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-Eight: Swanson

6:09 PM, August 20th, 1899

"I win," Jack said triumphantly, placing down his last white tile.

"So you did." Although in truth, Orville had no idea. He hadn't played dominoes for just shy of a decade and a half and couldn't remember the rules if I put a gun to his head (a tempting notion). He'd been twenty-nine then. Had a wife, two sons—he'd taught them how to play as a matter of fact. Now he could barely recall what they looked like…

Don't think about it, he told himself, glancing around his environs. White tiles. Beige table. Green grass. It was a new habit he was trying, and even quasi-useful. Relax… What's done is done. He'd spent most of his life thinking and taking great lengths to forget about them and it hadn't done him any good.

Abigail's empty glass sat on the table to his right and in the reflection, he saw gray wires sticking out of his head. Against his better judgment, he wondered, for a brief moment, if he was a grandfather. Or a father, if his seed took inside Margaret. Margaret. No, no, gray hairs. Clear glass. Brown droplets.

He'd watched Abigail leave that clear glass with the afterbirth of her backwash-laden beer. Where she was going, it was a requirement. Jack set the tiles again and Orville collected his from the boneyard, and no sooner than he had did he see—in the corner of his eye—Abigail Roberts storming over, cursing under her breath. Therein lies the natural charisma of Molly O'Shea.

"How did that little chat go?" Orville asked her.

"It was the last time I'll ever talk to that bitch again, let's put it that way," she replied, pulling a chair beside Jack.

"So no more productive than all the others," he chuckled.

"Reverend," Abigail groaned, stroking her forehead in pain, "this is also the last time I'll talk about that bitch again."

"Okay." He connected a three-six tile to Jack's double six with a snap.

"I swear," Abigail burst, unable to barricade it, "she fuckin' gets off on everyone hatin' her. She wants it that way. Wants to be the goddamn victim, all the goddamn time. I don't think she can live without it."

"Hmm. Did you try—"

"I really don't. She needs it. Can't admit you're the problem through a fog of self-pity, can you? And don't even get me started on how she's been actin' lately. Won't stop wearin' that stupid smug smile all the damn…"

It went on like that for a round or two before Dutch and John returned from the native's reservation. They'd been going over there for a while now, meeting potential allies, garnering information. Dutch had a plan, or so he said.

Abigail smiled when she saw John; as per their ritual, she sat still as he snaked around, taking her from the back, wrapping her in a hug, and kissing her cheek. "Missed you," he'd say.

"You too," she'd say back. And he'd transfer his hug to Jack, squeezing the boy so tightly his laughter grew as high as a baby girl's.

It always filled Orville with a dark, melancholy feeling. He hoped it wasn't jealousy, because he really was happy for them—they'd been different since John returned. Like a proper family.

"There you go," Orville said, standing and presenting his stool for John. "I've lost to this tiny son-of-a-gun all day, you can take a shift."

John thanked him and took his place, and Orville began his rounds through camp, stopping to try poor Ms. Jones—he was met with failure every time. After that he checked on Tilly, cooking away at Pearson's chuckwagon. Then he shared a pleasant conversation with Kieran before advancing to attempt to pry a few words out of Charles, another foolhardy endeavor. Afterward, he retreated back to the Marston family, who were always pleasant hosts. As he crossed camp, he couldn't help but notice the grizzled, scruffy form of Bill by the campfire, so drunk Orville feared the liquor on his breath would stoke the fire into an inferno.

He was miserable, mumbling to himself, drinking worse than he had in a while (no, he was not attempting to get on Karen's current level so they could be friends again). Swanson's shoes stopped in their tracks, landing on a pack of burgundy earthworms.

He was tempted to call out to Bill, to talk to him. Yet, he felt those worms writhe beneath him and couldn't seem to make Bill's needs outweigh theirs, and so he kept on walking. Away. I know I haven't got the right to be lookin' down my nose at anyone after I spent so long with my nose in one, but I just can't. I can't make pleasantries with such a man. Not after what Mary-Beth said he did.

