Katherine "Kissin' Kate" Barlow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ikissdhimbck) wrote2009-05-17 04:55 pm
ikissdhimbck) wrote2009-05-17 04:55 pm
Entry tags:
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
[Following this:]
The hot burn of daylight sun on her skin shocked her motionless.
She hadn't expected to emerge from the hotel in Goliad, after what should have been her first step up the stairs to her room above the bar proper. Finished with supper, her mind had been set on a hot bath and a good night's sleep. But she must have somehow stepped through her door instead, without noticing.
The concept didn't surprise her. Her mind was tired and unfocused, hazed with alcohol and deep thoughts. But still, she couldn't help but feel a bit betrayed by Bar, and paused long enough to send a few choice ill thoughts the Landlord's way.
She turned back and entered the hotel. Her rifle and hat still being in Doc's possession, and the hot sunlight of a late spring afternoon in Texas already turned oppressive, she needed something to shade her eyes. Luckily, the dirty black hat she had taken from the tailor in Blanconia was still among her effects, and, once in her room, she settled it on her head and changed into a clean shirt. The hat was over-large on her head, fitted to the round, sweaty swell of the tailor's noggin: the brim settled itself just above her eyebrows.
Once she felt somewhat freshened, she left the hotel and crossed the dusty street to get to the livery where she'd left Beaut earlier in the morning.
It was mid-afternoon, and sunlight pooled in the brim of her hat and trickled down her neck and arms. She had to squint to see past the glare off yellow earth and whitewashed walls, and almost immediately she began to feel the gray pinstriped trousers she was wearing stick to her thighs.
Hopping up onto the boardwalk, grateful for the slight shade offered by awnings and overhangs, she kept her gait light and quick. She glanced inside windows as she walked past the confectionery, the general store, the hat shop and post office—
—and then she stopped cold in her tracks.
Nailed to the outside of the building was a poster, and a familiar set of inked eyes glared back at her.
She blinked, and squinted at the bounty.
$500 REWARD
DEAD or ALIVE
"Wanted for robbery and murder," she murmured to herself, eyes narrowing at the yellow paper. "...Kissin' Kate...?"
The clack of boots on the boardwalk seemed suddenly oppressive, despite the loud thrum of her heart, and she watched from the corner of her eye as an older gentleman and his lady approached the post office. He looked at her as they passed by, and so she pulled her hat down low over her eyes, hiding her face and that poster as best she could.
When the sound of their footfalls faded away, she glanced up again, blue eyes raging with fury.
(Her new anklet seemed heavier all of a sudden.)
WANTED
REWARD
DEAD or ALIVE
"To hell with you, Trout Walker!"
She slapped the face of the wanted poster and ripped it from the wall, burying it in a pocket. She then turned on her heel and marched the rest of the way to the livery.
Once her saddlebags were packed, and she had paid the farrier for Beaut's new shoes and the tack she had bought, she headed out of town.
East.
Back to Green Lake.
_____________________________
It's a long ride from Goliad to Green Lake, but she knew if she pushed Beaut hard enough she could make it before nightfall. She wouldn't want to meet any of the Walkers by day, but the thought of meeting one by night was especially terrifying.
She only stopped once, by a dirty little creek where Beaut could get some water. The land sizzled with heat, mirages taunting her vision at every horizon. Once, she thought she saw Sam leading Mary Lou over the tired earth, the wheels of his onion cart wobbling across dry rock and grit, but when she blinked he was gone.
The sky was orange when she came in west of the town, bypassing the main road to get to the Walker estate. The fields were limp, incontestable evidence of the drought's effect on the town.
Trout was out by the the boathouse, ordering a farmhand about. He watched, while doing nothing, as the worker coiled up a length of rope and tied it off, setting it inside beside Trout's motorboat. Then he knelt to lock the boathouse doors, silently bearing Trout's insults until he was permitted to go, and at last headed back up to the main house. Trout, still muttering under his breath, retrieved a cigar from his breast pocket and turned towards the water, searching for a match to light it.
