In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Everyone's in a sour mood this week. Doc is in a funk because not only does it look like he's not getting the military backup he wants, but the government is impatient to see more progress on the railroad. Elam is pissed because the prostitutes won't do business with him and his white coworkers make more money than he does. Elam's fellow freedmen are pissed at him when he temporarily takes over as walking boss. Joseph is feeling frustrated because his baptism means nothing to his fellow Christians, who still see him as a savage. Cullen is glum because... well, because he's Cullen. You could give him a basket of puppies and he'd just mope about how he doesn't deserve to smell their sweet puppy breath.
After he finds Daniel Johnson's stash of badly Photoshopped photos and learns the name of the murderous Sergeant Harper, Cullen sets off to find him some twenty miles from Hell on Wheels. Along the way, he comes across Joseph and Lily. The "fair-haired maiden" isn't doing well, but Cullen manages to fix up her shoulder and she's soon on the mend. Cullen wants to be on his way, but he realizes Joseph will most likely be killed by vengeful white men if he shows up with Lily. And Cullen knows from vengeful white men. Meanwhile, the Swede has sent several of his men to look for Lily, amongst them the Weasel, who lives up to my nickname. Cullen dispatches them and returns Lily safely to camp, but turns right back around and continues his search for the sergeant. He's already taken off more time from work than he's actually been at work.
By the end of things, Doc is feeling slightly better, thanks to a visit to the Tent of Magic Lamps and Irish Nostalgia. He listens to the lads talk about the freedom the rail represented to them back in Dublin and comes up with a new way to rally the public behind him. Stay tuned for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: Daniel Johnson was just about to give up the sergeant who strangled Cullen's wife, but then Elam killed him before he could say the name. A Norwegian called the Swede imprisoned Cullen for Johnson's death. Robert Bell and his railroad survey team were killed by Cheyennes; only his wife Lily survived and escaped with the team's maps. Doc offered a hundred-dollar reward to anyone who finds Lily. Joseph Black Moon found her before his brother (aka the Worst Cheyenne Tracker Ever) could kill her. Cullen escaped from prison and convinced Doc to give him Johnson's foreman job.
Currently: Night has come again to Hell on Wheels. It's the only time the place looks remotely civilized, since the shadows hide most of the grunge. In Johnson's old tent, Cullen roots around the man's belongings. He pauses for a moment, rubs his eyes to let us know how he's been at this for a while now. From a small trunk, he pulls out a wooden box. Inside, there's a newspaper clipping about the Union veteran's shooting death in D.C. Cullen glances at it. Hopefully he thinks to himself, "Maybe I should try to be more subtle about things, so as to not get myself found out before I finish all my avenging." But probably not. Cullen gives a big sigh, then notices something about the lid of the box.
He lifts up a flap and uncovers a secret compartment filled with some of the worst examples of Photoshopping seen outside a preteen girl's Twilight shrine. In one photo, Johnson's giant head sits atop a trim soldier's body, the outline of his beard trimmed as if by gardening shears. Another photo shows the entire cast of Cullen's shit list. As his gaze goes from man to man, we follow along in flashbacks. He comes across Corporal Prescott first; he was the man Cullen killed in the confessional. Then there's Private Wristner; Cullen shoots the man while he's availing himself of an outhouse. A Lieutenant Tanner is shot in bed. Cullen finally stops reminiscing about his past kills and comes to the last man in the photograph -- the murderous Sergeant Harper. Alas, someone went a little overboard with the blur tool and his face looks like an unidentifiable alien mess. Cullen thinks for a long time, and then slowly folds the picture in half. Cue the opening credits.
