To sum the last week and a half in Madison's mind was to a proportion much like Cadentia had been when she'd begun moving her things over from the Hotel Penny - unfathomable. The dimensions of her life with Glenn had become so stretched that the past seemed very much alive in her present, and the future was an uncertain as it ever had been. Before Elijah had left, and after she'd first set foot in Rhy'Din. But even those events, those milestones in her life, were not like this. Then, she had been alone both times. But recently, on the edge of the worlds they knew, the Outlaw and her had forged some road to share to discover what lay buried. Only, what Glenn had found had disturbed him so furiously, that he had pushed her away and now, he was gone. As quickly as he had come into her life he had left it. It only seemed fitting.

She was in what had been, for years, an abandoned house out West. Madison did not know for how long it had been filled with the family that the two had walked in on, but long enough that their acres were tendered and thriving and after excursion, she'd seen the family, still nameless but for its sole survivor, Maida, owned some cattle. They were not doing well, which put it at closing on a week since anyone had looked at them. Between the last feed and Glenn and Madison arriving, someone had murdered the patriarch, and left the kid alone and starving. Unless, as it may have been, the assailant didn't even know of the child hiding in the shed. Whichever the case, the house was abandoned again, or rather, was due to be in an hour when Madison took to the trail and back to Rhy'Din.

A matter of days ago they had ridden to Glenn's side of the West for him to find his family in York, his hometown. Only, his brother Frankie, a Lawmen, was dead and with him had perished his wife and their daughter. Sheriff and his men had taken Glenn and Madison into custody for questioning, when both of them turned tables and things got ugly. It saw two men die in York, one of which was the Sheriff who had accused Glenn of murdering his own kin, and subsequently paid the price when one of his own men turned table and shot him. By the time the pair had left York, they were responsible for the deaths of citizens of that side of the West, but not of the terms they were arrested for. The Sheriff was one of the conviction that Glenn had shot his brother and had been seen leaving the scene, and was on the road to evade the brutal term. Glenn swore his innocence. The town had gone up in hellfire and the two had left on stolen horseback. Add theft to the list they left behind of their crimes in York. Guilty for them, in self defence. Not guilty for why they were ushered in the first instance.


Glenn, over a long day, had led them through brush and wasteland and meadow for hours until they reached the edge of what an old signpost announced to be DECREPIT. Madison had smirked at that. The house they found matched the description. She couldn't imagine that an estate was named that truly, unless the owners had been in possession of a deprecating sense of humour before their untimely deaths. Glenn, having kidnapped the only surviving Lawmen, tried to persuade some truth out of the man about Frankie's demise, but the man had been tough-lipped. In the end, Glenn had killed him too. Death was everywhere. Before killing the man, while questioning him in the kitchen, Madison had done a survey on the land, and found, in the shed, Maida, covered in blood but unhurt and scared and starved. Beside her, her Father, lay dead, riddled with gunshots. On the line, tattered, bullet-pierced sheets flickered in the breeze. It spoke a mean story.


The full day's stay at Decrepit had done nothing but work the grief deeper into Glenn. Again, he pushed her away, mad at the world, at himself, at the injustice. At not finding any family. It had meant more to him than he could or would say, to have found some Douglas' left. He had drawn into himself and become so distant that Madison had told him, that this time, she would be the one to leave. It was, after all, his business. Whether this murder had anything to do with York was not yet determined, but the killers might return and Madison insisted on getting the girl out of there. She'd reached out to Glenn, despite the misgiving growing between them, when he mounted horse and left her only with the instruction that she should indeed leave, and dig the dead lawmen a grave.



The next morning, resolved to give the man a burial and get little Maida to the safety of Rhy'Din, Madison walked around to the yard and took up the shovel leaning against the shed, and foot to the spade, handle shoved down deep, lifted earth. She wept the whole time.

