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 Sixty-Two: Tilly

10:38 AM, November 14th, 1899

"You can say it, Tilly."

"Say what, Dutch?"

He chuckled, rolling his eyes playfully at her. "You ain't a parrot, girl, I don't need you to echo everything I say without a mind of your own. I know what you're thinking, so just speak the words."

"I-it's nothin' really…"

"I'm sure it is."

"I-I ain't doubtin'..."

"I would certainly hope not."

"... but… why? Why now? I could've maybe understood getting revenge on Cornwall after John got shot, we weren't doin' nothin' anyway. But… I don't know… after last night… I just feel like we should be back at the reservation."

"I understand completely," Dutch answered at once. "And I agree. But you gotta believe me, there's strategy here. If there weren't, I promise we'd be back at camp."

"Strategy?"

"Yeah. Simple, so y'know it's good. Cornwall's money backs the Pinks. Get rid of him, get rid of one more blade pricking against our necks."

"So… this isn't about… revenge?"

His smile shined white. "Of course not." He rubbed his hands together. "Now… spill the goods."

She told him what she'd spent the morning studying. "Well, you were right. Cornwall's boat is way too heavily protected to attack—lawmen and Pinks are sticking to it like shadows. And I heard the hum myself: he keeps the boat running twenty-four hours a day. If we were to somehow take out all of his protection—which we can't—he'll just glide the hell out of there before we can board and drift down the Lannahechee River, out of our reach."

She continued, describing in vivid detail her exploration of Annesburg, flirting with a deputy so he'd fill her in on the Pinks, talking with the townsfolk about unemployment from the blown-out mine, scoping out Cornwall's boat from a bench on the docks while pretending to read the newspaper. She was able to do all this because while Dutch's face was stamped on the front page, hers wasn't. Besides Milton and Ross, no one had really seen her with the gang personally, they were looking out for Bill, John, Micah, the big fishes.

"And the only people allowed on his yacht are his manservant, his cook, and, once or twice, Jameson."

"Shit," Kieran muttered. "Not even the guards, the law, the agents?"

She shook her head. "It's happened a few times from what the deputy told me, but nothing steady. If we want to sneak in before the train comes, we can't rely on pretending to be a Pink."

"Then we'll have to rely on the other option," Dutch said, turning to Kieran. "Speaking of, how did you fare?"

He shrugged nervously, always hating to dispose of any news that wasn't good. "N-not great. I tailed her around town, but all she did was buy a few eggs. She tried the butcher, but he was outta meat. Money's thin all around and without people buying his wares, he couldn't get any more shipped—"

"I'll stop you there," Dutch interjected, polite as all could be, but Tilly could tell he was irritated. "I don't give a shit about her itinerary. Just let me have it: is she in our pocket or no?"

"N-no. I tried b-bribing her outside the post office—he never gets any mail, she said, prefers telegrams, but still, he always makes her check—but n-no cigar."

"Why?" Tilly asked.

"She's uh… she's p-pregnant."

A snigger wormed out of Dutch's chapped lips. He licked them. "Man rapes his own staff, classy." (Mary-Beth would agree, I imagine.) "Well, did you tell her that wasn't going to last long? Cornwall's got a wedding band, gold, of course. I saw it back in Valentine when we were introduced."

"N-no. I-I didn't say that."

Dutch sighed. "Damn, Kieran. If only you was the wanted man. If I could've walked into that town, I would've had her in minutes." He sighed a second time. "Does she at least look anything like Tilly?"

Kieran shook his head feverishly. "No. Besides race, there ain't much of a resemblance. The cook's pregnant, y'know, and even before she was… uh, y'know… heavier woman. And uh, she's quite a bit older… had flecks of white hair mingling with the black. And… uh… she had a pretty big scar across her face."

"Jesus," Tilly murmured.

"Yeah. eyebrow to chin."

Dutch snorted. "Cornwall no doubt. Still, she won't kill him for us. Whatever, we'll do it night, the guards won't see too well. We'll stuff Tilly's shirt, paint a gash on her face, and she'll hobble aboard the boat. It'll go off without a hitch."

