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 Fifty-Two: Bill

10:20 AM, October 30th, 1899

Bill was surrounded by the enemy. Dutch could talk all he wanted, but Bill knew who these people were, probably knew better than they did. He learned at a young age that each person was two people, his father had shown him that. One minute he was crying on the couch, pouring his whiskey into the weeds sneaking under the house, the next he was slapping his belt buckle against his hand to make sure it was hard enough. Think I'm blind, boy, think I can't see my son, my flesh and blood, is a worthless, mooching—

Karen was like that too, and so were the redskins. They wanted him to lower his guard, feel relaxed, then… snap! Like a cobra. But he wouldn't be fooled. He was too smart for that. They couldn't cajole him, he knew their true selves, saw it firsthand in Arizona in 1890. The whistling of arrows, the horrible eldritch chants, their black hair, red skin, and yellow eyes, like demons.

He yawned, pinching himself sharply at the forearm. He hoped Charles would be back by now, to stand guard while he caught some sleep—he had a terrible nightmare about the Red Man again and couldn't find sleep after. Charles was Indian, sure, but Micah said his dad was a slave, so the violent blood would be diluted with the submissive blood. Not that it mattered, he was still out hunting for some wolf with a few of them. In all likelihood, he was probably dead.

Bill's eyes fluttered and he punched himself in the groin, groaning softly. The nights before he'd tied a square of string around a small rug-sized portion of rocky land and tied the end of the string to his toe. Anyone tripped the trap and he'd be alerted, ready to raise hell—he slept with his guns cocked and loaded. But the string had snapped the night before. Like a cobra.

He'd suspected foul play at first, naturally, he wasn't an idiot after all, but it wasn't sabotaged. Although, in a roundabout way, it had been their fault. It was his nightmare that had provoked him into jerking his foot too high.

He peeped ahead, over that stupid bonfire and all the stupid, weirdly shaped tents, to where the land declined. Every time he caught a blur of motion, he prayed Charles was alive, on horseback, pulling up the hill, but it was always one of the natives, or an eagle swooping down low. Stay calm, he told himself. You got at least two hours last night. Back in the army, you was pullin' all-nighters. This is nothin'. Just stay awake.

10:47 AM, October 30th, 1899

"Wake up," the dark figure said as he roused Bill with a light kick to the thigh. He was draped in black, from his shirt to jacket to pants. Hell, even the eagle feather in his black hat was darkening, the sun to night. Speaking of which, it was yellow and glaring behind him, illuminating the man's silhouette, so Bill could only make out his slender, tall frame, and long hair. When his head bobbed in front of the sun, Marion could finally see Rains Fall clearly, as wrinkled as he was overtired. If Bill hadn't slept well last night, the chief looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. "Come with me."

Shit, this is it, Bill thought, rising quickly, scanning his environs. The red men and women were walking past him as though nothing was amiss, but the scent of plotting was thick in the air. They were going to kill him now, revenge for what Charles said Dutch did. He kept a hand tight on his pistol and remembered his platoon commander's credo: if we die, we'll die with redder hands than those goddamn savages!

Yet, to his surprise, nothing happened as they passed the central campfire where kids held wooden guns, pretending to be cowboys as they dashed around the hearth, and approached the horse stations. Brown Jack was there, head deep in a trough, feasting on fresh hay. Fuckin' traitor. My hay not good enough for you? Hope it's fuckin' poisoned with some voodoo shit.

Rains Fall paid him an esoteric glance. "Aleshanee took the liberty of brushing your horse, I hope you don't mind."

"I do, actually," Bill spat.

"Then take it up with him, I don't really care. You wouldn't be able to know which one he was anyway, even though he introduced himself to you before." Rains Fall mounted his horse, a brown filly with a long oily-black mane. "C'mon, there's a spot I want to show you."

"Oh, I'm sure I'll recognize him plenty when he tails behind us on this ride and shoots me in the back a' the head." Bill smiled proudly. He really knew all the moves.

The chief sighed somnolently. "If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead." His eyes lit up with umber fire suddenly. "You didn't think that string popped on its own, did you?"

