The next week spent in wait, omens of death and a brewing malice around them in the pastures, in the willow groves, on the open plains. The countryside giving way to golden prairie, long and sweeping expanse of grass of perfect gold where far away roads stretch like brown serpents across its expanse, where buffalos travel in great herds like seas of brown fur and ivory horn out there. All across it signs of the rebels. Faint whisperings on the air and through the nighttime, lanterns bobbing out there in the distance, that watchful eye everywhere seeming to taunt them. The knights descend into strange habits-Giles sketches more and more, sometimes even through the coldest and longest hours of the night where he sits there on his chair writing away like a madman with a look in his eyes even madder. Sunny with his hands perpetually on his guns, scanning the horizon with the gaze of the brewing murderer. Soon spoken between the knights and Monty not a word even at the dinner table, a fissure of distrust rising between them.

Jesse wakes up on the sixth morning, only two days out from Rumrun, to see a herd of buffalo running right there on the riverfront and cast in light of perfect gold to match the grasses. They kick up a massive cloud of dust as they run, seeming an almost biblical omen of wildness as they churn up the prairie with rippling muscle and high horn, the whole herd perhaps three hundred in number with the bulls in front followed by the females and then the young and elderly taking up the rear. Their snorts and the cacophony of their hooves like rolling thunder across the still air.

“I’ll be goddamned.” Jesse says, taking up besides Sunny who stands there with hand on hat. The knights stand there all five in a row, Florence coming up behind them.

“One of the biggest herds of buffalo I’ve seen.” She says. Jesse turns back and locks eyes with her, smiles-the two undeniably smitten.

“Shit. Look at them there.” Duncan says, voice laced with awe.

“A Godly animal if I’ve ever seen one. Noble.” Morgan says.

“No such thing as a noble animal. Just beasts is all they are.” Sunny says. He reaches a hand down to his pistol. There the watercraft is keeping pace with the herd almost perfectly, churning water as the beasts churn land, the buffalo observing it with curious landbound beasts eyes.

“Watch this.” Sunny says, and draws with frightening speed. A crack of the gun discharging and a rise of gunsmoke and one amongst the herd falls silently with a bullet through its eye. Morgan grimaces.

“Good goddamn shot.” Jesse says.

“Lord.” He adds, shaking his head and grinning. Some of the buffalo scattering now but most just observing the boat dumbly. Jesse puts his hands on his gun and feels his hands seem to twitch there, a rise of shiver up his spine like cold electricity as the killing fever hits his brain clean and venomous, the tantalizing bite of The Devil's rattlesnake of murder. He draws, hardly even looking where he's shooting and felling two bison there with shots to the throat and head, reports of the huge ninety five grain guns like a vicious cannonade across the prairie.

“Goddamn.” Duncan says. An impressed whistling from all the knights save Morgan.

“Well. I ought to give it a try.” Duncan says, drawing his pistol and firing slower than the first two but still deadly accurate. A buffalo falls with a gurling of blood, the whole herd still riding alongside them a mobile carnival shooting gallery of noble fur. Their beasts eyes wild but their bodies frozen in flight as if they are incapable of altering course. Giles shoots next, taking down one of the young buffalo in the back of the herd, wounding it but not killing it with a shot to the leg.

“Shit.” Giles says, shrugs. Sunny reloads his gun flipping down the barrel and putting in new ball and powder. He shoots again, and Jesse follows suit. Soon they are positioned there five a part all firing into the herd save Morgan, taking down buffalo after buffalo in clouds of dust and spurtings of blood, the gunshots ringing across the prairie like heavy and wicked thunderclaps. Eventually the scatterings of surviving bison veer off around a ridge and they are no longer, but as they look back they see there laid perhaps fifty buffalo dead or dying, spilling blood onto the golden grass of the prairie and staining it crimson, corpses of fawn fur already beginning to gather carrion. Swooping bone vultures of black and white, condors of great wings riding on the wind and diving down for the meat.

Their bones will lie there for time immemorial, soon to be overtaken by the green grasses and bleached white by rain and sun.

“Good shooting.” Jesse says.