Tilly's expression curved downward. "Dutch… I saw her hobble aboard the boat. They stopped her and checked what she was bringing in her wicker basket. Cornwall doesn't trust anyone or anything. He does this day and night, I checked with a local fisherman. Even when the sun's down, they'll stop me, they'll check me, and they'll make me. It won't work."

Dutch considered for a moment, removing his knife and gutting a strip of bark off a nearby tree. He did this again and again until a hole in the rough, scaly bark was revealed, showing the flat smooth wood beneath. Clicking his teeth in thought, he lazily sketched a message on that smooth flat wood: Lenny & Jenny.

Tilly's eyes grew filmy and she expected Dutch to turn around with a quivering frown as he remembered their dead friend. But when he faced them again, he was as aloof as ever. "The plan's good, we just need a distraction. Something to draw the Pinks' eyes away so they won't be focusing too hard on our dear Tilly." She felt a twinge of annoyance that Dutch hadn't even asked her if she'd be okay with all this, but she exhaled it, along with her doubts and fears. I've killed before, she thought. And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

"An explosion?" she mused.

"No. Something a mite subtler." He produced a mint-green fifty-dollar bill and handed it to Kieran. "I want you to head into town, buy a dress that was identical, identical to the one Cornwall's maid had. Do it quickly, while the image is pressed into your head." As Kieran gyrated to mount Branwen, Dutch turned to her. "And you—"

"You want me to go to Annesburg and meet with the Germans?"

He grinned amiably. "I want you to smuggle me into Annesburg so we can meet with the Germans."

11:23 AM, November 14th, 1899

Dammit, God, Tilly whined, you win.

She missed Uncle. She wasn't surprised he pissed off. "When the fighting gets thick, you're quick to thin away," she used to tell him, "and when we're hitting the bottle, you've already emptied it."

Still, as much as he was a coward, she'd probably urge Dutch to let him rejoin if he ever gained the sand to come back. As she was entering through the railyard on John's horse,

she could only imagine what excuse he would've made to avoid tagging along. Lumbago, probably.

She missed Lenny too. And Trelawny, Sean, Pearson, and even Swanson. Hosea especially, but she missed Karen the most. She'd considered searching for her a few times; she suspected the wildcat was drowning in booze in Rhodes' Parlour House or Valentine's saloon. Only Dutch had ordered her to stay, to look after camp. She couldn't be refusing him now, he had enough on his plate. And there were enough members of the gang refusing him at this point.

She shuddered, recalling her time with the Foreman Brothers. When they passed her around, it wasn't so bad, once she got used to the pain and the gruff sound of grunting, but when two or more wanted her at the same time, then things turned sour. They'd fight, and when they fought, it wasn't uncommon for her to wind up with a few bruises in the process.

It was silly, she knew, but she recalled the bruises and found her heart rate picking up into a gallop whenever Abigail or Charles argued with Dutch.

Speak of the devil, he was slumped over her horse's croup, staying as stiff as possible. She herself wasn't, in fact, she was shaking with sobs. They rode by the abandoned general store—at least she thought it was, the sign was German which she was as fluent in as Hakka Chinese—shying away from any lawmen patrolling or suspicious glares. With Dutch's (in)famous mug buried in horsehair, he was simply a dead man being delivered to his family for burial. A minimalistic plan, but an effective one.

She scanned the densely arranged, run-down hovels until her gaze landed on the correct one—or correct area I should say. All she knew was it was opposite the post office and what she said earlier was true: there were no specific numbers or addresses, all the low-rent huts were the same in the eye of the town's loving and generous benefactors, Jameson and Cornwall.

Luckily, she picked the right house on her first guess.

She walked up to the nonexistent front porch, a narrow crevice between where her back was nearly flush against the wall of the shabby one-story home behind her. She practiced a hangdog look for the fake corpse dangling on the horse she hitched to the tumbledown streetlight. She glanced back at said streetlight to confirm the weight of the horse hadn't brought it crashing down, and then she knocked brusquely.

