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 Thirty-Four: Kieran
12:05 AM, August 4th, 1899
It was the dead of night, dark as winter solstice. Kieran rode astride Deathbed (aptly named by Dutch), the old Morgan he'd rustled up. The Aged Gelding was grey in every sense of the word—in hide, in eyes, and in spirit. Kieran had found him while looking for a replacement horse. Branwen couldn't come with him, not where he was going.
Kieran was leaving the Dutch Van der Linde Gang and disappearing into the forests of Roanoke Ridge.
He galloped quickly, but not too quick. Pale-yellow fear took him and every time he saw a shadow bend under the orange light of his lantern. He'd asked Dutch about the Murfrees he knew were crawling along the woods when he'd done a supply run a few days ago, and of course, the man had downplayed it. "I met those bastards before personally," he said, "and I'm tellin' ya, you got nothin' to fear. They only want easy pickin's; they see a guy like you, don't know what you're about, if you're dangerous, and they run a mile like the cowards they are." He'd asked Sadie later, knowing the, most likely drunken (because she seemed to be following in Karen's footsteps of late), lady wouldn't deny him the truth. She just stammered three words: "Man. Crab. Pike." When he'd asked her to confirm what Dutch had told him, she just stared at him like he was an idiot.
Though, he'd yet to see a Murfree. He hoped as well to keep it that way as he ventured on. Like back at Radley's House, he felt the familiar touch of the hot shadow, the black dread that had consumed him so many times in the past. It was whispering in his ear; the words were like alcohol, cool but burning. Run, Kieran, it seemed to say. Run and don't look back. You've done it before.
It wasn't wrong. Kieran found the sienna beam of his lantern aiming over his shoulder, wondering…
No. No, he couldn't go back. He had to finish what he started. He turned around and spurred Deathbed faster, hoping the speed would relax him. It didn't.
All it did was cause the poor old horse to start whinnying and wheezing—they didn't call it Deathbed for nothing. Kieran slowed up, letting the ennobled grey mule catch its breath in fast, raspy gasps.
Suddenly, the horse made no sound at all. That was after the Kieran heard the gunshot. He flung from the dead gelding and landed hard on his stomach, crushing his lantern. When he looked up he saw six and a half figures: six O'Driscolls, lit by their pale-yellow lanterns that glowed so dim their faces were concealed by darkness, and one hot shadow, paying him a cute lady-like wave, mouthing I told ya so to him. "I know," Kieran mouthed back.
An O'Driscoll stepped forward. Kieran still couldn't make out his face, but noticed a ring on the hand he held the lantern with. Maybe his wife is one of them sweet-as-candy girls, the kind you never act cross with because you're scared their sweetness will be tainted by it. So maybe he ain't as violent as the others… or maybe he just wears it to make his punches hurt more.
"Valuables. Now," the maybe married man said.
"Sure, sure," Kieran stammered, rising to his feet before being kicked down again. He spoke on his back. "E-except… uh… well… I-I don't r-really think that's necessary."
Another O'Driscoll laughed manically before strolling closer. Kieran saw his white boots, bald head and clean-shaven face. He reminded him of the picture of Humpty Dumpty on one of Jack's books. "Really? And why's that?"
"W-well…" He gave a silent prayer. "C-cuz I'm one a' you!"
Those words bounced around the forest as though his hot shadow was screaming up and down. The first O'Driscoll raised his yellow lantern to get a better look at Kieran's face. In return, the Irishman caught a much better look at his mug; it wasn't a very pretty one: blind in one eye, half his left ear was chewed off (by what Kieran didn't want to know), and his glum frown stretched from cheek to cheek. This was not the face of a married man, Kieran thought.
"Doyle!" one of the O'Driscolls said to ugly, the one standing next to the hot shadow, remarked. "Who is this clown?"
"Gimme a minute, here!" Doyle called back. And a minute it was, down to the second. For one minute he studied Kieran's face, squinting in examination, before realization dawned on cue with eyes widening. "I know you…"
"Y-yeah…" Kieran stuttered. "My name is…"
"Kieran Duffy," Doyle finished before turning to Humpty. "This here is Kieran Duffy. O'Driscoll deserter. No, scratch that. O'Driscoll turncoat."
"N-no," Kieran repeated. "I ain't no turncoat—"
"You mean this is the feller in bed with the Dutch Van der Linde Gang?" one of the O'Driscolls asked.
"Ain't so!" Kieran argued, trying to rise again before landing hard on his ass. Stay confident. Keep loose. "You bastards shot my horse!"
The bite of arrogance certainly caught their eye, but still, Doyle leered at him with one eye. "You gonna tell us you ain't a rat? That you didn't tell 'em where Six-Point Cabin was? That you didn't nice and cozy with that pretty blonde like Tom said?" He leaned down over Kieran and he could smell his foul breath. It tasted like beer left in the sun for a week. "You callin' Tom a liar?"
He picked his words gingerly before answering. "Dalton ain't a liar, but he don't got all the facts." Biting back the quiver in his voice took everything.
The breath grew even more potent as the face crept closer. "Oh, and just what might those facts be?"
The smell was so terrible Kieran wanted to pull his face out of the line of fire and hurl right there on ugly Doyle's (seriously, who the hell would marry this guy?) black boots. But he didn't look away, didn't break the chain of their eyes, didn't back down. "You a military man, Doyle?" The man growled, opening his mouth, probably to recite some prose about how badly he'd hurt Kiaren if he didn't get to the point, but he was never given time to speak. "Well, I am. Spent eight months hounding Catarino Garza from Texas to the bottom of Coahuila—"
"Then what? You desert them too?"
