Ag can’t remember the last time he’d felt in control of his life. It had certainly been before he and Sol had left the ranch, that much is obvious. Since then, it seems like he’s just been carried along in a stream of circumstances that are entirely outside his power to change. First there had been Twin Falls, just days after leaving home, then running from the posse and, then, the crazy job his brother had decided they’d take from poor Mr McDaniel, to kill that man in Portland. But they weren’t killers, not really. They weren’t even thieves. What was Sol thinking? And then the McDaniels, both of them, had just up and rode off, which seems, now, like a clear and obvious sign that they should have just gone their own way. Just gone. But no, no: Sol had to run off after them, and then all that horror at the medicine show had happened, first that awful night with stabbed bellies and cut-off tongues and opened throats – another sign that it’s time to leave – and then the fire and all those poor people getting killed. How much clearer does it need to be? This isn’t for them. On some level, Ag expects frogs and locusts and all those other things that had happened to Pharaoh to start raining down on him and Sol now. Seems like it’s the logical damn progression of things.
And now Sol’s hellbent on saving that girl from the fat man and whoever the fat man works for. The man they were going to kill in the first place? It’s all too confusing and, really, it’s not even any of their business, not any more. But Sol, when he’s set on a thing, he doesn’t ever back down. Ag knows this. It’s both a good and a bad trait that his brother has: he’s the kind of man you’d want on your side, as irritating as he can be, because he’ll stick. You don’t want to cross him, though, because he’s bullheaded and won’t ever let up, stupid as he is. He’s exactly the kind of man who, unlike Ag himself, completely ignores all the many, many signs that say you should just go home. Cut your losses. Things don’t always work out right and that’s just the way it goes sometimes.
But I can’t just leave him, Ag tells himself. Much as he wants to. Sol is his brother and he’s way over his head here. He might have gotten off a lucky shot at that man in Twin Falls, but this Lyman fellow is a stone-cold killer. Hell, the man is even a killer after he’d been killed his own damn self. Something is very not right with that and Ag just doesn’t want to think about a man who can drag himself out of his own grave and start cutting throats and starting fires. If he’s headed west, they should be headed anywhere but that direction, and that is a fact.
He looks out the window at the scenery rolling by in the waning daylight. Sol’s head rests against Ag’s shoulder; the train’s rhythmic juddering and jolting has finally sent his brother to sleep after hours nervously pacing up and down the nearly empty car. Oliver had gone to sleep almost immediately, pulling his hat down and hunkering into his jacket. Dr Potter is coughing and shivering in his own jacket, a ratty horse blanket wrapped around him. The weather had been miserable heading north from Baker City to where they’d picked up the train near La Grande, rainy and cold with bouts of sleet, even this late in spring. Dr Potter had taken sick and gotten so feverish that he’d almost fallen off his horse once or twice. He’d refused to stop, though, ignoring Oliver’s suggestions that they hole up in the next town, long enough for the doctor to get a little stronger. Now, his rattling cough is hacking out over the clack of the train’s wheels and his eyes gleam with fever under his hat. From time to time Ag can hear Dr Potter muttering to himself, sipping at a little flask.
Ag himself is exhausted and just happy to be out of the weather, even if he can’t seem to fall asleep. When they’d finally reached La Grande, Sol had sold the horses and they’d had little time to do much more than grab a quick meal, the westbound train having arrived not long after they had. Ag’s never been on a train, but the novelty is spoiled by his tiredness and worry. He tries to close his eyes again, let the sway of the car rock him to sleep, but it’s no good. He just wants to go home; what had happened was awful, but this isn’t his fight. He wonders if he’d feel different had he the same infatuation with Elizabeth that his brother seems to have, although he also wonders how much of Sol’s determination is simply because his brother feels so poorly about his showing back at the camp, the way that man Lyman had simply broken him like that. If it’s just out of stupid pride that he’s doing all this. Yet again, Ag has the thought but I’m not a fighter, and he’s fine with that. Really, he is. His own pride doesn’t hurt, not at all. But Sol either hasn’t learned that lesson yet or still somehow thinks otherwise, dumb as he is.