To her relief, a girl fitting Charles' description met her at the door. Blonde hair, round milky face, Tilly even noticed the navy shirt Charles mentioned, albeit slightly. The girl only cracked the door a smidge.

All the same, she confirmed. "Uh, Gretchen?"

"Y-yes, ma'am," the girl said nervously, her wary eyes underlined by the lock chain of the rotted pale brown door. Her accent was thick as honey in her voice.

Tilly smiled, whispering, "Charles Smith. Remember him?"

Gretchen's face lit up, and suddenly her skin seemed more tan than milky. "You know him?"

"He's one of us." Tilly whistled, beckoning her head towards the cadaver on her horse. Dutch's fingers curled into a thumbs-up and Gretchen gasped excitedly. "Help me get him in?"

Dutch was heavier than Tilly trowed, and with her assistant being a malnourished sixteen-year-old girl, it took a bit of trial and error before they hauled him inside.

When the door was closed behind them, Dutch fell to his palms, performing a flamboyant handstand, even walking a pace or two, before collapsing onto his back. There was a little boy, tucked in the corner of the cramped one-room house on a corroding mattress that was completely flat and also studded with uncomfortable lumps. He giggled as Dutch fell to his butt, rubbing it dramatically like a clown, with a pouty frown stretching halfway down his stubbly beard.

Tilly tried smiling and waving at the little lad, but he disappeared back under his thick blanket.

She studied the shack then, the roof was even lower than it had looked outside, no more than eight feet off the ground. There were no windows and this family hadn't the money for candles or lamps, so the only light in the room came from cracks and holes in the four walls—there were hundreds of them, so the darkness didn't concern them. The cabinets were all open, yet there wasn't a scrap of food or drink save one stale uneaten biscuit resting on the kitchen table which ate nearly a quarter of the space.

"Are you hungry?" Gretchen asked, tracking Tilly's stare to the niblet of salty bread. Her stomach growled as she spoke.

"No," Tilly answered. "I-I had breakfast earlier." That was a lie, but after the sight of all that blood, she didn't think she'd eat for weeks. "But, you help yourself. Please."

"Oh, don't you dare!" Dutch cut in, squeezing between the two girls, heat pouring off of him as he coiled his arms around them. "We brought a little something for you and your brother. Something… sweeter."

His left arm was the one around Gretchen, with his hand lying limply at the side of her chest. He raised it directly in front of her nose, telling her to cup her palms. When she did, he flipped his sleeve down so stacks and stacks of chocolate candy bars flooded from his black shirt.

The German girl fell to her knees, hair mopping the dirty floor as she pooled the chocolate bars into one large pile. Behind her, blue eyes stuck out from their blanket. Emil was like his sister, golden hair, bright irises, and pale skin. Only his skin was paler, far paler, and his cheeks were deeply sunken in. Tilly realized at once why he was hiding from her. He must be contagious.

Dutch smiled at Tilly. "Trelawny taught me that."

"When did you have time to buy those?" Tilly asked. "How did you even enter town without getting—"

A finger blocked her lips, and when it turned over, it was a flat hand with a wrapped caramel resting in the center. She smiled shyly and took it, slipping it into her pocket.

Gretchen scattered her loot over the kitchen table and began greedily digging in. Tilly wondered how long it had been since she'd eaten.

Dutch sat across from the girl and Tilly joined him. Her seat was low and prickish. The table was a dark brown, but quickly fading to black from decay. Dried blood decorated it. Is that Charles' blood, or someone else's?

She quickly glanced back to the blue eyes in the corner, but they were already tucked away under a blanket.

"Why… oh, sorry… why are you here?" Gretchen asked, once she'd choked down her fifth bar. Her cheeks were chubby and stained brown from melting chocolate.

"Oh, take your time," Dutch insisted, "we're in no rush. We're here for three main reasons, really, but two'll clearly have to wait."

"Why?" Gretchen remembered her brother suddenly and darted all the way to the other side of the room (three steps) to offer him the rest of the chocolate in German. Gingerly, he pinched it from her hands, so as not to touch her.

