The next morning, both Jenny and Old Hillpaw kept their eyes glued to the door.  Each time it opened, they both turned and looked, wondering if the man in black was even going to show up and finish his story.

A little later that morning, however, the man in black came in, making no fuss and heading over to his usual table.  Both the waitress and the old man at the bar managed to hold back for several seconds before they headed over.

The man in black nodded at both Jenny and Hillpaw as they settled into the other two chairs at the table.  He showed no surprise at their curiosity, but merely waited for them to settle into their seats.

“Now, where was I,” he said, once both Jenny and Old Hillpaw were listening.

Old Hillpaw held his tongue for a moment, remembering how the story had been about to get worse, but Jenny immediately spoke up.  “You were heading up towards the Dakota territories,” she volunteered.

The man in black nodded again.  “Ah, yes,” he agreed, shuffling through his papers.  “We were almost to the Iron Range of Minnesota, and we were starting to think that we had lost the Organization’s agents behind us…”

We were still traveling slowly, Danni and I, but with each day that we headed north, our confidence grew.  It had now been over a week since someone had last attempted to kill or capture us.

I had to admire Danni’s courage and resolution.  Over half a dozen crackling campfires, she shared her story, explaining how she grew up with nothing, how she set her sights on obtaining more than she knew she’d receive in her life.

I mostly felt impressed as I listened to her story, but a small part of me, my beaten-down and half-extinguished morality, recoiled in horror.  This was what we pushed for in our society?  This is the status quo that the Organization fought to preserve?  We kept an entire class forced down, denigrated to second-class citizens at best, forced to toil in poverty for the entirety of their short, sad lives?

With each night we spent talking, my respect for Danni grew stronger, and my anger against the Organization and its ilk grew hotter and more furious.

Yet whenever I felt myself withdrawing, growing cold with anger against the wider world, Danni somehow sensed my innermost thoughts.  “Jasper, it’s going to be all right,” she soothed me, one of her hands straying gently along the length of my arm.

I shook my head.  “You broke out, but you haven’t seen what I have,” I responded, not meeting her gaze.  “Trust me, you don’t know how bad things can get.”

“So what, you’re going to solve all those problems at the end of your gun?” Danni responded, rolling her eyes – but not taking away her hand from where it rested against me.  “I’m sure that will fix everything.”

If she had been anyone else, I would have snapped back at her.  But with Danni, I held my tongue, and after a moment, she moved closer to me so that she could lean up against my side.  I lifted my arm to rest it around her shoulders, and we sat and watched the fire burn down to glowing embers.

The next morning, as we walked along the North Dakota road, I caught a rumbling in the distance.  The road we trudged along was little more than a dirt trail, but I could see a pillar of dust rising up from the approaching newcomer.

Our coats, heavier to protect against the chill of the fall air, were bulky and made it difficult to maneuver.  Still, I drew my revolver as we stepped off to the side of the road, Danni sliding back behind me.

The rumbling noise resolved itself into a man, most of his face covered with a huge, bushy beard, sitting on top of a wooden horse-pulled cart.  He eased off on the reins as he approached, and the cart slowed as his horse dropped to a walk.

“Well, howdy!” he greeted us with a smile, pretending not to notice the gun in my hand.  “Yew folks look like yew could use a ride!”

My eyes ran over him.  Stout, probably in his fifties, apparently unarmed.  Deep wrinkles in his face turned up when he smiled, as he did now.  “We sure could,” I agreed, making a decision.  “Mind carrying us on a bit?”

The man’s smile deepened.  “Well, sure, but I could offer yew more than that, if you’re interested,” he said, as we hopped up into the back of the open cart behind him.  “I’m headed back towards my house, down this road a ways.  If yew need a warm, comfy place to spend the night, I’m always up for some company!”

I hesitated.  The man looked friendly enough, but a lifetime of instincts screamed not to trust anyone.
I glanced over at Danni, however, and my heart softened.  She could use a night someplace warm, someplace indoors instead of out in a bedroll at a makeshift campsite.

“We’d be thrilled,” I answered the man.

For the next few hours, as the cart trundled on, I chatted with the man, although I knew enough to let him do most of the talking.  He prattled on about the cold winters, how hard it was to survive up here, how he always “kept his nose pressed to the ground” for opportunities.  I nodded but said little.

