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September 1872 Word Count: 4.9k Trigger Warnings: alcohol, foul language, reference to torture and death, poisoning.

September 5, 1872 Sarras City, Kansas

A wind-blasted, two-story clapboard approximation of a respectable establishment on the corner of the main street and the river extension road, The Pig & Whistle looked and sounded as if what was happening on the inside would blow it over before anything else leveled it.

Middle of a Thursday afternoon and the racket kicked up by the degenerates inside hollering and scuffing their chairs was audible from the hitching post. First Sergeant Cole Sullivan could not imagine what would compel a person to spend time in such a place if one did not have to. Were it not for the blaring sunlight, Sullivan might have thought the hour to be midnight.

This has happened before.

A wooden porch with scarred pillars wrapped around the outside of the building, shading a pair of old-timers as they sat in their rockers watching the street. They paid no attention to Sullivan as he stepped inside. Other than a glance to confirm neither man carried a weapon they aimed to use as he passed, Sullivan extended them the same courtesy.

Folks who crossed the Mississippi River and chose to stay did so owing to a deep disdain for their motherland. They saw the West as a sovereign nation, where the U.S. had a waning and unsustainable presence. A man did not have to respect federal authority, nor did he have to respect the military. Men out here barely respected each other.

Sullivan's entrance cut a rectangle of sunlight into the dust and the tobacco smoke; the gloom of the interior doubled once the door finished swinging shut behind him. No one had opened the windows, nor would they. Windows kept even more dust from entering the air, and kept it out of their drinks and their lungs. It would be foolish to open the windows, which might have allowed in ample light had it been cleaned sometime in the last year.

The bartender was a tired man, well into adulthood, whose dull blond hair was beginning to thin. With translucent skin that allowed one to read the map of veins in his forehead and the backs of his hands, he could have been a specter attached to the place. Though the bar's stools stood empty, the saloon was as full at two in the afternoon as Sullivan might imagine it to be six hours from now. He looked up, read Sullivan's uniform and rank, and ducked his head down to the dishes he was scrubbing his way through. Figured from looking at him Sullivan wasn't here to drink and lost interest again.

Sullivan wore the field uniform of the United States Army, blue trousers and frock coat with tall brown riding boots he had had to requisition with his own funds, and a wide-brimmed brown hat he had had since 1855 that had somehow survived all this time. Cheap linen and well-made leather: everything he could possibly need in a firefight on a gun belt around his hips. Gold piping around his chevron and spurs on his boots, the Peacemaker on his right hip and saber on his left, identified him as cavalry if the rest of the uniform failed to make itself clear.

Before stepping out of the doorway, Sullivan mapped the place. It was a reflex at this point, learning and memorizing a space in case of a later outbreak of violence. He had been in the Army too long to exist in an unfamiliar place without thinking of it as a potential battleground.

The Pig & Whistle was small and densely furnished. On its rectangular ground floor were ten round tables and chairs in two rows, parallel to the bar off to the right. The clock on the back wall proclaimed the time to be 3:11. Eight stools stood before the well-stocked if cluttered bar, with two more tucked into the back corner. A mirror mounted behind the bar gave the place the disorientating illusion of harboring more activity than it did. The stairwell ran from one end of the bar to the other, and the landing upstairs wrapped around the opposite length of the building as the porch. Private rooms for those whose appetites took them out of polite company, such as it may have been.

In the left back corner of the room, the gamblers were working.

They had picked up and stacked one of the round tables atop its neighbor in the right-hand row, allowing more bodies to squeeze in around the same table. Six of them, including the dealer, were able to sit at the same table, with more room for those who weren't dealt in. Those men were stood tossing down side bets or passing around a rolled cigar that like as not did not only contain tobacco.

Sullivan spared their bunch a glance, confirmed he did not recognize any among their number, and walked to the bar. There he took a proper survey of the men in the room.

Besides the bartender, one other body haunted the bar. A sun-cured man in sun-bleached overalls, hair and beard both long and white, sat in the back corner and watched the proceedings. Blue eyes twinkled in the dust. At his wrist, a large stein of beer. He planned to stay a while.

That man might have seen or heard something. Might also have drunk it away. Could have been eighty years old, easy, if he was seventy.

A dozen gamblers were at or around the table in the back, the majority of an age one might expect a man to have sorted his affairs and thus had the time to dedicate to gambling in a dusty saloon in the middle of the workday. The circuit didn't pass west of the river, anymore. None of them would talk to him. They'd let him buy them a round, but they wouldn't talk.

One still boasted a good amount of dark curly hair, its state of whitening indeterminate from such a distance in such low light. He was the only man in the place wearing a suit, light in both color and fabric, tailored to his lean frame. Most of the other men were down to their shirts and trousers, while some were held together by vests. This man was the only one wearing a jacket indoors. Former military or mercenary, Sullivan would have guessed from that alone, but that he did not look like a man who would join the former without a letter of conscription, nor one who would obey orders even then.

The stranger leaned against the wall, right boot planted behind its knee, fiddling with a pocketknife. None in his cohort reacted to the knife's presence. He flicked it open with a thumb, smoothed it shut again, flicked it open. Danced it back and forth along his knuckles. The blade appeared too dull to be good for anything other than cutting butter. Meant he had gotten all the practical use out of it he was going to get and this was its sole purpose.

Sullivan did not mean to catch his gaze, but the stranger did, and inspected it.

Movement from the corner of Sullivan's eye reeled it back in. The bartender stood straight and approached his stool, leaving the stranger in the darkest corners of Sullivan's peripheral vision where he belonged.

"Everything alright, soldier?" the bartender asked.

"Afternoon. My name's Sullivan, I'm with the U.S. Army Tenth Cavalry up at Fort Sarras. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I'm looking for information and was hoping you might be able to assist me in that endeavor."

"Sergeant!" called the old man from his corner. "You here about that derailment a few days past?"

"I am."

"Buchanan Yeats, sir. Folks 'round here call me Buck. And I bet you ain't gettin' much from folks 'round here, are ya?"

"Based on a guess," Sullivan asked, "or an observation?"