Bill felt his bowels quake; he couldn't stop the nervous fart from slithering out. Rains Fall invited him again, and this time, he hopped on his horse immediately and was a white shadow to the native as they exited the reservation and twined down the road, past a small spring that twinkled like the sweat gluing Bill's shirt to his hairy chest, over a rickety, ramshackle bridge—no doubt left so by Favours men—up the incline leading along the mountain range. Trees began to wan away, replaced by rocks and boulders, the air grew lighter yet also heavier in Bill's throat, and the chanting of birds seemed closer than ever. A pale hawk was chasing a red robin, so lurid across the crisp blue sky it was impossible not to notice. Bill instinctively reached for the shoulder strap to his hunting rifle, but found nothing; it was back at camp. He grunted, annoyed he'd forgotten, annoyed Dutch had made him do this at all, it had been days.

No, no, he told himself, Dutch had a reason. He always does.

"How do you like our village?" Rains Fall asked flatly.

"Why do you care?" was Bill's answer.

The native chuckled dryly. "You caught me—I don't. I've conditioned myself into politeness—or maybe I've been conditioned by others… eh, doesn't matter. The truth is… uh, Bob?"

"Bill."

"Bill. The truth is you're only here because I want someone who is goin' to listen, not talk. That's all everyone does nowadays: talk, talk, talk, it's maddening. Favours loved to talk, your friend from the Netherlands loves to talk, my son loved to talk, about rebellion and war and concepts he knew nothing about. Have you ever been in a war?"

Bill said nothing until he realized it wasn't rhetorical. "Me? Yeah."

"So was I. I was twenty at the time, a lot like my son, I suppose. And a lot like the rest of us then: we were angry, we were tough, and we lost. We lost every time." They overtook a steep acclivity and suddenly there were no more trees. They'd devolved into scattered shrubbery which shrunk further and further as the pair rose higher and higher up the trail. Then, even the patchy yellow grass evanesced as they reached the peak of the mountain; Bill reckoned it was the closest to heaven he'd ever gotten or would ever get (he was right). The world was laid before them like a map, stretching into the endless horizon; the perfectly ultramarine sky met with the earth at the mullion—the sun shined evenly, yet somehow the edge of Bill's sightline was blurry and dark, like a mist was hovering over the outline of the country; the trees below he knew were at least twenty feet tall, yet the dark-green crowns of the forests looked like furry moss strips across the fields and stony landscape, like God could take a hoe and scrap them away forever.

Bill was stunned into reverie by this gorgeous sight, surprised when he glanced to his left and saw his companion was as jaded as ever. A scowl hung proudly on his face and his eyes wouldn't peel from one object in particular: a dark mass in the distance, a monster. The monster must've been mad because black smoke was jetting from its ears, oiling the clouds above it. It had been a while, but Bill still recognized the demon: Saint Denis. He gyrated his head and saw another beast, Annesburg he assumed, to the west, and Blackwater to the east.

The modern world, he thought, she's closin' in on us.

"There was a time when all this land belonged to my people," Rains Fall said abruptly, sliding off his steed, beckoning Bill to follow again, which he did without question (Bill was good at doing what others wanted him to; he would've been a lovely whore). They strode together to the mountain's edge, overlooking everything their eyes could see. "We were free to go as far as our legs would carry us. My father proposed to my mother by bringing her a pretty blue flower from what you now call Indiana—very generous to name it after us. He journeyed across the country, ran with the buffalo, slept in the vanilla grass, lived on berries and some rabbits he skewered with an arrow, and retrieved it for her. It was on a stormy day when he came back and she said the flower glittered like the moon in his hand. She wore it until it died, and then sowed its seeds to blossom new ones. When it rained, she would ogle out from the tepee at how they shimmered, and once, she felt a thud inside her stomach while it happened. That's why I got my name—from the flowers and the rain." There was a soft smile across his lips, but it was fugacious, replaced by a hard glower. "I never saw those flowers. We'd been shooed out by then and all the flowers died." He pointed down. "This is where we live now."

Bill had to squint to see the reservation, a tight clustered nail-head size circle of gray dots. It reminded him of ants around a bean, draining it until it vanished and then they would soon follow suit, disappearing deep in the ground until all forgot about them. Without notice, Bill wondered how many natives he'd put in the ground, if he could remember any of their names, any of their faces. Don't matter, he refreshed himself, the redskins got what they deserved.

