Chapter Text
The second the bandits leave, Lowell follows their lead and escapes the bank before the law comes. He gets to his horse and takes the back entrance out of the city, he rides as quickly as he can, he canters through the city before forcing his horse into a gallop all the way back to camp.
He gets off of his horse and yells for Bill, “Boss! Boss, I have news!”
He can’t see Bill anywhere but does see Snakehips, “Snake, have you seen the boss? I need- it’s bad news- I gotta- I have to talk to the boss.”
“He went on a trot with his lady, Lo, they went that way,” Snakehips points him, “What’s the problem?”
“Banks already been robbed,” Lowell says, giving his horse a jolt and taking off.
Lowell rides in that direction Snakehips had pointed out and he can’t even see the boss and his lady, which means they must be a bit of a ways out. He gets his horse to gallop as quick as it can, in hopes of finding his boss and tell him the news.
Meanwhile Bill and Maria sit on a hill of grasslands, a good bit away from the camp. They wanted some privacy from the rest of the group, Maria said she wanted to talk and Bill could tell from the look in her eyes that this wasn’t a conversation he could get out of by whispering sweet nothings and taking her to bed.
They sit on this hill in silence for the first while, Bill refusing to ask what’s wrong and Maria refusing to break first. She’s a stubborn woman, something Bill knew when he married her, he loves her for it, just not when it’s directed at him.
Bill keeps trying to look her in the eye, but she turns her head each time, to pick daisies, to pet the horse, to take off her shoes and feel the grass beneath her toes, doing literally anything except for talking to him. It drives him mad, how she will demand they talk but refuse to speak.
Maria is laying down on the hill, hat covering her face as she allows the sun to wash over her. Bill sits up straight and watches his wife, finally he has enough, grabs Maria by the wrist and pulling her to her feet with a bit of force. Maria’s hat falls to the ground and she scowls, snatching her hand back.
“What is wrong?” Bill demands, “What the hell do we have to talk about?”
“Bill, mi Tesoro, what are we doing?” Maria pleads, bending over to pick up her hat.
“What are we do- We’re standing here in the middle of nowhere so you can talk to be about something, so what is it? Just talk,” he rolls his eyes as his voice rises in anger.
“I know, Bill, that’s why I’m asking! What are we doing? Going from one city to the next, manipulating and conning and stealing. All the stealing!” Maria laments, “Why are we doing this? We were fine before, we could be fine again. We don’t need to keep stealing.”
Bill takes a step back from his wife, it’s like he doesn’t recognise his wife. What the hell is she talking about? He spent his early life killing bandits, then he had to run form the law and when he met her, they turned to crime together. They got along without it when they stayed in his hometown in Tennessee, but she was tired of being poor and so they turned back to crime again.
“I steal for you, Maria. Everything, for you, because you can’t do it yourself.”
She clicks her tongue and shakes her head, “No, no you steal because you enjoy it. You enjoy the control, you and your men, no names, everyone has a role, no one gets to know anyone.”
Bill laughs lowly, “I do this for us, Maria, so you can go to your bars, and have your parties. You couldn’t do that if it weren’t for me, if it weren’t for my gang.”
“Well then I’ll stop!” Maria yells, stamping her foot and raising her arms in anger, “I’ll stay home and be a hermit! If it means that you and Danny will be home with me, no fear of getting shot, no getting people to run their mouths for intel. Please.”
Annabelle and Butch are standing outside the bank and are sharing a short, private smile. They had done it. They’d just robbed a bank! Annabelle was ecstatic, they’d done the thing, she has such an adrenaline rush, and most importantly, she has accuracy for her book. She knows what it’s like, that rush of entering the room with a gun and taking command of a group, of getting the money and now, all she really has to do is escape.
Annabelle takes the bag full of cash and puts it in the saddlebag, the pair of girls get on their horses, exchange a quick nod and they take off.
Annabelle takes the lead and Butch follows behind her, they begin to make their way through the city. They’re much further into the city than they usually go, the bar is closer to the entrance that they traverse and so a lot of this is unchartered territory to them.
Annabelle realises this and thinks that maybe they should’ve gone through this part of town more and made a plan, but it’s much too late for that now. They begin to make their way to the exit as best they can remember from their way in when suddenly she hears shouts.
“This is the law, stop your horses!” the male voice shouts.
This just got a lot harder.
Lowell galloped for a few minutes and finally saw the silhouette of his boss and his lady. He leans down, aligning his chest with the horse and urges it to go as fast as it can. As he gets closer he recognises that they are arguing, he can slowly begin to hear their voices from afar and their body language.
