Disclaimer: I own none of the characters presented in this story. Red Dead Redemption and all associated with said property belong to Rockstar Games.

Disclaimer: Strong depictions of violence, murder, and other such heinous and repugnant acts, very harsh language used throughout, and some taboo and offensive material occasionally presented.

Part Twenty-Two: Strauss

1:07 AM, July 23rd, 1899

Leopold Strauss was very tired.

Human beings are not nocturnal animals, he would write down in his gray notebook. A rather lame comparison, considering Leopold was a few leagues away from a human being. Though I suppose the general point stands regardless; after all, machines can't run day and night without getting overloaded.

No one had slept since last night. The plan was to wait for Dutch—they had everything packed up and ready—then they'd ride north, finally leaving the shithole of Lemoyne behind them. They'd camp overnight under the stars (how romantic…) and in the morning, they'd venture into Van Horn and hop the boat Trelawny and Sean had arranged to New Orleans.

It went about as well as Blackwater. Maybe boat jobs are a bad juju, Leopold jotted, before adding if jujus existed and weren't just excuses made by the stupid to justify their failures.

Afterward, at approximately twelve past ten (Leopold kept a rigorous record) the gang had scavenged the wagons for the supplies that the Pinks hadn't blown to hell—fortunately, the damage wasn't too severe. Most of the luggage could be salvaged with minimal damage, and the wagons themselves were still operational, albeit worse for the wear.

The horses were a problem—Kieran had cut them all loose so the agents wouldn't kill them in the crossfire. It had been a great surprise to everyone when Grimshaw thanked his ingenuity instead of lashing out about how hard it would be to rustle them back up. At fifteen past eleven, he'd recruited all the men who weren't injured or Leopold to help wrangle them while Mary-Beth and the other women helped with the nursing. Grimshaw, at least for now, appeared to be swatting death off, although there was no telling how damaged her facilities were—after all, she was smiling now. Besides Gwydion, all the horses were recovered, a feat Uncle would claim was tied to his actions specifically, but they all knew he'd just taken a nap by the trees. Once the two groups converged back at Shady Belle at a minute past midnight, they conducted the funerals. The graves were dug next to Pearson's—a notion Leopold found contrived, especially since one was a little light on body.

Amazing… Leopold wrote, the boy's body isn't even here, and Ms. Jones can't even bring herself to look at it, instead opting to run away like a child getting nicked by a bee. If it had been only Karen, he could have passed it off as feminine capriciousness (he'd been keeping a chart of the group's menstrual schedules and she was due any day now) and been a happy man, but then Dutch got weepy during the sermon Swanson gave and Leopold found himself struggling to keep his snort withdrawn.

He enjoyed his time with the gang, he really did, but this was what he couldn't handle: the artificial compassion, the fickle emotions. It was frustrating. And a hindrance, too. They had just been ambushed, time was of the essence. But they stood there for forty minutes, lamenting the death of men they'd only known for a few years (plus a third of that time is spent sleeping so in reality it was even less).

They debated sneaking back into the city to deliver Trelawny's corpse to his wife, who Uncle was pretty sure was named Marion (of course Micah then felt the need to cut in with his obtuse Bill jab ((Leopold really didn't see the humor in a boy having a girl-sounding name, his own brother's name was Addie. And then there was little Anna…))), but then Kieran was certain it was Martha, and Grimshaw added that he'd told her repeatedly it was Sarah, after Dutch swore up and down it was Lilith. Each argued against the other for a moment until the simple logic of it hit them all at once. They decided to bury him with Sean and Pearson—the papers would carry news to his women soon enough.

Of course, now that wasteful pastime was up, they entered the barren ruins of Shady Belle, assembling the hole-shrewn crates and broken chairs to forge the last gang meeting they would ever have in this dump.

Presently, it was eight past one, and Leopold was very tired.

"Okay, everyone got a seat, everyone comfortable?" Dutch asked, speaking in his usual loud, authoritative voice. He turned to Kieran, who was seated on an empty red crate. "Mind if I…"

"Uh, I—"

"Thank you." Dutch planted his foot on the box between Kieran's legs, compelling him to stand up. Dutch slid it to the center of the room and upgraded it to a pedestal, rising up on it so the whole room could clearly see him. "First things first: we need all hands on deck. Where is John?"

"Took Jack and Abigail on a walk. First time she's been out of the house in days." Tilly couldn't help a giggle. "Poor girl was tripping and tumbling down the stairs like she'd been deflowered."