"Little'a both," he said with a wink. "Reckon that'll be the way of it for a while. Folks are 'fraid."

"Must be a reason why. No one's in any hurry to rope me in. Can't help if nobody tells me what's going on."

He did not hear the stranger's loafers on the floor behind him before the man himself appeared between the two stools to Sullivan's left. In an olive green suit, a striped blue dress shirt beneath, Sullivan could not help but notice he had not buttoned the top two buttons. The old pocketknife was out of sight. His beard was groomed, and his skin was clean. Though almost a head shorter than Sullivan, the energy jangling in him made him feel about twice that taller.

When he reached for his billfold, Sullivan noticed he wore suspenders as well as a belt. Might well not have noticed at all, were he not watching him so closely. It would have embarrassed Sullivan to admit he found him breathtaking, once he got a good look at him. All that admission would have done was plumb the depths of his own loneliness. He did not want to think about how much time had passed since he had touched a man, or been touched, in any manner other than fraternal, or professional. Every other day of his career, he had not had time to think about it.

This day, he did not have time to think about it. The clock on the wall had told him as much. Yet the stranger made him think about it, and what it might be like to have the time to get to know him, before he ever opened his mouth.

Even with hindsight, Sullivan knew there was no world in which he did not want Royston the moment he saw him. Royston would not have to seduce him, in this world or any other. They were doomed before they even knew each others' names.

"Oh thank God you're here," the stranger said to the bartender, clinging to the bar as though it were debris floating in the wake of a shipwreck. Theatrics. The bartender flicked his eyebrows. "Could I trouble you for a whiskey and a bottle of beer? And the same for the—" He read Sullivan's chevron with a glance. "—first sergeant, as well. Please. He must be thirsty."

For the duration of the exchange, the stranger gave Sullivan the chance to take a hard look at his profile. At the flecks of silver in his beard, the equal salting of white among the dark brown of his curls. Small scars obscured by hair betrayed the number of times he'd taken a deep cut in a fight. The knuckles of his right hand were similarly cicatrized.

His eyes absorbed light rather than reflected. When he looked Sullivan straight on, they shone. The stranger liked what he saw, and made no attempt to conceal this.

Oh, no, Sullivan thought, he's handsome.

"You don't look like you're supposed to be here," the stranger said, his smile lopsided. His dialect was purposeful and impossible to pin down. He could have been from anywhere.

Sullivan's traitorous throat was dry. He cleared it.

"And where, may I ask, do you envision me instead?"

As he waited for their drinks, the stranger slid his right knee up onto the stool's seat, bringing his ankle to rest beneath his thigh. He planted his left elbow on the bar, chin in the heel of his hand. Eyes flowed down Sullivan's body and returned with purpose.

Where and how they were standing, neither man could see what the bartender was doing. He let the stranger undress him with his eyes instead of paying attention to what was happening behind him.

"Anywhere else, darling. What brings you into the sorriest excuse for a groggery I've ever had the pleasure of frequenting?"

"We had ourselves a derailment not three days past, as I'm sure you heard."

"Ah. Army business. Well, that sounds messy."

"Quite. And it's the most confounding thing... I'm unable to locate a single person in town who's willing to even speculate on who might've done it."

"You didn't give chase?"

"I had orders not to pursue."

"Oof, I bet that smarted." Before Sullivan could grab the conversation's reins, Royston went on, "Why did they do it? The mayhem? Or was it run-of-the-mill brigandry?"

"Given they absconded with a not insignificant number of horses, I should say it was profit with the mayhem being secondary."

"I bet you don't let much mayhem take place on your watch, do you?"

"Not if I can avoid it."

The stranger grinned. The tips of his cuspids glinted. This was the most exciting thing to happen to him in days.

With a pointed thump, the bartender set down two shot glasses full of a dark amber liquid strong enough to hit the nostrils from arm's length away. One in front of the stranger and one, with less force, in front of Sullivan.

"You sure this is whiskey?" Sullivan asked the stranger as the bartender rummaged for the beers.

"I'm told one eventually becomes accustomed to the smell," the stranger said. He sat up straight and picked up his poison. "To your health, First Sergeant...?"

If he told this man his name, which he had already announced a moment ago. If he told this man his name, that was it. He was done for.

Not telling the man his name wouldn't have saved him. He would have had to walk away. This was the only point in time when he could have walked away and it would do him any good. There is no world, no point in time, in which Cole Sullivan ever walks away from Arthur Royston.

The stranger batted his eyes. Set the shot glass on the sticky bar, and kept waiting even after their beers appeared.

Sullivan sighed and held out his hand to shake. Repeated what he'd told the bartender.

He was done for.

"Are you going to make me work for your Christian name?" the stranger asked as he took Sullivan's hand in his cool, firm grip.

"Well, considering you know my employer, my rank, and my family name, I'd say you have me at a disadvantage, mister."

The stranger's grin turned impish. That moniker had pleased him.

"Royston. Arthur." He released Sullivan's hand. "You dodged my question."

A laugh left Sullivan's throat, unbidden.

"Yes," he said. "Work for it."

Royston swallowed another grin. Picked up his shot glass again. This time, Sullivan did as well.

"To your health, First Sergeant Sullivan."

"And also to yours, Mister Royston."

They tipped the whiskey down their throats with what felt to be the appropriate amount of ceremony. When the backdraft hit him, Sullivan was glad to have a beer to put out the fire.

Royston recoiled from his glass after swallowing, dropping it as if it had burned him. Wheeled on the bartender to ask, "Is it your intention to put more hair on my chest? Shit, man!"

The bartender withheld his response, picked up the glasses, and wiped down the bar where Royston had dropped his. Commenced washing them. That should have struck Sullivan as strange. At the time, it did not. Business was slow today. The man had little to do besides attend to the people parked at his bar. Didn't look like he was trying to destroy evidence.

"I thought that was you," Buck announced.

Royston failed to register the man was speaking, let alone to him.

Buck went on, "Arthur Royston. Well now, that sure does explain what Lon Huston's kickin' up such a fuss about."

Royston did not spit his beer onto the bar, but he came awful close.