Bright and early the morning, a locomotive pulls into Hell on Wheels, belching copious black smoke. Everyone's like, "Pollute the air all you want! It's only 1865!" Workers slog through the filth and the mud, ignoring the Reverend as he tries to drum up some business. "Good morning, sinners!" he greets them. "I can say that, because I'm a sinner, too. I know the dark path of drink and debauchery... but now I'm on the path to God's light!" He invites everyone to come with him, but nobody takes him up on the offer. Mickey steps outside the Tent of Magic Lamps and Irish Nostalgia to dump a bucketful of urine on the ground. The thought occurs to me that perhaps it wasn't rainfall that made all that mud. "All are welcome," says the Reverend. "Black, white, sinner or saint. Even you Papists!" He gestures to the Irish lads. "Thank you, Father," Mickey says, then corrects himself: "I mean, Reverend." Sean is just a bit aghast, but it's not just religious tolerance that has him out of sorts. Their show the night wasn't the blockbuster it usually is and he doesn't anticipate the show being any different. He's upset that Mickey doesn't seem to be as worried as he is. "The Swede will come calling again, sooner rather than later," he reminds his brother.
But Mickey has other things on his mind, like the new girl in town. As he watches her hang up her laundry, he tells Sean that he heard she was a white girl who was sold to Indians. "Some say she was a slave, others say she was an Indian princess," he says. His eyes sparkle like he's recounting some fabulous fairytale, but Sean brings him back down to earth: "She's just a whore, Mick." With more than a hint of mischief, Mickey dares his brother to go talk to her and prove him wrong. Sean doesn't seem keen on that idea, but since guys everywhere in every era seem unable to resist the dares of their brothers, he screws up his courage and goes over to this girl. He politely doffs his hat and runs a hand through his grimy locks. "Good morning to ya," he says. Her back has been toward them this whole time. When she finally turns around, Sean gets a look at the black tattoos on her chin. She is pale-skinned, young and quite pretty, but the coldly angry look she gives him has probably sent his manhood scuttling down his pant leg and off to the hills. She says something in some unknown language with enough vehemence to scare Sean witless. He takes a few steps back, stumbles and falls on his ass into a particularly soupy mud puddle. Mickey laughs. The young lady smiles at Sean's back as he scampers away.
Workers wait outside the foreman's tent for their job orders for the day. Elam is among them, as is another worker named Psalms. Since they are lucky enough to be alive 150 years too early to have seen the latest Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, they instead gossip about their new boss. "Buy the man a drink first, that's what I hear," Psalms tells the other workers. "Buy the man a drink, then go savage as a meat ax on him." "He didn't kill Johnson," Elam says. Nobody seems to really buy that, considering Cullen was almost hanged for the murder. Speak of the devil: Cullen finally comes out of the tent and seems surprised to find the men waiting for him. He gives two white men -- a Mr. Kretchmer and a Mr. Toole -- their assignments. Then, turning to the freedmen: "Elam, I need you and your men --" Elam cuts him off. "It's Mr. Ferguson," he says. Everyone except Cullen gets a little tense. "Elam," he says pointedly, "you and your men get down to the cut." He walks over to Elam and they have a staring contest that's cut short when the Swede rides up on his horse. The Weasel and one other man are with him. The Swede has come looking for men to go looking for Lily Bell who, as he says, has been taken captive by Cheyenne dog soldiers. He tells them about Mr. Durant's bounty offered to anyone who finds her. Cullen tries to exert his new powers as foreman to keep the men there, but the Swede ignores him and starts picking men. Even when Cullen threatens them with the loss of their jobs, they'd much rather take their chances with the Swede. "Boss man, let them go," Elam pipes up. "We can do they work and our work." Elam's coworkers start secretly planning to empty their pee buckets in his bed.
