Chapter Text
It was the summer of 1895. The group had migrated North for the warmer months, taking advantage of the bigger game and scattered, lonely homesteads. Escaping the pressure from the law that had slowly been accumulating in the south from their ventures. 5 years had passed since Mac’s near-fatal injury, the scar quite a sight, and they’d gained and lost family members along the way.
Their current camp was positioned high above Cumberland Falls, in the warmer southern region of the West Grizzlies. It was only meant to be a temporary location for them, to eventually find a position closer to Valentine; but as the temperatures rose and people settled, they’d all started to like their little spot high above the canyon. Clear views and clean water; and dust-less air. It was a relief. Only the occasional bear or cougar to keep them on their toes.
The journey had been long and perilous, though. Too hard a ride for Lady, who had been lamed that winter, her gritty old age finally catching up with her. John had been the one to put a bullet in her, feeling it was his duty, but it had taken Dutch days to pull the boy out of that pit of despair afterwards.
Arthur had helped him break in and tame a grey kentucky saddler to replace his beloved nag shortly after they arrived at their newest camp, but the beast had all the ferocity and inhospitality of their environment and John had honestly been nervous to sit in the saddle again by the third time she’d thrown him.
“She ain’t gonna get any better if you don’t ride her,” Arthur had declared, one chilly and breezy morning, watching John timidly trying to pull her hoof up onto his knee to clean out her heels. Her leg wasn’t budging. “Gotta earn trust in a horse ‘fore you yank it around like that.”
John stood, sighing irritably, tossing the hoof pick to the ground. “I don’t want trust, I just want her to do as I say,” he griped, earning a contemptuous snort from the mare and a flick of her whip-like tail.
“The two ain’t exclusive,” Arthur murmured, pushing his rifle into the saddle holster of his own horse and strapping a bedroll to the back. “You thought of a name for her yet?”
John dusted himself down, lighting up a cigarette, glaring up at the pissed-off steed like she was a fallen tree in his path. “What was the name of that mean strumpet, working at the saloon in Strawberry?”
Arthur grinned, tipping his hat brim below his eyes as he recollected, “one who threw a glass at Davey? Weren’t it Hattie or Nettie or something?”
“Nettie sounds good,” John nodded, dragging on the cigarette with an angry crackle.
Arthur mounted his horse, kicking his feet into the stirrups, “come on then. Pearson needs another ram or elk, I’m taking you with me.”
John glanced up, “thought I was scouting that ranch with Mac today?”
“Life ain’t all about shooting and robbing,” Arthur responded resolutely, tightening his saddle’s billet, “folks need feeding, first and foremost. ‘Sides, you need to break in that horse.”
They drove North, up the gravelly mountainside, through hardy wildflowers and scattered, scrawny pine. Patches of snow still resting in the pockets of the landscape, unlikely to thaw before the next winter. By late afternoon they’d collected four grouse and a jackrabbit, but still no big game. They wove through the landscape, snowcapped mountains sprawling in a panorama around them, the views stretching for miles. Bright and clear and blue.
“Ain’t seen much of Dutch, lately,” John said conversationally as they steadily pushed through some dense bushes, the mosquitos clouding around him.
“Yeah, he’s been working the crowds in Valentine,” Arthur gave his horse a jab to push her up a steep scramble, “making connections and such. Doubt we’ll see him ’til he has a plan of sorts.”
“How much plannin’ does he need to rob a person?”
“You know him,” Arthur murmured, pulling himself to a stop on a crest, “he likes the big scores. The ones that create the bigger messes for us to run away from.” He pulled out his binoculars, scanning the craggy landscape for movement.
John held Nettie in place, yanking her reigns up to stop her from grazing for the hundredth time. “Camp don’t feel right when he’s gone for so long…” he muttered solemnly. “And I don’t know why we ain’t been allowed to go to Valentine yet. I ain’t visited a town in months. M’starting to feel… feral.”
Arthur grunted a dismissive response, no longer paying attention with his focus trained on scouting the mountains. He jolted, suddenly, ducking a little lower. “There!“ He whispered stiffly, “up by the creek on the lower ridge…”
The boy perked up, snapping his attention to where Arthur was describing. A white smudge next to the green ditch of the river. He could barely see it. What appeared to be an elk cow was grazing the lusher grass there, along with a couple more further uphill.