"Explain what, now?" Sullivan asked.

Buck said, "You ain't been in town that long, have ya, Sergeant."

"No, sir. Rode in last year."

"Betcha know Tommy Huston though."

"Name's familiar, sure."

"Ah, well, you know the Huston brothers, then."

The brothers were on a bulletin tacked somewhere in the command office. All three of the younger ones had their own separate fliers. The eldest brother and his wife shared their poster, inseparable even in print. Sullivan could recall every detail after staring at it so long. Both of them fierce-eyed and battle-hardened, Delilah tiny and wild-haired, Calvin tall and broad-shouldered, hands clasped as if prepared to meet a firing squad in their photo. Anyone who came for Calvin would have to tangle with Delilah, and Delilah had killed more men than the other three combined. Nothing the brothers did compared to what Calvin and Delilah did, not even the youngest and nastiest of them, not in terms of body count and sustained effort. The brothers were impulsive and short-sighted, but the eldest and his wife had cut down at minimum a man a year since the South fell, all of them blue. Most of them were officers. In recent years, they had lost the luxury of being picky.

It was Calvin and Delilah who Sullivan thought of first. That solved it for him. That's who pried up the rail and made off with eight of the fifty horses onboard. That's who he was looking for.

Sullivan's stomach dropped.

"Oh, Hellfire..."

"Yep!" Buck grinned. "Huston brothers wouldn't be worth half a damn if it weren't for Tommy there, the father, but if'n ya ask me—"

Royston hefted a sigh and rolled his eyes.

"—Cal's the ringleader. Folks say Cal's the one holding the whole operation together, and he wouldn't be worth a damn without Del. Some of the stories I hear tell 'bout Cal and Del make my blood curdle. You know they say Cal died in a prisoner of war camp?"

"Who says that?" Sullivan asked.

"That's what I hear from folks out Georgia way."

"You mean to say Army made a mistake?" Royston asked.

"Why ya think they gotta skin soldiers instead'a nabbin' someone easier to take down?"

"Nervous compulsion. Vendetta. Sexual thrill, instead of bearskin they use human cape for their fireside fuck-rug. Who the hell knows, man?"

"I'm tellin' ya, it's to keep Cal alive. Folks say she signed a contract with the Devil to bring him back, and she pays in skins."

"Do you hear the foolishness you're spouting? They don't gotta do a God-damned thing. I don't skin people alive all the time, and all I use is a knife."

"You skin people?" Sullivan asked.

"Darling, I could never, I'm incredibly squeamish," Royston said with a smile that evaporated the second he turned back to Buck. "That's the part you're leaving out. They're alive when Cal and Del skin them. If you're going to try to scare people, you have to play to the part they're actually afraid of. The Devil has nothing to do with it."

Sullivan believed Royston, and he didn't want to.

"They're alive?"

"Ah, yeah, I always forget that part." Buck took a thoughtful sip of his beer. "Anyway! Del's the one calling the shots with Cal. Tommy's the one who come here first, after he buried the missus. That would've been... summer of sixty-six. Yep. Said the boys would be headed out this way eventually, what with the South going to Hell after the War and all. He wanted 'em to have a place to land when they did. Whole family hates the North after what they been through, and they's runnin' outta places back east where one of 'em ain't got a bounty on his head. Oh, Lon's maddern' a swarm'a hornets at you, Mister Royston."

"Still?" Royston coughed in an attempt to keep his laugh suppressed. "You mean to tell me a good God-fearing Christian boy like Lonnie H. hasn't turned the other cheek yet? It's been..." He counted the years on his right hand. "... four God-damned years, Bucky!"

"If half'a what I heard's true—"

"Which I'm willing to bet it ain't."

"Don't take that bet, Buck!" someone shouted from the smoky back corner.

"—If half'a what I heard's true," Buck said again, "then you're the reason he spent the night in jail in Charleston back in Sixty-Eight and had to learn to shoot left-handed."

"I'll tell you who's the cause of Lon Huston's misfortune. Why, that'd be Lon Huston himself, sir. Nobody told Lon Huston to sit down at that poker table to begin with, so that was his first mistake. Nobody told him to stay in the game after two men who would've dusted my ass on an ordinary night hadn't had preposterously bad luck and folded. In fact, several people told him not to, and he did it anyway. Nobody told him to flip over a table because he lost said round. He was not under duress. I didn't threaten him. He insulted me, refused an honorable challenge to duel, flipped over a table like a child, and disfigured himself. There was no point at which he couldn't walk away."

"He insulted you?" Sullivan asked.

"Called me a motherless cocksucker!"

"... yep, that'd do it."

"Not that it's not true, but then he called me a cheater, and I, sir, do not cheat." He held Sullivan's gaze, waggled his eyebrows, and added, as if Buck were not sat right there watching, "Ever." Then continued on as if he hadn't interrupted himself in the first place, "He didn't need to flip that table over. I needed to poke a hole in his hand to defend myself."

Sullivan didn't know how else to respond, so he laughed a laugh that was equal parts amused and uncomfortable.

"What's funny?" Royston asked, as if they were alone.

"You're a bit of a scoundrel, aren't you?" Sullivan asked.

Royston grinned and took a slow, open-throated swallow of beer.

"Eh," Buck said, a knowing grin sneaking through his wispy cloud of a beard, "Mister Royston, that ain't the way the Hustons see it."

"Lon must have a real hard time seeing half of what he needs to, these days. I'd hardly call him a reliable witness."

"Does Laurence Huston live in town?" Sullivan interrupted.

"Mmm... tell ya the truth, I'd not seen a one of 'em 'til the other day. May well be they've finally come home to roost."

"The other day as in Monday?"

"Yes, sir. That very evenin', the three younger ones rolled into town on foot. Dunno what they did with them white stallions they usually ride. Lon was hollerin' askin' where you were, Mister Royston."

"Oh well now that is interesting," Royston said, coiling as he gave Buck his full attention. "You wouldn't happen to know how he thought to ask that, now, would you?"

"Well... I'd imagine someone told 'em you were comin', Mister Royston."

"Who told him I was coming?"

