Outlaw's Prayer (ch. 5, part 1)
Title: Outlaw's Prayer (5/?) part one
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Skibmann, various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: The bulk of this story will be separated into three parts: part one was chapters 1-4, and so part two stars with this chapter. I have been working on this story for the past seven months and I am SO excited to finally be posting it :D What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
"I know from firsthand experience that there's not an honest man in Texas nor a virtuous woman either." - the victim of Bill Longley
Tired, lonely buildings made of timber and sweat, raised not yet fifteen years before but already worn and old from Texas winds and unexpected hardships. A supply store, a blacksmith's, a third-rate saloon where the whores were probably more weather-worn than the buildings themselves and just as interchangeable. A dingy watering hole for traveling cattle and their herders alike, making the long grazing migration from the barren lands of South Texas north to the slaughterhouses of St. Louis. And a bank, standing tall at the center of the fledgling town, a beacon and symbol of commerce and community, a giant structure standing tall atop the mountain-less plain.
Burleson was just like every other town, identical to every shack and shanty erected from here to the Pacific, and David Cook didn't expect anything more.
They had rode into town for a bit of rest and regeneration, from lands north of Texas where they feared some wayward traveler would recognize Andy's face or a lone Creek warrior scrounging for prey outside of the reservation lands would identify the inked markings on Neal as one of their own. David's own likeness was growing more infamous as word spread through the plains of the trio's exploits, of the rash and daring robberies forming a trail from Missouri, but he was still relatively safe, none of the men causing enough of a stir to truly be noticed unless they planned it just so. A tiny settlement erected more for the cattle ranchers and transients than for the townspeople themselves would never take notice of an extra three travelers, young men like themselves flowing in and out of Burleson like crisp water through its bordering streams.
The Breakaway Saloon itself was what David aimed for, a late afternoon sun baking long shadows into the dust, making the building feel even more decrepit and unwelcoming, enhancing every flaw. It was unpleasant and small, with a simple design that revealed grimly there weren't many boarding rooms to be had, but it was all the shelter the three men would find for miles, the next town worth even a speck on a map being Dallas, in far too close quarters with lawmen than David felt comfortable with. Besides, it beat sleeping on the open plain, a vulnerable target for any and all men tracking down their trail; they had certainly gained a few more from the last bank they hit. David's back, sore from a relentless gallop in the saddle, didn't seem like it would ever get used to resting on the cold ground.
Quickly dismounting and hitching Sugarfoot to a watering trough, David felt Neal and Andy's eyes on him as they followed suit. Andy gave him a quick nod as Neal jutted his chin inconspicuously at the bank across the dirt road avenue, indicating they were rethinking Burleson as a purely recreational visit. David wasn't quite up to the level of eerily accurate non-communication as the other two men were with each other, and he wondered if they had been conversing silently their entire ride into town. As close as the three had become traveling with each other the past year, there were a few other things between Neal and Andy that David was quite content not to share in.
They could talk about it later, when the town slept and the three men could get a better scope of the bank, but for now, David just wanted to relax.
Surprisingly to all three men, the interior of the saloon wasn't nearly as rundown as its facade so ominously advertised. A warm radiance emanated throughout the large front parlor thanks to tallow candles situated around the room, chasing away the shadows looming in the streets outside. The tables and chairs were intricately carved, with Spanish roses and suns decorating the wood and legs curling down into fierce eagles' talons; from the condition of the exterior David had not expected much in the way of furniture at all. The bar was fully stocked with glass bottles stacked neatly in rows, glittering in the candlelight and casting the room in flickering shades of yellow and amber. The bar, as well as the rest of the parlor, looked to be free of bullet holes entirely--a detail not lost on the three outlaws, who were oftentimes lucky if they entered a saloon and left before witnessing a fight end in pistols drawn and blood on the floor. David considered them double-lucky if they could leave without getting into one of those kinds of arguments.
They had expected little more than a slophouse and came face to face with one of the most civilized saloons this side of the Rio Grande. Burleson just seemed to be full of surprises.
But what David saw before him was far more surprising than any Hell in the West freezing over, more pleasant than a lifesaving oasis in the desert. She stood there brazenly, no holster around her hip but her confidence alone told him she needed no gun to keep her protected in this town. She wore pants and a tucked shirt like any man on the cattle drive, but the thick fabrics and leather did nothing to hide her feminine frame, breasts and hips curving like a river, and just as powerful. Her hair glimmered in the candlelight, a deep, rich color reminiscent of spiced honey that David couldn't decide was blond or brown, but he knew he'd like to spend a lifetime contemplating.
Clear hazel eyes, intensified with a sense of daring, fell upon David's frame in the doorway, flashing intrigue and challenge where David only saw beauty. The talker and the charmer of the three men, David was never at a loss for words, always choosing carefully from a wide vocabulary and erring on the side of verbosity, but this woman had rendered him speechless, his ever-eloquent words flying out of his head. She was a vision without ever trying, a woman standing tall and unafraid at a bar, shooter of whiskey in her hand, dressed in men's clothes but exuding a femininity that was irresistibly alluring to David.
He wanted to whisk her away from the deceiving town, carry her off to some unforeseen foreign land and treat her like a queen, let them both escape the life of the endless plain. He wanted to give her all the lines he used on saloon girls but knew all were too tarnished for her; he found his charm effective to a fault on others but he had a feeling she wouldn't settle for a pretty line and a smile. All he found himself able to do was give her a half-smile in recognition, his own civility overwhelming him, and tip his hat in the beautiful woman's direction.
David's heart felt like it wanted to ride for the moon, lighter than he had felt in years, when she returned his gaze with a nod of her head and a genuine smile of her own.
***
David perched himself atop a precarious outcropping of rock, overlooking a sea of prairie grass below him, waving through the breeze like a massive crowd of thousands swaying their arms to and fro, contemplating time.
It could have been five years, four months by now, or perhaps it was seven; in David's line of work the days and months melted into one another, baked and steamed by the desert sun, and he always lost track of time here. He knew it had been winter in Texas back then, but that hadn't meant much to him in the days that were as scalding as a Missouri July. They had never seen snow down in Texas, not as they rested their aching limbs in Burleson years ago nor as they left the tiny town in the distance.
Pity, David thought, eyes narrowing as he looked out onto the horizon. Her hair would have looked so beautiful when sprinkled with snow.
The warm breeze whipped up into a fiercer, colder wind, biting against David's skin and rustling the newly acquired letter resting in his hands. There would be a storm tonight, the air was already giving fair warning.
***
"What is he doing?"
Kyle should have never asked that question. He knew fairly well what David Cook was doing, as he had been doing all day: David Cook was sitting. He had situated himself atop a rocky hill, far away from the Kings's encampment but close enough to still be within range of a trained eye or the sound of alarm coming from the horses. It was what David had been doing, truthfully, ever since an old acquaintance of the outlaws arrived--a tall, Jewish man working odd jobs to finance his way to California, who had seemed to become David's personal Pony Express. He greeted each man with a solemn nod, the meeting not substantial enough to dismount from his horse, and had complained to David that he wasn't Wells Fargo before handing him a small, wrapped package and a letter. The letter now remained in David's hands, the package delicately unwrapped in his lap; and there, he sat.
He should have also never asked that question because he had asked it before, and received a surly yet acceptable answer from Neal. The look on the older man's face told Kyle he wasn't pleased with hearing the same question twice.
"I already told you," he said testily, reminding Kyle of the clipped answer he had received from the blond before, that the leader of the Kings was taking some personal time, something every one of the outlaws needed once in a while. Neal felt at this moment he could use some of that same personal time away from Kyle Peek. "Now are you going to start paying attention or am I gonna have to shoot you to show you how it's done?"
