Gunslinger AU "pilot" (?)
Apr. 23rd, 2020 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saxophonicFirst chapter of an unpublished WIP about Caesar, Joseph, and other favorite characters set in a RDR2-based interpretation of late 19th century North America. Unrated but there's violence...it is a gunslinger AU....
Originally written between last December and this March. 4-5k words.
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Joseph doesn’t consider himself a patient man, not usually. But if there’s a way to turn waiting into a game, then he can pass the time without feeling every second like a knife to his back. Leaning against the front of the doctor’s office, he tips his hat at the beautiful dark-skinned woman making her way up the front steps. “Madam,” he says and flashes a grin, hoping to claim another smile from a stranger. If he gets two more today, he’ll beat his record.
She’s easily twice his age, her dark coils turning grey at her temples and brushed back from her face. Her gloved hands lift the long skirts of her dress from the dirty walk. Seems the whole place is nothing but a long skid of mud and a few ramshackle buildings that folks are fixing up to call themselves a town. Nothing wrong with having aspirations. They’re already big enough to play host to a sheriff’s office, though, two doors down. Joseph made sure to note that particular address after they rented two rooms above the saloon on their first night.
It’s been a lucrative couple days since then, that’s for sure.
She greets him with a polite nod of her head. “Good day, sir.” The woman doesn’t alter her course to continue the conversation and disappears inside the doctor’s office with a ring of the bell by the door.
That’s alright, he figures, and toys with the black bandana looped around his neck like an idle accessory. He didn’t score a smile, but he was just polite enough to fly under the radar. Rude men get noticed, as Caesar’s fond of telling him. Nice men slip out of people’s minds like smiling eels through cold, wet hands.
They’ve kept a low profile so far. Once Caesar comes to find him, they’ll ride out of Samstown and these folks will have forgotten they were ever here. Maybe when they find what’s missing, a handful of people here will remember two handsome strangers who came in from out of town, stayed for a few days, then left as quiet as they came. But by then, he and Caesar will be long gone.
Too bad. He was beginning to like this place. Down the mess of a mudslide that this town calls its Main Street, the saloon also rents the space by one of its front windows to a barber. A shave, a haircut, and a fresh draft beer all under one roof? It’s downright homey.
Joseph tugs down his black and red striped vest, then rolls up the sleeves of his dark maroon shirt. He should have worn his jacket, or something with more pockets today. He could use a cigarette right about now. Something to keep his hands busy and away from the dark leather ammunition belt around his hips, from the gun holster and hunting knife sheath beside his thigh. A man can only linger so much before someone begins to think he’s up to something. Across the street, two men sitting on a front porch are starting to pay him special attention. Inconvenient. He pats himself down for the smokes he knows he doesn’t have.
“There you are.” Caesar appears at Joseph’s elbow, still standing down on the ground. “How’s the street this morning?”
“About the same as any other day.” Joseph jumps down from the porch and lands on two feet. “Usual crowd, which is to say, not much at all.” He rests a casual hand on his hip. Leaning in, Joseph lowers his voice to a gruff whisper. “Was that drunkard at the bar last night telling the truth?”
Caesar nods. “Saw it myself through a tiny hole in the newsprint they used to cover the window. At least three people, and a whole lot of money.”
Oh, fuck yes. It’s ideal when the last score is their biggest. “They got guns?”
He answers with a half-hearted shrug before speaking. “None I saw, but you know that means shit.”
“Looks like the general store ain’t so general.” Joseph pulls the bandana so the knot rests behind his neck and pinches it up to make tucking his chin into it easy. It doesn’t obscure his face yet. Too suspicious for broad daylight.
“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Caesar says, making the same preparations.
Joseph grins. “I dunno. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Like something out of those dime novels we used to read.”
“Yeah, well.” Caesar tries to sound annoyed, but Joseph hears the amusement in his undertones. “Make sure you check your revolver before we head in there.” His hands smooth his fingerless gloves against his skin. Broad hands. Skilled hands. Quick with a fist, fancy with a knife, steady with a gun.
To appease him, Joseph pulls his gun in a surreptitious motion and checks the cylinder. Full. “Not my first time. Not by a long shot.” Joseph chuckles at himself. “You got Tilly and Sunflower set up for our getaway?”
Caesar checks his own chambers. “Round the way. Restless, both of them, but hitched to a post near the pig farm on the other side of these buildings.”
Their quick pre-check ends when they meet each other’s eyes. “Let’s do this.”
A quick jaunt over to the next building, Caesar holds the door open for a mother and daughter to exit the general store. He sweeps his hat off his head and holds it to his heart. “Ma’am. Miss.”
Joseph hides a laugh behind his teeth. He catches sight of a deputy pulling up on a fine red roan gelding to the sheriff’s office next door before he ducks inside. Best not to make eye contact. Head down, keep moving.
The bell chimes overhead and they find themselves alone in the shop, the keeper facing away from them. Perfect.
Caesar hangs back by the door, blocking it with his body, as Joseph approaches the shopkeep and pulls his bandana up over the bridge of his nose. “Afternoon, there, friend,” he says. The man turns around and Joseph draws his gun. “Let’s get those hands up. We don’t want no trouble.”
The shopkeeper falls very still, very fast. “Please.” His voice trembles. “Just take the money and go.”
Outside, a passing horse whinnies as its rider hurries it along. “Hands up,” Caesar chimes in. Joseph hears the click of the hammer being pulled back on Caesar’s revolver in the otherwise quiet shop. “Nice and easy.”
Two hands inch their way above the shopkeeper’s head.