"That I do not know."

"Well, then why did you start flapping your gums in the first place?"

"Thought it might be relevant to the Sergeant's investigation."

"Bully." Royston deflated and drank down the rest of his beer. "No secrets in this town as long as Army is on the case. I'll remember that."

"If you don't mind me askin', Mister Royston, what did bring you this way? Way I hear tell, you're back into bounty work."

"My, would you look at that! I do mind. Buck, you heard wrong, as usual. What I'm doing out here is none of your concern. I'm passing through, much more expeditiously than originally planned now that I know the entire damned Huston clan is hollering my name up and down the road. Forget what brought me here, I do not intend to do much of anything now that I am here. If I so much as spit in the street, you'll have everyone from here to Saint Louie clacking about it. You're worse than the old women I used to work with at the glass factory."

"Passing through from where?" Sullivan asked.

The creeping tension in Royston's muscles dissolved. He dropped his chin into his palm and said in a tone far sweeter than he'd used on Buck, "Omaha, Nebraska."

Sullivan waited. Royston sighed and sat up straight again.

"I had business there. Not a bounty. The business was of a personal nature, I was not paid for the pleasure of coming to this God-forsaken wasteland, and now that my business is concluded I intend to make for the East Coast with extreme haste."

"May I ask what is on the East Coast?"

"Opportunity, darling. And a fair sight more of it than you'll find in a place like this."

"So you don't intend to tell me where you're going."

The other man's eyes glinted. As if his blood had quickened in recognition of an opponent offering a worthy challenge. One corner of his lips looked ready to smile again.

"Other than that I'm crossing the Mississippi River and returning to U.S. soil, I hadn't thought that far ahead, handsome. I'm open to suggestions. You don't have to run off any time soon, do you?"

Buck cleared his throat and said, "Sergeant Sullivan, you're wastin' your time talkin' to Mister Royston. He'll not be forthcomin' with a man in uniform."

"Excuse you," Royston said. Spun to face him. Did not take his shin off the stool. "You know, it's men like you who've got folks surprised when they learn I do possess table manners and don't run around town—well, folks say a lot of things, and they seem to have an awfully difficult time swallowing the truth if it isn't mixed in with equal parts horseshit. One would think a man of your stature would at least get his facts straight before he started stringin' a whizzer in a saloon in the middle of nowhere, but here we are."

He turned back to Sullivan. Buck wasn't finished.

"Now, hang on a minute..."

"While I appreciate your enthusiasm, Mister Yeats," Sullivan said, raising his voice to be heard and having the effect he intended, "I've no reason to believe Mister Royston won't be forthcoming, other than your say-so. Now, I'm the one standing here talking to him instead of hollering his sins from down the bar, and I believe he's been honest with me. Would you let the man decide if he's going to answer for himself, please?"

No one had ever stared at him in such open awe as Royston did, then. It was not outside the realm of possibility that Royston had never let a man stand up for him as Sullivan just had, let alone a man of authority, such as Sullivan's was.

"Whatever you say, First Sergeant Sullivan," Buck said, holding up his hands. "Just tryin'a help."

"Well. Don't try so hard, huh? If I need a hand, I'll ask for it."

"Hey, Roy!" one of the seated men shouted. "Get your scrawny ass back over here and deal in!"

"Alright!" Royston shouted over his shoulder.

As he leaned back towards Sullivan, his eyes fell. Found the saber on Sullivan's left hip. Royston took a deep breath, looked Sullivan in the eye, and said, voice lowered, "You'll stay a while, won't you? I may be able to learn something from these chuckleheads."

Sullivan almost laughed again.

"If you are able, then the next round will be on me."

Royston winked as he said, "You're on, handsome."

The clock on the back wall read 3:37 as Royston picked up his beer turned and navigated the walk back to the card table with no difficulty. The bartender's eyes latched onto his back. Sullivan was surprised to find the clock ran at all, let alone that the time on its face matched his own watch's.

A warning from his gut. The time was important, and it would not be significant until later. He had missed an event, and its dominoes were falling, and all he could do was bear witness.

"The hell were ya doin' over there?" one of the gamblers hollered as Royston approached.

"Battin' his eyes at the captain," said someone else.

"He's a first sergeant," Royston responded, "and you scoundrels were doing the finger thing without me. Again."

"Damn right we were," said another fellow, "no one wants to bet against you."

"Excuse you, I have never lost at the finger thing."

"That's the point," said the second gambler. "It's a sorry bet to take. Say, I'll pay ya twenty-five bucks to slip up next time."

"One time I slipped up! One! And I haven't been welcome in the great state of Connecticut ever since."

"Who the fuck wants to go to Connecticut?"

"I the fuck wanted to go to Connecticut. In 1851."

"Bullshit!" said yet another man. "I'll give ya thirty."

"It actually offends me that you think me so cheaply bought."

As if in punctuation, the color drained from Royston's face. He set down his beer and wobbled sideways into an empty chair. Watching constellations swirl around his head instead of the room beyond.

"Whoa, kid, you alright?" one of the older men thought to ask.

Royston had nothing in his hands when he came up to the bar. When he spoke to Sullivan, his breath had not reeked of booze. He ordered as if he wanted to ignite something, not drown it. Nothing about the man's countenance suggested he wouldn't be able to handle a shot of whiskey, rotgut or not.

The bartender, meanwhile, had acquired a different breed of pallor. His eyes searched for options now that the consequences of his action were roiling, seeking the nearest point of egress. If he wanted out of there, the bartender would have to jump the counter. He wouldn't make it past the gate on Sullivan's end of the bar if running was his plan. He'd hesitated for too long.

Then in walked Franklin and Laurence Huston, and he wasn't getting out the back way, either.

Doom Metal Love Story

Book 1

Act 1

Death is not a lover. Oh yes he is. — The Road, Cormac McCarthy

Prologue Word Count: 5.2k Trigger Warnings: wartime setting, gun violence, human death and suffering, gore/explicit description of catastrophic injuries, graphic depiction of 18th-century medical procedures, POV character exhibits symptoms of PTSD.

