Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1875

Hosea Matthews doesn’t harbor any illusions about the kind of man he is.

He is a thief. A conman. A murderer, when required. An outlaw, every bit as ugly as the word implies. He can talk himself in or out of most situations, rob a man blind with a touch so light, it’s like he wasn’t even there. While this talent, this skill, might make another man proud, Hosea does not think it something to be praised. There are other men out there who do an honest days work and receive very little in return. Hosea often robs that man just to put a little more food in his belly. How is he any better?

These are the thoughts plaguing him as he keeps his horse at a slow walk in the fading light, content to let her move slowly as he takes in his surroundings. He’d decided to head towards Chicago a few weeks back. A big city seemed to be the best sort of place a conman like himself could get rich, quick. All the fancy men in expensive suits, their pockets loose and ripe for the taking. He could almost picture it now.

A flicker of light catches Hosea’s attention out of the corner of his eye.

There’s a campfire set up a little ways away from the road. He sees a man—perhaps a decade or so younger than him—sitting by it. His clothes look nice enough, a bit rough from spending days on the road but clearly not the clothes of a poor man. His horse grazes at the short grass nearby, a pretty black mare with a white stripe down her face. Hosea’s own horse—Empress, a pretty blue roan Nokota who liked to run like the wind when he let her—calls out a soft greeting to her, eager to make a new friend.

Hosea almost tugs her away. He certainly doesn’t need to be talking to a random man in the middle of the trail, no matter how harmless he might be. But he hesitates, and that almost seems to seal his fate.

The other man looks up—dark-hair slicked back, eyes dark and glinting in the light, his brows heavy and features drawn in bold lines—and almost immediately, his expression smooths into something friendly. Like oil being poured into water, all transparency blackened and turned into something more opaque. Hosea has seen other men do a similar trick, especially in theater and in plays. Automatically, he’s on guard, but he really doesn’t think this man is much trouble.

He reminds him of the rich boys, in line to take over their rich daddies empires. He may be on the side of the road in a tent with a bedroll set inside like any other traveler, but that could easily be passed off as the rebellion of youth. Something Hosea himself might’ve done, had he grown up differently and with a silver spoon pressed between his teeth.

“Good evening,” Hosea says, trying to wrestle his voice into something friendly.

“Good evening!” the man says, his voice jovial. “And what a fine evening it is, to ride out in the open country like this, yes?”

God, he even talks like a rich city boy, Hosea thinks. All grandiose and full of nothing but hot air.

“It is indeed,” Hosea replies. “It gets quite lonely out there, mind if I sit for a spell?”

The man opens his arms wide, as if welcoming Hosea to a grand palace and not just a patch of dirt he’s decided to claim for himself for the night.

“By all means! Come and warm yourself by my fire, friend. The more, the merrier.”

So Hosea does just that.

Sits down and starts talking to the man—about what, he can’t remember—and he finds this Archibald Smith man to be quite the character. He shares a bottle of good whiskey with Hosea and talks about all manner of things. Philosophy, art, literature. All the while, Hosea carefully filches everything of value he can find in this mans satchel; cash, jewelry and papers that look a lot like bonds.

This utter fool, Hosea thinks dispassionately.

They talk well into the night.

When Hosea finally gets the clarity of mind to leave, he bids the man a good night, wishes him luck and walks back to where Empress grazes. Side by side with Archibald’s black mare. He reaches into his saddlebags to tuck some of the stolen goods way, only to find his own stash of goodies has disappeared. He whirls around at the same time as Archibald does—who has his hands in his satchel and the same expression that’s probably on Hosea’s face. Utter astonishment.

Archibald is the first to break into a laugh.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he says, a genuine grin splitting his face wide open. “I’m very rarely surprised by anything but you…you, Mr. Lafonde, are a goddamn wonder.”

Hosea ignores the way his stomach swoops at that, blames the heat rising to his face on the liquor that sits in his belly. But he can’t ignore the way he cracks his own smile.

“I could say the same about you, Mr. Smith.”

Archibald’s smile softens then, into something that suggests familiarity. Like Hosea’s been traveling alone all his life, never recognizing another person until this very moment. He sticks his hand out, smile still on his face.

“My name is Dutch van der Linde,” he says. “What’s your name, my friend?”

Hosea reaches over, clasps his hand. Shakes. His touch is warm and firm, yet soft at the same time. Sends a little thrill through his body.

“Hosea Matthews,” Hosea replies, unable to tame his own face into something more neutral.

“With skill like that, it’s no wonder you’re on your way to Chicago,” he says. “You have a gift, my friend.”

“It’s no gift,” Hosea says, suddenly sobering. “What I do is terrible and unforgivable. It ain’t the right way of life.”

Dutch waves his hand through the air, as if batting away his words. “Only if you rob from the wrong people, my friend. What we do is nothing compared to those rich idiots stealing the money, the lives, the dignity of the common people. No matter how much we take, it will never be as much as those bastards take every single goddamn day they breathe air.”

Hosea snorts. He sits back down at the fire, takes the whiskey bottle and drinks deeply before replying.

“I don’t know how you figure that,” he says.

“It’s all about perspective. I’ve been readin’ this feller’s book, a man by the name of Evelyn Miller—”

And he starts talking. And Hosea listens. Talks about a world in which there is no government. No one to tell anyone how they choose to live, no lines to divide people. Just people working together for a common goal. People not divided by race or class because they would all be equal.

“If we were to steal from the richest among us, we could give it back to those who need it more,” he says with a kind of earnestness that is rare to find on the side of the road. “Even the scales. The man who works in the factories, he is a fool but only because he believes he has no choice but to bow to the rich man who gives him that job. That rich man is the very reason he starves to begin with. And we, we could be what frees that man and his family from the chains.”

“Why us?” Hosea demands, drunk enough to speak his mind for once instead of keeping it to himself. “We’re not good men, Dutch. Who’re we kidding, tryin’ to play it any different way?”

“We are still better,” Dutch says slowly, places a hand on Hosea’s shoulder and grips it firmly. “Than the man who steals from those who have less. That, my friend, is the difference. We steal to help. They steal to fatten their already over-stuffed pockets.”

Hosea hums but doesn’t argue with him. It does make a certain degree of sense. Hasn’t Hosea always chosen men who had a little bit extra to spare? Hasn’t he always gone after the men with shiny new shoes and far too much expensive cologne on? He’s never redistributed the money, like Dutch is suggesting, but the idea appeals to him, even as insane as it sounds.

“You think we could be Robin Hood?” he says, half-joking.

It doesn’t sound so insane when Dutch nods very seriously. His nose is flushed red from the whiskey and Hosea can’t imagine he looks much better, but he doesn’t look insane. Doesn’t really sound insane either. There’s something there, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s like he’s being offered a hand out of the hole he’s dug himself into over the years, but he isn’t sure if that hand is really there or he’s just imagined it.

“I don’t see why not,” Dutch says, voice still earnest and holding something fragile in it. “Why not try to do a little good with the hell we get into?”

“You keep saying ‘we’,” Hosea notes.

It’s then that Dutch van der Linde turns bashful, his eyes lowering and face taking on an even prettier shade of red.

“Well, of course,” he says. “I’d like to do this with you, if you’d have me. I mean…you’ve got a gift, my friend.”

His voice cracks at the end of the sentence, turns it into something raw and tender. Something Hosea wants to take between his hands and cup gently, like a rose he’d seen once, in a lady’s garden. Or a baby bird. It makes his heart warm, the feeling of electricity racing through his entire body. He studies Dutch, studies the bashful way he stands there. With as well-read as Dutch is, he wonders if he’s ever read Walt Whitman. He almost wants to ask.

He doesn’t though.

Not then. They’re far too drunk for any serious conversations to be remembered and Hosea is itching to be by himself for awhile, to think things over before he jumps in without looking. Hosea doesn’t make hasty decisions. That gets you killed and Hosea has no intention of dying from an ill-thought out plan.

Evidentially, Dutch recognizes this in him, and nods his head, pressing his lips together with no small degree of determination.

“Look,” he says. “We’re both headin’ into Chicago in a few days, right? Find me in Schaller’s Pump, if you change your mind. I’m going to stay there a couple of weeks, see what I can find and then head out.”

“What if I can’t find you?” Hosea asks. “Awful hard to find folk in cities like that.”

“Trust me, you will.” Dutch gives him another grin.

Hosea cannot find it in himself to argue much more. Just tips the bottle back, takes another gulp and passes it back to Dutch, who finishes it. The stars are big and bright in the sky and he finds he feels like he can breathe properly for the first time since he was a child, still clinging to his mother’s skirts. It’s almost like he’s come home in a way, but that thought feels absurd, so he quickly flicks it away.

How could this place be home? There’s not even a house here, just a rough canvas tent and a man with an artist’s tongue. Speaking things that might sound like just another con from anyone else, but to Hosea? It sounds an awful lot like a promise.

And that feels more terrifying for some reason.

Hosea does indeed, come across Dutch van der Linde again. This time, he finds the man tucked into the back of an alleyway, cornered by two rough, burly looking men and talking his fool head off. His feet lead him over there before he’s made up his mind to do it, pulling forth the character of an annoyed but stern older brother. He marches right over and cuffs Dutch in the back of the head, stopping whatever pitiful monologue he was trying to spin to these men. Dutch whirls around, scowl affixed to his face and hand already reaching for the revolver he knows is hidden beneath his coat but abruptly relaxes the minute he recognizes Hosea’s face.

“Do you know how damn long I spent, lookin’ for you!” Hosea says loudly, pushing his voice to sound gruffer, less nasally.

He’s not as widely built as these men, nor is Dutch, but he know’s he’s wirey and hopes this along with the shrewd look in his eye will keep them both safe.

“I—” Dutch says, but Hosea cuts him off.

“Ma and Pa sent me out after the last few brothels turned up nothin’! All this and for what? Shaming our poor fathers good name and giving our poor mother a heartattack! What were you thinking?” He turns to the burly men, who have turned suspicious at the sight of this newcomer, but at least their attention is focused soley on him. “My apologies, gentlemen. Has my idiot brother here done something to offend you?”

The men eye the two of them, obviously noticing they don’t look a damn thing alike. But Hosea is good at this, he knows it. He could make a rabbit believe it was a wolf, if he really had a mind to it. Or the other way around.

“My half-brother, Archibald here, has a terrible way of passin’ time, I’m afraid,” he says, his voice low. “Don’t worry about sparing any details from me, I know all of what he gets up to. How much did he take from you?”
One of the men—a feller with brown hair and a crooked nose—scowls but doesn’t seem like he’s ready to start swinging. He crosses his arms, looking down at Hosea as if he’s found a bit of unlikely sympathy at least.

“Forty dollars from each of us,” he says. “Little bastard.”

“Forty dollars!” Hosea whirls around and pretends to glare at Dutch, going into the pocket of his jacket and pulling out two money clips that indeed, do contain forty dollars. “Are you trying to drive our mother to an early grave?”

“She’s not my mother!” Dutch insists, finally coming out of whatever haze he’d been put in at the sight of Hosea’s presence. He falls into character quickly and gracefully in a way that Hosea admires in the privacy of his own mind. “That whore father took up with ain’t worth the shit on my boots.”

“How dare you! After that good woman does everything for you, from cookin’ to cleaning up that shit! Why, she loves you as if she were you own flesh and blood, you miserably bastard!” He spins back around to the men, passes them the money clips and adopts an expression of remorse. “I’m terribly sorry, gentlemen. Our father took up with a whore some years back—his mother, not mine—and we adopted him when she died of consumption. Boy never learned his place, or to keep his hands to himself. Here’s your money back. I hope we can all part as friends here today?”

The men look like they don’t quite know what to say to this, off-balanced by the two of them, Hosea expects. They grumble a little but put their cash back into their pockets, having not noticed Hosea’s own hands slipping the real prize out earlier.

“Hope you and your pa sort this little shit out,” the second man says, casting a meaningful glance to him. “Other folks won’t be so considerate of family matters like us.”

“We will, don’t you worry about that. Thank you for being so understanding, gentlemen. Have a good day!”

The men tip their hats and stalk off. Hosea waits until they’re out of the alleyway completely to turn back to Dutch, who’s expression is a mix of shocked and annoyed.

“It took me the better part of the morning to get that money,” he says, crossing his arms.

“That might be the case,” Hosea says, his voice going back to normal. “But you only got what they wanted people to think they had.”

He pulls out the money clip he’d spotted peeking out of another pocket, smirking slightly. Dutches’ eyebrows raise, then he scowls slightly.

“I still could’ve gotten that,” he insists.

“Maybe. But you didn’t.” Hosea hands it to him, leaning his left shoulder into the rough, brick wall so he can talk properly. “They looked like they were about to beat your eyes in. What the hell did you do to them to make them so angry beyond stealing?”