“We hear you’ve got some, ah,” Joseph rolls his wrist as he searches for the right word, the barrel of his gun making circles in the air, “some associates, doing business in your back parlor.”
Bootheels knock against the floorboards as Caesar steps toward Joseph until their guns are raised side by side. “We’d like a word with them.”
“Y-you don’t want to get mixed up with them, honest.”
“Let us decide that,” Joseph says. He jerks his chin toward the doorway behind the register. “Now move.”
The shopkeeper takes them around the store, through two small rooms before stopping in front of a door. He keeps his head hung low, shoulders hunched, shooting nervous glances at the two guns trained on him. Joseph moves out of sight from the door. Caesar presses up alongside him.
After a brief knock from the shopkeeper, a peephole in the door slides open. “We’re busy,” answers a gruff voice. “What is it?”
“Well, ah, y-you all have been working inside there for quite a while. I figure you would be ready to, uh, take a break. For dinner,” the shopkeeper lies clumsily.
After a few muted murmurs as the spokesperson confers with the others, an answer comes forth. “Not interested.” The peephole slams shut.
The shopkeeper looks at them, eyes wide as he shrugs, his open palms upturned in a silent plea. Joseph makes another impatient gesture with his gun until the shopkeeper sighs and knocks again. He looks defeated. Joseph almost feels sorry for him.
“What about…what about more whiskey a-and a fresh pack of cigarettes? On the house, of course.”
Two locks turn open. “Well, why didn’t you lead with that?” Something creaks on a hinge, like a barricade being lifted, and the door opens. Light pours out from the room for a moment before the shadow of a man fills the doorway.
Joseph jumps into action, shoving the shopkeeper away and pressing the gun against the man’s chest. He’s shorter than Joseph, but that isn’t saying much. He’s got the kind of squished face that makes him look as though he was dropped as a child but was only recently picked up off the ground to make something of himself. His reddened cheeks stand out against his otherwise pale skin and Joseph can see his dark hair is thinning under his expensive hat. Must be a good hideout, too, as he was comfortable enough to answer the door without a weapon in his hand. Which doesn’t mean the man’s unarmed, of course. That’d be a good assumption to make if Joseph was looking to get himself killed.
“Cigarettes, whiskey, and a whole lotta money.” Joseph grins. “We all have the same vices, I suppose.”
Caesar joins him a moment later, gun raised past the man’s shoulder to keep the others in check. The shopkeeper whimpers from his place cowering on the floor behind them. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”
The man backs up into the room after a rough prod from the barrel of Joseph’s gun. It’s a small room, with a single newsprint-covered window and another door leading God-knows-where, for a small operation. A woman in a pale yellow dress sits at the lone table, counting out a wad of money from one hand down to the table into neat stacks of bills beside a lockbox. There are several bottles of liquor in various stages of consumption scattered around the room, crumpled pieces of trash littering the floor, and a stack of dishes on a tray by the door. In one corner of the room, another man roughly the same age as the first watches the scene unfold from his reclined position on one of the dingy cots. Whatever product they’re pushing or liquor they’re smuggling is long gone.
Doesn’t matter much. Cash is king, and there’s plenty of it here for the taking.
“Just hand over the money,” Joseph glances at the woman. She glares at him and puts the stack on the table. “No one has to get—”
A shot rings out from beside him, and Joseph blinks as he takes it in all at once. The man on the cot had pulled a gun from somewhere but Caesar had moved quicker. Blood flows from the man’s wrist.
“Hurt,” Joseph finishes and clicks his tongue in annoyance. He shoves the man away from him as the room explodes into action. The woman pushes herself away from the table and jumps to her feet. “Did you have to shoot him?”
“Either him or us,” Caesar says as he cocks his gun with his thumb. “And it wasn’t gonna be us.”
“Aw, hell.” The woman pulls a pistol from somewhere in her skirts and trains it on Joseph, who swings his aim around to fire off a shot to her arm. She gasps, clutching the wound as her shooting arm hangs at her side. “Thought we could keep this one quiet, what with the sheriff next door and all.”
The door splinters open with the sound of a double-barrel shotgun, revealing another man standing in what was a private lavatory before he blew the door off its hinges. Somehow, he manages to miss everyone but make a damn good mess of wood.
Joseph leaps to the corner of the room to take cover on the other side of the table. “Where the hell was he keeping that?”
Caesar ducks another round of shots as the man on the cot takes his revenge. “Less talking; more shooting!”
The first man rushes Joseph with a scream and a knife he pulled from his boot. With a ruckus already kicked up, Joseph dispatches him and the man with the shotgun. Caesar takes care of the man on the cot. The woman drops her gun to the floor. “I was just counting the money for them,” she says. “I didn’t have nothing to do with anything.”
“Sure you didn’t,” Joseph agrees. “Go on and sit over there by your friend.” He points to the cot, then takes a few steps towards the table. He holsters his gun to scoop up the stacks of cash with both hands.
Instead, the woman pries the gun from the grip of her dead companion and screams as fierce as a mountain lion when she aims it at Joseph’s head.
She doesn’t get the chance to pull the trigger. Caesar shoots the gun from her hand, then lays her to rest with another bullet.
“Hey,” Joseph says. “I could have handled her, you show-off.”
Caesar holsters his weapon and surveys the four people spent around the room. “You talk too damn much to get the job done.”
“Sometimes, talking is the job.” Joseph chuckles as he opens his satchel, stuffing it with all the money left on the table. He checks the lockbox and grins at the bills inside. “They got anything worth stealing?”
Standing beside each of them, Caesar rifles through their pockets. “A few things we can unload without a hassle. Ooh, an engraved pocket watch.” Joseph looks up in time to see Caesar tuck that in his bag. Then, he picks up an unsmoked cigar from atop a chest and hold it under his nose. “Nice.”