"Neal," a voice shouted from behind them, their voices carrying on the wind back to camp from their position within a shallow valley, perfect for the shooting practice Kyle so desperately needed. Both men turned around to see Andy at the head of the valley, his tone and expression full of annoyance, as if he had given this reprimand to the Dr. many times before. Kyle would put money on the idea that he had. "Give the kid a break. He's not hurting anyone with his questions."
While the thinly-veiled death threats still seemed to be a regular occurrence, Kyle had received the respect he so craved after his rescue in Fox Canyon, especially from the skeptic Andy and Neal. Once it was clear to the Kings that Kyle had saved their hides and had the courage and the fortitude to do it again if ever needed, he was welcomed into the fold, given a share of the profits from Hicks's bank, and promoted to lookout--so long as he tended the horses and cleaned up camp, and pulled his own weight within the gang. Andy had been particularly kind to Kyle recently, his stance on the young rancher changing considerably once he saw the kid's ability could equal his enthusiasm. He claimed it was because he knew how it felt to be the youngest of the Kings, a boy among men; but with the way Michael Sarver had raised his gun towards Neal back in Fox Canyon and the split second chance Kyle took between a perfect escape and a burial, Kyle believed Andy's true reasons were something different completely.
Regardless of Andy's admonishment of the sharpshooter's attitude that day, Neal clenched his jaw and marched out of the valley, leaving a perplexed Kyle behind in his dust. "You teach him, then," he muttered as he passed Andy, his shooting lesson with the kid clearly over. He was the third King to attempt schooling Kyle in making the pistols at his sides more useful than mere decorations around his belt, and the third King to fail. Granted, this lesson ended before either man could send off a shot from their guns, but Neal didn't have to wait all day to determine a lost cause.
"Fine, maybe I will." Andy's tone was challenging but there was no bite to it; his retort was all in fun, glib and breezy as he tried to keep a stony expression but failed in the face of Neal.
"Fine." Not even the brim of his hat, pulled low over his forehead to protect fair Irish skin, could hide the smile ghosting across Neal's features. He ducked his head low, his voice following as he qualified in Andy's ear. "I wasn't really gonna shoot him."
Andy tried to focus on the clearly lost young man still standing in the valley instead of the breath tickling the shell of his ear. "One can never be sure," he gave his parting words with a grin as he motioned for Kyle to join them back on the ridge. "Get your horse, Kid; we're heading east."
Once Kyle had joined his new tutor and both had saddled and mounted their horses, Andy took the travel time to explain his unorthodox methods. "You were distracted," he said, keeping Vera on a steady, strong trot, with Kyle and Gangles--who had been quite displeased with being saddled so suddenly in the middle of the day, and had nipped at Kyle's shoulder in protest--lagging slightly behind. "The other guys want you to just snap out of it, yell at you enough until you figure it out. But that's obviously not working and we've still got to teach you to shoot or you're no good to us. Can't have you staging a stampede whenever we need your help. So I figured, best take you away from distractions."
When they finally did reach their destination--a deep valley a few miles from camp, whose limestone walls swallowed the noises of the plains above it, isolating the outlaws and the sounds of their practice gunshots inside--Kyle marveled at the other man's foresight, and for the first time in the two months since the heist at Fox Canyon passed, he felt he might learn something. "Joey had tried to teach me, distractions and all," he noted as he dismounted and led the horses to safe tether inside the valley.
"Joey's a great guy," Andy was already examining his gun, noting he hadn't been maintaining it as well as he could have, with tiny specks of desert dust gathering in the mechanical crevices of his revolver from a past windstorm in Nevada, or New Mexico, or wherever the hell they had just been. The lands they had traveled meshed together now along with the years, an endless run of territory they could never hope to conquer. "Tough as nails." Andy smiled and Kyle knew there was a "but" coming out of this conversation. "Can't aim a damn pistol if his life depended on it, and it has. There's a reason his favored weapon's a shotgun: the buckshot from that thing'd hit anything if you're close enough. Hell, I'm surprised he hasn't shot one of us full of holes yet."
He hadn't said any of this out of malice or jest; Kyle had learned how to decipher Andy Skib's dry wit in his short time with the Kings, and he knew this was to be taken quite seriously. He hearkened back to Joey's failed attempts at teaching him how to shoot, the older man's genial and lighthearted nature translating into a flustered absent-mindedness with one of Kyle's pistols in hand. Kyle wondered grimly if that was to be his own fate if he couldn't learn from the last of the Kings, that he would be stripped of his pistols and relegated to shotgun duty, trusted only with aiming at the broad side of a bank.
But this didn't account for Kyle's other failures in gun handling instruction. "David and the Dr. can aim," he reminded Andy, who gave a wide smile and shook his head at Kyle's inability, even after two months of being fully accepted into the outlaw gang, to always call Neal by his given name.
"That they can." Andy vividly remembered target practice and accuracy contests between David and Neal early on in the Kings's partnership, neither man backing down until the sky fell too dark to see neither target nor bullet. Neal always ended with the highest accuracy rating, as all three men knew would be the outcome, but it never kept David from trying or noticing the techniques he needed to perfect. Andy always stayed out of those competitions, humbly admitting his position as the third best shot in that close-knit group of three, and reminding them both that there was more to his skills than hitting a tin can at seventy feet. "They're damn good at it, too; some would say Neal's the best shot in the country, if enough people actually lived to tell about it."
Considering the number of times Neal had threatened to shoot Kyle, including that morning alone, this gave the young man no comfort. "Then why can't I pick that up?" he asked sheepishly, feeling like a child again in the minuscule red Sunday schoolhouse of his youth, shamed once again for forgetting the names of the Apostles.
This time there was sympathy in Andy's smile; he had certainly been there before. "Dave's a natural shot," he explained. "Mastered a gun the minute he got one in his hand; Neal, too. They can do a lot of amazing things with a pistol." Andy squinted against the sun as he loaded up his revolver, positioning each bullet carefully into its cylinder. The cactus standing tall among patches of overgrown prairie grass on the far end of the valley would do nicely. "Problem is, Dave doesn't really get it when someone else can't pick it up as fast as he did. He expects you to know, like he knows. He gets frustrated, he gives up. It's not that you can't learn," he said with a shrug. "It's that Dave doesn't know how to teach you."
"And Neal?"
Andy rolled his eyes, trying hard not to laugh. "Neal just doesn't want to teach."
It was not lost on Kyle that the only member of the Kings of which Andy didn't speak of their marksmanship, was himself. While each man's goal was to never have to use their gun during a heist or have to test their speed and accuracy in a shootout to the death, Kyle knew how important it was to have the skills when you needed them. With a steady hand Andy raised an outstretched right arm to eye level, his revolver gripped firmly in his hand, hesitating only a moment to focus his aim before pulling the trigger. With a loud pop and a spark of smoke pluming from the barrel, the bullet broke through the air to the other side of the valley, finding a quick and permanent home in the trunk of the cactus, dead-on center.
Kyle gaped at the shot, his eyes widening as his head turned from one of the bullet's points of call to the other, never expecting a demonstration such as that. Generally pleased with his performance, Andy lowered the gun, a quirk of his eyebrow the only indication of his satisfaction. His attentions only returned to Kyle when he heard the low whistle made by the young man.
"I didn't know you could do that," Kyle found himself saying before filtering himself, his awe escaping and amusing the other man. He had never seen Andy shoot before, and assumed from his permanent position away from the action of the Kings's bank robberies meant he was far from handy with a pistol; but this test of skill showed Kyle he was sorely mistaken. His style was subdued and rarely on display, but for sheer talent Andy's shot could rival even Neal's.