“Beat them at poker the night before.” Dutch shrugs. “They were shitty players.”

“Don’t forget sore losers.”

Dutch smiles then, the same kind of smile he’d given Hosea the night before, when they both realized the other had stolen from them without even realizing it.

“You found me,” he says, sounding almost giddy with it.

“I did,” Hosea replies neutrally.

“So…you wanna join me? You believe what I said?”

“I’m surprised you remember all of that, given how much we had to drink.”

Dutch scoffs. “That’s nothing. Wine makes you lose your head faster, but it’s more expensive. Besides, I rarely have the pleasure of such fine company. Wouldn’t ever want to forget something like that.”

Hosea’s stomach swoops again and he clears his throat to ignore it.

“I’m still not convinced you’re not just tryin’ to con me,” he admits, deciding honesty would be best with Dutch. “But call me curious. You said a lot of things that made sense to me and I want to see how far this goes.”

Dutch grins, scratches the back of his head. “Well,” he says. “I had some idea while I was here. But it involves card games with men who preen themselves too much. If you’re interested.”

“I always like beating a man at card games.” Inexplicably, Hosea finds himself smiling. He gestures to Dutch. “Lead the way.”

Chapter Text

March 9, 1877

The way they fit together should scare Hosea.

It’s not like it doesn’t, but at the same time, it feels like he’s doing something right for once. Jobs run smoother with Dutch around. He sleeps better, knowing the other man sleeps lightly and is positively deadly with the dual Cattleman Revolvers he sports. He has a confidant, an equal, a partner. Though he may be a decade younger, Dutch often speaks like he isn’t and Hosea likes that, in a way. He likes that they have the same taste in cigarettes, in liquor, in card games and occasionally, in books.

“’I celebrate myself’,” Dutch says one night, when they’re camping out under the stars and have been discussing poetry of all things. “’And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.’”

“You know Whitman?” Hosea says, amazed.

Dutch smiles that same, tender smile from when he’d first proposed their partnership.

“’Course I do,” he says. “Don’t you?”

And it was then that they became ‘partners’ in all sense of the word. Lovers, some might say. Kindred spirits, is what Hosea prefers. Hosea likes the way Dutch sees the world as something that isn’t too big too be fixed.

“A romantic at heart,” he says to Dutch often after long, passionate rants about the injustices of the world.

“It ain’t romantic to believe in doin’ the right thing,” Dutch insists, but leans in to Hosea’s hand when he cards his fingers through his hair.

They wander the world together, two outlaws against it all. Dutch comes up with plans far more grand than either of them can manage and Hosea acts as a voice of reason, sheering away all the glitz and glam behind what Dutch wants to do into what they actually can do. Even when the job in Kettering, Ohio goes sour, neither man can turn on the other.

“I told you,” Hosea says, voice full of the last dregs of his patience. “We should’ve taken the money we had and left. There was no need to go after that other feller just to get a few more dollars out of him.”

“You were the one dragging your feet,” Dutch hisses, standing up abruptly, but it’s practiced enough that Hosea knows he doesn’t really mean the rage he’s putting on right now.

It’s just another show.

“If you hadn’t…lollygagged, we could’ve been outta here with all the damn money at first light!”

“Are you implying, Mr. Van der Linde, that I’m a coward?”

“Oh-ho, I’m not implying it, Mr. Matthews. You are a goddamn coward!”

It was then that Sheriff Carmichael went into the cell with a rope to try and separate the two men from fighting—the town wanted to see them hang, he’d said, and he was determined to give that to them—but that had been a mistake. Hosea’s leg shoots out like a bullet from a gun and trips the sheriff. Dutch springs up from where Hosea had him lightly pinned to yank the rope from his hands. Together, they tie him up, rob him of everything of value and lock him in the cell they had once occupied. Hosea’s still swinging the ring of keys around his finger as Empress slows to a trot next to Queenie; Dutch’s mare. They’re miles away now, too far for angry mobs or law enforcement to get them.

“In all seriousness,” Hosea says, glancing at the man beside him. “You really should’ve known when to cut your losses.”

“I know, I know.” Dutch sighs. “Got a bit too greedy there. Do you still have any of the money?”

“Stashed some of it. A little, left in my boot. But it’s only fifty.”

Dutch scowls. Hosea leans over and pats his arm, giving it a little squeeze.

“Cheer up, Archibald, there’ll be plenty of other people to rob once we put some distance between us and Kettering.”

Dutch noticeably cheers up at the prospect of stealing from more rich men, something that draws Hosea’s own smile out. That night, they set up Dutch’s tent, the better of the two and push the bedrolls close together so they won’t be as cramped as they often are. They eat a quick dinner of trout jerky and canned peas. Hosea peeks in his saddlebags, delighted to see the sheriff hadn’t gotten to go through it and take all of the provisions. He digs out the can he’d been saving, waits until he’s sitting close next to Dutch again before pressing the can of strawberries into his hands.

“For you,” he says, smiling.

“You hate strawberries,” Dutch says, but his eyes are full of affection. “When did you get around to gettin’ this, old girl?”

“Right before we got caught. I was saving it as a celebratory treat, but…well, you saw how that played out.”

“You’re too good to me, Hosea.” Dutch leans into him, using his knife to pop open the lid.

He drinks some of that sickly sweet juice from the can, tilts his head back so it’s pressed against Hosea’s collarbone and smiles. It stains his lips red. Hosea wants to press a kiss there, lick the juice from his lips and pull it back into his own mouth. He’s not a fan of the taste, but he knows it drives Dutch wild.

The angle’s wrong though. So he waits.

“I’m just the right amount of good to you,” Hosea corrects him, wraps his left arm around his waist.

They’re both a bit too thin for this to be comfortable, hip bones jutting together and Hosea knows his ribs are a bit more prominent than usual thanks to a particularly cruel winter, but there’s no complaints. He half watches Dutch eat his strawberries, half looks at the stars. Just as pretty as they were the night they met.

Dutch chucks his empty can off into the bushes, wipes his fingers on his pants and manages to twist himself around so he’s straddling Hosea’s lap. Hosea huffs a soft laugh, hands coming to settle on Dutch’s hips.

“Are you looking for something, Mr. Van der Linde?” he says.

“Perhaps.” Dutch grins, but quickly sobers. “Where are we even gonna go after this? There’s a lot of law around here. It gets worse, the more east we go.”

“Could go west,” Hosea says. “Less people, sure. But less law. Less ‘settled’ than the government would like. It could be good for us.”

“You think there’s enough purses to snatch where there’s nothing but deer and antelope?”

“It’s not entirely devoid of people, Dutch. Just less than the amount we’re gonna find here. Better that way. We’ll do jobs, hang low, and leave before they even know what hit ‘em.”
Dutch’s face gets considerate as he wraps his arms loosely around his neck, drawing his head closer to Hosea’s. He can smell the damn strawberries on his breath. But he waits, knowing Dutch doesn’t like it much when he interrupts him thinking.

“Alright, old girl,” he says with a smile. “We go west, then.”

“Perfect.”

Hosea flashes a quick smile and meets Dutch in the middle, the same as they always do. He could never tire of this.

July 1877

It is about three months later when he meets the acquaintance of Susan Grimshaw. She’s a fine looking lady though Hosea privately thinks she cannot hold a candle to his Bessie, and Dutch is clearly taken with her. She seems happy enough to ride with them, voices her pleasure at finding another woman at the camp with Hosea.

They’d run into Bessie coming though Annesburg and Hosea could not resist asking her to join him again, as he’d done so long ago, when they were younger. Her parents had died and she seemed to not mind leaving the laundry place she worked at so long as it was at his side. He didn’t quite understand her reasoning behind it. She knew about him and Dutch, knew what kind of a man he was but insisted she didn’t care very much.

“You’re a good man at the heart of it all,” she’d say to him before they fell asleep. “That’s why I follow you, Hosea Matthews.”

Susan Grimshaw is cut from a different cloth from Bessie. Stern and to the point, she makes it abundantly obvious that she will be orchestrating the layout of where they sleep at night, what kind of dinner they’ll be having and whether or not things get washed on time. Hosea is surprised that Dutch would show interest to such a strong woman. He’s always liked being in control, as far as Hosea knows.

But then he sees her and Bessie sitting together by a river one morning, talking about something or another and Bessie gets to talking about her father. A bastard, he was. Hosea had once sworn to put a bullet between his eyes if he ever laid hands on Bessie again and she’d stopped him. He can tell by the way she sits, that she’s reliving a memory of him again, and watches in utter astonishment as Susan drops the shirt into the mud and wraps her arms around her, petting her hair gently and whispering comforting words into her ears.

From then on, he does not question her presence.

They bring her on jobs occasionally, when they need a woman to act as a distraction. She’d been a painted lady before meeting Dutch, and uses those particular skills to her advantage when required. She’s also a surprisingly good shot with a shotgun. Blows a big hole in a tree near Hosea’s head when they’re traveling though Ambarino and down falls the body of a cougar. He almost forgives her for making him nearly shit himself.

“Oh please, Mr. Matthews. That cat would’ve done more damage than the shotgun,” she says.

“Ms. Grimshaw, cougars don’t spit out buckshot the way a shotgun does.”

Dutch laughs. “Well old girl, d’you think you can use that pelt for anything if we take it with us?”

Hosea eyes it carefully, then shrugs. “Most of it’s a lost cause. But I say we take it anyway.”

They travel through the Grizzlies, then through the Heartlands. It’s past the Tall Trees they find a bit of breathing room. Wide-open spaces, with little towns and places called cities but really just felt like overgown tumors. There were still banks to rob and rich men aplenty. Hosea takes in a deep breath and smiles. This land will be good for them, he just knows it.

As if to prove this point, he and Dutch go into the nearest town to scope out the potential. Susan and Bessie stay back at the camp, setting up the tents and presumably starting on dinner for them. It’s not a very big town, this place. The sort of place mostly farmers get up to trouble but he senses a quiet unrest between the men with dirt underneath their nails and those with fancy suits, trying to set up new businesses. There aren’t enough leads here to really let them sit comfortably, but he knows Dutch will want to take everything he can before they leave this town in the dust. He’s never liked passing up on an opportunity.

They mingle with people in the saloon. Separate but together. Hosea discovers there’s been some sort of rising issue between developers who want to buy up all the farmland to make houses and the farmers that are just trying to mind their own business. He finds out the mayor of this place is a little corrupt; keeps paying the law to go after the farmers even though they built the town up themselves. That there was to be a game of blackjack soon, between businessmen and the mayor, and that was where much of the decision-making happened.

Hosea tucks this information away in the folders of his mind, leans back against the bar and takes a sip of brandy. He watches the crowd with only a slight passing interest. He’s seen all this before: men looking to get drunk after a long day, the working girls with their painted faces, batting their eyelashes at any man who’s gaze lingers too long,  and others looking for an excuse to exchange fists if nothing else.
He can see Dutch charming his way through a crowd in the back, dazzling them in that way that he has.

Hosea admires him for a moment, smiling to himself. What he has with Bessie and Dutch is enough to keep him from seeking the company of any other. He politely declines when one girl—who looks far too young to be working at such an establishment—tries to chat him up. Something else catches his eye just then, and for years later, he’ll never be able to explain why.

A boy—a young one at that—with a filthy face and greasy, tangled hair, reaching into the satchel of a rough looking man. A fellow degenerate, if Hosea had to wager a guess, though nothing like him and Dutch. The boy has an angry look to him, taking whatever he can and stuffing it under his shirt before darting away. The boy has no finesse though. No light hand, no loud, booming voice to shout “Look this way, it’s much more important!” while he subtly slips everything they’ve got into his own pockets.

He’s probably a street rat, if Hosea were to place a bet. Likely motherless. No mother in Hosea’s limited experience, would ever let her boy wander the streets looking that thin or that dirty. He wears a too-big, old black gambler hat with a rope tied around it and clothes with more holes than cloth that he’s clearly outgrown awhile ago. Dutch drifts back over to him, takes Hosea’s glass and drinks from it like it’s his own, but Hosea cannot tear his eyes away from this poor, angry kid.

“Well, the pickings are slim, old girl, but I don’t reckon it’s anything you and I can’t handle. Leagues better than good old Kettering,” he says, then finally notices Hosea is not looking at him.

“What’s got you all distracted?” Dutch says.

He follows Hosea’s gaze to the boy and gets an odd look.

“Are you okay?”

Hosea blinks, looks down at the floor self-consciously.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Just…that boy looks a little young to be stealing, is all.”

Dutch’s gaze passes over him in a manner more befitting of a bank investor than his closest companion next to Bessie.

“He’s not that young,” Dutch dismisses. “Looks like he can take care of himself.”

“Look at those bruises, those cuts, and you tell me again he can take care of himself,” Hosea says, frowning. “He looks like he’s been in a scrape with wolves.”