“Boss!” he yells from a safe distance, hoping that they’d stop arguing, “Boss I got- there’s bad news!”
He finally gets close enough to tell his horse to stop and it does with a slight skid. He jumps off the horse and runs over to the patriarch of the gang, panting heavily.
“Speak man, what’s going on Lowell,” Bill says in a dangerously low voice.
Lowell shivers at the command and straightens up, “The bank, sir, the bank has just been robbed.”
Bill’s eyes darken as he turns away from his wife and takes a step towards Lowell, “No, McAvoy, we’re robbing the bank tomorrow.”
Lowell flinches at the use of his last name, his real last name. He shakes his head quickly, “No Boss, someone robbed it today, near end of my shift.”
“Elaborate,” the patriarch growls, and Maria takes a step closer to him, putting a hand on his arm, their quarrel seemingly forgotten.
“Two bandits, women I think, the ran in, guns in the air firing warning shots and got the crowd under control,” Lowell explains, “They uh, they took everything I had behind the counter. They didn’t get into the safe but the place- Boss, the place will be crawling with the law for days.”
Bill takes another couple steps towards Lowell and looms over him. Another shiver runs through the slightly younger man’s body. He may be a man grown, but the man standing before him is one to be feared, he learned that the moment he joined the gang, he had fast hands and wasn’t afraid to fire some warning shots into his own men.
“I don’t like this,” Bill says calmly, which is more dangerous than if he were to yell, “You’re gonna go back to camp, find Snakehips and tell him to go and get Danny, alright?”
“Yes Boss,” Lowell nods his head, not moving for a second.
“Get,” Bill says lowly and Lowell all but runs to his horse, gets on it and rides back to camp.
Butch is realising how difficult it’s going to be to get out of the city. They’ve never gone this deep into the city before which was their first mistake, the second? The timing. It’s later in the day, more people are on the streets, pedestrians and horses and carts, they are weaving through the city as best they can, but it becomes clear to Butch very quickly that they don’t know where they are.
“Turn left!” Butch yells to Annabelle, seeing an opening and hoping they can both get through that pocket of space before it closes up.
Butch sticks to being behind Annabelle, reasoning to herself that she can protect Annabelle from behind, have her back, like she promised she would. If the law catches up, then they’ll get to Butch first before they get to Annabelle.
“We’re turning right after that cart!” Annabelle yells back when they find their next opening.
But Butch is scared, she looks up and sees that those gathering clouds she noticed before are accumulated above the city, growing darker and darker. A storm is coming on, she knew it would, she just hopes that they’ll weather this storm better than she has before.
“Just keep going straight!” Annabelle commands after their turn.
They keep weaving through their obstacles, trying to get closer to the exit, find where they are but the route is becoming more convoluted and her hope is straining. She isn’t religious, but she prays that Annabelle knows what she’s doing, that she’ll figure out where they are and get them out.
Bill watches as Lowell rides back to the camp and turns to Maria, pulling his arm from her comforting hand, “Happy now?”
Maria’s nostrils flare slightly and she gives him a dark look, “Don’t put this on me, cabrón, just because I want us to stop does not mean that I wanted all of our work in this city to go to waste.”
Bill raises his hands and mocks her, “Oh sorry, mi vida, I know you wouldn’t want your little siestas to go to waste(!)”
“No need for the racialism, puto! We all worked hard on this one and I know that the boys will take this just as hard,” Maria spits at him.
Bill raises a hand to slap Maria which she catches and twists his arm, “You will not raise your hand at me, William. Now I know where my Dañel gets it from!”
Bill shakes his head with a scowl and kisses his teeth, “Daniel is growing up to be his own man, I couldn’t make an imprint on my son if I tried.”
Maria drops his arm like a hot iron, glaring daggers at her husband, “Our son didn’t even know who you were for the first eighteen years of his life. But since he’s known you? He has turned into hombre-niño estúpido, egoísta y sexista!”
Bill rolls his eyes and turns back to the horse they rode, he mounts the stallion and turns his head to his wife, “Are you joining me or will the princessa mexicana walk so as not to be too close to the man that corrupted her child?”
Maria is seething as she mounts the horse behind him, grabbing onto his torso and squeezing harder than she needs, an elbow digging into the man’s ribs to show her ongoing displeasure.
Annabelle looks back at Butch as they continue to try and weave through the city. They might not know where they are going anymore, but at least she knows that Butch is behind her, at least she knows that she’s still there.
Their shifting path is slowly closing off, and Annabelle realises that they’ve almost hit a dead end. She tries to slow down to find another exit, she just about finds it and takes it, taking another quick glance behind confirming that Butch is right behind her.