"Lenny!" Dutch called over by his tent. The boy rushed over and Orville saw them commune from a distance. Orville smirked; Lenny was wearing a blue vest, black puff tie, one of Arthur's coats, beaver he trowed, and a checkered scarlet scarf, and for a moment, it was Dutch and Hosea talking, like nothing had ever changed. Even when that image faded, Orville's smile persisted. That boy's really grown into quite the man, he thought. It was the romantic in him, but he thought he saw Lenny flirting with Tilly the other day at the chuckwagon. Orville hoped he was. His grieving for Jenny had gone on long enough. Sometimes we lose people, and there ain't nothing to do but plow on. The memories came back and he needed to calm himself with the burnt sienna of Molly's hair as she strutted along.

Then he realized and scooted closer to Dutch's tent, in case she was drunk and Dutch said the wrong thing and she tried to claw his face off. But something was off about her. If Lenny had grown more cool, than she had to, eerily so.

She sighed blissfully through pursed lips, a half-whistle, leaning one hand on the gang's patriarch's wooden tent pole. "Lovely fuck we had last night, didn't we, Dutch?"

The three men in earshot of that did a double-take. Dutch was gone last night. I don't think she left camp, we woulda noticed the missing horse at the very least. What's she implying?

From what Orville could make out, that same deduction was racing around in Dutch's head, too. He stared at Molly with a loathful confusion, the same kind you pay a puzzle you can't quite crack. He turned back to Lenny, his eyes still half-fixed on the woman who was now stroking his tent's mast suggestively. "If he's gone, find another boat. We don't have much cash at the moment, those bonds are a mite too hot right now, but offer them up instead. Good as gold, I can't imagine any man with his head on straight turning 'em away."

And with that, Dutch spiraled away inside his tent, though I suppose I ought to call it a tepee with how much time he spent with the natives, bumping sharply into Molly as he entered.

"Where are ya headed?" Orville asked Lenny, shadowing him as he walked to the hitched horses on the other side of camp.

"Van Horn. Whichever way things fall, we need a ride outta here, so I'm checkin' to see if that colorful boat captain Sean and Trelawny spoke so highly of is back from New Orleans yet."

"Makes sense. Mind if I tag along?"

Lenny jerked his head. "You want to? Since when?"

"Since now." He engirdled his arm around Lenny's shoulder. "I want to give you a bit of advice regarding the fairer sex."

Lenny groaned, knowing where this was going a mile in advance. They reached the horses. "You ride with me," he said, grabbing Céline's reins and yanking the Turkoman over to the clergyman. "Even sober, I wouldn't trust you to drive a bicycle."

And then, after a minute of Orville's pathetic attempts to shimmy atop the horse, they set off.

The jungle struck the reverend differently now. It was too quiet, too still, not even the trees shook in the heavy wind. He'd heard about Uncle and Sadie getting hit by the Murfrees—they hadn't been that far from camp. Had the brood finally found out where they were stationed? Were they just waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike? Even when they broke clear from the woods onto the main road, Orville didn't feel safe.

To ease his nerves, he started a conversation. "How do you know the boat will be there?"

"Well, short answer is: we don't," Lenny answered, "but he claimed he'd back and forth every two weeks, so unless he's got a bad eye for calendars, which is more than likely, or he's been killed, retired, or put out of business, all viable options, our Mr. Oliver Smith should be there, lounging about."

Orville nodded, opening his mouth, until he saw a big, broad-shouldered man riding towards them with godspeed. He was fitted with a green bandana, and Orville nearly shouted O'Driscoll!

Then the man passed them by. The exhale of relief shot out involuntarily. Calm down, Jesus… Maroon horse. Gray sky. The O'Driscolls ain't even in play anymore. They got chased away by the Pinks, and unless something went wrong, that should've shaken both of them off our backs. So why am I so… tense? Must be withdrawal.

"So…" Lenny started, "I reckon… while we're at Van Horn, we-we…"—he sighed in defeat—"we might as well hit the saloon again."

Oh. "Yeah, yeah, we'll do that."

"Do… do you think he's dead?" Lenny's voice cracked as he uttered it.

Orville wasn't sure what to say, so he gave perhaps the most universally politique answer in the English language. "I really don't know." He knew it wasn't a very encouraging reply, but he didn't want to lie. When he first donned the cassock in Rock Hills Church in Kansas, that was the first lesson Brother Ramirez taught him. He was a tall man, Brother Ramirez, had very oily skin—despite voyaging north to colder climates from his hometown in Mexico, where he spoke often of heat waves that cooked flies right out of the air, he sweated incessantly, worse than Orville had ever seen another man sweat.