There was a definite click, and a cold steel weight pressed to the back of his head that even he couldn't mistake. He went still.
"How does that feel?" Kate whispered, a detached curiosity in her voice.
His shoulders relaxed in recognition of her voice. She imagined that gold-plated sneer on his face, and counted that against him as his first mistake.
He chuckled.
"Well, if I'd known you were stupid enough to come back to town, I might'a saved myself the expense and inconvenience of sendin' men out t'get ya," he jeered, moving to turn around.
"Hold it," she commanded, pressing the nozzle of her pistol deeper into the soft tissue under the base of his skull. He paused, grunting in discomfort. But he was overconfident, and didn't heed the warning.
As far as Kate was concerned, that was mistake number two.
He turned around and there it was, that gold tooth winking at her from below sneering lips.
"Or what?" he taunted.
Though forced to take a step back, her blue eyes flashed dark and angry. "Or I'll do to you what I did to them men you sent after me," she threatened levelly.
He laughed outright, glancing out from behind the long evening shadow of the boathouse in an effort to spy a passing ranch hand. "Well, if I'm not mistakin', Miss Katherine, but it seems to me that's your intent regardless of what I do."
"Don't bother lookin', Trout," she warned, garnering a grim satisfaction from the way his face darkened with the nickname, "it's just you and me. And if I'm not mistakin', but you're a deal sharper than I gave you credit for."
He smirked.
And then he lunged for her gun.
She let out a frustrated grunt as he yanked her against him by the barrel of her gun, only barely restraining herself from firing the weapon when she knew her target was lost. She meant to regain it, without gathering the attention of anybody back on the estate, and one bad shot was all it would take to screw that up.
Trout's free hand curled around her neck, jerking her body so that he had her shooting arm twisted and her back to his chest, fingers bruising against her throat. He backed them up against the boathouse doors. She bared her teeth in equal parts pain and frustration, and if she could speak around the vice grip of his hand, she might have sarcastically made a jab at the way men always seem to go for her throat.
"I'm a lot of things you never gave me credit for, Katherine," Trout hissed into her ear, his hot breath putrid in her nostrils. She struggled against him, but the sad fact of the matter was he was simply much bigger than she, and with only one free hand there wasn't much she could do.
He forced her head back, and savagely tipped it this way and that. "You still talk tough, but lookit you. Seems the criminal life ain't been very kind on your pretty little looks," he gritted, before he ran his tongue along the length of the healing cut on her cheek.
She choked out an enraged grunt and clawed at his wrist, her feet scuffling in the dirt in search of some leverage. "You... sunnova... bitch!"
"That ain't no way t'be talkin', Miss Katherine," he lilted, keeping his grip on her firm. "Not when you know I'm the only man you got who can give you any hope'a makin' all this stop anytime soon."
"I'd ...rather hang... th'n..deal wi' you."
Her words visibly shocked him. "Well, we can arrange that, you know!" he barked, twisting her arm harder and jerking her back until he heard her cry out. He watched her face with fascination as it distorted in pain.
"It didn't have to be like this, y'know."
Slowly, she wrenched her eyes open and looked at him. Despite the frustration on his features, she could see sincerity in his eyes.
"Look at this place!" he exclaimed. "I could'a provided for you! Given you what you needed!"
"I didn't want yer daddy's money!"
"So you chose the onion picker?!" he snarled, shaking her a little.
"A ... slug would'a been ...pref'rble t'you! ...But I loved him!"
He laughed in her face. "Loved him? You're the reason he's dead."
She felt a pang in her gut, a swell of guilt and fear, but the same sensation she had felt in Weyland's workshop washed over her then, replacing the guilt with resoluteness.
"No," she choked. "...Y'..killed him."
"What I did was a mercy," he hissed. "You broke the law. Would you have rather seen him hang for it?"
He twisted her around and pinned her against the boathouse doors, keeping his hand locked around her fist and the gun she held. Again, his free hand grabbed her by the throat and held her firmly in place, so she had little range of motion.