By the time the moon had risen and fallen again and the sun took its place in the sky once more Glenn had put miles and hours of distance between him and that little house on the hill with Madison and Maida and the two dead men riddled with bullet holes and wrapped in old sheets and rope. He didn?t stop riding and he had no destination in mind until he gazed up at the sun again and found himself blinded by its light. That?s when it hit him, something he?d forgotten from his lessons during boyhood: the sun was a star like all the others. He laughed quietly at the wind as the horse beneath him wheezhed and shuddered and gasped for breath, its pale coat sleek with sweat and its muscles pained from the hard ride. Glenn granted the beast a moment of mercy as he dismounted and pointed a gun at its head when it toppled over and landed heavily in the dirt and dust. The gunshot echoed across the rolling hills and scared the carrion crows who were hiding in the brush and the bleached branches of an old tree that stood pale against the backdrop of a sky that was a darkening shade of blue. Clouds were rolling overhead and drifting to block out the sun, his sun. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky and thunder rolled and the ground shook under his feet.

He gathered what he could from the saddlebags and stuffed them into a pack that he slung over his shoulder, replaced the spent bullet in the cylinder of his Dragoon and he turned away and started walking back toward York. He wasn?t sure how many miles out he was or if he was even heading in the right direction, but he figured walking would be better than standing and waiting for the sun to take his life away and the crows to pick his eyes out when they returned to feast on the meal of horseflesh he left for them on that dusty hill. Another bolt of lightning raced across the sky and was chased by the loud boom that made his ears ring and they brought with them a downpour of cold rain that washed over and drenched the gunslinger to the bone. He ducked his head against the wind that came roaring over the countryside and marched along, envying his dead brother for that one moment as he lay nice and safe and dead in his grave, no longer worrying about the world that had tried so desperately to erase the Douglas family from existence.

Glenn was forced to make camp against the thick trunk of a tree that stretched wide enough to block some of the wind and less of the rain. He huddled up under a blanket and stared at the world as it began to flood with muddy puddles of water. Some ran red from the dirt and dust of the land and he thought about the man he?d killed and the woman he?d shot afterwards on a night not so different from this one and wondered if that was really when he went bad or if it had happened when he first left York all those years ago and got into trouble with some men in the neighboring town.

?Don?t mean sh*t,? he muttered under his breath as though trying to avoid being overheard by that howling wind and beating rain that deafened his ears to the world. ?Went bad and it don?t matter when.?

Least I can do is see that Frankie?s killer is brought to justice.

If he ever did one good thing in this world, Glenn Douglas would make sure that it was in his family?s name.

"Nothin' "

"Then why we slowing down? It's a parade!" Maida cheered at Madison's back. The gunslinger shook her head.

"Nothin' like you think", glancing to the girl. Her hair was wind-whipped and in the full light of day the color of straw. It fell down to her shoulders raggedly. Still matted in clumps. Still stringy and dirty. Through the fair locks she looked back at Madison, seriously. "I can hear music but!"

Madison had brought the pace right back to scratch and breathed out her nose the sigh she'd been holding in. Ahead of them, a good few miles, was the distant procession of Greene's funeral. Amongst them, Glenn may have been, and she fought with her heart to not keep going up along the pass and down the ridge and towards York, fought with it like she fought the reigns as the horse tired beneath them. They would need to stop soon, and she didn't want to be staying in York, not when he was there and not with their recent history in that town. Maida's safety was more important than a misunderstanding with a man, in reality, she hardly knew. With haste, she turned away from the sounds of the horns and brass and crying and tumbled her and her charge towards Cadentia.


They reached it an hour and a half into nightfall. She helped the girl down and into her house, saw to it she was run a bath and fed. "Morning, we're going to the clinic", Madison was taking off her boots. A grunt as her toes were finally freed after three long, angry days. "She's a kind woman. Known her for years."


"Will you stay while she looks after me?", Maida called from the bath tub, sitting in the water, slack-jawed with the comfort of hot water, of a warm meal to come, of care. "Will you?"


The girl's voice echoed in that too large house. "I will come back, baby. But I've got to see to something first."


The next morning, having left Maida in the care of the Riverview, and assuring her return, she headed back to Cadentia on horseback and put together a bag for the road. The road back to York. She couldn't be sure he had returned, but the vengeance in him was so great and the care she held the same, it was killing her not to try, not to see if she could undo some of the wrong in his heart, and between them. Grief was protean, sly. She knew it well. Knew how it hid. Knew how it changed its face. It wore Glenn. Within the hour she was on the road again. Headed West. As ever, uncertain of the outcome, but gone with the conviction that she must do what needs be. If he said he did not want her, if he was still looking at her with that rage, she would leave, she let him go from her fingers. She'd come back to Rhy'Din and forget. But the man had opened up a part of her life she'd thought was over, a part she had denied. Helped her to see past her own sadnesses with the world. At its essence, they held an uneasy truce, but affection roared for him in her bones. She needed to try.