"Well, we need him back. Kieran?"

"Yeah?"

"You're fast. Go run out and find them."

"Oh let them be, Dutch," came the perplexing voice of Grimshaw—perplexing not in tone but of the words that were jumping out. "That family is owed some time to themselves after all that's happened."

"Family?" Dutch questioned, confused. "We're a family, Susan, you know that. One big family, and we need…" he trailed off, the situation was too uncanny to keep focused. "Are-are you okay?"

"Never better," she responded with a grin. A grin?

Leopold hurried through his journal, looking for the chart—she was facing the largest mood swing Leopold had ever seen and there could only be two logical explanations: her period was raging with a Herculean fury, or she was facing flights of fancy those close to death experienced. Leopold grimaced at the results; she was not long for this world.

"Dutch?" inquired Uncle, "are we still goin' to that boat in Van Horn? We'd need to leave just about now. I told that horse fellow and his dim-witted (yet somehow far more charming) brother to meet us there at eight."

"Uh…" Dutch looked to the door, then back at Uncle, deciding to let things play out without a full house. "No. We ain't. We can't go till we got enough money to disappear completely. And the situation ain't any better in New Orleans, if anything it'll be worse—better here in the semi-west, it's our element."

"And… I hate to break it to you," Leopold cut in as he recounted the red tin lockbox, "but we couldn't afford it. Our funds from Ms. Jones' bank job and the train job have been mostly quashed."

"How much we got?" Bill asked, leaning forward on the fractured chair that barely held his weight.

He checked his ledger, pulling to the first page. "About twenty-two hundred." That was complete nonsense, of course. The gang had barely five hundred locked away in that tiny box Leopold kept so close. Dutch wanted it that way, wanted the gang to feel safer, that they had insurance. When people are scared, they're rash, he said.

"But that is no problem," Dutch reassured, "Sean told me, God rest his soul, the boat recirculates every two weeks, so if we can make enough money by then, we can fall right back on it, as though nothing ever happened. But right now, we need a place to lie among the willows."

"Well, that's simple enough," said Bill, "let's just ride right back to Clemen's Point."

"Oh Bill…" sighed Sadie, followed by the head shakes of the rest of the gang.

"What? It's the last place they'd think to search."

"No, Bill, it's the first."

"Bu—well, yeah. But because it's the first, it would, uh, y'know, they wouldn't ever think—i-it would be the last place they'd think to look."

"Dear God, Bill," croaked Micah, sitting as close to Dutch as ever, "I used to think your stupidity was like a well poisoned with arsenic."

"Micah, that's enough," said Dutch.

"I figured that once the bad stuff got drained into buckets and removed, it would refill with actual drinkable water, but no, it seems yours is just an endless—"

"Micah!" Dutch yelled, shaking the cripple in his boots. He glared at the white-winged vampire bat with an out-of-place streak of hate.

Hmm, that's interesting, Leopold thought. I assumed Micah was being groomed as the new Arthur, with the hat and all… but something's changed now. What happened on that boat?

"We, aww fuck, we could go back to the mountains," suggested Tilly, which was commemorated by waves of groans and 'no way's.

"My balls are shriveled as is, and we're in the south!" Uncle decried.

"But we lost the Pinks there once before, we could do it again!"

"It's too far," said Sadie timidly, too frightened of Tilly to look her in the eyes.

"Plus it's not economical," Dutch explained, "we need to lie low, yes, but we need to be in a position to slowly reemerge to society, and when we do so, we need a job in mind. Can't find one if we're completely cut off from the civilized world."

"What about Lagras?" came a voice that was strangely virtuous and confident. "When I buried Pearson I found his journal—he wrote that he found an abandoned spot up by the swamps that even the locals are too wary to investigate. Might be the perfect place."

"That's… a marvelous idea, Swanson! What's it called?"

The reverend slicked his fingers and scrolled through the pages until he found what he wanted. "Lakay. 'It's a jungle up here. Roads are bumpy and hurt. Rumors of monsters and daemons. Heh, you won't find some city-boy copper up here, no sir.'"

"I love it!" Dutch exclaimed. "It's perfect, almost… prophetic…" He lifted his arms up, forming a t-shape with them and lowering his head slightly to the right. The image looked familiar, and Leopold quickly sketched a famous portrait from memory and compared it. Ja, that's Velázquez's painting of Christ. Did he do it on purpose, or did he not even realize anymore?

