Strange Empire (2014) s01e12 Episode Script

- Previously on Strange Empire - "Massacre on the Plains.
" - It's about us? - It was me that made them drunk.
It was me roused them to blood.
You will sign this confession and attest to its details.
- She killed a man.
- It wasn't murder.
I do feel for you, Miss Finn.
We are one, you and I, both enthralled by life, and its expiration.
I love you.
She has been the rift between us.
I say we forge our bond, split the mine profit, father and son.
"The dark riders face one another, guns aimed at beating breast " Jesus! Shite! - You been reading this? - I don't read.
"Massacre on the Plains" about the dark riders? Well, one, a man hereabouts.
Devil on earth.
Harvests skulls, tears a living heart from a man the other, an Indian gunslinger woman he hunts to free his soul.
The gunslinger's a squaw? Yeah.
A lot like that one we were tracking.
A thousand dollars on that head.
Where those writ? North 'a here, is said.
The lawless land.
Canada.
Hardly worth the bother.
Five? It is twice that.
Is now.
Get off! Don't touch her! Let go! He's fixed on you.
We need to go from here, and as soon as possible.
- Let go! - What of this, Slotter? You send the men off timbering, now you take our guns? I shift the world, Kat Loving.
Tables need be turned, people stirred.
You feel us move in on you, do you? You feel a rope closing around your neck? Tales here speak of us, though wrapped in fancy.
- Fee - Hush! "Two dance toward death, one good, one evil, and the apprentice of sorts torn betwixt.
" Found under the ticking.
Chase Sloat's confession.
He told us who killed who, that you alone set them to it.
Best not to listen to the ravings of a haunted man.
Did he tell you how I killed your man? - No.
He could not have - No, Kat! You intend to kill me now? Kill us all? Each to his own time.
Is my world, Kat Loving.
I have taken it from you.
So much for Chase Sloat's confession.
Be the end of it.
Whores, gentlemen! Women who know their place.
Are you hurt? His mind is unraveled.
No.
He is sound in his way.
What do we do? First we retreat.
Then we attack.
You can't stay here.
You go to Indian territory? There is trouble there.
Troubled land's where you go seeking guns.
Slotter made the bar a canteen.
We're to feed his militia.
Took flour, kerosene.
All we could pilfer.
Miners will be headed back soon.
Keep them here, hidden with the women and children till we return.
How long? Days.
A week, perhaps.
Weaken his men best you can while we're gone.
These things that happen, Fee armed men come in the night, guns taken is so like your tale.
He will not mime the latest chapter.
He cannot.
He is for me, no one else! Come back here! I'm not done with you! Quiet yourselves and keep to your business! Legs open, mouths shut, not the other way round.
Smart thing you having me shell out for this small army of yours.
The seeds of socialism will be crushed.
Might be we should spend the day, draw up the proper divvy of shares we've been meaning to.
Confounds me, business.
Need clip that boy's wings.
Close the purse strings on him.
Let his mind clear.
I'm well aware of my son's need of fiscal discipline.
Yet he holds me over the barrel.
Need not worry, now.
You are a bull.
He will abide you in time, give you all you ask of him.
I intend my share of this mine and that coal.
Shhh now.
Hush This dress you wear, was me bought it for you years past.
Not so long ago.
Seems not.
Was thinking on our son.
He might be relied on here till John regains his mettle.
Us.
Together as one.
Send one of the whores up.
Be in my bedchamber.
Left to dishes then, lover? Tend to the man's needs.
Can't.
Dark rider wouldn't like it.
I'm down to my last.
Care and food, shelter.
These things I can offer you.
Then I would be in your debt.
Gentlemen have I seen you before? Are you sure? My goodness.
How is that I haven't seen you around here before? You gentlemen don't work too hard today.
It'll kill you.
You can take care of yourself.
I have grown fond of such delicacies.
They have helped you heal.
Your husband, his father, they are tight as widows, armed to the teeth.
What will you do now with your future uncertain, spread before you? I will take the mine, the house, every cent in their pockets.
How? Set one man against another.
Might there be something left for me? Shoots heads off turkeys at Christmas.
The mind wills the shot to the mark.
It is satisfying.