A glance behind me revealed that Danni was sprawled out in the back, her head resting on her pack, her mouth open slightly as she slowly breathed in and out.  I couldn’t help smiling at her innocent slumber.

With the sun halfway down in its descent from the top of the sky, we arrived at the man’s house, a small but sturdy looking cabin.  The horse eased the cart to a stop, and I hopped back to wake up Danni and help her down.  “C’mon in when yew two are ready,” the man commented, and ducked inside.

Once awake, Danni waved away my offer of help climbing down from the cart.  “Here, I’ll go inside,” she said, grabbing the two packs.  “I can see that you need to stretch, after sitting up on that cart all day.  Take your time!”

I protested, but she wouldn’t hear it.  “Go on, walk around, make sure we’re safe,” she insisted, pushing me away before heading for the house.

I thought about ignoring her command, not wanting her out of my sight.  But she was right; I had been sitting on the cart for far too long, and my cramped muscles cried out for a stretch.  I strolled down the road a little ways, gazing out across the empty fields as I let my sore legs recover.

A hundred feet out, I suddenly paused.

Wait a minute.  Why were the fields empty?

I turned around again, looking back at the little cabin.  I now noticed that there were no other outbuildings around.  Where would the man’s horse stay?  There was no barn for it.

An alarm began wailing in my head, and I started back towards the house at a trot. Something was wrong.

Three steps closer, my ears caught the faint sound of a scream, coming from the throat of a terrified young woman, and my trot turned into a flat-out sprint.  My muscles screamed, but I ignored them, fumbling at my hip for my gun.

And then, fifty feet from the front door, I saw the house flash with red and orange, and a giant’s fist slammed into my chest and threw me backwards.

To be continued . . . (we’re getting towards the end, I promise!)

The first step in my plan, as I explained to Danni on our first night back in civilization since the train crash, was getting our hands on supplies.

“We can’t just go around buying up everything and showing our faces,” I explained as I rubbed stable dirt into the creases on my face, checking my reflection in the silvered glass piece in the hotel room.  “We have to assume that the Organization knows that I’m with you, and they’ll be watching for either of us – or, even worse, both of us together.”

The hotel that we had chosen was slightly nicer than the average, and I’d circled carefully through the town streets before I decided that it was acceptable.  The building was tall but didn’t stand next to any comparable adjacent structures, preventing infiltration.  The manager and staff were paid well enough to ensure the privacy of their visitors, but not so well that they wouldn’t accept a bribe to make sure they kept their mouths shut.

Against the Priests, however, I didn’t know how much good that bribe would do.  When a man’s got a gun to his head and he can feel the last few seconds of his life trickling away, money tends to not matter too much to him any longer.
Even as I explained our first steps, however, Danni didn’t seem thrilled.  She was even less enthused when I told her what she’d have to change about her appearance.

“I can’t do it!” she cried, both of her hands flying up to try and protect her gorgeous locks of burning red-orange hair.  “It’s who I am!”

“Be reasonable, Danni,” I commanded, still holding the knife in one hand.  “Either you cut it, or you dye it.  Preferably both.  It can always grow back out and return to its normal color.”

Finally, the young woman let me trim and dye her precious locks.  “I would almost rather just have a shootout and put an end to all of this,” she complained as she watched the little strands of hair fall down the floor around her chair.  “At least then I’d get to plug a few of these bastards before I go.”

“No offense,” she added a moment later, turning to glance back up at me.

“None taken,” I replied, smiling back a little at her earnestness and concern about offending me.  I couldn’t remember the last time that someone had worried about hurting my feelings – at least, not out of anything but fear or self-preservation.

A few minutes later, and my rough haircut was done.  Experimentally, Danni reached up and felt her new, shorter hair.  “At least it will be easier to keep out of the way,” she remarked, although I knew she was trying to make herself feel better.

I put the knife away and sat down on the hotel room’s single bed.  “I have something that might cheer you up,” I suggested.

She glanced over at me.  “Yeah?  I kind of doubt it, but give it a shot.”

So I laid out the rest of my half-formed plan.

By the time that I finished, Danni was no longer frowning.  Instead, a slow, deliberate grin had spread across her face and her eyes sparkled with anticipation.  “Wow,” she breathed out.  “That’s even more bloodthirsty than anything I’d imagined, Priest.”

