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 Fifteen: Hosea

2:24 AM, July 22nd, 1899

Yeah, but what you think I should do?

They were coming back—Hosea knew it was them by the snow-white horse riding vanguard to the posse. His heart skipped a beat seeing only five horses until he noticed Sadie was riding with Dutch; Bob must've died. Owls hooted above them as the gang was made (reasonably) whole again, and Hosea and Grimshaw marched to the nearby Dutch who was helping Sadie down.

"What the hell, Dutch?" Grimshaw henpecked. "Why the hell did ya leave us so exposed? These fools…"—her hand branched off in the direction of new arrivals, Kieran and Uncle—"showed up at midnight, and I thought we were done for. Coulda been anyone: Pinks, O'Driscoll's, Lemoyne Raiders, Bronte's people, Foreman Brothers…"—she glanced back at Kierna, remembering he existed and she wasn't badgering him—"Why are you just standing there with your mouth open like a trout? Get them horses put away!"

"Y-yes ma'am," he answered, starting with The Count and walking him over to their makeshift stables.

"Colm O'Driscoll is dead," Dutch said excitedly, talking loud enough so the whole camp could hear. "We fucking got Colm O'Driscoll!" He cupped Grimshaw's face and planted a happy kiss on the wrinkled facets of her cheek. "We got him!" He strangled Hosea in a tight hug, before jumping off as the old man winced.

"Sorry," Dutch winced. "I forgot about…" He motioned at the sling around Hosea's left arm.

"It's fine," Hosea insisted, plastering a weak smile—it wasn't fake, it was just mirroring his current demeanor. "I'm just glad no one was kill—"

And then he saw it. The tubby belly protruding off Javier's horse, where the loin and croup met. He recognized it instantly. He'd played cards for years with that tubby belly, got into needless yet heated fights with it, cheered with it, cried with it.

In his chest, he felt the cold fingers of the Iron Grip wake up, slowly extending so the curved, needled tips gouged his insides; he felt them float until they lightly danced on his hammering heart before squeezing with a gleeful passion.

No… This couldn't keep happening…

"Colm had him at knifepoint. We tried to reason with him, but he was off his rocker. Nothing anyone could do."

Hosea lifted his wide eyes and agape mouth to Dutch; his friend had gotten good at keeping his thoughts reticent (must have been spending some time with Charles as of late), and while Hosea couldn't always gauge what he was feeling, he could always tell when he wasn't speaking the whole truth. He glanced at the five other witnesses, all of them looking down—a neutral position, neither confirming nor denying Dutch's words—except Lenny, who gave a slight, almost imperceptible, shake of his head. There was more to it.

"Nothing, you say?"

Dutch's eyes slowly rolled to the right, where Lenny stood frozen. He alternated a few glances between them, before turning back to Hosea with cold eyes that drilled into him like a knife.

"I am saying precisely that." He continued glaring until he noticed Karen and Tilly exiting onto the tumbledown front porch, gawking at the sight of their dead friend. Besides Abigail, everyone who was at Shady Belle was either out front by the obliterated fountain, or out on the balcony looking down with sad eyes.

"I know this is hard. It's hard on all of us," Dutch spoke to the camp, loudly and with a magnetic, sparkling ring to it. "He was my friend, too. One of my closest…"—Hosea felt sick—"But he is gone now, and he wouldn't want us to fall apart in his honor, now would he? What do you think he'd want us to do?"

Yeah, but what you think I should do?

Hosea felt his hands vibrate with rage and he clutched them.

"He'd want us to do what we did at Colter: buckle down and push through. We can do this! We are so close. Tonight we'll pull our final score, and then we disappear. We just need to hold fast, hold together, hold—"

"Hold onto you?" Hosea snapped. Dutch's ajar mouth closed with a heavy sigh as he turned his head slowly to face his old friend.

"What?"

Hosea looked around and saw thirty eyes glued to him; everyone was staring, like kittens to their mother. He could see it in them as he rotated, paying each of them a glance. They were terrified. Of what was to come, of what they'd lost. Of what they still had left to lose…

Don't turn this into a pissing match, Hosea, he thought. That's not what they need.

He tried releasing his spite into a long exhale, before speaking monotonically, with a sprinkle of elderly warmth. "Things have gone belly-up, Dutch. It ain't all your fault, but that doesn't change anything. We are fucked."