Kieran didn't answer that question. "And you wanna know what they taught us? When the enemy captures you, it is your responsibility as a soldier to drain as much time and resources from them as possible. That usually means to escape, and if I was a prisoner, that's just what I woulda done—run back to y'all and help you bring 'em down. But I had their trust—"
"Cuz you ratted about Six-Point Cabin!"
Kieran pushed Doyle back, flowering to his feet. Six men trained their guns on him, but he wasn't scared. "They threatened to cut my balls off! What would you have done?! Even have your tiny cock dangling on burning pliers?!" Even the hot shadow looked intimidated, though it already knew he would say this. "Does any of you even know a single man who died at Six-Point?" When no one spoke he continued. "I did you fools a favor, a hundred of 'em in case you were too blind to see it! I let the Braithwaites take the boy so Dutch's gang was lured out of their element, to Shady Belle, right by the city where they got in fighting with the Italian mob. Who do you think orchestrated that? And speakin' of Shady Belle, who do you idiots think told Colm? Hmm… you donkeys ever think 'bout that for five minutes?! How your side knew to come there?"
Humpty Dumpty licked his lips nervously and proffered a guess. "T-the cook?"
"The cook?!" Kieran barked. "The old loyal cook who rode with them for over a decade and couldn't make a livin' for himself without leanin' on them? That cook? Hmm… did that cook also tell Colm Arthur was up top on that ridge at your meeting so your guys would know exactly where to jump him?"
"That was you…?" one of the guys hiding behind the hot shadow whispered.
"You're goddamn right!" Kieran roared. He dug into his ebony jacket, but not one man accused him of reaching for a gun. He pulled out something precious, something that would drive even poor decrepit Strauss the machine to a tear. The cherry-red tin shined against the orange lantern light. Creased green bills poured out of it. "That's every cent to the gang's name in case you sons of bitches are still doubtin' me!" He realized at the end he'd been doing a Dutch impression.
White boots scampered along, collecting the money, followed briskly by the others. "This is at least twelve hundred dollars…" he muttered to Doyle.
Doyle stood, his one eye wide enough for two. "If what you're sayin' is true, why ain't ya back at camp cousin' more trouble."
The broad curves on Kieran's smug smile hurt his face. "Cuz…" he began, "they found a new lead, one so unbelievably lucrative no one need ever work again. I want that for the O'Driscolls. We can get away clean, and rebuild in a new land so rich the lords and higher-ups'll be throwing every pretty daughter they got at us. No need to waste any more time on those Van der Linde bastards, let 'em go. It's our time now!"
Humpty and the other four O'Driscolls looked to Doyle with quizzical expressions. "Do you believe him?"
Doyle gawked at Kieran with one narrow brown orb, panning it over him thrice. "I don't… not." The hot shadow jumped for joy, floating and falling slowly like paper and Kieran tried hard not to follow suit—it was an arduous endeavor. "Let's let Tom sort this out."
"When this is all over," Kieran said forcefully, wagging his finger, "you idiots had better make it up to me for killin' my horse."
"Whatever," Doyle mumbled. "Ride with Phillip there,"—he pointed to Humpty Dumpty—"and we'll take ya to Tom Dalton."
6:12 AM, August 2nd, 1899
Kieren was convinced he sleepwalked last night; must've been up banging his head against the cave's stone wall. It was the only thing that could explain his headache. Then he groaned in realization as he rose from the patch of lilacs he'd slept on last night, stepping over murky brown bottles.
Kieran sometimes wished he wouldn't always wake up so damn early, but he doubted that habit would yield; it had been drilled into him his whole life: his father owned a haughty rooster that loved the sound of his own voice more than sleep itself; the army hadn't ever allotted more than a paltry number of sleeping hours, and that Captain Hudson made it his personal mission to make Kieran as uncomfortable as possible; and the O'Driscolls, well, he never slept much with them—always afraid he'd wake with a knife in his back.
It was the third party in a row they'd had, and most everyone else was just as sore and grounded as Kieran, except for little Jack, Strauss, and, shockingly, Swanson—he sat by the wire reel table, flipping through pages of his Protestant Bible. No lantern or matches were set up on the patchy table, and the sun's crown had just peered out from behind the cave, illuminating the fading summer day, yet Swanson looked as though he'd been reading for hours.
Kieran heard he was cleaning up, but Bill told him he'd said that a hundred times. Yet… three weeks with no booze or opium as far as he could tell. Swanson seemed different too. No longer the gaunt, brittle, broken man Kieran had met, the man who cried and drank and drank and cried almost exclusively. This man was bright, in more ways than one. His skin blushed with color and life that before had been impossible for the reverend; his wits had returned in plentiful waves most of the camp didn't even know existed within him; and he bubbled with hope and desire, concepts absent from him for who knew how long.
He felt compelled suddenly to approach and wandered over to the spool. "H-hey, reverend."
Swanson set down the book and smiled, his orange mustache reaching for the sky. "Kieran. How are you?"
"G-good. You?"
"I'm terrific."
"I-I'm glad to hear it," he shuffled his hands over each other nervously. "I-I'm sorry. For not helping out with burying Pearson. It was the right thing to do, and he—I mean I don't know if he liked me, but I considered him a friend… I think."
Swanson's head shook with a snort, but his jovial grin didn't waver at all. "Don't tell me you been beatin' yourself up over this, have you?" When Kieran didn't answer he chuckled. "Simon liked you. I know he did. He's in a better place now and he knows what's in your heart, my friend. So don't you fret."
The boy returned his smile, shyly at first, then genuinely. "I… I know it probably don't mean much comin' from me—heck, we just met a few months back—but I want you to know I'm proud a' you. Y'know… for quitting."
"You're wrong," Swanson said, "it means everything coming from you."