"Well, because reason one is thanking your mother for saving my dear friend, reason two is thanking your father for saving my dear friend, and reason three is thanking you, which I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to do while we wait." He raised a fist to his lips in premeditated shock. "Oh, that is… only if we're not being too much of an inconvenience… I'd hate to burden you, we can come back later if you—"

"No," Gretchen assuaged, returning to her seat. "No, not at all. My mother should be back any minute, hopefully with good news about a job. With the mine gone, we…" Her sullen frown sunk to the floor and Tilly felt her ribs close around her heart.

Did Charles tell her? Does she know we're at fault for that? She took in the skinny girl and the sickly blue eyes hiding on the small bed that they probably all shared. We did this…

"I-I hoped Father would have a job by now," she continued, glumly thrusting her shoulders in the air, "but no. He's tried the lumber yard, the post office, the train station, the railroads, the tobacconist, the wool dealer, and the wood sawyer. No one will hire him."

"Well that is just not right," Dutch said, reaching over, stroking her arm compassionately. "No right at all. Damn Jameson should be doin' something about all this, shouldn't he? It's his damn town."

"I guess…" Gretchen murmured, picking a scab with chocolate-coated fingers. Her head flicked up suddenly, wide with curiosity. "I never asked! How is… uh, Mr. Charles? I-I was worried about him, his wounds hadn't fully healed yet. Is he well? Is he here with you?" She looked to the door as though the answer was given already and what she wanted to hear.

"So…" was all Dutch said in response, "when did you say your mama was gettin' back again?"

She arrived less than a half-hour later, harboring unemployment with her. She was a spitting image of her daughter, only with shorter blonde hair knitted into a bun a white skirt accompanying her navy shirt instead of a second blue garment.

"Thank you," Dutch said slowly. She didn't speak English half as well as her daughter. "For helping with my friend."

"Was?" she stammered, bewildered.

"Uh, Mamma," Gretchen said, "er spricht über Charles Smith."

"Oh… Charles Smith…"

"Yes, yes," Dutch chuckled congenially. He performed another magic trick, shaking the woman's hand. When his left hers, she found two fifty-dollar bills clinging to her sweaty fingers.

"Oh," she whispered, in shock, "oh, oh Gott…" She swirled to him, speaking in English as best she could. "Oh, no, no, no, I-I n-no taken fr-from you."

Dutch laughed again, swatting her attempts at a return. "Yes, you most certainly can, please, I'm begging you. Really, I'm flush right now. You need it a hell of a lot more than I do."

Tilly felt the swelling in her heart unclog as the woman grinned ecstatically from ear to ear. That was probably more money than they'd seen in years. Enough to stock more food, enough to take Emil to the hospital, enough to move away maybe, buy a better life. Tilly's joy sagged down to reality as she remembered that couldn't happen. They needed them for the next part of the plan.

"Elke," Gretchen's mother repeated, stabbing her chest roughly so Dutch and Till took notice. "Elke, Elke."

"Dutch," he greeted, before pointing to his compatriot. "Tilly. Tilly."

Elke rambled in German for a moment, none of which either guest caught. When it was done, Gretchen stepped forward. "She, uh, wants me to clarify how… grateful we are. Then she asked how Mr. Smith was doing… but now is curious as to whether or not you folks are hungry or not. We don't have enough room to offer you a place here with us, or else we certainly would, she wants me to explain, but she is curious as to whether or not you want to stay with us so we can show our gratitude. She, uh, she wants me to tell you that she hopes you will."

Dutch's nod was polite and courteous. "That sounds lovely. Maybe a bit more too." He reached into his jacket pocket and removed a short bottle of rum. "I'd relish the opportunity to share a drink with your father. What's say we all settle in, talk for a while, pass the time, until he gets here."

7:59 PM, November 14th, 1899

Tilly envied the poor girl. She was the only chokepoint between Dutch and her father, Andreas, who barely spoke English better than Tilly spoke Hakka Chinese. The pair had been chatting for hours, jokes, stories, whatever, and Dutch had stowed more than one bottle of rum in his suit. Their speech slurred and hastened, and Gretchen searched their hazy words to translate their meaning back to the other. Her mother had run out to collect more milk now that they had the money, but it didn't seem to help. The glass was still foggy where the creamy beverage had been, and the two refills that followed, and still her voice was hoarse and cracking, as she struggled to translate every precise detail.