“Well, I’m sure his mother will fix him up when he goes home to her.”

Hosea shoots him a look, taking his glass back and drinks from it. He watches the boy steal a bit of bread and a piece of meat from a drunk mans plate, always careful to shove his prizes in his mouth quick enough that no one will notice in time, to keep his head low and shadowed beneath the brim of that dumb hat that they can’t see him chewing. A pang goes through Hosea’s chest quite unexpectedly at the sight.

Hosea is no saint, and this is a well-known fact in their little family, as Dutch often calls it. He has killed men for the lesser crime of having to spit on his boots, dragged men behind Empress when they tried to steal her away from him on trails and watched the kicking of their feet stop and their screams fade away as their skin is rubbed away by sharp rocks, their bodies beaten black and blue. He’s not a strong man, not in the way most people think of strength. But he is ruthless. More willing than Dutch to eliminate a problem with a bullet, cut their losses clean and quick if he thinks a new business parter is going to turn them in or try to stiff them of their share.

But in this moment, he feels very little more than a man trying to stand against the waves of the ocean he’s so often heard about. He thinks about a time when he was a boy and had gone out hunting in the mountains he’d been born in, when he watched snow fall from the high cliffs and bury an entire herd of deer. They’d been helpless to stop it.

He wants to help this boy.

Not in the way Dutch often frames it, where they give a cut of their payouts to the poorest in the communities they visit, where they can just pass the money along and leave the next morning like the Robin Hood stories of old. No, he wants to take this boy in. Get him cleaned up, trim his hair a little. Put him in something that actually fits him, keeps him warm and safe. Teach him how to read and write and shoot a damn gun so nobody can beat this poor kid ever again. He wants that angry look out of his eye. He wants to see what this boy could grow into, what kind of a man he could become.

Bessie could not have children. They’d seen a doctor awhile back to see what the problem was and the doctor said he had nothing for it. She’d cried for a week and he’d held her, pressing his lips into her forehead and promising her it didn’t matter to him because he still had her, and that’s all he ever needed. Her and Dutch. He knew she still yearned for a more traditional family, as much as she accepted his ways. She wanted a child to mind, something she could take care of that wasn’t two grown men and a former prostitute.

And suddenly, Hosea wants a very similar thing.

“How difficult would it be, do you think, to get that boy out of here?” he asks, his voice calm.

Dutch looks at him like he’s crazy.

“Why the hell would you want to do that?”

“I don’t reckon that boy has anybody in this world,” Hosea says slowly, his voice quiet. Careful of who might be listening, always. “We could take him in. Teach him what we know. Give him a better opportunity than the one he’s got here. Because if he stays here, he’ll get the rope. And I can’t…I can’t stomach something like that happening. Not now.”

Dutch still looks confused, looking back at the boy and Hosea like he’s not sure which one is the stranger at this point.

“Never took you for the sentimental sort, old girl,” he says, sounding bemused.

“Can we or can we not do it?”

Dutch gets that analytical look on his face, the one he wears when he’s cooking up something that Hosea might have to modify if only to make sure they both don’t get killed. When he looks back to Hosea, he’s smiling. A little fond, a little pleased with himself.

“Certainly,” he says. “Anything for you, old girl.”

They wait for the boy to make his way closer to where they lean against the bar before Dutch speaks.

“Good evening, young man,” he says, adopting the tone he likes to use when he spins a yarn. “What brings you to a place like this?”

The boy freezes, eyes widening like he’s worried he’s about to get called out. The fear gets replaced with anger quick, like an alley cat bristling to make himself look bigger.

“What’s it to you?” he bites out, drawl almost too thick for his mouth.

“Nothing, nothing at all. My friend and I were simply curious.” Dutch gestures to Hosea, who tips his hat. “It’s not often you see young boys like yourself, running around in such establishments. These places aren’t safe, you know.”

“I can take care of myself, mister.” The boy is still trying to put on a show.

Hosea’s almost a little impressed by how much he’s trying, even though he can see the boy shaking.

“Look, we don’t mean you any harm,” Hosea says, hoping his softer, raspier voice will work better than Dutch’s carnival barker. “We’re just a little concerned. Can we buy you dinner, at least? Before sending you home to your mother, I mean.”

The boy gets a shifty look on his face, clearly calculating whether it’s worth the free dinner to potentially owe them. Hosea can understand why he’d think like that. It’s exactly what he would’ve done, had he lived in such a way. Eventually, his hunger wins out though, and he trudges forward. Arms held close to his stomach, as if he expects to get kicked in the gut, though it’s just as likely he’s concerned about losing the little treasure hoard he’s picked up. He keeps casting a glance to the rough man in the back, who still hasn’t noticed some of his bounty is missing.

Hosea orders him a plate full of chicken, carrots and peas and a bit of bread. The bar does not offer anything not absolutely saturated with alcohol, so he takes water from his canteen and pours it in an empty glass that he gets the bartender to give him. The boy watches him with narrowed eyes. Once again, Hosea silently applauds him for being cautious at least. If nothing else, it’s clear the boy knows how to survive on his own.

“I’m Hosea,” Hosea says. “Hosea Matthews. My friend here with the far-to-loud voice is Dutch. I apologize for his ways. In another life, he would have been a fantastic showman.”

Dutch smiles good naturedly at the jab, drinking from Hosea’s glass.

“You ain’t from around here, are you?” the boy says, a great big chunk of bread lodged between his teeth.

“No sir! We hail from out east. Dutch is from somewhere near Pennsylvania if I’m remembering correctly?”

Dutch nods, pleasant smile still affixed to his face. He can see the question behind his eyes though. They never use their real names, never say where they’re from. Hosea is running off the script right now and it’s all in a desperate bid to get this boy away from this town and someplace where they can protect him.

“And I’m from the mountains, myself.”

“The Grizzlies?”

Hosea chuckles. “No, a little bit further than that. North of Annesburg. But I haven’t lived there properly in…a good long while.”

The boy chews thoughtfully for a moment, gulps down most of the water like he’s not seen water in a week.

“Why’re you here, then? This place ain’t like over there.”

“No, it certainly isn’t. We’re just here for a little while, stopping in for business.”

“Business.” The world rolls around in the boys mouth, an unfamiliar word. “Don’t know what kind of business you could get from this shitheap.”

Dutch snorts and Hosea bites back a smile, despite being a bit perturbed a boy would be so cynical. He supposes it’s to be expected, with how rough it looks like he’s been living.

“Well, there’s always business somewhere if you know how to look.” Hosea smiles a little. “For example, I noticed a little bit ago that you took up some business with that feller back there. The mean looking one, with the crooked teeth.”

The boy freezes, body going tense immediately. He looks like he’s about to bolt. But Hosea is careful, and he’s not stupid. He does his best to make himself look small for once. Confident, but not dangerous. Friendly even. Out of the two of them, Hosea’s a bit more suited to sounding friendly. Dutch has a tendency to sound a bit too disingenuous, a bit too flamboyant. Useful in many cases but more often than not, just as detrimental to a cause.

“We aren’t going to turn you in, son,” Dutch says, lowering his voice appropriately for once. “It isn’t any business of ours whose pockets you decide to go into.”

“But we are concerned for you,” Hosea adds on. “The bastard no doubt deserves it, but he doesn’t much look like the type to forgive and forget.”

“And you two are?” the boy snips.

“We do not make a habit of killin’ folks who don’t need killing,” Dutch says. “I’ve got a sayin’, son. We save fellers as need savin’, kill fellers as need killing…and feed fellers, as need feedin’.”

The boy doesn’t seem to know what to make of that, so Hosea speaks again.

“We don’t kill children,” he says firmly. “Ever. No matter what.”

“Even if they steal from you?” the boy gives him a challenging look.

“Even then,” Hosea replies, voice even. “And you looked like you needed feeding.”

The boy almost cracks a smile then, almost like he’s picked up a little bit on the small joke but he tampers it down with a scowl. He begins to eat again—devouring the chicken like a wolf—and Hosea does not feel the need to talk just then. He’s glad he’s able to feed this boy right now, put something in his stomach more substantial than the scraps he’s been taking from people mostly too in their cups to pay attention. But he’s still aware of the danger he’s in. The outlaw in the back has a girl on each arm and is talking loudly to the men he’s playing cards with. It’s only a matter of time before he notices the stolen cash.

“So why d’you give a damn ‘bout whether or not I eat?” the boy says when the chicken is gone and all that’s left is the peas and carrots.

“It is the responsibility of a community to ensure no child goes hungry,” Dutch says. “Though evidentially, the people of this good town have seen fit to shirk on such a task.”

“They got better ‘n bigger things to worry about than the son of some no good thief.”

“Well son, even if this community ain’t willin’ to step up to the task, we are.”

The boy snorts. “Whatchu want with me?”

Hosea opens his mouth to explain that they want nothing at all, try to talk him into leaving with them so he can at least keep his money, when there’s the sound of a bottle shattering and a wordless roar that sounds more like a monster than a man. Hosea turns and sees the outlaw the boy stole from before pushing the working girls off of him, fury radiating off of him hotter than the sun in June, little eyes sweeping the saloon.

“Which one of you bastards took my money!” he shouts.

The boy flinches, tries to hunch down in his seat at the table. He’s not the only one who flinches but for some reason, he is the one to draw the mans attention. The bottles behind the bar rattle as the man stomps over to them, close enough that Hosea can smell how he reeks of unwashed skin and booze. He grabs the boy’s shoulder with one massive, meaty hand and half drags him off of the stool. The boy cries out, falling to the floor.

“It was you, wasn’t it, you little shit,” the man snarls. “A good for nothing thief, just like yer goddamn daddy!”

“Excuse me sir,” Dutch says, holding his hands out in a placating way. “May I have a quick word with you—”

“Aw, shut up, ya damn fairy! This don’t involve you.”

Dutch’s face darkens and he takes a step forward. “I beg your pardon?”

The outlaw ignores him for the moment, reaching down to drag the boy up by the collar of his shirt. The cash he’d taken earlier—along with several other trinkets no doubt from other patrons—falls out and scatters onto the floor.

“I fucking knew it!” the man snarls. “Nothing but a goddamn pickpocket. You’ll swing for this, boy!”

“Let’s try to calm down for a second here, friend—”

Dutch is trying to see if he can spin a good enough yarn to distract this man, Hosea knows this. He’s seen him do it before, talk a brute down from a fight with such ease, it almost makes Hosea giddy. But he knows it won’t work this time. He’s not sure how he knows this, only that he can feel it in his bones and if they don’t do something soon, this poor kid is going to end up dead, one way or another.

Hosea does not think of his skills as something good, but there’s a benefit to being quick to react to things. And it’s that in the years he and Dutch have been together, and the trouble they’ve gotten in and out of, he’s come to find there is only one other person who can outdraw him and that, thankfully, is Dutch. Before the outlaw can even notice his hand flying to his revolver, he’s got a bullet through his temple, his brains splattering part of the bar and most of the floor. Dutch quickly pulls the boy from his grasp before he can fall on him. There is a stunned silence as the patrons of the saloon take it in.

Hosea holsters his revolver and finds his hands are shaking. He curls them into fists, takes a deep breath and reaches into his satchel to slap money on the counter.

“I think we’ll be going now,” he says quietly.

Then he turns and walks away. He hears Dutch’s familiar footsteps behind him along with what he can only guess are the boys. Hosea is distinctly aware of how stupid he’s just been, violating one of his main rules of not acting on impulse, but he finds he cannot regret it too much. Not even with how he’s just ruined their prospects, not even with how he knows this means the law will come after them and they’ll have to move quick, come morning. The boy is still alive and that’s all that matters.

“Do you have any belongings you’d like to take with you, son?” Dutch is saying to the boy.

Hosea thinks he nods, because he doesn’t hear any sound. Dutch sighs.

“Well, we best grab it before we leave.”

“Why? Are you takin’ me with you?” the boy says.

His voice has lost the gusto from earlier. Now, he sounds shaky and uncertain.

“Of course we are,” Dutch says, his voice settling into something soothing. “We ain’t gonna leave you in this hellhole to rot. Not if that’s the kind of company they keep. Listen son, we ain’t good men but we’ll keep you safe and well-fed, if you let us.”

The boy kicks at the dirt. When Hosea looks back at him, he looks hesitant. He casts another look at the saloon, which is just starting to grow in volume again, and then back at them.

“Beats swingin’ for twenty dollars,” he says.

And that’s the end of it.

They hurry to an abandoned house at the edge of town and pick up his things, a pitiful collection of rags meant to be clothing and two pictures of people that must be his parents. One is of a woman with a small but kind smile. The other is a mugshot of a mean-looking man wearing the same hat the boy wears now. They tuck his belongings in Dutch’s saddlebags, and Dutch holds his hand down to help the boy swing up into the saddle. The people in the saloon are getting louder and Hosea can see other people poking their noses out of their homes, wondering what the hell is going on. He swings himself up into Empress’ saddle, tightens his grip on the reins until his knuckles grow white.