Cullen stands down and lets some of his men join the search party. As the rest of his crew head off to their work, he calls them back. "I'm looking for a man named Harper. Frank Harper. It's a friend of Johnson's," he says. "I got something for him." Everybody remains silent, possibly because they believe their new boss to be a murderer. Finally, Mr. Toole says Harper's out with the logging crew, some 15 or 20 miles west. Cullen immediately heads for his horse, like it's not going to look at all suspicious when Harper turns up dead right after he was asking about him. Or maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he figures once he's finished killing off everyone on his vengeance list, he'll be ready for a hanging. "Is that a bullet?" Elam calls after him, within earshot of several of the other men. Cullen plays dumb, so Elam elaborates: "What you 'got' for Sergeant Harper." Cullen ignores the question and tells Elam to get to work. As Cullen rides off, Elam gives him a strange smile. Maybe he's thinking of all the ways Cullen's going to screw himself over and it makes him happy.
In his fancy train car, Doc's looking none too happy. The Swede is telling him that everyone's scared after the Indian massacre. "They seen the bodies. They heard the stories -- your stories," he says. Seems Doc's flair for the dramatic has bitten him in the ass. "I need troops," Doc says, looking over a stack of papers that have also made him unhappy. The Swede is enjoying this far too much. He ever so casually mentions the seven men who left the job last night and expects more to leave soon. "Seems the men prefer to keep their scalps on their heads." Doc gets all riled up. He points to his young engineer, asks him if he's afraid. He's not. He points to his telegraph operator, asks the same question. The operator tries to admit that he is, indeed, afraid, but Doc cuts him off. He turns to the latest plans the engineer has drawn up in proposal of straightening the route in order to meet their deadline. Doc steadfastly refuses to change a thing, even when the engineer mentions that Central Pacific is making better progress. "Keep to the plan! I'll make it a reality!" He catches the Swede smirking and calls him on it. "I'm just looking forward," the Swede explains, "to watching yet again as you smite the forces agin' you." Doc clearly recognizes the snark for what it is, but he has more important matters at hand. He wants to know how the search for Lily is going (the Swede assumes Doc is actually more concerned about the maps) and the Swede informs him he has men on the job. Then the Swede pouts about Cullen trying to posse-block him. Doc flails: "Still more concerned about your killer than my railroad!" Heh. I appreciate a man who knows his priorities, even if they're crazy.
The important thing to Doc is whether or not Cullen is building his railroad and the Swede, looking a hair dyspeptic, has to admit that he is. Although what gave him that impression is a mystery, since Cullen only just got the job. And he's already left his post to go riding off after Sergeant Harper. Doc turns to the telegraph operator and dictates a telegram to Senator Crane, the silver-haired fellow who sucked at negotiating bribes in the pilot episode. "Work continues at a fever pace -(STOP)- However, hostile native action threatens progress -(STOP)- The march of civilization in jeopardy -(STOP)-" As he goes on about the necessity of "displacing the savage," we check in on Joseph Black Moon and Lily Bell riding on horseback across a misty landscape. Lily, sitting in the saddle in front of Joseph, does her best to remain upright, but she's too weak. When she slumps forward, Joseph catches her and eases her off the horse. He carries her over to a patch of trees and lays her down with a gentleness that would surely shock Doc Durant.
As Joseph leans over her to check her wounds, he hears a gun cock behind him. He looks over his shoulder. It's Cullen. "You speak English?" Cullen asks. "Yes sir," Joseph answers. Cullen waves him away from Lily with his gun. Joseph, being a sensible sort, complies. He introduces himself and says that he's Christian when Cullen asks him if he's Cheyenne. Cullen assumes that Joseph has done something to Lily. Joseph explains about saving Lily from the Indians and how he's trying to take her to the railroad to see the doctor, but Cullen remains suspicious. After checking Joseph over for weapons, he moves over to Lily and checks her shoulder where Joseph tells him she took an arrow. He finally puts down his gun and peels back the neck of Lily's blouse for a look at her wound. It looks pretty nasty. Cullen gets Joseph to retrieve the field kit from his saddle bag. He seems to know instinctively what to do. He's efficient and capable and for the first time, I'm a teeny bit interested in his past. What did a tobacco farmer do in the war to make him so handy with field medicine?