"There have been… setbacks, certainly, but it's always darkest just before the dawn. We just gotta keep pushing for that dream. After this final score—"

"We'll what? We don't even know if we have an out. Trelawny and Sean shoulda been back by now, something has gone wrong."

That part caught Karen and she strode closer to them. "You don't think they're—"

"I'm sure Sean is fine, Karen," Dutch reassured. "I'm sorry Hosea is getting us all worked up,"—he looked him dead in the eyes—"he really shouldn't be doing that." He acknowledged the whole camp now: "I know this is a scary time for us all, but we've been through worse. Just hold together,"—again Dutch looked Hosea dead in the eyes with the final two words—"and we'll be fine."

And then he tried to leave, to let the conversation end there. To shun reality and continue enabling the unattainable dreams he instilled in his naive followers. He doesn't get to do that. Hosea grabbed their pariah tightly by the arm, spinning him back around, forcing him to look at his bygone friend.

"Goddamn it, I need to spell it out? It's fucking over!"—he drew a semi-circle with his hands in the same fashion Dutch had with Milton (although it was sloppier with the one hand in a sling)—"This is over! What will it take for you to see it?! Pearson's gone. John's gone. Jack's gone. Abigail's a goddamn vegetable. Arth—" He couldn't finish, the Iron Grip wouldn't permit him to. "Our boys…" he whispered to Grimshaw, who was too distracted by the loose hair on her dress and the fly boring into her arm to offer a reply.

"What did ya fucking expect?" cried a sluggish voice from the balcony. "Dutch Van der Linde only cares about himself. The rest of us can drop fucking dead!"

"Christ, Molly. It's not even three in the morning!" Dutch bemoaned.

"Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!" she continued, sucking down another swig from her yellowish bottle.

Ignoring the inebriated mess of a maiden, Hosea finally squeezed out what he'd been driving at, what he knew Dutch wouldn't want to hear: "We need to disband." That attracted everyone's attention; Molly's drunken chants halted immediately, as though his words had pierced soberness right into her.

"W-what?"

"Jesus, José," Micah groaned, "is it your time of the month? Stop being dramatic—"

"Shut up, or I'll put a bullet in you!" He turned to his friend of twenty years with pleading eyes. "Milton was right—you know it. There's too much heat, we can't keep this up."

"We can—"

"Dutch, please," he whispered. "They still have a chance to live full lives. We need to break this up."

Javier chimed in. "We are living our fullest life, Hosea."

"And what about loyalty?" Bill added.

"Dutch, tell them!"

"I—"

"I love them, too. I know this is like our family, hell, it is our family. But we have to do right by them, much as it might hurt."

The owls hooted above them as translucent silence plagued Shady Belle in anticipation of their leader's response.

"Hosea…" he finally began, licking his lower lip, "I-I can't just walk away when the cards get cold. I don't want us to survive, I want us to live—"

"Don't do this," Hosea begged, fury taking him by the tongue, "not again."

"What am I doing?"

"What you did to Arthur! You're-you're trapping them!"

"I'm trapping them?"

"Yeah! Just like with Arthur!"

"I trapped Arthur?" He chuckled in a humorless way that forbade his own fury. "You've got some stones—"

"Why is he wearing that hat?" Hosea pointed accusingly at Micah's cheap black gambler's hat with two strands of unfastened brown rope making up the band. Dutch rebutted with a shrug. With a fucking shrug. "That's all he was to you. A gun with a hat. And you got a new gun and you kept the hat, so who cares, right?"

The words hung in the air around camp, shutting even the owls up. Dutch's hands shook as his face was marred with a murderous scowl. His hand slunk for his gold and silver Schofield revolver, and Hosea actually thought he was going to do it. Then he let the hand holding the grip tightly fall to his side.

"If you…" he started, closing the gap between the pair of them until there wasn't any, the brim of his hat meeting Hosea's, "were anyone else in the world, you'd be dead by now. If you ever say that again, I'll put you in the dirt!" He shoved him back, taking special care to aim at that wounded arm, provoking a yelp of pain from the gaffer. "You ain't no better than me. You say I was 'trapping' Arthur? Well, where were you? You were off hoping to God I was. Hoping to God he'd stay so you could play pretend that he was yours; that Bessie wasn't infertile as goddamn desert soil!"

Hosea wanted to argue, to fight back, but the Iron Grip had a stubborn hold on his throat, and he could hardly breathe let alone speak. All he found himself doing was collapsing onto his knees with a violent fit of coughing.

