Arthur Morgan did not intend to survive when he gave his hat to John Marston and stayed behind to gain his redemption. As he crawled towards his final resting place, he never intended to wake up again.
But he does wake up. Thanks to time travelers F...
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1885
Dearest Mary,
I apologize for my silence these past few months. Been a pretty rough go of it for me, and I have been very busy. It's a long story, and one I would like to tell in person, if you will have me. I have thought of you often since your letter, and if you aren't married just yet, I would like to meet and just talk about things. If you are able, I currently reside in Bear Glen, North Elizabeth. It isn't too far by train and stagecoach from your father's farm. Seeing you would make me a very happy man.
Yours,
Arthur Morgan
Arthur set down his pencil and looked at his work in the warm, golden glow of a kerosene lamp. Eliza's hands rested gently on his shoulders, and she read the letter as he wrote it, there at a desk in her house in Bear Glen.
"It's a little formal for you," Eliza admitted, "but then your writing style is very fluent and eloquent compared to the colloquial way you speak."
Arthur raised an eyebrow at her.
"You talk like a hillbilly but your writing is like poetry," Eliza clarified, bending down slightly to kiss him on the cheek and then immediately retreating to a wooden armchair near the fireplace on the cabin's farm wall. She winced as she walked, and her gait was more of a waddle. The baby would come any day now, and Arthur could tell she was more miserable than she let on.
As for him, he had finally worked up the courage to write to Mary. Eliza assured him she didn't mind, and in fact she was even looking forward to meeting Mary someday herself, given that Arthur thought so highly of her. But truthfully, putting his thoughts to pen seemed an insanely daunting task to Arthur, one that taking care of Eliza seemed to give him a good excuse to ignore.
She needed him more and more these days. Everything hurt, from Isaac kicking her constantly in the ribs to the sharp pains from her joints and swollen feet, to the ache of her back and hips when she stood for too long. She wasn't on her feet much, but remained in very good spirits, or at least it seemed to Arthur.
He usually took care of hunting down their dinner while she made it into some sort of soup or stew she could cook easily and not have to get up constantly to tend. Arthur did most of the cleaning as well because standing for too long was painful for her, and he usually washed their dinner dishes while she did tasks like mending clothing and preparing their bed for sleep.
Arthur also did most of the farm work and ran errands in town for her. It was too late to plant her garden by the time he got it built, but it was at least there for next spring. Although, he considered planting her some turnips, carrots, broccoli, and other things that would grow well in the fall if they weren't too busy with the baby by then.
He also tended the livestock. Eliza disliked cattle and didn't trust herself to handle them by herself when Arthur inevitably had to leave again, so he'd bought her goats instead: a very smelly billy goat she'd promptly named Ulysses, and two nannies. A couple of goats gave just as much milk as a cow, and they were smaller and easier to manage. They also kept the property clean of weeds and could produce babies that could be sold as another source of income or killed for meat.