"That," Andy replied, feeling the happy hum in his bones once again from the vibration of shooting. "Took me a lot of practice." It had cost Andy years to perfect his own shot, far from the natural talent of David and Neal with a pistol, with a trail of shells and bullet gouges in cliff faces to prove his progress.
"How did you learn?" Kyle asked eagerly, no longer feeling as if he had been sidled with the last King willing to keep him around for more than target practice.
A slow, irrepressible smile spread on Andy's face as he inspected his gun once again, eying the cylinder and waiting for the revolver to cool. "Neal actually taught me," he said, quickly explaining himself once the expression of disbelief quickly washed over Kyle's face. Just because he didn't like to teach didn't mean he hadn't. "He wasn't keen on it at first, and he really wasn't good with patience, but I knew how to work it out of him." He hadn't spent eight years riding with the other man without picking up a few tricks; namely, figuring out quite quickly how to convince the sharpshooter that training him would be worthwhile.
Almost immediately Kyle knew there was no chance of him learning the methods to get Neal Tiemann to reveal his trade secrets with a pistol, not from the smile he doubted Andy even knew he was making or the shine in his eyes that told Kyle more than could be said in that valley with words. He remembered what he had seen the night of the Fox Canyon robbery, though he had wished and hoped and scrubbed at his head until it was sore to forget; he remembered in vivid detail the flesh he spied in the dim moonlight, the sounds of their breath entwined together like their fingers, their very bodies.
That was certainly a length Kyle would not go to for shooting lessons.
"Let's see your form." Andy started the lesson quickly, knowing they had little time before the setting sun dulled their eyesight to the details of the targets and the trails of their bullets through the sky. Kyle, who, for the first time felt rather silly for having two pistols by his side he didn't know how to use instead of one he could master, sheepishly held up one in his right hand and pointed the barrel in the vicinity of the cactus at the other end of the valley, doubting he'd even come close to hitting the natural limestone wall behind it, much less the plant itself.
Andy frowned, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he scrutinized Kyle, the greenhorn looking more ready to shuck corn than shoot a gun. "You're thinking too much," he concluded, and silently Kyle agreed. He was worrying too much about mimicking what he had seen before with the other Kings, emulating the casual way David would raise his gun or Neal would approach a target, imitating the fearlessness Andy had with taking that shot instead of forming his own. "The art behind gunslinging is to keep it natural: you can't be worrying about the mechanics of it if you're staring down a barrel. You've already got the instinct," he remarked, remembering Kyle's split decision to stampede the horses through Fox Canyon two months ago, a decision that saved the Kings's lives but one Kyle couldn't remember thinking about or making, just executing. "You just need the skill to back it up. That's what Neal always taught me."
The mention of the Dr.'s name again brought back those images in Kyle's mind, the intimacy between the two founding members of the Kings that he never should have nor wanted to see. Though he wished he would have never caught sight of what occurred after Fox Canyon, his curiosity was piqued by their history, how one outlaw with such a notorious, deadly past and one who wasn't supposed to even exist could grow to mean so much to one another. "So," Kyle chanced, figuring the unanswered questions about the shadow and the sharpshooter in his head were more distracting than anything to be found around camp. "You and Neal are...close?"
He tried to word his query as best he could, choosing each syllable carefully, wary not to sound too inquisitive or to let on that he saw too much, knew more than Andy or Neal had hoped to tell him. He was no wordsmith like David fancied himself, plotting the right synonyms in his head as he spoke, always the paradox of an eloquent outlaw; but he didn't stumble over words either, and he respected their power. Just as he asked he regretted it, ducking his head and allowing wisps of his hair to fall into his face, masking the blush of remorse on his cheeks.
But Andy didn't find the question to be an intrusion, nor did he notice Kyle's embarrassment over asking it; he had no reason to suspect Kyle knew anything more than what Joey had revealed about the Kings's history that first day he joined their ranks. "You could say so," he gave a wistful smile, his eyes no longer focusing on Kyle's form but on something inside his mind; memories, Kyle thought, and for a fleeting moment he envied them for having someone with whom to share such fond thoughts. "We've known each other eight years now; rode all over the West with Neal, making our mark. Before Joey--hell, before even Dave came around, it was just us." He laughed, thinking back on those times when they were so young, and so carefree; wondered how things would have changed if it had just been the two of them together all along.
The older man gave no indication about what Kyle had seen that one night, and the young man would push it no further; he would never be green enough not to know when to let sleeping dogs lie. "He came around...right when I needed him," Andy continued, his voice now adding to that faraway look in his eyes, dipping low and gentle without even noticing. "My life at the time wasn't...wasn't really me at all. Wasn't where I wanted my life to go."
"And this is?"
Kyle had heard the paradoxical responses from this kind of question from the other Kings: David, arguably the most vocal, produced a thick layer of apathy on the best of days when asked if he enjoyed the outlaw lifestyle, and a harsh vitriol or cold, detestable silence on the worst. The outlaw life was never meant to be for the long term, only for those who made their fortunes fast and effectively or the ones who flooded the frontier cemeteries with their bones. The reason the Kings remained alive was the same reason the life was slowly killing them: small, escapable heists in tiny towns gave them their small bankrolls and allowed them to live for another day, but the notoriety and infamy they gained with each robbery forced them into hiding, and the world saw them as outcasts or, even worse, dollar signs for bounties. Two months ago Kyle wanted more than anything in this life to be an outlaw, to experience that adventure and thrill he'd never find in a normal life; now, he realized a normal life was all that David Cook had ever wanted.
But the look on Andy Skib's face told him something quite different. Andy wasn't even looking at Kyle anymore, didn't give a damn about how he held his pistol; his thoughts were completely on something else, the peaceful smile on his face telling Kyle more than an answer in words could ever say. The way he wanted his life to go...in Andy's mind it wasn't about the outlaw life, of hiding from the rest of the world or no one ever knowing he even truly existed. He couldn't care less about the millions of nameless faces who saw him as just the same, people who didn't know who he was; he only cared about the ones who did.
"You're gonna have to leave soon." Andy touched his fingers to the piano keys, the pads of his fingertips soft against the ivory, not even pressing down hard enough to make a sound. There would be time enough for his fingers to make noise in two hours, when his parents' guests arrived to listen and be entertained by their promoted prodigy, to fawn over the Skib's perfect little Tulsa homestead, their perfect little life, their perfect little son.
He felt his presence before he saw it, a warmth beside him he never experienced for the fifteen years he had lived in his parents' shadows. A swift, tattooed hand descended upon the keys to Andy's left, mimicking the placement of his fingers in a lower, deeper octave. "They can kick me out when they want," Neal replied breezily, never caring nor fearing the wrath of Andy's family, pressing his fingers down to release an ominous minor chord into the parlor. If his parents had seen Neal Tiemann touching their prized grand piano, they would have done more than just kick him out of the house.
"Wish I could leave with you." The suit they made him wear was stifling, the room to which he had been banished until his musical talents were needed even more so. He couldn't begin to tell Neal what a joy it was that he had snuck in, his tattoos a colorful distraction from the dull black and white keys before him, the black and white prison all around him. He didn't need to. "All these stupid people I don't care about, talking about me, whispering things...thinking that I'm important, or something, when they don't even know me." He sighed, Neal's minor chord still ringing in his ears. "Sometimes I wish I could just disappear from all this. Be a shadow." His last words were a whisper but he knew Neal could hear them. "No one would know who I am."
Silence. It took years for Andy to realize that Neal was waiting for Andy's gaze to rise from the piano keys to respond, for expressive brown eyes to lock with a dangerous, icy blue. "I'd know who you are," Neal responded quietly, taking his hands off of the keys.