His next moments occurred only in an uneven series of flashes:

Dutch stormed past him, the other gunslingers on his tail.

Someone was talking in his ear—Lenny or Karen maybe—but he couldn't hear them. Could only discern the hoot hoot above them; he brought his chin up in hopes of spotting one but saw naught but the blue moon in the sky—it was at its first quarter, about half full. That's how them fancy saloons do it now. Fill the glass up halfway for double the price. Fuck it, he'd take it. Pay triple if need be, whatever, he just needed a drink. Why not? It wasn't like he couldn't control himself. Just one drink…

Then his vision went fuzzy and he blacked out.

7:58 AM, July 22nd, 1899

Even from the long distance, through the inky-black night and the obstructing arms of the gray and green trees, Hosea could see him clearly: short brown hair, ivory vest, maroon bandana. He couldn't hear what was being exchanged, but based on Dutch's relaxed mannerisms with his hands, like the left one fluctuating around when he spoke or the right one patronizingly placed on the young man's shoulder, Hosea assumed he was winning—if this was the kind of discussion anyone won at.

Arthur's head sagged down in a defeated nod.

The temptation to help Arthur, bolster him, defend him became overwhelming, insatiable. Yet he couldn't move; it wasn't due to the Iron Grip or a bear trap, but for some shameful disinclination to do so. He fought harder, straining himself with sweat, but still his legs were stone. Arthur departed back to his tent, the slaughter of his hopes and dreams displayed plainly on his face. His tent was as black as the sky, and against the starless night, you'd think he just vanished into the whispering wind when he penetrated through the thin cotton doors.

And then there was a voice calling him back and he woke up in his room in Shady Belle, lying with his shoulder to the stiff bed.

"Hosea," chanted Mary-Beth. "How are you feeling?" She handed him a silver tin of coffee, which he absorbed with disdain. I'm so fuckin' sick of coffee. I want something fuckin' stronger.

"'Bout as well as any of us, I suppose," He answered passively.

"Did you-did you mean what you said? 'Bout-about dismembering the gang?"

He considered his next words with a surplus of gingerly gravitas; he wasn't sure of his next move—does he argue with Dutch again once they've both had time to cool down? Does he go to each member and beg them to leave while they still could? Does he drop the whole thing altogether and shoot for the stars with his delusional confidante? He was still mulling options over and couldn't sway Mary-Beth in one way or another until he was sure, in mind and soul.

"Dutch and I said a lot of things neither of us meant," he consoled. "And as for the dismemberment… all I meant was I think we ought to try something new. We've been going back to our same bag of tricks for a while, and it doesn't work no more."

"But… you think it's the… best play?" She gouged him with such curiosity and innocence that Hosea couldn't lie.

"... yeah. I do." He stacked his untouched coffee on a cream-shaded piece of parchment on the green-rotted coffee table next to his head, noticing her languid figure and trying to solace her. "But let's not dwell on that. Who knows? If Lenny's plan goes good, maybe our troubles will be over." Or we could all be killed. Can I let it get that far?

"Hosea…" She removed that cream-colored paper from under his coffee tin and showed its front side: stamped and addressed—a letter. "Sadie got this from Rhodes. It's for Arthur."

The old chisler felt his devoted iron friend roar to life like a train, stabbing his heart with its sharp thumb.

"I thought you'd know what do with it better than Dutch," she admitted bravely, presenting the letter to him with both hands.

"You made the right decision," Hosea said, snatching the letter and tearing it open, reading the contents to himself, before catching wind of Mary-Beth's own captivation, and raised his voice a mite:

My Dear Arthur,

I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to thank you for your help with Jamie. He and Daddy are still arguing but I understand that Jamie is thinking about going back to college. Whatever happens, I believe you saved his life and we are all truly grateful.

Oh Arthur, I have made such a mess of my life, time and again. Why can I not change and be the woman I want to be? Why couldn't you change and be a man and put down all those fantasies that shroud your judgment?

Life is very confusing and I see now that I am not very good at it.

I am afraid we have gotten ourselves into another mess. It's not my fault but I need your help. I'm staying at the Hotel Grand in Saint Denis. Oh Arthur. I know it is wrong to ask you, but I have nobody else and for what we once had together, I beg of you, even though I am ashamed to do so.