“Not any longer,” I replied to her.  “It’s just Jasper, now.  I think I’m done with the Priests for good.”

“That’s good – I approve,” Danni commented, standing up and stepping over to stand beside the bed.  She leaned forward on top of me, letting her hips push back a little and accentuating her figure.  “I’m not sure the long black coat suits you.”

“Really?  I kind of liked it.”

Danni shook her head.  “I think it’s time for you to try something new,” she murmured to me.  “Why don’t you try taking it off?”

A few minutes later, she made several soft sounds of approval as the coat settled into a crumpled pile on the floor.

And soon after that, the coat was covered up by other garments, falling softly to the floor as we discarded them.

The next morning, as the sun climbed higher in the sky, we were headed out of town, our new horses now loaded up with fresh supplies.

“Our first destination is up north,” I had told Danni the night before, as her fingers traced soft circles across my bare chest.

She sat up a little as she gazed down at me, propping herself up on her elbows.  Even darkened and cut short, her hair still hung around her pretty face like a halo, making her seem alive and full of motion.  “What, up near Minnesota and the Dakota territories?  Why would we want to go up there?”

“I know a man up there,” I replied, my finger slowly sliding down the curve of her spine.  “Runs a mining company, working on the Iron Range.  He’s going to have some of the supplies that we need – and he’s the only option I can imagine for what we’re considering.”

Danni nodded, turning and leaning back so that she could gaze up at the wooden ceiling over us.  Her head nestled into the crook of my arm, fitting comfortably.  I liked the feel of her warm body pressed up against mine.  “God, this plan is crazy, isn’t it?” she said after a minute.

“It is,” I agreed.  “But, honestly, I don’t see much of another option.”

For a long time, Danni was silent.  I was starting to think that she might have fallen asleep, when suddenly she nodded.  “Well, no looking back,” she said, the words barely above a whisper.  “Let’s do it.”

Our next couple of weeks were largely uneventful, although they definitely took all the energy we had.  We’d be up each morning with the sun, pushing the horses as much as we dared as we headed north.  We did our best to stick to smaller roads and trails, trying to avoid the main thoroughfares as much as possible.  There was no way of knowing where the Organization would position its spies, but we did our best to be as invisible as we could.

We still had to stop every now and then for supplies, and we’d often take the chance to trade in the horses.  No point in getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere if a horse threw a shoe.  When we dared to venture into larger towns, I put out a few feelers to see whether the Priests were after us.

After the third attempted ambush, I started to realize just how deep in the mud hole we’d sunk.

“They mean to make an example out of you two,” one of my contacts told me in hushed tones over a beer at the back of the little town’s saloon.  His gnarled hands trembled a little as he lifted his drink.  “They’ve started to hear more murmurs of dissent, and Management is cracking down hard.  They’re throwing everything up against you two, now.”

My contact pointed at me.  “‘Specially you,” he reiterated.  “Deserting the Priests?  Jasper, no one leaves the Priests.  Not with their heart still beating, at least.”

“Well, I did,” I replied, tossing a few coins onto the table for the beer.  “Thanks, Doc.  I’ll be seeing you.”

“I hope so,” the man murmured as Danni and I left.

After that conversation, Danni and I began moving a little slower as we tried to take even more precautions.

Still, even with our slowed pace, we made progress.  We decided to swing around, cut through the Dakota territories instead of risking going straight north through St. Paul.  The Minnesota capital was on the Mississippi’s head, a prime location for outsiders to hop on and off the barges that traversed the wide river.  We’d attract less attention, we figured, if we headed north through the Badlands and then cut east.

*

The man in black sighed, leaning back from the table and shrugging his shoulders to stretch out the sore muscles.  “I think that’s a good place to take a break,” he commented to his audience.

Jenny, perched on the edge of her seat, blinked with surprise.  “What?  But we’re getting to the good part!  I want to know what your plan was!” she cried out in dismay.

Old Hillpaw held his tongue.  He wasn’t sure, but he thought he caught the slightest hint of a quiver in the man in black’s voice.  Something was coming, he sensed.

