STORY WRITTEN AND OWNED BY KRISTEN REID. IMAGES ARE NOT OWNED BY THE CREATOR.
She understood wolves. She knew them like an unshakable, gut feeling every time her mind set its thoughts upon those devilish, hollow eyes that only held hunger in their sights. She had felt the sting of their claws ripping at her flesh for that desired taste of life many years prior. She now bore the mark of survival amongst those fiends and thieves as long-ago mended scars above her eye. Mercy Aberdeen was not an ugly woman, even with the symbol of her scourge with the wolves that she prominently wore on her face. She was a beauty of the west perceived as a damsel by gentlemen that wished her for their own to save from a “man’s world”, but she needed not a savior dressed in the folly of expecting a woman like her to bend to the violent earth. She danced alongside it as her own and lived among men and wolves, the likeness of the two beasts hardly discernable in her mind, with her beauty only a mask for the existence of hardened drive that lingered beneath soft, ginger waves and gentle eyes. Those deep gashes had revealed her cynical soul beneath, and now that bit of her was exposed to the world, existing beside her placid looks like a wild animal with nails clipped short and a bow around its neck. She had been named Mercy by her father, whether it out of hopes for desired characteristics to come into fruition as she aged or out of fear of what would come in her wake, she knew not. She knew hardly of anything now. Her mind only held her name given by a man that scarcely loved her, the yellow eyes of beasts that longed to keep society as rough as the forests that they had emerged from, and the sight of a stranger lying amongst the dead of the Golden Pond stagecoach stop.
Mercy’s head buzzed in pain and her eyes sought clarity as she regarded the scene before her in the early hours of morning. The stranger before her laid among the dead as not yet a member—his eyes flickering with life as he regarded Mercy. He had been beaten, his leg had been slashed deeply with a knife, and he leaned haggard and tired against the side of the coach with a pistol in his hand.
“Who did this? Wh–what happened?” Mercy asked, grabbing her temple in pain. She sensed she could faint at any moment or that her head had actually sprung a leak, but when she felt around it, she only touched a thick skull perfectly intact. “Who–”
The stranger regarded her with a question in his eyes and chewed at his lip as Mercy stumbled around to get up onto her feet. “What you mean ‘what happened’, woman? Look around! You got blood all on you!” Mercy turned to examine the strewn about bodies and rubbed at the dried blood on her hands before checking herself for cuts and wounds, but she could not find any. The man cocked his pistol and aimed it at her, counting to himself in his head, but soon he let the numbers fall into nonsense and holstered his gun as he finally let himself study her beauty.
“Who are you?” Mercy asked, turning to him and meeting his eyes.
The man didn’t answer. He only raised a brow at the inquiry. He noticed the scars on her face and thought twice about pegging her as a simple woman that spent her hours baking pies and canning berries all day.
“Thought you were dead, Miss. You must’ve had everything in your skull knocked clean out of ya,” he said. Mercy shook her head. “Yes, you did. You must’ve if you can't remember nothing of what happened. Maybe with that gun there?” Mercy turned around to see a heavy Springfield rifle lying beside the indentation in the dust that her body had made. “Maybe they hit you hard upside the head. I never did see you through the whole mess of it. You just sorta popped up in my sight when I just now opened my eyes. We’ve been out a while seeing as it’s now morning... now it looks like you done woke up without a lick of sense of what happened. Do you even know your name?”
Mercy nodded. “Yes, it’s Mercy. I’m the owner of this home station, Golden Pond.”
Mercy asked the man his name. He thought about the question for a moment, like he was trying to settle things with himself before answering. “Uh, Elias. Elias Shephard.”
“And who is ‘they’? Who did this?” Mercy asked sternly as she walked over to the stagecoach. A man who looked to have been the driver had a clean shot through his head while another poor man of her age lying next to Elias had a slit throat with dried blood staining to his clothes in gory fashion. The Golden Pond’s hostler, Clyde, was among them with a shot through his neck. Mercy felt her heart sting at the sight of the young boy whom she had cared for over the years. Three others that looked to be desperados were on the ground unnaturally ripped to shreds. Mercy studied the bodies carefully, wincing at the sight and confused at how something so horrific had been orchestrated by humans. “Well, whoever did all this didn't stick around to make sure their handy work had been completed by ridding the world of the two of us, it appears, though you’ve got a real nasty gash there on your leg.”
“It was so dark last night... could hardly see a thing. I was just shootin’ at whatever damn well moved about.”
“I got a guess it was the Whitlock Boys,” Mercy offered as Elias tried to sit up further. He hissed in pain when his leg moved in a certain way.
“Nasty brood, they are. They must’ve killed those poor bastards and left the two of us to be eaten up by wolves or anything else in these mountains that deem us fit for a meal,” Elias said as he managed to stand up with pressure off of his injured leg. He started to shimmy his way over to the horses still attached to the coach, but he shot a look back at Mercy. “You know the Whitlock Boys?”
“I’ve heard of them, yes, but I don’t know very much.” Elias nodded and then unhooked the two horses from the coach. Mercy watched him, studying his worn clothes and his overall renegade appearance that had taken shape from the constant dust swirling in the air and the beatings he had undoubtedly taken. “Perhaps it was wolves instead.”