"Hold her down," he says to Joseph. Cullen takes out a small pocket knife and starts to undo Lily's stitchery. It's no easy task, as the flesh has swollen and scabbed over the thread. Lily opens her eyes to the sight of the two men looming over her. She screams and struggles. She hears them as if from far away telling her to hush, which she understandably doesn't quite manage to do. Cullen digs around in the wound with a pair of pliers. Blood pours out. He digs some more and pulls out a fragment of arrowhead. Lily screams and then pants with relief that the ordeal is over. In a bit of shitty editing, the camera pans up and shows the wound all sewed up while Lily is still in mid-pant. Either Cullen managed to stitch it up faster than the eye could see, or it's a shot from before he started digging around. Joseph sweetly pats her hand.
Back at the construction site, the men are hacking at the cut. Psalms works in his pants and suspenders, the scars from past whippings obvious on his back and arms. "The man says we gotta do our work and theirs," he says, driving his sledgehammer into the ground for emphasis. "But I ask you: Why ain't that Negro ass down here with us?" Other men working beside him bear similar scars. Psalms goes on about the "old days" which he feels in some ways were better, even with "master" nearly working him to the grave. "At least you knew your place," he says. Elam hears all this and walks over to peer down at him from the top of the trench. "Less talk, more work," he says to Psalms. Psalms responds by heaving his sledgehammer to the ground and taking a step back. "Bust me some stone, Negro," Elam says. Psalms comes back with: "How 'bout you bust me your head?" Elam drops down into the cut and the two stand chest to chest. Psalms accuses the lighter-skinned Elam for forgetting who he is. For a tense moment, it looks like they're going to come to blows, but Elam reaches down, picks up a sledgehammer and goes to work. "This ain't for them, this is for us," Elam says. "White man ain't gonna give you nothing, 'cause they want us to fall." As he gets into a rhythm hammering at the stone, the other men on either side of him do the same. Psalms, having lost the crowd, looks like he could spit. Eventually, he sucks it up, joins in and gets to work, too.
Back at the impromptu surgery site, Joseph has a little fire going. A cold gray drizzle has begun to fall. Cullen picks up Lily and lays her on a patch dead grass away from the mud. He looks down into her unconscious face for a long time, rain dripping off the brim of his hat, his breath coming out in misty bursts. He touches the back of his hand to her brow and looks worried. After a long while, he gets up and heads for his horse. Joseph is surprised he's leaving but Cullen says he's got somewhere he needs to be. Joseph thanks him for helping Lily. Cullen rides off for about a minute before he stops his horse. "Dammit," he whispers, and heads back. "You ain't thought this thing through, have you?" he asks Joseph. "Indian brings that woman back to town, Indian don't get out alive." Joseph is genuinely perplexed by this, saying, "But I live there, at the church." Cullen tells him about the bodies that were brought back to town, how everyone's seen how they died. "Why cut them up? What do your people get out of it?" Cullen asks. "Your people have done much worse," Joseph says. Cullen doesn't disagree with him, but the fact remains that Joseph is a dead man if he brings Lily back. Cullen says he'll take her in himself. Joseph scowls, but gets on his horse and rides away. Cullen sighs and looks sad because his plans for vengeance will have to be delayed now. Big pouty baby.
Hell on Wheels. Ah, nighttime has come again and everything that was gross looks... slightly less gross. Elam, Psalms and a few others are walking through town. "Explain to me how I work harder than them and I go to bed with three dollars less in my pocket," Psalms says. "Don't make a lick of sense." Elam agrees and asks, "Why don't we get the same reward?" He stops and looks over at the brothel. The others catch his drift, but think he's crazy. "We deserve a taste, too," he says. Oh, honey. I don't think you want to taste what's in there. When Psalms tries to talk Elam out of going into the brothel, Elam teases him, asking if he's gay (or, as Elam says in the parlance of the day, "one of those nasty boys") and calls him out for masturbating behind the tents every night. Everyone laughs at Psalms, but he'll be the last one laughing when everyone else comes down with a raging case of syphilis or genital warts the size of biscuits. Psalms thinks Elam will hang if he so much as goes into the brothel, but Elam puffs himself up and says he's not scared.
