The office was well-appointed, if a little spartan in style, two guest chairs before a heavy wooden desk, one of them occupied. The clock on the wall made itself known with insistent ticks, ones that filled Agent Milton's many pauses. He paused whenever he stopped to sit at the desk, whenever he stood again, roamed around, his shoes on the ceramic floor clicking off-time to the clock.
"I'm glad you came to us, I know it couldn't have been easy for you.
"If it makes you feel any better, Miss Nilsen talked to us, too. We picked her up not long after you all hit the bank, but she changed her mind. 'Course, we didn't know what we had, then, even though we were certainly looking.
"She just looked like a little angel to us, all beaten up. That pitiful arm wrapped up in cloth. Another lost girl fallen in with you miscreants. She didn't even have that famous knife of hers.
"Probably shouldn't be telling you that even we make our mistakes, but there was one; it was only after she walked away that we did some digging, realized the Butcher of Rio Bravo had been right under our noses. Everyone's heard the name, you know, but few know what she did to earn it. It adds to her mystique, as I'm sure she figured out. She wasn't any cold-hearted killer, just a young girl in a family of hardworking immigrants on a wagon to the promised west."
Milton thumbed open a file and slid an old photograph across the desk, tapping the likeness of a small blonde girl on the fringe of a large, blond family, the father in a three-piece suit even in the desert climate depicted in the photo. Tine herself was blurred, children seldom still enough to sit through the long exposure times of photos back then. But the shock of white hair was there, the impish expression. "Her father was a smith, trying to ply his trade in America. They worked on farms, mostly, whoever would take them."
Tick. Tick. Tick.
"A gang of highwaymen slaughtered them all, save sweet little Tine. She was placed in servitude to them that killed her family, at their hideout in Fort Mercer. Suffered years of beatings, worse, as I'm sure you can imagine, lamb in a wolves' den like that." Milton smiled to himself.
"Despite it all she stayed a docile little thing, according to the witness we finally found. The men even taught her to use a gun so she could hunt for the camp, and she never once turned it on them.
"But one day, she was handed a knife to chop some vegetables for dinner, and instead she massacred those boys, every last one she got her hands on. Something must've snapped in her. The law that came up after hearing the screams just thought she'd escaped the carnage.
"The newspapers called her the Angel of Rio Bravo, pictures of her sweet face were posted all over the state." Milton slid a yellowed newspaper across the table with ginger fingers, the edges disintegrating. A doll-like teenager stared hauntingly from the front page, blonde hair wisped around her face. ANGEL OF RIO BRAVO RESCUED read the headline.
"Eventually, she escaped the orphanage they took her to on a stolen horse, and she's been on the lam ever since, carving up the five states with that damned knife. The papers eventually changed their tune, Angel for Butcher."
Milton laid another paper atop the first one, this one with Tine's familiar wanted poster sketch, her likeness squinting meanly outward, the headline TWO SLAIN - BUTCHER OF RIO BRAVO STILL AT LARGE screaming from the top. He pointed at the headline, grunted. "It's the name we want. Make an example with a big public hanging, all the papers there.
"Like I said, everyone's heard of the Butcher of Rio Bravo. Same as most everyone's heard yours; that daring Sisika escape really clinched it."
Tick. Tick.
"Don't feel so bad. More of your people talk to us than you think. We talked to a Miss O'Shea in Saint Denis, but she gave us nothing and we couldn't tie her to anything, especially now, with her connections.
"Mr. Matthews proved disappointing when he said he could get the Butcher to us the first time around." Tick. "Well, you know how that turned out for him." Milton trailed off, looking out the window, before whirling back, his face vindictive.
"You've got a family, don't you? People counting on you. Don't be stupid." He slid a final paper, Tine's wanted poster, across the desk, where it was picked up by a trembling hand, swathed in gold rings.
"I can get you the Butcher," Dutch said, his voice bordering on a croak.
Milton smiled for a moment, but his mouth returned to a grim line as if by rote. "And Morgan and Marston?"
Dutch's eyebrows furrowed dangerously and he rose partway in his chair. "That weren't the deal."
Milton only laughed as Dutch became latently aware of the other agents surrounding him, another wolves' den.
"You're the biggest prize of all, Van der Linde. You're in no position to negotiate." He waited until Dutch collapsed back into his seat, holding his head in his hands. "Surely you understand. We can't have folks shooting up state prisons, rustling sheep, robbing trains and stages all over the country."
There was another pause, the clock ticking its passage. Dutch's chest deflated, he curled inward in the chair, peeling the fingers from his face.
"But the rest of us get to live?"
"Yes," Milton nodded. "If you keep your noses clean."
The clock continued to tick, but it might as well have stopped. Dutch heard nothing but his next damning word, reverberating in his own ears.
"Yes."
YOU ARE READING
The Angel Butcher of Rio Bravo: An RDR2 Story
Fanfiction[ Arthur Morgan / John Marston x OC love triangle ] "Let me be sweet to you," she murmured, nuzzling into his neck. "I'm always giving you such a time, aren't I?" * Tine Nilsen, known outside of the law as the Butcher of Rio Bravo, is a fearsome me...