Andy never really shook himself out of that memory, only worked around it, responding to Kyle without really thinking. The kettle was on, but the family went on vacation. "For now, it is," he answered; it wasn't the richest life, it wasn't the most glamorous like his life could have been, but it was his own, and that was what truly mattered.
That pregnant silence between them, Andy ignoring everything but the scenes in his mind, vivid as the day they occurred, grew awkward for Kyle, especially knowing what he knew. He still held his arm outstretched towards the far end of the valley, the muscles and tendons beginning to tremble from holding out the heavy pistol for so long; he feared he was getting a cramp. "David doesn't seem to think so," he quickly changed the subject from the other man and Neal, remembering in his mind where that conversation could lead. He could already tell, even if he had his eyes closed and ears stuffed with tumbleweeds, that the connection between the shadow and the sharpshooter was deeper than that of friends, even deeper than the lovers Kyle had seen the night of Fox Canyon. But he kept his mouth shut on the subject, not for his own modesty, but because he didn't believe Neal and Andy even realized what they had.
Shrugging nonchalantly, Andy didn't seem to be alarmed by Kyle's change in topic, or even noticed the greenhorn's lack of subtlety. "That's because David never wanted this life," he admitted, something the leader of the Kings himself had told Kyle on a few occasions, making sure to remind the young man that the life of the outlaw wasn't all thrilling, successful bank robberies and enjoying the spoils of a heist. "He had different reasons for how he came to be one of us. Good reasons, yes, but not lasting ones." The shift did seem to refocus Andy's attentions, however, and he frowned; not everything Kyle did had gone unnoticed. "You're gonna break your arm if you lock your elbow like that; the backfire from the shot wouldn't be padded by anything, and you're body's too rigid to take the shock. Didn't anyone teach you how to shoot?"
He instantly regretted the words because he knew no one had; Kyle looked sheepishly at the pistol in his hand, considering for the first time that it might be more trouble than it was worth. "Just relax. Get comfortable with the weight of the gun in your hand; you'll never know how long you'll have to aim it in a standoff."
Kyle did as he was instructed, believing that the other man was also employing the trick of changing the subject to end their talk on David Cook's reasons for becoming an outlaw--one of them. But to his surprise, once Andy decided Kyle's stance was satisfactory, he continued with the conversation. "Neal and I came West to look for adventure. There was nothing left for us back home; I guess you could say we were bored."
Later Kyle would learn there was more to it than that, that Neal--too white for the Indians and too Indian for the whites--had left an existence as an outcast and Andy escaped his worst fears of being his family's pawn for the rest of his days. Even at that moment Kyle hadn't believed him; no one risked their lives and became outlaws simply because they were bored. No one besides him, anyway. "We owned the plains, riding wherever we pleased, hitting general stores and the odd stagecoach along the way, really only taking whatever we'd need. We were all action, no purpose." He said it with a wistful nostalgia to his voice, as if he missed the days it had only been him and Neal and the open plain, the sky stretching for miles and the Earth under Vera and Sixx's hooves theirs only to conquer. Compared to that feeling, riding with the Kings must have been downright domesticating.
"But David was just the opposite: all purpose, no pleasure. A real man on a mission, and it was damn admirable. He needed our help tracking someone down, and we thought his cause was justifiable, so we did." Andy shrugged, his vagueness deliberate and obvious as his gaze turned to the ground, kicking absently at a pebble. "Once it was done, it just felt right for him to stick around; the rest is history."
The rest was the history of the Kings, Kyle thought: it was only when David had joined with Neal and Andy did the three find fame by robbing banks, and they began to leave their distinctive calling card--one simple playing card, from an unmarked deck, purchased states and miles from each robbery--once the newspapers needed a name to match up to the crimes. "Who were you tracking down?" Kyle asked, knowing it was probably one question too far but also knowing he'd never get the answer from David himself.
Andy's eyes grew dark; clouded. Though the question was directed about David Cook, the topic hit all three of the original Kings hard, the memories of that first meeting with the man from Missouri unforgettable to him. "A lawman," was his first answer, as vague and unemotional as the other details of their little history lesson, but he amended himself, believing that as a true member of the Kings Kyle deserved to know more. Besides, it wasn't like he wouldn't ask about it later on. "Someone who did wrong to David. To his family." The cruelties David had spoke of in that dingy saloon in Austin, the reasons he gave that made Andy and Neal join with him on the spot over six years ago, still stung in his mind like they were his own wounds. "Wronged them bad."
A chill went down Kyle's spine, so severe and sudden he almost let his pistol fall to the ground from his grip; the shooting lesson would have certainly been over then. David had never spoken about a family before, none of them did; perhaps there was a reason for it.
The moment passing along by them with the hours of the day, Andy cleared his throat; Kyle had seemed determined to bring back the Kings's past, whether the outlaws wanted it or not. "After we helped him find the lawman, Dave...lost his purpose. He completed it, yes, but once you allow one thing to mean everything to you, and one day it's gone, you just end up feeling empty. No one can last that long like that."
Kyle narrowed his eyes at the other man; something didn't add up. The portrait of a despondent, empty shell Andy was painting didn't correlate with the David Cook Kyle had gotten to know over the past two months, who broke out into broad, unadulterated smiles at the drop of a hat and found the positive in Kyle's admittance to the Kings, even when Kyle sometimes could not. And then there were David's moments of moodiness, when the confidence and optimism seemed to drain from his body out of his boots, a dull, grey mirror of his usual self. There were moments when he was lost, yes, and times when no one else could reach him, but David Cook hardly seemed like a man without a purpose. "He must have found something else," Kyle concluded, and Andy couldn't help but smile at this deduction.
"That," he replied, pointing his finger at Kyle in the form of a pistol and miming pulling the trigger, the other man's hunch right on target. "Is who's at the other end of that letter."
The letter...the most recent thing to send David into a world of his own thoughts. Kyle wondered with great interest who it could have been, eager to discover a part of David's mysterious past that had been kept hidden from him for two months, and hidden from the rest of the world forever. "His family?" he took a shot in the dark, unaware until five minutes ago that David Cook even had family to speak of.
Andy's smile faded to something bittersweet, the question unwittingly moot: there had been a family, many years ago before he had ever come across Neal and Andy's path, and he supposed there could always be the possibility of a family in his future if David got his way and found an escape from the outlaw life. But at this moment in time, the only kind of family that existed for David were the other Kings, the four men around him who would have his back for anything, would follow their leader through Hell if need be. "A woman," Andy supplied the correct answer, the one word being far more simple and yet more complicated than anything else. "Her name's Kelly, lives in Texas. Real spitfire of a girl."
"So you've met her?" Kyle's interests were once again piqued at learning something new about the leader of the Kings. "What's she like? When did they meet? Do they just talk in letters?" He found it astounding that being an outlaw allowed for any type of social life, much less finding oneself a sweetheart in Texas of all places. He grinned wide, still at a loss as to why David seemed to resent the outlaw life so much. He seemed to be able to have it all.
But Andy cut off the stream of questions from the Kings's newest member: even for the patient Andy Skib, Kyle's curiosity eventually wore thin. Besides, removing Kyle from the distractions at camp was the entire purpose of this excursion, not to gossip about David Cook's past. "The rest is for Dave to tell you, if he decides he wants you to know," he reasoned, holding his arms up in surrender. He could talk for days about his own history, the adventures he shared with the Dr. by his side, but David's stories were his and his alone to reveal. "You'll get no more from me until you learn how to shoot."
He motioned towards Kyle's pistol yet again; bad form, locked elbows, it didn't matter so long as the kid had aim. Feeling that uneasiness about his skill returning to the pit of his stomach, Kyle still did as the other man instructed, raised his arm to keep the cactus in his line of sight, making sure to relax and let the bullet do its magic as he squeezed the trigger and fired.