They need to leave. Now.

“Say son, what’s your name?” Dutch asks once they’ve gotten the horses at a gallop.

Hosea knows they’re going to take the long way back to camp, to shake off any of the law or any other person that might think to follow them. He hopes Bessie is alright. He hopes Susan is keeping her shotgun close by.
They’re riding so fast and so hard that all Hosea can mostly hear is the sound of hoofbeats against the dirt, the heavy breathing of both mares as they push themselves to outrun Hosea’s sins. And the boy is quiet now, face partially tucked into Dutch’s back. It stirs something in Hosea, to see him so close to the man he’s given a part of himself to.

“My name’s Arthur,” the boy says. “Arthur Morgan.”

Chapter Text

July - August 28th, 1877

Arthur proves to be an interesting child.

He slinks around most of the time, too scared to speak up and other times, he loses his temper over the smallest of things that it sends Hosea’s head flying. He doesn’t like to talk much, but listens attentively. Dutch will read passages from his books to him and then set the book down on Arthur’s knees and ask him to try reading it for himself. When that fails, they begin drawing letters in the dirt with a stick. Over and over and over again until Arthur gets it down and can at least start to recognize the shapes.

He’s always moving, always doing something. Tearing up strips of grass, picking at his clothes, fidgeting with a spoon or pencil or a random leaf he finds on the ground. He paces and walks quickly. If they move too slow, he gets annoyed. Then flinches when he snaps at them, as if expecting to be hit.

The first night back at the camp, Bessie takes one look at him and immediately starts boiling rags to wash all the cuts he’s accumulated. They get him into a tub as soon as they’ve moved on from that damn town and she scrubs hard at his hair even as he insists he’s old enough to do it himself. Takes a pair of scissors to it and trims it down into something much more manageable, brushes it with her own comb until it shines in the sun. Later, when Arthur is having lessons with Dutch about something or another, Bessie pulls Hosea away for a quick walk.

“He’s got some awful scars on his back, Hosea,” she says, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “Looked like he was beaten for a time. There are a few that look like burns from cigarettes.”

Hosea scowls and picks up a rock to chuck at a tree. He doesn’t know if these scars came from the town or that no-good father Arthur doesn’t like to talk about, but he has a strong suspicion it’s more of the latter. Admits as much to Bessie, who accepts his theory with pressed lips and a drawn brow.

Susan doesn’t take to Arthur nearly as quickly, often scolds him for how often he forgets to finish chores, how he gets mud on the new clothes they give him when they get enough money at the next town. Hosea bites his tongue for awhile on the subject. He knows if he tries to bring it up to Dutch, his concerns might be waved away until he’s got enough proof that she’s being cruel to the boy. Eventually though, even she comes around. Mostly when Arthur returns one day with a fistful of creeping thyme he’d found while wandering around near camp. She takes it, adds it to their dinner that night and stops complaining quite so loudly about the mud, so long as he bathes enough to her satisfaction.

Hosea, meanwhile, tries to find things he should teach the boy.

He feels a bit off-center when he’s around Arthur. He’d wanted to bring the boy back with them so badly and now that he’s gotten what he’s wanted, he’s not sure what to do with it. Why the hell did he think he could ever be some sort of father figure to him? He’d only ever seen his own daddy three times in his entire life. He knew nothing of what it meant to be one.

He watches quietly as Dutch teaches him from Evelyn Miller, fills his head with the philosophies of a better world and what they’re trying to do with their own crime. Watches how Arthur says very little but seems to feel a great deal. And gets an idea.

He finds out, in part from Bessie, when the boy’s birthday is. August 28th. Saddles up Empress and asks Arthur to come into town with him. It’s a bit bigger than the place they found him, something Hosea finds infinitely safer in the long run. More people means its easier to disappear if they need to. Means they’re more accustomed to strangers too, less likely to know what’s hit them until Hosea and Dutch have been long gone.

“Why’re we goin’ into town?” Arthur asks as they trot down the muddy roads, avoiding walking pedestrians and wagons alike. “We goin’ on a job?”

“No, nothing like that,” Hosea says turning Empress so she comes to stop at a hitching post.

He waits for Arthur to slip off of the horses back before doing the same, tying her reins to the post and giving her a fond pat before they head towards the general store.

“I just figured, what with today being your birthday, you might like a treat or two,” he says, glancing back and Arthur.

Arthur frowns, gets a bit of that antsy, suspicious look on his face.

“You ain’t gotta give me gifts,” Arthur mumbles.

“I don’t, but I want to.”

He holds the door open for the boy, slips in behind him.

“We just need to pick up a couple of things here first and then we can go down to that bookshop I saw you eyeing last week,” he says. “You can pick out two things. How about that?”

“You sure we got enough for that?”

Hosea chuckles. “Don’t worry about that, Arthur. Now, come on.”

He gives him an abbreviated list of things the women sent him out to get, keeping his own list tucked away in the pocket of his coat. Arthur takes to the responsibility  eagerly, examining the fresh produce with a discerning eye, checking to make sure they’re not bruised or rotten. The way he holds them reminds Hosea of Bessie and he smiles to himself, wondering when she might’ve taught him this particular skill.

Quietly, he picks out a bar of chocolate for Arthur and some peppermints for the horses, stocking up on cans of provisions and salted venison fit for long traveling. He pays for his purchases and waits for Arthur to come back with an armful of assorted vegetables and fruits. The store clerk raises his eyebrows at him but still rings them up and gives them a sack to carry it all. Hosea thanks the man and takes the food back to Empress to settle everything in her saddlebags.

Then, they walk to the bookstore. A little bell chimes above the door and the inside is a bit darker than the outside. It’s not the largest bookstore Hosea’s ever seen but it looks well-stocked, with a space near the back full of what looks like writing supplies and blank journals. Arthur’s eyes widen and he takes a step back, right into Hosea.

“It’s alright,” Hosea says, nudging him forward gently. “It’s just a bookshop.”

“I’ve never seen so many books before. Not even in Dutch’s tent.”

Hosea smiles a little, walks a little further inside. “In the big cities, they have even bigger stores.”

“Dutch says big cities ain’t for us though.”

“No, they’re not. Go on, pick something out.”

Arthur gives him another look, like he can’t quite believe what Hosea’s saying, but eventually wanders off into the shelves to peer at them. Occasionally, he pulls one down and flips through the pages before putting it back. Hosea takes a look at the crime and mystery novels and manages to find one he’s never read before. It isn’t long before Arthur is tugging at his sleeve.

“You find something?” Hosea says.

“Think so.”

He holds out his books for Hosea to see.

“’A Complete Study of Midwestern Flora’,” Hosea says. “And…’Black Beauty’?”

Arthur ducks his head.

“I like horses,” he mumbles.

“Well, there’s certainly no shame in that. C’mon, let’s buy these and go back to camp.”

Arthur clutches his books close to his chest as they walk back to Empress, as if they are precious and in a way, Hosea supposes they are. He wonders if Arthur’s ever really owned anything of his own, if he’s ever gotten a gift or how long it’s been since someone remembered his birthday. Hosea helps him swing back up on Empress’ back, grunting slightly at how heavy he feels. Already, a few months of receiving regular meals has made the boy put on weight and he’s grown at least a couple of inches since they found him.

“You’re fifteen now, aren’t you?” Hosea says as Empress trots out of the town.

“Yep,” Arthur says, voice low.

“Pretty soon, you’ll be a man, y’know. Excited about that?”

Arthur shrugs. “Don’t see how that’ll be any different from now.”

“Well, people will be more likely to hire you for odd jobs and the like. And I heard Dutch was thinkin’ about having you join us on some jobs.”

He feels Arthur’s interest spike then, his hands gripping Hosea’s jacket more tightly. “You’re gonna take me out with you?”

“Of course we are.” Hosea turns his head to flash a quick smile at the boy. “We’re not gonna just throw you into it though. You need to learn how not to get caught.”

“Dutch’s been teachin’ me how to pickpocket folk,” Arthur offers. “Said I’m gettin’ better at it.”

“Well, being able to properly pickpocket is a good skill to have, but it’s not everything there is to know.” Hosea sees a snake coiled in the grass up ahead and automatically tugs on Empress’ reins to move her to the side, so as to not disturb the poor creature. “You need to know how to dazzle a crowd. Need to know when to keep talkin’ and when to stop. When to keep going and when enough is enough. And how to shoot a gun.”

“Dutch says we don’t kill folk in cold blood.”

“And he’s right: we don’t. But that don’t mean folk won’t be tryin’ to kill us. It’s important to know how to defend yourself.”

Arthur hums, a thoughtful sound. Then he says, “How come you don’t teach me much?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dutch teaches me how to read ‘n all that borin’ stuff he likes. Ms. Grimshaw teaches me how to wash clothes sometimes. Bessie teaches me how to cook ‘n make a proper fire. But you don’t really teach me stuff. Last time you taught me something was…when you showed me what a wild carrot was.”

Hosea feels a quick stab of regret, cursing his own doubts for making him hesitate so much with this boy. Arthur isn’t stupid, isn’t so young as to not realize when someone isn’t properly giving him enough attention. He decides from now on, he’s going to do better in that regard. Better for his lessons to be clumsy than for him to completely ignore Arthur, as he’s mostly been doing up until this point.

“I never really had a father of my own when I was a boy,” Hosea admits, deciding to tell the truth. “And I know I’m not yours but…feels mighty important to teach someone something about the world. My Bessie, she used to help the children around her town before we got together. But I’m afraid I’m a bit out of practice with the whole thing.”

Arthur is quiet at this. Digesting the words, perhaps mulling things over. Hosea feels a bit foolish talking to him about something so personal. Usually, only Dutch or Bessie can worm something like that out of him. But he wants

Arthur to understand it’s not personal. He’s just afraid.

“My pa wasn’t a very good teacher unless you count beatin’ me with his belt when I walked too loudly in the house a good lesson,” Arthur says. “I don’t reckon you could do much worse than that.”

Hosea’s heart breaks a little bit at how matter-of-fact the boy is about this, and thanks God a little bit that old Lyle Morgan is dead and in the ground, or else he might be liable to go off and do something stupid like kill the bastard himself.

“None of us would ever lay a hand on you,” Hosea says quietly. “That ain’t how you teach things.”

He feels Arthur shrug.

They ride in silence for a little bit. Just as Hosea catches sight of the campfire in the distance, he turns to look at Arthur again, a contemplative look on his face. “Here’s a deal for you: how about you and me look at that book you got—the one on plants, not the horse book—and I’ll teach you all I know about herbs and such. That sound fair?”

“Like the seasoning Ms. Grimshaw puts on dinner?”

“Like that, yes, but other things too. Berries that are safe to eat, for one. Poisons and healing plants. All of it. Then, you’ll be able to help me make medicines when we need it.”

“Doesn’t Dutch usually just buy some in the stores?”

“He does, but I always like to make a few of my own. Just so I know we’ve got enough.”

“Alright then,” Arthur says. “I think I’d like that.”

August 28th, 1878

Arthur continues to grow quickly after that. Dutch delights in teaching him every single trick he knows and a few he’s developed in the years since he met Hosea and Hosea finds he enjoys teaching him skills that don’t have a thing to do with committing the perfect crime. He still tries to teach him how to act, although the boy quickly proves he’s not good at donning the persona of another, even for just a little bit.

“I’m too stupid for this,” he says to Hosea one night, fuming after he’d nearly botched another con because he couldn’t spin a yarn at the drop of a hat the same way Dutch and Hosea can.

“You ain’t stupid,” Hosea says. “This just isn’t your talent and that’s alright. You leave talkin’ people in circles to me and Dutch, we’ll find something else for you to get good at.

In a way, Hosea is glad Arthur doesn’t take after them with their ability to lie so smoothly. He benefits best when the lies are kept small and simple, when he doesn’t have to talk so much to dazzle whoever they’re conning. And as he grows, he fills out a bit more. Takes to helping unload the wagons—because they have two wagons now, to help cart supplies they need—and feeding the horses. Slips all of them treats, even Queenie when she’s being temperamental.

For his sixteenth birthday, Dutch and Hosea get him his own horse.

They lead him to the stables at the newest of towns they’ve decided to grace their presence with and Dutch gestures grandly to the pastures with all manner of fine steeds.

“It’s high time you got yourself your own horse, son,” he says, smiling slightly. “Go on and pick whichever you like.”

Arthur considers each one carefully—from a shy chestnut pinto Kentucky Saddler mare to a white roan Nokota—and dismisses each in turn. The stable-master, clearly eager to make a sale, leads him into the barn, where a handful of other horses rest in their stalls. One of which, shakes from the barely contained fury of the roaring animal inside.

