"No matter what happens," John said, cupping his hands and boosting Abigail up into the saddle behind Jack, "you gotta keep riding and don't look back." He closed his eyes, willing his voice to be steady. "And don't be worrying about me, you hear?"
"Listen to me. When the time comes, you gotta run and don't look back. This is over."
Unbidden, Arthur's voice echoed in his ear. That was what the man had said to him, wasn't it? And he found himself, suddenly, knowing how he must have felt. Watching as those he loved rode away, knowing that he would never see them again, and that he was walking to his own grave.
He had tried, tried to not have let Arthur die in vain. His brother had died so that John and his family might live in peace, and so John had done all he could to keep from following in his footsteps. And yet, now, as he moved to peer between the barn doors, he found himself putting his feet in bootprints that weren't his own. Hadn't been his own, he realized, in quite a long time. How long had it been, he wondered as he looked at the lawmen, since he started to repeat history?
He had been a fool to think he'd be left in peace. They had used him, made him kill what was left of the Van Der Linde Gang. Javier - the man had been hanged, and he was sorry for it. They had been good friends, once. Bill - he had killed him himself, and felt no great sorrow. He had never been a great man, or even a good one, and the world was better off without him. And Dutch - dead by his own hand, jumping off a cliff. Why?
He thought, perhaps, that somewhere inside of Dutch Van Der Linde was Dutch. The man that had taken him in, raised him, given him a home. Had called him Son, taught him to read and write although he would have made a perfectly good soldier while unable to do either. Despite what the man had done, John liked to think that there had been good in him, once. Before Micah had joined the Gang, before Dutch had fallen apart. There was no way Dutch could have pretended, could have acted in the way he cared for them. No way he could have faked the worry in the way he had sat by his bedside when he was down with a fever; the terror on his face when Artie had collapsed after being shot when they were young and stupid. Perhaps, he thought - hoped?, the Dutch that was buried deep inside had not wanted to make his Son go through the pain of turning a gun on him.
John was glad that it was only those three he had been sent after. He would never have been able to find it in himself to kill Pearson - running his store in Rhodes - or Tilly, or Sadie, Mary-Beth or Charles. None of them had drawn attention to themselves, he supposed, as Bill or Javier or Dutch had. Well, Sadie had, but it would be nigh impossible to track her down in South America, the same with Charles in Canada.
And so the only known living member of the Van Der Linde Gang was John Marston. The man who had spent the last couple of months robbing and slaughtering his way across the states and down through Mexico.
John hoped they would get rid of his body after they killed him. He doubted they would have the decency to, he was little more than a dog to be put down. But he didn't want to put Jack or Abigail through the trauma of having to find him, or bury him for that matter. Let him be gone, nothing more than bloodstained dirt and spent bullets to mark his last stand.
John looked down at his gun, checking the chamber. He had six bullets, and he intended to make every one of them count. There would be no changing his fate; perhaps if he had more bullets, or a gun with a larger magazine he might have been able to steal a few more months, a few more years. But he intended on going down fighting.
Ross wouldn't care, of course. He was another Colm, a man who cared more about numbers than anything. Every man that John shot - that had been shot over the last half hour - would be replaced by the next day, if not sooner. The paperwork might inconvenience Ross, but he would feel no great sorrow over his men's passing. John would never understand leaders like that, how they could send men to die without even caring.
For all of his faults, Dutch had cared. When they were ill, any of them, even those who had been with the Gang for a short time, he would stay with them. Make sure they had what they needed, made sure they were grounded if they were lost to fever dreams. If they needed to, they could go to him for anything. A worry, a fear, even if they just needed someone to sit with after spending a week hunting alone, he would be there. He knew everything about them - who they had been before, their hopes, their fears, their dreams. Everything, down to their favorite foods (he would never admit it, but John and Arthur always found it suspicious that Pearson would make their favorites around the holidays) and their favorite colors (every year, everyone got a handkerchief in said color for Christmas - the box was unsigned, but they knew). When Gang members died, Dutch himself helped to engrave their headstones.
And yet these men were sending people to their deaths without knowing their names.
The lantern's light caught on the barrel of the gun, and he couldn't help but to grin. It was a pistol that Arthur had given him when he sent him off. He rolled it over in his palm, looking at the carefully etched carving of a stag on the grip. Arthur had taken it off the corpse of an old gunslinger, and it was a fitting gun for his end. The weapon had a blood-soaked past - Arthur had killed the man who wielded it, and that man had killed a great many of his opponents. What was six more lives to the gun?