June 30th, 1873 Fort Sarras, Kansas

This has happened before.

This will happen again.

∞

The City gave Erik Hofer no choice but to be here. If Hofer had a choice, conscious or otherwise, he would have chosen, Whichever saves Cole Sullivan.

He stands grappling with this choiceless choice at what may well be the end of his life—as he bleeds from a wound that will not heal, as that place silently screams behind him, a complete absence, everything that ever existed gone from the world, every decision he ever made leading him straight to this one. All of this was inevitable, and all of this could have been avoided.

Two states exist at once. Hofer is, at this moment, not aware of their existence. They cannot co-exist.

In one state, Cole Sullivan dies. Hofer cannot remember what killed him the previous time, or even that a previous time exists. All he knows is he will not allow his best friend to die.

The other state is unstable. In that state, Cole Sullivan lives.

If Erik Hofer does not do what he does next, which would neither be in the man's character nor the City's interests, then Cole Sullivan will die, and they will have to do this all over again.

∞

The two-story hospital at Fort Sarras, Kansas, was well-stocked and sufficiently staffed, both of which its surgeon, Major Erik Hofer, could attribute to its quartermaster and first sergeants' diligence and commitment to their jobs. Even hundreds of kilometers inside what was now enemy territory, waiting for retreat orders from battalion headquarters, Hofer never had to wonder how the Hell they were going to survive out here. They would have to evacuate the neighboring town before they ran out of supplies.

Being well-stocked and sufficiently staffed, Hofer had no excuse not to attend to the mounting pile of paperwork on his desk. Which he did, after rolling and lighting a cigarette. Fatigue had ambushed him, moments ago, and he could neither determine the cause of, nor the remedy for, his headache. As he smoked, he realized he felt the same breed of helpless anticipation as he had when his wife went abed to deliver their first child. Something was about to happen, and he would have no control over it once it began.

First Sergeant Sullivan had been on furlough for all of twelve hours when the door to the hospital burst open. Without thinking, Hofer stood. The fact of the messenger's appearance having to do with Sullivan hollered at him before the door swung closed behind the sapling of a man. After running from the command building at the center of Fort Sarras to the hospital on the opposite side of the parade grounds, the private wanted to keep running until he had delivered the message in hand.

The private knew what would happen if he ran inside Major Hofer's hospital.

"Is Surgeon Hofer here?" Hofer heard the runner ask through the open door.

"Aye," said the orderly, who Hofer imagined was in the middle of changing a catheter, "back in his office. Need somethin'?"

"Orders from Major Ellis. I gotta give 'em straight to Surgeon Hofer."

"Well git on then, what're you talkin' to me for?"

Hofer knew it had to do with Sullivan, and held out hope for the possibility to exist that this time it wouldn't. A year would pass before he would understand how he knew how he knew. He was on his feet and buckling himself into his gun belt before the kid breached the threshold of his office. Orders from Major Ellis meant he would be afield before he knew it.

Decorum demanded the runner knock before he entered the office. Hofer beckoned him in, unlocked his cabinet, and asked, gruffer than he meant to, "What is it, Private?"

"Orders from Major Ellis, sir. Request for medical assistance from outside Catena, Missouri. A civilian found a man matching the First Sergeant's description on the side of the tracks. Says he—"

The paper shook between Nevin's fingers as his eyes moved across the message again. Hofer gave him three seconds to pull himself together, then set his bag on the table. Took three long strides to hold out his own hand and relieve the youth of the burden.

"Major says you're to leave... well, he said five minutes ago, but—"

"Jesus hopped-up Christ," Hofer swore as he read the message again. It didn't make any more sense the second time. "What happened?"

∞

Hofer and the man assigned to escort him, a weary corporal named Reinhard, rode the five kilometers to the Sarras City train station as if the Devil were real and after them, the fastest Hofer had ridden since the War ended. Written orders from Ellis prevented any undue burning of time and secured swift passage for the two men and their mounts. Other than what was written on the message, Hofer had no other details.

Catena station. St. Louis unable to respond due to intense fighting further north. Meet civilian named Westerberg at the station. Transport of severely wounded man matching description of First Sergeant C. Sullivan possible.

Nearly four hours by train, and they had caught the last eastbound. Would have had to requisition a damned stagecoach if they hadn't. This felt fated, and Hofer didn't like it. Few bodies were on the train and fewer stood at the lamp-lit station platform awaiting its arrival five minutes past midnight.

The trapper was short and weathered, with white stubble and a full head of hair gone white though he was no more than a decade older than Hofer. He saw them before they saw him, and he approached in sparse leather gear, moccasins silencing his footfalls.

"You are prepared to depart?" he asked, by way of introduction.

"Where's your mount?" Hofer responded.

"At the gate. I found your man eighty kilometers back."

"Christ, man," Hofer said. "That horse won't make it."

"No shit. I traded her for another. You are both able to ride in the dark?"

They could ride in the dark as much as they could walk and talk at the same time. The corporal led their mounts from the train and prepared their lanterns.

"What was his condition when you left him?"

"Bad, Surgeon. Do not be surprised if he has expired by now. His head was bashed in and I was unable to set the leg. Halfway up the thigh, it's broken."

"Was he conscious?"

"Thanks be to God, no."

"Breathing?"

"When I left him this afternoon, yes."

"Where did you find him?"

"By the tracks. Just north. Someone must have thrown him."

"Tell me you didn't leave him where you found him."

"No! I am not a monster. I brought him to my cabin without incident. If he is still alive he will be warm and not eaten by predators, so either way, bitte, you are welcome, Army man."

Hofer gritted his teeth and prepared for the inevitability of what they would find at the end of the ride—a dead trooper and no idea what had happened to him or who had killed him.

If he could have, Hofer would have flown. Grief planted a sour seed in the pit of his stomach, and he refused to allow it to germinate until he saw Sullivan's corpse. Until then, he was still alive. They had seen each other this morning. This morning he was hale and in good spirits and looking forward to seeing his mother for the first time since they left the Capitol. So far as Hofer knew he traveled alone. Marshals would have to pull the train manifest and see who else was onboard.

