Chapter 46: Night Chase
Bonnie remembered hearing her parents talk about the future of the company in this city — but since she had only been a little girl, she hadn't understood much of that sort of thing. All she understood was that her mother was going to travel to another city, and she would be left at home alone.
She had hoped she could ask her father to let her go with her mother — and fortunately, he agreed. The memory of Nicolás's small smile in that moment would follow her forever, because every time she looked at her father in the present, she found herself wondering where on earth that man she had so admired had gone.
That was how she first came to know this city. After a long carriage ride, she found a scene much like Ironwood's — except that this city had its own train: the Ashwood railroad line within Gramond County.
She walked the streets hand in hand with Eleanor, skipping the way any innocent girl might in a world this dark. Throughout it all, Bonnie always asked about every new thing she noticed around her.
"Mama, what's this?"
"Mama, how do you do that?"
"Mama, can we have one of those?"
Eleanor always answered with enthusiasm and a warm smile.
"That's a bell."
"It's just butter, Bonnie."
"If you study hard enough, I might consider getting you one of those."
Bonnie and Eleanor left their memories in this city — the church, the railroad tracks, the good food, the streets that had barely been paved back then. There was no steam-powered machinery to make the locals' lives easier; it had simply been a cowboy town, the kind Samuel Calloway had once seen in the movies.
Then, all at once, Bonnie opened her eyes. She had been asleep in the inn room. After her walk with Evelyn, and since she hadn't managed to have her nostalgic stroll alone after all, she had chosen to spend the time alone in her room until morning. She hadn't expected to fall asleep while lost in so many memories.
'I don't think I'll ever get used to these conveniently timed dreams. I feel a little tired even though I slept for a while. What time is it? I don't have a watch… I should buy one. Calculating the time by the position of the sun and the moon is a pain.'
She sat up on the bed and straightened her hair, which had gotten tangled during the short nap.
The room itself was small — nothing like the one at Hotel Mississippi in Steam City. It had a bed comfortable enough to sleep in, an oil lamp, and a window that let in natural light. There was no private bathroom, but that was the least of her concerns.
She got up and walked over to the window. As on almost every night, the full moon hung in the dark sky. Its light was as intense as ever — three times larger than the moon in Samuel's world, it covered far more of the sky.
But then she frowned, because her senses fired all at once. The speed of the world dropped before her eyes, her pupils dilating, her irises glowing. Distant sounds translated into fast, nearly imperceptible movements in the darkness — alongside the growl of some animal.
A few microseconds later, something leapt through the air just outside the window, passing right in front of the moon.
It was dressed like a jester. Its eyes glowed in the darkness, just like Bonnie's.
They found each other in that tiny sliver of a second. The jester was Scaramuccia — of course it was — who for one instant showed a flash of surprise at the sight of her, before turning his gaze away and replacing it with something desperate.
Time resumed its normal pace — but in that same second, the growling grew louder. Bonnie looked down from the window at the street below: a coyote was chasing the shadow that moved through the darkness.
"That was…"
She had barely processed what she'd seen in that instant, but her mind started pulling everything back — all the memories of the tragedy in Steam City. The urge to be sick hit her hard, but pressing her hand to her mouth and squeezing her eyes shut, she swallowed down all that desperation that had almost brought her down once more, and stared out the window with determination.
'He knows what happened down there!'
That note with the poem hadn't been enough. He knew what was going on below that altar and did nothing until a gun was aimed at his head.
That single thought — which she didn't even stop to fully process — pushed her to grab her ammunition belt and revolver. She buckled it on in a hurry, then threw the window open. There were only two floors in this inn. From there, she took a breath and jumped down to the street.
She slipped on one of the cobblestones and hit the ground face-first — but with no visible injuries, she got up and ran after the coyote.
Not far away, on a street abandoned to the moonlight, Marcus sat on the steps of a large house. He was drinking whiskey from a flask, his eyes glowing faintly with the cold blue of his irises.
He stared into nothing with an unfocused gaze — but then his eyes shifted from side to side, as though he were watching something that wasn't there.
Back with Bonnie — she ran through the street with a slight limp. The fall had hurt, but her body had probably built up enough fury over the past few days to push through it. She corrected her gait as she went, until she found herself running properly again, following the sound of the coyote.
'That coyote… It can't be a coincidence. Could it be something like Evelyn's cat? I don't see the sheriff Victoria mentioned.'
She rounded the corner. She was near the church — that old white building, nearly yellowed with age, its bell motionless and silent. She could hear the coyote close by — but just as she moved to get closer, the bell rang out hard.
Bonnie's senses overreacted. Her eardrums nearly burst.
'Damn it! Too loud!'
She pressed her hands to her ears, trying to fight through the pain and the brutal impact of a sound that had nearly ruptured her eardrums on the spot. Then, on the roof of the church, she spotted the jester's shadow.
The image he cut was very different from what Bonnie had seen before. He didn't look like a coward fleeing at the first opportunity. If anything, from inside the darkness, he seemed to be watching everything with a certain resilience.
At the same time, the coyote growled at the church entrance. It looked up at Scaramuccia as though it wanted to tear him apart, clawing at the walls, trying to climb them.
"You're not going to get anywhere following me. This duel will keep going the same way until one of us dies of old age," Scaramuccia said to the coyote. "Don't you realize this doesn't make any sense?"
Bonnie half-expected that, given everything crazy she had seen by now, the coyote would answer — but a voice came instead from the other end of the street, forcing her to duck behind the corner of a building.
"I never let my prey go, clown."
Walking with total ease, a cigarette in his mouth this time, Marcus lit it with his lighter and took a slow drag.
'Is that the sheriff of Gramond County?' Bonnie wondered.
The coyote stopped clawing at the wall and walked over to the man. It looked at him in silence, waiting. Marcus pulled a piece of meat from his pocket and tossed it into the coyote's mouth. The animal ate eagerly before turning its attention back to the figure up above.
"Besides, I'm not in any rush," Marcus said. "Not like you can just slip out of the city on your own — I've already set the whole thing up as a trap for you. It's only a matter of time before you walk right into it."
Scaramuccia looked uneasy. He clicked his tongue in irritation and stepped back, his body swallowed by the mist. A moment later, he was gone from the face of the town — but his footsteps still echoed in the distance.
The coyote growled and bolted after him.
Marcus stood there staring at nothing — but then in one second he turned to look in Bonnie's direction. She pressed herself back behind the corner, breathing hard, her nerves on edge.
'Did he see me?'
If it were possible, she had no desire to face that man. As Victoria had said, the sheriff followed the Hunter's Ballad — and she, barely a novice in the Outlaw's Ballad, stood no chance against someone like him. What's more, what Stigma did Marcus hold? Bonnie didn't even want to think about it.
So, after a long, tense second, she sprinted through the alleyways and kept following Scaramuccia from there. She had no interest in whatever trouble the jester was tangled up in — she wanted answers about what had happened that night, and she was going to get them no matter what.
On the rooftops of the houses nearby, just above Bonnie, Evelyn's cat followed close behind her. The animal made no sound at all — far too silent compared to any person or coyote.
The night was going to last longer than expected.