Turning away, Joseph moves without a word to search the rest of the room and pinches anything of value he can get his hands on, until commotion from the front of the general store reaches Joseph’s ears. The warbling voice of the terrified store owner floats through the air. “They’re back there, two of `em!”
“Sounds like we got company coming, and not those girls from last night neither,” Joseph warns. “Don’t think we’ll be walking out the front door and riding off like we planned it.”
Caesar slings the shotgun around his shoulder. “Think we can force our way through?”
“Dunno. Maybe, maybe not.” He shuts and locks the door they came through, then drops the barricade over it, for all the good it did the previous tenants. “Doesn’t seem likely, but when have we ever cared about what’s likely.”
With a grunt in frustration, Caesar kicks a chair a few feet across the room. “Shit.”
Joseph leans against the door and checks the bullets in his revolver. “Someone just had to jump the gun, didnt you.”
“I will not apologize for protecting us,” Caesar snaps.
The doorknob jiggles as someone tests the lock. Joseph spares it a glance as he reloads. “Didn’t ask you to. Just making conversation.”
“You’d run that mouth right out of every town you’ve ever set foot in, if I wasn’t around to stop you.” Caesar strides over to the window and rips away the newsprint with one hand. “What do you think?”
The door rattles as someone, or several someones, try to force it open. “Might as well,” Joseph says over the demands from the lawmen outside.
“Good,” Caesar says. “I’d rather not kill anyone else if we don’t have to, you know. Especially not a whole damn pack of lawmen in a town that won’t remember us otherwise.”
“Not up for another bounty on your head?” Joseph asks. “For all the trouble it caused, you have to admit, it made things interesting.”
Caesar shakes his head. “Bribing that sheriff was expensive.”
A shot rings out as someone shoots at the doorknob, the bullet coming clean through the door and missing Joseph’s hip by a few inches before it lodges itself in a floorboard.
“Shit!” Joseph spins away and aims his gun in reflexive defense.
The doorknob takes a few more shots from the other side in quick succession before the lawmen shove up against the door again, like someone’s using their shoulder as a battering ram. The barricade shudders, then cracks in two places on the next pass. It won’t be long now.
Joseph glances at Caesar. “That won’t hold for another hit,” he says.
“I know that,” Caesar says, pushing the table against the door as an additional barricade.
Joseph grabs the chair Caesar kicked earlier. “Then let’s get the hell out of here!” He hurls it through the window, shattering the glass. He crosses his forearms in front of his face before he leaps through hole he made, ignoring the nips of pain as jagged pieces inevitably cut into him. Some of the shards break under his boots when he lands and makes a break for it. Caesar lands with another thud of boots and crunching glass behind him.
Not a moment too soon. They make it a few paces before lawmen yell for them to stop before they start shooting. Joseph keeps an easy pace as he books it, Caesar never more than a few steps behind. “Left, left!” Caesar shouts.
They slide around a muddy corner past the sheriff’s office, Joseph spreading his arms apart to keep from pitching over. Their horses come into clear view. They’re hitched near the stinky pig farm, just where Caesar said they’d be. Not a moment to lose, they race away from town together, horses side-by-side.
“Why are they shooting at us, anyway?” Joseph calls over to Caesar. “They were smugglers, or blackmailers. Criminals. We did that town a favor, stealing from them instead of hitting their bank.”
“The whole people-shooting-people business probably has something to do with it,” Caesar says. He urges his horse faster.
Gunfire follows them. Joseph trusts his horse to keep them on the road as he looks behind them.
That handsome roan he’d admired all week bears its rider, the deputy he noticed earlier, with powerful grace. The deputy leads a handful of officers after them. Every single one of them has a gun in at least one hand each, but the deputy’s rifle shines bright under the midday sun.
“They’re right on us!”
Joseph exchanges a look with Caesar, who turns away with a scornful click of his tongue. “I’ve noticed.” He pulls his Mauser repeater from its place on his gelding. “Remember what I said earlier?
“No.”
“About the talking?” Caesar turns in his saddle and takes aim, picking off their pursuers one by one with the same practiced ease he might demonstrate during target practice while standing both feet flat on the ground.
The riders adapt with a signal from the deputy and fan out. The road away from Samstown curves sharply to avoid a steep incline into thickly-forested hills, Joseph and Caesar stick close to the trail. Some of the lawmen, including the deputy, don’t follow them around the bend.
“Where’d they go?” Caesar lowers his gun and turns forward to reload.
Joseph covers him. He fires off a few shots, aiming for human shoulders and animal legs, to do enough damage or inflict enough pain that they stop giving chase. “Into the trees, I’d guess. They know this land better than we do. Keep your eyes up and your head down.”
Leaning forward, Caesar murmurs words of encouragement to his steed. “What would I do without your words of wisdom, Joseph.” His sarcasm cuts across the sound of hooves pounding against the dirt road.
Grinning in response, Joseph turns off the last of the pursuers before scanning the hills for riders. He shoots at one fighting to steer his horse around a nasty thatch of brambly-looking bushes, then at another when his horse skids down the slope at an uncomfortable angle. Both riders turn tail. Caesar and he stick to the road and keep riding hard, waiting for more lawmen to ambush them. But as they eat up yards by the minute without another hitch, Caesar motions for them to pull off the road .
They take refuge in the trees, dismounting a little ways up the hill. Joseph leads his mare with one hand and pats her neck when they finally come to a stop. “That’s a girl,” he murmurs as he slips her an apple.