A Rye doesn't give up so easy.

Jack Forrey died on August 21st at 10 13am. He left behind two daughters and a wife, and a pawn brokerage in York. On the side, for half a decade, he had worked as a stable hand and clerk at the Station. Extra money never hurt in the country. He had lived in town all his life.

Madison hadn't wanted blood when she arrived, though she knew that denying anything more than she had for nineteen months was foolish. If she was going to emancipate Glenn, there was risk. And in their world, risk came painted red. She was a fool to set foot in town. Color her reckless. A path wended, keeping to cool shadows of side streets and unlit porches, dashing through the morning like a phantom. A trio of passing women gave her sweeping looks of curiosity but little more than that. The only ones who knew her history with York were dead, or Glenn, and Glenn wasn't anywhere in sight. Her eyes had passed through a few saloons, and an enquiry made with the first hotel she came to.

"Gonna have a rough time gettin' a name, Miss. Most everyone who comes stays here got some lie they give me, whether it's their name or reasons for coming. Say, why you wanna know anyway?" The steward looked her up and down. "Don't look law."

"Thanks for your time", lean into the counter, taking note of the badge stuck to his checkered shirt, "...Hank." A smile to seal his silence. Don't breathe a word. She was gone.

Jack had been tending to the horses at the station when her shadow fell across his out back. From behind a barrow she'd crouched and watched prior, picking her time and casting glances over shoulder for movement elsewhere. The intention was to knock him out, but at Jack's reflex it had all gone awry. He'd drawn as soon as he felt her, that gun raised as he turned, only, her bullet got there first - clear straight through his back. "I'm sorry", whispered, she meant it too. Gun smoke evaporated around her as she gazed down at the body with a contrite frown.

The horses whinnied, bucked and bolted in circles, then scattered. Madison dragged his body into the stable, locked the door behind. By 10 23, Jack Forrey had seemingly risen from the dead and was swaggering back out into daylight - boot knife strapped on, oilskin duster, cordobe. He came zipping up his fly and brim pulled down low over his face. A Ruger in grip, the other fist pushed open the rear door to the offices, he bowed his head low and walked the hall like he had done every day for five years, mind that he seemed a little different today. Maybe something in his step.

Madison, by all appearances, had disappeared right into thin air.

He turned left, she turned right.

Greeting her was a longhorn skull, bones above the time-wrecked wall piece curling wickedly up and in. Eyes like the flowers back home slid under brim away and towards the hall lined with small, dank cells. She headed there. The gate to one open wide, and beside it a young guard beside himself. The gun shook in his hand as he turned on her, and almost relieved at thinking it only the stable hand, until seeing the feminine features below that hat's shadow. The boy had the daylight and more scared from him. Madison c*cked her gun subtly at her side. Blind with fright and ernest as the day, he moved at her, throwing the side of the gun against her jaw, splitting her lip and having her cry out in a groan. She stumbled back. The impact had the cordobe go flying. River of dark hair slipping free from its bunch under the hat and around her shoulders. Duster's tail spun with her turn and duck from further punishment.

"F*cking ghosts!", the young man cried, confusion paramount in his inexperienced eyes. Jack, who wasn't quite himself today, only smiled. "That's right. Where's Douglas?" Blood trickled down her lower lip and she rubbed it away with the back of her thumb, regaining stance, gun raised. "Tell me. Now", arm extended, the Ruger held inches from the stricken blonde's face. He wanted to draw too, he was shaking with the need, but he didn't. "He.. he's gone."

"What?"

Keeping the pistol trained on him, her head craned back to peer into the cell. It was vacant alright. Empty as an amnesiac's eyes.

"Where?"


On his indication, she lowered the gun away, and began walking backwards down the way he pointed. Her other hand rose, a finger before her split lip. Be quiet.


Th longhorn regarded her balefully from its mantle on the wall. The pits of its sockets dark as the wrong side of the night. She breathed in sharply as her back met the sun and turned expecting more menace, but seeing only desolate street. "Goddamn it". The ruger tucked down the back of borrowed jeans. Then, she paused. Sensing eyes on her. Steely blue eyes met blue eyes. A woman and a coyote staring one another down.