Butch is following behind Annabelle and is quickly realising that they can’t both get out of here. Annabelle keeps glancing back to confirm she’s there, but as she is Butch does the same and confirms that the law isn’t too far behind.
She gives a quick look back up to the sky and feels a drop of rain hit her nose. It’s then that she knows that she isn’t getting out of this, the wind is changing and that means she’s going to have to leave. But maybe she can make sure that Annabelle doesn’t have to leave.
She surveys the choices laid before her, after Annabelle made a slow to reach a new path Butch realised that there were a few paths coming up. She weighs the options and quickly shouts to Annabelle.
“We need a distraction,” she yells to the blonde.
“What?” the girl yells back to her.
“Take the next left, I’ll meet you back at my farm later,” Butch tells her.
“We can’t split up!”
“We can’t get caught!” Butch tries to reason, “Just do it! Don’t stop til you get to the farm!”
Annabelle doesn’t reply but take the next left and Butch keeps riding. She’s closer to the law and they didn’t see Annabelle very well with her in their path and so they don’t see the blonde turn off.
Butch keeps riding and finally finds somewhere to make a right, pulling the cops further away from wherever Annabelle has gotten to now. That’s all Butch cares about right now. She’s gambling with her own life right now, but at least Annabelle will be safe.
She keeps riding and riding, avoiding people walking and crossing the streets, swerving beside other riders and carts and dodging around buildings. It’s not enough, she sees the dead end of an alleyway that she’s approaching and she can do nothing but stop where she is as she takes one last look back to see the lawman approaching her, and he looks familiar. Too familiar.
Oh no.
It’s the hostage that took too much of a liking to Annabelle.
Annabelle leaves the city and keeps riding. She holds back the tears threatening to fall as she doesn’t know when Butch will escape with her, but she keeps riding.
She rides until she gets to her own farm and drops the bag in her room, her daddy is too busy out with the pigs and so she doesn’t get questioned this time, thank god. She takes off her hat, takes down her hair and moves her bandana from covering her face to covering her hair.
She shakes her head a bit to try and get rid of the nerves she has, but it just doesn’t work. She paces up and down the whole house, walking in and out of rooms and all the way to the front porch where she decides to get back on her horse and starts riding to the Levitt’s farm, hoping to see Butch when she gets there.
Henry has been following the bandits since the moment a fellow officer of the law came to the bank. Billy, the other officer, takes care of controlling the crowd, taking statements and calming them down. Henry has been following as best he can, he wants to find the woman girl with the gun.
He’s had his eyes on that girl since she robbed the train he rode into the city on. Her hair wasn’t pinned up that time, but long and flowing like melted gold down her back, he couldn’t see most of her face, but her piercing blue eyes enthralled him.
What intrigued him most, though, was the way she handled a gun. Now while he thought it was most unbecoming of a lady to handle a firearm, he couldn’t deny that she was talented. The gun was almost like an extension of the hand, she waved it around like it meant nothing to her, she let loose warning shots without a second thought.
She is a wild girl, without a doubt, but Henry is sure that he can tame her. He just needs to capture her first. Like a beautiful bird, he just needs to catch her and put her in a cage so that he can hear her sweet song whenever he wishes.
He can’t quite catch up to the bandits- the girls, but he sees them slow and a grin finds its way across his face. They’re getting sloppy, he’ll catch them in no time, he’s sure.
He follows them weaving in and out of paths of opportunity through the city, the girls are having to pick their windows, but Henry’s yells make people part in front of him to let him stay on their tail.
Eventually the girls split up, they don’t think he notices, but he does, he was never looking at the brunette, the blonde was the one he wanted after all. She was too far out of reach though, so he follows the darker haired girl, she’s the next best thing.
He finally catches up to her as she corners herself and his grin only widens, a manic look in his eyes. The girl comes to a stop and Henry slows his horse to a trot, slowly moving in on the girl. She jumps off her horse and hold her hands up in surrender, but Henry doesn’t care, he brings his horse to a stop and jumps off. He grabs his gun from his holster and slams the butt of it against her temple hard, knocking her out.
Henry lifts the girl, throwing her atop his horse and mounts it himself, keeping the girl on the horse and deciding that rather than taking her to the station he brings her to his apartment, taking the back entrance rather than going through the bar.
He thinks that he may just be able to get his girl with the gun after all. The brunette is just a stepping stone, he’ll find out more about the girl from her, he’s sure. He can capture his sweet songbird and she’ll embrace him. Nothing will stop him now.