Later that day sitting with Florence in the cabin around the circular breakfast table, the kitchen small and cluttered laden with cookware and china hanging from the walls, bouncing and clinking as the ship steams along. A small window looking out from the kitchen on its starboard sides, porthole shaped and through it streaming the pale light of dying summer. The steam rising hot and ephemeral from the tea cupped in fine china of blue and white, a color to match Florence’s dress. Her slender hands stretched there around the cup, looking at Jesse with her sharp eyes as they sit the only two in the cabin. The Knights bantering on the crates over some phantom and good natured argument likely of mischievous nature, the rest of the Merce children dipping their feet off the side of the boat and into the cool water of clean blue. Here in the cabin a pleasant sort of silence coupled by the heartbeat thrum of the steam engine which whirs in the adjacent engine room, almost hypnotizing in its rhythmic lull of piston and burning coal.

“Do you think ye’ll be a knight forever, Jesse?” She asks. Jesse furrows his brow, surprised by the question.

“I haven’t thought about forever. All I know is now.”

“That’s a good way to live.” She says, meeting his eyes dark blue to pale gray. Jesse takes a sip of his tea feeling it slide down his throat hot and bitter but refreshing nonetheless.

“It's one way to live. I don't even know if I'll be alive in ten years, much less thirty or fifty or a hundred.” Jesse says, looking down into the cup there the tea leaves forming vaguely into the shape of a hunting dog. He swirls the tea with his finger and the shape is gone.

“Well. I don't think very many people live to a hundred.”

“But you see my point.”

“I see yer point. That's no way to live, thinking about death.”

“Well. What else is there to think about out here?”

“Yer friends.”

“You.” Florence laughs, slips her slender hand across the table and puts it on Jesse’s, wrapping the two around each other. Jesse looks into her eyes, looks down to her hand. There on her wrist below her maroon beaded bracelet he sees long and horizontal scars across her wrist, pale but not quite faded.

“I think about death quite a bit too.” Florence says.

“You aint ought to.”

“I know that.” All of a sudden she drops her head down. Jesse sees coming from her eyes a dropping of tears, crystalline and awful in the gray prarielight.

“I’m terribly afraid, Jesse.”

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“Of what?”

“Of dying. Sometimes I get so lonely out here, when the nights get long.” Jesse leans over the small table, presses his head against hers, red hair falling against black. He feels her breath on his lips, hears the steady drumbeat of her heart.

“I do too.” Jesse says.

That night, as the sun fades into bloody crimson like a sanguine heart there in the West casting the prairie a golden roseate, Jesse sits on the bow and looks out to the horizon. Far in the distance a burning wagon train, stench of burning whiskey and ash on the wind, perhaps twenty slain pilgrims all there like doomed argonauts, their blood and brains and bone all scattered there a color to match the sunset darkening, darkening, darkening off in the distance. The North Star looks upon them a grinning eye at their misfortune, twinkling there indifferently at their fate. Pulling oxen butchered and gutted, women and children scalped and men decapitated with their heads perched there eight total among the flaming wreckage on pikes, looking up at the knights with gauged eyes as they pass. On their foreheads the rebellions eye their only remaining sight, accusing the passing knights, in their headless bodies strewn there bullets and arrows. Those eyes stare, stare. Warning them, perhaps.

Jesse checks that both of his guns are loaded, spits off into the river.

That night Jesse stares up at the starry sky, holding the midnight watch that the knights have set. In his hand a pistol, in his eyes something wild as he looks off onto the prairie, seeing there poltergeists of sight and sound, lights of animal eyes seeming so very human and sounds which ring so much like the clicks of gun hammers. His eyes dart back and forth over the prairie there, far off in the distance the faint glow of electric light from Rumrun rising spectral over the ridges of gold mines which demarcate its edge.

Suddenly, a hand falls onto his shoulder. He whips around and clicks the hammer down on his pistol.

Standing there Florence Merce, jumping back when she sees Jesse’s gun. On her body a thin and finely floraled night dress and in her hands a bottle of evil looking emerald liquor. Jesse drops his gun and disarms the hammer.