Out here you must know how to shoot, and ride, keep together body and soul.
If you have a soul The chipmunk squeaks.
All right, in at the rib.
Let's aim further.
That apple dangling there, far past where you imagine your reach.
See? Horses tacked, ready when called.
Come on! Let's go! Leave here.
Hide with the women in the woods.
He will not let me go.
He would track me, discover the others, kill them all.
Then I will stay.
I will protect you.
I am protected.
It is the others who need to worry.
Is you I stay for.
Timbering is tiring work.
Warm bed, warm bath, warm woman all I think on last days.
A day, we'll be home.
Damn hard timbers, these.
A few more trips, we'll make a solid mine we can grow old in.
Hey.
We got pay for you all from the Captain's pa! Red! Jesus, Red! We have more.
Warm blankets, heavy tools.
Solid gold.
Collected from the women of my camp.
All we have.
A man took all from us.
Killed our men, set women to whore, purchased children.
Now he hides behind an army to protect himself from justice.
You will kill him? This, and two horses.
We have no more.
Eight guns.
And this kill as many as you can.
Make the food stretch, mother.
We cannot let Slotter's men feel us shorting them.
What? There are so many of them, Fee.
And Kat, the men, they are long overdue.
This is our place.
Built up from nothing.
We will not be made slaves or driven off like cows.
We will bring these brutes to their knees.
Sawdust in the biscuits this morning, purgative in the coffee.
Except they have the constitutions of oxen.
Thought something extra for the day's stew.
From the chamber pots.
Hungry? Mother Have come to make peace.
Peace is the last thing I seek.
Your father has manipulated your mind against me, to take the mine, to get hold of everything we've built together.
You are no longer my wife.
I have cut you out of me.
Was Cornelius bought me at auction, John.
I was 12, he took me.
Took pleasure in my fear, kept me as a pet, shared me with his friends.
Is you and I share a hatred for your father.
And you thought I would abandon you if I knew this.
I wanted to spare you the pain.
But no longer.
Now you inflict it.
You are thin.
Ribs healed? Much as they will, I expect.
The miners aren't coming back.
You are not either.
Armed men met us in the road, shot Red, wounded others, drove off the rest.
When Slotter's done with us, he'll hire Chinese at third wages, kill who tries to return.
So you desert us.
No.
I risked coming for you.
There is better work west.
Come with me.
I will not leave that murderer unpunished, may God damn him! One of us leaves this world before I turn tail.
I cannot be without work, Sybil.
I cannot stay here.
I have I have a wife back east.
What? Depends on me.
I should have told you.
I should have.
Go! Now! For you.
You make a whore of me? For the babies.
And Fee.
I love you, Sybil.
I didn't mean to But I do.
I do.
Look at that.
Where'd they all come from? Tribes who never lived in these lands, dispossessed of theirs, pushed further west and further, till all pushed together.
Is that what happened to your people? Why you killed that surveyor? Man was sent to take my people's land.
It was his job, right? You know a Metis woman in camp? Name's Kateri Dumont.
She shot a man in Batoche.
Kateri? I do not know her.
Some masquerade of her writ.
Word is she's here.
Bounty on her's double now.
We are Blackfoot driven into Cree territory.
Enemies who drive us south into the Sioux and more enemies.
What of your family? All but two children gone.
And they are sick, lie waiting for death.
They might get better.
Medicine, maybe? Shush now.
Get more bread for Pia.
I will trade for the food.
No.
I have beads from the Cree, bullets from the Sioux Precious things from lands far and near.
This glove Where did you get it? Where? From who? Tribes on the trail, trades on trades on trades, over and over - You're lying! - Ma! She doesn't know.
She tells the truth.
This belongs to my man.
A white man.
It's his glove.
Where is he? Did you see him? What is it? Come on, we need to hide.
Sat this afternoon hoping that we might get those papers seen to.
Thought we might talk to that Mr.
Ling, hire his workers, see that Isabelle tells me you raped her as a child? Is true, then.
She is a carnal force.
Uses men's desires as a weapon.
Some are like that.
Children? Your wife seduced me in your own kitchen not three months ago.
Came to me in the night wearing nothing, spread for me at your harvest table.