Chapter 5, part two
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Skibmann, various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: The bulk of this story will be separated into three parts: part one was chapters 1-4, and so part two stars with this chapter. I have been working on this story for the past seven months and I am SO excited to finally be posting it :D What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
"I know from firsthand experience that there's not an honest man in Texas nor a virtuous woman either." - the victim of Bill Longley
Tired, lonely buildings made of timber and sweat, raised not yet fifteen years before but already worn and old from Texas winds and unexpected hardships. A supply store, a blacksmith's, a third-rate saloon where the whores were probably more weather-worn than the buildings themselves and just as interchangeable. A dingy watering hole for traveling cattle and their herders alike, making the long grazing migration from the barren lands of South Texas north to the slaughterhouses of St. Louis. And a bank, standing tall at the center of the fledgling town, a beacon and symbol of commerce and community, a giant structure standing tall atop the mountain-less plain.
Burleson was just like every other town, identical to every shack and shanty erected from here to the Pacific, and David Cook didn't expect anything more.
They had rode into town for a bit of rest and regeneration, from lands north of Texas where they feared some wayward traveler would recognize Andy's face or a lone Creek warrior scrounging for prey outside of the reservation lands would identify the inked markings on Neal as one of their own. David's own likeness was growing more infamous as word spread through the plains of the trio's exploits, of the rash and daring robberies forming a trail from Missouri, but he was still relatively safe, none of the men causing enough of a stir to truly be noticed unless they planned it just so. A tiny settlement erected more for the cattle ranchers and transients than for the townspeople themselves would never take notice of an extra three travelers, young men like themselves flowing in and out of Burleson like crisp water through its bordering streams.
The Breakaway Saloon itself was what David aimed for, a late afternoon sun baking long shadows into the dust, making the building feel even more decrepit and unwelcoming, enhancing every flaw. It was unpleasant and small, with a simple design that revealed grimly there weren't many boarding rooms to be had, but it was all the shelter the three men would find for miles, the next town worth even a speck on a map being Dallas, in far too close quarters with lawmen than David felt comfortable with. Besides, it beat sleeping on the open plain, a vulnerable target for any and all men tracking down their trail; they had certainly gained a few more from the last bank they hit. David's back, sore from a relentless gallop in the saddle, didn't seem like it would ever get used to resting on the cold ground.
Quickly dismounting and hitching Sugarfoot to a watering trough, David felt Neal and Andy's eyes on him as they followed suit. Andy gave him a quick nod as Neal jutted his chin inconspicuously at the bank across the dirt road avenue, indicating they were rethinking Burleson as a purely recreational visit. David wasn't quite up to the level of eerily accurate non-communication as the other two men were with each other, and he wondered if they had been conversing silently their entire ride into town. As close as the three had become traveling with each other the past year, there were a few other things between Neal and Andy that David was quite content not to share in.
They could talk about it later, when the town slept and the three men could get a better scope of the bank, but for now, David just wanted to relax.
Surprisingly to all three men, the interior of the saloon wasn't nearly as rundown as its facade so ominously advertised. A warm radiance emanated throughout the large front parlor thanks to tallow candles situated around the room, chasing away the shadows looming in the streets outside. The tables and chairs were intricately carved, with Spanish roses and suns decorating the wood and legs curling down into fierce eagles' talons; from the condition of the exterior David had not expected much in the way of furniture at all. The bar was fully stocked with glass bottles stacked neatly in rows, glittering in the candlelight and casting the room in flickering shades of yellow and amber. The bar, as well as the rest of the parlor, looked to be free of bullet holes entirely--a detail not lost on the three outlaws, who were oftentimes lucky if they entered a saloon and left before witnessing a fight end in pistols drawn and blood on the floor. David considered them double-lucky if they could leave without getting into one of those kinds of arguments.
They had expected little more than a slophouse and came face to face with one of the most civilized saloons this side of the Rio Grande. Burleson just seemed to be full of surprises.
But what David saw before him was far more surprising than any Hell in the West freezing over, more pleasant than a lifesaving oasis in the desert. She stood there brazenly, no holster around her hip but her confidence alone told him she needed no gun to keep her protected in this town. She wore pants and a tucked shirt like any man on the cattle drive, but the thick fabrics and leather did nothing to hide her feminine frame, breasts and hips curving like a river, and just as powerful. Her hair glimmered in the candlelight, a deep, rich color reminiscent of spiced honey that David couldn't decide was blond or brown, but he knew he'd like to spend a lifetime contemplating.
Clear hazel eyes, intensified with a sense of daring, fell upon David's frame in the doorway, flashing intrigue and challenge where David only saw beauty. The talker and the charmer of the three men, David was never at a loss for words, always choosing carefully from a wide vocabulary and erring on the side of verbosity, but this woman had rendered him speechless, his ever-eloquent words flying out of his head. She was a vision without ever trying, a woman standing tall and unafraid at a bar, shooter of whiskey in her hand, dressed in men's clothes but exuding a femininity that was irresistibly alluring to David.
He wanted to whisk her away from the deceiving town, carry her off to some unforeseen foreign land and treat her like a queen, let them both escape the life of the endless plain. He wanted to give her all the lines he used on saloon girls but knew all were too tarnished for her; he found his charm effective to a fault on others but he had a feeling she wouldn't settle for a pretty line and a smile. All he found himself able to do was give her a half-smile in recognition, his own civility overwhelming him, and tip his hat in the beautiful woman's direction.
David's heart felt like it wanted to ride for the moon, lighter than he had felt in years, when she returned his gaze with a nod of her head and a genuine smile of her own.
***
David perched himself atop a precarious outcropping of rock, overlooking a sea of prairie grass below him, waving through the breeze like a massive crowd of thousands swaying their arms to and fro, contemplating time.
It could have been five years, four months by now, or perhaps it was seven; in David's line of work the days and months melted into one another, baked and steamed by the desert sun, and he always lost track of time here. He knew it had been winter in Texas back then, but that hadn't meant much to him in the days that were as scalding as a Missouri July. They had never seen snow down in Texas, not as they rested their aching limbs in Burleson years ago nor as they left the tiny town in the distance.
Pity, David thought, eyes narrowing as he looked out onto the horizon. Her hair would have looked so beautiful when sprinkled with snow.
The warm breeze whipped up into a fiercer, colder wind, biting against David's skin and rustling the newly acquired letter resting in his hands. There would be a storm tonight, the air was already giving fair warning.
***
"What is he doing?"
Kyle should have never asked that question. He knew fairly well what David Cook was doing, as he had been doing all day: David Cook was sitting. He had situated himself atop a rocky hill, far away from the Kings's encampment but close enough to still be within range of a trained eye or the sound of alarm coming from the horses. It was what David had been doing, truthfully, ever since an old acquaintance of the outlaws arrived--a tall, Jewish man working odd jobs to finance his way to California, who had seemed to become David's personal Pony Express. He greeted each man with a solemn nod, the meeting not substantial enough to dismount from his horse, and had complained to David that he wasn't Wells Fargo before handing him a small, wrapped package and a letter. The letter now remained in David's hands, the package delicately unwrapped in his lap; and there, he sat.
He should have also never asked that question because he had asked it before, and received a surly yet acceptable answer from Neal. The look on the older man's face told Kyle he wasn't pleased with hearing the same question twice.
"I already told you," he said testily, reminding Kyle of the clipped answer he had received from the blond before, that the leader of the Kings was taking some personal time, something every one of the outlaws needed once in a while. Neal felt at this moment he could use some of that same personal time away from Kyle Peek. "Now are you going to start paying attention or am I gonna have to shoot you to show you how it's done?"
