Ages of characters involved in the chapter. Yes, I know some aren't strictly canon, but they fit my headcanon better dammit.

Abigail: 18

Arthur: 28

Dutch: 39

Hosea: 50

Jack

1894/1895

"Dutch, can we… damnit."

Dutch glanced up from his book. Dinner had ended long ago and night had consumed the forest, leaving their camp quiet and rather peaceful. Abigail was anything but. She lingered at the entrance to his tent, her hand still clasped onto the flap of canvas. She set her lips in a determined line, but a fear wavered in her eyes and her shoulders held tense.

He set his book aside and patted the place on his bed. "What's wrong, my dear?"

"Can we — I don't know, go for a walk or something?"

Dutch raised an eyebrow. "I'd rather lay in my own bed."

She flushed. "It's nothing like that," she insisted. "Well, something like that."

Baffled, Dutch shrugged on a coat against the chill and picked a lantern from its hook. She had never seemed adverse to having sex with them before. It must be serious.

"Lead the way, then," he said.

On foot, she led them down a thin path to the riverside, well out of earshot of anyone from camp. He set the lantern down, his eyes fixed on her. Abigail might have been the hardiest woman he had ever met. Despite her youth and hard life, or perhaps because of it, he hadn't seen her flinch or show an ounce of fear. She was tougher than most men he had ridden with.

Yet, she stared off into the river, her lower lip jut out and trembling, and her arms wrapped around her middle as though she had been wounded. He realised a moment before she spoke.

"I'm pregnant," she whispered.

Dutch nodded. "I know."

"I don't wanna leave—"

"You don't have to."

"—but I wanna keep him." Abigail's voice broke and her entire body shook with the effort to hold back her emotions.

Not many things surprised Dutch, but that did. He had figured she would ask to keep this quiet and take her into town to find an abortionist. Perhaps an orphanage or church, if she had a gentle heart.

Dutch sighed and wrapped his arms around her. Her hands dug into the back of his coat as she sobbed.

"It'll be alright, my girl," he whispered. "We want to build a whole new world. And the world would be an awfully dreary place without children."

"I don't—I don't want him to grow up like I did," she managed through her tears.

"We all want better for our children than what we had."

"I need to—I don't want my son to grow up with his mother as a whore."

Dutch pulled away and he felt her stiffen as he looked at her. "I never told you that you had to be," he reminded her gently. "Whatever was in your past was your past, I said. You had insisted on earning your keep. But you can help keep camp or go into town and learn the trade with Hosea—"

"I want to be a mother to my son," she said, her eyes hard as blue ice. "That is the only job I want in the world."

Dutch considered it. "Of course," he said. "Why don't we walk a stretch?"

Abigail nodded and wiped her tears. Dutch retrieved the lantern and they walked along the water's edge in silence, the cool night air washing over them.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

Her breath hitched with the threat of another sob. Dutch put his arm around her waist again.

"It'll be alright, Abigail," he said.

"I didn't expect you to be… so relaxed about this," she admitted. "I was expecting…"

"...the worst," he finished for her. "But you're a part of this family, my dear. You're under my protection, and that means you and your child will always be safe here."

xxx

"I still can't believe Abigail's gonna have this thing," said Arthur, his face pale.

Dutch stoked the fireplace and held back a smile. He knew Arthur was terrified the boy was his, though he would have been secretly quite pleased. The only certainty was that it wasn't Uncle's or Hosea's. Despite their best attempts to keep quiet, Abigail had been with the Callandar boys as well as Bill, Javier, Dutch's own boys, and himself. He couldn't even say for sure if the reverend had kept his vows.

But at the end of the day, it was hers and that was all that mattered to Abigail.

For the time being, they had commandeered an abandoned mining town. They had filled in the chinks in the walls and the root cellar with many trips to town and the woods. Fall was fast approaching and the snows would isolate them for the winter, giving ample time for Abigail to recover and the child to gain strength before moving camp again.

"He's not a thing," said Dutch mildly. His patience the last days had worn treacherously thin. "Would you rather I tie her down and carve it out of her?"

Arthur all but fell off his chair. "No!" he exclaimed. "Of course not!"

"She wasn't about to be rid of her own child and, as she hadn't done nothing, I wasn't about to cast her out," he snapped, throwing the poker back in its pot. "Someday, son, it'll be you making these sorts of decisions yourself. And then you'll learn how much harder it is to make them when people are doubting you."

"I would never doubt you, Dutch," swore Arthur.

Dutch threw himself into the chair next to Arthur. "I know, boy. It's just been a… a trying few days."

Abigail, with a belly fit to bursting, had rode into town with Hosea, Uncle, and the other girls, leaving the rest of men to sit on their hands and wait. Either she would return with a new child, in which case a celebration would be mandated, or she wouldn't.

John didn't want to wait. He had been out hunting three days now and Dutch had a suspicion what Abigail had been hounding him about. If she wanted to claim one as the father, she had chosen the youngest and most immature of the lot. Even Davey probably would have stood up as a father.

Bill burst through the door, cheeks blistered red with cold. "Boss, I think they're back," he said. He ran back out, across the wet leaves, to the larger cabin the others stayed in. "Pearson!" he hollered. "Put the stew on, you lazy bastard! Gotta new mouth to feed!"

"The child lived," breathed Arthur. "He's alive?"

Dutch laughed and held the door open for him as Arthur ran down the road to where the wagon pulled up. Even at this distance, Dutch could see Abigail was beaming from ear to ear. She handed off the child to Hosea and Arthur lended Abigail a hand as she climbed down.