Kieran felt his hangover start to sober away as though the preacher's kind words were coffee."Thanks."
"Any time."
He pulled up a chair next to the reverend. "What… what… s-section—that the right word?—you readin' there?"
"Oh, uh, Romans 1:17, but I'm not really readin' it much. Just sorta takin' it in, I guess." He picked up the book again and began waving through the pages. "Not explainin' it too well, am I? Well, I guess it's like this: ya spend so much time with something that just holding it, smelling it, feeling just… brings back memories."
"Good or bad?" Kieran asked.
"Both, mostly," he answered, laying the tome flat on the table. "Life's kinda like a book, I think. Ya flip back and stick your finger on the stuff you like and the stuff you don't."
"What if the book don't got any bad stuff?"
There was a sharp glimmer in Swanson's eyes when he said "Ain't a lotta people with lives like that book."
"Yeah… I guess so." Kieran pulled Swanson's creased copy of the Bible over, fanning through it thoughtlessly. What is it with everyone and books? They're dumb. Just some dictionary company's ploy to make decent folk think they're stupid.
"You a Christian man, Kieran?" asked Swanson, folding his arms.
Kieran cleared his throat. "Eh… I-I don't know. I-I'm God-fearin' if that's what you mean…"
"Uh, no. No, it wasn't."
"Then I don't rightly know. When my daddy was still alive, he'd ride me into town every week for Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of St. Peter at Hunghill. We couldn't read, but Father O'Malley sure made it sound interesting… till we found out he was… committing some… heretic acts with the town's young boys…"
"Oh, Christ…"
"Yeah… soured the whole thing for everyone I reckon."
"Not… you weren't…"
"Oh God no, I didn't live in town. Me and Daddy lived by the lake. Probably why I like fishin' so much."
"Men like that give the cloth a bad name." Swanson chortled. "Though I guess I can't really stare down my nose too much at him, now can I?"
Kieran raised his head, pulling his raven locks behind his ears. "Yes, you must certainly can. You ain't nothin' like that creep, reverend."
Swanson rested a hand on Kieran's. "You're a good kid."
"Thanks."
Swanson's smile turned coy then and he removed his palm from Kieran's to use it as a mask. "You likin' what you readin'?"
Kieran squinted his eyes in suspicion. "Yeah. Why?"
"Oh, no reason." He let an impish silence fill the gap before he spoke again. "I'll have to tell Mary-Beth you're a natural learner."
Kieran realized then that he'd forgotten his illiteracy and slammed the book together, tossing it back to its owner. "Oh, shit!" he cried in a whisper-scream. His hatred of reading had not gone amiss by Swanson, even when he was drunker than Uncle. "Please don't." The clergyman just chuckled. "Seriously, she's like a bloodhound. The second she catches a whiff a' hope she'll sick her claws in me and I'll never get my nose outta a book aga—"
"Kieran!" thundered the imperious voice of Dutch. "Get over here!" He was calling from his large beige tent, assembled beside the entrance of the cave. Kieran's feet rose immediately and hurried two steps ahead of the rest of him over to the gang's leader. A shiver of nervousness took him—a shiver he was used to, a shiver he'd grown to hate—as he drew nearer.
Molly shot out of the tarp just as Kieran arrived. She smiled, but it wasn't for him. It was smug and self-satisfying. He wondered for a moment if she and Dutch had just had sex but when he entered, he knew that couldn't be true.
Dutch was wearing his long black coat—must've been cold from moving north, even if it was still summer, albeit the tail-end of summer—with his black vest, pants, and hat. The only source of color in his entire attire was his small pocket square that had faded from its vibrant red to a pale pink. His appearance matched his mood.
"There he is…" Dutch started, the friendliness in his tone a shadow of the shell it usually was, "the O'Driscoll." That word stung and Dutch knew it. "Have a seat." He pointed to his bed—despite Molly, there was only one—and Kieran sat quickly, knowing it wasn't a request.
The Irishman scratched his neck nervously. "H-h-hey, Dutch. Great party last night. That was a good idea."
Dutch smiled weakly, but it wasn't at all like Swanson's. It was closer to Molly's. "Thanks…" He reached into his coat and pulled out a cigarette, offering it. Again, Kieran complied, feeling it wasn't an option. "I saw you dance with Mary-Beth…" There was a hint of something venomous behind the monotone delivery.
His nails moved up his neck where stubbly hair hung."Y-yes sir. She-she's somethin' ain't she?"
"Yessss… she is…" Dutch struck it then. The match glowed fiery and fervid in his hands, the color nearly identical to his pocket square. He leaned closer and Kieran suddenly felt very claustrophobic. The blaze hovered in his direction so he stuck the fag into his mouth and shielded his face with it. Kieran wasn't a smoker and spat grey puffs in raspy coughs. "Sorry," he murmured, as though it was a Honduran cigar he'd disrespected.
" That's alright, son. Tell me: did Mary-Beth say anything to you? Something… problematic?"
Black-grey mist wafted up and Dutch's face flickered cloudy and dark. "W-what do you mean?" Kieran asked.
Dutch peered through the smoke then; he was barely an inch from Kieran's own face. "If you know what I mean, you know what I mean. Do you?"
He scratched so hard he drew blood. It flowed down to his knuckles. "I-I mean… nothin'... c-comes to mind—"
"Good!" Dutch cheered, his frown folding upwards. "Here, let me…" he removed his pink handkerchief and wiped off Kieran's hands. The dark red blood had no effect on its coloration. "I was scared Mary-Beth mighta told you somethin' that woulda gotten you worked up. I love her, but she's emotional and a storyteller, two qualities that are the rancorous nemeses of the truth."