"Neal," a voice shouted from behind them, their voices carrying on the wind back to camp from their position within a shallow valley, perfect for the shooting practice Kyle so desperately needed. Both men turned around to see Andy at the head of the valley, his tone and expression full of annoyance, as if he had given this reprimand to the Dr. many times before. Kyle would put money on the idea that he had. "Give the kid a break. He's not hurting anyone with his questions."
While the thinly-veiled death threats still seemed to be a regular occurrence, Kyle had received the respect he so craved after his rescue in Fox Canyon, especially from the skeptic Andy and Neal. Once it was clear to the Kings that Kyle had saved their hides and had the courage and the fortitude to do it again if ever needed, he was welcomed into the fold, given a share of the profits from Hicks's bank, and promoted to lookout--so long as he tended the horses and cleaned up camp, and pulled his own weight within the gang. Andy had been particularly kind to Kyle recently, his stance on the young rancher changing considerably once he saw the kid's ability could equal his enthusiasm. He claimed it was because he knew how it felt to be the youngest of the Kings, a boy among men; but with the way Michael Sarver had raised his gun towards Neal back in Fox Canyon and the split second chance Kyle took between a perfect escape and a burial, Kyle believed Andy's true reasons were something different completely.
Regardless of Andy's admonishment of the sharpshooter's attitude that day, Neal clenched his jaw and marched out of the valley, leaving a perplexed Kyle behind in his dust. "You teach him, then," he muttered as he passed Andy, his shooting lesson with the kid clearly over. He was the third King to attempt schooling Kyle in making the pistols at his sides more useful than mere decorations around his belt, and the third King to fail. Granted, this lesson ended before either man could send off a shot from their guns, but Neal didn't have to wait all day to determine a lost cause.
"Fine, maybe I will." Andy's tone was challenging but there was no bite to it; his retort was all in fun, glib and breezy as he tried to keep a stony expression but failed in the face of Neal.
"Fine." Not even the brim of his hat, pulled low over his forehead to protect fair Irish skin, could hide the smile ghosting across Neal's features. He ducked his head low, his voice following as he qualified in Andy's ear. "I wasn't really gonna shoot him."
Andy tried to focus on the clearly lost young man still standing in the valley instead of the breath tickling the shell of his ear. "One can never be sure," he gave his parting words with a grin as he motioned for Kyle to join them back on the ridge. "Get your horse, Kid; we're heading east."
Once Kyle had joined his new tutor and both had saddled and mounted their horses, Andy took the travel time to explain his unorthodox methods. "You were distracted," he said, keeping Vera on a steady, strong trot, with Kyle and Gangles--who had been quite displeased with being saddled so suddenly in the middle of the day, and had nipped at Kyle's shoulder in protest--lagging slightly behind. "The other guys want you to just snap out of it, yell at you enough until you figure it out. But that's obviously not working and we've still got to teach you to shoot or you're no good to us. Can't have you staging a stampede whenever we need your help. So I figured, best take you away from distractions."
When they finally did reach their destination--a deep valley a few miles from camp, whose limestone walls swallowed the noises of the plains above it, isolating the outlaws and the sounds of their practice gunshots inside--Kyle marveled at the other man's foresight, and for the first time in the two months since the heist at Fox Canyon passed, he felt he might learn something. "Joey had tried to teach me, distractions and all," he noted as he dismounted and led the horses to safe tether inside the valley.
"Joey's a great guy," Andy was already examining his gun, noting he hadn't been maintaining it as well as he could have, with tiny specks of desert dust gathering in the mechanical crevices of his revolver from a past windstorm in Nevada, or New Mexico, or wherever the hell they had just been. The lands they had traveled meshed together now along with the years, an endless run of territory they could never hope to conquer. "Tough as nails." Andy smiled and Kyle knew there was a "but" coming out of this conversation. "Can't aim a damn pistol if his life depended on it, and it has. There's a reason his favored weapon's a shotgun: the buckshot from that thing'd hit anything if you're close enough. Hell, I'm surprised he hasn't shot one of us full of holes yet."
He hadn't said any of this out of malice or jest; Kyle had learned how to decipher Andy Skib's dry wit in his short time with the Kings, and he knew this was to be taken quite seriously. He hearkened back to Joey's failed attempts at teaching him how to shoot, the older man's genial and lighthearted nature translating into a flustered absent-mindedness with one of Kyle's pistols in hand. Kyle wondered grimly if that was to be his own fate if he couldn't learn from the last of the Kings, that he would be stripped of his pistols and relegated to shotgun duty, trusted only with aiming at the broad side of a bank.
But this didn't account for Kyle's other failures in gun handling instruction. "David and the Dr. can aim," he reminded Andy, who gave a wide smile and shook his head at Kyle's inability, even after two months of being fully accepted into the outlaw gang, to always call Neal by his given name.
"That they can." Andy vividly remembered target practice and accuracy contests between David and Neal early on in the Kings's partnership, neither man backing down until the sky fell too dark to see neither target nor bullet. Neal always ended with the highest accuracy rating, as all three men knew would be the outcome, but it never kept David from trying or noticing the techniques he needed to perfect. Andy always stayed out of those competitions, humbly admitting his position as the third best shot in that close-knit group of three, and reminding them both that there was more to his skills than hitting a tin can at seventy feet. "They're damn good at it, too; some would say Neal's the best shot in the country, if enough people actually lived to tell about it."
Considering the number of times Neal had threatened to shoot Kyle, including that morning alone, this gave the young man no comfort. "Then why can't I pick that up?" he asked sheepishly, feeling like a child again in the minuscule red Sunday schoolhouse of his youth, shamed once again for forgetting the names of the Apostles.
This time there was sympathy in Andy's smile; he had certainly been there before. "Dave's a natural shot," he explained. "Mastered a gun the minute he got one in his hand; Neal, too. They can do a lot of amazing things with a pistol." Andy squinted against the sun as he loaded up his revolver, positioning each bullet carefully into its cylinder. The cactus standing tall among patches of overgrown prairie grass on the far end of the valley would do nicely. "Problem is, Dave doesn't really get it when someone else can't pick it up as fast as he did. He expects you to know, like he knows. He gets frustrated, he gives up. It's not that you can't learn," he said with a shrug. "It's that Dave doesn't know how to teach you."
"And Neal?"
Andy rolled his eyes, trying hard not to laugh. "Neal just doesn't want to teach."
It was not lost on Kyle that the only member of the Kings of which Andy didn't speak of their marksmanship, was himself. While each man's goal was to never have to use their gun during a heist or have to test their speed and accuracy in a shootout to the death, Kyle knew how important it was to have the skills when you needed them. With a steady hand Andy raised an outstretched right arm to eye level, his revolver gripped firmly in his hand, hesitating only a moment to focus his aim before pulling the trigger. With a loud pop and a spark of smoke pluming from the barrel, the bullet broke through the air to the other side of the valley, finding a quick and permanent home in the trunk of the cactus, dead-on center.
Kyle gaped at the shot, his eyes widening as his head turned from one of the bullet's points of call to the other, never expecting a demonstration such as that. Generally pleased with his performance, Andy lowered the gun, a quirk of his eyebrow the only indication of his satisfaction. His attentions only returned to Kyle when he heard the low whistle made by the young man.
"I didn't know you could do that," Kyle found himself saying before filtering himself, his awe escaping and amusing the other man. He had never seen Andy shoot before, and assumed from his permanent position away from the action of the Kings's bank robberies meant he was far from handy with a pistol; but this test of skill showed Kyle he was sorely mistaken. His style was subdued and rarely on display, but for sheer talent Andy's shot could rival even Neal's.