“What the hell is that?” Arthur says.

“Oh that?” The stablemaster laughs uneasily. “Don’t worry about her, partner. She ain’t worth riding.”

“Can I look anyway?”

The men gestures for him to go ahead and Arthur walks towards the shrieking mare with careful, light steps the way Hosea taught him to walk. Hosea and Dutch can’t help but trail after him.

Inside is a young mare—barely a mare really, more like a filly just finishing growing up—and she looks absolutely furious. Her ears are pinned back, mane and tail tangled like a tornado took up residence. Her coat is covered in dust and muck and hay sticks to her in clumps. She roars her frustration again, lashing out with her front hooves at the bolted door in front of her.

“As you can see, ain’t worth ridin’.” The stablemaster says.

“What is she?” Arthur asks, not taking his eyes off of her.

“A Hungarian Half-bred. They’re supposed to be quite good for war. Fearless creatures, quite loyal and smart too. This one…she’s just a bit too wild for anyone to ride. Was thinkin’ about selling her to the butcher, since she’s bucked off just about everyone else.”

Arthur gets that look on his face he often dons when Hosea knows he’s about to do something really stupid. He opens his mouth to stop him—or caution him, at least—but Arthur beats him to it.

“Can I try?”

The stablemaster chuckles nervously. “Did ya not hear what I said there, boy? She ain’t fit to ride. You’d be lucky if she only took a chunk out of your arm there.”

“I wanna try. I won’t try to ride her, but I wanna see if I can get her to follow me on a lead.”

The stablemaster flicks his eyes to Dutch and Hosea, looking like he wants some sort of intervention. And then Dutch looks at Hosea. He sighs.

“Try not to lose your hand to her, son,” he says.

Arthur nods, pressing his lips together. He looks determined.

Quickly, the stablemaster opens the stall door and lets Arthur in. Hosea can see they’ve tied two ropes around her neck and around the halter to try and hold her still. Both barely let her move in the stall and she faces Arthur with a challenging look in her eye, as if to say, ‘You’re up next? Good luck.’ Arthur keeps his body loose, soft. He keeps his hands down by his side, doesn’t quite look her in the eye.

“Easy there, girl, easy,” he says, his voice soft. “Ain’t gonna hurt you none. I promise.”

She shrieks again, rearing up onto her hind legs and pawing at the air savagely. Hosea reckons she could scare off a hungry cougar with the way she slams them back into the ground.

“You’re okay, girl. You’re okay. Easy there.”

Arthur speaks softly and light, but approaches her persistently in between fits. Eventually, her ears flick forward and she eyes him with something that could be described almost as curiosity. He slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a peppermint, smiling a little.

“Ain’t gonna hurt you, girl. C’mon, let’s be friends! I’ll give you this peppermint if you don’t bite my hand off.”

The mare seems to be considering it. She keeps as far back as she can manage, but she doesn’t rear up or scream again and her nostrils flare as she sniffs at the treat. Eventually, she leans over and takes it delicately from his open palm. For a moment, the sound of crunching fills the air. Arthur grins.

“That taste pretty good, huh?” he croons. “I got more, if you want ‘em.”

Hosea watches as he gently lays a hand on her nose, his touch light. She jerks her head back for just a moment but accepts his touch the second time he gets his hand on her. She makes a low noise in her chest and he beams at her, scratches her face gently.

“See, girl? Told ya I ain’t gonna hurt ya. Bet it’s been a long time since anybody gave you any kind of lovin’, huh?”

Without taking his eyes off of her, he says to them. “One of you mind passin’ me a brush? Think she could do with a good cleaning.”

Utterly befuddled, the stablemaster pulls one from a hook somewhere and passes it to Arthur. The boy lets her sniff it for a moment, mumbling something only she can hear and before long, he’s brushing away all of the filth on her coat. Untangles her mane with his fingers, manages to soak a handkerchief in her water bucket and rubs her down with soothing, firm hands. She stands there, as docile as one of the ponies in the back, nosing at his pockets for more treats which Arthur gives to her with a smile.

When he’s done washing her up, her coat gleams like fire in the sunlight that filters in through the window. She has a bit of white going down her face and a pink nose that puffs against Arthur’s cheek, making him laugh. He carefully pulls all but one of the ropes off of her, turns to the flabbergasted stablemaster with a self-satisfied smile stuck firmly on his face.

“Mind lettin’ us out, partner?”

The man pulls the door open with no small degree of wariness and lets both boy and horse out. Dutch and Hosea keep close to the sides, watching in wonder as this already quite large mare with a coat of fire walks peacefully behind the boy they’ve been raising together. Dutch is smiling like a proud father, showing all of his teeth and Hosea? Hosea can’t keep his own grin off of his face.

“I think we’ll take her,” he says to the man, when Arthur has led her all the way down to the other side of the stables and is heading back.

“You sure?” the man says. “She’s got a temper on her, that one.”

“I’m quite certain if we don’t take her, that boy’s gonna move in with her,” Dutch says, laughing a little.

They get her at a discounted price, on account of the stablemaster being so eager to get her off his hands. They buy him the tack he’ll need for when she’s a bit older and watch as Arthur loads it up onto the wagon himself, the mare already tied to the back and watching him as he loads more supplies up.

“You wanna sit up here with us, son?” Dutch calls to him.

“Nah, I’ll sit back here with her. Make sure she doesn’t get too lonely.”

“Suit yourself!”

Hosea keeps looking back as best as he can through their boxes and sees Arthur sitting with his back pressed against a couple of crates. Hears him talking, though he can’t make out exactly what it is he’s saying. Dutch turns to him, raising an eyebrow.

“Were you aware he had a gift?” he says.

Hosea shakes his head. “He’s always liked taking care of ours, I’ve known that since we took him home, but I’ve never seen anything like that. I taught him how to not spook one awhile back but I didn’t know he knew how to do anything like that.”

Dutch chuckles. “Well, as far as outlaws go, I’ve never heard of one calmin’ a horse that angry. Might be useful.”

“You thinkin’ of horse rustling for his first job?”

“Naw, there ain’t much money in that. Besides, I think it best if we stick to the home robbery plan, like we discussed before. A bit less dicey, if things go south. Don’t need him gettin’ trampled on his first attempt.”

Hosea hums in acknowledgment. He watches Dutch light a cigar and lean back in the seat, puffing smoke into the air.

“Still think I’m crazy for wantin’ him?” he asks, tone light.

Dutch smiles that same fond smile and presses his shoulder into Hosea’s. “Naw. I think I understand it now. He’s something special, our Arthur.”

Hosea returns the expression, casting another glance to the aforementioned boy, who seems to be explaining something to the mare in the back.

“Indeed he is.”

Chapter Text

April 1879

Bessie is the one to draw him away from it all, all the blood and gore that stains his hands. She holds them tenderly between her own as she dabs at the latest of injuries he’s sustained, thieving the way he does. A house robbery gone wrong, where the owners hadn’t been as asleep as he’d originally anticipated. Hosea is used to things like this happening every once in awhile, barely flinches at the sting of a booze-soaked cloth pressing into where bullets nicked him. He’s more frustrated with himself for failing to account for this possibility than he is that he and Dutch got hurt, although he’s plenty angry about that.

But he keeps his thoughts to himself, especially under Bessie’s tight-lipped, discerning gaze. She ties off the gauze she’s wrapped around his left shoulder, presses a kiss on top. Her hands linger, and he watches her blue eyes float up to him. They’re unusually bright with unshed tears.

“How many more times am I gonna have to patch you up?” she whispers. “How many more times are you gonna get shot at before this ends?”

“It won’t be forever,” he says, his voice equally as hushed. He takes her hands in his, laces their fingers together. “Dutch says we just gotta get enough to buy our own land and then we’ll be homesteaders. Livin’ however we want to, free as the birds.”

“But what if you never get to that point? What if you die before you can?”

“That’s not going to happen.” He pulls her hands close to his face, presses a kiss to her fingers. “I promised you I’d return all those years ago, didn’t I? And I promise you before every job, I’m comin’ back to you. The devil himself would have to drag me to hell to keep me from you.”

She curls a bit closer to him, legs thrown over his lap. In the same way Dutch fits so nicely against his shoulder, Bessie does the same, her reddish-blonde hair tickling Hosea’s chin as she snuggles close. He can smell the vanilla extract she likes to use as a perfume. It makes her smell like a bakery, something that had charmed him long ago, when they were young and he’d been passing through Annesburg with a traveling troupe at the time. It always felt like something a younger girl should be doing, not a young woman old enough to marry.

“Hosea,” she says, voice like something of fragile, spun glass. “I’ve never asked much of you ‘cause I know you and I know how you are. And I know something that makes you happiest is outsmartin’ any bastard with too much money for his own good.”

Hosea opens his mouth but she holds her hand up, the ring he gave her flashing in the low firelight.

“And I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t think it important. You know that, right?”

Hosea nods, feeling an aching in his chest that’s worse than the injuries he got tonight.

“Would you be willing to leave with me? Go someplace safer, try to live like normal folk for awhile? Just to see if you can. I know you like to wander, I know you love Dutch and would never part from him if you could avoid it—I accepted that when you showed up on my door again all those years ago and it made me happy to know you had someone else that wasn’t just me that put that smile on your face—but I’m worried. I’m afraid. What if we never get enough money? What if the law catches up and shoots you dead? What if we don’t get that happy-ever-after Dutch’s been promisin’ you for years now?”

She pauses, tears falling freely from her eyes now, and scrubs at them furiously with her wrist. She takes a shaky breath in and when she lets it out, it’s a bit steady.

“I ain’t meanin’ to speak poorly of Dutch, mind you. He’s got a good heart, that man. But he’s a dreamer, and dreamers don’t make the best company when lives are at stake.”

“I understand what you mean, Bessie,” Hosea says, his voice rough with a mixture of emotions he doesn’t like feeling so close to the adrenaline wearing off. Makes him feel tired and old. “I could try to talk to him, if you like. Get him to see reason.”

“I don’t think it’ll work. Not now, anyways. Not when he’s so fired up about all this.”

In his heart, Hosea knows she’s right.

“What about Arthur?” he says, running his thumb over the back of her hand. “We can’t just leave him like that.”

“No, of course not. The very thought of it.” Bessie squeezes his hand tight, then relaxes. “Maybe you could ask him to come with us. He ain’t so little anymore, bein’ seventeen ‘n all. Reckon he never really was. But I’d never leave him behind like that.”

Hosea is reminded again, that Arthur is just as much her son as he is Hosea’s and Dutch’s. When he doesn’t wander with Boadicea—who’s grown into a truly behemoth of a horse—picking up odd jobs and jotting down every little thing he can think of into that journal of his, he sticks close to Bessie’s side. Asking if she needs anything, if she wants an extra pair of hands. Brings her back flowers, on occasion, which she coos over and sets in an old bottle of gin on the table they eat at.

“I’ll ask him,” Hosea says, pressing his cheek against the top of her head. “After I tell Dutch. He ain’t gonna like this.”

“No,” she says. “He ain’t. But…I’m just askin’ you to try for me. If it doesn’t work out, we can always track him down again.”

“Alright, my love.” He kisses her hair, goes back to holding her. “I’ll try. For you.”

“That woman has poisoned you against me,” is the first words out of Dutch’s mouth, and Hosea considers it a personal blessing he has enough control over himself and enough love for Dutch to resist the urge to punch him for it.

Even so, he still shoots Dutch a nasty look.

“That isn’t true and you know it. Don’t start up with one of your ramblings again, you know I’m not like that. I’d never leave if it weren’t for a good enough reason.”

“What’s the reason then?” Dutch says, scowling. “You tired of me? Decide I’m not worth the trouble and you prefer Bessie because she’s not as much of a pain in the ass as I am—”

“Dutch van der Linde, sometimes, you talk entirely too goddamn much,” Hosea growls. “Shut your mouth for a few minutes and maybe I’ll have enough time to give you want you want.”

Dutch huffs, but flings himself to sit down in a chair at the table he uses as a desk. Crosses his arm petulantly, like a child, and waits. Hosea takes a deep breath before starting to speak.

“Bessie’s just worried about me is all,” he says, voice lower than it was before. “I don’t blame her. She doesn’t run jobs like us, she’s scared one day, I’ll go out and I won’t come back. Or worse, I’ll come back in pieces she’ll have to bury. She doesn’t have anybody else, Dutch. No family at all.”

“And we do?”

Hosea scowls and holds up his hand, the one with Bessie’s ring on it. “I know you don’t believe much in the power of the government and you haven’t stepped foot in a church since your mother used to make you at eight years old, but this ring means somethin’ to me, Dutch. We stepped on glass together and I got her this ring after workin’ all those months as that accountant. I promised my life to her. I ain’t gonna break that promise if I can avoid it.”