“Maybe for those unfortunate sods,” Elias said, gesturing to the torn apart bodies, but then he motioned to the stagecoach driver, the other passenger, and Clyde, “Only wolves can’t shoot or stab.”
“Why were you here at the stop? Where were you traveling to?” Elias didn’t answer her and kept busy with freeing the horses. “Were you with this coach? Where were you headed?”
“Nearest town.”
“I don’t remember anything,” Mercy whispered to herself as Golden Pond sat silently as a mute witness to all that had transpired.
“Well, as you know, the nearest town, Amathwaite, isn’t much of a town. I’m just needing to meet up with some friends there.” Elias finished freeing the horses and patted one of them on its neck. He tried mounting up on the horse, but his leg caused him to holler in pain. Mercy came over and studied him, eyeing his gun belt.
“We travel together. To Amathwaite. Let them know what happened here since I won't be too much help on remembering last night.” Mercy was not one to enjoy the company of another, and she knew that she was fully capable to make the journey alone, but without her memory running as it should, she kept her ideas on a traveling companion at the forefront.
The man shifted uneasily on his feet and looked out towards the road before them. “I could just make the trek and tell them, and you can stay safe here.”
“No, I need to be there too, because I don’t think you’ll be worth much with that leg of yours if it kills ya on the way, and I don’t much like the idea of staying here alone with all this death around me.”
The man nodded hesitantly before meeting her eyes. There was something about him that didn’t sit well with Mercy, though she couldn’t exactly place why aside from his clothes and hardened appearance.
“I ain’t sure I fully trust you, Mister Shepherd,” Mercy said as she searched the stagecoach top to bottom, pulling out some blankets, a large bottle of whiskey, and some rope. The man watched her, confused, as she held up the rope and gestured to his hands with her head. “I’m sorry, but it’s just ‘cause I don’t have my head about me right now. You understand.” Elias closed his eyes and groaned but allowed her to tie up his hands in front of himself.
“I’m not lying, Miss. Truly. I am in just as much shock and horror at what happened as you are! Please!”
“What do you do? Why were you traveling... answer me that.”
The man’s pause before answering was far too long for Mercy’s liking and she shook her head as she tightened the rope.
“I work with money. I’m from up north!” Elias said with fervor, “I was coming down this way to meet up with friends.”
“And I’ll take that,” Mercy said with a hand pointing to his gun belt. Elias grumbled, of pain or annoyance, she couldn’t tell, but it hardly mattered. Mercy unhooked the belt and put it on herself, checking the pistol before putting it back in its holster. She kept Elias near her as she led the stagecoach horses into the stables and readied them to ride, placing the supplies she had pulled from the coach plus a few cans of food and a canteen from the station in the saddlebags before folding up the blankets and tying them to backs of the horses. She scrubbed the blood from her as best she could with the help of a bucket of water near the station.
Mercy helped Elias mount a black thoroughbred, and then she looped the rope around his forearms as well and had it tied to her horse so that he was completely tethered to her. Mercy led the horses out of the stable and pulled out the bottle of liquor from the bag. She went over and doused Elias’s leg wound with some of it to which Elias howled and hollered and sucked in sharp breaths. Then she walked over to the poor dead stagecoach driver’s lifeless body and ripped a bit of cloth from his shirt and then wrapped it tightly around Elias’s wound. The knife that had been previously pulled from his leg remained on the ground with old blood still clinging to it.
“Damnit, give a warning next time before you go killing a man like that.”
Mercy placed her hands on her hips with a raised brow. “Why’d some outlaw leave his knife jammed in your leg? He didn’t want his knife back? Didn’t wanna finish the job? He just ran off?”
Elias met Mercy’s eyes with annoyance. “Who cares? Miss, I am just as shaken as you–”
“But you can’t die from a stab in the leg, least not quickly without rot and infection. Why’d they leave you?”
“Am I of a criminal mind to where I should know such a thing? Excuse me, but this is all very insulting. Very insulting, ma’am. I am a man of class and refinement.”
Mercy nodded with a hint of false amusement and then came over and checked that the rope was tight. “Then think of this as a precautionary measure that will soon be over when we reach Amathwaite. You’re turning into quite an annoying fellow.”
The odd couple traveled through the valley of nothingness for the rest of the day, staying quiet apart from the few comments to each other about the heat and the sun. Elias had asked if she even knew how to use a gun, to which he only laughed and said, “I guess you won’t really use it, though, huh?” Mercy had answered him by shooting a bird clean out of the air above them with perfect aim, keeping Elias’s wandering mouth shut up from asking more questions on the topic of her skillset.
When the sun’s bright rays had started to fade, and they had both found themselves finally out of the dusty valley and amongst the woods, Mercy pulled the rope at Elias’s hands and stopped her horse.
“Gettin’ late. We’ll rest here for the night.” She hopped down, keeping the pistol at her side. Elias swung his legs around to dismount.
“Hey! You move when I tell you to move,” Mercy warned as she shot him a caveat glance before helping him down. He offered her a crooked smile, but Mercy did not return the sentiment. Elias made sure to keep his injured leg swinging beside his other, never touching the ground.
Mercy walked over to the clearing they had come across with a blanket and the opened bottle of whiskey in her arms. Elias kept his tied hands at his chest and regarded his horse who was nickering and swinging his head like the entirety of the situation was a joke.