"Ooh, such a gentleman," cooed Meredith, fanning herself from the back of the wagon.

"Oh, Mr Morgan, could I have a hand as well?"

Arthur blushed scarlet to the tips of his ears.

"Shut up," demanded Abigail. She accepted the small wrapped bundle from Hosea as the girls clambered out the back on their own.

Even so, Arthur put an arm around Abigail and led her to the cabin as Hosea and Uncle steered the wagon back into the stables. Rosy from the chilly ride back to the town, Abigail's face still held an unusual pallor.

"Are you doing alright?" asked Dutch, falling into step beside them.

The baby's pink face wiggled in her arms, with a head full of fine dark hair and his mother's eyes. Not Javier's then.

Overwhelmed, Abigail nodded . "I—I haven't stopped smiling," she said. "Thank you, Dutch." She turned her clear smile to him and all he could do was return it and open the door for her.

Bill had done his job and spread the word. When they pushed their way back into the cabins, a wave of heat and the smell of rich rabbit stew and greeted them. The others bustled around with bottles of whiskey, cursing at each other to hurry up. An overlarge crackling fire strained behind its iron gate in the fireplace.

Javier strummed his guitar to call for silence. "Hey, hey, new madre is here! What's his name?" he asked.

After much shushing, the men all turned, faces expectant. Abigail looked down at the little pink face swaddled in her arms. "It's Jack," she said, a watery laugh bubbling from her lips. "He's Jack!"

"Everyone, it's Jack," shouted Javier.

Cheers and whoops answered him.

Even Mac came forward to embrace Abigail and congratulate the new boy, patting Jack's bare head while he gurgled happily in his mother's arms. Drinks and bowls were pushed into everyone's hands as they all found places to stand and sit. Miss Grimshaw brought out a sheet pan of chocolate cake, Abigail's favourite recipe with cherries and cheap wine. Songs, increasingly sloppy and drunk, echoed off the walls as they made promises to the little boy who laughed ceaselessly. Softened by the child, even the sour-tempered Mac swore to teach Jack to ride a horse. A mood of genuine joy took over the cabin and Dutch had never been prouder of his men. This wasn't any celebration of a heist well done, but a move in the right direction. New life, a new generation, the purest and most human celebration there was.

Hosea slid next to Dutch soundlessly, an empty glass in hand. For several moments, they watched the group in silence. Arthur still sat with Abigail, as Jack was passed around the men to the dramatic tune of Javier's guitar.

"Another one," said Hosea heavily.

"First one," corrected Dutch with a fond smile. "The boys were our sons. Now, we're grandparents. Our brave new world is growing."

Hosea sighed and lowered his voice to a whisper. "What sort of a life do you think that boy will have?"

"The best we can give him," said Dutch firmly. "You aren't having doubts now, Hosea, about raising children? Ten and fifteen years too late, I'm afraid."

Hosea touched his shoulder and guided the two of them into the back room. Dutch shut the door behind them and fixed Hosea with a hard look.

"We didn't take newborn innocents and put revolvers in their hands, Dutch," said Hosea, unfazed. "This is different."

Dutch shrugged. "How so? That boy and her mother are our responsibility. Once he's grown, he can make his own decisions what life to lead."

"Like John? Like Arthur?" he demanded. Hosea gestured back to the main room, eyes narrowed. "Last I checked, both of them robbed that train two weeks back. John killed the engineer, both of them several lawmen in the escape."

Dutch flinched. That job had gone wrong every way it could have. "They're grown men now and can make their own decisions. This isn't a prison camp."

"You could make the right decisions easy for them."

"Right decisions?" asked Dutch, ice in his voice.

Hosea had known him too long and too well to be cowed by his anger, though. "When are you going to teach Jack to shoot?" he snapped. "Six? Seven? When is he going to kill his first rabbit? Elk? Bear? Man? He'll have a bounty on his head before he can talk. What about if we get captured, or killed? Be reasonable, Dutch."

Dutch grit his teeth and bit back the insults he itched to hurl. "You want me to throw out an eighteen-year-old whore and her newborn infant?" he asked in a voice of forced calm.

Hosea breathed a sigh of relief. "We have enough money to set them up in a house," he said, his own plan clearly already thought out. "Give little Jack there a normal life."

"A normal life," spat Dutch, grimacing. "With a surly mother bereft of a man, abandoned by an unknown outlaw father, living with a cloud of fear the day the law snatches away his mother. Normal. And you know if we start making regular visits to a particular residence, it will be noticed. Best case is to wait for the chance to—"

"—buy land out west," finished Hosea with a groan. "How many years will that be?"

Dutch put a hand on his shoulder and smiled until Hosea's eyes met his again. "My brother, I know your fears," he said earnestly. "Do you think I haven't had enough time with my thoughts these last days? But this is the right thing to do. Trust me. Let the boy grow up surrounded by people who love him. Teach him like we taught our boys. Reading, writing, the larger world. Expose him to towns and the wilds. Try to give him a passion for something other than robbing and shooting. And let him know he doesn't ever have to join us."

Hosea shrugged the hand off him, his eyes as dark and haunted as his voice. "At least I won't live to see John and Arthur take him to his first bank robbery."

Hosea returned to the party, leaving Dutch alone with his thoughts. He sighed and clawed a hand back through his hair. Hosea would come around, he always did eventually.