Jess's bounty is over two-thousand dollars by the time Billie crosses into Canada, and a good number of bounty hunters she had built a rapport with over the years are in the dirt.
She's in Canada because Jess talks, when she's cuddly and spent. Talks about her big plans, what she's gonna do with the money, how one day she's gonna clean up and they're gonna be married.
"I wouldn't run to Mexico. We're right on top of Mexico, everyone expects it. Me, I'd ride like hell north while everybody's looking south. All the way to Canada, and ain't nobody'd ever find me."
Well, she's gonna fucking find her, because they ain't been married yet and even though she never believed her when she said it, Billie's apparently holding her to that.
Jess has a lumberjack cousin, up in Canada.
He ain't seen her, and Billie don't believe he ain't seen her, but she can't rightly explain the situation to him in a way that proves she's not in it for the bounty, so she's out on her ass in the snow.
Billie has discovered she fucking hates snow.
She goes from town to town asking after her and gets nothing, and even when she thinks she might have something everyone closes up tighter than a nun's asshole.
Every time she sees a flicker of recollection in someone's eyes she wants to grab them and shake them and scream "I ain't gonna hurt her, I love her, I need her more than anything, please!"
But she don't.
And then one day she gets an offer.
Some lowlife wants to sell Jess out for half the bounty and dibs on the money she stole.
"She's hid out just up this ridge." He says, as they ride out to get her. "Every couple weeks the boss sends me on an errand run for her so she don't get spotted in town, and every couple weeks she sends me back with a little bit of gold for the gang."
Billie nods along, not particularly caring what his angle is.
"Way I figure, I'm just saving the boss some time. Take all the gold at once instead of piece by piece."
"Mm."
She shivers, the biting mountain air chilling her to the bone.
They hitch their horses in the mouth of a cave, a tarp hung across it to block out the worst of the wind.
"Jessie?" The man calls out, pulling the tarp aside.
"...You're early." She calls back, and that's all that Billie needs to hear.
She grabs him and buries her knife in his throat before he can say another word, and he drops to the cave floor with a sickening gurgle.
Jess watches her, stunned and wide-eyed. She's sitting by a fire eating beans, a pile of empty cans tossed to the other end of the cave over the course of weeks.
"B-"
"Don't say nothing." Billie says, retrieving her knife and picking up the man.
"Elias Carlyle, wanted dead or alive for six counts of murder." She explains, dragging him onto the back of her horse before coming back to warm her hands at the fire. She glares at Jessie over the flames. "I'm going to take him back to town, and then you know what I'm gonna do Jess?"
Jessie shakes her head slowly.
"I'm gonna come right back up here, and one of two things is gonna happen." She says. "Either you're still gonna be here, and we're going to have us a talk, and figure out what we're doing next. Or, you're gonna be gone, and I will hunt you down until one of us is dead."
"I-"
"Because I can forgive a lot, Jess. You wanna rob the government, that's your business. You flee the country, I understand, you'd die out there. You wanna make me follow you to some frozen hellhole, fine." She leans in over the fire. "But you didn't think, maybe you should tell your cousin, or any of your other idiot pals, that I was on the level? That I weren't after the bounty?"
"I-I thought maybe you were-"
"I could've bagged you in Arizona, you dumbass! Makin' me do all this horseshit-"
She goes to her horse and climbs on.
"Till one of us is dead, Jess. Don't try me."
Jess nods meekly, and eats another spoonful of beans.