He had to make it to him, first. Between the dark and the increased hostilities, the fact the Army should have pulled everyone out months ago when the Purchase fell through, Hofer would be surprised if they made it to the cabin at all. This was a gambit he made without thinking, and had before, and would again.

"Mark on Corporal Reinhard's map where that is, if you would, please," Hofer said. "In case we're separated."

"Army man," said Westerberg with a wry cough of a laugh, "you had better hope we are not separated. Look west. It followed you."

Hofer turned his head and saw a roiling wall of brown dust riding in on the wind. Taller than any Hofer had ever seen, and growing taller as it approached. They would be riding straight toward an incoming dust storm, an ill omen if ever he saw one. For days, the question had been whether they would be fortunate enough for the winds to shift and blow the storm further south into unpopulated territory.

The trapper went on, "If you are caught in that, you are as good as dead."

"Reckon we'd better quit jawing and move our asses, then, huh?"

∞

To Hofer's eye, the land in rural Missouri was indistinguishable from the land in Kansas. Flat, endless, and green, at least along the river. Dead as Hell, everywhere else. Uneven in most places. They did not have the luxury of cautiously picking their way across the plains. Their success relied on their haste, and Hofer was not willing to consider the recovery of a corpse a success.

After an hour of hard riding, less than ten kilometers from the location on Reinhard's map, a flash of igniting powder occurred at the same time as a thundering clap. Rifle fire. Someone was out here with them.

The bullet caught the trapper in the chest and knocked him from the saddle. The horse panicked and dragged her rider for over fifty meters before his boot bounced from the stirrup and left him inert and silent in the dead grass. The other two screamed but did not drop pace, their ears and hearts prepared for combat. Hofer was unable to determine from which direction the shot had come until Reinhard shouted, "Two o'clock, Major!"

Hofer saw the pop of fire as he ducked, leaning hard into the animal's shoulders. Nearly threw himself out of the damn saddle, so invested in not catching a bullet was he. Neither was he interested in breaking his damned neck.

That bullet missed his neck by centimeters. His ears rang.

Their dismount was sloppy, the horses lathered and angry to have to make such a sudden stop when their riders' urgency had not abated. They were without cover though the moon was able to hide its face behind the coming storm.

The trapper's horse continued on through the darkness, the frantic clopping of hooves receding into the uncertain east, away from the storm and the gunfire and her rider's corpse. She owed him no loyalty. They had only met tonight.

"Easy easy easy," Hofer said to his mount, grabbing hard at the reins to keep her from disappearing on him, sighting the crouching bandit from eighty meters off.

Hofer was not a sharpshooter. One could scarcely call him a marksman. He was a surgeon before he was a soldier. That was why he had an escort. He did not carry a rifle. All Hofer wore was a saber and a pistol. Reinhard returned fire with his repeater and caught a bullet through the upper arm as he was shifting his aim.

"Oh, fuck you!" Reinhard shouted.

"I didn't know youse was Cavalry! I-I-It's dark! I—"

The corporal returned fire, prepared even without full use of his right arm.

Were Hofer a believer, he might have thought God was looking out for him. The War did away with any delusions he might have had about the existence of a benevolent deity. After the War, watching Clara's father wither away from a deep, cancerous rot in his stomach, unable to do a thing for him except keep him swimming in morphine. Holding her while she cried, this joyful and spirited woman who had never cried a day he had known her—that assured him any deity that existed wasn't spiteful, either. Any out there were indifferent at best, and Hofer had forgotten how to speak outside of combat. What gentleness Clara had coaxed out of him to begin with was gone. For years, after the War, he did not know how to speak to his own wife.

Sullivan, though. That man had sent Clara such thoughtful letters after her father's death, and her mother's, when she passed from grief soon after. Had never met either of them. Sullivan's father hadn't been worth a damn, and he had been convinced his mother was ashamed of him, for a long time. But his words had comforted Clara in her bereavement.

She joked from time to time that if anything ever happened to Hofer, she would expect Sullivan to marry her in his stead. It would be his brotherly duty, would it not?

If Clara found out Cole had died of something so pointless as a cracked skull, that would be the end of her. If she found out Erik died of something so pointless as a bullet to the belly, riding out to retrieve his body.

Hofer took a deep breath. Another. Another. He didn't have time to breathe. He imagined his children's faces and threw himself behind a tree stump and sought the brigand. Found instead a flash of glass reflecting off what little light the sky offered. Ducked behind cover. Reinhard fired his repeater. A shout told them he had hit his mark.

Then Reinhard's head jerked back, and a spigot of blood opened between his eyes, and he dropped the repeater.

Hofer didn't have time to think, now, either. He launched forward, grabbed Reinhard's rifle, and found the dark shape five meters closer than it had been before. Swung the barrel of the repeater through the dark. Found his mark. Gave him a dose of lead.

This time, the sound of a bullet punching through meat produced no shout. The brigand, the murderer, the unlucky bastard, whatever he was, fell down dead, and Hofer, gasping, kept the barrel trained at the spot where the son of a bitch who killed Reinhard had fallen until he was certain the son of a bitch was cooling.

Spared, still breathing, he dropped the repeater into the dirt and crawled to Reinhard. His eyes stared up empty at the starless sky, chest unmoving, no pulse at his throat. Hofer could neither remember Reinhard's first name, nor where he was from, nor whether he had children. Nothing Hofer could do for him even if he did. He would soon be the same temperature as the ground. Colder.

Reinhard would not hear him if he spoke and Hofer did not waste his breath. He said silent thanks to the man for leading him this far and closed his eyes so they would not dry out as he lay waiting for the Army to come retrieve his corpse. The son of a bitch who killed Reinhard was alone and had died that way. Nothing Hofer could do for him, either. The man would have had to have not shot at them to have had a chance, and he said it right before he died. Everyone looked the same in the dark.

With one of the horses fled and two lanterns dead, Hofer knelt in consideration of his scant options. He consolidated matches, water, and ammunition from Reinhard's belt, then shouldered the repeater and read his compass by lamplight. The trapper had penciled landmarks and directions onto the corporal's map in addition to coordinates. Once in the saddle, Hofer would not be able to consult the map again.