Still, when he spoke, you wouldn't dare giggle at the dark stains lacing his white robes. "Orville," he'd said, with the voice of God, always using first names (perhaps it was a display of authority, but Orville believed he just liked learning everyone's first name), "when they come, and they will come… in swarms, you mustn't lie. When a mother comes crying that the scarlet fever is choking her son to death, turning him red with rashes and asks for your help, y'know what she's doin'? She's fishin'. For you to tell her everything's all right, that God won't let her child die. If you feed her that when her boy dies in the next few days, she'll hold Him accountable, and you. We can't have that. God loves her son, as he loves you and me, and we cannot misuse that trust by feigning to comprehend His will." At that point he'd lift both hands for Orville to take in his own—it would've been a sweet custom, if not for the palms flooding with sweat. "The world is a nasty place, Orville. Filled with more sin than virtue at this time, I believe. So please, don't go adding more sin to the earth with a lie."

Even though Orville would grow to procreate more sin than he'd have ever thought imaginable, lying was the one vice he strived to avoid.

"I-I don't think he went back to drinkin'," Lenny admitted. "Not the way he talked about it. Worst year of his life, he said. No way."

The reverend respired roughly, scanning for a pleasant view before delivering his unpleasant views. He found a pretty purple verbena sprouting amidst murky brown grass—must've been the last one of the season. "Lenny… I don't think Hosea's disappearance was a coincidence. Arthur passed and Jack was dead, for all he knew—the two boys he was closest with."

"He was close with me," Lenny spat out unintentionally. "He was… he was my friend." His stomach sank and gurgled agonizingly in Orville's hands.

The preacher coughed back the phlegm from his throat. "I-I was lyin' before there, Lenny."

"Huh?"

"'Bout my not knowing if Hosea was alive or not. Just didn't wanna feed ya false hope. He's alive, I know it." And somewhere in the world, a tall sweaty corpse rolled over in its grave, but it was worth it. Lenny smiled. So Orville kept on. "And it won't be another year, kid, I promise. Hosea's sad and lonely out there somewhere, drinking his problems away—and trust me, I know how that feels—and we'll find him, and we'll help him, and when he lays eyes on you, he'll be just beamin'."

He had no clue if there was any truth in any of this, and most likely there was not. Still, he'd tallied up so many sins over the years, what was one more?

"Thanks, Swanson."

"Of course, Lenny." He chuckled. "And hey, while we're on the subject of beaming, I couldn't help but notice the way you were eyeing our Tilly today…"

"You're way off-base, old man," Lenny responded quickly.

A broad grin twisted Orville's mustache until it fell completely when he saw it.

Van Horn. It was tumbledown and sunken down—it looked as though the whole town could slide off the earth and down into the black depths. The smell of thick coal blasting from thin oxidized smokestacks raped its way into their nostrils from five hundred feet away. Vultures flew overhead, knowing this was a prime spot to scoop up a cheap meal. It was as run-of-the-mill as Orville expected.

Yet… he felt an unexplainable twitch of dread in his skin as they rode into town, passing the lighthouse on their way in. There were ruffians and other such lowlifes prowling the streets, but they were few in number, in fact, they were barely present in number. Like a skeleton crew—the lowest exact number of civilians you could keep to avoid rousing suspicion…

Just withdrawal, he thought, trying to relax. Moldy brown docks. Greasy white windows… with the curtains drawn.

They hitched Céline by the pier, appropriate since that was their first stop. They walked down the dock seemed to stretch on for hours, until they found the small cargo ship stationed at the end—the only ship in Van Horn for that matter. The waters were choppy and the boat convulsed like a woman with TB. I say woman because, despite the shakiness, the bold white letters tattooed on the vessel's taupe underbelly reading The Foreman's Dame were as clear as day, even beneath the cloudy, growling sky. Lenny called out for some crew members to greet them. Eventually, an answer came back:

"The hell do you want?" asked a voice from the crow's nest. He was too high up to make out any details, but Orville did notice the slur in his voice and the legs dangling carelessly through the gaps in the barred nest.

"Did… did we wake you?" Lenny said, taking the words out of the clergyman's mouth.

"You did, thanks a lot," the drunken money of a man commented, his tone teeming with sarcasm. "Now piss off."