"That," Andy replied, feeling the happy hum in his bones once again from the vibration of shooting. "Took me a lot of practice." It had cost Andy years to perfect his own shot, far from the natural talent of David and Neal with a pistol, with a trail of shells and bullet gouges in cliff faces to prove his progress.
"How did you learn?" Kyle asked eagerly, no longer feeling as if he had been sidled with the last King willing to keep him around for more than target practice.
A slow, irrepressible smile spread on Andy's face as he inspected his gun once again, eying the cylinder and waiting for the revolver to cool. "Neal actually taught me," he said, quickly explaining himself once the expression of disbelief quickly washed over Kyle's face. Just because he didn't like to teach didn't mean he hadn't. "He wasn't keen on it at first, and he really wasn't good with patience, but I knew how to work it out of him." He hadn't spent eight years riding with the other man without picking up a few tricks; namely, figuring out quite quickly how to convince the sharpshooter that training him would be worthwhile.
Almost immediately Kyle knew there was no chance of him learning the methods to get Neal Tiemann to reveal his trade secrets with a pistol, not from the smile he doubted Andy even knew he was making or the shine in his eyes that told Kyle more than could be said in that valley with words. He remembered what he had seen the night of the Fox Canyon robbery, though he had wished and hoped and scrubbed at his head until it was sore to forget; he remembered in vivid detail the flesh he spied in the dim moonlight, the sounds of their breath entwined together like their fingers, their very bodies.
That was certainly a length Kyle would not go to for shooting lessons.
"Let's see your form." Andy started the lesson quickly, knowing they had little time before the setting sun dulled their eyesight to the details of the targets and the trails of their bullets through the sky. Kyle, who, for the first time felt rather silly for having two pistols by his side he didn't know how to use instead of one he could master, sheepishly held up one in his right hand and pointed the barrel in the vicinity of the cactus at the other end of the valley, doubting he'd even come close to hitting the natural limestone wall behind it, much less the plant itself.
Andy frowned, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he scrutinized Kyle, the greenhorn looking more ready to shuck corn than shoot a gun. "You're thinking too much," he concluded, and silently Kyle agreed. He was worrying too much about mimicking what he had seen before with the other Kings, emulating the casual way David would raise his gun or Neal would approach a target, imitating the fearlessness Andy had with taking that shot instead of forming his own. "The art behind gunslinging is to keep it natural: you can't be worrying about the mechanics of it if you're staring down a barrel. You've already got the instinct," he remarked, remembering Kyle's split decision to stampede the horses through Fox Canyon two months ago, a decision that saved the Kings's lives but one Kyle couldn't remember thinking about or making, just executing. "You just need the skill to back it up. That's what Neal always taught me."
The mention of the Dr.'s name again brought back those images in Kyle's mind, the intimacy between the two founding members of the Kings that he never should have nor wanted to see. Though he wished he would have never caught sight of what occurred after Fox Canyon, his curiosity was piqued by their history, how one outlaw with such a notorious, deadly past and one who wasn't supposed to even exist could grow to mean so much to one another. "So," Kyle chanced, figuring the unanswered questions about the shadow and the sharpshooter in his head were more distracting than anything to be found around camp. "You and Neal are...close?"
He tried to word his query as best he could, choosing each syllable carefully, wary not to sound too inquisitive or to let on that he saw too much, knew more than Andy or Neal had hoped to tell him. He was no wordsmith like David fancied himself, plotting the right synonyms in his head as he spoke, always the paradox of an eloquent outlaw; but he didn't stumble over words either, and he respected their power. Just as he asked he regretted it, ducking his head and allowing wisps of his hair to fall into his face, masking the blush of remorse on his cheeks.
But Andy didn't find the question to be an intrusion, nor did he notice Kyle's embarrassment over asking it; he had no reason to suspect Kyle knew anything more than what Joey had revealed about the Kings's history that first day he joined their ranks. "You could say so," he gave a wistful smile, his eyes no longer focusing on Kyle's form but on something inside his mind; memories, Kyle thought, and for a fleeting moment he envied them for having someone with whom to share such fond thoughts. "We've known each other eight years now; rode all over the West with Neal, making our mark. Before Joey--hell, before even Dave came around, it was just us." He laughed, thinking back on those times when they were so young, and so carefree; wondered how things would have changed if it had just been the two of them together all along.
The older man gave no indication about what Kyle had seen that one night, and the young man would push it no further; he would never be green enough not to know when to let sleeping dogs lie. "He came around...right when I needed him," Andy continued, his voice now adding to that faraway look in his eyes, dipping low and gentle without even noticing. "My life at the time wasn't...wasn't really me at all. Wasn't where I wanted my life to go."
"And this is?"
Kyle had heard the paradoxical responses from this kind of question from the other Kings: David, arguably the most vocal, produced a thick layer of apathy on the best of days when asked if he enjoyed the outlaw lifestyle, and a harsh vitriol or cold, detestable silence on the worst. The outlaw life was never meant to be for the long term, only for those who made their fortunes fast and effectively or the ones who flooded the frontier cemeteries with their bones. The reason the Kings remained alive was the same reason the life was slowly killing them: small, escapable heists in tiny towns gave them their small bankrolls and allowed them to live for another day, but the notoriety and infamy they gained with each robbery forced them into hiding, and the world saw them as outcasts or, even worse, dollar signs for bounties. Two months ago Kyle wanted more than anything in this life to be an outlaw, to experience that adventure and thrill he'd never find in a normal life; now, he realized a normal life was all that David Cook had ever wanted.
But the look on Andy Skib's face told him something quite different. Andy wasn't even looking at Kyle anymore, didn't give a damn about how he held his pistol; his thoughts were completely on something else, the peaceful smile on his face telling Kyle more than an answer in words could ever say. The way he wanted his life to go...in Andy's mind it wasn't about the outlaw life, of hiding from the rest of the world or no one ever knowing he even truly existed. He couldn't care less about the millions of nameless faces who saw him as just the same, people who didn't know who he was; he only cared about the ones who did.
"You're gonna have to leave soon." Andy touched his fingers to the piano keys, the pads of his fingertips soft against the ivory, not even pressing down hard enough to make a sound. There would be time enough for his fingers to make noise in two hours, when his parents' guests arrived to listen and be entertained by their promoted prodigy, to fawn over the Skib's perfect little Tulsa homestead, their perfect little life, their perfect little son.
He felt his presence before he saw it, a warmth beside him he never experienced for the fifteen years he had lived in his parents' shadows. A swift, tattooed hand descended upon the keys to Andy's left, mimicking the placement of his fingers in a lower, deeper octave. "They can kick me out when they want," Neal replied breezily, never caring nor fearing the wrath of Andy's family, pressing his fingers down to release an ominous minor chord into the parlor. If his parents had seen Neal Tiemann touching their prized grand piano, they would have done more than just kick him out of the house.
"Wish I could leave with you." The suit they made him wear was stifling, the room to which he had been banished until his musical talents were needed even more so. He couldn't begin to tell Neal what a joy it was that he had snuck in, his tattoos a colorful distraction from the dull black and white keys before him, the black and white prison all around him. He didn't need to. "All these stupid people I don't care about, talking about me, whispering things...thinking that I'm important, or something, when they don't even know me." He sighed, Neal's minor chord still ringing in his ears. "Sometimes I wish I could just disappear from all this. Be a shadow." His last words were a whisper but he knew Neal could hear them. "No one would know who I am."
Silence. It took years for Andy to realize that Neal was waiting for Andy's gaze to rise from the piano keys to respond, for expressive brown eyes to lock with a dangerous, icy blue. "I'd know who you are," Neal responded quietly, taking his hands off of the keys.
Andy never really shook himself out of that memory, only worked around it, responding to Kyle without really thinking. The kettle was on, but the family went on vacation. "For now, it is," he answered; it wasn't the richest life, it wasn't the most glamorous like his life could have been, but it was his own, and that was what truly mattered.
