Traveler trilogy Book 2.
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, however, when Francis S...
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At last, the day of time travel dawned. To minimize disruptions to Sadie and Hiram, they left in the dead of night to drive to Valentine. Naomi, Charles Smith's wife, offered to care for the two children in addition to her own son, a boy about Sadie's age named Hosea, as they traveled and in the unlikely event they didn't come back from the past at all.
Jackson drove the ranch truck with his sister in the shotgun seat. Arthur, Francis, and Charles were left to squeeze into the back, with Arthur in the middle between the two men. It was the first time he'd seen Charles in a while, but now was not the time to catch up. There was work to do.
The moon was the only light on the landscape for miles. It reflected its silvery, almost liquid light off the rocks of the mountains in the valley, and the cliffs near the Dakota River and Caliban's Seat as they drove. In spite of the lateness of the hour, Arthur was not tired at all. Rather, he sat in the darkness, listening to the hum of the truck's engine in silence.
Behind the truck bumped a horse trailer that carried Cheyenne. Arthur still stubbornly insisted they bring her along, much to Francis' chagrin. Even Charles thought it was a bad idea, but they'd given in eventually.
Speaking of Charles, Arthur was glad to see him again, in spite of the circumstances. There was no one else Arthur would have rather gone back to 1899 with, for he and Charles shared a bond stronger than blood because of those days. In a way, no one else except Charles understood what it was like to live the last days of the Van Der Linde gang. Sure there were people like Sandy and Jackson who'd made it their entire life's mission to understand those events in history, but they had not felt it, as Arthur and Charles had. They had not seen Dutch's eyes growing more and more maniacal as the days passed. They had not felt the warm sting of air as bullets fired from Pinkerton guns flew by inches from their heads. In Arthur's case, they had not felt what it was like to keep fighting when everything hurt and he could barely breathe from his ruined lungs.
Charles and Arthur had never spoken about this bond, but each of them nevertheless acknowledged its existence. When Charles, Naomi, and Hosea arrived at the ranch a few hours ago, Arthur and Charles had not even bothered to utter a word of greeting. They had only to meet each other's gaze, and Arthur knew. The calm, somber fear in Charles' eyes was the exact same terror that had been welling up in Arthur since Francis burst into their kitchen with news of his blunder. They were the only two who understood just how volatile of a situation they would be entering.
Arthur chanced a glance at Charles from the corner of his eye. He stared out the window, looking out over the Heartlands, with a faraway look of deep thought on his face. Like Arthur, he too was being forced to face his demons as the truck drove closer and closer to Valentine.
In stark contrast, Tori and Francis were fast asleep. Good, Arthur supposed. Let them sleep. Rest would be hard to come by in the coming months, especially for Tori. Being pregnant and traveling back in time to the pre-antibiotic age had to be stressful, not to mention the urgency of their mission making things worse. Best they slept now, while they still could.