"First Jack, now this," Dutch ranted. "It's a sign. A sign that we have got all we need if we stay together. Can't you see? Things went bad when Jack was gone, but now he's back—the dark ages are dead. I promise you: the world'll be a brighter place from here on out!"

Leopold jotted down his prediction for what would come next: Brighter place?

"Brighter place?!" spat Karen, drunk as a skunk and right on cue. "Sean's dead! He—hic—was a good man, better'n I deserved. And he's fuckin' gone!"

"Karen…" Dutch tried to pacify.

"Your fuckin' plan didn't do shit, ya fuck!" Molly cackled at this, earning the stink eye from most everyone in the room. "Trelawny's dead! Lenny's dead—"

"We don't know that—"

"Charles is dead!"

"Karen…"

"They're all dead! And you're just fuckin' dandy, ain't ya?"

"You're grieving, you're hurting, you don't mean it… but shut the fuck up," he warned, motioning for Swanson to get involved. "No one loved them more than me, so don't you say something I can't forgive ya for."

"Ooooh, I got plenty to say, Dutch—"

"No, you don't," said Swanson, grabbing her lightly by the arm and guiding her outside. "Let's get some fresh air."

"Fuck you! Fuck all of youse!" she said trying to fight back, but as we all well know, sleep deprivation and liver poisoning don't breed strength.

"Thank God she wasn't shot," Micah said after a sharp whistle. "Woulda been like shooting a Molotov cocktail—"

"Shut up!" Dutch exploded. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Just shut your goddamn mouth!"

After a long, awkward pause, Micah concealed his pain with a hideous chuckle. "I—I was just kiddin'. You know me, Dutch, you all know me, I kid rough."

"Not anymore. You'll kid in silence now, that's what you'll do. Or so help me God, that leg'll be the least of your problems."

After Micah shrunk into himself (there was a dick joke there but Leopold wasn't going to waste space in his mind with that fruitless witticism), Leopold had enough time to readjust his bifocals twice on his small, shrew-like nose before anyone broke the silence.

"Dutch…" started Mary-Beth who curiously had his hand intertwined with Mary-Beth's. Leopold made a note of it. "About Lenny… what do you think—"

"I don't know. But I do know we didn't see them die, so it's not hopeless. We thought Sean was killed in Blackwater, remember? Then what happened?"

"He got shot dead for nothin'," Molly drawled, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag.

Dutch mustered as much politeness as he could as Leopold sketched the face she'd make when he'd yank the fag out of her mouth. "Molly… put that out."

"Why? It ain't botherin' no one."

"It's botherin' me, Molly." He stepped closer to her and she inched back onto the staircase.

"Well, I don't care…"

The doodle Leopold made was primitive, but it captured the essence of what played out next.

"I hate you!" Molly screamed as Dutch put the light out under his boot. He shook his head and marched back to his plinth in the heart of the room.

"D-Dutch," Mary-Beth questioned nervously, scared of repeating barely expired history. "What happened? On that boat?"

Leopold knew and scribbled it down in black ink. It doesn't matter.

"It doesn't matter. All that matters is that's over, and harking back won't help. We need to think about the future. For instance, with Mr. Pearson—"

"So I should just start shittin' on the floor?" asked Uncle.

"S-shi—what the hell are you on about?"

"Well…" He dragged out the vowel, sliding his thumbs into his overalls. "I remember when I was six, and I was living in the city with my uncle, and he left and I was too scared to leave and too short to reach the chamber pot, so I unloaded onto the floor. When he came back, he took one glance at my foul-scented present, so grabbed me by the cuff and said 'If ya got to do your business, do it out the window or onto a plate and eat it, but never on newly varnished hardwood floors.' If I didn't care to remember that, I'd still be shittin' on floors. That's what our jobs have become: shit on the floor. And I for one, would like to learn from our mistakes so we don't have to live a life stepping over piles of shit. So, Dutch, do enlighten us: what happened on that boat? Take your time; we're in no rush."

"W-well, we are," Kieran added. "The Pinkertons could return at any time—"

"Shut it, tomboy." Uncle stared at Dutch, his doughy eyes ablaze with his challenge.

"Things happened," Dutch said slowly, with an edge to each word, "things beyond our control."

"Hmm…"

Leopold was disappointed when Bill—who apparently didn't find any of this fascinating (probably because any and all subtext or subtlety went over his moronic head)—blocked his view of the two men in a Mexican standoff with their eyes with his shiny, balding head.

"Hey, ya got a minute?" he whispered to the Austrian.