Inside the tent, some men are laughing at Mr. Toole's assessment of some lady's "face like a hatchet and ass like a Venus." They stop laughing as soon as they see Elam walk inside. "Just what do you want, you mule-colored bastard?" Toole asks. To his fellow freedmen, Elam is light. To the white workers, he's dark. He gets disdain from both for the same color skin. He says quite reasonably that he's just there to spend some money like the other men. Toole takes offense to that, and more or less challenges Elam to a fight. Things start looking hairy when the tattooed young woman from earlier saunters into the scene. She tosses a word of warning back to the other ladies about Mr. Toole, saying, "We call him the Blade; he'll gut you like a trout." Ew. Either the grubby little troll is rough with the ladies or he's packing quite the fleshy scimitar in his long johns. Neither option is very pleasant. Elam gives the tattooed lady a long, appreciative look. "And who might you be?" she asks him. "Your customer," he says. For a moment, she doesn't react, and then she busts up laughing. Elam shrivels. Mr. Toole laughs too: "Look at him -- can't even land a cheap-ass whore been plowed by every heathen buck in the territory." Now it's the tattooed lady's turn to shrivel. It's not so nice when people laugh at you, now, is it? She fights back tears as Elam turns to leave.
Lily finally comes to after her emergency surgery and immediately starts looking for her maps. Cullen gives them to her, then spends the new moments tending the fire, trying not to have a conversation. "My shoulder's feeling much better," she says. He stares into the fire and says nothing. Lily looks around and notices Joseph is gone. For some reason, Cullen doesn't tell her what really happened, and just makes up something about Indians being hard to figure out. Lily tries a different tack: "I'm afraid we haven't been properly introduced." "Cullen Bohannon, I work for the railroad," he says. Without waiting for her to introduce herself, he goes to lie down a few feet away and covers his face with his hat. Clearly he's hoping this is the end of the conversation, but Lily persists. She wants to know why he's being such a clenched-up asshole by ignoring her, although she's much more polite about it than that. Finally, he explains: "You ain't whore nor squaw; you shouldn't be out here." Instead of being offended by his crude language, she gives him a steely look. "You don't know who I am, or what I'm capable of." Cullen agrees, but he also doesn't care. Or so he says. He turns onto his side away from her. End of discussion.
In his train car, Doc drinks alone and stews over a telegram from the Senator. It seems the Senator is more concerned about Doc's lack of progress than he is anything else. "The honorable senator is 'concerned,'" Doc says in a mocking tone. "If he were in my shoes, he'd be downright suicidal." He tries to pour himself another drink, but slops it all over his desk. He calls for his servant Henri and gestures helplessly at the mess he's made. Although he doesn't say anything as he cleans up, Henri clearly thinks his boss is a total boob and doesn't try to hide it. Doc says Henri's look of disdain reminds him of his first wife. As Henri helps him into his jacket, he blathers on about how he tried to explain to her that he drinks to "fuel the conflagration" in his belly or some crazy thing like that. "Did your wife accept this excuse?" Henri asks. "As a matter of fact, she didn't," Doc admits with some sadness. Henri may well be the only person around whom Doc can be so unguarded because he knows Henri isn't kissing his ass.
Doc leaves the car to go for a walk around town. Although he's surrounded by people, he's essentially alone. He pauses outside the saloon, looking in at men drinking with their friends. Before long, he moves on -- and puts his foot right into a mud puddle. He makes a sound of disgust. Nearby, a woman laughs. He looks up and sees the tattooed lady, emptying a bucket of urine onto the ground. She laughs at him some more before going back into the brothel. Doc makes a mental note to burn his shoes later.