"The truth?"
"Yeah. Here it is…" he sat down on the bed next to the boy, draping an arm onto his shoulder. "Mary-Beth and I… we kissed."
Kieran couldn't stop the cigarette from slipping from his fingers. "What?!"
"A long time ago, weeks before we even met you." He waved the bloody cloth between them as he explained. "One kiss, but it didn't go no further than that. We both knew it was a mistake. I'm with Molly" —he muttered the next part—"for better or worse. And she is too young for me. Too soft too. I like my women harder if I'm bein' blunt." A fleck of blood smacked Kieran's nose as that pink flag flew. "Anyway, while we were doin' the Annesburg thing—y'know where she was pretending to be my wife—I made a joke. It was a stupid, senseless joke about how—eh, never mind, it was too dumb to even recite. I was anxious about meeting the Jamesons and—uh, I shouldn't make excuses, it was just flat-out dumb. But like I said, that sweet child's a mite too emotional for her own good—taken it to heart. I mean, surely you've noticed she's been a little quiet recently?"
Kieran didn't blink. "I-I mean s-sure…"
"Well, that was why!" He sighed, finally stuffing the pocket square out of sight. "I'm real sorry, Kieran, I am. You know I didn't mean nothin' by it and I know she's sweet on you"—he gave a girly smile—"and unless I'm blind, deaf, and simple, you look like you're sweet on her too…" Dutch poked and prodded him, asking "Am I right?" repeatedly like a teenage girl hungry for gossip, and Kieran couldn't help but chuckle. "So… we're good?"
He extended his hand. It took Kieran a moment to process that he was supposed to shake it. He goggled at it for a while, soaking in the wrinkles before finally, slowly, accepting it. "Y-yeah…"
Dutch slapped him on the chest in a cordial manner. "Beautiful! Beautiful! Next order of business: I got something I'm really excited to tell you, Kieran."
Kieran kept his eyes peeled on his hands before the silence lasted a quarter of a minute and he met Dutch's excited eye, seeing he wanted to stretch the tension out. "What? What are you excited to tell me?"
"I got a plan." He puffed out his chest as he said it. His legs shook with excess energy. It reminded Kieran of Cain every time he'd seen Arthur. Again, Dutch let that hang, wanting Kieran to inquire further. Ever the dramatic, he was.
"What is your plan, Dutch?"
"My plan is this. Last night, I had five beers in me, contemplating our predicament. Pinkertons on one side. Murfrees on the other. Bounty hunters on the third side. O'Driscolls on the fourth. A box of shit we in. And it's closin' fast… So, tell me, Kieran: how do we stop all these threats? How can we possibly overwhelm their numbers?"
Kieran shook his head, perplexed. What the hell is goin' on today? "I-I don't know."
"Guess."
"Uh, we-we…" he droned off, thinking.
After about another fifteen seconds, Dutch got bored and sprayed it out. "We turn those rabid dogs against each other… and last night, on my sixth beer, I finally figured out how."
Tired of the drama, Kieran asked instantly after Dutch finished, just assuming he'd fall silent again. "How? How?"
Dutch leaned forward, putting out the warm cigarette Kieran had dropped with his boot. "O'Driscoll loyalists… What do you say Kieran? You want to help us out? Want to prove to everyone—Sadie included—where we both know your loyalties lie? Willing to do whatever it takes?"
Kieran glanced down at the dying fag, the steam fading away. This is it, he thought. This is my chance to show 'em once and for all that I'm one of them.
"Yes. Yes, I am."
7:34 PM, August 4th, 1899
His wrists burned when they tied the ropes as taut as possible. His face ached purple when they berated him senselessly with punches. His stomach had blushed as pink as Dutch's handkerchief when they flogged him with a leather whip.
At least his sense of humor was still intact (arguably the most important part of the human anatomy, aside from genitalia). He could chuckle at the irony: he was tied standing up to a tree in the exact manner as Dutch's gang had done back in Horseshoe Overlook. It reminded him of what Swanson had said: Life's like a book, kiddo. Ya try and turn the page, and the wind blows you back to where you were. Not what Swanson said, of course, but pain can damage a man's memory.
And at least in Horeshoe, he'd had a pleasant view: from the girls in their nightwear to the gorgeous landscape their camp looked down on, to the girls in their nightwear.
Wherever he was—Moonstone Pond he guessed, judging by the pond and bright moonlight—it had no such savory sights. Humpty "Phillip" Dumpty was seated by the campfire with other O'Driscolls, in the heart of camp, between the fifteen small pyramid tents on either side. They must have been running low on meat for their stew because a deer's head, antlers excluded, protruded from the large cast iron pot. According to Humpty's shuddering face every time he sucked his spoon, it was not tasty.
Doyle as well as three more O'Driscolls had taken their other captive, a poor farmer's boy, and dragged him into the forest behind Kieran, but staying close enough that he could hear what they did. The lad's screams painted a vivid picture; Kieran could hear them throwing him down and pinning him, could hear the men laughing as they took their turn with him as he begged them not to. And when it was over, he could hear a single shot being fired. When the four O'Driscolls returned, Doyle, beer on his breath, approached Kieran. The boy's bowels quivered as he imagined them doing to him what they did to that farmer's boy; I'm not strong enough. I can't stop them, he thought. But Doyle turned around and passed out inside his tent that sat beside Tom Danton's far girthier wide-walled one.
The O'Driscoll ringleader had smelled out his ruse the moment Kieran had arrived. He'd hoped Danton would just get on with the interrogation as quickly as possible so he could switch to the backup plan, but the bearded fat man seemed to believe talking to his new prisoner was a waste unless he was beaten, battered, and humiliated.