"Not at all," Leopold said, regretting it instantly, realizing there were two meanings to that answer and the doltish lived to cherry-pick.

"Was wonderin' if you had any more debts needed collectin', y'know for traveling money."

"I—"

"Cuz, if you had, me and Karen could go collect…"

"I d—"

"I mean, I could go myself, but, I mean, she-she likes spendin' time with me," He cranked the level, pulling his whisper down to something adjacent to a mouse farting for the next part: "I think she likes me." Leopold opened his mouth to clarify the abundance of fallacies within that sentence but was cut off again by the grizzled grizzly. "So, what do you say, you got something?"

He rubbed his hands together with such an electrified state of being, that Leopold felt a wave of pity fester inside of him. It was foreign and registered to him as nausea. He almost felt bad with his answer.

"I do—"

"That's great!"

"—not."

The light in Bill's eyes died. Were murdered, I suppose is more apt. "Oh…"

"But thank you for asking, Mr. Williamson. Now could you please scoot aside seeing as our aside is finished?"

By the time he trodded out of the way, the conversation was finished, a clear victor marked with a creased nose, v-shaped brow, and moist, maddened sweat dripping down their necks. The words went amiss, but the result was as Leopold expected—Uncle backed down.

Leopold smirked. That's Uncle, for you. Tough but no elasticity; you press down on him, he doesn't budge, insists he's hard as a diamond, but push down on him, real rough like, he cracks as totally as a duck egg. I couldn't imagine being so spineless.

"What about the others?" Sadie asked. "Lenny, Charles, Javier, do we just leave them?"
"Oh, now you care about leaving a man behind?" Tilly bit back.

That engendered her to silence—like the old man, she cowered away from her attacker. Heh, a historic day. Sadie Adler and Uncle—two reflections, one mirror.

"Oooh, speaking of which…" Leopold' sometimes blue, sometimes green eyes darted to the speaker coming off the stairs. "I never asked. How did that little undertaking in Saint Denis work out?"

"Molly…" (surprisingly) Grimshaw warned, privy to the immediate fallout of the girl's next words (again, though, surprising, usually Grimshaw lived to see Molly getting a right clouting).

"Find a whore? Or did ya step up to the plate yourself?"

It went as anticipated: Sadie delivered some profane, yet completely accurate words about her dear friend, and started chasing her around the room, threatening her tongue and other pink areas with the tall, bloated hunting knife she waved around. Bill grabbed her, holding her away while Molly crept behind Dutch for protection, which he was none too happy to supply.

"Get her, Dutch! Kick her ass!"

"Fuckin' bitch!"

Leopold's green/blue eyes folded over white as he rolled them. Children, he thought, they're all children. He missed Mr. Morgan more than he ought to; it wasn't that he was good company, no, no, he was unbuttered and unsalted in terms of a flavorful personality (granted Leopold's recreational time with him was sparse and scattered). What he admired so much about the tart-tongued truncheon was his detachment. His uncanny superpower to stay collected in every situation, to not be weighed down by his emotions.

Oh, lovely. Now Dutch was shoving Molly away to Mr. Uncle, and she's struggling and cussing in his flabby arms. It was obvious.

Emotion—it was a sacrilegious concept to Leopold. Anger was a thick red veil, blurring the finer details and goading violence; fear was ants in your boots, prodding you to run off; and love, god forbid love, was the Antichrist. It was a spasm, a flinch, a call to inaction, for death. Daddy did the right thing with Anna, he did… 'You've gotta close your heart Leopold, your head's a better investment.'

And there lay Ms. Grimshaw, decked head to toe in bandages, trying to dampen Ms. Adler's temper from her comfy spot on the floor. And… oof… there goes Mr. Bell with the hand strategically placed on Ms. Jackson's rump. Followed by the justification that he's following Dutch's orders: 'kiddin' in silence.' The woman's the one who started with the bitchin'. It would've been a great shock if it wasn't so glaringly apparent.

It was what he respected about Hosea (speaking of which, he was surprised that topic hadn't been broached yet, soon, he figured) before he'd cut dirt out of there like some lily-livered coward.

And… the yapping has officially gotten so crowded I can't make any of it out, but I'm sure it matches snugly with the approximations. God, if I was capable of growing bored, I'd have surely been stultified to tears by now.

Dutch could say what he liked about this brave new world, but Leopold knew the generation to come would be the greatest ever seen—and he was very rarely wrong. Why? Because there were was going to be a lot of goddamn machines.

Then a piercing scream sliced through his productive thinking, burning his ears and compelling him to clutch his skull firm so it wouldn't shatter.

