Chapter Text
Lemoyne, 1899
The swampy haze of Lemoyne made the sunlight a rich and dark golden hue, even in the early afternoon; the jaundiced light spread through the muggy air to filter through the dirt-flecked window and illuminate the bedroom of their ragged shack in a mix of gentle orange light and dark shadow, with flecks of dust floating in the beams like snowflakes in a silent winter. The air smelled sharp and clean despite its humidity, the recent rains purging the persistent odor of rot and pollution, at least for the day. A gentle breeze whistled through the slats, swaddling the two occupants inside in a gentle domestic tune.
“Let- Let me know if it hurts, all right?”
“It’s going to hurt no matter what, dear girl, just- rip it off-”
Molly cringed as she worked her nails under the bandage on his chest and squealed with a disgusted noise as she ripped it off, then turned away and gagged at the gnarled, discolored flesh on his chest where his body was filling back into the hole that had punched through him, leaving a rough crater of sickly discolored skin shining with puss.
“There there, dear girl,” Hosea muttered as Molly flung the bandage into the waste bin next to his bed and fluttered her hands in disgust, reaching out for the alcohol-soaked rag himself to clean his chest with, carefully cleaning his wound as much as he could without taking off more skin before using the other end to delicately pat it dry. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“But I wanted to help,” Molly said miserably, gritting her teeth and trying to peek another look at his wound from between her locks of curly ginger hair. “I don’t want to be useless.”
“You’re not useless,” Hosea replied easily, setting the rag back on the edge of the water pail. “You don’t have to learn how to be a medic to have worth, dear girl. Now, if you can hand me that fresh bandage, I can do this myself.”
Molly ducked her head and meekly handed him the fresh bandage and gauze. Hosea nodded his thanks and then, with his one working hand, carefully positioned the bandage over the wound with his fingers and then pinned it down with his right hand, using his left hand to wrap the gauze around his chest as tight as he could, ignoring the twinge in his shoulders with how far he had to reach. He was panting and sweating from the pain when he finished, and he must have made for such a pitiful sight that Molly made a distressed noise and gushed, “Here, let me,” tearing the gauze off for him and setting the roll back with the rest of the supplies. The very next second, she hiccupped a sob and hopped to her feet, turning her back on him and hugging herself. “I’m sorry.”
The room was spinning slightly as he forced himself to deepen his breathing, supporting his weight on the bed with his left arm as his body started shuddering, his sciatic nerve electrocuting him something awful. “What- for?” he wheezed out.
“Don’t throw me out,” she begged, hugging herself tighter and ducking her head. “I promise I can be better, I can-”
“Molly,” Hosea ground out, pushing himself off the bed with a choked-off grunt — the standing made the pain lessen a bit — and limped towards her, reaching out to gently take her arm and turn her towards him. He swallowed thickly to make his voice less harsh and took a deep breath before saying, low and soft and gentle, “I don’t know what kind of ‘performance’ you think you owe me, Miss O’Shea, but that’s not what this is. I’m not going to get angry at you or force you out if you can’t ‘earn your keep.’ You’re a person, not a worker bee. If you learn skills, I want them to be for yourself, for your own independence, not because you think you have to convince me you’re worth keeping around.”
In the heavy silence that followed, he took a long moment to truly look at Miss O’Shea.
The woman’s frizzy curls were pulled back in a low, loose ponytail to keep them out of her face, bearing it and all of its freckles to the low sickly light, making her pale skin look sallow. Her green eyes, once so full of keen and curious light, were dark and glassy now, bloodshot and misted with unshed tears. Her lips were chapped from all her worrying at them, her soft smooth fingers pink and raw from the chores she’d been forcing herself to do lately. Gone was her emerald and mahogany dress and all her jewelry, her symbols of being a fine woman of society; now she simply wore a white blouse with a dark blue skirt, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders like a shield.
He’d once found a porcelain doll in a ditch, having fallen out of some stagecoach or other or the hand of a child gunned down by bandits. Whatever the source, it was long gone and far away, leaving only the once-loved doll to lie cold and forgotten in the mud and the filth, its dress and hair in tatters, its face streaked with grime in such a way to look like tearstains.
Looking at Molly, he couldn’t help but be reminded of it.