“Taken hostage by a woman,” he sighed as he hobbled over after her, “I hope you have good intentions with me, Miss Aberdeen.”
“Depends on yours,” she uttered sharply as she busied herself with preparing a small camp and starting a fire for them.
“You need help?”
Mercy looked at him with exasperation. “You stay put, you hear?”
Once she had finished, she came over and nudged Elias to sit down, then she tied his feet together before she walked over to the blanket across from him and crashed down onto it, kicked her knee up, and rested the pistol on top to keep it aimed at him. Neither said a word for what felt like an hour, just the flames licking between them—a few crickets chirping and distant animals rustling in the leaves around them in the woods. Mercy’s eyes never left Elias’s. His eyes never left hers, but as Elias’s remained lively and strong, Mercy’s fell slightly every few seconds, and she would rub a hand against her forehead in pain.
“You need rest,” Elias proposed with a nod of his head.
“Like hell, so you can run or try something” Mercy scoffed. She reached over and took a swig from the whiskey bottle and gritted her teeth before breathing out contentedly and returning her glare to Elias.
“Think of me, a poor passenger on that coach having just witnessed not very long ago others killed by Lord knows who, possibly the Whitlock Gang, himself left to die, and then captured and tied up again like a damn prisoner with a gun pointed at him.”
“Alright, Elias, think of me, a woman that woke up to a bunch of folks lying amongst her torn apart and dead, her memories of it all gone, and you sitting there as alive as ever. For all I know, Elias, you’re lying. Now, shut up.”
Elias nodded solemnly and then watched her as she took some more gulps from the bottle. Even with her disheveled appearance and her sharp tongue, she was something he was starting to find himself not being entirely bothered by the company of, and if Elias had to admit it, he was starting to like her spit-fire candor.
“If I may, Miss, whiskey ain’t gonna make your headache go away.”
“No shit, but it may make you go away,” Mercy said with a sigh as she tossed the bottle aside.
“A woman who drinks hard whiskey is a woman that’s got good stories to tell.”
“I ain’t got stories.”
“Well, you run that little, gimcrack stagecoach stop. You must have stories from people that pass through and stay.”
Mercy scrunched up her nose and then leaned her head back to look up at the faint stars above her just barely beginning to pepper the purple sky with white dots like sugar on a blackberry. The whiskey was warming her, perhaps warming her brain more so than she would have liked with its comforting heaviness. "You ever hear about them Mexico devils living around here in the plains?”
“Men?”
Mercy breathed out a bit of a laugh and nodded. “Well, I think they’re men, hiding disguised as a wild folklore legend, but, anyway, these things are like dogs, maybe wolves, something evil living in black fur behind red, bloody eyes. There was a Navajo man that came through on a coach from down in Mexico heading up to New York... ain’t that a long damn journey? He was also a very cruel man. Cruelest that’s stayed at my lodge. He hated me for some reason... kept lookin’ at me like I was a ghost. He didn’t even sleep that night either. See, Golden Pond is just one big room. I cook and live in the same space where the travelers sleep. There’s no escaping one another. That night... he kept his eyes open until morning, and they always shifted onto me at my every movement. He kept a knife tucked into his bed too like he thought someone was gonna kill him at any moment. I didn’t like the way he stared at me. I thought he might have tried something in the night, just waiting for me to go to sleep, but I think he was more scared of me than I was of him for whatever reason. Maybe he thought I had a predisposition towards Native Americans. People are so unkind to them. I don’t see with hate like some people tend to do, but I doubt saying so would have changed his demeanor towards me. Anyway, he was a farmer, heading up to New York to try his luck on a new endeavor, because his livestock... they all got sucked up dry like a fresh drink of water for a thirsty wanderer! He said that every pig, goat, cow... they were all dead, but not from rustlers or a man with a gun causing mayhem to Native Americans just for the hell of it. Those animals were stretched apart—torn open like some godforsaken thing was peeling open an orange to suck out the nectar inside. He said that there were claw marks all tearing the animals to ribbons and large teeth marks were sunk into the flesh. He thought that he had angered some rageful ancient spirit that sought to scare him. Now, mind you, he told this story without a hint of fear in his heavy voice. I almost believed him and his tall tale, but there was something in the way he spoke that made me choose the voice of reason and throw out the whole story as hogwash. He was just a man who disliked the people he was forced to lodge with, telling stories to shock and frighten them. But, I have to admit, there’s been many a night in that stop that I’ve spent alone, and I’ve felt this gnawing feeling of death and violence piercing me, like whatever hound-ish devils that killed that man’s farm are going to swarm the area and make me into a meal.”
Elias and Mercy sat in silence, both stewing over what she had shared. The evening was suddenly empty of crickets, frogs, and wildlife. Elias broke the silence with a chuckle that started to rise in volume. He couldn’t help but laugh fully then, and the more he did, the more Mercy found it contagious, or perhaps her alcohol-tinged brain found it so, but she nonetheless chuckled alongside him. Even though she felt this snake-like quality in him, like he was hiding in the grass only to strike her once he had the chance, she also felt a little more comfort in his presence. She didn’t know why exactly, but she found herself starting to relax a little bit. Maybe that too was the alcohol in her bones.