"... für das Geld."

"He said thank you—again—for the money," Gretchen relayed gravelly, sucking back the last white rivulets of her drink to wet her sore throat.

Dutch sucked back the last golden-brown rivulets of his drink before refreshing it and shrugging. "No big thing." He topped off Andrea's bowl—they only had two glasses.

The German took a long swig, rambling again in his foreign tongue.

"He says it most certainly is," Gretchen said, "without the mine, it'll be all that keeps us alive."

Tilly felt guilt solidify into a sword in her stomach. She grabbed one of the empty rum bottles and forced the remaining droplets down her throat. It dulled the sharpness of the steel only slightly.

Elke noticed Tilly's thirst and offered her milk. When she refused, Andreas passed his rum bowl to her. She refused a second time, politely smiling. This feels wrong, she thought. Something about this feels wrong.

Gretchen cleared her throat shyly, speaking softly. "How is it you know Mr. Charles?" Her gaze was aimed at her knees, but Tilly knew she was referring to her. "Are you… related? Or… married?"

She delivered the final word so dramatically that Tilly couldn't help chuckling. "No, no. He lives with us."

"Us?"

Dutch leaned forward eagerly, as though he was waiting for someone to set him up that way. "We're a community, fifteen strong, thriving on the outskirts of society."

"Oh, like Mr. Arthur," Gretchen garnered.

Tilly snorted bitterly. "I guess Dutch miscounted. Fourteen strong."

Silence followed.

Elke spoke through Gretchen, saying, "Christ… why is it the good are always gone too soon."

"I don't know…" Dutch murmured, chugging the rest of his rum.

"Uh, wenn du sagst…" Andreas began.

"He says when you say outskirts, what do you mean?"

"What I mean, girl, is quite simple, yet most men are determined to believe it is a convoluted riddle too daunting to solve, though the bigwigs certainly help 'em with that." He exsanguinated what remained in the bottle, swirling it in his murky glass. "America is doomed."

Tilly sighed, slumping in her chair, bracing for it.

"You ever read The Yellow Wallpaper?" He knew they hadn't. "It's like this: We're in a cage, them carpetbaggers and fat cats have made sure a' that. But what do animals do when they're in a cage? They fight, they resist. And resistance begets labor unions and strikes and protests. So what do they do, the ones topping the bill at the forefront of this country? They make their cage pretty. They feed us products, moving picture shows, whorehouses, shit we don't want and sure as shit don't fuckin—"

"I'm sorry," Gretchen interrupted, catching her breath. "Can you slow down?"

"Yeah, sure. You ready? Okay. Where was—ah, right. Okay, they glamour up their cage and they toss us in it, and they tell us—oh, have you ever read anything by Evelyn Miller? He explains this way more articulately than I can. No, no? Okay, never mind… uh, where was I? Um, oh yeah, so they make things and convince us we want them, then they snatch them from under our arms and dangle them in front of us. 'C'mon, little rabbits,' they say, 'if you want the carrot, you gotta run for Papa.' And we run and we run and we run—in fuckin' circles. Working—"

"Um, Mr. Dutch—"

"Too fast?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. We run in fuckin' circles, working dead-end jobs, in whatever conditions they want for us, this great big system that loves us so much, they do, they told me so! They didn't let us in so they could work us 'round the clock for sixpence more than a fuckin' slave, or so they could pull our votes in whatever direction they wanted, or so we could die in their wars halfway across the fuckin' map in goddamn Gettysburg for no fuckin' reason at all—!"

"Mr. Dutch?"

"Goddammit, girl, can't you keep up!" His fist boomed atop the table, shaking the glasses on it. Andreas' bowl of booze flooded over the brim, dripping onto the floor. Everyone gaped at him with horror.