“Hosea…” Molly started slowly, visibly forcing her eyes to look up and meet his. “N-... Whatever happens, can… can you promise to protect me?” she croaked.
Hosea gently tilted his head and nudged her chin with a finger, encouraging it to lift. “What ever are you afraid of?” he whispered.
Molly sniffled and blinked, a tear leaking down her cheek. “...I just don’t want to be alone.”
His expression softened even more.
My, what harm have we wrought on this poor girl?
“I promise that I will protect you,” he said solemnly, reaching out and grasping her hand and giving it a firm squeeze to ground her, a bitter taste filling his mouth with the knowledge that it was once solely Dutch who promised to shield her from ire. “You’re my friend. And if you give Tilly and Susan a chance, they can be, too. Remember that.”
She sniffled again and nodded, dropping her gaze to slowly sway forward and bury her forehead in his collarbone. He huffed and patted her on the back.
“Now. Would you like me to teach you how to cook?” he prompted gently. “It’s rather important for living independently.”
Molly gulped and stepped away from him, wiping at her eyes with her wrist and nodding. “I’d like that.”
“Well, then, let’s see what we’ve got in the pantry,” he prompted, moving away to shrug on his old blue button-up and shakily slip his socked feet into his boots, hoping his shivering from his pain wouldn’t upset Molly too much.
“Hosea?”
“Hm?” he prompted, looking up from his struggle to button his shirt properly, of half a mind to abandon his right hand entirely.
Molly stepped forward, then, and buttoned his shirt for him, keeping her gaze down as he tensed at the intrusion. “...Bessie was a very lucky woman.”
Hosea stood perfectly still even as a short, pained breath escaped his throat, unsure how to respond to that.
Outside at the main fire, he kept them both busy by coaching her through mixing the flour, baking soda, and salt together before heating up the skillet. They were on their way back with a bowl of cold water to turn the dry ingredients into bannock dough when the clatter of one of their alarm traps sounded for the trail leading into Lakay.
Molly immediately paled and dropped the bowl, and Hosea quickly took their skillet off the fire and threw it into the mud, kicking out the fire while hissing, “Get in the shack and hide, quick!”
Molly helped support his weight so they both could scramble back inside, and as Molly darted into the bedroom, choking back her whimpering, Hosea made sure to silently close the front door before hobbling after her, nodding at her tearful gestures for him to hurry up.
Molly began to close the bedroom door, only to pause when Hosea grabbed his gunbelt and slung it around his waist, tightening and fastening it with quick harsh gestures. As soon as he was sure it wouldn’t fall down, he shoved a box of ammunition in his pocket and deftly drew his left-handed pistol, turning back to the door.
“What are you doing?” Molly whispered, paling.
“I’m going to check it out,” he whispered back, quietly limping out the door before she could stop him. “Shut this door and barricade it and don’t make a sound until I give you the all clear.”
“No, nonono, don’t leave me alone-” Molly started to babble, reaching out for him with wide panicked eyes-
“I can protect you a lot better knowing exactly what the threat is rather than having it break our door down Miss O’Shea now please,” he begged in a harsh whisper, lifting his shaking right hand to weakly grasp at hers.
Molly’s face crumpled, but she nodded, quietly shutting the door a second before he heard the heavy drag of the table.
Releasing a slow breath, he limped across the front room and tucked himself into a dark corner by the front window, swallowing thickly and slowly inhaling before peering out into the main yard of Lakay.
He caught a glimpse of movement around the back of one of the neighboring buildings. After a long few seconds, he spied a shadowy figure staking out the shack through the dirty window, their gun drawn. After a minute, the figure was still the only sign of life.
Slowly exhaling, he leaned back out of sight and clicked the hammer back on his cattleman, clenching his jaw at the harsh mechanical c-li-ick just as he heard the faint sound of the neighboring building’s door opening.
He strained his old ears to every little sound; the murmur of the breeze, the buzzing of flies, the croaking of frogs. Underneath it all was the quiet sound of footsteps, getting closer, and closer. Approaching his front door.
He inhaled.
The doorknob started turning.
He slowly and steadily raised his revolver as the figure rounded the door and he found himself staring down a barrel.
And past that barrel…
...was Dutch.