Soon it rained, which Kieran was thankful for. When he'd been whipped, he'd thrown up. It sat in a puddle on his feet and the smell was rank. Now it was dissipating, washing away with his blood and tears. The only downside was that it was horribly cold and his throat was too sore from screaming to ask for a coat (which I'm sure those noble gents would have been all too happy to provide).
When the rain settled, and Kieran's pain had exhausted him enough to start drifting off to sleep, that was when the stout shadow of Tom Dalton emerged from his tent. Kieran watched with teary fluttering eyes as the figure loomed closer until he felt the heat of his raging torch scorching his nose. It was agonizing but he didn't have the energy to wail, instead offering a weak whimper and shifting his head to the side.
"Well…" Tom Dalton said, forsaking all formalities by prodding Kieran's shirtless chest with two fingers. "Hi, Kieran."
Kieran whimpered again.
"Y'know," Dalton said, "that's real rude. When someone says hello, you ought to say…"
After a long pause, Kieran mustered a mutter. "... H-hellll-o."
"It's real good to see you again." Dalton seized poking and moved to the face, cupping it and forcing it to face him. "I say again because we met before. You remember?" Kieran shook his head. "Back north above Grizzlies West. Food was scarce and Colm—God rest his soul—sent us all out to scout for food. Deer, squirrels, frozen berries, anything. I came back with… a doe, I believe." Kieran's eyes dropped once more and Dalton brought the flame against his chest. It sure woke him up in a hurry. "And then I sees two men hauling this little woman of a man—that's you by the way—and I can't resists me a secret, so I followed them, where they dumped this little woman of a man in front of one of our lieutenants, Karmichael, I believe, and y'know what they says?" Kieran coughed.
"Heh, course you do. They said: 'We found this guy ten feet outside camp. He was hiding so he wouldn't have to hunt!" Everyone broke out laughing and Karmichael leaned over you, asking 'That true, son?' And you stuttered 'Y-y-y-yes s-s-s-sir.' 'Why,' he asks. 'You wanna eat too, don't ya?' And you just bend down, saying all softy 'I-I-I-I'm s-s-scared a' w-w-w-wolves!'" Piss and rain ran down Kieran's goose-pimpled thighs. Dalton just sneered.
"That's how I knew you were lyin'. Didn't even need whatever cock-and-bull story you were shapin' up. I know youse, Kieran Duffy. You're a coward. They pressed you for beans and boy did you not disappoint with your spillin' of 'em! They put a gun in your hands and asked you to kill your brothers in arms, and I bet you said 'Sure thing boss!' didn't you? Now they want a spy in our ranks and since you're too much of a coward to refuse them, you run right in the direction they want: to us." He started heehawing like a donkey. "You almost had us too! Had Doyle and Phillip, the asses, but not ol' Tommy! No, no, ol' Tommy sees right through you." He concluded by poking Kieran again in the stomach, so roughly his whole body jiggled.
"Well," Dalton asked. "Got anything to say?"
"W-w-w…" Kieran stammered.
"W-w-what?"
"W-weren't… weren't…"
"W-w-w-w-w-weren't… w-w-w-w-weren't… w-w-w-w-weren't…" Dalton said as though he was imitating a baby trying to talk. "What?!"
"Weren't a doe… was a fox…" Kieran smiled. He half laughed half coughed.
Dalton joined in, laughing hysterically as he extinguished the torch in a puddle and brought the stick down hard on Kieran's head, snapping it in two. He grabbed Kieran by the face, sticking his finger down on one of the Irishmen's eyes as he wailed. "Listen to me, you little shit! I know who you are and so do you! A snake! And I can't trust a snake any more than I can't throw one, but I can trust a snake to be a snake. You're gonna tell me what your mission was and what Dutch is up to now or you lose an eye. Ya hear?!"
He pulled away and Kieran groaned, taking several deep breaths, blinking arduously with his left eye. "Okay! Okay! Dutch wanted me to tip you off on some big score in Rhodes—Braithwaite jewels!"
"Oh…" Tom nodded with a smug sigh. "A setup. Deputies all around, eh?"
Kieran spoke quickly, too quickly. "Y-yeah, probably."
Tom got closer, adding his hands to his hips, speaking like a distraught mother. "Kieran… are you telling ol' Tom the truth?"
"Y-yeah…" The words came out so fast you would've thought he had time to speak them.
"Kieran… do you want Doyle to take you out back? I can wake him if—"
"No!" Kieran said desperately. "No, no! Okay, yes, we wanted you to get arrested, but that wasn't really the goal."
"What was?"
"T-to… oh God, they'll kill me…"
Tom hied closer, driving a fist into Kieran's bruised ribs. He could feel the shaggy beard on his face. "You should be more worried about what I'll do!"
"We wanted to distract you!" Kieran screamed. "We wanted to distract you so you wouldn't find out 'bout the gold."
Tom's pudgy, hairy countenance shifted, his eyes glittered with avarice. "Gold?"
The other O'Driscolls had heard by now and were attempting to subtly maneuver over. Kieran coughed violently before responding to give them time to get close. "Yeah. We found out that the Annesburg coal mines, y'know the mines?"
"Yeah."
"They struck gold. Oh, so so much gold. Enough for us to get out, move to another country. Hell, become emperors in another country."
"Jesus," Tom muttered in awe.
"Escape the Pinks," Kieran continued. "Live rich and prosperous."
Tom grinned gleefully, turning back to his men. "Gold!"
"Gold!" They echoed, shouting it again and again. "Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!"
"Tom?" Kieran said, as loudly as his cracked voice would allow. "Y-you're right, y'know."
"Heh, can you narrow it down?" he remarked, spiraling around, a knife in his hand. It was dulled from repeated usage, but more than sharp enough to do the job.