Hofer orientated himself, the stars unable to do much to guide him, that wall of dust the clearest marker he had that he was headed in the right direction. His mount was impatient. She stamped her front hooves as she waited for Hofer to return to seated, and so soon as he clicked the reins, she continued on as if spurred.

∞

The cabin was where the trapper said it would be. Hofer found first a copse of trees marked on the map, then a chalked stump serving as a marker. A rusted wagon wheel, a dirt path, and at the end of all that a darkened single-room building made of hand-fallen logs and clay and sod. Sturdy and unobtrusive. Hofer's lantern struggled to give his horse enough light by which to run, and it sputtered the last few staggering steps to the cabin's front door.

"Hold on," he said to the horse, who was wet and starved for air by the time he lurched from the saddle and secured her lead to the post. She gulped down the water and oats Hofer provided her, shutting out everything else in the world but the fulfillment of her own needs. "I'll get you put up in a bit. You're not glue yet, I promise."

It was not his intention to lie to the animal. Until he opened the door and saw who was inside the cabin and what the state of him was, Hofer could not promise anyone any damned thing. If he was going to promise anyone anything at all he would have promised his friend he would make it to St. Louis to see his mother. It would be some other company's first sergeant laying in the dark, half-dead and alone.

If Westerberg had left a candle burning, it had long since consumed itself. The cabin's patchy single window showed only the shapes of furniture. Anyone who stood in the dark would be able to see him just fine. The cabin door was unlocked and gave no resistance as Hofer raced on tired legs up the stairs and through. The hinges did not squeak, for the man who had built the place had taken care of it before he died. This was like as not all Westerberg had in the world, and he died making it available to a man he had never seen before, whom he could not have moved to the nearest settlement, the nearest surgery, without assistance. Without roads or telegraph services or even a mail carrier, the nearest connection to the rest of humanity would have been the trading post midway between his cabin and the train station.

That Westerberg had not put a bullet in the back of the trooper's head and told the Army he found him like that spoke to the trapper's character. Later, Hofer will consider that to be the humane thing to do.

But then they would have to do this all over again.

Before he found the body, the smell of oxidized blood hit Hofer in the face. Beneath that bouquet of staved-off death swarmed sweat and vomit and old urine. With the dying lantern in hand, Hofer illuminated each corner of the room until he found him, laid out on a sheet atop a long thin cot dragged into the center of the room.

"Oh," Hofer said, instead of swearing, because if he swore, Sullivan would know how bad it was. He had to be the surgeon of First Sergeant Sullivan's regiment right now, not his friend, or they would have to do this all over again.

Average height and sturdily built, wearing the field uniform and calf-length boots he only took off to change into his parade dress every evening, Hofer knew who he was looking at before he saw the man's face. It would be a while until the swelling decreased if it ever did. Until he cleaned the blood away, Hofer could not determine whether Sullivan's brains were even still inside their casing, and Sullivan had another wound that pulled Hofer's attention away at the moment. That wound, which would kill him sooner, the trapper had already exposed. Westerberg had done an admirable job dressing and splinting the leg to transport Sullivan from wherever he had found him. With the trousers cut free, Hofer only had to kneel beside the cot and loosen the bandage.

"God damn it, Cole…"

Sullivan's skin was cool as a mortuary slab even through Hofer's gloves, as pale and gray to his eyes, yet he was, somehow, still breathing, if with effort. His heart still beat. His eyes flit beneath his lids as if he were dreaming. Committed to living or not, Sullivan would die if Hofer spent too long in indecision, or if he made an error in judgment. He was dying right in front of him, slow and painful, the worst way Hofer could think to go, and Hofer was all that would keep him alive. If he was conscious, he was in excruciating pain.

"Cole," he said, because if Sullivan was conscious, he would not be able to speak. "It's Erik. Keep breathing while I get a fire going, I'm not losing you to hypothermia in June."

It was July. It didn't matter.

Hofer set down the lantern and prepared his operating theater. Took advantage of Sullivan's stillness to start a fire in the hearth, as quick and shoddy as he had ever built one. Once the kindling caught he grabbed his medical bag and returned to Sullivan's side. A sharp, pained moan—he was trying to talk. Sweating now, and Hofer could not blame it on his proximity to the fire, or its strength.

"Hey," Hofer said. Kept his tone as gentle as he could as he prepared a hypodermic needle. He needed both his hands."Cole, hey, shh. Don't try to talk."

Sullivan whimpered and fell quiet. He was conscious. He was fucking conscious. Hofer worked faster.

"This is morphine. It won't be enough, but it'll sand down the edges for you. Hang on buddy, I know you don't like needles."

When Hofer pushed the needle into the thickest part of his uninjured thigh, Sullivan did not flinch. As the drug took effect, the surgeon exposed the first sergeant's linen shirt and assessed his trunk, looking for other injuries. If other limbs were broken, he would find out later.

Aside from the fracture at his temple, the rest of Sullivan's head and neck were unremarkable. A neck injury would have killed him when the trapper dragged him here on horseback. Not even if the trapper had stabilized his spine before dragging him. He could have damaged his spinal cord lower down, or the force of the injury could have caused vertebral displacement higher up.

Sullivan did not react when Hofer palpated his ribs or the quadrants of his midsection. His hips were stable, though muscle spasms assailed the right.

Hofer had to set that leg.

Femur fractures carried an eighty-percent mortality rate, as of the last figures Hofer had read. That figure soared if the fracture was open, as Sullivan's was. That thick, yellow knuckle of bone pushing through the skin created a cave in which infection could settle and multiply. If it was not completely clean, it would kill Sullivan. And there was no way in Hell Hofer would be able to move him before that dust storm hit them, let alone transport him to an operating theater.

As his temperature increased, Sullivan stirred more. Each shuffle of clothing against the sheet drew Hofer's attention away from the time-dulled memory of how to set an open fracture. If he was still conscious, he had ceased moaning in reptile-brained agony, and Hofer was not ashamed to admit that his gratitude was selfish.