"What are y'doin', Katherine?" he asked, face inches from hers. "You're a schoolteacher, and a woman. How long you think you're gonna last 'fore you die out there?"
She said nothing.
"You're wanted in more places than one, now. Eventually you are gonna get caught. And we'll hang you for what you've done."
"You know what?" she whispered, steadily keeping her eyes on his. "I'm so tired of folks thinkin' I'm built for nothin' more'n takin' care of children and mindin' a house."
Swiftly, she drew her small Colt and pressed it against his leg, blowing a hole in the meat of his thigh. The muzzle was so close that it burnt a hole in his trousers and the flesh underneath, and Trout howled in agony.
She shoved him back, hoping his grip would loosen on her fisted pistol, but he only stumbled a half step and then yanked the gun from her hand by its muzzle. He smacked her hard across the face with its butt, and she fell to the ground.
Punch drunk and dizzy, he had her completely unarmed before she knew what was happening. By the time she had enough presence of mind to breathe again, he had her on her back, his full weight on top of her. He grabbed her by either side of her face, thumbs bruising into her temples as he pressed her skull down against hardened dirt.
"You think you're gonna kill me?" he snarled.
She could feel his spit on her face.
"I know you, Katherine! You ain't done nothin' your whole life without someone holdin' your hand! You want me t'believe you're changed alluva sudden? That you're dangerous? You ain't never broken law one 'til the day Sam died! I know you, and you ain't never wanted t'end up like your daddy!"
Her mind reeled with the supposition. She was still dizzy from the blow he had delivered to her head. Coughing as she forced air back into her lungs, she started dry heaving. She wanted to roll over and be sick, but his hold on her wasn't relenting, and she felt strange and weak and disoriented.
You ain't never wanted t'end up like your daddy!
Memories moved through her mind like a burst of powder from a photographer's flash pan, agitating the sickness. What he said ... was true. What her father did was right, but it wasn't lawful. It didn't matter that the laws were unjust. He was killed, and the men responsible for his death got away clean. Katherine, for her part, walked away and started over. She didn't take a stand, she didn't fight, she didn't even consider nonconformity.
She didn't want to end up like her daddy: reviled, victimized, and shot down.
The sight of her so fully under his control was more than Trout could bear. His desire and his hunger for revenge was only fed by the unfocused look in her soft blue eyes, the way she was still beneath him, her hair splaying out like a golden blanket in the fading sunlight. He seized a chance he didn't expect he would ever get again. Hands moving from her face, he started ripping open her blouse.
"Nnh," Kate protested weakly, scrabbling in the dirt beneath him. He had her, without chance of escape.
But she had no intention of just lying down and taking it.
"You're wrong," she coughed. "I'd b'lucky ...if I could ever be half th' person... m'daddy was."
Maybe it was already too late, but she finally realized that there are some things worth fighting for.
"You'll be lucky," Trout answered, forced to slow down and work on each button one at a time when he came to her vest, "if you make it off my property alive."
Mistake number three.
Her hands blindly searched for a gun, but what she found was a rock. She swung upwards with a yell, catching him on the side of his head. He grunted and fell flat, a chunk torn from his ear where the rock made contact. Kate shoved him off of her and pulled herself to her feet. She was dizzy, and vaguely sick to her stomach.
Trout groaned and moved, but didn't roll over.
Looking at him, Kate took a minute to get her bearings back. Steadying herself, she stumbled to his side, and shoved him to his back with one of her boots. His eyes were closed.
She caught a glint off of his pocket watch and, lowering one knee to his chest, she mercilessly yanked it from his lapel. He grunted at the sudden weight.
"Thank you kindly, Trout," she muttered, breathing hard. "This should buy me somethin' pretty."
Pocketing it, she slowly collected her weapons, and the hat that had tumbled from her head earlier.
"...Katherine—?"
She swept her hair back and settled the black hat low on her forehead. "I ain't gonna kill you, Trout."
Her boots scuffed in the dirt as she slowly turned back around, looking on his prone figure with contempt.
"You know why?"
She smirked, and began to walk away.