“There’s your story. I guess women who drink whiskey do have something to tell,” Mercy chortled as she nodded to the bottle at the side of her. “Want some?” Elias shook his head. He didn’t want to lose his focus. Perhaps with her tiring eyes and lack of guard dropping with the whiskey and exhaustion, he could slip away this time, it was just a matter of the damn rope bound around his hands and feet.
“But what of you, Miss? You seem like you pack a punch. Weren’t no lady with her curls pinned up pouring tea for gentlemen when we met, nor one sitting here with me now. You’re a tough one, ain’t you? I see you got the nasty end of a fight with some real beast from the past.” He gestured to her scared face.
“You should see the other guy,” she joshed, “It’s been a few years since then. I’m lucky this is all I got from a wolf attack.” He was the first man she had ever encountered that saw her scars as a mark of who she truly was—not as some lady with an unfortunate blemish to be worn behind heavy powder. She stopped aiming the pistol at Elias and placed it next to her before laying down flat. She reveled in the crisp evening breeze before turning her attention to Elias, who seemed to be distracted by something coming upon them in the woods. Mercy watched him, confused at what he was looking at.
A man came out of the dark brush and approached them, lit up by the orange glow of the fire and the bright, full moon coming into view in the night sky. He was heavyset and bald and looked like he had been digging in holes for years as his arms were covered in dirt and his clothes were all ripped and stained like he lived out there in the thick of the wilderness. His missing-teeth grin was plastered onto his face making him look like some strange specter as he stood there eyeing both Elias and Mercy. Mercy jumped up at the sight of him and tried to grab for her pistol on the ground, but a second, thinner man of similar appearance was already standing behind her and grabbed it before she could. He ran over to stand near Elias and aimed it at his head. Mercy kicked herself for her sloppy, utter idiocy supplied by the damn whiskey and letting her guard down.
“Well, look here, Obadiah. A couple of nice folks out here enjoying the fire,” the bald man chuckled as he crouched near the fire. The thin one, Obadiah, who was clearly not as sharp as his friend, nodded and pressed the barrel of the pistol harder against Elias’s temple. Elias shot a confused glance at Mercy who returned it with worry.
“What you boys want, hm?” Elias asked calmly as he tilted his head up at them. The men noticed his bound hands and feet and then looked at Mercy.
“He’s all tied up, Miss. Is he a bad man? What’s his bounty worth?” Obadiah asked with a toothy smile. “Maybe we’ll be the ones collecting on you, then.”
“He ain’t got a bounty. Get the hell out of here right now,” Mercy threatened. The men just laughed.
“Well, pretty thing, we like this here fire. How ‘bout you come sit with us, hm? I’ll be nice.”
Mercy shook her head. “I’ll kill you both.”
“Nah, I don’t think ya will.” The bald man stood up and came over to her and leaned in. “Obadiah there’s got your gun. I think maybe we’ll cook the both of ya like squirrels in this fire.” The bald man grabbed Mercy by her cheeks as she kicked and screamed at him. Obadiah had his eyes completely on Mercy and his friend, not paying any of his attention to Elias and letting the pistol drop to the ground. Elias thought about grabbing it quickly and then using it as a means to escape towards one of the horses and leave, letting this problem be Mercy’s alone. It wasn’t his business anyway with this woman. She had him tied up. He could be out of there and free of all of it.
The bald man ducked from a punch that Mercy threw his way and then she kicked him between the legs, eliciting a yell from the man and making him drop his grip on her face. Mercy stumbled back away from him, tripping on the discarded whiskey bottle which made her fall to the ground. The bald man reached down to grab her, but a shot rang out and pierced his gut, making him collapse into himself in agony with a horrible shout. Then another shot came, and Mercy looked over to see Obadiah fall to the ground with a hole in his forehead. Elias, still sitting against the rock, tied up at the feet and hands, aimed the pistol between his clasped hands at the bald man’s head. The man pleaded for him to stop as he clutched at his bleeding wound, but Elias pulled the trigger, and with the ringing of the final shot, the man fell backward with a thud. Mercy stared at the dead bodies with fear rushing into her eyes and her skin turning pale. Elias’s chest rose and fell steadily as he kept his eyes on the lifeless men for a moment before he turned them to Mercy.
“Y’alright?” he asked, eyebrows raised but with a smooth calmness in his demeanor like he hadn't just shot two men without a thought. Mercy nodded and met his eyes. He hadn't tried to run or shoot her... he had saved her. She stood up and kicked the bald man’s body away from her as she made her way over to Elias. She held her hand out for the gun, which he handed back without arguing. Mercy put it in its holster as she stared at him. Elias just tilted his head up to look at her quizzically. He was so blasé about the whole thing. It made her wonder how many times he had killed a man before and what the circumstances and reasons had been.
“Thank you,” she uttered and gave a reassuring, small nod before walking over to Obadiah’s body and pulling his arms to move him. He wouldn’t budge, even though he was quite thin. Elias asked if he could help, and after a moment of regarding his offer, Mercy nodded and walked over to untie his hands and cut the rope at his feet. They both worked together to carry the bodies off in the distance. After they were done, they walked back to the camp together. She shot Elias a few warning glances as they walked, wondering if he was going to try running, but he shook his head.