Yours,

Mary

Mary-Beth finished reciting the letter for Hosea; the Iron Grip wouldn't sanction him to speak. He changed his mind, downing the silver pot of coffee in an instant, needing something, anything, to wet his bone-dry tongue. He stripped the dusty blanket from his back and wafted onto his wrinkled feet, taking the letter in his hand.

"Hotel Grand?" he confirmed.

"You're going to see her?"

"Of course. Why not?" He made his exit from the room and the house hasty, hoping he could desert the Iron Grip back with Mary-Beth—that it wouldn't haunt him (why not, she was a sparkling conversationalist, why did it need to follow him everywhere he went like a lovesick pup). Of course, he failed.

Still, he marched on to the "stables", which was really just a spot where the horses grazed off a semi-blocked piece of land, collecting Silver Dollar, his prized silver Turkoman. He led the stallion in slow saunters that grew into large gallops northeast, all the while ignoring the filthy looks from the man keeping watch this morning.

"You don't look so hot, José," Micah hollered smugly. "Lookin' pretty spent."

"You too, Micah. The difference is it took me a bullet to the arm to get there, whereas you was always there. Probably born there."

"Gettin' slow with your quips, old man. But getting a whole lot faster with your… c-c-cah! Ca-ah! Cah-oughs!" Micah cackled, imitating Hosea's flutter of coughs earlier.

Hosea was disappointed in himself for not sticking with the advice he'd lined out about Micah years ago (at least it felt like years): he was an itch in your asshole—scratching him just made it worse, it was best you turned a blind ear and eye to him.

The journey to Saint Denis was a cautious one; Pinkertons were on the docks to the east by the market district, the police station was below the mansion district to the south, and Bronte's men were scattered all around, with them all converging at the center of town, where they thought the Van der Linde gang was planning to hit the bank—and if course Hotel Grand was right across the street from it. Silver Dollar and his master arrived from the northwest by the mayor's mansion. They waited by the bridge leading in until a party of riders joined them; it made it easier to blend in. He'd also added a pair of glasses (the lenses were fake, of course, he couldn't risk distorting his vision for this) and a large pipe to his countenance, hoping it would conceal the resemblance it bore to all the wanted posters.

The ride in was tediously slow—the men he rode behind clearly won't win any horse races in the near future—but thankfully uneventful. Hosea hitched his horse by the cemetery without so much as a turning head in his direction. He couldn't go to the Hotel Grand himself, hell no. Pinkerton's had people in there for certain, hell they were probably staying there for the week—they needed someplace to lie low near the bank.

He leaned against the high wall of the bone orchard and whistled for one of the street urchins to come closer. Despite his doughy, cute face, the boy packed a grim, alert face—the kind of a face only occupied by those who knew the deal, the kind of kids you'd never see Mr. Milton caught dead with.

"This is as far as I go, mister," the boy said, staying ten feet away from Hosea, even though it was broad daylight out in the open. Smart kid. Pays to be paranoid.

"I need you to fetch a lady for me." he reached his hand out, brandishing a thin stack of green bills that seemed to spark the child's narrow, nervous eyes. "I'll pay you three dollars now and five upon returning. Name's Mary Linton. She's staying at the Hotel Grand." Since this request didn't require him to follow the old man down a dark alleyway, the boy inched closer, before shrugging and walking over, plucking the money from Hosea's open hand.

"Why don't you go and do it yerself?" The dough-faced boy asked, counting his payment dramatically, as though it were hundreds of dollars he was sorting through and he needed to make sure he wasn't being shorted. "The law got you among the willows? Cuz I could just go run down to our great and wise Police Chief, Benjamin Lambert…"

"And you'd be very disappointed to find that this old geezer is good pals with the good part a' Uncle Sam. And you'd be disappointed moreover when you're arrested for harassing said old geezer for nothing more than wanting to see his daughter without the displeasure of seeing his bastard son-in-law."

Dough-faced Street Rat leered at him passionately, as though he could blow Hosea's face away by sheer concentration alone. He relented eventually, deciding he couldn't, and turned around, ambling over to the Hotel Grand.