"Because scum like you ain't worth the bullets."
_____________________________
She let Beaut walk once they made it off the Walker estate, sneaking out in the falling dark almost as effortlessly as they had snuck in. She wondered if she might regret not killing Trout when she had the chance. But, she realized, it wasn't what her daddy would have done, and that thought alone put her at ease.
She and her horse were tired, but it would be several miles yet before they'd stop. She wanted to put some distance between herself and the quiet town once again, figuring that she only had a few minutes before Trout would be up, or found. Once he was, the hunt would be on again.
She had left the trail and turned north, and it was only by sheer luck that she found another creek—this time, a bit cleaner and a bit wider—where she could give Beaut a respite. She sat down on a rock a few yards off, in front of a small, scrubby bush she had set on fire to boil some water. Presently, she had Trout's pocket watch in her hands, and she was watching the way the firelight gleamed off its surface. Shadows of flames danced in her vision every time she glanced up, toying with her like the mirages of the day preceding.
She imagined he was there again.
"Oh, Sam," she whispered to the dark. "It's been so long since the last time I saw you."
She felt his hand close over hers, and the rock she was seated on suddenly grew bigger as she pictured him sitting next to her. "I can fix that," he whispered, and his voice was as soft and smooth in her ears as it had been the last time they spoke.
"Where've you been?" she murmured. "You don't come to me when I'm in Milliways."
He smiled wanly. "You don't need me when you're in Milliways."
"I feel like I need you always."
He brushed the tips of his fingers across her cheek.
"You've always got me, Miss Katherine."
She closed her eyes, and dared to believe him.
"Are you mad at me for what I've done?"
She swallowed hard.
"I couldn't never be mad at you, Miss Katherine," he whispered.
"Don't leave me."
"I ain't goin' nowhere."
Dawn was breaking by the time she finally moved. The fire had died away, and so had Sam.
She gathered Beaut's reins up and climbed into the saddle like a slow reflex. She gave the horse's sides a gentle squeeze. Beaut snorted, and continued walking north.
Though where they were headed was more up to the animal's whim than that of her mistress.
.
The hot burn of daylight sun on her skin shocked her motionless.
She hadn't expected to emerge from the hotel in Goliad, after what should have been her first step up the stairs to her room above the bar proper. Finished with supper, her mind had been set on a hot bath and a good night's sleep. But she must have somehow stepped through her door instead, without noticing.
The concept didn't surprise her. Her mind was tired and unfocused, hazed with alcohol and deep thoughts. But still, she couldn't help but feel a bit betrayed by Bar, and paused long enough to send a few choice ill thoughts the Landlord's way.
She turned back and entered the hotel. Her rifle and hat still being in Doc's possession, and the hot sunlight of a late spring afternoon in Texas already turned oppressive, she needed something to shade her eyes. Luckily, the dirty black hat she had taken from the tailor in Blanconia was still among her effects, and, once in her room, she settled it on her head and changed into a clean shirt. The hat was over-large on her head, fitted to the round, sweaty swell of the tailor's noggin: the brim settled itself just above her eyebrows.
Once she felt somewhat freshened, she left the hotel and crossed the dusty street to get to the livery where she'd left Beaut earlier in the morning.
It was mid-afternoon, and sunlight pooled in the brim of her hat and trickled down her neck and arms. She had to squint to see past the glare off yellow earth and whitewashed walls, and almost immediately she began to feel the gray pinstriped trousers she was wearing stick to her thighs.
Hopping up onto the boardwalk, grateful for the slight shade offered by awnings and overhangs, she kept her gait light and quick. She glanced inside windows as she walked past the confectionery, the general store, the hat shop and post office—
—and then she stopped cold in her tracks.
Nailed to the outside of the building was a poster, and a familiar set of inked eyes glared back at her.
She blinked, and squinted at the bounty.
DEAD or ALIVE
"Wanted for robbery and murder," she murmured to herself, eyes narrowing at the yellow paper. "...Kissin' Kate...?"