“Miss Aberdeen, I ain’t gonna run, lest some inbred cannibals come out again to mess with you tonight.” As much as Elias wanted to be free of the whole situation, he truly didn’t want Mercy stuck in the thick of it if something of the same incident occurred with a worse outcome. He was starting to care for her, much to his annoyance.
“You think they could’ve been some of those from the Whitlock Gang?”
“Them boys? No, no there are other gangs besides the Whitlocks around here, but those two just seemed like mountain folk… creepy mountain folk, but I’d say there’s nothing in those brains that resemble the inner workings of any gunslinger. We’ll just have to keep our eyes out for anything else.” When the two reached the camp, Mercy stayed up, wide awake, thinking on what had just happened and also still trying to keep an eye on Elias.
“Don’t think I could’ve shot them,” Mercy stated, eyes staring out into the woods. “I’ve never shot a man before, so, I don’t think I could’ve done it.”
“I think ya could’ve. Could’ve shot me. Maybe yours is a heart that’s too good to take someone’s life.”
“You shot them both easy enough.”
Elias dropped his eyes and breathed out. “Yeah, I’ve had to shoot men before.” Mercy watched him with a little hint of worry in her features. “I was in the, uh, cavalry. Long while back. Had to shoot folk. Shooting someone is something you try not to linger on, and well, it of course ain’t something for the empathetic.”
Mercy thought for a moment, thinking over what he had told her. She pushed aside the disquieting thoughts that crept up in exchange for a fleeting moment of finding something trustworthy in Elias—as if to ignore a hidden truth gnawing at her for some semblance of temporary comfort—and figured that if he meant her harm, he would have done so already.
“Well, I’m very grateful for what you did. Lord knows what might have happened.”
Elias rubbed a hand through his unkempt hair. “I’ll just be glad when we reach Amathwaite.”
Elias woke up to an empty campsite. The fire was out, but the horses were still tethered to the trees, and Mercy’s hat was sitting on top of where she had been sleeping. Elias wondered if she had gone off to get water or to find something for food, but she hadn’t brought the pistol with her.
“Mercy?” he called with his hands cupped around his mouth. “Mercy!”
The forest only answered him back with birds chirping and the occasional sound of wind rushing through the leaves. Elias glanced back at the horses again, noted the pistol once more, and reached forward for it. His eyes scanned the area again, listening for movement of any kind, but he heard none. After a few minutes of struggling with his injured leg, he slowly hobbled over to the horses, and he began untying the one he had claimed as his own and then led it onto the path.
“Elias?”
Elias twisted around to see Mercy standing there. She looked like she had just pulled herself from hell itself, with blood on her and her hair all about and wild. Dirt smeared her skin in random places and her eyes were tired. Elias dropped the reins and pulled off his coat, wrapping it around Mercy who clutched it tightly around herself.
“Where the hell did you go? What happened to you?” he asked. Mercy shook her head.
“I don’t–I don’t remember.”
Elias furrowed his brows. “Did someone take you off in the middle of the night? More of those people out here, huh?”
Mercy squeezed her eyes tightly. “I–I was sleeping, and I woke up like this out in the woods. No one came into camp, at least–well, at least I don’t think so. Maybe someone did, and I guess I fought back.” She held out her bloodied hands to Elias but then grabbed her forehead and groaned. “Um, why do you have my gun?” Mercy asked, studying Elias and his horse, “You were planning on runnin’, weren’t you?” Elias didn’t say anything. His lips stumbled, not releasing a single word in his efforts. Mercy closed the coat around herself with her arms crossed over her chest. “What are you hidin’, Elias? Who are you really?”
“I’ve told you who I am! I was going out to look for you, that’s what, Mercy!” Elias yelled with exasperation.
Mercy’s eyes were dark with anger and her mouth trembled. She was tired. She was paranoid about everything with this man all over again. She was alone in her mind with nothing to bring her reassurance. Mercy turned and walked back over to their camp and tried scrubbing the blood from her hands with the water from her canteen. She placed her hat atop her messy hair and swept the haphazard, ginger strands into some semblance of a braid as she walked back to Elias. Her hands were held out, awaiting an offering with a hint of irritation in her amber eyes. Elias tossed the pistol to her and then pulled himself up onto his horse, a growl of pain escaping his lips as his wounded leg helped him in his efforts.
“Strange,” Mercy whispered to herself as she looked down at the dirt clinging to her clothes.
“And apparently lucky,” Elias remarked with a sigh. Mercy just furrowed her brows at him.
“Let’s get moving,” she said as she mounted up, “We should reach Amathwaite by night, right?” Mercy asked as she kicked her horse into a steady pace which Elias followed. He didn’t answer her.
Despite their shared night of a somewhat blossoming companionship, Mercy and Elias had fallen back into their reserved ways from the previous day. No words were uttered between them, not even to comment on the heat of the day. Mercy had left Elias untied and free to use his hands, though she kept her pistol at the ready if he tried anything or thought about running. She knew it was strange to keep him under her grip like a prisoner, as he himself had noted earlier, but there was a creeping fear in her mind after hearing the mountain men mention a bounty that Elias was much more than he let on. She, of course, had had this sinking worry since she had met him, but now she wondered if he was connected fully to the men that had been killed at the station. Elias lacked a bit of harshness to him that she always associated with men of suspicious morals, but she was playing her cards close to the vest, keeping her eyes on him as if he truly was a bounty being brought in to Amathwaite—if he was innocent, then he could depart from her as such when they reached their destination.