"I am a coward. I'll always choose to save my own skin, no matter what…"
"Not making a very good case on why I shouldn't kill you," Tom said, strolling nearer, raising that knife. "Though the best case wouldn't help ya either."
"On the contrary. I'm makin' an excellent case. You said it yourself: a snake can be counted on to be a snake. I'll lure them into the open for you."
That stopped Tom dead in his tracks. After a hasty pause, he returned his hands to his hips, regurgitating his words in that motherly way. "Kieran… are you lyin' again?"
"No. Why would I? I can't deliver you the moon, but you know I can deliver you this. You've seen them; ya really think your clowns can take down the Dutch Van der Linde Gang? You had three of 'em dead to rights at Bluewater Marsh and they got away."
Tom groveled. The truth is a hard pill to swallow. "What do you want?"
"My life and a hatful of gold. Trust me, with how much is there, that's a bargain."
"A bargain, eh?" He scratched his chin with the serrated blade while he decided. "Fine. You win." The lie was so obvious Tom might as well have tattooed the word Bullshit on his forehead in fire. "Now… let's go to Annesburg."
12:38 AM, August 5th, 1899
The town was deathly quiet. The wind whispered a ghostly fog as Kieran rode, hands bound behind his back, laying flat on his bruised, pink stomach. His mouth was gagged, fitting as he was stowed on Silence, Tom Dalton's horse. The rag stuffed down his throat was a pair of white underwear, now blemished red with blood—and it was not at all clean.
The clicks of horseshoes dancing across the gravel were the only sounds Kieran heard as they entered Annesburg, apart from the hot shadow in his ear. You're gonna die, it murmured. You're gonna die, you're gonna die, you're gonna die!
Stay calm, he told himself. Stick to the plan.
A faint yellow glint caught Kieran's eye and he struggled his head up to see a small German boy inside one of the cramped apartments reserved for the Annesburg miner workforce. His father pulled him down and closed the blinds.
If there were any guards leading up the hill to the mines, they were asleep or hiding. Or Dutch killed 'em, Kieran realized. Oh God… I didn't think 'bout that…
Suddenly, fifty horseshoes stopped clicking as Dalton and his men reached the top of the hill, mere feet from the large mine. Two iron railways spanned from the bottom of the hill leading back to town all the way into the dark opaque mine. It reminded Kieran of Beaver Hollow's cave—a toothless mouth waiting to swallow him.
Dalton grabbed Kieran by his long raven locks and tossed him down onto the metal railway. He hit his jawbone hard against the iron and saliva flooded his pain along with more blood—but really he ought to be grateful: if he'd had an erection when he fell, it would've snapped clean off.
The O'Driscolls followed Kieran's descent, although with more grace; they crept off their horses, lightly cocking their shotguns and repeaters. They moved into cover, behind the wooden pillars protruding from the ground, ferrying black wires from the mine back to town, or fashioning their own, moving crates and barrels from the loading docks.
Dutch was completely surrounded, and there was no other way out of the mine.
Kieran felt Dalton's sticky palms take his shoulder and hoist him onto his feet. He removed the gag. "If you're lyin'," he whispered, "if Dutch ain't in there, if there ain't mountains a' gold for the takin', you're gonna face a lot worse than Doyle. I'll cut off your dick and rape you with it. Then I'll send you to the Murfrees. You know their reputation, I hope?"
"Yeah—"
"I'll tell you anyway. I visited them once and saw a man with no limbs strapped to a block of stone above a massive pyre. He wasn't congenital by the way. Y'know what they did?"
"I can imagine," Kieran grumbled.
"I'll tell you anyway. They chopped off his hands and feet, did it good too, he didn't bleed out. Then they rubbed dirt and muck and all the good stuff into those wounds, letting them get infected. Then, every few days, they'd shave off the infected layer of flesh and start again, till the man was little but a stump. It took the man weeks to die after that—they kept him more than nourished so he couldn't rush it." He slapped a hand onto Kieran's back like they were chums before sliding his fingers up, squeezing down on half of the boy's neck. It wasn't enough to choke him but more than enough to hurt. "You sure this is the story you wanna tell? Last chance."
Kieran didn't shake his head from the fingers, didn't break eye contact. "And when this is done, you let me go? With a hatful of gold?"
Tom Dalton laughed. "Sure. Hell, I'll make it two." He shoved Kieran forward and the Irishman almost tripped over a rail tie.
Kieran marched forward. He wore pants but besides that, he'd been stripped naked. Every fiber of his body ached in agony and every weary step drew blood from his bare feet. Still, he marched forward. The hot shadow draped its sharp claws over his shoulders and they burned. He was drenched in so much sweat he was shiny; it leaked into his eyes and blurred the path forward but with his hands bound he couldn't wipe it away. It was a strange paradox: the mine grew larger and farther away the closer he fared. Like every step forward punched him two back. Heh, story of my life, that still intact sense of humor mused.
A sharp whistle rang out and he stopped. Tom Dalton, still puckering, shook his head and stroked his rifle. One more step and I'll assume you're desertin' us again, Kieran deciphered. If he knew one thing, he knew the penalty of desertion.
Standing about halfway between the dark cave and Tom Dalton, Kieran spoke. "Dutch?" No answer. "Dutch?!" Nothing. Kieran realized the truth. He'd been set up. Dutch was back at camp, laughing his head off about what a fool that dumb Kieran was. "DUTCH?!" He was so gullible, so simple, he'd believe anything. Now that the peace offering had been exchanged, the O'Driscolls would leave Dutch alone and he—
"Yes, yes, hello?" a fast anxious voice called out. It was Dutch's. "Kieran! That you?"
