Note for future reference: if you see any underlined words, think of them as crossed out instead (like what Arthur and John often did in RDR2). FF doesn't let me actually cross them out, so I'm letting you all know.

I started hunting a lot more now.

Rufus likes to help me out with that. I guess I got lucky that at least he got out of all that unscathed without dying. None of us got out of that the same. He's gotten a lot quieter, and outside of hunting trips, I don't even see him run around no more.

And Ma, she won't even speak. Last time I saw her like this was when sis died years ago. Pa decided to stop going out for a while after that, and he always seemed to know just the thing to lift her spirits—even if just by a little. Even Uncle laid off the whiskey for her sake, maybe that's the time he started becoming so grouchy too?

I guess that makes me the screw up here. Rather than being with her, I just find myself killing some poor animal. I don't think it's the killing I want; rather I just want some excuse to shoot something. I just… I don't know anymore.

Pa always said he was only good at shooting, and I… I just feel like this is the only way I can feel like he ain't gone—not completely anyway. He probably wouldn't approve, not like this anyway. She won't say it, but I know Ma doesn't either.

I caught a couple lawmen arresting some fella today, something about a drunken assault or something like that. The law used to make me feel safe—at least, when I was with Ma or if Pa was having one of his good days—but now… now I just can't help but fight the urge to run away. If not that, then fighting to keep my mouth closed to avoid getting shot.

I just don't get it.

They were the law, weren't they supposed to be the good guys right? That's how they always are in the stories I've read. Pa… the things he had done in the past would've made him the bad guy in those, but he put that life behind him. Not just that, he even made a deal so that he could finally be free from everything he'd done. Usually in the stories, the gunslinger is the one who turns his back on the deal.

But Pa… he did everything right. He kept his word. But the law? They just shot him like some rabid dog. Not just him, but Uncle too. And for what? So that the bastard Edgar Ross would forever be immortalized as the man who took down the last members of one of the West's most infamous gangs and finally tamed the Wild West. I've read the papers (not to Mama, god knows what that'd do to her), he's gotten all the credit for everything; killing Uncle Bill, Ha Javier, Dutch… and Pa.

Once upon a time, Pa used to say reading was a stupid hobby. In the stories, Edgar Ross would be a hero and a savior. I guess he was right—hearing that is the biggest lie I've ever heard. And all those years I spent reading all those books and filling my head with that nonsense? I'm the biggest fool there ever was.

I came across some weird old man today. He acted like he was some sort of prophet or something.

I have him some money I had left after going into town, and he said something weird like, "in the end, it'll give you nothing."

Crazy old man.