“So, you ain’t never shot a man?” Elias asked, breaking the awkward silence, his eyes cutting over to her and then back to the road.
“No. That’s an evil thing, killing someone. Something only those damned Whitlock Boys find joy in. Common scum doing the devil’s work of taking a man’s life.”
“Perhaps they don’t find joy in it.”
“What do you call that rampage of a killing back at the stagecoach stop? Doing so to survive or what? What alternative is that evil to finding joy?”
“All I’m saying is maybe not all of them are monstrous killers like people think. The Whitlock Gang don’t usually kill innocents, Miss, is what I’m getting at. They rob, yeah, and maybe enjoy a good beating on someone looks at ‘em wrong, eh, don’t get me wrong, they are bad folks, but they ain’t known for slaughtering. And besides, it looked like some of those boys were even out amongst the dead as well.”
“You sure know a good bit about them, don’t you, Elias?”
“I read the papers, Miss Aberdeen.”
“I know what I woke up to at the stop. I know what I saw. What they did was butchery, Elias. If not them, then who do you suggest did it in their stead? Perhaps those imaginary demon dogs that Navajo man raved on about. You’d be a raving fool to think it wasn’t nothing but pure evil living through the body and soul of a human that did that.”
“I still ain’t quite sure what I saw, Mercy.”
Mercy shook her head. “You think there’s something good to be found in everyone, that it? Do you think men like the Whitlock Boys are worth something more than the hangman’s knot? If that is so, Elias, then I think you and I are heading to Amathwaite for far different reasons.”
"No, actually. I think everyone is evil and dark just like those Whitlocks. They just capitalize on it and make it public while the rest hide their blackness and their own demons living inside them under either deceit or ignorance. That’s what I think. This whole country is black with sin just as much as in New York with its refined, new coming ways of ‘civilization’ as it is in these damn desert wastelands. People want an evil to hang just so they can feel like there are worse things than themselves in this world. People want a monster to point at and hand over to the devil and God on a path in judgment and companionship whilst they can have enough time to hide themselves and their own sins.”
Mercy didn’t say anything. She only rode alongside Elias with her eyes firmly planted on the outstretched road until she finally spoke, breaking the building silence between them. “That is an odd observation, but one that I cannot argue with exactly.” Elias and Mercy looked at each other then, finally pulling back into some broken semblance of understanding between one another that had been slowly coming to a head the longer they were in each other’s company. “No matter your peculiar philosophy and my own philosophy, the law punishes those that sin publicly, and as such, those men deserve the noose, Elias. There is no one else to blame for the violence of that day, and I will have judgment for what was done bestowed upon those that are deserving of it.”
Seeming to not have another argument for Mercy, or too tired and done with the situation to keep the topic at the forefront of their conversation, Elias changed the subject as he looked over Mercy’s scarred face. “What exactly happened with those wolves that got ya?”
She sighed and absentmindedly reached her hand up to her eye and forehead and felt the healed scars beneath her fingertips. “It was about a year ago. I hadn’t always owned that stagecoach stop. It used to belong to a man that took me in about the same time I was attacked. Anyway, years prior, I had to run away from my home after my family was killed by none other than those wretched Whitlock Boys after they tried robbing us and Daddy fought against them.” Elias’s eyes widened a bit as he listened to her confession. He finally knew the rage and sorrow that drove Mercy then—her intense desire to have the same men thrown from the earth and into the flames of hell. “And I don’t care what you say, Elias, they sure as shit killed innocents that day. Maybe you don’t understand them half as well as you think you do. Papers aren’t as realistic or telling as a gun pointed at your head. Well, after that, I wandered the desert for a couple of days in search of a town or something, anything. One night when I was having to sleep rough and exposed on open, flat land, I heard howls off in the distance, but they weren’t like wolf howls, I remember that. They were sharp and cracked, almost like–like cackles of a witch. There were two of them, and they kept getting closer and closer to me. I aimed my rifle all around in the darkness, praying that they would stay away, but I quickly saw their black bodies come into view under that full moon casting them in both shadow and light—twisting them into odd angles. They looked almost like monsters instead of wolves in that moment, and I shot over and over again at them. One jumped at me, slashed my face, gave me a nasty bite on the shoulder. The wretched beast was cackling in a frenzy. I ended up being able to grab my knife and stab it into the wolf’s neck. The other one ran off. I was lucky to have survived that night with only these ugly scars. That next morning at daybreak, I noticed that the wolf I had stabbed hadn’t died but had run off as well. I ended up hobbling in the direction of an outpost that I could see on the horizon. It was the stagecoach stop, Golden Pond, I now own, waiting there like a mirage calling to me. The man who owned it, Lee, took me in, fixed me up, and let me live there and work. It was definitely a miracle from God—Lee and that stop. Poor man ended up dying a few weeks later. I hardly remember anything from that day, but I remember seeing his body all torn up... like those men... I knew it had to be the Whitlock Boys again that killed him. I knew it. I hate them men, Elias. I hate them.”
