The Angel Butcher of Rio Bravo: An RDR2 Story

viii. The ash tree

CW: I won't be making any further warnings in this story, so this is it: smut ahead. If that's not your thing, no hard feelings! ✌🏻💕

John.

John crouched in the bushes lining the train tracks; he, and Sean and Charles next to him, briefly illuminated by the train engine's headlamp. Beyond them, standing on a stolen oil tank parked on the tracks was Arthur, holding a rifle aloft. Separately, together; all the men were praying the train would stop.

John needed this robbery to work. With the exception of his sojourn out to Six Point Cabin, he'd been sitting mostly idle for weeks while the stitches mended his face anew; as if the gang would let him forget about it.

A week after their failed search for Colm O'Driscoll, John had been watching Jack play by the fire while Abigail finished some mending work. Sean, nursing a hangover, ambled over and sunk to his knees in the dirt next to Jack, exclaiming, "What's the wean got? Show Uncle Sean."

"It's my trains," Jack explained, sitting up so Sean could better see how the boy carefully paraded the wooden cars, attached by a length of twine, in a loop in the dirt.

Sean grinned. "You've got quite a track, there, but what if-" Sean seized a large rock, and put it in the train's path. "-this happened?"

Jack paused the train, now confronted with the rock. He looked to Sean and back to the rock, uncertain. "Crash?"

"Yes, my boy, crash!" Sean was gleeful, and encouraged Jack's hand forward with the train in it to bump against the rock, making dramatic explosion noises with his mouth. Jack giggled, backed the train up, and brought it forth again, prompting even more ridiculous sounds from Sean.

John was about to admonish them both for the ruckus, but witnessed their play first hand. If a train didn't want to crash... "That's it." He murmured to himself, scribbling frantically in his notebook.

"What's it?" Sean asked, looking up from the make-believe carnage before him.

"Never you mind," John replied, not looking up from the page he was writing on; the words oil tank, secluded track, first class carriage.

A pronounced, disgusted scoff pulled John from his writing. Abigail stood over Jack, swatting at the dirt on the child's pants and shirt. "You're letting him run this filthy train all over his clothes, John! You couldn't have kept an eye on him for ten goddamn minutes?"

Already he could see Sean smirking behind her, and his blood boiled, hating to be shouted down in front of camp. "I'm working, Abigail!"

"I'm working, John, to keep this child clean and fed. You're just-" she gestured at John's lap, the notebook still lain open in it. "-scribbling and drawing pictures."

"They're words," he said, unkindly, holding up the book to show her, knowing her inability to read was a sore spot. "See? Train robbery?" He jabbed his finger at the letters and her face fell.

"God damn you, John Marston." Abigail picked up Jack and held the boy to her, and John stormed off, sick of being woefully inadequate for fatherhood and equally sick that everyone in the gang was privy to it.

He huffed through the denser forest at the northern edge of their camp, ducking under low hanging branches and wading through clusters of ferns, disrupting a couple of squirrels in their hiding places. He clenched his fists and felt the bite of his fingernails in his palms. They'd grown long again; Abigail usually trimmed them.