The clack of boots on the boardwalk seemed suddenly oppressive, despite the loud thrum of her heart, and she watched from the corner of her eye as an older gentleman and his lady approached the post office. He looked at her as they passed by, and so she pulled her hat down low over her eyes, hiding her face and that poster as best she could.
When the sound of their footfalls faded away, she glanced up again, blue eyes raging with fury.
(Her new anklet seemed heavier all of a sudden.)
'There'll be more comin'.'
'It only ever gets worse.'
'Not always worth getting out alive.'
"To hell with you, Trout Walker!"
She slapped the face of the wanted poster and ripped it from the wall, burying it in a pocket. She then turned on her heel and marched the rest of the way to the livery.
Once her saddlebags were packed, and she had paid the farrier for Beaut's new shoes and the tack she had bought, she headed out of town.
East.
Back to Green Lake.
It's a long ride from Goliad to Green Lake, but she knew if she pushed Beaut hard enough she could make it before nightfall. She wouldn't want to meet any of the Walkers by day, but the thought of meeting one by night was especially terrifying.
'I don't want to hear no more fightin', Katherine. Or I could always just toss you on out there 'gain?'
She only stopped once, by a dirty little creek where Beaut could get some water. The land sizzled with heat, mirages taunting her vision at every horizon. Once, she thought she saw Sam leading Mary Lou over the tired earth, the wheels of his onion cart wobbling across dry rock and grit, but when she blinked he was gone.
The sky was orange when she came in west of the town, bypassing the main road to get to the Walker estate. The fields were limp, incontestable evidence of the drought's effect on the town.
Trout was out by the the boathouse, ordering a farmhand about. He watched, while doing nothing, as the worker coiled up a length of rope and tied it off, setting it inside beside Trout's motorboat. Then he knelt to lock the boathouse doors, silently bearing Trout's insults until he was permitted to go, and at last headed back up to the main house. Trout, still muttering under his breath, retrieved a cigar from his breast pocket and turned towards the water, searching for a match to light it.
There was a definite click, and a cold steel weight pressed to the back of his head that even he couldn't mistake. He went still.
"How does that feel?" Kate whispered, a detached curiosity in her voice.
His shoulders relaxed in recognition of her voice. She imagined that gold-plated sneer on his face, and counted that against him as his first mistake.
He chuckled.
"Well, if I'd known you were stupid enough to come back to town, I might'a saved myself the expense and inconvenience of sendin' men out t'get ya," he jeered, moving to turn around.
"Hold it," she commanded, pressing the nozzle of her pistol deeper into the soft tissue under the base of his skull. He paused, grunting in discomfort. But he was overconfident, and didn't heed the warning.
As far as Kate was concerned, that was mistake number two.
He turned around and there it was, that gold tooth winking at her from below sneering lips.
"Or what?" he taunted.
Though forced to take a step back, her blue eyes flashed dark and angry. "Or I'll do to you what I did to them men you sent after me," she threatened levelly.
He laughed outright, glancing out from behind the long evening shadow of the boathouse in an effort to spy a passing ranch hand. "Well, if I'm not mistakin', Miss Katherine, but it seems to me that's your intent regardless of what I do."
"Don't bother lookin', Trout," she warned, garnering a grim satisfaction from the way his face darkened with the nickname, "it's just you and me. And if I'm not mistakin', but you're a deal sharper than I gave you credit for."
He smirked.
And then he lunged for her gun.
She let out a frustrated grunt as he yanked her against him by the barrel of her gun, only barely restraining herself from firing the weapon when she knew her target was lost. She meant to regain it, without gathering the attention of anybody back on the estate, and one bad shot was all it would take to screw that up.
Trout's free hand curled around her neck, jerking her body so that he had her shooting arm twisted and her back to his chest, fingers bruising against her throat. He backed them up against the boathouse doors. She bared her teeth in equal parts pain and frustration, and if she could speak around the vice grip of his hand, she might have sarcastically made a jab at the way men always seem to go for her throat.