Mercy’s voice broke and she rubbed at her eyes quickly before taking in a deep breath and exhaling shakily. “I want them to hang for what they did to me, now a third time.”
Elias nodded his head and reached his hand out to touch her shoulder. “I’m very sorry, Mercy.”
For the first time in a long time, or at least, since the time she could remember in her life, Mercy smiled. It wasn’t big nor did it appear as a smile of happiness and contentment, but it held a kind of depth and understanding to it that made Elias feel it in his soul. He smiled back.
Amathwaite finally came into view in the distance, able to be seen easily over the wide stretch of desert that had slowly been eating away at the forest that Mercy and Elias had been traveling through. Now, they were back on dusty ground with flatlands outstretched around them. The sun was setting again, warning them of night’s presence about to creep upon the land. It would take too long to reach the border of the town, and with the full moon beginning to paint the land in a blue glow and coyote’s yipping wildly on the prairies, Mercy begrudgingly clicked her tongue for her horse to come to a stop.
“We gotta camp again, unfortunately. Misjudged the time to get there. Another night.”
Mercy dismounted and helped Elias off his horse, and the two walked over to a lone, leafless tree surrounded by some boulders to hold up at for the night. Mercy quickly started a fire, and in time they were both resting against the rocks, staring into the flames as the day slowly died. The whole situation was like déjà vu, and Mercy wondered if it was her own personal hell—stuck with some fool in the wasteland of America with a headache and no end in sight. She questioned if the sight of Amathwaite in the distance was in fact a hallucination her mind had conjured up. Mercy pulled out a can of food and stabbed a knife into the aluminum top, breaking it open and revealing lukewarm beans. She nearly groaned at the sight, wishing for something with a more desirable taste to satiate her hunger, but she turned the can upside down and jostled it in her hand until the smoky, sludgy beans filled her mouth. She handed it over to Elias who took his share of the pitiable meal. They carried on like that, sharing the can and canteen of water back and forth and taking turns staring into the fire until Elias looked out past it and up into the mountains that they had come from.
“You think what killed all those men up at the stagecoach station could have been those rabid, demon beasts that Native American told you of?”
“No... it was a story,” Mercy said with a tired voice, “I think we should just stay quiet tonight, thank you.”
A few minutes of muteness passed between them again before Elias coarsely broke it and remarked, “If they were real, suppose, you think they come out at all times of the day or just night? Do they just kill animals? That’s what I’m getting at... you think if they just kill animals, then they couldn’t have killed those men... and whatever it was killed them at night.” Mercy finally shifted her eyes over to Elias and saw that he was staring ahead almost absentmindedly, as if he was speaking to himself or that his brain was trying to connect dots out loud.
“But like you said, wolves or beasts or ‘demon dogs’ don’t shoot or stab,” Mercy said flatly.
“It was so dark. I didn’t see anyone. I heard Jeremiah screaming and–”
“Jeremiah?” Mercy cut in as she studied Elias, who quickly tore himself out of his reverie. His eyes met hers, lingering as if to catch up with himself. “Who’s Jeremiah?” Elias sat up and held up his hands, eyes shifting around and unable to land on Mercy’s as she stood up with the pistol gripped in her hand. “Jeremiah one of Whitlock’s men, Elias?”
“As I said, I read the papers, Mercy, but I don’t know their names.”
Mercy’s eyes burned harshly in the darkening sky, making them appear almost black in the cast of the fire. “How much is your bounty worth, hm? That price on you, what is it?”
Elias shook his head and let out an uneasy laugh at that. “Mercy, you’re getting paranoid out here now. It’s been long days riding in the heat and your memory is shaky, please, don’t spin a story to fit some fear you’re having just to appease it. Jeremiah was an old friend of mine, I–I sometimes have that past horror of his death in my head, and I was reminded of it is all. I’m sorry. I was speaking freely and out of mind.”
“How much is it?”
“Miss Aberdeen, you don’t think me evil. Surely, you don’t.”
Neither of them blinked as they held one another’s eyes—Mercy’s cold and Elias’s shaken. The sun was now asleep behind the mountains, ushering in the navy blue of night just barely tinged with darkness. Mercy and Elias were bathed in the fire’s light, surrounded by the boulders like walls closing them in on one another, allowing for no escape from the moment nor each other. The more Elias regarded Mercy’s chilled, lifeless demeanor, the more she appeared to be of a creation that made him afraid—a man who fashioned himself as one who knew no fear. As he crumbled apart, the rocks around them and Mercy’s hand on the pistol stayed firm.
“How long did you figure this about me?” he asked plainly, tilting his chin up at her and squinting his eyes, like trying to read her would give him the answer without her speaking.
“I’ve been figuring since I woke up with you at Golden Pond, but now my figuring’s been satisfied. It wasn’t hard to figure this whole time, Elias. You never acted the saint, though at times, I was fooled, I will give you that. Slips of tongue never favor us, and yet we can never rein them in as easily as they flow,” Mercy sighed as she shook her head. Her voice cracked with anger or sadness, one or the other she could not even tell, “And to think I was almost fooled into caring just a bit about you, Elias. And damn you for that. Damn you for making me care.”