Dutch’s glare wobbles a bit and Hosea catches a glimpse of fear and grief underneath before the other man’s face smooths out again.

“You’re choosin’ her over me,” he says, his voice shaky.

“I would never.” Hosea takes his hand as he sits down in the chair across from Dutch’s, holds it tight. “I want you to come with us. Settle down someplace nice and quiet. Try not to fire a gun at someone for more than a month at a time, if you can. But I know you won’t do that. I know you can’t do that, as much as I wish it weren’t the case.”

Dutch sniffles. “I’d do it for you. If y’asked me to.”

Hosea smiles a little, swipes his thumb across the other mans cheek. “I know you would. And I know it’d kill you if I did. Hell, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to give up this life for very long.”

“But you’re gonna try anyways?”

Hosea nods. “For her, yes.”

Dutch laughs a little, a small choked thing that sounds more like a sob. “You’re a stronger man that I am, old girl.”

“Nonsense,” Hosea squeezes Dutch’s hand. “You’ve your own strengths, old friend. You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

Dutch laughs again, still sounding no better than the first time. They sit together, palm against palm. Quiet but for Dutch’s sniffles and Hosea’s own suspiciously running nose. It’s a nice day outside, Hosea thinks. Calm spring morning, with birds chirping in the trees and the scent of new life all around. Freshly plowed dirt in the distance. Mother deer tending to their babies. A good time to leave as any.

“I suppose you’ll be wantin’ to take Arthur with you,” Dutch says eventually.

He sounds resigned to this, expecting Hosea to take everything he’s ever known with him in one full swoop. Hosea shrugs.

“I’ll ask him. But…he’s a bit too grown to be telling him where he’s gonna go now. Almost eighteen. Law’ll recognize him as an adult.”

Dutch huffs as he always does whenever the law or government is brought up, a special sort of exasperation that Hosea had only heard in long-suffering spouses when thier partners did the same stupid thing again for the millionth time.

“He probably should go with you,” Dutch says. “It’d be better for the boy.”

“It might,” Hosea says. “Might also blow up in my face. It’s been a long time since I tried to do honest work for more than a few months at a time.”

Dutch hums.

“And hey. Listen.”

The other mans dark eyes flick to Hosea’s so fast, Hosea’s breath gets caught in his throat for a minute. They’re full of great sadness, almost as bad as Bessie’s had been the night before. Hosea is a weak man for seeing the two people he loves most in the world crying, he knows this. Knows he folds all too quick just to get them dry again. It’s something he’s always kept from Dutch, for worry that he might abuse that power for stupid things.

“If it doesn’t work out, if I manage to fuck this up, I’ll come back to you,” he says, forcing—and failing—to make his voice sound less like a strangled goose. “I swear that to you, Dutch. You ain’t gettin’ rid of me that easily, you stupid bastard.”

Dutch huffs a laugh, more genuine than before.

“I’ll hold you to that promise, old girl,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry for bein’ such a fool, sometimes.”

“You’re the only fool I’m willin’ to put up with.” Hosea gets up and stands close to Dutch, who leans into him so hard, Hosea worries they’re both going to go sprawling across the floor of his tent. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, but it hardly feels appropriate for right now. “Don’t you go forgetting that now.”

“I won’t,” Dutch promises, eyes closed.

Hosea presses his free hand against Dutch’s head, strokes his hair. Memorizes how warm his face feels, partially tucked into his stomach like this. How right it feels. He tries to ignore how it feels like his heart is splitting in two, half staying with Dutch and the other going with Bessie. Lets a few of his own tears fall and just soaks it all in.

Arthur is by the horses when he goes to look for him a couple of days later.

He and Bessie have been busy packing, sorting out where it is exactly they’d like to go and it surely hasn’t escaped Arthur’s notice. He hasn’t commented on it yet. Hosea doesn’t really know why. He still brings back herbs for Bessie and Susan to use in dinner, still helps out by hunting what little he can and helps Dutch on smaller jobs.

He’s brushing Boadicea, talking to her quietly as he works. Humming a song under his breath that judging by the way her left ear is turned towards him, she’s listening to.
Hosea watches him for a few minutes, unwilling to break the tender peace he’s wrapped himself in, but the heaviness in his heart won’t let him just leave without trying to get Arthur to come with him. He’d sooner chop off his own hand.

“Arthur,” he says, trying to make his voice sound relaxed.

“Hey, Hosea,” Arthur says, glancing up from Boadicea’s back.

“Mind if I talk to you for a minute, son?”

Arthur shrugs, but doesn’t walk away. Hosea considers this to be the best he’s going to get. He sighs heavily, sitting down on a nearby stump. He’s been mulling over what best to say, how to explain it. How he might convince him to go with them. Nothing’s ever fit right, the puzzle pieces refuse to join and he wonders if Arthur has somehow managed to inherit an irritating quirk of Dutch’s without sharing any blood with him. Dutch listens to Hosea more often than not, but on occasion, even Hosea has to admit defeat.

“I suppose you’ve heard me and Bessie are leaving soon, haven’t you?” he says after sitting there for awhile.

“Ms. Grimshaw mentioned it once or twice,” Arthur replies, voice careless. “Didn’t know if she meant forever or just for a little while.”

“We don’t know that either, honestly. All depends on if I can keep my hands clean, I suppose.” Hosea huffs a laugh. “I’ve been a conman longer than I can remember. Don’t know if I know how to do anything else anymore.”

Arthur hums. He’s running the brush over Boadicea’s shoulder.

“I didn’t come over just to tell you we were leavin’ though,” Hosea continues. “Bessie and I…well, we wondered if you might want to come along with us.”

Arthur’s steady movements falter for just a moment and he looks up at Hosea with an unsure twist to his mouth.

“Come with you?” he echoes.

“Yes. We’re goin’ up to the mountains in Ambarino. I know something of hunting, so I think I might try the trappers business for awhile. I know you’re not very good at that sort of thing, but I could always try to teach it to you better. Or you could raise some horses, take up some odd jobs.”

“But Dutch ain’t goin,” Arthur says.

“No, he’s not.”

“Why?”

How to best explain to Arthur that Dutch is not a man who accepts change easily? How to explain to Arthur that Dutch is not a bad man, not really, just a man who doesn’t like losing and this sort of thing feels like losing to him? How to explain Dutch has only ever rolled over for one man in his entire life, and it’s Hosea who gets that privilege, in part because Dutch knows Hosea would never do a damn thing to hurt him? Would never use that gift he was given for anything less than making Dutch feel loved and appreciated?

He thinks he should leave what they are to each other out of his explanation, all things considered. It’s private, this affection they hold for each other, even though Susan and Bessie are fully aware of what’s going on. He doesn’t want to somehow accidentally chase him off by admitting to doing things that are considered illegal and immoral in the eyes of the law, despite how unlikely that is after how often Dutch has preached against it all.

“You know how when we play poker, Dutch never loses gracefully?” he settles on.

Arthur nods. “Gets real mad. Storms off ‘n everythin’.”

“Right. That’s what settling down would feel like to Dutch. It’d feel like he was losing something, even though he’s not. I know he’d be miserable if he didn’t get to do things his way and if Bessie weren’t so afraid right now…well, I’d be happy to help him. I’ve been helping him for four years now. I’m only leavin’ because Bessie asked me.”

“I wish you weren’t goin’.”

Hosea sighs. “Me too.”

Arthur is silent for a bit, carefully pulls a burr from Boadicea’s mane. Hosea half wonders if he’s forgotten what he’s asked him, but Arthur isn’t usually so absentminded. It’s more likely he’s thinking things over. Slow and careful, just like Hosea does with one of Dutch’s plans.

“I think I better stay,” he says eventually. “Dutch’ll need someone to watch his back, if you ain’t gonna do it no more.”

A lump rises in Hosea’s throat like he’s trying to swallow a rock. He feels like saying to the boy, “It’s not your responsibility to watch his back” but he knows Arthur won’t take kindly to the suggestion he can’t help. Despite the initial first few weeks where he didn’t seem to know how to do anything, he’s turned into a hard worker since they took him in. Something Susan had always approved of wholeheartedly, something Dutch and Hosea had always exchanged glances over. Concern mostly, because Arthur never knew when to stop.

“I think you’re big enough for the job now,” he says instead, smiling a little.

Arthur returns the expression, but it’s clear he isn’t happy about it. The boy seems to be debating something in his head for a minute before he drops the brush and half-staggers into Hosea, crushing him in a hug. He’s still like a gangly colt, all legs and sharp wrists digging into Hosea’s sides as he clings to him like he’d clung to Dutch when they rode out of that town all those years ago.

“I might come back,” he says into the boys shoulders. “There’s no guarantee I’ll actually be able to keep my hands clean, you know.”

“Don’t matter.” Arthur’s voice is even more muffled than Hosea’s. It’s been growing deeper lately, raspier. “Still gonna miss you ‘n Bessie.”

Hosea doesn’t have anything to say to that. He just holds this half-grown boy and hopes it’s enough for now.

March 1880

Their cabin in the mountains is nice enough, Hosea supposes. Bessie had thrown everything she had into decorating it with whatever she had on hand and he makes a habit of bringing her things from the forest to help. Flowers that she hangs to dry in the kitchen, fallen branches of white pine to fill it with the sharp, sweet scent. He isn’t entirely sure if his gifts are helping though, because she’d broken down crying the first time he came back with flowers and he knew she was thinking of Arthur.

God, does he miss that boy.

He spends most of his days checking trap lines he lays down, hunting with a rifle and occasionally dipping down to the nearest town for a quick drink and a game of cards. None of them play like Dutch does and none of them realize he’s counting the cards when they play blackjack the way Dutch had the first time they’d played and it makes him even more homesick than he ever thought he could be.

He enjoys the way the crisp mountain air sits in his lungs, even the way the constant chill sinks its teeth into his sides. He’d grown up to this, the spectacular views, the odd weather, everything. He’s missed it a little, all these years spent in the land below. But despite it all, no matter what he does and how he chooses to fill his time, he still feels a little aimless. He works to feed him and Bessie, to make sure they have what they need, but that’s it. He doesn’t make any proper friends beside people he’d lend some sugar out to and play a game of dominoes with. His mind feels like a penned-in racehorse, snorting and pawing at the ground, eager to let loose and run free. For he is exactly as Bessie described him to be all those months ago: a man who delights in tricking people who deserve to be tricked.

He spends a great deal of time rereading old books, sharp eyes always searching for something, anything to do that could get him thinking the way he used to.

They last almost an entire year before his boredom gets them in trouble.

Some strangers show up to the local saloons and Hosea isn’t so far into his cups not to notice that these fellers are different from the folk he’s come to know. Fancy suits and shiny pocket watches, they turn their noses up at the locals and their poverty while making themselves a nuisance to everyone else trying to mind their own business. Hosea is not a prideful man, not entirely. He’s pleased when he does well and annoyed when he doesn’t, the same as any other man.

But well, perhaps a bit of Dutch has rubbed off on him because for the first time, he wants to see how far he can take it with these men before he gets caught. Wants to take everything he can and see if they’ll even notice, or if they’re too busy thinking they’re God’s gift to the world that they won’t even see when he takes everything of value from their person.

He manages to get them to play blackjack. Chats them up, explains he came there for the fresh mountain air. Plays up the act of a simple country bumpkin and wins a few hands, just to set them at ease. And then, he starts winning. And the stupid bastards fall for every line he throws them. They grow huffy. Indignant. Not yet violent, Hosea is careful to lose one or two times to make sure they don’t pick up on him tallying the cards in his head, memorizing who has what hand and studying each face to figure out how much they have exactly as he prepares to strike. But it’s still immensely satisfying to take most of what they have in the card game and then slip a bit extra from their pockets on his way out the door.

The next morning, Bessie finds out and shakes her head, half full of fondness and half full of exasperation.

“You really couldn’t help yourself, could you?” she says, her voice low.

Bessie doesn’t shout, never has. It’s a bit more terrifying to be on the receiving end of her quiet voice when she’s angry anyways. And he knows that while she may not be able to wield a shotgun with the same skill as Susan

Grimshaw, her hand’s always been steady with a knife. Whether she’s holding it in her hand or throwing it at some handsy bastard’s head.

“I’m sorry, my love,” Hosea says, holding his head in his hands. “You should’ve seen ‘em though. Peacocking around like little lords. They deserved to be robbed.”

“I ain’t arguing with you on that. But why, why couldn’t you just let it be? Just leave and come home to me?”

“I guess I am what I will always be,” Hosea says, shoulders slumping. “A thief.”

She scowls at him, crossing her arms. “Least you’re an honest one. Else I’d’ve thrown you out of my bed ages ago.”