Hosea’s eyes widened to take in as much of him as he could — his boots caked in mud, the outfit he wore to the bank robbery missing all of its finery and reduced to fraying pants, a stained and disintegrating shirt, and his fine red satin vest waterlogged beyond saving. His hair was disheveled and hanging around his head in ratty strands, his curls drowned and weighed down out of existence by sweat and grease and matting. The skin of his face was blotchy and sunburnt under the rough beard that grew unchecked, and his eyes-
Hosea’s breath hitched.
Dutch was staring at him with a look full of so much crushing terror and sadness that it made gooseflesh cascade down his skin and tears sting his eyes.
The last time he saw Dutch look anything like that was when he was staring at Annabelle’s corpse in his arms.
He never, ever expected to be the subject of so much agony.
Hosea clicked the hammer back on his revolver and holstered it with a tremor while Dutch kept his gun trained on him, swallowing thickly and slightly shaking his head, biting his lip. Hosea opened his mouth, closed it, took a step forward, opened it again, tried to speak, but the only sound that came out was a quiet, broken sound that rattled through his throat and brought more tears to his eyes, breaking into something sharp and breathless as the tears overflowed and started spilling down his cheeks.
He kept moving forward, his bum right leg and the gun aimed at him beyond his concern as he stepped closer, lifting his left hand to touch Dutch’s face. He bypassed the gun which remained frozen in the air, aiming at where he’d been, and Dutch began shrinking away from his hand with a tremor before his skin finally made contact with Dutch’s.
They both gasped and nearly choked.
“Are you real?” Dutch breathed, pressing his face into his hand and staring into his eyes with near-hysterical desperation.
“I’m real,” Hosea managed in a broken whisper, a second before he hitched a sob and threw himself into the man’s chest, collapsing into his partner’s solid weight as Dutch dropped his gun on the ground to instead cling to him in a shaking embrace, hiding his face in Hosea’s neck as Hosea buried his eyes in his, the both of them breaking down into exhausted sobs and pained wails as they struggled to breathe each other in, Hosea’s hand twisted harshly into Dutch’s shirt.
The world collapsed in that dim room.
For so long, he’d been hanging in a sickening limbo, unable to commit to grieving the man so long as he never saw his body.
Now, that body was here, in his arms, against his heart, holding him to its pulse, racing like the pounding hooves of a horse over prairieland.
Hosea knew that his matched it, beat by beat, a call and return.
The most comforting melody he could possibly listen to.
After a long while, when he was finally capable of forming words, still buried in Dutch’s frame like he could use it to hide from all the horrors of the world, Hosea choked out, “Are you- are you the only one? Did the others make it?”
Dutch tightened his hold before letting go, gulping down a deep breath and bending down to retrieve his gun. “God, Hosea, I need to bring you outside, there’s someone who needs to see you.”
Dutch grabbed his right hand and began to excitedly run out the door, only for Hosea to stumble with a pained yelp and pitch forward, causing Dutch to spasm to a stop and throw his arms out to catch him, dragging him back upright with a look of pale fear. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
“I…” Hosea began, then opted to simply hold up his hands at waist level, watching Dutch frown down with pained eyes at his steady left hand and his violently shaking right.
“What the Hell happened?” Dutch asked harshly.
Hosea blinked up at him. “I got shot.”
The protective anger brewing in Dutch’s face shattered all at once.
“Don’t pity me,” Hosea said quickly. “I can move well enough on my own. Don’t worry about this now - please, just- lead me to who I need to see.”
Without a word, Dutch simply nodded, moving away at a slow and careful walk, watching Hosea out of the corner of his eyes as he limped at his side.
The man led him a little ways up the trail, then gestured at a patch of bushes behind a tree, where a trained eye could see a figure low in the brush. Hosea was reminded of a doe hiding her fawn in the reeds. Dutch stepped towards the figure, then, and lowly whispered, “It’s me, come on, there’s someone here for you,” before bending down and heaving whoever it was back up to their feet, and out of the bushes came Dutch and-
“Arthur!”