“I think we lost them,” Caesar says, more to his horse than Joseph. He rubs the nose of his gelding as it huffs at him. “Where to now? We might want to lay low after that bit of mess back there.”
Joseph shrugs. “Maybe so. We can fence what we found and buy enough supplies to last us until the next town.”
“And what town might that be?” Caesar asks. He checks the straps of his saddle, a long-ingrained habit after a hard ride. His gelding snorts and scratches the ground with a hoof before stretching out his head to nibble the fresh growth off a nearby bush.
“Whatever town we want. Where’s the map?” Joseph rifles through his saddlebags. He takes the chance to hide away some of the cash from his satchel into a few false backs, and to wipe down his guns with an oiled cloth before he remembers what he went looking for and begins his search anew. A bit worse for wear, Joseph pulls the map out and unfolds it with a shake.
Lifting his head from his task, Caesar says, “Careful with that.”
Joseph waves him off with a dismissive grumble. “Seen better days, and it’ll see more.” From beside his journal, he grabs his compass and walks a few yards away from the horses into a wide patch of sunlight shining through to the forest floor. The map’s familiar terrain comes into easier view, along with notes scattered over the paper in a handful of different scripts. A map of the west, with a few extra annotations added after living in it for years, and living hard. “Now, where are we?”
“Couple of miles south of Samstown, that’s for certain,” Caesar supplies. “Let me take a leak before you decide anything on your own.” He pats the head of his horse, which noses against his torso in search of treats. Caesar produces an oatcake from his satchel with a chuckle.
“I’ll decide at my own pace.” Joseph makes a show of readjusting the map with another shake before he buries his nose in it like it’s the most interesting reading around. “Doesn’t matter much to me whether you’re pissing out there or scowling over here when I make my choice.”
Muttering under his breath, cursing Joseph’s name no doubt, Caesar slips further into the trees to relieve himself. Joseph keeps an eye on him, watching those broad shoulders pass through patches of shadow and dappled sunlight purely out of habit. Can never be too sure what’s lurking beyond pockets of civilization, especially after a hard winter when hungry beasts rouse themselves in search of a meal. Caesar stops several paces away from their resting place and Joseph averts his eyes
Once outside the muddy town, it’s a gorgeous bit of country out here, flourishing with the early spring’s thaw. Trees boast new growth in an array of pale green shoots. Flowering shrubs open their white buds against a backdrop of a few coniferous trees, still dark with their shiny needles. A clump of silver birches stand proud roughly 50 feet deeper into the woods. They play host to a red roan lipping at a curly scrap of the paper-like bark.
Red roan?
The deputy sits in his saddle, staring down the long barrel of his gun, aimed right at Caesar. Ready to fill him up with lead.
Joseph reacts without a word. He pulls his gun from his thigh holster, cocking the hammer back before he gets it in position, and fires a single shot that sends a flock of birds into the sky with a chorus of irritated tweets.
The deputy sways on his horse before slipping to one side, dead before he hits the ground.
Finished with his business, Caesar watches the deputy’s riderless horse take off back toward town. Smart horse, that. “Thanks,” he says, a little incredulous. “I thought we had lost them.”
“Don’t thank me. [[I’m all you’ve got]],” Joseph says, twirling his gun around his finger before sliding it back into its holster. Caesar meets Joseph’s gaze through the trees. At this distance, his expression is hard for Joseph to read, so he doesn’t try too hard to decipher it. Seems like it’d be another scowl at Joseph’s showboating, or annoyance they still had someone on their tail. But that wasn’t just any old hired gun, that was a man with a badge. “Ah, shit. We may have to keep moving sooner than we thought.”
“Hm?” Caesar pushes branches out of his way as he approaches Joseph in the sunlight. Joseph picks up his compass from where it landed on a tuft of grass. “Because of the horse? We got enough time to figure out our next move before it makes it back into town.”
Biting the inside of his mouth, Joseph shrugs. “It’s a deputy. They won’t wait.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Caesar arches a hooked blond eyebrow and comes to a stop beside Joseph. “Gimme that.” He grabs one end of the map and pulls it toward him, forcing Joseph to share.
They fall into an easy pattern, bickering and barbs not encumbering their decision-making, but a welcome part of the process. Even before they set out on their own, just the two of them fighting to live their own lives with all the freedom afforded by the relative anonymity of the West, it’s a familiar pattern. Joseph smacks the map with the back of one hand as he makes a point for heading further east.
“Too many people to the east,” Caesar argues. “More people means more lawmen.”
“At the rate I’ve been going through them, though,” Joseph starts, but Caesar cuts him off.
“No,” he says flatly. “We ought to keep heading south.”
Joseph frowns. “They’ll expect us to keep going south. Won’t they?”
“No guarantees about what they’ll think.” Caesar lifts a hand to rub his chin. “And, well, process of elimination. We shouldn’t go west, not for a while yet, and too far east makes me uneasy. You know it does; I don’t know why you suggested it.”
“Just an idea.”
“A bad one.”
Rolling his eyes, Joseph pulls the map from Caesar’s grasp. “A matter of opinion.” He closes the map with snappy movements.
“Stop wrinkling that.”
“I’m folding it.”
“Badly.”
“It’s still folding, isn’t it?” With the map reduced to its packing size, Joseph moves to return it to his saddlebags. “So, we ride south? Fine. But let’s head south east.” He turns on his heel, holding up both his hands in anticipation of Caesar’s protest as he walks backwards. “Just until we find a place to camp and lie low for a few days. Let the mess blow over before we head into another town and make more money.”
Caesar follows him, spurs clicking. “Alright,” he says after a long moment. Joseph turns the right way around with a grin. “I suppose that’s as good a plan as any.” They reach the horses. Caesar flashes him a smirk as he swings up into the saddle. “Let’s ride.”