Kieran glanced back at Tom before answering. "Yeah, Dutch. It's me."
"Sorry, me and Bill musta fallen asleep," the bodiless voice echoed in the darkness. "Where the hell you been? We been diggin' all day!" At this, the sound of pickaxes slashing the rocky walls in the mine recheated as though they'd always been there. Clang! Clang!
Again a whistle came, this one more subtle. Tom shook his head and petted his gun. Don't rat, rat.
Clang! Clang! "Well, Dutch…" Kieran said, hoping he'd get the double meaning. "Remember when we talked about that crossroads? About me either gettin' through to Annesburg the easy way or the rough way?"
"Oh…" a sympathetic voice that sounded like Dutch said. Clang! Clang! "Ya got it the rough way?"
"Yeah."
"Sorry."
A third whistle. A shake of the head. A stroke of the gun. Get him out, NOW.
"Kieran!" Dutch called. Clang! Clang! "Wanna come in and help us with the loot?"
Kieran turned around, staring at Tom Danton's pudgy, ugly mug as he responded. "Actually, Dutch, I'm hurtin' pretty badly. Could you come out instead?"
"Uh, sure…" Dutch said nonchalantly. Clang! Clan—
Sound dissipated so suddenly Kieran thought for a moment he'd gone deaf. Twenty sets of hands tightened hard on their guns as they walked for Dutch and Bill to emerge.
And so they did.
In two mine carts, racing across the railway, keeping low as bullets ricocheted off the cart's metal hull. An arm reached out and scooped Kieran into the rickety iron car as it shot like greased lightning past the O'Driscolls and down the hill into town.
When they were out of range, Dutch picked his head up from the cart, a triumphant grin on his face. "Oh, look, look! Here it comes!" he cried, lifting Kieran's face to the mine just as it exploded.
They had used some of the dynamite Charles had pinched for them and rigged it to the ceiling and walls. When it blew with an orange flash, there was no longer a mine. The entry was so avalanched you might as well be drilling through solid earth trying to get back in, and that was without considering how much product had been destroyed—from what I hear, explosives aren't good for coal. The Annesburg police jumped into action—a bunch of suspicious riders passing through town could be ignored, but the town's primary commodity and whole reason for being a town in the first place? That was a catastrophe.
The O'Driscolls were being shot at in moments, and they were chased out, their tails between their legs. In the distance, Kieran saw Tom Dalton riding off. He was no longer smiling.
Once the carts reached the end of the railway, Bill hopped out of his adjacent cart and helped Dutch pull Kieran out and over to where they hitched Brown Jack and The Count by the post office in preparation.
They mounted up and rode off before their luck turned.
"Woweeeeee!" Dutch cheered. "That worked better than I could have prayed for!" Kieran groaned softly against his neck, barely holding on, and Dutch cleared his throat. "Well, y'know, except for you gettin' tortured. Sorry 'bout that, but you were warned that was a possibility. That's why we saddled you up with that horse—damn thing was older than Uncle."
"They saw through your bluff?" Bill asked.
"Yeah," Kieran wheezed.
"Damn! Even with the box a' money? I thought that would get 'em," Dutch lamented before smiling again. "But, hey, the backup plan worked just beautifully now didn't it? Kieran lured 'em in and now the O'Driscolls are responsible for blowing Annesburg's biggest mine! They don't even have an inkling that it was us!"
"How ya doin' Kieran?" Bill asked, as tenderly as God would allow. "Ya hurtin' real bad?"
Surprisingly, he was. Still, through his horribly swollen lips, he uttered "I'm fine."
He saw his hot shadow then. It looked at him with pity before contorting into another person, with golden-brown curls, rosy-pink cheeks, a freckled face, and a pretty dimple brushed onto her stunning face. Then it bent into an ugly frown and released a silent scream. Kieran felt terrified suddenly. Shit, shit. Oh God, is she gonna be disgusted with me? Oh God, she is. Oh, I can barely see outta my left eye, oh God, she'll hate that. Shit, shit—
"Ya did good, Kieran," Bill interrupted with a simper. "Ya really took one for the team."
"Oh, yes…" Dutch said with such fatherly pride in his brown eyes that Kieran's anxieties melted away. "No question 'bout it now. He's one of us."
He clung to those words the whole ride to Beaver Hollow.
1:03 AM, August 5th, 1899
To Kieran's relief and confusion, Mary-Beth was not horrified to see him. She was angry. "What the hell did you go and do?" she asked as Bill lifted him down and walked him to the spool table, sitting him in the same chair he'd been in the morning Dutch had called for him.
"I'm sorry," was all he could muster. She looked really nice, he thought, but he tried not to stare at her, to acknowledge her. When he was a child, he used to think that things could only see you if you saw them—to a four-year-old, it was the only logical explanation for why his cat wouldn't pay attention to him. Even now, he still occasionally tested that theory, hoping it might be correct.
"I don't want you sorry!" she said, scurrying to the gang's scant medical kit and removing liquor and bandages before returning. "When I want you sorry," she mumbled, "you'll know."
It was a better reception than Kieran had feared, but admittedly, he'd had some rather warm fantasies he was a little disappointed she wasn't helping him fulfill. Luckily, Uncle appeared to help with the swooning, patting Kieran on the shoulder, and saying "Don't worry, boy. That speech just means she wants to fuck you. I hear it all the time."
"Get lost, ya old goat!" Mary-Beth cried, splashing his eyes with the burning firewater.
Kieran chuckled. The chuckling hurt so bad that he stopped chuckling.