“We’re upwind, so we need to move wide,” Arthur packed the binoculars away, pulling out his carcano rifle. “It’s a ways. Stay on the horses for now.”
They moved at a steady walk and at a long, healthy distance, moving clockwise through the rocky valley, eye trained on the elk at all times. It seemed to take forever this way, but Arthur insisted he wasn’t risking a shot unless he was sure it would be close and clean. Too much rock for an injured cow to hide in.
They arrived at a heavy river, slicing wide through the landscape like a claw wound. John’s mare whinnied nervously at the foamy water’s edge. Arthur pondered the situation for a moment, looking out over the breadth of water. “Reckon it won’t reach our saddles,” he asserted, driving forwards into the flow.
They needed to move through it to stay out of the wind’s direction, but John hesitated. He could sense the unease in Nettie; the way she was throwing her head and twitching backwards. But Arthur was already a third across, and he gave the mare a decisive kick, sending her into the icy stream. She accepted, but fussed and bickered the whole way, her pitchy complaints getting louder as the fast chill of the water reached above her belly.
It must’ve all just been too loud, because the next thing John heard was Arthur swearing fiercely, and John threw his attention to the elk herd that had started bolting away through the crags. They’d heard them. Arthur raised his rifle to his shoulder, though he wasn’t even on the last stretch of the river, and fired as a last resort at the receding prey.
The explosion cracked from his gun. It occurred to John, then, that Nettie really hadn’t actually been introduced to the sound of a gunshot yet.
She reared in a panic, spun, sending John hurtling into the frigid torrent.
The cold hit him before the dire circumstance was realised. His lungs had the air punched-out of them, and he gasped desperately, only to gain a mouthful of water instead. He kicked and scrabbled against the river’s pull, trying to find his footing, but the flow was too fast and too mean. He simply couldn’t get the leverage to pull himself up.
Every time he found the frothy surface of the water, he was spun back underneath. Tiny, incremental gasps of air, immediately sapped as he struggled and fought. Thunder filled his ears and the heavy weight of his wool coat was dragging him down even more. He thrashed his arms out of it, trying to lighten his load, letting the water rip it away from him.
He began hitting rocks. Body hurled against them, winding him further, the torrents threatening to push him downwards. He clawed at the stone surfaces, trying to fight his way up them. All the while, losing more and more oxygen, his head going dizzy from the lack of it.
It seemed endless, but he tried to keep his eyes open, tried to find the surface. But he couldn’t reach the daylight. Everything was white and foamy and churning and awful.
He hit another rock; but this time, it was softer. It grabbed at him violently, pulling him close to it. He grabbed on instinctively, holding the shape of it, but he was so weak, could hardly get his hands to work, numb as they were.
Arthur pulled the boy to the surface, and John took a desperate and shallow gulp of air, before the water lapped over him again.
Morgan had galloped ahead, tied his lasso to the closest tree and then dove in. But he hadn’t the time to tie the other end to himself, so he clutched ferociously to the tail of it, his other arm holding John’s flailing body, barely able to keep the boy above the surface.
“I got you!” He gasped, already so exhausted, and he kicked hard against the current, swimming them on a pendulum, diagonally to the shore.
Arthur dragged John’s limp body across the stones until he could lie him down out of the water’s grip. Marston was coughing, which meant he was breathing, and Arthur flopped down to the ground in relief.
“You really…” he gasped, catching his breath, “…need to learn how to swim.”
John wasn’t in any headspace to respond, he rolled miserably onto his side, choking on his rapid breathing, filling his system with oxygen as fast as he could take it in.
They lay there for an age, regaining their strength, listening to the angry growl of the river as it churned against the rocks. When John finally felt strong enough to move again, he pulled himself into a wobbly kneel, staring at his companion and then northwards, upstream, to where Nettie had abandoned him and begun grazing on the far shore. The icy chill of his soaked body was beginning to catch up with his weakened state. He shuddered aggressively.
“Okay,” Arthur noted, recognising the new threat they were facing, “we’re camping here. Need to get you warm…” he rose to his feet, whistling for his horse, Prairie, who obediently trotted over.