He wanders into the Tent of Magic Lamps and Irish Nostalgia. Mickey, not recognizing him, tells him they just finished their last show of the night. Doc, disappointed, starts to leave, but Sean calls him back in. Unlike his brother, Sean knows who Doc is and invites him to stay for a private showing. Mickey, the honest bastard that he is, is just about to charge Doc their usual five-cent admission when Sean asks for five dollars, instead. Doc is a bit taken aback, but pays up anyway. As has been established recently, Doc is inclined to give in to men with big balls. As he lights the lamp and gets the first slide into place, Sean gushes like a fanboy about Doc's capitalist exploits and pulling himself up by his bootstraps and so on. Doc looks at pictures of the Irish countryside, stunned as to why these men would leave it to come to the railroad. Or, as Doc puts it, "this filth and squalor and muck." I wonder if Phil Burke and Ben Esler got tips from Colm Meaney on their Irish accents? "You and thousands like you have followed me out here," Doc says, "and I'm genuinely curious why." Sean flounders for a bit, then comes up with, "It seemed a proper investment for our time and efforts." He's trying to speak in terms he think will impress Doc, but guileless Mickey has no such concerns. "That's not it at all," he says. Sean tries to hush him up, for fear of his brother saying something silly, no doubt, but Mickey goes on. He tells Doc about their youth on their father's farm, and the day when he and Sean heard the train whistle in Dublin and jumped on for a ride. The way he talks about it makes it sound like a magic carpet ride. "We never felt so free," Sean chimes in. Doc, raptly listening, latches onto this bit. "The railroad gave you freedom," he says with wonder. Such a thing never occurred to him, apparently. He's been framing the rail in terms of healing the nation and replacing savagery with civilization, but one of the most basic of human desires had thus far escaped him.
In the church tent, the Reverend is hammering together pine boxes. Bodies lie on the floor, covered by sheets. Joseph walks in, raising his hand to his mouth at the smell. "I prayed you would stay away, my son," the Reverend says. "This is my home," Joseph says. He can't take his eyes off those bodies. The Reverend tells him it's not safe for him to be here. Joseph, still not quite getting it, reminds him he's baptized now. In turn, the Reverend reminds him that that doesn't necessarily sway the prejudices of others. Joseph bows his head and looks close to weeping. "It's not your fault," the Reverend says. "But it is!" Joseph insists. "They were from my band. Our dog soldiers, they're the ones that did this!" Flies buzz. The Reverend tries to convince Joseph that his family wasn't responsible, but Joseph recognized the arrows. He knows it was his brother. The Reverend warns him not to tell anyone else, but Joseph is aghast at the thought of not telling the truth. So now Joseph gets to have one of those transformational hair-cutting scenes most commonly reserved for women as a symbol of letting go of one's past. With only a tiny, warped mirror as his guide, he takes a pair of shears to his shoulder-length locks and hacks away until he has something resembling a white man's haircut.
The morning, Lily conscientiously kicks dirt over the remains of the campfire. She's still bloody and disheveled, but the color is back in her cheeks and she doesn't look like she's going to keel over at any moment. Cullen is nowhere to be seen with three men ride up on horseback. It's Weasel and two others. "Well, there you are, kitty cat," he says. "We been searching over hill and dale for the fair-haired maiden of the West." Lily looks nervous but stands her ground. Nearby, Cullen is finishing up answering nature's call when he hears what's going on. Weasel says he's there to rescue her, as she's been "sullied by the heathen" and all. Lily bristles and tells him, in her own polite way, to shut the fuck up. Weasel wants that bounty, though, so he makes a move toward her. She whips out that knife she was sensible enough to grab after her husband was killed. One of the men advances on her with a gun. "Stay back," she warns him.