Dutch exhaled several times. He smiled apologetically. "Sorry 'bout that. That was… very rude of me. I'm sorry. Uh… where was I?"

"Are you outlaws?" Gretchen asked offbeat.

To his credit, Dutch didn't shy from it. "Yes, ma'am, we are."

When she translated, her mother gasped.

"The good kind, I should add," he included.

Through his daughter, Andreas said, "There's a good kind?"

"'Course. Think of us like Robin Hood, you've read that one certainly. We steal from those who don't need what we's stealin' and we give it to those who do." His finger marked the two fifty-dollar bills lying opposite from him. Elke jerked her hand away from it, as though it was literally dripping with blood. It wasn't. Only metaphorically.

Tilly cringed at the lie. They hadn't given anything back for years. They still weren't. He had a plan with waving that money in their faces.

"B-but… you kill…"

"There are levels of killing…" Dutch answered, stuffing a hand under the table. It rose with his gold-plated gun. He dropped it in front of his glass with a loud thud that echoed off the walls.

Tilly shook her head subtly at him. This isn't a good idea…

He didn't notice or didn't care. "Now, for example, I could kill you with this, or…" he raised a closed fist. "I could kill you with this." When his fingers uncurled, Andreas murmured at what fell onto the table.

"T-there's nothing there."

"Exactly," Dutch said. "That's Jameson's weapon of choice. I mean, you get what I'm sayin' right, Andreas? Don't you feel cheated that they robbed you a' your way of living? Your son's sick and you can't afford to take him to the doctor."

"Das ist anders…"

Gretchen translated. "He said it's different. With the mine gone what can they pay us with? There's no job to do, no wages to earn."

Dutch sighed theatrically. "See, you're doin' it, Andreas. You're letting yourself stay in that cage. If this mining town exists for you to be close to the mines so you can make a livin' by mining, then how come when the mines go down, they don't let up with the rent? Shouldn't it be a two-way street? If you accept they can't pay because there's no work to be had, why can't they accept you can't pay them because there's no work to be had?"

The Germans didn't have a rebuttal to that.

"And to address your completely reasonable concerns, ma'am," he continued, "I swear, on God and Christ Himself, I've never killed anyone who didn't have a gun trained on me. Not never." Another lie. Dutch's chair squealed back as he stood. "Look… if you… if you feel uncomfortable now, just say the word, and my girl and I will leave. I only ask that you keep the money, it's perfectly clean, I promise, no one got hurt gettin' that."

Elke glanced at him, opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Tilly jumped to her feet, placidly wishing the woman would say those magic words: get out.

Instead what she said was—through Gretchen, naturally—, "What do you mean? How did no one get hurt? You're robbers."

Dutch smiled crookedly. "Heh, of a sort. To be honest…" He dragged his revolver off the table and tucked it away. "I haven't fired this thing in years. We've moved onto a different method of theft, me and my team."

"What?" Gretchen asked for her father, fascination burning in their eyes.

"We help coordinate labor strikes and protests."

"Huh?" The Germans said in unison.

"We promote unjustly tormented workers to fight back against their cruel oppressors. A cheeky little way we manage to do my two favorite things in the world: helping folk and getting filthy rich in the process."

"What are you talking about?"

"I told you," Dutch explained, returning to his chair. "America has become a cage, the many inside, the few outside. But… do that math. If we outnumber them a hundred to one, and we do, it's us who hold the real power, not them. The high rent that strangles your savings so you can't even get your boy proper medication? That's an illusion, it only exists because you refuse to say no. And part of the reason why we came here tonight to meet with you fine folk is to convince you to say no. And everyone else too.

"Y'see, I've been doin' a bit of diggin'. A few bribes here, a few friends there, and I've found this out: Jameson is only crackin' down on y'all so hard cuz his boss, Leviticus Cornwall, the majority shareholder in his company is here. He's the goddamn cruiser hogging the entire dock. If he believes the Annesburg Mining Company is irreparably in the red, he's cutting the ripcord and Jameson's life work crumbles. He needs to show strength by continuing the rent and refusing tax breaks or any kind of worker's comp."