“And I care for you, Mercy. I may have been lying to you the whole ride here, but I ain’t lying when I say I do care for you too.” Their eyes, still steady on one another, shifted for just a fleeting moment into a shared sorrow at their confession, but as quickly as it had come, their admission was shielded again just as they had both expertly done before. Elias nodded and smirked a little at her, running a hand through his messy, dirt-dusted hair and staring up at the stars above beginning to show in the sky. “And it’s true. I’m no saint, I ain’t. But no one is, right? Not even you, Mercy. But, yeah, I killed. I kill. My likeness has got a reward for a thousand dollars dead. I, myself, carry the Whitlock name upon my sinned soul more so than any of those boys that came with me to Golden Pond. I’m Shaw Whitlock’s little brother, though, he ain’t too fond of me,” Elias said with a slight laugh, “and I guess that’s why he ain’t come looking for me and the others.”
Mercy breathed in unsteadily with her darkened eyes still unblinking and her hand brandishing the pistol more brilliantly then. “That’d make you Silas Whitlock, then.”
The man with two names smiled at that and nodded again. “But I wasn’t a part of your Daddy and Momma dying, Mercy.”
“Don’t you say my name. Don’t you speak about my family, you hear me?”
“And I wasn’t a part of that man, Lee, dying. Hell, I wasn’t a part of all that death at the stop! We came to rob you folks, not slaughter the lot. Now, my men did shoot those travelers, yes, but it’s only because they fought back and that boy you know was the one stabbed me in the leg and beat me. My men died too, Mercy. And I never saw you through it all. You were like a ghost until the moment I woke up to you laying there on the ground without your memories. Now, you ain’t pinning that sin on my shoulders. You ain’t pinning none of those sins on me.”
“What did you expect, Silas? Robbing folk ain’t gonna come with them fighting back? Don’t spin it how you see fit just to help yourself sound better than you are. It’s like kicking a dog and not expecting for him to bite back and at the end of the day what matters is that you still kicked the damn thing to begin with. You know, I don’t wanna believe it. I don’t wanna believe you were a part of it. But it was you. It was all you. You ruined everything. You’re evil, Silas... and you deserve that rope, and I deserve that money for helping rid this earth of a killer. Now, I’m going to take you to Amathwaite to watch you hang, or I’ll shoot ya right here if you don’t cooperate.” Every word she spoke was with a pain in her soul. She had grown to feel something for his soul, unknowing of what it carried, but nonetheless, she found herself wishing to ignore that truth in the hopes of being wrong about this man.
Silas held up his hands and shook his head as Mercy aimed the pistol at his head. She was nearly seething, her eyes almost black as sin. Silas hardly saw a woman in her at that moment— true fear of his life hanging at the end of a rope or the end of Mercy's wits while holding that gun with a readied bullet.
“And maybe you do believe all that for your truth... but that ain’t altogether the reason for you saying that is it, Mercy? You want that reward money now. That’s what’s driving you. Not so much vengeance and justice as it is a stack of bills in your hand.”
Mercy didn’t answer him.
“Mercy, please,” he said softly, “Forgive me. We are all dark in with what we do, so please, see me for something more than what you are feeling in rage. You say you care for me, and I, you."
“Shut up, Silas,” Mercy’s trembling voice betrayed her—her eyes wet with a hint of sorrow and her hand shaking with the grip of the gun. “You’re a trickster. A liar. A killer.”
Silas launched forward for Mercy, throwing her to the ground and pinning her under him as he attempted to free the gun from her hand and reclaim it as his own. She kicked him and fought back with growls in her throat. They struggled back and forth, the pistol still in her hand but threatening to leave it under Silas’s force.
“I do care for you, Mercy, but I care for my life more.”
In that empty, silent wasteland, with the whipping breeze of night and the quiet peace amongst the lives of Amathwaite off in the distance unaware, a piercing shot resounded out over the plains. The crows sitting in the jagged desert trees called out to the world at what had been done, but no one knew their language and thus knew not of what they professed. And a silence like before followed the sharp, intruding screams as they faded into an echo. But that moment was fleeting, as wrenched out screams drifted back into the area—screams that lingered and lingered and with each horrible beginning of one, the more sickened and afraid anyone that could hear them would become. In between those dying cries, a sharp cackle could be heard—cackling yips that were both animalistic and human. The golden dirt in that little spot surrounded by desert boulders turned red from the leaking of a soul as one of the tethered horses rejoiced at the thought of a now weightless journey without spurs rubbing their side.
In the morning, when the pale sun was beginning to awaken the lives of that vast, dried-up land, Mercy Aberdeen opened her eyes from a forgotten sleep and felt sore in her bones as she had many times before from sleepless nights in the past, and she smelled blood upon her skin and surrounding her on the ground, and she felt a hunger appeased in her stomach that she did not understand, and she finally looked down at the torn-apart body of Silas Whitlock whose blood matched the kind caked on her nails and arms and lips. And Mercy turned her confused and horrified eyes to the horizon and caught sight of a pair of wolf-like beasts standing boldly in the warm sun of dawn. They were more monstrous than any dog, more human than any wolf, and more familiar to her own existence at that moment than she cared to accept. But she knew then. She knew everything. And she rode to Amathwaite after the blood had been scrubbed from her body and her sins had been buried into the dirt alongside Silas’s blood with the hope of blending into civilized society. She was certain she could do so easily.
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