“Spooked me.” Jesse says softly.

“I can tell. Lord. They really did train you for the gun, didn't they?”

“I believe they did. The way of the bullet.” Florence laughs, puts a hand on his shoulder, and leans in towards his ear.

“Come and drink with me.” She says, in her voice a tinge of mischief.

“I really shouldn't.” Jesse says, looking out at the prairie.

“Well, I say you should. So it's a tie vote then, one to one.” Jesse meets her eyes, faces close together and breath mingling.

“I’d say we should flip a coin but I don't think that’ll be necessary.” Jesse says, standing. Florence giggles, wraps her hand with his. Together they walk towards the bow of the ship and seclude themselves there behind the cover of a tall stack of crates which contain in them crystal flasks. Florence touches open the topmost crate and takes two of the flasks, pouring in them a touch of the liquor each.

“Absinthe?”

“Absinthe. Devils drink, but Lord does it make my head feel fine.”

“We’ll see if it does the same for mine.” Jesse says, throwing back the liquor. He gags and holds a hand to his mouth, the taste foul and strangely herbal as it slides down his throat like slick fire.

“Goddamn!” Jesse exclaims, and Florence holds a finger to his lips giggling.

“Hush now.” She says.

“That ain't Godly. The Lord did not make that liquor there.”

“Maybe The Devil did but don't it taste kind of fine?”

“It don't taste fine. But.” Jesse looks out to the world, sees it already growing slightly fuzzy, the standard inebriation tinted slightly by the tendrils of thujone and wormwood.

“Oh. It does feel fine.” Florence laughs, slips up against his shoulder. He feels their her skin against his shirt, her hair falling softly against his collarbone.

“I told ye.”

“That you did. Another shot?” Jesse grimaces, shakes his head.

“Well.”

“Well the night is young and we’re younger so why dont ye?” Florence says softly into his ear, running a hand along his neck.

“I s’pose.” She pours out another shot even larger into the flask and Jesse downs it, finding the taste slightly less vile than the previous, the fennel feeling almost sweet on his tongue.

“You know. That ain't so bad.” Jesse says.

“It's cause yer drunk already. Featherweight.” Florence says. Jesse feels butterflies flying about his chest, perhaps monarch and emperor in species, as Florence puts a hand up and onto his cheek. He reassesses and considers that they are perhaps queen birdwings instead as she leans over and kisses him squarely on the lips, soft lips grasping about his.

“I really do get terribly lonely out here.” She says.

“I must be lonelier.” Jesse says. Florence brings two fingers up and onto Jesse’s chin, on those fingers two elegant silver rings of a twining serpent and a diving hummingbird. She brings the fingers into Jesse’s mouth, and he feels the rings there settling against his tongue.

“Yer quite pretty, you know that?” She says.

“Mfffggghh.” He says. She kisses him squarely on his forehead and gets on top of him as he sits there, folds of her dress falling against his trousered pants. She brings her fingers out of his mouth and they kiss again, her hand falling to the belt of trousers and undoing them there as Jesse brings a hand up and slips off the straps of her dress, running a hand there against her silver crucifix and necklace of colorstained tusk ivory beads.

“Oh, Lord. On the boat?” Jesse says. Florence pours him another glass of absinthe and tips it up and into his lips and he moans. She drinks its dregs and leans into him, kissing his neck.

“On the boat.”

“Oh, that's not decent.”

“I never said it was.” The two faces locked together now, freckles matching there like twin constellations as they kiss, absinthe taste still sharp on the tongues devil dancings.

The pants all the way undone and then the two young lovers together, bound momentarily as one in the summer night, sooner rather than later climax and a pleasant warmth in the nighttime as the two embrace each other. Semen running down Florence’s sweetly freckled face and she smiles at him. He leans in and kisses her to her surprise, and she pulls away giggling while she cleans off her face with a spare clean oilcloth.

“And you talk about indecency.” She says. Jesse only smiles and she is back in his arms, the two embracing there and falling off quickly to sleep, fading into The Green Fairies embrace.