Hosea waited a few minutes, trying to remember the lyrics of a song (seriously, what the hell is it? Uh… w-we'll sing in the prose of good brandy and… uh… Shit) before he noticed a policeman strolling by. He could have jolted his face away to stare at the stonework of the cemetery wall, hoping to God he wasn't studied on any further; instead, he gave a wave which was innocently reciprocated. That's how it was with people—it's why he'd loved acting so much in his youth; symbolic interactionism he'd heard some Easterner call it (who of course had never acted once in his life): the way people's views on folk are shaped by the minute details—an accent, a scar, a pair of glasses. If Hosea hadn't been wearing glasses, that lawman might have focused more on the curves of his face, on the familiarity it bore to a poster he'd seen earlier… but of course, all he'd seen were glasses and a pipe and a warm face. He was probably thinking how nice of a fellow that man was.

It was the same way with the stage: the volume at which you spoke, the colors you wore, the style in which you walked. The audience was absorbing it all, already making up their minds on the kind of person you were—the character that is. John had never understood it; of course, he wouldn't. Bastard could never understand the power a smile had on a person—after all, he'd never tried. He missed it sometimes. Acting. Bringing something into the world instead of just taking, taking, taking. Just couldn't fight my own nature I suppose. Bessie always knew. Bessie…

"Hey, old man!"

Hosea turned to face the source of the high-pitched holler and he saw her standing beside it; she looked a lot more worse for the wear than the last time he'd seen her: her thick raven hair, large brown oval eyes, and her turquoise and brown dress (which, unless he was losing his mind, was the exact same one she'd worn last time he saw her, although now it was practically falling apart) were unkempt and weary. The tips of her cheeks were flushed with sunburn, the dimple on her left cheek sagged, and when the tired rings around her eyes mixed with her long eyelashes, it looked like someone had stamped her eyes with a black circle. The Iron Grip simmered vindictively in his stomach and his teeth dug deep into the pipe he carried in his mouth.

"I asked her," continued Dough-faced Street Rat, "her husband is dead. You don't have a son-in-law." He folded his arms menacingly (as menacingly as he could manage anyway). "Twenty bucks."

"T-twelve," Hosea countered fecklessly.

"You're really gonna negotiate for a few bucks when your life is at stake? Twenty."

He sighed, feeding the boy's outstretched hand with two tens. "Fine. Just take it and get lost."

Dough-faced Street Rat simpered and strolled off, granting them one final time with the vexing buzz of his voice. "Let me give you some free advice. Treasure it cuz there ain't much free no more. Use a cane next time, old man. It'll make you look more decrepit than you already are."

Hosea didn't register any of it, though. He was too narrow-mindedly focused on the woman in front of him, who timorously swayed—she still didn't know what was going on and wicked eldritch flights of fancy were beginning to consume her.

"Hello, Mrs. Linton," Hosea greeted, donning a meek smile and doing his best to project cheerfulness with the cold grip festering inside him. He doffed his hat after removing his pipe so she could hear him better. "It's very nice to see you again."

"I-I'm sorry, have we met?" she asked, keeping her distance, still unsure if there was some trick being played on her.

"Yes, a while back. Hosea Matthews"—he offered her his hand (the one he could actually use)—"I'm a friend of… Arthur."

"Oh." Her eyes lit up, before darkening again in recognition. "Oh. I remember you now. You were that-that flannelmouthed conman who tricked Kimmy Sandler into buying a wagon a' grape brandy you stole from the distillery."

"Sounds like me, sure enough."

"The company sent goons after it. Shot Kimmy dead on sight before he could explain."

"Oh… I didn't know that." That Iron Grip was swelling up, bigger than an orange now. "...um… you-you said in your letter you needed help with something?"

"Oh, um, yeah… thank you, but… uh…"—she glanced over his shoulder as though there was something she was missing—"where's Arthur?"

Bigger than a grapefruit. "Just taking it easy. Took a nasty fall off his horse the other day, gave a good poundin' to his head—"

"Oh Arthur! Is he alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, he's fine. Like I said, he's just taking it easy right now. Wanted me to send you his best regards." The lie came with astonishing ease. "So… the letter?"

Her face lost much of its color as the reality of her present situation came back to her. "... oh, that's-that's alright. I appreciate it, but, uh…"

"I'm really a swell guy underneath it all, y'know. We ain't all as bad as the papers make us out to be."

She dug her tongue into her left cheek in contemplation. "I—why do you care so much anyway?"

Because I need to hear you say it. "Because Arthur asked me to."

She sighed, surrendering. "It's… it's my daddy."

Hosea couldn't stop the groan from exiting the chokepoint of his lips. He remembered her father; what a prick he'd been. Leered down at Arthur from his high horse—a whore in one arm, a cluster of poker chips in the other, and a bottle lodged in his fat mouth. Seemed like little had changed. "Still meeting his steep quota of sin and debauchery, I see."

