Chapter Text
Stadium lights blared hot and bright over the sand of the arena, the hum and buzz of the crowd nearly drowning out the sound of the commentators. Arthur Morgan sat wedged between a bouncing Karen and an ever nervous Abigail, as below them in the chutes, John leant over the back of a large grey bull.
“- mean mug on this feller, and I ain’t talkin’ about the bull!”
The commentator continued to rattle off mostly-bullshit facts about Marston and the bull he was about to dance with. Behind the sound of the microphone, the beat of a pop-country song thumped against the seats of the stands.
Arthur watched Abigail’s grip tighten on the hat in her lap, John’s face obscured by the shiny plastic of his helmet as he swung a leg over the wide ribs of the bull.
Arthur’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
He frowned at the front of his shirt. The near-sum-total of people who had his phone number were either sitting around him in the stands, or below loading chutes. No one had time for text messages between broncs and bucking bulls.
He fished it from his pocket anyway, flipping it open. The screen lit up with a single text message.
‘Please tell me you’re not part of Dutch Van Der Linde’s gang.’
Arthur’s frown deepened. There was important context here, and he was missing a hell of a lot of it. He looked at the name on the top of the message, which didn’t help much. He’d put the number in as ‘Guy on the trail- Charles?’
Whatever the hell that meant.
Below him, John was clinging to the back of the grey Brahman bull as it flung itself into the ring. Sand sprayed around the cloven hooves, as the horned head went down. The back legs flew up, near vertical, tail flying. The bull spun and leapt, John’s chaps flapping and his free hand waving above him.
“Horns like the devil and twice as mean,” the commentator described. It seemed an apt description, as the hundreds of pounds of muscle twisted through the air like a ballerina. John went flying after a few seconds of battle with gravity, thudding into the ground with a cloud of sand. Immediately, the bull was distracted; the duck-and-weave game of the bull-fighting rodeo clowns began, Sean’s orange head among them, as John rolled to his feet and dashed for the side of the ring.
Abigail let out a long held breath.
Arthur looked down at his phone, but there were no further messages. He glanced around the ring. It was a smaller gathering than some of the other venues they frequented on the circuit, but not small enough to make out any faces.
Except…
He recognised the shape of the man. Sitting in the top of the seats opposite, alone. Broad shoulders, and dark skin. Still wearing blue. Keen eyed enough to spot Arthur in the crowd.
Arthur had met him by sheer, almost impossible, coincidence. Two lone men, on solo cross-country horse treks. Riding in opposite directions. They’d spent a freezing cold night together in the shelter of an abandoned farm, high in the mountains during a storm. All he’d gotten was a phone number and a first name, and yet ‘Charles’ had remained a memory that haunted him. There had been times that Arthur almost convinced himself that he’d made up the quiet, knowledgeable wanderer. That he’d been just a figment of a lonely man’s imagination.
Yet here he was, apparently. Across the stretch of sand, asking Arthur a question to which he had the wrong answer to.
‘It’s not so simple as that.’ Arthur texted back after some deliberation. His fingers slipped across the buttons, keying wrong letters and setting him two steps back for every one forward. Damn thing. If folks didn’t worry about him so much, he’d have thrown it away. When he finally hit send, and pocketed the phone, he was immediately handed a paper plate of food. He looked up to see Tilly, as she clambered between Arthur and Karen to the seat behind them.
“Pearson special,” she said with a smile.
He couldn’t quite decide what was on the plate, but it smelt good. And presumably, it passed food safety standards, seeing as Pearson’s food truck was still in business. How that business was doing, Arthur wasn’t so sure. The proprietor spent most of his time with the ‘gang’, drinking.
Arthur had always wanted to describe Dutch Van Der Linde’s odd collection of folks as a family. Yet in recent years, perhaps ‘gang’ was a more suitable term. Times had certainly changed, and the people along with it.
“What’s got you all sour?” Karen asked with a nudge of her elbow.
“Nothin’,” Arthur grunted back. He stuck the plastic fork in his mouth, trying to figure out if he’d missed the buzz of another text. Maybe it was just the loud guitar track playing as a poor-tempered bull took offence to the narrow confines of the chute. John had been lucky not to draw that one.
When his phone did vibrate a few minutes later, it took a handful of seconds for his brain to catch up; too caught up in watching a magnificent roan bull fling a sticky young bull rider around the ring. He hung on, which was some miracle, and after the sound of the buzzer, he flung himself from the animal’s broad back, nearly landing on his feet in the sand.
“Who the hell is that?”
“No idea,” Abigail said beside him. From the loudspeaker, the commentator called the end of the round. The big roan bull trotted out of the ring like he owned it, as the crowd around them fell into loud conversation.
“Let’s go find John,” Abigail added, hand on his elbow as she stood.
Arthur followed her, trying not to tread on people's toes as they clambered from the stands. He tugged his phone from his pocket once they reached the stairs, following Abigail down.
‘I’d be interested to know how it is, then.’ was Charles' reply. Arthur tried, and failed, to read the tone behind the words. Did he know Arthur’s friends? It didn’t seem so likely, though being in the same place as Charles again also hadn’t seemed likely.
‘I’ll buy you a drink then,’ Arthur texted back. In the time it took to do so, he lost Abigail in the crowd.
She appeared suddenly to his left, grabbing his elbow and pulling him away from the stands.
“Come on!”
The area around the chutes was a seething mass of hats and boots. A first aid tent set up nearby patched up the would-be champions, and the unlucky few who hadn’t been quick on their feet. Arthur and Abigail waited on the edge, trying to spot John in the crowd. He appeared eventually from the mass, helmet tucked under his arm, still covered in sand.
Abigail gave him a terse once over as he approached, before jamming his hat over his tousled hair, and kissing his cheek.
“Good riding, Marston.” Arthur thumped him on the back, coming away with a hand covered in sand. More showered onto the ground.
John shrugged, righting his hat and his hair. Arthur knew him well enough to catch the thin twitch of a self-satisfied smile across his scarred face.
“Hell of a bull,” he said as they ducked through the crowd. It was getting hard to move about, as people thronged to the bar and food trucks before the next round started. Arthur kept an eye out for the mysterious Charles, though he didn’t appear. At least, not where Arthur could see him. He didn’t seem the type for crowds.
John and Abigail headed straight back for the stands, where the rest of their friends and family were gathered. Arthur slowed behind them, not following them up the stairs. He caught John’s eye as he ascended, and waved him off. Tugging his phone from his pocket again, more times consecutively than in all the prior years of owning it, he opened a new message.
‘Maybe tomorrow,’ Charles said. ‘So long as you aren’t running out before morning.’