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[Click here for next chapter].
Originally written between last December and this March. 4-5k words.
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Joseph doesn’t consider himself a patient man, not usually. But if there’s a way to turn waiting into a game, then he can pass the time without feeling every second like a knife to his back. Leaning against the front of the doctor’s office, he tips his hat at the beautiful dark-skinned woman making her way up the front steps. “Madam,” he says and flashes a grin, hoping to claim another smile from a stranger. If he gets two more today, he’ll beat his record.
She’s easily twice his age, her dark coils turning grey at her temples and brushed back from her face. Her gloved hands lift the long skirts of her dress from the dirty walk. Seems the whole place is nothing but a long skid of mud and a few ramshackle buildings that folks are fixing up to call themselves a town. Nothing wrong with having aspirations. They’re already big enough to play host to a sheriff’s office, though, two doors down. Joseph made sure to note that particular address after they rented two rooms above the saloon on their first night.
It’s been a lucrative couple days since then, that’s for sure.
She greets him with a polite nod of her head. “Good day, sir.” The woman doesn’t alter her course to continue the conversation and disappears inside the doctor’s office with a ring of the bell by the door.
That’s alright, he figures, and toys with the black bandana looped around his neck like an idle accessory. He didn’t score a smile, but he was just polite enough to fly under the radar. Rude men get noticed, as Caesar’s fond of telling him. Nice men slip out of people’s minds like smiling eels through cold, wet hands.
They’ve kept a low profile so far. Once Caesar comes to find him, they’ll ride out of Samstown and these folks will have forgotten they were ever here. Maybe when they find what’s missing, a handful of people here will remember two handsome strangers who came in from out of town, stayed for a few days, then left as quiet as they came. But by then, he and Caesar will be long gone.
Too bad. He was beginning to like this place. Down the mess of a mudslide that this town calls its Main Street, the saloon also rents the space by one of its front windows to a barber. A shave, a haircut, and a fresh draft beer all under one roof? It’s downright homey.
Joseph tugs down his black and red striped vest, then rolls up the sleeves of his dark maroon shirt. He should have worn his jacket, or something with more pockets today. He could use a cigarette right about now. Something to keep his hands busy and away from the dark leather ammunition belt around his hips, from the gun holster and hunting knife sheath beside his thigh. A man can only linger so much before someone begins to think he’s up to something. Across the street, two men sitting on a front porch are starting to pay him special attention. Inconvenient. He pats himself down for the smokes he knows he doesn’t have.
“There you are.” Caesar appears at Joseph’s elbow, still standing down on the ground. “How’s the street this morning?”
“About the same as any other day.” Joseph jumps down from the porch and lands on two feet. “Usual crowd, which is to say, not much at all.” He rests a casual hand on his hip. Leaning in, Joseph lowers his voice to a gruff whisper. “Was that drunkard at the bar last night telling the truth?”
Caesar nods. “Saw it myself through a tiny hole in the newsprint they used to cover the window. At least three people, and a whole lot of money.”
Oh, fuck yes. It’s ideal when the last score is their biggest. “They got guns?”
He answers with a half-hearted shrug before speaking. “None I saw, but you know that means shit.”
“Looks like the general store ain’t so general.” Joseph pulls the bandana so the knot rests behind his neck and pinches it up to make tucking his chin into it easy. It doesn’t obscure his face yet. Too suspicious for broad daylight.
“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Caesar says, making the same preparations.
Joseph grins. “I dunno. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Like something out of those dime novels we used to read.”
“Yeah, well.” Caesar tries to sound annoyed, but Joseph hears the amusement in his undertones. “Make sure you check your revolver before we head in there.” His hands smooth his fingerless gloves against his skin. Broad hands. Skilled hands. Quick with a fist, fancy with a knife, steady with a gun.
To appease him, Joseph pulls his gun in a surreptitious motion and checks the cylinder. Full. “Not my first time. Not by a long shot.” Joseph chuckles at himself. “You got Tilly and Sunflower set up for our getaway?”
Caesar checks his own chambers. “Round the way. Restless, both of them, but hitched to a post near the pig farm on the other side of these buildings.”
Their quick pre-check ends when they meet each other’s eyes. “Let’s do this.”
A quick jaunt over to the next building, Caesar holds the door open for a mother and daughter to exit the general store. He sweeps his hat off his head and holds it to his heart. “Ma’am. Miss.”
Joseph hides a laugh behind his teeth. He catches sight of a deputy pulling up on a fine red roan gelding to the sheriff’s office next door before he ducks inside. Best not to make eye contact. Head down, keep moving.
The bell chimes overhead and they find themselves alone in the shop, the keeper facing away from them. Perfect.
Caesar hangs back by the door, blocking it with his body, as Joseph approaches the shopkeep and pulls his bandana up over the bridge of his nose. “Afternoon, there, friend,” he says. The man turns around and Joseph draws his gun. “Let’s get those hands up. We don’t want no trouble.”
The shopkeeper falls very still, very fast. “Please.” His voice trembles. “Just take the money and go.”
Outside, a passing horse whinnies as its rider hurries it along. “Hands up,” Caesar chimes in. Joseph hears the click of the hammer being pulled back on Caesar’s revolver in the otherwise quiet shop. “Nice and easy.”
Two hands inch their way above the shopkeeper’s head.
“We hear you’ve got some, ah,” Joseph rolls his wrist as he searches for the right word, the barrel of his gun making circles in the air, “some associates, doing business in your back parlor.”