"Is there a reason why this land hates us so much?" Rain Falls asked rhetorically.

"D-do you want an answer to that?"

"No," Rains Fall sighed. "I don't think I like this country anymore. I don't think I want to stay." He chuckled. "Y'know, the first time we were told to evacuate our homes, your government sent us a messenger instead of an army. He said something I'll never forget: 'ya can't be too tied down if you threw up tents instead of houses.'" He snorted dryly again. "Perhaps he was right. Maybe we were born to be on the road. I was born in Tenessee, married in Arkansas, and lost my father, grandfather, wife, and daughter right here."

Bill pursed his lips, befogged. "Right here?"

Rains Fall exhaled deeply. "No, not right here. In Ambarino."

"Oh, sorry."

"Please don't talk, you're defeatin' the whole purpose of inviting you along. Where was I?"

"Something 'bout a wife and daughter?"

The chief rubbed his temples in consideration. "No… no… eh, I can't remember."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Whatever. If you can't remember something important, it wasn't all that important. My son used to joke about the army sayin' that whenever they forgot about a peace treaty." His impassive eyes drifted to Bill then. "You know your man killed Favours?"

"I don't have a man—" Bill blurted before realizing that wasn't what the chief was referring to. "Oh… Dutch?"

"Yeah. Already there have been retaliations. Two women were assaulted on a supply run into Valentine."

"Heh, good thing they weren't men," Bill quipped before remembering he forgot to include a joke.

"We have sentries constantly keeping watch for any of Favours' fools," he continued, ignoring Bill, "and we've stocked up on food to avoid making any trips for a few days. That seems to be repelling any smaller attacks, and hopefully it holds, but Monroe has heard whispers. Favour's men are gathering by the dozen, becoming organized, collected. They're planning something big against us, and whatever it is, we can't be here for it."

He was standing closer to Bill now, and he feared the native was trying to push him off the cliff, and took a large step back.

"Have you ever been to Canada?" Rains Fall said candidly.

"I-is that also rhetorical?"

"No."

"Then it sucks. Cold and wild. Lotta bears, lotta things that want to eat ya alive."

Rains Fall managed a flat chuckle. "Doesn't sound so different from here."

"Is that a joke?"

"Yeah, it was." The chief slid a hand into his pocket—for a gun, Bill thought, but it was only a green tin of chewing tobacco. The mountain fell into silence apart from the whistling of wind and ballad of birds as Rains Fall sucked out all the paste's juices and spat what remained a hundred feet down. Bill prayed it landed on Charles. Would serve him right for abandoning him here. "Your friend… Dutch… he's got me between a rock and a hard place. The way I see it, I have three options: I could turn him into the army, framing him as the one who killed Favours and instigated all the problems between us and the state—which would be right around the truth"—Bill unsheathed his revolver, ready to splatter the old man's brains down onto whoever was below them (why not, with the red skin they probably wouldn't notice the blood)—"and hope that's enough for them. But it won't be, it never is. And Favours' men, his real men, they wouldn't call off what they're planning. We've been guilty in their eyes of somethin' for years now." He coughed out another brown glob and kept on. Bill didn't return his gun. "Option two: I could adopt the Oklahoman attitude of neutrality. Send your gang packing and warn you never to come back. But what does that do for me? Makes an enemy of another dangerous group of people and deprives my reservation of a dozen trained guns to help against whatever threats may be thrown our way—and they will be thrown our way." He groaned and closed his green tin in defeat and when he did, Bill found the gun was no longer in his hand. "No, no, I guess I'll just have to embrace you. Even though you've destroyed any chance at peace." He turned back, eyes heavy as stones. "Maybe that was for the best. What do they say? For every door God shuts, he opens another one? Maybe Canada will be good for us—or maybe not, I don't know."

Bill threw up both hands, needing an end to this madness. "What the hell are goin' on about Canada for?"