That pregnant silence between them, Andy ignoring everything but the scenes in his mind, vivid as the day they occurred, grew awkward for Kyle, especially knowing what he knew. He still held his arm outstretched towards the far end of the valley, the muscles and tendons beginning to tremble from holding out the heavy pistol for so long; he feared he was getting a cramp. "David doesn't seem to think so," he quickly changed the subject from the other man and Neal, remembering in his mind where that conversation could lead. He could already tell, even if he had his eyes closed and ears stuffed with tumbleweeds, that the connection between the shadow and the sharpshooter was deeper than that of friends, even deeper than the lovers Kyle had seen the night of Fox Canyon. But he kept his mouth shut on the subject, not for his own modesty, but because he didn't believe Neal and Andy even realized what they had.
Shrugging nonchalantly, Andy didn't seem to be alarmed by Kyle's change in topic, or even noticed the greenhorn's lack of subtlety. "That's because David never wanted this life," he admitted, something the leader of the Kings himself had told Kyle on a few occasions, making sure to remind the young man that the life of the outlaw wasn't all thrilling, successful bank robberies and enjoying the spoils of a heist. "He had different reasons for how he came to be one of us. Good reasons, yes, but not lasting ones." The shift did seem to refocus Andy's attentions, however, and he frowned; not everything Kyle did had gone unnoticed. "You're gonna break your arm if you lock your elbow like that; the backfire from the shot wouldn't be padded by anything, and you're body's too rigid to take the shock. Didn't anyone teach you how to shoot?"
He instantly regretted the words because he knew no one had; Kyle looked sheepishly at the pistol in his hand, considering for the first time that it might be more trouble than it was worth. "Just relax. Get comfortable with the weight of the gun in your hand; you'll never know how long you'll have to aim it in a standoff."
Kyle did as he was instructed, believing that the other man was also employing the trick of changing the subject to end their talk on David Cook's reasons for becoming an outlaw--one of them. But to his surprise, once Andy decided Kyle's stance was satisfactory, he continued with the conversation. "Neal and I came West to look for adventure. There was nothing left for us back home; I guess you could say we were bored."
Later Kyle would learn there was more to it than that, that Neal--too white for the Indians and too Indian for the whites--had left an existence as an outcast and Andy escaped his worst fears of being his family's pawn for the rest of his days. Even at that moment Kyle hadn't believed him; no one risked their lives and became outlaws simply because they were bored. No one besides him, anyway. "We owned the plains, riding wherever we pleased, hitting general stores and the odd stagecoach along the way, really only taking whatever we'd need. We were all action, no purpose." He said it with a wistful nostalgia to his voice, as if he missed the days it had only been him and Neal and the open plain, the sky stretching for miles and the Earth under Vera and Sixx's hooves theirs only to conquer. Compared to that feeling, riding with the Kings must have been downright domesticating.
"But David was just the opposite: all purpose, no pleasure. A real man on a mission, and it was damn admirable. He needed our help tracking someone down, and we thought his cause was justifiable, so we did." Andy shrugged, his vagueness deliberate and obvious as his gaze turned to the ground, kicking absently at a pebble. "Once it was done, it just felt right for him to stick around; the rest is history."
The rest was the history of the Kings, Kyle thought: it was only when David had joined with Neal and Andy did the three find fame by robbing banks, and they began to leave their distinctive calling card--one simple playing card, from an unmarked deck, purchased states and miles from each robbery--once the newspapers needed a name to match up to the crimes. "Who were you tracking down?" Kyle asked, knowing it was probably one question too far but also knowing he'd never get the answer from David himself.
Andy's eyes grew dark; clouded. Though the question was directed about David Cook, the topic hit all three of the original Kings hard, the memories of that first meeting with the man from Missouri unforgettable to him. "A lawman," was his first answer, as vague and unemotional as the other details of their little history lesson, but he amended himself, believing that as a true member of the Kings Kyle deserved to know more. Besides, it wasn't like he wouldn't ask about it later on. "Someone who did wrong to David. To his family." The cruelties David had spoke of in that dingy saloon in Austin, the reasons he gave that made Andy and Neal join with him on the spot over six years ago, still stung in his mind like they were his own wounds. "Wronged them bad."
A chill went down Kyle's spine, so severe and sudden he almost let his pistol fall to the ground from his grip; the shooting lesson would have certainly been over then. David had never spoken about a family before, none of them did; perhaps there was a reason for it.
The moment passing along by them with the hours of the day, Andy cleared his throat; Kyle had seemed determined to bring back the Kings's past, whether the outlaws wanted it or not. "After we helped him find the lawman, Dave...lost his purpose. He completed it, yes, but once you allow one thing to mean everything to you, and one day it's gone, you just end up feeling empty. No one can last that long like that."
Kyle narrowed his eyes at the other man; something didn't add up. The portrait of a despondent, empty shell Andy was painting didn't correlate with the David Cook Kyle had gotten to know over the past two months, who broke out into broad, unadulterated smiles at the drop of a hat and found the positive in Kyle's admittance to the Kings, even when Kyle sometimes could not. And then there were David's moments of moodiness, when the confidence and optimism seemed to drain from his body out of his boots, a dull, grey mirror of his usual self. There were moments when he was lost, yes, and times when no one else could reach him, but David Cook hardly seemed like a man without a purpose. "He must have found something else," Kyle concluded, and Andy couldn't help but smile at this deduction.
"That," he replied, pointing his finger at Kyle in the form of a pistol and miming pulling the trigger, the other man's hunch right on target. "Is who's at the other end of that letter."
The letter...the most recent thing to send David into a world of his own thoughts. Kyle wondered with great interest who it could have been, eager to discover a part of David's mysterious past that had been kept hidden from him for two months, and hidden from the rest of the world forever. "His family?" he took a shot in the dark, unaware until five minutes ago that David Cook even had family to speak of.
Andy's smile faded to something bittersweet, the question unwittingly moot: there had been a family, many years ago before he had ever come across Neal and Andy's path, and he supposed there could always be the possibility of a family in his future if David got his way and found an escape from the outlaw life. But at this moment in time, the only kind of family that existed for David were the other Kings, the four men around him who would have his back for anything, would follow their leader through Hell if need be. "A woman," Andy supplied the correct answer, the one word being far more simple and yet more complicated than anything else. "Her name's Kelly, lives in Texas. Real spitfire of a girl."
"So you've met her?" Kyle's interests were once again piqued at learning something new about the leader of the Kings. "What's she like? When did they meet? Do they just talk in letters?" He found it astounding that being an outlaw allowed for any type of social life, much less finding oneself a sweetheart in Texas of all places. He grinned wide, still at a loss as to why David seemed to resent the outlaw life so much. He seemed to be able to have it all.
But Andy cut off the stream of questions from the Kings's newest member: even for the patient Andy Skib, Kyle's curiosity eventually wore thin. Besides, removing Kyle from the distractions at camp was the entire purpose of this excursion, not to gossip about David Cook's past. "The rest is for Dave to tell you, if he decides he wants you to know," he reasoned, holding his arms up in surrender. He could talk for days about his own history, the adventures he shared with the Dr. by his side, but David's stories were his and his alone to reveal. "You'll get no more from me until you learn how to shoot."
He motioned towards Kyle's pistol yet again; bad form, locked elbows, it didn't matter so long as the kid had aim. Feeling that uneasiness about his skill returning to the pit of his stomach, Kyle still did as the other man instructed, raised his arm to keep the cactus in his line of sight, making sure to relax and let the bullet do its magic as he squeezed the trigger and fired.
Chapter 5, part two