In the surgical theater, setting an open femur fracture required time and care and more than one set of hands. In the field, it called for amputation, which would require assistance if the surgeon was unable to sedate the patient.

Some men could sit still while Hofer removed an arm that was beyond repair. He had never removed a leg from a man who was able to sit still once he started sawing.

The trooper would fight him. The surgeon knew this without knowing how he knew.

Even in the impossible scenario where Sullivan did not contract a systemic infection, and that wound in his skull was not fatal. Even in that scenario, where Hofer kept the bone well set and developed a new matrix of tissue through traction and he continued his recovery with a split and crutches. Even then, this would never heal with any degree of satisfaction. No one would ever look at the leg and exclaim to their fellows after, That was a fine bit of business that Army Surgeon pulled off, setting an open femur fracture with riding tack and rope for traction, why, and I'm hearing that brave Cavalryman has made a full recovery of both Mind and Body as well!

They were in a space where Sullivan was both alive and dead, where he had a leg and did not have a leg, where he wanted Hofer to save his life and would have rather he put a bullet in his head.

Sullivan wasn't lucid, let alone responsive, so Hofer could not take his settling at the sound of his voice, or relaxing beneath the pressure of Hofer's arm against him as the surgeon worked, as a positive. Sure as hell couldn't ask him what he wanted. Then Hofer unbuckled and eased the gun belt from around his hips, and took his saber and his revolver from him.

One eye opened.

The white of Sullivan's globe screamed from beneath a sea of rust-red blood, the other too swollen to be of any use as he grabbed for his Peacemaker. As if he could fire it even if Hofer did secure it in his grip. If anyone could have fired a revolver in this state, it was Sullivan. Separated from their regiment and dying hundreds of kilometers from their home soil, his brain must have thought it was the only thing he had left to reach for. That he had to protect Hofer, or someone else, from a threat. Hofer had no idea what he was thinking. He had a massive head wound.

Hofer did not put that revolver in his drugged, desperate grip. He grabbed Sullivan's hand, caked with old blood, and squeezed it.

"Cole, it's me. It's Erik. Try to relax."

The fight went out of him. Sullivan's wild left eye slid closed again. Against his better judgment, Hofer smoothed a gloved hand over his forehead, easing sweat-drenched hair away from the open wound in his temple.

"There you go. Keep breathing like you were—slow. Nothing's going to get you. I'm going to… I'm going to straighten out your leg. Once your leg is straightened out, you'll feel better. I promise it will be of some benefit to you, I am not merely torturing you for my own amusement. We may be here for a considerable period. We have a dust storm upon us. You don't need that gun, brother. Alright? You're… I'll keep you safe."

He sniffed back what that flood of passion had brought up in him. Until he knew who had killed Sullivan, Hofer's task was a bit nobler than revenge. He had to keep him alive.

Shears removed everything about and below the waist, and then from the torso so Hofer could complete a more thorough examination later. He stopped, and remembered, and covered Sullivan's shoulders and chest in a wool blanket. The thought he should try and strap him down came and went. This was the best he could do.

Sullivan made a small noise of distant discomfort as Hofer tied an anchor of rope around his hips. This would keep his makeshift splint tight. It had to be tight or it would not work.

"You're all right," he lied again. "I'm fashioning a traction splint. Were we in the hospital, I'd have someone to help me with this. Several someones. Someone to keep you calm. You have to do that for me. You keep breathing, slow and even, like you've been doing, we'll trick your brain into thinking the pain's not that bad. I will not lie to you, it's going to hurt like Dickens for a moment, and then it will hurt less. Nothing you can't handle. Be plain sailing from there. Then I will see what I can do about that thick skull of yours. Alright? You're going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. You can do this."

He repeated the lie like a prayer, You can do this, as he doused his hands in iodine, then poured the solution into the man's open wound, holding a forearm down against his uninjured left shin when Sullivan tried to crawl away.

"Easy, easy," Hofer said, and sniffed, hard, because his eyes were watering. The fire was producing too much smoke.

Sullivan quieted and returned to doing exactly what Hofer told him to do, taking even and deep breaths as Hofer tied rope below the knee, and again around the ankle. Hofer braced himself with a foot against the inside of his best friend's hip, the other planted on the floor beneath his ankle.

The bravest man Hofer knew tried to grab fistfuls of sheets to brace himself. He could not make fists.

Hofer stopped lying, then.

"Cole, I'm going to count to three, and then I'm going to pull this rope. This will set the fracture. You know I will do my absolute best to save you and the leg, but if I gotta choose..."

There was no way to cut off the leg and not kill Sullivan. He had to keep him alive, dust storm bearing down on them or not. He wasn't willing to kill Sullivan to keep him from dying.

"… well. Remember what you told me at Chickamauga."

Delirium would not let Sullivan respond even if he heard him, even if he remembered.

Almost a decade ago, September 1863. Shrapnel exploding every time a cannonball hit a nearby tree, a cluster of cover, men screaming for aid, the buglers calling for regroup, and Sergeant Sullivan had charged around the bend in that damn river clearing a path through grey backs with his revolver, then his saber. Like a bearded archangel, twenty-eight years old and fighting as if he were going to live forever. All because Assistant Surgeon Hofer was pinned down with the platoon that never reported back. The company commander was ready to write off the lieutenant for the sake of repositioning and Sullivan had galloped off before anyone could tell him not to. Couldn't tell that man a damned thing, once he spotted the course of action that was objectively right.

What in the name of Hell is the matter with you, Sullivan? Hofer had shouted as he dismounted, jumping down before the horse had even quit walking. Get back to the line!

I ain't leavin' without you! Sullivan had shouted back, the way he might have said Because I love you, if Hofer were that kind of man. If Hofer knew Sullivan was that kind of man.

Almost a decade later, Hofer had to hope his friend would not bleed to death on a stranger's cabin floor because he, whom no one would ever confuse with an angel, avenging or otherwise, made the choice that killed him.

The surgeon counted to three, aloud and slow, and braced himself.

And then he pulled the rope.

#spoilers: book 1 #preview: full chapter #character: cole sullivan #character: arthur royston #full chapter shop's closed

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