"I'm a lot of things you never gave me credit for, Katherine," Trout hissed into her ear, his hot breath putrid in her nostrils. She struggled against him, but the sad fact of the matter was he was simply much bigger than she, and with only one free hand there wasn't much she could do.
He forced her head back, and savagely tipped it this way and that. "You still talk tough, but lookit you. Seems the criminal life ain't been very kind on your pretty little looks," he gritted, before he ran his tongue along the length of the healing cut on her cheek.
She choked out an enraged grunt and clawed at his wrist, her feet scuffling in the dirt in search of some leverage. "You... sunnova... bitch!"
"That ain't no way t'be talkin', Miss Katherine," he lilted, keeping his grip on her firm. "Not when you know I'm the only man you got who can give you any hope'a makin' all this stop anytime soon."
"I'd ...rather hang... th'n..deal wi' you."
Her words visibly shocked him. "Well, we can arrange that, you know!" he barked, twisting her arm harder and jerking her back until he heard her cry out. He watched her face with fascination as it distorted in pain.
"It didn't have to be like this, y'know."
Slowly, she wrenched her eyes open and looked at him. Despite the frustration on his features, she could see sincerity in his eyes.
"Look at this place!" he exclaimed. "I could'a provided for you! Given you what you needed!"
"I didn't want yer daddy's money!"
"So you chose the onion picker?!" he snarled, shaking her a little.
"A ... slug would'a been ...pref'rble t'you! ...But I loved him!"
He laughed in her face. "Loved him? You're the reason he's dead."
She felt a pang in her gut, a swell of guilt and fear, but the same sensation she had felt in Weyland's workshop washed over her then, replacing the guilt with resoluteness.
"No," she choked. "...Y'..killed him."
"What I did was a mercy," he hissed. "You broke the law. Would you have rather seen him hang for it?"
He twisted her around and pinned her against the boathouse doors, keeping his hand locked around her fist and the gun she held. Again, his free hand grabbed her by the throat and held her firmly in place, so she had little range of motion.
"What are y'doin', Katherine?" he asked, face inches from hers. "You're a schoolteacher, and a woman. How long you think you're gonna last 'fore you die out there?"
She said nothing.
"You're wanted in more places than one, now. Eventually you are gonna get caught. And we'll hang you for what you've done."
"You know what?" she whispered, steadily keeping her eyes on his. "I'm so tired of folks thinkin' I'm built for nothin' more'n takin' care of children and mindin' a house."
Swiftly, she drew her small Colt and pressed it against his leg, blowing a hole in the meat of his thigh. The muzzle was so close that it burnt a hole in his trousers and the flesh underneath, and Trout howled in agony.
She shoved him back, hoping his grip would loosen on her fisted pistol, but he only stumbled a half step and then yanked the gun from her hand by its muzzle. He smacked her hard across the face with its butt, and she fell to the ground.
Punch drunk and dizzy, he had her completely unarmed before she knew what was happening. By the time she had enough presence of mind to breathe again, he had her on her back, his full weight on top of her. He grabbed her by either side of her face, thumbs bruising into her temples as he pressed her skull down against hardened dirt.
"You think you're gonna kill me?" he snarled.
She could feel his spit on her face.
"I know you, Katherine! You ain't done nothin' your whole life without someone holdin' your hand! You want me t'believe you're changed alluva sudden? That you're dangerous? You ain't never broken law one 'til the day Sam died! I know you, and you ain't never wanted t'end up like your daddy!"
Her mind reeled with the supposition. She was still dizzy from the blow he had delivered to her head. Coughing as she forced air back into her lungs, she started dry heaving. She wanted to roll over and be sick, but his hold on her wasn't relenting, and she felt strange and weak and disoriented.
Memories moved through her mind like a burst of powder from a photographer's flash pan, agitating the sickness. What he said ... was true. What her father did was right, but it wasn't lawful. It didn't matter that the laws were unjust. He was killed, and the men responsible for his death got away clean. Katherine, for her part, walked away and started over. She didn't take a stand, she didn't fight, she didn't even consider nonconformity.