We’re all going to die, Ag says to himself, silently at first and then out loud, quietly: “We are all going to die.” It’s hard to believe it, even said out loud like that, like It’s raining or I’m thirsty, a simple sentiment that he knows, deep down, is true. We’re all going to die. He can’t decide if he’s just so afraid that it makes him calm, makes the idea too big and impossible to fathom, or if he isn’t afraid enough yet, if he’s just stupid and clueless like Sol. We’re all going to die. Either that man Lyman will gut them or one of this Hedwith’s other men will shoot them, as Oliver seems to think or, somehow, they’ll actually wind up doing what they’re trying to do, kill these people, and then the law will catch up and hang them all. No matter what, that’s it. It’s really that simple. They’ll wind up like poor Mr McDaniel, like that woman with the lovely voice. Like his friend Ridley, dead and in a hole in the ground.
We’re all going to die.
The worst part is not really understanding any of it, just being caught up and carried along in that stream of circumstance. Ag feels small and helpless, nothing but a bystander. Dr Potter is smart, Oliver is big; hell, even Sol at least has his fired-up nervousness and his quick, stupid temper. Ag knows that he, himself, is just taking up space, making up the numbers, but that it puts him in danger anyway. It doesn’t seem fair that this all had to happen so soon after leaving home, when things were just getting started with his life. He has the sick sense of making bad choices and paying the price for them, when he hasn’t done any choosing at all, not really. Yet again, he tells himself that he has to stick, that Sol is his brother and Ag can’t very well just leave him, no matter how awful this all is, no matter how much Ag just wants to go home and do something quiet and good for once.
He must have fallen asleep for a while as, when he wakes up, the moon has crept up in the sky, buttery orange and beautiful. Ag doesn’t know where they are, exactly, but the train is stopping yet again, rattling into another small town. They have to be fairly near Portland by now. The rain has stopped and stars are peeking out of holes in the clouds; the moonlight over the gorge and the Columbia is almost heartrendingly beautiful, like he’s seeing night truly for the first time. Sleep has helped, and Ag’s mind feels clear now, the decision made, his own choice for once.
Sol is slumped away from him, lying with his head back, snoring. Oliver hasn’t moved from his spot on the opposite seat, his big shoulders rising and falling with his breath. Dr Potter seems to finally be sleeping himself. Even though the car is mostly empty, the four of them are clustered together, as if for protection.
Ag stands up and steps over his brother’s legs, not looking at him, gripping the rack over the seats as the train finishes slowing. He twists his hips from side to side, stretching, rolling his stiff neck, working out the kinks. When he takes down his bag, he catches a gleam of eyes from under Dr Potter’s hat. They look at one another for a moment and then Ag nods and works his way down the car to the exit.
“What?” Sol yells. “No, he goddamn did not!” He’s in a fury, striding up and down the car, looking from side to side as if Ag is just hiding somewhere. The morning sun is bright through the windows, and Ag is nowhere to be seen. “He goddamn did not!”
“Just let it go, Sol,” Dr Potter whispers, coughing. “He’s gone.”
“He’d better not be fucking gone, goddamn it, he’d better not be.” Sol’s anger vies with disbelief: Ag can’t have just left. Not like that, slinking off into the night with nary a word to no one. Ag is his brother. He knew that they were in a tight spot and a brother always has your back. Sol, himself, wouldn’t have left his brother, fool that Ag is, even. Their mama hadn’t raised them like that. Family is family. “No, he didn’t,” Sol repeats, a bit more weakly.
“He did, Sol, now be quiet.” Alexander is shivering from his fever, sweaty cold. Everything has a slightly surreal tinge to it, as if he’s still half-dreaming. He’d watched Ag walk off the train a few stations back, though; that, he knew, was real. Really, he can’t blame the boy, when it comes down to it.