In the time is took for Arthur to whip up a flame, John had started shaking violently. Whatever strength he’d managed to retain after his brush with death had been utterly and entirely spent on the shivering to keep himself warm. He was huddled in on himself, in nought but his shirt, watching Arthur hustle a fire together.
“C’mere,” Arthur grabbed him, dragged him close to the embers. He tore off the boy’s remaining clothes until John was nude and then threw the bedroll over him, bundling him and pressing him as close to the fire as possible without singeing the fabric.
Only then did Arthur remove his own sodden clothes, down to his union suit. The sun had lowered behind a craggy peak and the chill was beginning to bite him too. He rested at the fire side just long enough to heat up the damp fabric. Morgan let out a long, heavy, weary sigh. “God damn.”
John couldn’t agree more. “Thought that was it for me…” he mumbled, staring at the liquid heat in the centre of the coals.
Arthur huffed, reaching into the pocket of his sodden coat, piled at his side, and pulled out a soaked box of cigarettes. Grunting disappointedly, he tossed the useless tobacco into the bushes. “That horse…” he muttered contemptuously, “I’ll ride her back. You can take Prairie.”
John nodded as Arthur stepped over to Prairie and pulled down two of the grouse they’d shot that day from her saddle.
John watched him silently clean the birds, only enough energy to stay sitting up, occasionally a little more to throw another stick on the fire. Arthur gutted them sloppily, wastefully, in a rush to get the job done. He threw the remaining carcasses into the river and washed his hands, before returning and pressing the breast meat and hearts and livers onto the grill above the flames. “We can catch something else for camp tomorrow.”
John nodded sleepily, reaching over and prodding the meat over on the charred grate, determined to be of some use. Arthur only grasped the stick out of his hands and took over the task himself. John always fussed that Arthur never let him take control of things but, deep down in the recesses of John’s nature, he liked that Arthur took on the brunt of it. Particularly in moments such as these.
They ate in weary silence, and then Arthur dressed and took on the ordeal or wrangling Nettie back to them. By the time he returned, twilight had arrived and John was asleep in the bundled up bedroll by the fire’s warmth.
Now truly exhausted himself, Arthur pulled John’s bedroll from his mare’s saddle and unfurled it beside the boy. He’d barely made himself horizontal before sleep had dragged him into its void.
John slept deeply, cradled by warmth at his front and back. For the first time since he was a child, he dreamt of the noose that had squeezed his neck all those years ago. Of feeling hopeless and terrified but oddly accepting of his fate. He dreamed of falling and of floating, feeling light as air but also untethered and out of control. Scared and lost and spinning.
When he woke, it was completely dark. The fire reduced to smouldering embers. The horses were shadows in the trees, legs locked in sleep. The river rumbled like a constant threat, and the sky was alight with innumerable stars.
John turned, his energy somewhat regained, to face Arthur who was sleeping at his back, pressed close for warmth. The man breathed slow and deep, lips gently parted, brow furrowed in a slight frown. “Arthur…” John uttered, so quiet that the wisp of warm vapour from his breath was a bigger indication he’d spoken than the sound itself.
Morgan didn’t open his eyes but his breathing shortened, his eyelids twitching as he was roused from his slumber. “Hm,” he grunted, short and lazy.
“Had a bad dream,” John murmured, voice barely escaping him.
It took a moment for Arthur to react, but he reached out of his bedroll, weakly taking John’s bundled shoulder in his hand and pulled him even closer until the boy’s mouth was pressed to his clavicle. So close John could hardly breathe; but it was exactly where he wanted to be. Crushed into the warmth of his elder’s body, Marston felt himself succumb to the comfort of sleep once more, feeling all the safer.
When Arthur awoke, the morning sun had reached their spot in the valley, creating a steamy fog above the water and a hazy light across the hills. They’d slept late, and he clutched the warm body at his front, holding John close for the soft heat of it. The length of the boy’s body was pressed firmly against him, the bedroll pulled open to maximise body contact, and Arthur was met with the recollection of John’s nude state.