He looked around. It was late and most were dressed in their white nightwear, apart from Charles who was on night watch for a few more hours, and Karen who was passed out in her black gown. She was the only one not to greet Kieran (being stupid drunk all the time was exhausting work). Even Strauss approached him, gingerly asking if Kieran had been able to preserve his Christmas-red lockbox. He seemed nearly sad when the answer was no. Nearly.
Dutch wandered over next, surrounded by a horde, all demanding answers and asking where the hell the three of them were and why Kieran was so fucked up. He rose up onto the table like it was a pedestal, addressing all his loyal subjects. He told them about Kieran's intentional kidnapping and the bombing of the Annesburg mine.
The stunned silence was expected by Dutch, Kieran thought, but he didn't seem ready for what came after.
"Are you outta your mind?!" The mob folded open to show the source of this statement: it was Abigail. "That's more heat we don't fuckin' need right now! Why do you keep doing this, Dutch?!"
Dutch's ecstatic smile whimpered but he forced it to remain stagnant. "Well, Abigail, if you had listened, you would have heard that the heat ain't gonna fall on us. That was the point. Think: Cornwall's fundin' the Pinkertons and they're comin' after us cuz we're the ones doing the most damage, but now we've changed that. Cornwall was a major investor in Jameson's Mining and Coal Company and we just crippled his largest mine and framed the O'Driscolls for it! Can't you see?!" The blank faces were his answer. "We just tricked our greatest enemy into hunting down our second greatest enemy for us, pulling them off our trail. It's brilliant!"
"Brilliant?!" objected the last person Kieran would have ever expected to side against Dutch. Especially for him. "Look at what happened to Kieran! You allowed this to happen, Dutch!"
"Susan," he coaxed, his smile long gone now, "that was not the ideal predicament, but Kieran volunteered, I didn't beat him into it, did I, Kieran." Dutch glanced to him for backup, but his throat was too raspy and dry to agree. It wouldn't have mattered because Abigail would've cut him off.
"The Pinks didn't know where we were, but now you've drawn 'em up north, a hop, skip, and a jump from where we're at now!" she protested, walking until she was directly in front of Dutch, leering up at him. "What's the point a' staying discreet if you keep pullin' these crazy stunts?!"
"Have some faith in Dutch, Abigail," Javier broke in.
"Pick. A. Side. Of. The. Fence." Dutch growled at the Mexican. He gawked at everyone next, from Tilly's shy countenance to Jack's confused one to Molly's slight smile to Swanson's agape mouth to Sadie's apathetic scarred cheek. "Can't you see? Can't you see what I've done is good for us?"
"Dutch," Lenny sighed, hands on his hip, " we tried this before, remember? Brought hell to Saint Denis and they still had fifty guys to spare to bring Shady Belle down. And forty more and a Maxim gun back in Lakay. Didn't matter what we did, there's just too many of 'em. You ain't pushing any more off our scent."
Dutch made a sound between a gasp and a shriek. "Lenny, a-are you kiddin' me? You're the pragmatic one! Can't you see how sly this was? The O'Driscolls are goin' down now!"
"I-I can't argue it weren't smart, Dutch, but…"
"But what?"
"But…" he struggled.
"But what?!"
"First Pearson!" Lenny cried. "Now Kieran. You're goin' too far just to win, Dutch!"
Dutch jolted as though he'd been slapped. "I'm goin' too far? It was your idea to blow a city to smithereens just to rob a damn boat!"
Lenny didn't have a rebuttal to that.
Ignoring his own nature, Charles stepped in next. "Dutch, this isn't right. Do you know what you've done, what you've really done? You put a lot of innocent folks outta work, folks who can barely afford to live as is. This is against what you always preached us on about."
Dutch scoffed. "Did you see the way they lived? Jameson's a crook who's abused those people long enough. If anything, we're helpin' 'em! They'll move on now, find a place where they can make decent wages."
"Where?" Abigail butted in. She pulled a chair and used it as a ladder to bring herself onto the spool table with Dutch so she could meet him on equal footing."Tahiti?" The atmosphere was thick and more prevalently, hushed until she continued. "Where are they gonna go, Dutch? What they gonna do? John told me a lotta 'em don't even speak English for God's sake!"
"Did he now…" Dutch's eyes rolled to John, who picked up little Jack, rocking him in his arms, trying to use him as an excuse not to participate in the argument between his wife and father. Dutch glanced back at Abigail, forming a misshapen grin. "Well… maybe they can start whoring. If it makes a woman into a goddamn messiah, it can't be all bad, can it?"
"What?" Abigail snarled.
"John!" Dutch called. "Get your wife under control!"
"Yes, John," she mirrored, "get me under control."
They both stared daggers at John, their eyes grabbing him by an arm and tugging, careless of the damage it would do. He just stood there, rocking a tired Jack, hoping the world would swallow him up and allow him a reprieve from this conversation.
"John!" they said in unison.
At last, John looked up, licking his lips, selecting his words very carefully. "Dutch… I… Why didn't you tell us what you were planning? I mean… if you had told us instead a' just disappearing with Bill and Kieran, we coulda talked this over some more…"
The inflection at the end made it sound like there was more, but there wasn't.
Dutch lept down from the table, leaving Abigail up there all alone. He kept his head down, obscuring his face so all Kieran could see in the dark night was that little pink square. "I thought—I thought you'd all be happy," it said. "I thought…"
And that pink piece of cloth ran off, mounting The Count and vanishing into the forest, mad-as-hell. And heartbroken.
Dutch's new plan... surprisingly one of his better ones.
First major piece of conflict with the gang, and it's only gonna build more as we progress.
Hope you liked, I had a lot of fun writing this one-Kieran's conversations with Swanson, Dutch, and Tom in particular.
Let me know where you think the characters stand on Dutch's actions, I'm always hungry for input.