She didn't want to end up like her daddy: reviled, victimized, and shot down.
'I hope it was worth it for you.'
The sight of her so fully under his control was more than Trout could bear. His desire and his hunger for revenge was only fed by the unfocused look in her soft blue eyes, the way she was still beneath him, her hair splaying out like a golden blanket in the fading sunlight. He seized a chance he didn't expect he would ever get again. Hands moving from her face, he started ripping open her blouse.
"Nnh," Kate protested weakly, scrabbling in the dirt beneath him. He had her, without chance of escape.
But she had no intention of just lying down and taking it.
"You're wrong," she coughed. "I'd b'lucky ...if I could ever be half th' person... m'daddy was."
Maybe it was already too late, but she finally realized that there are some things worth fighting for.
"You'll be lucky," Trout answered, forced to slow down and work on each button one at a time when he came to her vest, "if you make it off my property alive."
Mistake number three.
Her hands blindly searched for a gun, but what she found was a rock. She swung upwards with a yell, catching him on the side of his head. He grunted and fell flat, a chunk torn from his ear where the rock made contact. Kate shoved him off of her and pulled herself to her feet. She was dizzy, and vaguely sick to her stomach.
Trout groaned and moved, but didn't roll over.
Looking at him, Kate took a minute to get her bearings back. Steadying herself, she stumbled to his side, and shoved him to his back with one of her boots. His eyes were closed.
She caught a glint off of his pocket watch and, lowering one knee to his chest, she mercilessly yanked it from his lapel. He grunted at the sudden weight.
"Thank you kindly, Trout," she muttered, breathing hard. "This should buy me somethin' pretty."
Pocketing it, she slowly collected her weapons, and the hat that had tumbled from her head earlier.
"...Katherine—?"
She swept her hair back and settled the black hat low on her forehead. "I ain't gonna kill you, Trout."
Her boots scuffed in the dirt as she slowly turned back around, looking on his prone figure with contempt.
"You know why?"
She smirked, and began to walk away.
"Because scum like you ain't worth the bullets."
She let Beaut walk once they made it off the Walker estate, sneaking out in the falling dark almost as effortlessly as they had snuck in. She wondered if she might regret not killing Trout when she had the chance. But, she realized, it wasn't what her daddy would have done, and that thought alone put her at ease.
She and her horse were tired, but it would be several miles yet before they'd stop. She wanted to put some distance between herself and the quiet town once again, figuring that she only had a few minutes before Trout would be up, or found. Once he was, the hunt would be on again.
She had left the trail and turned north, and it was only by sheer luck that she found another creek—this time, a bit cleaner and a bit wider—where she could give Beaut a respite. She sat down on a rock a few yards off, in front of a small, scrubby bush she had set on fire to boil some water. Presently, she had Trout's pocket watch in her hands, and she was watching the way the firelight gleamed off its surface. Shadows of flames danced in her vision every time she glanced up, toying with her like the mirages of the day preceding.
She imagined he was there again.
"Oh, Sam," she whispered to the dark. "It's been so long since the last time I saw you."
She felt his hand close over hers, and the rock she was seated on suddenly grew bigger as she pictured him sitting next to her. "I can fix that," he whispered, and his voice was as soft and smooth in her ears as it had been the last time they spoke.
"Where've you been?" she murmured. "You don't come to me when I'm in Milliways."
He smiled wanly. "You don't need me when you're in Milliways."
"I feel like I need you always."
He brushed the tips of his fingers across her cheek.
"You've always got me, Miss Katherine."
She closed her eyes, and dared to believe him.
"Are you mad at me for what I've done?"
She swallowed hard.
"I couldn't never be mad at you, Miss Katherine," he whispered.
"Don't leave me."
"I ain't goin' nowhere."
Dawn was breaking by the time she finally moved. The fire had died away, and so had Sam.
She gathered Beaut's reins up and climbed into the saddle like a slow reflex. She gave the horse's sides a gentle squeeze. Beaut snorted, and continued walking north.
Though where they were headed was more up to the animal's whim than that of her mistress.
.