She is a poison to men.
I shot a man who called her faithless.
He was my best friend He called her Babylon and Jezebel.
Sit here again, and I'll carve you up on the sideboard.
Purity.
For you.
A belt for your gun.
Full kit.
In case one of these men have more drive than sense.
Strange place, this west.
Not what I conjured.
Thought the land pure and wild, would purge and fire me.
Instead, it has stripped me to bone.
I have thought recently of leaving.
They'd chase you down for what you do.
You know that.
But I am not like you.
But you are complicit with me.
But I'll live on in people's minds.
I will be remembered.
Sit with me.
Let us look into the night.
I was going to travel around the world in a balloon.
See it.
Photograph it, maybe.
Show the truth of it.
You ain't broke yet, miss, I be the judge of it.
What I've done Hush.
Whoring You ain't done nothing that's gonna take your heart, nor soul, nor that damn balloon.
I could love you, Morgan Finn, truly.
If you'll have me.
Good to see true men not made womanly by rumours of contagion.
Cholera.
Rapid.
There cholera here? Cholera? The women have all gone, mother.
No.
I am not leaving.
I will not give up.
Time may have come where we have no choice.
No arms, no men No men.
I intend to keep that way now on.
You! Ate that stew of yours, been at the latrine ever since.
Man like you, makes his dollars hunting others, shouldn't be surprised crap leaks from you.
No, ma! Stay back! Clean meat for me next time, God damn you.
Pack what you cannot part with.
Morgan and I will steal what's left of their food.
We all leave tonight.
Leave me be! Don't eat that.
Sure it's safe? Gunfire ended at dawn.
Birds are aroused.
Hold up now.
You stay.
Peace and rest to them.
God take them up.
Ma? I understand now, what you did, why you killed that man.
Come with us tonight.
Before there's hell to pay.
You are in danger, and I will not stand by.
I cannot.
Is me loves you even if you feel naught for me.
I should like to look upon you till the end of my days.
Cavalry mistook these ones camped here for another supposedly harbouring a murderer.
Mistook? Yes.
I will speak to the officers as to their orders, get clear what was the cause.
The cause is land, and a wish to see every Indian walks dead.
Katherine Loving I cannot abide your reasoning.
You got a pack full of guns.
What are you intending? They suffer in Janestown.
They're waiting on me.
Do not sacrifice yourself for this.
Go! Thieves hanged for less out here.
No! No, no! Oh, lookie-look.
Cowboy Is a girly girl.
Warm as toast up the middle, I bet.
Huh? You see her, miss? Pretty as you are.
Time you were busted open pretty, then we'll put you in petticoats Make you dance some, huh? All of us in there We're gonna learn you how to be a girl.
No No! Come on Tell me you're learning.
I'm learning! Do not move! Do not move.
I have one bullet left.
Cowboy The lady has some dispute with you.
Should be we sit down calmly, talk things through.
Come.
Why? Because.
Goddamn.
Go! Yeah.
Don't fret, lady is a doctor.
Strap him down.
Mrs Loving, Slotter's with Rebecca, and a bounty hunter's come for you.
- And his men? - Drunk, sick, or both.
There's one with him, always.
See, a man like this is full up with evil.
Is his heart that's black and the root of it, that evil.
You cut it out, you turn the man into an angel.
This is my science, Doc.
Let's open him up.
No, please, don't I cannot.
I have taken an oath to do no harm.
You still must play at hesitation? Just cut him open.
Hmm? No.
No, please! No.
You do it, or you both die here and now.
Oh, God! Quit your whining.
We take him now.
We must be quiet, clever.
Bullets will only bring them all on us at once.
Take out as many as you can.
And once we have him? That is between the two of us.
Is my sense that an evil man harbours a dark heart And there, you can see, are great patches of darkness.
No.
No, the blood flow is restricted there.
The darkness is damage.
Mine'll be as black as the coal that tarnished it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Evening, gentlemen.
Don't get up.
Lock the rest of them in the bunkhouse.
There is trouble.
Can't leave a man suffering.
Done gentle, that.
Night, now.
He has gone.
Morgan? That man's no man.
You murder.
Life, love.