Traveler trilogy Book 2, updates every Friday!
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, h...
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Jenny awoke to the sound of arguing. Normally, she slept curled up between Mrs. Adler and Mary-Beth over at the girls' wagon, but both women had managed to rise before her today. She lay alone, and she groaned and put her pillow over her head to muffle both the sunlight in her eyes and the grating tone of Susan Grimshaw shouting at Tilly.
The argument ended as soon as it began, but Jenny was already too awake to fall back to sleep. It was mid-morning by now anyway, and she had a headache. Unfortunately, she'd lain awake for a while last night with a bottle of whiskey and drank nearly the whole thing in the company of Bill Williamson and John Marston. Bill she detested almost as much as Micah, but John was a decent man.
Groaning, she got to her feet and hobbled forward on cold, bare feet towards the chuck wagon fire, where she knew Pearson usually kept a pot of coffee in the mornings. She was just straightening up from pouring herself a cup when she caught sight of Arthur standing near her with his own steaming cup and a freshly-rolled cigarette pressed between his lips.
"Heard you and a couple of fellers had you some fun last night," Arthur joked, halfway grinning at her as he blew smoke from his nostrils. "I heard you three young idiots carryin' on until almost four in the mornin'. Ain't a one of us that got a lick of sleep."
Jenny felt herself blushing as she stepped back from the coffee pot. She supposed they'd been loud, but she had also been too drunk to care at the time. "Sorry," she said softly. "I just... I needed to blow off some steam. I'm just so worried about Mac. We should have heard from him by now, and the longer we go without him coming back, the more I worry that he's captured or in jail or... or worse."
"Try to keep up hope," Arthur said gently, handing her his cigarette. Jenny took a long draw on it and then handed it back to him, tilting her head back to blow the smoke into the bright, cloudless sky.
"What hope is there?" Jenny whispered sadly. "We lost Karen and Davey. Sean too, and Micah and Lenny have been gone for a suspiciously long time as well after they rode ahead on the way down from the mountains."
"There's more hope than you think," Arthur replied. "Trelawney showed up yesterday in Valentine and told us he'd found Sean in Blackwater. I'm ridin' out to Great Plains today to meet up with him and Charles and Javier, and we're gonna rescue Sean from the bounty hunters that's holdin' him prisoner."
Jenny's breath caught in her throat and she took a sip cautiously from her coffee cup to slow the shaking of her hands. "Just Sean?" she asked breathlessly. "Did Trelawney say anything about Mac?"
Arthur shook his head. "No. I don't think he stuck around that town very long after we left. They may have Mac and it turns out he just didn't see him when he saw Sean." Clearly deciding he was done with his coffee, Arthur took one more sip and then dumped half of the remaining cup into the dirt. He wasn't one to like too many grounds in the bottom. Jenny always thought it was wasteful of him to be such a snob about his coffee, but she didn't let it bother her.
