The train has seen better days. So has the landscape it's passing through. Inside, the windows are smudged, cracked in places, and rattle with every turn, the seats are rickety and feel like a small step up from lying on concrete, and the lamps, unlit in the humid West Elizabeth afternoon, are saturated with wax and oil residue. Outside, what were once vibrant evergreen forests line the tracks and eventually give way to the scrub brush deserts of New Austin.

Both will see worse before this is over.

Persuading Ross to let John take Jim and Kate to Armadillo had been easy enough - Ross didn't offer up any resistance besides some smart remark about how he was surprised John had friends at all and that he was going to have to telegraph Marshal Johnson for two more horses, but more guns were more guns were more guns, and more guns meant a better chance of getting Williamson. There was an elegant, almost naive element of simplicity to the logic.

John stares out a window, arms draped over his seat, legs crossed. Something tells him that things are going to become very illogical very fast. If they haven't already.