This boy Sol reminds Dr Potter of himself, the way he was when he was that age. Loud, stupid, always at odds with the world he was trying to make his place in. Trying on this persona and that, seeing where he fit. Afraid, really, he knows now, afraid that he wouldn’t. Sol thinks he’s a man, that drinking and cursing and fighting make him one, but Alexander knows he’s only a boy still. Sol will have to learn the difference soon enough. Maybe, Dr Potter thinks, if and when he does, he will make better choices than one Alexander Potter ever did. Assuming Sol lives that long. His reveries are interrupted by another long, painful fit of coughing.
Oliver watches Dr Potter, worried. The sickness is accelerating, and Alexander looks to be falling apart. Just now, Oliver doesn’t much care that Ag Rideout has left; his greater concern is that Alexander isn’t even going to make it to Portland, much less find a way to end this thing, from the look of him. And he’s the one in charge, he’s the clever one. They need him. Oliver himself feels far from well, going short on the Salt, rationing their last bottles as they were, but his own illness is nowhere near what Alexander looks to be suffering. The Salt is still keeping Oliver together but it’s doing little for Alexander. That’s clear. He wonders just how long Alexander has been keeping the extent of his true condition a secret, these last months, whether the coughing and sore guts and aches have ever really been from booze and opium at all, from the cold and the wet weather. Death is catching up with him. How did I not see that before? Oliver thinks. Maybe he had, though; maybe he had and just refused to admit it to himself.
When Sol comes stomping up the aisle again, Oliver reaches out a hand and grabs his arm, pulling him down to the seat. Sol struggles for a second before giving it another thought, seeing the look in Oliver’s eyes. “Just shut up for a minute, boy,” Oliver suggests. “We need to let the doctor think.”
Sol’s fury is inwardly wilting, though outwardly he’s still red-faced and tense. Ag’s departure, now that he understands that that is in fact what has really happened, seems to drain him, deflate him, as if his brother had taken the larger chunk of Sol’s own courage away when he’d skulked out into the night. For the first time since Baker City, Sol wonders: what am I doing? Just a few hours before, it had seemed so clear: they’d get to Portland, find Elizabeth, kill Lyman Rhoades and this Hedwith fellow, and be on their way. Even with Dr Potter and Oliver’s concerns, it seemed, to Sol at least, a sure thing. They had the weight of righteousness on their side, after all, but Sol is now beginning to get a hint that, in the real world, maybe righteousness doesn’t mean a goddamn thing, not when you’re put in opposition to that which is stronger and meaner than you are. What the fuck am I doing?
They’re only a stop or two from Portland now, and Sol wonders if he should just get off the train when next he can and work his way back eastwards, try to find his brother and either beat him or thank him, or perhaps some combination of the two. Even though Sol had slept fairly well this last night, worn out from all that has happened, he feels exhausted again at the thought of what lays before him, both the choice he now faces about what he should do and the knowledge of what it will take to accomplish it, either way. He realizes that he doesn’t even know Elizabeth McDaniel, after all. Is he that much of a dunce? It doesn’t make sense to go chasing after her like a moonsick calf, maybe get gutted or shot, for a girl that doesn’t even seem to have the time of day for him. But he can’t back out now, can he? He’d never be able to live with himself. Or could he? Forgetting can be pretty easy, if you put your mind to it. Goddamn it, Ag, he thinks, I can’t do this by myself. Hell, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do.
Dr Potter waves Oliver and Sol closer. Most of the night, in between bouts of fever, he’d been planning. They’ll need to get in quietly. Getting out doesn’t really matter, after all, at least for him and, to a lesser degree, Oliver, who can maybe hang on a while longer. Alexander knows he himself doesn’t have much more time: now that he’s close to the end, his body appears to have decided to completely fucking rebel on him. But maybe they can get Sol and the girl out, though. After they do the rest of what he’s come to do. Just maybe. One thing at a time.
“Now, listen,” Alexander says, looking at Oliver and Sol, trying to stifle another cough. “I think I might have an idea.”