Even now, Arthur was protecting him. Twelve years gone, and he still found himself beneath the man's wing. They had had their fair share of differences, had spent the better part of the last few years of their lives at each other's throats, but in the end Arthur was, and always would be, his big brother. The kind who would do anything to keep his hare-brained, fool of a younger brother from being killed, not allowing even death itself stop him.
He felt like a damned fool.
He should never have let his guard down. It had been twelve years since he had run with the Gang, but he had only started keeping his head down four years ago. And even then, he had still gone by John Marston, the well-known name of a wanted gunslinger nine times out of ten, instead of Jim Milton, a pseudonym he had used for years. Hell, he had even bought Beecher's Hope in his real name!
Shit, Beecher's Hope. What had he been thinking? Right next to Blackwater of all places! It had been years, sure, but people don't forget! His Bounty Poster had been hung up there for years, for Christ's sake! Sure, Abigail had wanted the place. But she hadn't even seen a picture, he could have bought a farm, any farm, and she would have been happy. He should have thought for once in his life, taken them all someplace far away. Moved up to Canada, like Charles, or followed Sadie to South America.
As John cracked the door to the barn open, peering out for only a moment to count how many Pinkertons waited for him outside, a figure crossed the threshold that, only moments before, his family had ridden across. Hay didn't give beneath their boots, didn't crunch to betray their presence. The sun nearly shone through them, making them glow in an ethereal way.
They approached John, and yet he remained unaware of their presence. If he were to turn around, however, he would have come face to face with Arthur Morgan.
The man looked hale, and whole, and healthy, as though he had never grown sick, the Gang never splintered. As though he weren't, at that moment, little more than dust six feet under a long rotted headstone. His blue eyes were mournful, lips upturned in a morose, yet somehow proud smile. His blond hair was silhouetted by the sun, angelic in a way that didn't fit someone who had lived as he had.
He had tried, in the end, he had. Arthur had been desperate to use what time he had left to give John and his family-Arthur's family-a chance to live. Not to survive, but to truly live. And he was so proud of them: of Abigail, for standing by John's side through it all, of Jack, for being such a smart kid, having such high aspirations. The kid would make a fantastic lawyer someday, an incredible author; he had come so far. Of John, for going straight despite how hard it had been, for finally stepping up and being a father to his boy, for being a loving husband to Abigail, for never raising his gun against another man except in self-defense, until his hand had been forced.
John shivered, and closed the door. Anxiety knotted, low in his stomach, and despite himself he contemplated, just for a moment, running. Slipping out the open barn door and bolting for the fence line, relying on the barn to obscure him from the Pinkerton's sight until he was in the tall golden grass, able to steal a horse and make his escape.
The knot in his stomach released, suddenly, and he was filled with warmth, a sudden courage. He could never do that, had only contemplated doing so for a heartbeat. Even if he did manage to escape, he would spend the rest of his life on the run. The Pinkertons wouldn't allow him to live, would hunt him down as a pack of hounds relentlessly harry a stag. He would never be able to return to Jack and Abigail, would have to let them think he was dead, but even then they would still be in danger. The Pinkertons would forever be watching them, expecting him to return; even if Abigail remarried (and a part of him revolted at the thought) they would still watch her for the slim chance he showed up at their doorstep. If he faced them, allowed himself to be struck down, then Abigail and Jack would be safe. No longer would they have ties to the Van der Linde Gang, no longer would need to be under the Pinkertons' eye.
Arthur squeezed John's shoulder, trying to convey that he was there for him, even though he knew his brother couldn't feel his touch. He had always been there for him, following him as a stag after his death. Had been there when he struck down Bill, had collected The Bear and sent him on his way. Was there when John watched Javier hang; had waited for the Coyote to wake before sending him after The Bear. Had watched as Dutch spared him the pain of shooting the man he still considered a father, and had laid beside The Lion until it opened its eyes, and watched it greet The Fox. There were so many things he wished to do; he wished to grab his pistol that no longer hung at his hip, to tell John to wait at the other side of the barn door while he counted down, before they kicked it open like they had so long ago, striking down the entirety of the gathered Pinkertons with ease. But he couldn't; he was little more than air, now, able only to watch John's story unfold, and hope that, somehow, he knew he was there.
John rolled his shoulders back, straightened his spine. He checked his gun a final time, making certain that it would fire when he pressed the trigger. He had made a great many mistakes in his life, but he refused to make even one now. When Ross returned, he wanted him to have to say that a single man had taken down six of his men in the time it took them to strike him down.
With Arthur at his side, hand on his shoulder, John brought his hands up. The barn doors swung open, and the Pinkertons raised their guns.