Arthur’s tense, weathered face snapped into something soft and full of fragile light at the sound of Hosea’s cry, and when he lifted his gaze to meet Hosea’s, his jaw dropped open and his eyes immediately started shedding tears. Hosea bounded forward half on one leg and threw his arms around the boy, only vaguely aware of Dutch cautiously letting go of Arthur’s weight so that Arthur could support his weight on him instead, the both of them crushing each other in as fierce an embrace as they could while Arthur cried and chanted, “Oh my God, oh my God-”
Hosea frantically used their hug to check him over, taking in the ugly green bruises that peppered his frame wherever they peeked out of the tattered rags of his suit and the splint that encased his left leg, held gingerly off the ground.
“Oh, dear boy,” Hosea croaked, combing his fingers through the tangles in Arthur’s hair, “I was so afraid you were dead, I was so afraid-”
“I saw you die, old man,” Arthur rasped, coughing weakly over his shoulder with another tired sob. “Don’t you start with me. How the Hell are you alive?! Oh my God- I never woulda left you had I known you were alive, ‘Sea, I swear, I’m so sorry-”
“Hush now,” Hosea snapped. “Enough of that. I was taken good care of by some saintly good samaritan and then by dear Susan, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be doing so well had I been dragged to whatever Hell made you both look like such shit. This was for the best. Shhh, now… I don’t blame any of you… It’s all right… We’re all okay now...”
Dutch’s hand warmly embraced his shoulder, then, and when he looked up at the sharp light glittering in the man’s dark eyes, he knew his words soothed the other man’s soul as well.
As Arthur caught his breath while hiding his face in Hosea’s shoulder, Hosea asked, “How many others survived?”
“Just Javier and Lenny,” Dutch said lowly, and Arthur shuddered. “They oughta be arrivin’ here later. Is the gang somewhere else? What you doing here alone, Hosea?”
“I ain’t alone,” Hosea answered easily, dodging the loaded question of where the gang was. “I’ve got Molly with me, and Tilly’s been working in Lagras and Susan’s been working in Rhodes to keep us afloat. They oughta be home a little before sundown. The rest of the gang I’ll tell you about later. Now come on, I need to see you both cleaned up and fed before I go insane.”
Dutch and Arthur both nodded, and Dutch warily took his place as Arthur’s crutch once more as Hosea slowly led them back to the main shack.
“Here, there’s a bed in the main room here, Arthur, where you can rest,” Hosea said quickly, walking up to the bedroom door to open it, only to have it hit something large and heavy with a deep thunk noise. Hosea blinked, then politely rapped on the door. “Molly, it’s all clear. You can come out, it’s just Dutch and Arthur. Arthur’s wounded and I wanna give him the bed!”
There was only dead silence from the room.
After a solid thirty seconds, Dutch’s expression turned dark. “Molly!” he barked, a second before he smashed his fist against the door with a cracking BANG that made Hosea and Arthur flinch. “Goddammit, woman, get a move on!”
They immediately heard scrambling in the room and the table was flung away from the door with a cacophonous screech, and in the next breath, the door was flung open and Molly darted past Hosea at a sprint to fly out the front door.
Dutch ignored her and moved instead to bring Arthur to the bed, and Hosea leaned backwards, feeling sickening anxiety skitter down his spine like spider-legs. “I’m going to go check on her,” he said quickly. “You two get settled. I’ll be right back.”
He left the two of them with Arthur giving Dutch a disapproving look, lowly muttering something that made guilt briefly flash across Dutch’s face.
Once he got back out into the sunlight, it wasn’t hard to spot Molly out by the horses where they were hanging their heads miserably in the damp heat. She was frantically pacing and clutching at her hair, letting out occasional guttural cries that made the more skittish horses shy away from her and the others pin their ears back.
It took him a minute to limp over to her, and she didn’t seem to notice him until he was a foot away. When his shadow cast over her, she glanced up at him and crumpled, throwing herself down to sit in the damp grass and hug herself.
“Molly…” he started gently.
“I wanted him dead,” she sobbed suddenly, hiding her face in her knees. “I don’t want him here. I wanted him dead!”
Hosea sighed and awkwardly shuffled his feet, hesitating to kneel or sit for fear he wouldn’t be able to get back up again. “You don’t mean that…”
“And that’s another thing!” she wailed, lifting her head to squint up at him through her tears. “You’re just gonna take his side now! You’re going to forget all about me!”
Any concern about saving himself from pain fell out of his head, and he quickly lowered himself to land harshly on his left side to sit beside her hip. The pop of pain that shot through his chest and spine stole his breath, and he took a long moment to shiver through it, gathering himself enough and shifting into a position where his voice wouldn’t waver to sternly declare, “I made a promise.”