"Oh don't be like that! It's—things have been hard on him—"

"Things have been hard on all of us as of late. I mean, Christ, how many excuses are you gonna gobble up? How many fancy and flowery speeches before you see what he is: a narcissistic, manipulative—"

"Don't speak that way about Daddy!"

Bemused, Hosea stuttered out an unintelligent sounding uh twice, before remembering what he was doing here; during his rant, he realized he'd stopped talking about her daddy…

"He… he suffers enough."

"Yeah, Job and Mr. Gillis. Two most molested figures in the Hebrew canon."

She glowered at him, lightly slapping his shoulder with her left hand. But she couldn't see the corners of her face protruding in a slight smirk."I see now where Arthur gets his famous sarcasm from. It's the lowest form of comedy, y'know."

Every time she said his name it was like she was blowing a whistle into his ear; he tensed up, his eyes narrowing under the discomfort. "Y-yeah. Uh-huh. So… uh, w-where is daddy, anyway?"

She opened her mouth to answer, then froze, the space between his lips bigger than a half-dollar as she considered whether she should tell him, should involve him. Finally—probably seeing she didn't have any other prospects—she garnered the strength to shoot words out of her agape mouth. "E-Eckhart Stables. You know the place?"

"Yeah," he said, motioning to Silver Dollar, "let's go."

He climbed atop his white Turkoman—which was certainly harder than it used to be—before lifting her behind him on the horse. They began to canter southward by the train yard to where the stables were, keeping by the slums to avoid the prying eye of the law.

"What's he doin' at the stables anyhow?" Hosea asked.

"Said something 'bout getting a new horse," Mary answered, giving a strained cordial smile to some of the vagabonds they passed. "Said it was a disgrace a man of his standing should be riding around on some nag. I don't know, he wasn't himself."

"He was three sheets to the wind, you mean?"

She scoffed. "He's not always drinkin', you know."

"Okay… you do understand that being a drunk piece of shit does not require one to be constantly drunk, only that one is drunk at a rate remarkably higher than any sane drinking man would recommend. The 'piece of shit' part comes at birth."

"Oh, you're so vulgar. I see where Arthur gets it from." There it was again, that name, like a lash to the back. "How-how is he, anyway?"

Hosea was usually good at improvisation, but when she kept berating him with that subject, he kept falling apart. "Uh…"—he cleared his dry throat—"Good. Bit of a bump from that fall—"

"Poor thing."

"—but otherwise he's good."

"Does… does he ever talk about me?" Her grip on Hosea's shoulders tightened with anticipation.

He did. His tongue tasted of iron now, and he found himself unable to speak. Luckily, she relieved him of that responsibility. "Never mind," she said quickly. "I shouldn't have asked that. Forget it."

"D-do you—"

"No. Maybe? I don't know. Forget it."

Silence followed before Hsoea worked up the staunch to ask: "This'll sound strange, but… did he ever talk about me?"

He didn't even need to be facing her to know she was probably looking at him like he was mad. "I mean… you'd know best. You-you lived with him, didn't you? D-do I have something wrong?"

"No ma'am… just wondering if he confided anything to you…"

"Like what?"

"Oh, y'know…" Did he know that I didn't mean to trap him? That I wanted him to be happy? That I fucked up? "Anything he was too embarrassed to say to me directly."

"Uh… no. Nothing comes to mind."

They arrived at the stables then—if they could even be called that (damn place looked more like a warehouse than anything else)—, sparing them from any more awkward natter.

Hosea stalled the horse on the street by a lamp pole, not bothering to hitch him this time—Silver Dollar was loyal if nothing else. The filthy industrial air summoned Hosea's cough as Mary walked ahead to the plum-dyed front doors of the sad, brick warehouse.

"Let me go in and see what kind of a state he's in," she said, her large brown eyes filled with a hope Hosea knew would go unanswered.

"Alright, good luck. Scream if you need any help."

"That's not funny." She cracked the door open enough for her slim figure to slip through before letting it close behind her.

Hosea paced a few steps forward, continuing his Herculean effort of remembering that fucking song. Let's, uh, hoist up our glasses… good… good cheer is our… aim? No, good cheer is our—

"You can't stand there," came a rankling voice of a warehouse worker, cleaning the horse shit off the pavement, trying to make it look more presentable. He was exceptionally coordinated in his work, brushing in systematic horizontal strokes, leaving no crevices unswept.