"Um, first we had a few questions. Do you—"

"I'm not in the mood for answering questions. Leave me be."

"Certainly sir," Lenny said calmly, "just two questions and we're gone. Do you know if—"

"Still not in the mood for questions," the man in the crow's nest barked down, tossing a filthy green whiskey bottle at them. It hit the water instead, missing them by fifty feet. "Ya really shouldn't think that talkin' fast makes a no into a yes and a yes into a no. British guy pulled that on me once and I had to shoot his face off with a shotgun—didn't wanna do it, but I felt I owed it to his kids."

Orville kept his gaze fixed on Lenny, who flashed his pearly-white teeth even though the man was on his back and too far away to see his face properly. "And I'm sure they say a prayer for you every night for that, but that flowery story doesn't change our position. I need a few simple directions—and, believe me, if it was up to me, I wouldn't be here, but it isn't—so I must plant my feet here sir, until you are ready to comply with my mostly minimalistic demands."

He sat up in his giant waste basket, and Orville finally saw his face, albeit from such a distance that he couldn't really make out the features, just that he was wearing a white shirt, stained with booze and a brown hat, perhaps a bulldogger? "Am I currently bein' blackmailed by a—hold on, you're black, right? Hard to tell from here."

"Yes sir, I am," Lenny replied.

"So, am I currently bein' blackmailed by a black ma—eh… never mind. Sounded funnier in my head." He scratched his eye with his thumb. "Just do what you're here to do so I can get back to doin' what I'm here to do."

"Sleeping?" Orville couldn't help jabbing.

"Waiting."

Lenny, keeping that phony simper equipped, threw the hem of his scarf over his shoulder so the remaining end looked like a red and black dress tie. "Well, me and my friend here are in search of a boat to transport us off and away, so we are either searching for an old business associate of ours who guaranteed our safe travels. Goes by the name of Mr. Oliver Smith. Or, we require other means of relocation and therefore, another boat. Thus, I would inquire as to whether or not you are the captain of this ship so we could get negotiations brewing as soon as possible."

The man on high scratched his chin, unimpressed. Then he lifted a leg over the other and farted. "Got good news and better news and worse news. You can't find Oliver Smith or make a deal with me because by doing one you'd do the other. I'm Oliver Smith—"

"Oh, pleasure to meet you!"

"Thanks. Likewise. Sorta. Anyways… I'm afraid I can't take you fellas right now. Maybe in a few weeks…"—he mumbled the next part, annoyed— "... or a few years with how damn long this is takin'."

"Why?" Orville couldn't resist asking. "You don't look too busy." He gestured around the barely-above-a-ghost-town.

"Waitin' on a client. Icelandic fella. I think his friend was Russian, but I never really took the time to remember to remember."

"Well, sir," Lenny started, "it's your lucky day: here we are!"

The boy took a few minutes relaying their cover story to the sailor; he was far away, but from the habitual nods and lack of objections, Orville presumed he ate every last bite Lenny fed him. When it was over, he seemed relieved, yet he never smiled. "Great… been waitin' on you boys."

"Yes, sorry about that. There's a good reason I assure you—oh well, listen to me, going off on tangents again! I'll regale you with our adventures later, right now, how about we talk turkey: when are you departing with the next shipment?"

"Whenever," he said quickly, "within the week if you want. Or longer. I don't care."

Lenny laughed cheerfully. "Great! If you don't mind, might you extend your gangway—"

"All I got is a plank a' wood—"

"That'll do—so I might inspect your, uh, Foreman's Dame?"

Captain Smith groaned. "Yeah… never trust a Spaniard to spell, I'll tell ya that much."

"I'll… I'll keep that in mind. Anyway, I'd like to inspect your ship and ensure it's roomy enough for my many companions—"

"It is. I promise. Hell, you can bring 'em down tonight to test it out."

"Perhaps. Now then… the plank?"

It took Oliver Smith quite a while to scale down the crow's nest on account of the bad limp in one of his legs. "Took a knife there a while back," he said when he got down to the main deck. "Thank your Russian friend for that when you see him again."

While he pulled a long black board from the boat's interior quarters, Lenny turned to Orville. "Alright, I'll handle this, you go take care of the saloon." His face twisted into a funny web when he remembered. "Shit, you're a… y'know…"

"I'll be fine," he insisted, "if I can spend all day with Karen, I can handle a pub." He chuckled slyly before shaking his head. "Sorry, that wasn't funny."