Tilly didn't think there was a nibble of truth to any of this.

"So, here's where I come in. With your help, I'm goin' to convince all the other men who're out of work and waist-deep in debt to take a stand with me. We're going to march over to Jameson's office, and demand he double his efforts to reopen the mine and cut down on rent. It'll be a civil affair, that's essential, no rioting, screaming, or crying, just a bunch of guys outside his window, chanting our—implausibly reasonable—requests."

"H-how is that gonna make anything better?" Gretchen asked.

"Simple. Jameson doesn't want to look weak in front of Cornwall, so when he sees he can't even keep his own town under control, he'll get desperate. Meet our demands, no matter what they are, as long as we keep quiet and cease humiliating him in front of his precious employer."

"Aber die Agenten…" Elke said.

"She's says there's agents, though."

Dutch chortled. "We outnumber them a hundred to one, too. Besides, what'll they do? As long as we stay well-mannered, we ain't breakin' the law, trust me. I did this before in Brooklyn, ten paces from the police department. They couldn't do squat."

"Was fragst du…"

"My father wants to know what you're asking him."

"I'm asking him to take a stand, tell him that, go ahead. I'm asking him to get what he's earned. I'm asking him to help me get the rest of this town on board."

When Andreas's mouth fell to object, Dutch cut him off. "This is a good plan. A safe one. Jameson can't fire you because if we do this right, get the others involved, he'd have to fire everyone, and he certainly can't do that. His finances are plummeting as is, he can't find a hundred more workers overnight. Do you know what this means? Lower rent, higher wages, better quality of living—"

"And what do you get out of this?" Gretchen inquired, crossing her arms at her chest. "What does this mean for you, why do you care?"

Dutch giggled. "Well, I don't work for free, of course, I got a kid to feed here." He shook Tilly by the shoulders. She laughed forcibly. "Think of me as… a whore."

"Hure?"

"Eine hure?"

"Yeah… a cheap one. Y'know, I ain't got the looks to pull ya in right away, so I give you the first one on the house first. Essentially what I'm getting at is this. I ain't gonna charge you up-front. Instead, when this is over, I'm gonna go door-to-door, heh, church style, and collect eight bucks from everyone."

"Eight?"

"Yeah, with the money I'll be making you all, I'm sure you can spare it. There's what, a hundred people in this town? Eight bucks a pop adds up."

Andreas leaned to his wife, whispering softly to her. Tilly wasn't sure why, neither of them could speak German, whispering didn't make their conversation any more private.

"We…" Andrea stammered, in English, the sneaky bastard. "We… n-no… we no s-sure. N-not. We not sure."

"Well that's perfectly alright," Dutch said, slinking afoot, towering above the poor, hungry immigrant family. "I don't expect you to make up your mind right away. I just wanted to put it in your head, that's all. Mull it over, take some time, please. Think long and hard 'bout your future. And I want you to know that if you refuse me, I won't leap over your head and hit the next German family in line in Annesburg. I will respect the answer you give me and leave you all alone. We got another potential situation queued up in Valentine, so who knows?"

He began squeezing past the narrow gap between the table and the wall to the front—and only door. Tilly followed him, thanking God the streetlamps were leaking through the cracks in the walls or they'd be stumbling in the dark.

"And thank you," Dutch concluded, resting a hand on the door latch. "Thank you for saving my best friend. Please… let us return the favor."

A choice he was giving them, Tilly reflected, sticking her hands in her pocket against the cold breeze that awaited them outside. She caressed her fingers over the wrapping of the uneaten caramel. Her appetite continued to allude her. He was giving them a choice.

Yet, when she turned to close the door and watched as poor sweet little Emil vomited two chocolate bars onto the floor, groaning in sickly agony, she knew it really wasn't much of a choice at all.

They had gotten their distraction.

Another Dutch plan... yipee...

Hope you enjoyed Dutch's rant about Gettysburg. Felt like a Dutch move to work a reference to his dad in there.

All in all, pretty relaxed chapter.

Tune in next time to see everything go to hell.