He snorts, though there’s nothing very funny about it. He keeps his eyes fixed on the worn floorboards, waiting for her judgment. Her verdict. He’d seen folk in the depths of the forest, presumably hunting for him. Heavily armed and angry as anything, though he doubts the sheriff cares much for the visitors. It’s more likely he cares for the money he gets paid for hunting him down and stringing him up.

“Where’d Dutch say they were goin’ before we left?” she says, her voice devoid of anything.

He looks up. “Back to Illinois, I believe. No telling if they’ve left yet or not.”

“Well, the best we can do is try and track them down, I suppose.”

Hosea blinks. “What do you mean?”

She stares at him for a long minute. “Hosea. We can’t stay here. Half the town and the sheriff are out, lookin’ for you just to appease those idiots you stole from. And I ain’t makin’ you try to settle down again. I see now that it was never gonna work out.”

Hosea stands up, walking towards her slowly. “I can try again, Bessie. I know I can. I’d do anything for you.”

“I know that.” She takes his hands in hers, corner of her mouth ticking up. “But I also know that this is makin’ you miserable, and I don’t want that. You ain’t happy here.”

“You weren’t happy when we were with them,” he points out.

“That’s not why I asked to leave. I loved mornin’s with Susan, watchin’ you and Dutch pour over the latest of his schemes. I loved watching Arthur grow. It’s just…everything else…”

“The shooting, the law following us,” he says dryly.

“Yes, that. I could’ve done without all that.” Bessie smiles a little. “I asked you to try. And you did. Be it on my own head to expect a leopard to change his spots.”

He feels a bit of shame, for not being able to last longer. For not being able to change his ways and be an honest man for her. And with that shame comes a bit of relief. How many men can say they have a wife that understands their nature? Doesn’t mind that he holds another in his heart while still being devoted to her? His Bessie is the most patient of people he’s ever had the pleasure of knowing and if he must, he will do everything he can to feel as if he’s earned the right to breathe the same air as her.

As if reading his mind, she presses a quick kiss to his mouth, leans back to study his face.

“None of that guilt business, Hosea Matthews. We got packin’ to do.”

Chapter Text

June 1880

June in Illinois turns out to be a special breed of hell. The last time he visited, Illinois had been locked in the cool grip of spring and he hadn’t sweated nearly as much until they ran into a bit of trouble. It’s not as hot as some other places Hosea’s seen, but it’s certainly no paradise. He longs for the cool breezes of the mountains, the way it never really warms up the higher you go. Hell, even being faint of breath as he climbs up the peaks sounds preferable to the sun that beats down on his shoulders like God wants to make good and sure all the sinners keep from sinning if only to avoid melting faster than a lump of butter left on the porch.

He wipes the sweat from his brow before turning back to the wood he’s been gathering for the campfire tonight. He’s already got a sizable stack, but he’d like to get just a bit more, to ensure the fire stays lit throughout the night.

The sound of heavy hoofbeats against the earth draws his attention to the fire-colored mare and her sandy-haired rider. Arthur has what looks like two turkeys tied to his saddle and an assortment of plants poking out of his saddlebags. The turkeys look more like buckshot incarnate rather than something they could eat and Hosea finds himself shaking his head.

“I think at that point, we’d be better off eating rocks,” he says to Arthur, who slows Boadicea down when he sees Hosea. “What the hell did you use? A shotgun?”

Arthur shrugs. “Was all I had on me.”

“Next time, use your revolver. Doesn’t have the range, but at least it won’t be like eating gravel when Bessie and Susan get their hands on it.”

Arthur huffs, but there’s a hint of a smile on his face. “Betcha you would’ve done better, if you’d gone with me.”

“I’ll go next time. You’re all grown up now, you don’t need an old man trailing after you on every hunting trip, like a nursemaid.”

Arthur grunts, turns away. Clicks his tongue and sends Boadicea walking back towards the camp.

Hosea sighs.

He supposes he should’ve expected the rift to form between the two of them when he left, but it still stings something fierce. Arthur had never been the most chatty person. Hosea is accustomed to Dutch, who never shuts up, and Arthur’s own mouth rarely opens except when he answers questions either men ask him. But before he’d left, he’d been able to have actual conversations, not just polite chatter exchanged between people that could’ve just been neighbors. It’s just frustrating, to know what he’s lost and not know how to get it back.

Dutch looks up when Hosea returns to the camp, expression brightening like he’s just found the sun. In one hand, he loosely holds a cigar and in the other, he’s got his copy of the Iliad open, foot propped up on a spare crate as he reads.

“Wondered how you’d make out, old girl,” he says. “We’re runnin’ a bit low on deadwood ‘round these parts.”

“You think it’s time to move on yet?”

“Not quite. There are a few more leads I want to check out. Got a list right here, if you’d like to take a look.”

“Sure. Give it here.”

There is a companionable silence between both men as Hosea sits on the crate Dutch has his foot propped against. Dutch moves his foot into Hosea’s lap and Hosea holds onto the toe of his boot absentmindedly, the list in his other hand. He can hear the birds singing in the trees, the wind rustling the leaves and the women talking about something indistinct in the background as they chop vegetables together. He can see the top of Arthur’s hat over near the horses, Boadicea freshly unsaddled and following him around as she often does.

The tightness that’s been in his chest for a year eases. He’s home.

November 1883

“He’s late.”

Hosea looks up from his book, glancing at Bessie who’s sitting at the table with Susan as she smokes a cigarette. Dutch is half asleep on his shoulder, or so he’d assumed, because the man talks without opening his eyes or moving.

“He loses track of time. He’ll be back soon, don’t worry about it.”

Bessie snorts. “He usually comes back by sunset.”

“Probably at the saloon. He’s been playing blackjack up there for awhile now.”

“He’s only eighteen.”

“They don’t know that.”

Bessie’s grunt is irritated, and she takes Susan’s offered cigarette without protest, sucking on it a couple of times before passing it back. Hosea flips the page in his book and keeps his ear trained on the entrance. Dutch nuzzles a bit closer, breathing nice and easy. Hosea thinks he looks pretty like this, his hair all messy and face loose from sleeping. No mask donned to play whatever part he’s decided to take on for the day. Just Dutch. The same face he fell in love with a few years back.

Eventually, he hears Boadicea coming up the path and Arthur sits tall in the saddle. Hosea slips his bookmark in between the pages, nudges Dutch awake so he can get up.

“Where have you been?” he says, voice calm.

Arthur still flinches a bit. He scratches behind his head. “At the saloon.”

“You left around noon. You were there that long?”

“Naw, I was just ridin’ along the road before then. Would’ve been back sooner, but I got caught up with something.”

“You aren’t hurt, are you?” Bessie says.

She’s gotten up and approached them, skirts swishing with her movements.

“All in one piece, I promise Bessie.”

One of his saddlebags begins to wriggle. A pitiful yelping sound follows soon after. All eyes snap to it and Hosea takes a step back, recalling the time Arthur had picked up a half dead possum and insisted they nurse it back to health.

“And I brought a new friend,” he continues.

He pulls back the flap and reveals the scrawniest, mangiest looking puppy Hosea has ever laid eyes on. He pulls him out gently, holding him close to his chest, heedless of the fleas the dog doubtlessly has.

“This is Copper,” he announces.

“Arthur,” Dutch says, frowning already. “Where the hell did you get a dog?”

“Found him outside the saloon. Somebody’d chucked him out in a box. Spent a good hour or so, just tryin’ to get him in my saddlebag.”

“Probably should’ve left him there, son. He doesn’t look like he’s gonna make it.”

“He will,” Arthur insists. “I’m gonna take care of him, get him all cleaned up. Just like I did with Boadicea, when we got her. He won’t always look like this.”

Dutch looks unsure. He turns to Hosea who shrugs.

“He already takes good care of the horses. Why not let him keep it? It’s just a dog.”

Dutch chuckles, shaking his head.

“Well, alright then! I suppose you can keep Copper then. Make sure he’s trained, else we might have bigger problems than you scratchin’ yourself raw.”

Arthur grins, hand already rubbing a spot on the pup’s head.

“He’ll be a good boy, I promise, Dutch.”

Hosea sets his book on top of the table Susan still sits at and takes Boadicea’s reins to lead her to the other horses. Her ears flick back at this, still unwilling to be touched by anyone who isn’t her rider. Arthur walks on her other side, still cradling Copper.

“Be nice, Bo,” he says.

She looks less like she’s going to bite Hosea, but still eyes him warily. Both walk together over there until Arthur sets Copper down on the ground and begins to remove the tack from her back. Hosea sits down on a nearby rock, making a kissing sound to draw Copper’s attention. The pup turns to him and walks over, sniffing curiously at his boots.

“You’re starting to get a collection of reddish animals here,” Hosea says, taking one of Copper’s ears between his thumb and forefinger and rubbing it gently.

The pups tail wags wildly and he leans into the touch, tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“Ain’t intentional, I swear,” Arthur says. He runs a brush along Boadicea’s neck and down her side, patting her as he works. “I just see ‘em, all alone and well…ain’t like I can’t take care of ‘em.”

“Something tells me you’d have an even bigger collection, if we didn’t move all the time.” Hosea smiles. “Is that something you’d want in the future? A lot of animals?”

“Dutch always says we’ll start a homestead someday, when we get enough. So I reckon so.”

“I’ve never had the knack myself. My mother, she had a cat and he hated me. Used to attack my feet when I slept.”

“Don’t think Copper’s the type to like nibblin’ toes.”

Hosea laughs. “No. I think he’ll get into all sorts of mischief, once he’s feeling better.”

They’re quiet for a minute. Arthur clearly expects Hosea to say something, and he fully intends to, but right now, he’s just enjoying the way the puppy licks his fingers and rolls onto his back. Eager for attention and affection it seems.

“You’re mad at me for bein’ back so late,” Arthur guesses, slipping his brush away to pull out a hoof pick.

Boadicea lifts her left front hoof without any coaxing, accustomed to the way her boy works. She doesn’t even lift her head from grazing at the short grass.

“I’m not mad, son. I was just worried.”

“Dutch never minds. Says it’s alright if I wander.”

“It’s alright when you wander during the day, when it’s easy to see threats. But you ain’t used to shooting in pitch black the way me and Dutch are. Not yet, anyway.”

“I’m fine. We hardly run into any trouble out here, anyways.”

“Arthur.”

The boy sighs, comes around Boadicea so Hosea can see him properly. It’s only been four years since he and Dutch found him in that saloon, but he already looks so different from the boy he’d been then. He’s taller, broader. His hat fits him properly now. He’s in dire need of a haircut, hands sweeping his bangs back from his eyes. Hosea can see where he missed a bit of hair on his chin, near the scar he got from the time he tripped over seemingly nothing and slammed into the ground.

“I know you’re eighteen now and that means you’re almost a man,” he says slowly. “And I know I already left once, so you’re probably wondering when I’ll leave again.”

Arthur crosses his arms. Waits for Hosea to get to the point. Hosea sighs.

“I ain’t leavin’ again,” he says solemnly. “I did well enough while I was out there, but I still couldn’t help trying to pull the wool over some strangers who came into the town I was visiting near. And, as Bessie said to me the day before I left, I wasn’t happy. I’m staying with you and Dutch, both of us are. For better or for worse.”

“I just don’t get why you left us in the first place,” Arthur says, ducking his head so Hosea can’t see his face. “Was it something I did? Did I not do a job the right way, was I too dumb to pick up on some sorta signal you n’ Dutch have worked out? I know I ain’t that smart compared to you two—”

“You aren’t stupid, Arthur,” Hosea says firmly. “Just because you don’t have our flair for the dramatic doesn’t make you stupid. There’s nobody else I’ve ever known who takes to the horses so quick and you’re the hardest working young man I’ve known. I never, ever would dream of leaving, just because of something you did. I told you before, when I asked if you wanted to come with us, me and Bessie wanted you. She missed you fiercely when we were on our own. We used to wonder what you were up to, nearly every day.”

He hears a sound come from Arthur that sounds suspiciously like a sniffle but chooses to ignore it for the time being.

“I didn’t want to leave you or Dutch. Felt like my heart was being torn in two.”

“Why leave then?”

“Sometimes in life, you love two things or two people. And if you want to follow one of ‘em, you have to leave the other behind. Or make them unhappy. And you don’t want to do that, but you try to choose the lesser of two evils.”

Hosea frowns. “You tell yourself every day that you did the right thing and sometimes, it’s a lie. And other times, it’s a truth. In this case, I think it was more of the former. Bessie understands that, as much as I’m sure she doesn’t like it.”

“I like Bessie.”

Hosea laughs. “I like her too, son.”

“Wish she wasn’t unhappy here though.”