Bootheels knock against the floorboards as Caesar steps toward Joseph until their guns are raised side by side. “We’d like a word with them.”
“Y-you don’t want to get mixed up with them, honest.”
“Let us decide that,” Joseph says. He jerks his chin toward the doorway behind the register. “Now move.”
The shopkeeper takes them around the store, through two small rooms before stopping in front of a door. He keeps his head hung low, shoulders hunched, shooting nervous glances at the two guns trained on him. Joseph moves out of sight from the door. Caesar presses up alongside him.
After a brief knock from the shopkeeper, a peephole in the door slides open. “We’re busy,” answers a gruff voice. “What is it?”
“Well, ah, y-you all have been working inside there for quite a while. I figure you would be ready to, uh, take a break. For dinner,” the shopkeeper lies clumsily.
After a few muted murmurs as the spokesperson confers with the others, an answer comes forth. “Not interested.” The peephole slams shut.
The shopkeeper looks at them, eyes wide as he shrugs, his open palms upturned in a silent plea. Joseph makes another impatient gesture with his gun until the shopkeeper sighs and knocks again. He looks defeated. Joseph almost feels sorry for him.
“What about…what about more whiskey a-and a fresh pack of cigarettes? On the house, of course.”
Two locks turn open. “Well, why didn’t you lead with that?” Something creaks on a hinge, like a barricade being lifted, and the door opens. Light pours out from the room for a moment before the shadow of a man fills the doorway.
Joseph jumps into action, shoving the shopkeeper away and pressing the gun against the man’s chest. He’s shorter than Joseph, but that isn’t saying much. He’s got the kind of squished face that makes him look as though he was dropped as a child but was only recently picked up off the ground to make something of himself. His reddened cheeks stand out against his otherwise pale skin and Joseph can see his dark hair is thinning under his expensive hat. Must be a good hideout, too, as he was comfortable enough to answer the door without a weapon in his hand. Which doesn’t mean the man’s unarmed, of course. That’d be a good assumption to make if Joseph was looking to get himself killed.
“Cigarettes, whiskey, and a whole lotta money.” Joseph grins. “We all have the same vices, I suppose.”
Caesar joins him a moment later, gun raised past the man’s shoulder to keep the others in check. The shopkeeper whimpers from his place cowering on the floor behind them. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”
The man backs up into the room after a rough prod from the barrel of Joseph’s gun. It’s a small room, with a single newsprint-covered window and another door leading God-knows-where, for a small operation. A woman in a pale yellow dress sits at the lone table, counting out a wad of money from one hand down to the table into neat stacks of bills beside a lockbox. There are several bottles of liquor in various stages of consumption scattered around the room, crumpled pieces of trash littering the floor, and a stack of dishes on a tray by the door. In one corner of the room, another man roughly the same age as the first watches the scene unfold from his reclined position on one of the dingy cots. Whatever product they’re pushing or liquor they’re smuggling is long gone.
Doesn’t matter much. Cash is king, and there’s plenty of it here for the taking.
“Just hand over the money,” Joseph glances at the woman. She glares at him and puts the stack on the table. “No one has to get—”
A shot rings out from beside him, and Joseph blinks as he takes it in all at once. The man on the cot had pulled a gun from somewhere but Caesar had moved quicker. Blood flows from the man’s wrist.
“Hurt,” Joseph finishes and clicks his tongue in annoyance. He shoves the man away from him as the room explodes into action. The woman pushes herself away from the table and jumps to her feet. “Did you have to shoot him?”
“Either him or us,” Caesar says as he cocks his gun with his thumb. “And it wasn’t gonna be us.”
“Aw, hell.” The woman pulls a pistol from somewhere in her skirts and trains it on Joseph, who swings his aim around to fire off a shot to her arm. She gasps, clutching the wound as her shooting arm hangs at her side. “Thought we could keep this one quiet, what with the sheriff next door and all.”
The door splinters open with the sound of a double-barrel shotgun, revealing another man standing in what was a private lavatory before he blew the door off its hinges. Somehow, he manages to miss everyone but make a damn good mess of wood.
Joseph leaps to the corner of the room to take cover on the other side of the table. “Where the hell was he keeping that?”
Caesar ducks another round of shots as the man on the cot takes his revenge. “Less talking; more shooting!”
The first man rushes Joseph with a scream and a knife he pulled from his boot. With a ruckus already kicked up, Joseph dispatches him and the man with the shotgun. Caesar takes care of the man on the cot. The woman drops her gun to the floor. “I was just counting the money for them,” she says. “I didn’t have nothing to do with anything.”
“Sure you didn’t,” Joseph agrees. “Go on and sit over there by your friend.” He points to the cot, then takes a few steps towards the table. He holsters his gun to scoop up the stacks of cash with both hands.
Instead, the woman pries the gun from the grip of her dead companion and screams as fierce as a mountain lion when she aims it at Joseph’s head.
She doesn’t get the chance to pull the trigger. Caesar shoots the gun from her hand, then lays her to rest with another bullet.
“Hey,” Joseph says. “I could have handled her, you show-off.”
Caesar holsters his weapon and surveys the four people spent around the room. “You talk too damn much to get the job done.”
“Sometimes, talking is the job.” Joseph chuckles as he opens his satchel, stuffing it with all the money left on the table. He checks the lockbox and grins at the bills inside. “They got anything worth stealing?”
Standing beside each of them, Caesar rifles through their pockets. “A few things we can unload without a hassle. Ooh, an engraved pocket watch.” Joseph looks up in time to see Caesar tuck that in his bag. Then, he picks up an unsmoked cigar from atop a chest and hold it under his nose. “Nice.”