He nestled his fingers at the back of John’s nape, tangling in the matted hair there, scratching with his blunt nails. With his other hand he crept down the long line of the boy’s back, feeling the raised cuts and grazes. Marston was far from soft or womanly, but he was slim and taut and tapered. Arthur had decided long ago that he liked it just as much.
John groaned, pushing away gently, trying to escape the rough touch threatening his peaceful sleep. He rolled onto his back, but Arthur persistently followed, framing the boy’s body with his elbows and pressing his face into the cup of John’s neck.
Marston woke then, grunting and scrunching his eyes against the bleary morning light. “Arth..?” He muttered huskily, sleepily allowing himself to be pushed down against the ground, the older man pinning his upper arms to the bed roll.
It had become this, now. This unspoken, rowdy, handsy thing between them the last few years. Reserved for when they were far from camp, neither wanting the added torment of it being known they were also sweet for each other as well as Dutch. It was occasional and usually a result of some petty spat or, even rarer, a sentimental moment. They were, after all, indirectly intimate through their connection to Dutch. But alone with one another, it wasn’t as simple. Their relationship too fraternal, too hot-blooded. It made things volatile, but the need and want was there, always bubbling under the surface, unsure and unstable. Neither really knowing what to do but both wanting it regardless.
Arthur leaned over the restrained body, pressing shallow bites across John’s chest, knowing John was too weak and tired to resist much. The boy was warming up to the contact, though, knocking his knees apart and letting a faint shadow of a moan escape his lips.
But Arthur was past the point of coaxing, and he pressed his mouth to John’s, kissing the boy’s slack lips with hungry fervour. John found the energy to kiss back. Clumsy and messy, all teeth and breath and hesitant tongues. Tired as he was, John reached up and pressed his palm to Arthur’s crotch, feeling the hardness below the jeans. The elder gave a seething hiss at the contact.
“You well enough for this?” Arthur breathed.
“M’fine.”
“Good,” Arthur crushed his body down then, teeth and pressure and the hard rut of his hips against John’s. The boy spread his legs further to accommodate, overcome with all the friction against his bare skin. He gasped at the assault of sensation.
Arthur was always so rough about it. Always so forceful and unrestrained, like his body couldn’t quite disassociate love making with it’s more familiar physical past-time; fighting. It ignited a heat in John’s belly and he felt his energy spike, some underlying fight or flight instinct, and he bit back. Clamping his teeth down on the man’s shoulder, more as a warning than an effort to hurt him,
Arthur only chuckled lowly, returning the sentiment to John’s own neck, gripping the salty skin with his teeth. John yelped, wriggling his hands between them and pushing hard, hauling Arthur’s body away from him and to the side. Morgan collapsed onto his back willingly, a goofy grin cracked across his features.
“Y’er too heavy!” John snapped, all irritated and flustered, and he straddled Arthur instead, swinging one coltish leg over his pelvis and sitting squarely on the stiffness in the jeans.
Arthur grinned, “well, look’t you,” bucking his hips upwards, startling john and lurching him forward. He grabbed the boy’s wrists then, pulling him back down into another aggressive and playful kiss, locking him in place with his grip on John’s upper arms.
John fought at first, but settled into the position and allowed himself to relax once his irritation subsided in place of building arousal. He was hard too now, embarrassingly so, considering he was still the only one even partially undressed, let alone fully nude. He made a point to start unbuttoning Arthur’s shirt, to at least make things fair, and Arthur released his hold on him to allow it.
Morgan stared up at him. John’s flushed skin, brows furrowed in concentration, tangled black hair falling all about the place. Pretty, but in a wild way, raw and unrefined. He looked half feral, always so unkempt. Arthur liked it; but then, he’d always liked untamed things.
“Hurry up, boy,” he reached down, undoing his own belt and pants as John fumbled the buttons. He shucked off the shirt and kicked off his jeans once freed of their restraints, keeping his eyes trained on John, watching how he panted in anticipation, cheeks and ears glowing hot.
Hands firmly on the boy’s hips, he pushed him back until John was seated on his upper legs. Spitting into his hand, he then took both of their erections in his grip, and John let out a sharp gasp at the contact, leaning back and gripping the meat of Arthur’s thighs to stay steady. “Ah!… oh god,” the boy began thrusting erratically to add to the jerking motion of the palm.