Molly quieted down at that, and finally managed to take a deep breath, slowly rubbing up and down her arms. Hosea sat with her in silence, letting her calm herself down and process his words, busying himself with looking at the way the sunlight filtered through the leaves of the wetland trees where it hung low in the sky, broken only by the figures of flying insects. He studiously ignored the pounding of his heart pouring adrenaline through his system to urge him back to Dutch and Arthur.
They would still be there when he went back. Molly might not.
Eventually, Molly finally let out a long, shaking breath, wiping at her eyes with her palm. “I don’t want to be in the same place he is.”
Hosea slowly nodded. “That’s understandable.”
Molly slowly slid her eyes over to him. “I know you won’t kick him out, though.”
“...Not without due cause,” he replied.
Molly sniffled and turned her gaze down to the ground. “Guess I’m not due cause enough.”
Hosea flinched and slowly clenched his hands, looking away to take a deep breath.
After another long minute, he said, “...My offer to take you someplace where you can start a new life still stands, Miss- ...Molly. If you don’t want that, then I promise- you don’t have to be friends with him. You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t even need to sleep under the same roof as him. I’ll make it clear to him that he’s not to so much as look at you if need be, but I can’t just-...” He took another deep breath and rubbed at his temple. “He’s been my partner for twenty-five years, Molly. I’m sorry, but I can’t just throw that away. Not until he crosses a line for me, and the dirty truth of it is that he… that he hasn’t yet.”
“Then do you honestly believe that there’s anything he could do that would cross your line if he hasn’t by now?”
Bitterness filled his mouth.
Molly let out a low, pained noise and curled further into herself. “I don’t know why I even bother anymore. You’re all I got in the world, Mr. Matthews, but that’s all over now, I s’pose, just like everything else in my piss poor excuse of a life. Maybe I should just run off to the nearest gator nest and get myself out of the way-”
Hosea abruptly stood up at that, gritting his teeth against the pops of his joints as Molly jolted and leaned away from him as he leaned forward and sternly growled from low in the throat, “If you find yourself alone in the world then that is your own doing, Miss O’Shea. I’m not going to isolate myself for you and I’m damn well done excusing you for not making an effort to befriend anyone else. My world does not revolve around you, this family does not revolve around you, but there’s a place for you here with all of us if you’ll just stop closing all of our damn hands when we open them for you. Your worth ain’t got nothing to do with labor, but it does have to do with making a damn effort. By all means, be a part of this family, or be alone, but I will not be your keeper.”
He didn’t bother to look at her face before ambling back into the shack.
When he finally made it back to the doorframe of the bedroom, panting for breath and shuddering from the waves of pain pulsing through his chest, causing him to half-collapse against the wood, Dutch and Arthur looked up from their murmured conversation to fix him with twin concerned stares. “You all right, Old Girl?” Dutch prompted gingerly, rising to his feet and reaching out a hand.
“Just fine,” he responded automatically, shaking his head against his storm of thoughts to focus on all that had to get done. “There’s a tub in the next shack over, I should draw you both a bath-”
“Well here, let me worry about that,” Dutch said gently, finally reaching him and laying his hands on his sides; Hosea’s breath immediately eased at the sensation of those strong, familiar hands bracing him, feeling him, swiping their thumbs over him as if to convince their owner that he was there, working up and down his ribs and around his back. His forehead was resting against Dutch’s chest before he even had the thought, the man’s scent easing his eyes closed, soured as it was. “You should lay down- Christ, I can’t even imagine what you’ve gone through. Go on and lay down with Arthur, settle.”
Dutch was ushering him towards Arthur, then, and Arthur was anxiously scooting himself over to press himself against the wall and patting the narrow strip of twin mattress beside him, and Hosea figured that he didn’t really have a choice.
He still couldn’t sort out his muddled head fast enough to speak another word before Dutch was gone.
Arthur coughed at his side, some awful, wet sound, his head turned away to face the wall, and Hosea straightened up on the bed to anxiously look the boy over, ignoring the nerve pain blooming at the base of his neck as he did so.