Turning away, Joseph moves without a word to search the rest of the room and pinches anything of value he can get his hands on, until commotion from the front of the general store reaches Joseph’s ears. The warbling voice of the terrified store owner floats through the air. “They’re back there, two of `em!”
“Sounds like we got company coming, and not those girls from last night neither,” Joseph warns. “Don’t think we’ll be walking out the front door and riding off like we planned it.”
Caesar slings the shotgun around his shoulder. “Think we can force our way through?”
“Dunno. Maybe, maybe not.” He shuts and locks the door they came through, then drops the barricade over it, for all the good it did the previous tenants. “Doesn’t seem likely, but when have we ever cared about what’s likely.”
With a grunt in frustration, Caesar kicks a chair a few feet across the room. “Shit.”
Joseph leans against the door and checks the bullets in his revolver. “Someone just had to jump the gun, didnt you.”
“I will not apologize for protecting us,” Caesar snaps.
The doorknob jiggles as someone tests the lock. Joseph spares it a glance as he reloads. “Didn’t ask you to. Just making conversation.”
“You’d run that mouth right out of every town you’ve ever set foot in, if I wasn’t around to stop you.” Caesar strides over to the window and rips away the newsprint with one hand. “What do you think?”
The door rattles as someone, or several someones, try to force it open. “Might as well,” Joseph says over the demands from the lawmen outside.
“Good,” Caesar says. “I’d rather not kill anyone else if we don’t have to, you know. Especially not a whole damn pack of lawmen in a town that won’t remember us otherwise.”
“Not up for another bounty on your head?” Joseph asks. “For all the trouble it caused, you have to admit, it made things interesting.”
Caesar shakes his head. “Bribing that sheriff was expensive.”
A shot rings out as someone shoots at the doorknob, the bullet coming clean through the door and missing Joseph’s hip by a few inches before it lodges itself in a floorboard.
“Shit!” Joseph spins away and aims his gun in reflexive defense.
The doorknob takes a few more shots from the other side in quick succession before the lawmen shove up against the door again, like someone’s using their shoulder as a battering ram. The barricade shudders, then cracks in two places on the next pass. It won’t be long now.
Joseph glances at Caesar. “That won’t hold for another hit,” he says.
“I know that,” Caesar says, pushing the table against the door as an additional barricade.
Joseph grabs the chair Caesar kicked earlier. “Then let’s get the hell out of here!” He hurls it through the window, shattering the glass. He crosses his forearms in front of his face before he leaps through hole he made, ignoring the nips of pain as jagged pieces inevitably cut into him. Some of the shards break under his boots when he lands and makes a break for it. Caesar lands with another thud of boots and crunching glass behind him.
Not a moment too soon. They make it a few paces before lawmen yell for them to stop before they start shooting. Joseph keeps an easy pace as he books it, Caesar never more than a few steps behind. “Left, left!” Caesar shouts.
They slide around a muddy corner past the sheriff’s office, Joseph spreading his arms apart to keep from pitching over. Their horses come into clear view. They’re hitched near the stinky pig farm, just where Caesar said they’d be. Not a moment to lose, they race away from town together, horses side-by-side.
“Why are they shooting at us, anyway?” Joseph calls over to Caesar. “They were smugglers, or blackmailers. Criminals. We did that town a favor, stealing from them instead of hitting their bank.”
“The whole people-shooting-people business probably has something to do with it,” Caesar says. He urges his horse faster.
Gunfire follows them. Joseph trusts his horse to keep them on the road as he looks behind them.
That handsome roan he’d admired all week bears its rider, the deputy he noticed earlier, with powerful grace. The deputy leads a handful of officers after them. Every single one of them has a gun in at least one hand each, but the deputy’s rifle shines bright under the midday sun.
“They’re right on us!”
Joseph exchanges a look with Caesar, who turns away with a scornful click of his tongue. “I’ve noticed.” He pulls his Mauser repeater from its place on his gelding. “Remember what I said earlier?
“No.”
“About the talking?” Caesar turns in his saddle and takes aim, picking off their pursuers one by one with the same practiced ease he might demonstrate during target practice while standing both feet flat on the ground.
The riders adapt with a signal from the deputy and fan out. The road away from Samstown curves sharply to avoid a steep incline into thickly-forested hills, Joseph and Caesar stick close to the trail. Some of the lawmen, including the deputy, don’t follow them around the bend.
“Where’d they go?” Caesar lowers his gun and turns forward to reload.
Joseph covers him. He fires off a few shots, aiming for human shoulders and animal legs, to do enough damage or inflict enough pain that they stop giving chase. “Into the trees, I’d guess. They know this land better than we do. Keep your eyes up and your head down.”
Leaning forward, Caesar murmurs words of encouragement to his steed. “What would I do without your words of wisdom, Joseph.” His sarcasm cuts across the sound of hooves pounding against the dirt road.
Grinning in response, Joseph turns off the last of the pursuers before scanning the hills for riders. He shoots at one fighting to steer his horse around a nasty thatch of brambly-looking bushes, then at another when his horse skids down the slope at an uncomfortable angle. Both riders turn tail. Caesar and he stick to the road and keep riding hard, waiting for more lawmen to ambush them. But as they eat up yards by the minute without another hitch, Caesar motions for them to pull off the road .
They take refuge in the trees, dismounting a little ways up the hill. Joseph leads his mare with one hand and pats her neck when they finally come to a stop. “That’s a girl,” he murmurs as he slips her an apple.
“I think we lost them,” Caesar says, more to his horse than Joseph. He rubs the nose of his gelding as it huffs at him. “Where to now? We might want to lay low after that bit of mess back there.”