“John, stay still,” Arthur hissed, gripped the boy’s hip to try and keep him steady but John had better leverage in this position and was chasing his own pleasure, eyes lightly closed and mouth ajar as he pushed into that tight heat.
It was making it all the harder for Arthur, unable to get enough pressure himself, and he pushed hard on one foot, toppling John over to the side with a yelp of disapproval. They rolled onto the grass, this time John on his back and Arthur leaned over once again. Flushed and frustratingly hard, Arthur impatiently took them both in his hand again and twisted his wrist as he jerked, finally able to get the friction he needed.
John wriggled at first, unhappy with this new arrangement, but Arthur must’ve found a hold on him he liked because he stilled suddenly and stopped scrabbling to get away. “Ngh…” he hummed, resting his hands on Arthur’s shoulders. He watched how Arthur’s slick precum was smeared across them both, the intimidating size difference between them, how thick Arthur was compared to him. Arthur could barely wrap his fist around his length as well as John’s. Thought of that cock inside him, stirring up his insides the way Dutch’s did. Stretching him wide and filling him with jism. Making him beg and cry and writhe from the pleasure of it. It never came to all that, Arthur and him, but John always thought of it in these final moments.
“I’m gonna…” he moaned, trying again to jerk his hips upwards but Arthur had him firmly pinned. John’s breath came out in noisy, short gasps. Far louder than he ever had the freedom to be in camp.
“Oh yeah?” Arthur sneered, lip curling as he felt himself reaching the precipice too, “gon’ spend all over y’self? Make a damn mess?” His jerks were becoming irregular and blunt, so close now, “come on, Johnny, show me.”
Arthur was never one to be vocal until the absolute last crest of his arousal and the shock of it always toppled John over the edge. He cried out as his orgasm flooded his system, going rigid as he shot all over himself. Arthur followed immediately after, stifling a grunt as he covered John as well, coating the boy from neck to navel.
They rested for a while, slack and floppy, staring at one another as they both panted to regain composure. Arthur’s gaze travelling down John’s soiled front, feeling dazed and satisfied at how utterly indecent he looked. Wet and ruddy and nude as the day he was born.
“Y’er heavy…” John muttered again, expression lax and placid but twinged with discomfort.
Arthur nodded compliantly, hoisting his weight up and dropping down onto the grass beside the boy, letting the breeze cool his clammy body. They lay there, sprawled in the short, dry grass, looking sinful and satiated in their states.
It took some convincing to get John to return to the river to clean up, the boy’s fear of water now rekindled into a blazing, fresh flame. In the end Arthur had to situate himself knee-deep and splash water at the boy to clean him off. John had shouted and complained but it ended in laughing and Arthur was glad for that at least.
John had also insisted on Arthur riding with him on Prairie as they waded back across the torrent, dragging Nettie behind them. Arthur eventually mounting the problematic mare and didn’t offer her so much as an inch of leeway. Arthur had always been good with horses, possibly the best in the gang, and John watched him handle her into submission with a strong hand and soft words.
They never did find another elk, but they partially made up for it with five more grouse and a goose.
“We gon’ tell Dutch?” John piped up as they descended a rocky bluff, jolting back and forth as the horses took wide steps.
“About the river? Or the elk?”
“No, about… about what we been doin’?” John cautiously affirmed, feeling weirdly guilty about the whole thing.
Arthur scoffed, “reckon he suspects…” eyes trained on the narrow trail, holding the reigns limply in one hand to let the horse concentrate, “nobody’s business but ours, anyway.”
John liked that. Something private, just for them. So much within the gang was public knowledge, it was hard to have privacy or secrets. Dutch made no real effort to hide his affections towards either of them from the rest of the group. They were all beneath the man in some way or another, and his dalliance with the boys was just an extension of that. But Arthur and him, that was something else, something hard-won and personal. They didn’t even understand it fully themselves, so how could they explain it to anyone else?
As the sun sank behind Mount Shann to the West, dipping their world into blue shadow, they spotted the firelight of camp below in the plateau before the canyon, smoke streaming into the sky in a delicate thread.