The man in black shook his head.  “Sorry, hon, but we’re not getting to the good part,” he said to Jenny with surprising gentleness.  “In fact, I’d say we’re getting to the bad part.”

The young waitress just stared back at the man in black, her mouth hanging open in a little O.  “The bad part?” she repeated.

“This story doesn’t have a happy ending, I’m guessing,” Old Hillpaw commented.

The man in black glanced at him.  “It has an ending,” he said.  “How you feel about that ending, though, I’ve no way of knowing.”

He stood up, reaching up into the air and stretching.  “But it’s getting late,” he pointed out, glancing out at the setting sun through the bar’s grimy windows.  “I think the rest of this story will have to wait for tomorrow, if you’re still willing to hear the rest.”

Jenny nodded immediately, jumping up to her feet.  “I’ll be here,” she promised.

The man in black glanced at Hillpaw, and the old man was astonished to see a little hint of hope in those dark eyes.  “I’ll be here too,” he gruffly gave in.  “Not like i’ve got much else, anyway.”

That little glint of hope, of concern that Hillpaw might say no, was gone as fast as it had appeared, but the older man knew what he had seen.  “Until tomorrow,” the man in black concluded, gathering up his typewritten pages.

“Until tomorrow,” Hillpaw and Jenny echoed after him.

To be continued (still) . . . 

At the latest revelation from the man in black, Jenny let out a gasp, her eyes going wide and looking as though she was about to topple off her chair.

“You shot another Priest?” she exclaimed, her voice loud enough to make another couple patrons glance around.

Old Hillpaw, perhaps possessing a bit more self-preservation instinct than the young waitress, hurriedly shushed the woman.  “Keep your voice down, girl!” he hissed.  “That kind of talk still gets folks into hot water!”

But this time, Jenny didn’t yield to her elder.  “But I thought the whole Organization blew up a decade ago!” she retorted, the words half questioning and half argumentative.

The girl glanced at the man in black for an answer, but Hillpaw was the one who replied.  “That may be, but lots of folks still walk around in long black coats,” he said, his eyes tersely scanning the interior of the bar.  “Some of them might be priests, some might not, but that name still holds power, and shouldn’t be used lightly.”

When Hillpaw’s eyes returned back to the storyteller at their table, he was surprised to see the man in black chuckling.  “Young lady, if you thought that one dead Priest was a surprise, you’ll have your jaw on the floor by the end of this story,” he commented, tossing back the rest of his drink.

Only once the glass was full again, Jenny scooting back into her seat after doing her duty as waitress, did the man in black look up at his audience.  “Anyway.  Where was I…”

We didn’t have much choice but to make a run for it.

Of course, that Priest hadn’t been working alone.  Too much to hope for, really.  The next one ambushed us as we hiked up from the little shack, back towards the rail line – or, at least, that was his intention.  If it wasn’t for the errant flap of a black coattail in the breeze, we might not have spotted him before he could draw on us.

Fortunately, the hired man holding the Priests’ horses was more than happy to surrender the animals once he learned that their previous owners were dead.  Our drawn weapons didn’t slow his decision any, either.

I still felt slightly weak as I hauled myself up into the saddle, but I wasn’t about to let Danni outperform me.  The girl’s face was drawn and pale, clearly affected by fear, but she showed none of that emotion in her actions.

“What now?” she asked, above the clatter of the horses’ hooves.

I shook my head to get my thoughts moving.  “We need to get supplies,” I shouted back, trying to corral my thoughts together.  “We can’t hide out without supplies – and we need to get our hands on cash if we want supplies without drawing more attention to ourselves.”

At that, the girl suddenly flashed me a devious little grin.  “Money’s not a problem,” she replied, reaching down and tugging open the knapsack she had carried up from the little shack down by the crash site.  Inside, I caught a flash of green bills.

“You pulled it off the train,” I guessed.

Her smile grew another inch.  “I always carry some on me, just in case I need to make a quick escape,” she retorted.  “I had it with me when I jumped.  Glad to hear it will come in handy!”

I didn’t say anything back to the girl, but my opinion of her, already deep and tangled, grew a little brighter.

Still, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help casting my thoughts further ahead – and beyond our immediate future, our possibilities were bleak.

The Priests wouldn’t stop hunting us.  That was why they were so powerful – and so feared.  All their members were trained killers, and they didn’t stop.  Even if a target had been on the loose for years, Priests kept on searching for that person, kept on sending members to finish the job.