Arthur looked… horrible. He’d been so focused on the fact that he was alive before, and then on the evidence that he’d been beaten, to notice the way his skin looked pale, the way his eyes looked sunken with deep purple rings underneath them, the way his face was forming closer to his skull rather than being plump with rosy fat. Sweat was pouring off of every inch of Arthur he could see, yet the boy was faintly shivering.
“What happened to you out there?” Hosea asked quietly, setting his right hand on Arthur’s forehead and frowning at the presence of fever, hot to his skin even in the heat of Lemoyne.
Arthur cringed away from the tremors in his hand and struggled to prop himself up on his elbows, looking Hosea over in turn with a furrowed brow, his blue eyes still misting slightly. “I could ask the same damn thing,” he shot back. “Hosea, no pain flare ever made only one hand shake, what the Hell is going on?”
Hosea clenched his jaw and silently cursed the boy’s incessant need to deflect concern off of him. “The bullet almost went through my spine,” he said lowly. “Instead of being paralyzed, it damaged the nerves along my spinal column, and so now my entire right side is only half listening to my brain and shakes like a chandelier in California when I try to use it. I’m in constant pain, but that ain’t anything new. I’ll live. Your turn.”
“Christ, ‘Sea…” Arthur whispered, his expression crumpling as his gaze fell to his chest, as if trying to see the bullethole through his shirt.
“Arthur,” Hosea repeated. “Son, please.”
Arthur ducked his head and anxiously glanced up at him at that, and Hosea only had a few seconds to regret his harsh tone before Arthur warily started, “We… escaped Saint Denis on this ship… Dutch bribed the captain, and we were- supposed to hide out in Cuba for a while, arrange another ship to Tahiti before coming back for y’all, but… there was this godawful storm…”
Hosea nodded along, gently encouraging Arthur to continue by folding his hand around the younger man’s.
Arthur took a deep breath — a sickening, wheezing note — then slowly let it out in a shaking rattle. “The ship went down. I got washed out into the ocean, washed up on the shore of Guarma-” He quickly turned his head away to start coughing again.
“You fell in the ocean and you’re coughing like this?!” Hosea snapped, hauling himself out of bed to do- something. Pace, apparently. He forced himself to stop and say, “God, you could have pneumonia, we need to get you to a doctor-”
“M’fine,” Arthur ground out, his body language shuttering up as he swallowed back his coughs.
“You are not ‘fine,’” Hosea shot back, feeling his eyes sting. He raised his left hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes to compose himself. “I’m- I’m sorry for snapping, it’s just, Arthur, Bessie died of pneumonia, I know the damage it can wreak, and I do not want to lose you to it. I just-” He looked up, then, and crossed his arms against the open, sad, remorseful expression on Arthur’s face. “I’ve been spending a week unable to grieve you,” he said quietly, his voice shaking. He opened his mouth to say something else, a slew of sentimental declarations lining up on his tongue, then— slowly closed it.
“I ain’t the one you need to be worrying about,” Arthur said softly, his eyes still studying him with a remorseful glint. “It’s Dutch.”
Hosea blinked, hard. “What about Dutch?”
Arthur worried at his lip for a long moment. “...Guarma was run by Alberto Fussar, who basically ran it as some… sugarcane plantation, with the slaves to go with it. His soldiers started beating me, and Dutch threw himself on top of me to protect me, and they split his skull open. Again.”
Hosea felt his heart skip a beat and shudder up into his mouth.
“He’s been… he… he’s been different, since watching you die, Hosea,” Arthur said quietly. “And him gettin’ hit over the head… He’s been actin’ off. Strange, even for him. He murdered Micah over some spat-” Hosea’s eyes widened to a painful degree “-and he’s been seizin’ up.”
“H-...” Hosea swallowed and ran his left hand through his hair, taking a shaking breath. “What do you mean, ‘seizing up’?”
“He’s been falling down and shaking,” Arthur whispered, looking around as if to check for the man in question. “He’s just- gone when it happens, shakes so much he looks like he’s hurting himself, and if it ain’t that then one of his sides will shake or his head will fall down or he’ll just space out mid-sentence. It’s scary, ‘Sea. I’m afraid for him.”
Hosea stared at Arthur for a long moment before stumbling back to sit on the table, covering his mouth with his hand.
They stayed that way, sitting in uneasy silence for a long while.