Cullen walks into the fray and fires a few shots. Damn. I was looking forward to seeing Lily gut all those guys. Instead, she ducks behind a tree to avoid stray bullets. Cullen takes down two men and aims the shot at Weasel. The bullet grazes his head and he falls off his horse. Lily takes one of the horses and rides the hell out of there. Cullen gets his horse and rides after her, leaving Weasel rolling around on the ground, going, "My ear! My ear! Where is it?" Heh. Cullen catches up to her soon enough and takes her horse's reins. Lily dismounts, staggers a few steps away, and then falls to her knees, sobbing. It's been one damned thing after another and she's been too busy trying to survive to cry. Cullen gives Lily her space, either out of respect or because he's at a loss as to what to do.
Back at Hell on Wheels, the Reverend is presiding over a funeral service for the dead. He speaks over montages of men carrying the coffins to their graves and of Cullen and Lily riding toward town. "Death's no stranger to this Godforsaken place," he says. He says death comes in many forms, either from hard labor, prairie fire, whiskey or gunshot. "But must we be Death's accomplice?" he asks. "Must we do his bidding?" After the montages, we end up in a tent where the Reverend is speaking to a packed crowd. "I know that your hearts seek vengeance for the deaths of those men," he says, "but haven't we had our fill of war?" Joseph and his new dorky haircut stand off to the side, head bowed and shoulders slumped, trying not to stand out. The Reverend picks up a small Bible and kisses its cover. "And they will hammer their swords into plowshares," he quotes from Isaiah 2:4. Among the crowd are the Swede, the Irish brothers and Elam. The Reverend's call to peace seems to have reached the men. And then there's Doc, who starts quoting from Joel 3:10 in his booming carnival barker's voice, with the exact opposite advice.
Doc gets up and takes the floor. The Reverend has this exasperated look on his face, like, "Ugh, this shit-disturber again?" Doc uses the Reverend's mention of war as a segue to discuss what's worth fighting for. "What is worth laying our lives on the line for?" he asks. The tattooed lady glances over at Elam. "Robert Bell gave his life for this undertaking, this grand idea... for he knew what this railroad would mean to us as a nation! He knew this railroad is a new birth of freedom!" Doc goes on about the freedom to choose one's fate, to make one's fortunes and so on. The Irish brothers give each other knowing smiles. Doc got his money's worth at the Tent of Magic Lamps and Irish Nostalgia, after all. "We cannot let that freedom be threatened by ragtag bands of marauding, Stone Age primitives!" At this, his gaze falls on Joseph, who's probably biting his tongue so hard it's bleeding. Doc says peace can only be had if they "put down their sticks and stones" and convert to Christianity. Spittle shines on his chin, that's how worked up he is. He goes over to Joseph and holds him up as an example. Joseph looks like he wants the muddy, urine-soaked ground to swallow him whole. "If these roaming bands of nomads are willing to do as he has done, then there is very real hope that our mission might be accomplished peacefully." He turns to the Reverend, who gives him a polite but embarrassed smile. If they don't convert, Doc says, "Then they are the authors of their own destruction!" That filthy tent must taste terrible, but he keeps on chewing it anyway.
Lily and Cullen finally reach Hell on Wheels. They ride past the fresh graves with their white picket crosses. She doesn't stop to look for her husband's grave. "It's been months since I've seen such a..." She trails off. "Shit hole?" he offers. Instead of being offended, she seems slightly amused. On the outskirts of town, he hands her the reins and asks if she can go the rest of the way on her own. She's surprised he's not taking her in so he can collect the bounty. He tells her he's got business to attend to in Cheyenne territory and only has a few hours of daylight left. So he turns back around and rides off again. If his ass doesn't get fired from his new job, I will be sorely disappointed. Lily tries to call him back to thank him, but he doesn't even slow down. Melancholy fiddle music plays as Lily watches our stony-faced antihero vanishes over the horizon.
Think you've got game? Prove it! Check out Games Without Pity, our new area featuring trivia, puzzle, card, strategy, action and word games -- all free to play and guaranteed to help pass the time until your show starts.
What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Talk Without Pity, the social media site for real TV fans. See Tweets and Facebook comments in real time and add your own -- all without leaving TWoP. Join the conversation now!