"What, in the street?" Hosea chuckled, looking down to confirm that the scale of concrete he stood on was no different than the rest of the serpent that stretched across the whole town.

"Yes, in the street," the young man answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He stopped for a moment to readjust his flat cap before laboring on in his work that was apparently essential for the warehouse to thrive—not the quality of the horses as you might expect.

"Is it your street?"

And oh that made the lad mad. Disrespecting a man who held little power was nearly as bad as disrespecting a man with an abundance of it—they clung even tighter than the big boys did. "Just get outta here!" He strolled close to Hosea, aiming the butt of his broom like it was a gun to his face.

He was sick of him. Of them. The power-hungry; this one didn't have the courtesy to be subtle about it. Hosea smiled; even with one arm, he could kick this limpsy dunderhead's ass—at least he could have if not for the flash of blue in the corner of his eye. Policemen. On horseback, riding up the street, monitoring the train yard for stragglers.

"Huh?" the shit-cleaner asked. The three policemen were taking their time, sauntering with no haste. "We gotta make this a scene?"

Not seeing a way out, Hosea muttered the only response he could. "N-no." He took a step back—off the street to the puddle of horseshit the boy had raked into large clumps.

"That's what I thought." He sniggered, walking behind the warehouse to the right, going to clean the right entrance.

Fuck you! Hosea thought, not daring to say it aloud with the police mere feet from him. Fuck you, you fucking power-hungry son of a whore! Fuck you Du—kid. Kid.

"I have half a mind to kill you myself!" bellowed the drunken voice of Mr. Gillis as he exited the warehouse, Mary dotingly by his side. Age wasn't particularly nice to anyone, but it seemed to have a vendetta against Gillis. His gray hair flowed loose and thin on his fat head (he tucked a top hat over his bald spot, but it still was visible underneath to anyone who didn't use bifocals) and his belly had ballooned up fifty pounds since Hosea had seen him last.

"Daddy… oh Daddy, please come home," she begged, trailing him to the end of the street. "You're tired and unwell—"

"I am no such thing. You get away from me, you head home… I insist upon it. Leave me be. Damn nuisance." He took a right at the end of the warehouse, heading down an alleyway that probably led out to a saloon, no doubt expecting the conversation to be over.

Insists? Hosea thought. He insists? He followed the fat old coot down to the right, passing by Mary as he went.

"He's up to no good," she said, "Stay out of sight, we need to follow him."

"Sure, sure."

A million ideas went through his head as he walked towards Gillis, ignoring whatever it was Mary had said. A million ways to play this: a bookie warning him his debt was outstanding and would only get worse; a hitman hired by Arthur, who'd heard of his treatment of Mary; a man of the cloth who'd put the living fear of God into him. There were a million intelligent ways to get Gillis to clean up his act. But Hosea didn't opt for any of them. He was sick of acting, of playing pretend—it was all he did. Pretended to be a hardwearing face and reassuring words for the gang, pretended to be an honest man for Bessie, pretended to be ball-less for that power-hungry boy. He was sick to death of the power-hungry.

"Hey! Hey!" he called to Gillis, provoking him to turn around.

"The hell d—"

And he punched him as hard as he could, knocking him to the floor. Hosea jumped on him, wrestling and thrashing the man with his working arm while Gillis worked against him, blindly tugging on his attacker's shirt and throat. Needless to say, both combatants were far, far outside their prime. It was a pathetic sight for Mary, who tried unsuccessfully to pull them apart. Then Gillis discovered Hosea's damaged left arm and went to work on it, clouting it with his right arm. Hosea screamed and rolled over in shooting pain, and Gillis moved on top this time, pounding away at the widower's weary face until he couldn't feel it anymore. One of his front teeth was shattered, black bumps swelled up like they were pimples, and his silver hair was dyed with his red blood.

Through his bruised right eye, he saw Mary tossed to the ground next to him and heard her father shouting slanders at her, although exactly what eluded his ringing ears. Her eyes went wide with horror when she got a clear look at her partner and she rushed over.

"Oh, Hosea! Why'd you go and do that? Oh, God… here…" She grabbed him by the right arm and pulled it onto her shoulders, helping him walk forward. "Let's…umph… get you… umph… to a… umph… doctor."