“Is he gonna die?” Arthur asked, his voice small.
Hosea blinked himself out of the fog he’d entered, slowly dragging himself out of the cold numbness that had poured through his veins. “We’ll get you both to a doctor,” he said, his voice sounding even to him dull and devoid of emotion. “If not tonight, then first thing tomorrow morning.”
Arthur opened his mouth to respond to that, but then the front door opened and Dutch breezed into the room, loudly announcing, “The bath’s all made up, Arthur, let me get you over there,” in his cracking baritone before harassing Arthur out of the bed and onto his foot, inserting himself under his left arm to support his weight. He looked over at Hosea with a wide smile and playfully drawled, “I told you to rest, ‘Sea, let us dirty varmints purge our filth in peace.”
And with that, Dutch left with Arthur, leaving Hosea alone to continue staring blankly at the wall.
Black flies crawled on the windowsill.
He felt nothing.
And he thought nothing at all.
--
In the late afternoon, while Dutch and Arthur were still bathing, the alarm trap sounded again.
Hosea limped out into the middle of the courtyard, his gun drawn and aimed down the path, only to lower when he saw two familiar horses. Boaz and Maggie.
“Hosea!”
The looks of shellshocked, ecstatic joy on Javier’s and Lenny’s faces were enough to coax a smile onto his own, and as the two boys crashed into his arms, hugging him for dear life and shouting their relief and joy over his shoulders, crying, “I can’t believe you made it, old man!” and “Of course he did! Of course he did!” and “We would have done anything, risked anything if we knew you were alive-!” and “God, thank God, oh thank God-!” he felt a warm ember of joy ignite in his heart once more.
“Javier…” he managed, his voice quivering and thick with emotion. “Lenny…” He clutched at them tighter. “Welcome home, sons.”
The rest of the day continued in a frenzy — seeing Dutch and Arthur clean and straightened up and in their regular clothes restored a sense of normalcy, and Hosea busied himself with looking over and treating Lenny and Javier’s wounds while Dutch inspected and took careful stock of Lakay. That was when he heard Susan’s shrill shriek, and Hosea rose to peer out the window and spy Susan leap into Dutch’s arms, letting the man dip her and kiss her cheek before she slapped him across the face. He fondly shook his head and clapped both Javier and Lenny on the shoulders, excusing himself back to the bedroom with Arthur before Susan tanned his hide for puttering around and fussing. He was only mildly surprised when Susan dragged him away by the ear anyway to dump him in the hammock so that she could fuss over Arthur without him in the way.
Everyone was in the main shack prepping for supper when Tilly arrived at sundown, opening the front door barefoot and in rolled up overalls, covered in mud up to her thighs with smears on her cheek, a line of fish over her shoulder, and when her eyes fell on Lenny, Javier, Arthur, and Dutch, her expression crumpled up like an old newspaper and Susan had to take her fish so that the boys could beckon her over for a hug and to rub her back as she cried. Hosea spotted it when Susan turned her head over her shoulder to snap at Tilly to come help descale and debone the fish, but softened and quieted herself when she saw Dutch take Tilly by the shoulder and lead her away to a corner, talking softly to her with a quiet, proud glow in his eyes.
The last rays of the sun were slipping beneath the horizon when Molly meekly slinked back in through the front door. Javier, Lenny, and Arthur all greeted her warmly with polite nods and Tilly sent her a slight smile; Susan and Dutch studiously ignored her, opting instead to chat amongst themselves as Susan prepped the plates, and Hosea nearly tripped over himself in his rush to reach her side. “Welcome home, Molly,” he said softly, taking her arm and guiding her towards the table where Lenny was pulling up a chair for her, and Molly twined her fingers with his and gave them a light squeeze in thanks as she softly said, “Thank you, Mr. Summers.”
Hosea finally sat down in his own chair and breathed through the pain wracking his frame to keep it from showing on the surface, remaining quiet as everyone save for Molly joyously chatted away with each other, fixing his gaze on the grains of the wood as his heart uneasily jackrabbited in his chest and nausea crawled up from his stomach.
He wondered why he hadn’t told any of them that he disbanded the gang yet.
But as Dutch sat down across from him, pushing a plate towards him and beaming at him with a soft, bright smile…
...he supposed he already knew.