A small smile flitted over Rains Fall's lips. "You mean you don't know? And I thought I was being cut out of the loop…"

"Shut up, old man," Bill roared, enraged all of a sudden. He killed the gap between them, looming large over the native. Dumb red man, just like all the others. Tryin' to bring me down, by the pen or the sword. I bet he never married. I bet he just whore-fucked Karen to queef out that other redskin bastard. Wouldn't surprise me, those lovers have so much in common…

"You don't want to do anything drastic," Rains Fall said coolly.

Bill clenched his fists. "Don't talk like you know me!"

"Believe me," the smug cocksucker remarked, trying to get to Bill, to make him think he was an idiot. I'll kill him… "It's bad manners to harm your host."

"Then I won't live with you dirty savages no more. I never wanted to in the first place."

A twinkle of twisted delight shined in the chief's eyes when he said, "Well then, it'll be a rough couple of days for you. In light of the Murfree situation down by where you folks are, Dutch has requested your gang stay with us in the reservation until the train is squared away."

Bill recoiled like he'd been slapped. "What?"

"Yeah, Murfrees launched an assault on Beaver Hollow. No one's dead, at least to my understanding."

"Too bad," Bill pouted, "they deserved it. They all deserved it."

"You're sad man, Mr. Williamson." He pointed behind him and Bill spun as he walked past him. "I'm goin' back now. I must say, I'm disappointed. Your reputation led me to believe you were a quiet man but you're quite the prattler."

"Try Charles then," Bill retorted as they mounted their horses.

"I have, his has also misled me. A prattler too, though much better at it than you if I must be frank."

"Yeah," Bill muttered as they trod down the mountain's base, "lotta things ain't what they supposed to be no more."

"Bill," Rains Fall said after a time, when the heat from Cotorra springs was visible in the thickening treeline, "what would you do? If you were in my shoes?"

"I-I…" he stammered in consideration.

"Would you really toss away your home, your birthright, just to survive?"

"I… I don't know."

"Well, what would you do?"

"I said I don't know! Shut up!" The ride back to the reservation was silent from then on. That was good. There was no more thinking. Bill hated thinking; it corkscrewed everything, made things confusing. When Bill was a child, someone went around saying the local well had something toxic in it, that his daughter died from it, but then another, more officious man, came around saying the former feller was a loon and not to be taken seriously—the water as fine. Bill nearly screamed because what else could he do? Was it poisoned or was it not? If he went five miles out of his way to a different well, he was an idiot, if he drank tainted water and died, he was an idiot. It made him angry, and as it should—life was so much easier to understand when things flowed unidirectionally.

It was the same when they arrived back at the reservation, and Bill noticed for the first time how tattered the natives' clothing was, how rundown their homes were—if they could even be called homes—, how the little boys and girls were playing cowboy around the bonfire because it wasn't safe outside the campgrounds. Something was swelling up inside him and he didn't like it. It's not okay to have something inside of you. He was a man after all, and that was wrong. He hitched his horse where he'd found it, he didn't have the energy to move it—he needed to sleep, he was tired.

He saw Javier and Swanson talking to Monroe by the storage house, the latter glowing in the primly arranged navy uniform with the golden buttons, bushy brown beard, and handsome, handsome face—like his platoon commander…

No! It's wrong, Bill, we can't do this ever again… Get away from me you—

—worthless… mooching… His father's belt strap was soft leather but the buckle was copper and hurt so much…

He plopped down on his thin sheet of a bed, burying his visage in the ground, he needed the darkness, needed to sleep. Things will make more sense when I wake up. Thoughts of Abigail at Shady Belle flooded his brain but he warded them off.

SCREECH!

He glanced up, heart racing, to see it swaying on a branch so narrow its talons wrapped around and dug into his palms. It was the white hawk, and dripping red down its chest, was the head of the robin. The hawk's eyes were brown and inside them, Bill saw a perfect mirror.

Hope you enjoyed. With how much Dutch screwed Rains Fall over, I thought a chapter explaining why he is letting them live in the reservation would be necessary.

Hope you liked this deeper insight to Bill's psyche-his repressed sexuality has so much story potential so it's a lot of fun (in a twisted sense) to explore that here.

Next chapter will have a major reveal that should flip everything you think you know about this story.