"No!" he cried, spitting jagged pieces of broken tooth out of his mouth. "No doctors!" He let his legs go limp and she collapsed under his weight, dropping him back down onto the rough concrete. He crawled to the corner, sitting his back against the wall of some export warehouse labeled D3. "I-I-I can't. I-I-I have t-to…"

She leaned down to him, taking his hand in hers gently, looking at him with those large innocent eyes. "You don't have a choice. We can put you under a fake name or somethin' but you need to get looked at. I mean, if it's money, I got… um…" She tried fishing around her pockets before realizing she was wearing a dress. "Shit. Um—excuse my language—maybe they take credit? I mean they wouldn't refuse you, woul—"

"Arthur's dead."

Her large hazel eyes grew dark as he spoke, shadows seeming to loom over them from nowhere. At the same time, the color completely dissipated from her face, leaving only saggy bone-white skin.

"What?" Her voice was cracked and broken up like a distorted phonograph.

"Shot dead in Rhodes. A few days back." Her breath became heavy and boisterous, her chest leapt up and down. "I killed him, y'know." He thought that would grab her attention, but she kept those brown orbs closed, clawing her heart with her trimmed nails, focusing fully on her breathing.

"He told me a long time ago he wanted out. Asked me what I thought about, 'course he'd already made up his mind—we both knew it. Just wanted me to encourage him, give him that extra push. And I… I couldn't do it." He felt something warm drip down his face, but he couldn't be sure if it was blood or tears. "Too selfish I guess." The Iron Grip had him now, body and soul. Clutching him by the whole body, leaving just the head sticking out over the first knuckle. He was talking, but it wasn't his choice anymore; words were being pushed out like a belch:

"Later that night, I saw Dutch talking to him, saw him slipping his hooks into the boy. I knew in an instant what would happen: he'd talk Arthur down, bend him like he always did. And still, I did nothing. Why did I do fucking nothing?"

He looked at her pleadingly, needing her to answer, but she couldn't. Inhaling and exhaling dominated every other thought she could have—she might not even have heard him.

"D-do I deserve to die? Do I deserve to die for what I've done?" asked the Iron Grip.

But he might as well have been a ghost. She wouldn't look at him, wouldn't speak to him; her breathing was sporadic—like her lungs were poisoned and sickly. His hand grew cold as hers left it; she stood up, the shadows across her eyes making it impossible to tell what she felt towards him if anything at all.

He screamed her name, but it mattered little as she walked deeper into the dark alleyway, her ears were deaf to iron. And then the alleyway ate her up and she was gone. Hosea Matthews never saw her ever again.

10:23 AM, July 22nd, 1899

The glass was tepid and friendly in his hand; the place shone with soothing orange candles that calmed his pained body; the pianist sang out delightful tune after delightful tune—he was playing The Star-Spangled Banner now, and Hosea genially hummed along. He hadn't gone back to Shady Belle, of course, nor was he in a particular rush to. He let the whiskey flow slowly down his throat, sending a hot shiver of numbing pleasure through his old bones. He'd never quit, but this, oh this was the first real drink he'd had in a long time, the kind that washes everything away. And it was working too, he felt the Iron Grip drowning—God he should have thought of this days ago—he felt it whimper, flicker, and die out like a smoldering flame. He flipped the shot glass on its rim, pushing it off to the side with the others, motioning the barkeep to bring him another.

The liquid was amber, like melted gold. And he drank it.

And the next. And the next. And the next.

There goes Hosea...

Not sure if my treatment of him here will be popular or not, but hear me out. A lot of the community sees him as a perfect leader who could never do anything wrong, but I've never seen it that way. Obviously, he is a far more reserved and wiser leader than Dutch, but he had his fair share of screw ups. It was Hosea in the game who insisted to Dutch to go through with the bank job despite the risks, leading to the massacre at Saint Denis; secondly, he completely botched the job with shmoozing the Braithwaites for the gold-seriously, conning people is what Hosea is known for, but they saw through him instantly.

Anyway, I wanted to put Hosea in a position (i.e. being guilty over Arthur's death) where he removed himself from the gang without being killed like in the game, allowing me to leave the gang devoid of his wisdom, while being able to save him for later.

Side note: I did change Karen to Tilly in Chapter 13. The dialogue is all the same, I just swapped in Tilly for Karen since she hasn't had much action yet.

Also, I added a summary of the timeline in Chapter 13 if anyone's confused about the nonlinear aspect of the story.