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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Jenny and Arthur rode together through the forested mountains of Ambarino, up towards the Wapiti Indian Reservation.
Up here, the air was crisp and clean and cold, like a razor-sharp dagger made of pure ice. The trees hadn't begun to turn colors yet, but as most of them were evergreen, Jenny wasn't surprised. It was colder up here than it was in Roanoke Ridge, and Arthur wore a thick, warm coat made of white buffalo skin over his usual piebald buckskin vest and elkskin chaps. It didn't look like it was doing much to help him, though. His skin was as pale as a sheet, and he hugged his coat around himself for dear life.
"You okay?" Jenny asked him quietly as they rode. "You don't talk much anymore. In some ways, you're almost a completely different person than the one you were before you got lost in Guarma."
He shook his head. "I... I'm not, really," he said at last in a sad, raspy voice. "I'm the same bastard I always was, and that right there is the problem."
"How do you mean?" She patted Moondancer's neck gently as they rode slowly side by side.
"I see things differently, but it doesn't change who I am," he replied. "The things I've done, the people I've killed. You know better than most because you've done those sorts of things too."
"Murder, do you mean?" She scoffed. "All the people I've killed either deserved it or were trying to shoot me first."
"Stealin' from folk too," he said. "Like we stole from the Downes family and so many others who didn't have a pot to piss in. It's the opposite of what Dutch always said we should be."
Jenny raised an eyebrow. "Who're the Downes family?"
Arthur's face darkened, and he hung his head. "No one. Just forget I said anythin'."
They were quiet for a minute longer. The wind in the pines and the creak of their saddles beneath them were the only things that could be heard.
Detesting the quiet, Jenny said at last, "What do you think we should do about Eagle Flies?"
Arthur shrugged. "I'd hoped Rains Fall had some ideas," he replied. "But if he don't know what to do, I don't really, either. Eagle Flies seems like a good kid, just real angry with a lot of hate and hurt in his heart." He sighed. "You and him both are sort of that way, I guess. Reminds me of how I used to be when I was about your age."
"What, angry?"
"Yes," said Arthur. "You're what, twenty-three? Twenty-four? That's about the age I was when..." His voice trailed off. "Look, Jenny, I care too much about you to let you waste your life in anger like I did."
"What makes you think I've got a life left to waste?" she rebutted, looking up at him. "You may be dying because you're sick, but I'm dying because my soul is broken. I don't... I can't go on like this much longer. Micah's never going to face consequences for what he did to me, and I can't live in a world that tolerates such injustices."