If the Priests were hunting us – and that indeed seemed to be the case – we would never be safe.

As we rode across the dusty plain, however, two thoughts crept into my head, both of them unexpected and unsettling.

Somehow, in the last forty-eight hours or so, I had switched from thinking of Danni as my opponent, to thinking of her as my ally.  Even now, I suspected that, if I drew my gun and put a hole in the chest of the young woman riding just ahead of me, I’d be able to return to the Organization.  I might face demotion, but I’d be off the hit list.

So why couldn’t I kill her?

I didn’t have an answer to that question.  Instead, I turned my attention to my second thought.  This one was not a question, but a suggestion, the vaguest and haziest inkling of a plan.

It was wild, crazy, almost certainly impossible.

But, try as I might, I could think of nothing else – and the idea didn’t fade away…

To be continued . . . 

When I next awoke, I was able to sit up, groggily lifting up my hand to press it against my forehead.  My eyes scanned around and I saw that I was still in the same room, still sprawled out across the same rough bunk, as where I last remembered being, just as Danni…

Danni had kissed me!  My mind seized onto that fact, clung to it like a drowning sailor clings to a spar of wood.  There were a million other thoughts circling around the periphery of that fact, a million ways to interpret it, but I didn’t let them emerge from the shadows.

Looking around, my eyes caught a flash of red-orange hair.  There she was!  But as I turned towards her, I immediately saw that something was wrong.

Danni was crouched down by the closed door leading out of the shack.  Now that I could sit up and look around, I saw that we were in a single-room cabin, shoddily constructed and with stars visible through the cracks in the wooden boards.  Aside from the bed on which I lay and a small, uneven table, there was no other furniture inside the shack.  The roof looked to be made of tin boards, more rusted than bolted together.

My eyes, after making this quick circuit of our location, returned to Danni.  Such was the extent of my grogginess that it wasn’t until my second glance at her that I realized that, in her hand, she held my revolver.

“Danni,” I whispered, and the girl practically leapt a foot into the air.

She moved quickly, rushing over to my side, one hand rising up to press briefly against my lips before she withdrew it.  My eyes went to hers, and I saw fear reflected back at me.

“I think there’s someone outside,” she whispered to me, her voice barely audible.  “Jasper, I’m scared.”

Before I could respond, I heard the snap of a twig echoing in the silence outside.

Praying that my muscles would respond, I forced myself up from the bed.  I could feel soreness and stiffness in my limbs still, but my arms and legs moved as my mind commanded, and I sat up on the bed.  I slid forward, down onto my knees on the floor beside Danni.  My hand reached out to her, and she handed me my pistol.

There was definitely someone outside.  As I scanned around, straining to see through the cracks in between the boards of our ramshackle shelter, I caught a flash of movement.  By the time I had the gun up and pointed, though, I didn’t know if the intruder outside was still there.

As soon as I pulled the trigger, I would lose the element of surprise.  I only had one shot.

Next to me, I felt Danni lean in close, her eyes wide as she looked around.  I couldn’t pull my eyes away from scanning the cracks, but for a moment my concentration was broken as the young woman put her arms around me.

I knew that I just had to be patient.  The person outside was cautious, patient, but they didn’t know that I was inside and waiting for them.  I took a deep breath, following my training.

There!  Even before the thought had crystallized fully in my mind, the gun was up, my finger tightening on the trigger.  The revolver cracked as a heavy slug punched out, straight through one of the boards in the shack’s wall.

And a second later, we both caught the thud of a body hitting the ground outside.

Danni leapt to her feet, but I reached out, catching her wrist.  When she looked down at me, I held up two fingers.  There could be another person out there, a partner.  She reluctantly sat back down, and we sat in silence for ten more agonizing minutes, listening.

We heard nothing.  Finally, after I felt reasonably confident, I stood up, and we stepped outside.

The body wasn’t hard to find.  The man had been dressed in black, but his pistol was silver, glinting brightly even in the dim moonlight.

I used one foot to turn the body over, even though I knew what I would find.

The eyes of a Priest stared sightlessly up at the night sky as a dark stain spread outward from the hole punched in the center of his chest.

To be continued . . .