Finally, when all the other clamors of the room had been dominated and silenced by her own, Mary-Beth closed her mouth. "Thank you. Now that I can hear myself think…"—she pulled the O'Driscoll forward, by the pedestal near Dutch in the center of Shady Belle—"... Kieran's has something to contribute."

The boy was slouched in a way that made him two-thirds his actual height—five feet eight inches by Leopold's calculations—head so close to his shoulders it seemed at first he was born with no neck. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke with at an anxious tempo:

"We could leave a note… f-for Lenny… and… y'know…"

"Oh, oh, that's brilliant," scoffed Bill, "yeah, when the Pinks tear this place apart in a few days, or hell, let's be real, a few hours, why don't we just leave 'em a map too? Make it easier."

"W-well, not a real note. We'll hide it. Somewhere they'd never think to look. Uh… John can doodle, right? Maybe print up a fake wanted post—"

"Wait! Wait," Dutch interjected, furrowing his brow in thought, "wait…"

"Uh, b—"

"Ssh! I got half an idea… just giv—oh, now I got the full idea. Oh yeah, that's a good one." He smiled triumphantly.

"What's a good one?" Grimshaw asked, in a tone of curiosity, rather than of typical bitterness.

"Oh, I got the perfect spot for it. I'll talk to Swanson 'bout it later. We'll hide it—"

"Dutch," Mary-Beth cut off, in a far more polite manner than last time. Leopold rubbed his ears in remembrance of the discomfort. "I-I been quiet about this—I have been quiet about this… what are we gonna—going—to do… about…" She struggled for a while, biting her lower lip, then wetting it repeatedly, before finally spitting it out: "Hosea."

Dutch's smile disappeared. "I…" His breathing grew dangerously heavy, like he was about to have a heart attack. "I…" Life squirted back into his limpsy figure as he discovered the answer. "I'm letting my imagination run amok. He's fine. Probably went down to Saint Denis for a…" he cleared his throat, realizing he'd said too much, although the word was written on the wall: drink. "But, I'm sure with the gang war we started, he got shut in and hasn't had a chance to slip away. We'll just mention on the note to leave it where it lies, so that way, be it Lenny or Hosea who finds it first, both groups will find their way back to us."

Mary-Beth smiled at this and nodded her head, as did Tilly and the others, but none of them believed it, especially not Leopold. He wasn't quite sure where the old man was, too many variables in play, but he was certain that wherever he was, drunk, beaten, or dead, he wouldn't be able to read the note let alone find it.

"But, now that I've got all your attention…" Dutch continued, bringing his arms back up. Christ is slew. It must be unconscious. "Without Pearson, we need a new camp cook. With Grimshaw in no condition and Abigail's cooking being… well, infamous…" Besides Micah and Kieran, there wasn't a single member in the gang who didn't shudder at the horrid memories. "... I think Tilly should take up that role."

Oh, come on… Leopold wrote.

"Oh, come on," Tilly protested. "Can't it be Uncle or Molly, they don't do nothin' regardless."

"I resent that," fought Uncle taking a swig of whiskey. "Speaking of, where are we gonna get our meats? Our best hunter is gone, and we're going to a spot that ain't exactly near any markets."

"We'll… fish," Dutch countered.

"Or we can always eat you, ya fat old coot," said Bill, swiping the bottle out of Uncle's hands, claiming it for himself in large, greedy gulps.

"No," Leopold said, using his voice for the second time this conversation—a pretty impressive feat by his standards. "If we're going the cannibalism route, it would be best to gather up the Pinkerton's corpses while they're still reasonably fresh. Could make a fine stew out of that if the idea of munching on roasted human fingers is repellent to anyone."

He looked up, surprised to see disgusted, wide eyes facing him with horror.

He shrugged.

Hope you liked this take on Strauss. I thought it would be entertaining to write him as a cold (quasi-omniscient) machine of a man, but let me know what you think. I like the idea of him being quite intelligent, arguably the most intelligent there, and using that intelligence as an excuse to be so stagnant and uninvolved. In the game he always saw Arthur as a friend, so I like the idea of that being because that was the point in the story when Arthur was an apathetic, unfeeling machine-just like Leopold. Be interesting to see how his perspective would change about Arthur if he knew about Mary...

I'm writing this pretty fast, so please let me know if I'm making any mistakes-I'm only human after all.

Wondering why Dutch is still tolerating Micah after all that's happened? Stay tuned to find out.