"Eh, it was a little funny. Meet me back here in ten?"

"Sure."

It was funny: the walk back off the harbor was over in a few steps, but when he turned back, Lenny was miles away, a tiny black dot hopping onto a slightly larger gray and brown dot in the distance, embroidered with bright eggshell white font on its hull.

Orville hied to the Old Light Saloon, feeling good. We're gonna get outta here. We're—excuse me—fuckin' finally gonna get out of this mess. Just gotta raise up a few more bucks from Dutch's next heist and we're gone. He wasn't sure if he'd stay with the gang past New Orleans, not sure he'd need to. It was a big town, easy for one man to get lost in and hard for some guns-for-hire-with-fancy-hats cohort to find him. Plenty of sin there too, ripe for the conversion to God's holy path. He was almost one month sober and felt strong about it too. Yet… that warm feeling of self-gratification, of peace of mind began to chip away as he thought more and more. Mr. Smith was speaking real quick. Like… like an actor following his cues.

Orville glanced around the town, a close glance. There were folks, sure, but they seemed… off. They walked and they talked and they bought and they did what you do in a town, but it felt mechanical. He thought of Strauss; robots just going through the motions, without thought or self-awareness.

He reached the bar and opened the door, not at all surprised by the lack of Hosea Matthews, but surprised quite a bit by the lack of any customers at all. The barkeep was a woman, young and fair, with red hair, a pallid left eye, and burn marks all across her face in subtle rashes and a few large pink blots. "Can I get ya anything?" she asked.

Twenty-nine days he'd been sober, and he found himself—in this precise moment, hating that number, wanting it to be lower, to be zero. There were a few bottles of whiskey behind here—fewer than you'd expect for a bar—but oh how tantalizing they were… the condensation on the glass made his mouth water. Just one drin—

No! God, keep it together, he told himself, exhaling heavily. Relax. Orange, knotty hair. Dusty gray chairs. Black charcoal in the fireplace. Sea-green carpet. Beige floorboards… shining with broken glass. And blood-red streaks. The water in his mouth dried up instantly. There was a struggle, a fight. This bar is empty for a reason, it was cleared out forcibly. No more drunks or stragglers or other wild cards. Why?

And it hit him. He'd felt like Lenny and him were being followed, hounded by some calamitous, unseen danger, but no, no, the danger had been waiting for them. For days, maybe weeks, patient as a panther. And now they were in it, like bugs in a web.

"Hello?" the barkeep asked. Of course, she wasn't really a barkeep. "Whiskey? Gin?"

His throat was so dusty he couldn't speak. His hands were shaking and he was sweating worse than Ramirez. She ogled at him with that one pale dead eye. If he moved, she would shoot him with the gun he knew she was holding with her left hand under the bar.

Still, he chanced it, racing to the door in massive leaps, closing it behind him just as a thunder strike of a gunshot tore the door to shreds behind him. The sound echoed across the lying mask of a town, and they came bursting from the houses, hidden behind those thick black curtains, dressed proudly in their three-piece suits and bowler hats.

There were at least twenty. And they were surrounding him like a constrictor. He ran for Céline, mounting her faster than he'd ever mounted another female before. He uttered a silent prayer and sanguinely searched his left, hoping, begging that Lenny would be right at the foot of the docks, jumping onto the horse, telling him to get them the hell out of there.

Instead, all Orville saw was a tiny black dot on The Foreman's Dame, waving its hands in the air. Dozens of tiny bowler hats surrounded it. Lenny had been captured.

And Orville tore hell-for-leather past all the bowler hats, past all the bullets chasing after him, past that decrepit lighthouse, and past Van Horn, escaping within an inch of his life.

And he prayed for God to protect his friend as his horse trampled over the final purple verbena of the season on the way back to camp. The petty petals fluttered off the stem, disappearing forever into the dark sky. The night was upon them.

The Pinks are in Van Horn. Take a wild guess as to who leaked info about the boat out to them...

Next chapter: see the epic battle to get Lenny back!

Also got a bunch of subplots here that are going to develop into major plot threads later on. I won't say which ones, but if you've been paying very close attention maybe you can pick up where Act II and III are leading...