Jesse awakes to a gunshot. Out of more instinct than thought as he shocks from his sleep he draws both pistols and stands, quickly crouches back down when a bullet singes off a lock of his hair.

“Ah, fuck.” He says. Flashes of shooting from the shore, Jesse’s eyes scanning there as he raises his guns and fires back, pistol cracks rising through the air quickly like the popping off of some grimoire fireworks show. A bunch of splinters fly into his left ear but he pays it no mind as adrenal rises through his body and banishes away the liquor, the killing shivers rising along his spine and a mad murderer's desire crawling into his brain.

“Rebels!” Jesse hears Sunny call.

“Bastards! Come and get it!” Duncan calls, yelling as he raises his gun and fires off to the shoreline. Bullets coming from both sides of the river, tearing up the hull of the boat and shattering crates of goods as they come onto them like a lead cascade. Jesse looks to Florence and sees her ducked there, wide eyed and with her hands on her head.

“Stay right there.” Jesse says.

“My brothers and sisters.”

“I said stay right there I swear to God.” Florence shakes her head, begins to run to the cabin. From there coming out as she enters Monty Merce with wide and panicked eyes, a bullet nearly taking off his head.

“Get the fuck down!” Sunny calls to him, taking cover with his pistol firing off. Jesse runs to his fellows a bullet grooving along his back and sending up a spurt of blood as he grits his teeth and dives behind a crate of summer watermelons which are being shot open in great red explosions like a premonition of the gore around them. Monty crouches at Jesse’s side and Jesse pulls him down. Jesse, Sunny, and Monty on the starboard side and Morgan, Giles, and Duncan shooting off of the port, Jesse guessing perhaps a dozen rebels per side.

“Why are they shooting at us?” Monty says.

“Why wouldn’t they be shooting at us?” Jesse says. A crate of absinthe is shot open and it leaps up in flames, the fiery puddle spreading across the deck of the ship. Soon after other crates igniting, the deck rendered into a hellscape inferno of lead and fire, sticking out of the wood spare crossbow bolts and arrows. Jesse peaks up his head and shoots at two vague forms wielding rifles, felling them both.

“When you get to hell tell em Sunny Miller sent ye!” Sunny says, standing up and firing off his pistol. On his face a grin and in his eyes a bloody sort of fever.

“Gimme one of them pistols. I wanna fight.” Monty says, seeming furious.

“You ain’t getting no pistol. Sit yer ass down.” Sunny says. Jesse looks over the two and hands Monty one of his pistols along with spare ball and powder. The whole deck stinking of ash and gunsmoke now, mingled cornucopia of the noisome stenches of the goods rising and wafting an eye watering stink on the wind. The fire now consuming almost the entire deck, beginning to melt the varnish on the bottoms of Jesse's boots as the three shimmy to avoid it. Jesse rises and guns two more down, hardly able to see where he is shooting as the smoke rises a dark veil around the ship.

All of a sudden the shooting stops and Jesse hears the scurrying and shouting of the rebels retreating. He stands and shoots at the darkening forms, feeling in his mind a numbing sort of murder madness, the killing fever.

“Yeah! You run! Cowards!” Jesse shouts, spittle flying onto his lips. He turns to see the boat beginning to fall apart with the flames, the fire leaping onto the cabin. It quickly consumes the cabin where the Merce children shelter, melting and charring the wood and shattering the porthole windows. The sounds of the mules howling in agony towards the bow, burning and the smells of their fat rising on the air like a scorching of gamey bacon.

“My kids.” Monty says, rushing towards the cabin and held back by Sunny.

“Ain't no point Monty.” Sunny says. Jesse looks at the cabin and knows he's right, then looks back to Sunny, then back to the cabin. He shakes his head and runs there towards the flames.

A long pause as The Knights hold back Monty Merce and watch the fire jump.

“God save him.” Duncan says. Morgan has eyes closed and is thumbing his crucifix, steadying his feet to the sinking throws of the ship as water floods onto the deck and begins to extinguish the flames of the bow. He mutters something under his breath no one hears.

A crackling of flames, a spewing of ash.

The door kicked off its hinges and there come Jesse and all five of the Merce children, all burning like torches.