR2 Story

iv. A nice spot

John.

The loud thunk of wood hitting the floorboards startled John from his slumber, heavy with laudanum.

"Oh, sorry, John," Tilly said, her deep brown eyes regretful as she stooped to pick up the crate she'd been carrying.

"No matter, Till," he gruffed, his mouth cottoned with sleep, vaguely aware of a bustle of other gang members around his sleeping place in Colter's main building. "What's going on?"

"We're moving on," she said, grunting softly as she adjusted the crate within her arms, "weather's finally cooperating, thank goodness."

"Heh, yeah," John replied, pushing himself to sitting; something that still required a fair degree of effort. Abigail swept into the building, Jack at her skirts. Her eyes rested on John sitting up and her expression softened, grateful she didn't have to wake him.

"Oh, good, you're up," she said, approaching him with an extended hand that she pressed briefly to his forehead, checking his temperature. "You're cooler, too."

John stretched, feeling the muscles in his back and shoulders, long dormant, uncoil. "Anything I can help out on?"

"No, we're most of the way there," she dismissed, nodding at John's arms for him to feed them into the jacket she held out, the arm where the wolves had torn into him carefully patched.

"Thanks," he whispered, astounded again that she did so much for him, despite his not much deserving of any of it. But she was already out of earshot, having hustled on to a pile of Jack's toys by the fire and throwing them into a sack. John was inspecting the fine stitching on the patch adorning his sleeve when the boy himself sat next to him, swinging his legs.

"Oh, uh, hey, Jack," John uttered, the remaining laudanum in his system giving the boy's tawny head a preternatural glow in the sunlight that made its way through the windows.

"Hi, Pa," Jack said, his gaze on his toes.

"You know where we're going?"

"Uncle Hosea said he found a nice spot." Jack's finger drew a repetitive circle on the quilt between them.

John chuckled, awkward. "He knows all about them, Uncle Hosea." The boy swivelled to look at John, staring directly at him for what seemed like an endless amount of time, before growing bored, hopping off the bed and running back to his mother. John exhaled a hot breath through his nostrils. For all that time learning shooting and reading, no one had taught him how to speak to children.

The gang's belongings packed, Arthur and Charles appeared in the doorway, each grasping under John's shoulders and heaving him out toward his wagon, where Abigail, Jack, and Uncle were seated in the back; Pearson and Grimshaw in the driver's seat. With an unceremonious shove, Arthur dumped John's ungainly, injured limbs into the wagon bed, where Abigail had laid out the quilt and pillows that had been on his cot.

"Always so gentle," John scoffed from where he lay sprawled, as Arthur brushed off his palms.

"Yeah, yeah," Arthur said, his tone short, tipping his hat to Abigail and hopping down from the wagon to make for one further down the train.

From up ahead, John heard Dutch shout, "Time to get out of this frozen hell, folks! Mount up!" There were scattered cheers all around him, and Jack, picking up on the excitement of his aunts and uncles, joined in with a pitched, "wahoo!"

"Keep the boy quiet, Abigail," said John, his scowl pulling at the stitches on his face.

"Oh, shut your mouth, John Marston," she scolded. "Would rather have left you in the snow." But even as she said it, she fluffed the pillow behind his head, stroked some of the hair from his eyes.