Joseph shrugs. “Maybe so. We can fence what we found and buy enough supplies to last us until the next town.”
“And what town might that be?” Caesar asks. He checks the straps of his saddle, a long-ingrained habit after a hard ride. His gelding snorts and scratches the ground with a hoof before stretching out his head to nibble the fresh growth off a nearby bush.
“Whatever town we want. Where’s the map?” Joseph rifles through his saddlebags. He takes the chance to hide away some of the cash from his satchel into a few false backs, and to wipe down his guns with an oiled cloth before he remembers what he went looking for and begins his search anew. A bit worse for wear, Joseph pulls the map out and unfolds it with a shake.
Lifting his head from his task, Caesar says, “Careful with that.”
Joseph waves him off with a dismissive grumble. “Seen better days, and it’ll see more.” From beside his journal, he grabs his compass and walks a few yards away from the horses into a wide patch of sunlight shining through to the forest floor. The map’s familiar terrain comes into easier view, along with notes scattered over the paper in a handful of different scripts. A map of the west, with a few extra annotations added after living in it for years, and living hard. “Now, where are we?”
“Couple of miles south of Samstown, that’s for certain,” Caesar supplies. “Let me take a leak before you decide anything on your own.” He pats the head of his horse, which noses against his torso in search of treats. Caesar produces an oatcake from his satchel with a chuckle.
“I’ll decide at my own pace.” Joseph makes a show of readjusting the map with another shake before he buries his nose in it like it’s the most interesting reading around. “Doesn’t matter much to me whether you’re pissing out there or scowling over here when I make my choice.”
Muttering under his breath, cursing Joseph’s name no doubt, Caesar slips further into the trees to relieve himself. Joseph keeps an eye on him, watching those broad shoulders pass through patches of shadow and dappled sunlight purely out of habit. Can never be too sure what’s lurking beyond pockets of civilization, especially after a hard winter when hungry beasts rouse themselves in search of a meal. Caesar stops several paces away from their resting place and Joseph averts his eyes
Once outside the muddy town, it’s a gorgeous bit of country out here, flourishing with the early spring’s thaw. Trees boast new growth in an array of pale green shoots. Flowering shrubs open their white buds against a backdrop of a few coniferous trees, still dark with their shiny needles. A clump of silver birches stand proud roughly 50 feet deeper into the woods. They play host to a red roan lipping at a curly scrap of the paper-like bark.
Red roan?
The deputy sits in his saddle, staring down the long barrel of his gun, aimed right at Caesar. Ready to fill him up with lead.
Joseph reacts without a word. He pulls his gun from his thigh holster, cocking the hammer back before he gets it in position, and fires a single shot that sends a flock of birds into the sky with a chorus of irritated tweets.
The deputy sways on his horse before slipping to one side, dead before he hits the ground.
Finished with his business, Caesar watches the deputy’s riderless horse take off back toward town. Smart horse, that. “Thanks,” he says, a little incredulous. “I thought we had lost them.”
“Don’t thank me. [[I’m all you’ve got]],” Joseph says, twirling his gun around his finger before sliding it back into its holster. Caesar meets Joseph’s gaze through the trees. At this distance, his expression is hard for Joseph to read, so he doesn’t try too hard to decipher it. Seems like it’d be another scowl at Joseph’s showboating, or annoyance they still had someone on their tail. But that wasn’t just any old hired gun, that was a man with a badge. “Ah, shit. We may have to keep moving sooner than we thought.”
“Hm?” Caesar pushes branches out of his way as he approaches Joseph in the sunlight. Joseph picks up his compass from where it landed on a tuft of grass. “Because of the horse? We got enough time to figure out our next move before it makes it back into town.”
Biting the inside of his mouth, Joseph shrugs. “It’s a deputy. They won’t wait.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Caesar arches a hooked blond eyebrow and comes to a stop beside Joseph. “Gimme that.” He grabs one end of the map and pulls it toward him, forcing Joseph to share.
They fall into an easy pattern, bickering and barbs not encumbering their decision-making, but a welcome part of the process. Even before they set out on their own, just the two of them fighting to live their own lives with all the freedom afforded by the relative anonymity of the West, it’s a familiar pattern. Joseph smacks the map with the back of one hand as he makes a point for heading further east.
“Too many people to the east,” Caesar argues. “More people means more lawmen.”
“At the rate I’ve been going through them, though,” Joseph starts, but Caesar cuts him off.
“No,” he says flatly. “We ought to keep heading south.”
Joseph frowns. “They’ll expect us to keep going south. Won’t they?”
“No guarantees about what they’ll think.” Caesar lifts a hand to rub his chin. “And, well, process of elimination. We shouldn’t go west, not for a while yet, and too far east makes me uneasy. You know it does; I don’t know why you suggested it.”
“Just an idea.”
“A bad one.”
Rolling his eyes, Joseph pulls the map from Caesar’s grasp. “A matter of opinion.” He closes the map with snappy movements.
“Stop wrinkling that.”
“I’m folding it.”
“Badly.”
“It’s still folding, isn’t it?” With the map reduced to its packing size, Joseph moves to return it to his saddlebags. “So, we ride south? Fine. But let’s head south east.” He turns on his heel, holding up both his hands in anticipation of Caesar’s protest as he walks backwards. “Just until we find a place to camp and lie low for a few days. Let the mess blow over before we head into another town and make more money.”
Caesar follows him, spurs clicking. “Alright,” he says after a long moment. Joseph turns the right way around with a grin. “I suppose that’s as good a plan as any.” They reach the horses. Caesar flashes him a smirk as he swings up into the saddle. “Let’s ride.”
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[Click here for next chapter].