“Ah, well.” Hosea looks across the camp to where Bessie is settling down for the night in their tent. He can see her fluffing his pillow a bit so it’ll be soft for him when he eventually lays down beside her. A thing he always forgets to do in the morning. “The way I understand things, she doesn’t dislike the company, just the circumstances.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you feel the same way?”

Hosea shrugs. “I’ve led this life for a long time, Arthur. I’ll probably die doin’ it, knowing my luck. I’ll always wish things were better of course, but I’m willing to do what I have to do to make that happen. I believe in Dutch’s vision of what the world could be like, even if I think he’s a bit too fanciful about it some times. And that’s enough for me.” He spreads his arms wide, gesturing to the whole camp. “I’ve got everything I care about right here. Even Boadicea, as mean as she is.”

Boadicea snorts and stamps her hoof. Arthur lets loose his own snort, though his is of amusement.

“You tease Dutch for bein’ dramatic, but that was pretty sappy, old man,” he says.

“Well, I’m with Dutch, aren’t I? Someone has to match him in that area, and it’s certainly not going to be you.”

Arthur is still smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Nope. It’s not.”

Hosea stands up, gently shoves Arthur’s hat down over his eyes. “Finish up with Boadicea and go get some of the leftovers Susan left out for you. You’ve had a long day, you ought to get some sleep.”

Arthur makes a grumbling noise as he goes to fix his hat. “Okay, Hosea.”

“And Arthur?”

The boy cocks his head towards the older man, looking quite a bit like the pup he’s taken in if not for the color of his hair being different.

“No more card games at the saloon for now. You’re eighteen, not twenty-one. You can’t drink legally in Illinois without parental consent and I’m not givin’ you any. And neither is Dutch if he knows whats good for him. You wanna drink, you can drink here instead.”

“But Ms. Grimshaw only lets me have one beer a day!”

“When you’re a man, you can drink as much or as little as you like. Alright, Arthur?”

Arthur grunts, crosses his arms again. “Alright, Hosea.”

“Glad to hear it.” Hosea pauses before continuing to walk back to his tent. “Goodnight.”

He hears Arthur say back, voice soft and mindful of the rest of their family, “’Night, Hosea.”

March 1885

“Honestly Dutch, I don’t think we’re gonna find much here. The town’s dryer than a desert and the people poorer than anyone outside of Annesburg,” Hosea says as they trot down the main road of the newest town they’ve come across in Illinois.

Optimistically called ‘Opportunity’, Hosea privately thinks they should’ve added another word before it. He hasn’t been to someplace as rundown as this one since they found Arthur seven years ago. Not even the vermin looks well-fed.

“You’re probably right.” Dutch sighs. “I don’t even think we can pick up supplies at that store we passed by earlier. Pickin’s looked slim.”

“I didn’t even see any bags of maize,” Arthur adds from behind them both.

At twenty-one years old, Arthur Morgan has lost most traces of childhood and turned into the kind of man another might turn away from in a dark alleyway. He does not walk proudly but neither does he walk hunched over. The only thing meaner looking than him is his horse and she’d give a drunken Irishman a run for his money. Best of all, he’s competent. A thing Hosea cannot help but be the slightest big proud of, despite how much Arthur insists it really isn’t anything. Always reliable, always is where he says he is and never late to anything. A fine boy and a finer son, all things considered.

“There was no maize?” Dutch says, turned around to glance at him. “Christ. Guess we better tell Susan and Bessie to start packin’ up then. No point in staying here if we can’t even get a bag of goddamn maize.”

Arthur makes a sound of agreement, but Hosea’s attention has once again, been caught by something in the distance. He shades his eye with his hand, cursing himself for forgetting his hat back at his tent. Dutch notices he’s distracted and raises an eyebrow.

“What is it, old girl?”

“Looks like a crowd up ahead,” Hosea says. “Don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

“Well, let’s go check it out,” Dutch suggests. “If nothing else, we might get some entertainment out of this place.”

They keep to the back of the mob, craning their heads to see what exactly has everyone so riled up. But the minute Hosea sees the short, scrawny form hunched over with a rope around his neck, his heart drops. It’s a boy, even younger than Arthur was when they found him. He could be anywhere from ten to twelve and he looks more skeleton than human, with a dirty rats nest for hair. He watches the crowd with wide, fearful eyes, desperately searching for escape.

Next to him, Dutch fumes.

“You must be joking,” he mutters. “They’re gonna hang a boy?”

“Looks that way,” Hosea says, his own voice strained.

He sees Arthur move Boadicea to stand beside him, mouth a flat line as he squints up at the stage, where a man is giving a speak about the sin of theft.

“Excuse me, sir!” Dutch calls, raising his hand. “May I have just a moment of your time?”

The crowd and the man all turn to look at Dutch, many still baring scowls and hard, flinty eyes. Their faces still caught up in the savage blood lust of awaiting that lever to be pulled and for the rope to snap tight.

“You may, stranger. But only for a moment. We are enacting justice on this vermin and cleaning up our good streets, once and for all.”

“You say vermin, friend, but all I see is a little boy.” Dutch tilts his head to the side, slipping into the role of confused passerby so easily, but Hosea can still see the fury in his eye. “A little rough-looking, to be sure, but nothing too criminal.”

“This ‘little boy’s’ been stealin’ our chickens for weeks,” the man retorts. “Ain’t nobody got enough to feed themselves, let alone this little shit. Better to hang him now before he grows up and starts stealin’ worse. Thievery is a crime, y’know, a disease. Thieves are never satisfied with just a little bit. They gotta keep takin’ more and more away from the good, honest, hardworkin’ folks. Better for ‘em all to hang, the sooner the better.”

“Now see here, friend, I think this is where I’m gonna have to cut you off.” Dutch straightens up and Queenie takes a step forward. “What this boy’s tryin’ to do? Is survival, plain and simple. He doesn’t want to die, doesn’t want to starve, so he steals food. And you would condemn this boy to death, just for not wantin’ to die?”

Hosea is well-versed with Dutch’s speeches by now and it sounds like this one is gearing up to be a particularly long one. It’s a toss up whether or not Dutch intends to talk their way out of seeing this boy hanged or if he’s just stalling for time. He watches the crowd carefully, watches the speaker and the man just behind him, who’s hand rests on the lever that would open the trapdoor and kill this boy. The boy, to his credit, is still shaking like a leaf but he watches Dutch with wide eyes, as if daring to hope that this stranger would even try to save him.

“They ain’t buyin’ it,” Arthur mumbles into Hosea’s ear. “’Specially that feller with the lever.”

Hosea hums, keeping his face carefully neutral. “Get ready.”

“For what?”

“You’ll know when it happens.”

Arthur huffs, but continues to pay attention. Dutch is really laying into the man and the crowd by extension. Berating them for turning thier backs on those who need it most. His speech might’ve even worked, if this was a different crowd. If they weren’t already so eager for death.

The man next to the lever shifts and there is a loud squeak as gears turn and the trapdoor opens. Just as the boy begins to fall, just as the rope begins to grow tight, Arthur whips his revolver out and shoots the rope. The boy falls to the dusty earth like a sack of potatoes, grunting loudly as his knees—and then the rest of his body—slam down.

“Get him the hell out of here!” Hosea shouts, drawing his own gun and firing two shots into the air.

Arthur barely spares him a glance, already coaxing Boadicea to rear up on her hind legs and give her fiercest battle cry, sending the crowd scattering to get out of the way of the giant horse. She springs forward and Arthur leans over heavily, arm held out wide to grab the boy. Who has somehow in all the confusion, picked up on what was going on and holds out his own arms a little dazed as Arthur slams into him and yanks him up with one arm under his scrawny shoulders. Boadicea is moving too fast for Hosea to see whether or not both of them stay on the horse, but he trusts Arthur’s skill in a saddle to keep them both safe.

Meanwhile, the local law enforcement has caught on to Dutch and Hosea and is shooting at them as they race through the town. Just fast enough to stay ahead of the men on foot. Some of them—those not in uniform—race for their houses, to the guns stored there and the horses nibbling on sparse grass. The play a game of chicken in the town for probably ten to fifteen minutes before Hosea senses the tide changing as both townspeople and law enforcement begin to get a bit organized.

“Time to go!” he shouts to Dutch, who automatically turns Queenie around and races with Hosea out of town.

They take a long way back to camp, turning what was originally an hours ride into two and a half. By the time they return, Boadicea’s already grazing next to the wagon horses, the cinch of her saddle loosened and the bit free from her mouth. Bessie and Susan are already looking over their newest member and Arthur is throwing the remains of the noose into the fire with a disgusted look on his face.

Susan looks up when they trot into camp, crosses her arms and gives Dutch a glare.

“You couldn’t resist stirring up trouble, could you, Dutch?” she says. “I just got the camp set up and now Arthur’s tellin’ me we’re gonna have to move again!”

“It was of the utmost importance that I stirred up trouble, my dear,” Dutch says, sliding down from Queenie’s back. “I couldn’t just watch them hang that boy over stealing goddamn chickens!”

Susan scowls at the tone, but Arthur steps between them on his way to take Queenie’s reins. He takes Empress’ when Hosea dismounts and leads them to where Boadicea grazes. Arthur is no master of subtlety, but Hosea has a feeling this is his method of getting the two of them to stop fighting. Which has been happening more often recently, though Hosea doesn’t quite know why.

Dutch is the first to give in.

He sighs, pushing his hair back behind his ears from where it became ruffled from all the hard riding earlier.

“I wouldn’t have done it the way that I did if I thought there was any other way,” Dutch says. “They wanted their pound of flesh. Hosea and I…and Arthur, we decided they wouldn’t get it.”

Susan doesn’t say anything else, but she also doesn’t throw an empty tin plate at him, which Hosea considers a win. She huffs and spins around to rejoin Bessie, who’s looking over the boy much like how she once did for Arthur when they brought him home. Dutch watches her for a minute, an odd expression on his face before it closes off and he marches to his tent. Hosea makes a note to talk to him later and decides to join Arthur with the horses. There’s really no reason for the boy to be crowded by three well-intentioned adults after the ordeal he’s just been through.

“Hey, Hosea,” Arthur says, already brushing Queenie down.

“Arthur.” Hosea smiles warmly. “You did good today, son.”

He ducks his head but eventually nods his acknowledgment.

“He don’t talk, the boy,” he says after awhile. “Tried talkin’ to him the whole way back to camp. Didn’t say a word. Not one peep outta him.”

“Well, he’s just been through something pretty awful, only to be picked up by us. And we don’t look like the friendliest of sorts.” Hosea plucks a stray burr from Queenie's coat and flicks it off into the woods somewhere. “I reckon his neck might hurt a bit too. Mine certainly did, after they tried to hang me.”

“You almost got hanged?”

“A long time ago, yes. I too, stole some chickens, and the sheriff decided to make an example out of me,” he says. “Fortunately, the crowd that came to watch my hanging thought the punishment didn’t match the crime. Some stranger in the crowd shot me down and they hung the sheriff instead. My throat hurt for at least a week or two afterwards.”

Arthur winces, hand coming up to idly touch his own. “Unpleasant business.”

“Very much so.”

They brush down all of the horses together in companionable silence. Hosea doesn’t really feel he needs to talk to Arthur right now, even though he can tell the young man is bothered by something. He decides it can wait until later. For now, he and Arthur keep a steady eye on their newest member of the gang from afar. And Hosea thinks that if Arthur had been the start of this really becoming a family, this boy is what solidifies it.

Chapter Text

June 1885

This new boy makes Arthur’s first few days of mumbled responses look downright chatty in comparison. His name is John Marston and Hosea only knows this because Arthur manages to pry it out from him a couple of months later, after the boy has a nightmare and subsequently kicks Arthur awake. He watches all of them with wide, careful eyes, flinches if they reach too quick and devours his food as if he expects to lose it even quicker. Perhaps he had, in the past. In response to this, Susan and Bessie give him portions at a time to make sure he doesn’t choke and let him help take stock of what they have for food stores and what they’ll need when the men go into town. This also, has the unfortunate consequence of aiding and abetting his hoarding. Yet another thing Arthur brings up one night as he shakes their bedrolls out of ants.

“He’s drivin’ me crazy,” the young man grumbles, glaring at where John is sitting next to the fire, almost vacantly staring at the flames. “Startin’ to wonder if he was worth the trouble if he’s gonna be this goddamn annoying.”

“We didn’t help him for his supposed usefulness, Arthur,” Dutch says, voice reprimanding. “We helped him because it was the right thing to do.”

Arthur sighs, tension leeching from his body at Dutch’s words. “I know, Dutch. Just can’t help bein’ like this. Ain’t had a good night’s rest in what feels like forever.”

Hosea does his best to see if he can coax some words out of John, but he’s even less recipient to his prodding than Arthur. The only time they can hear any words out of him is when he manages to annoy Arthur enough that Arthur throws a pinecone at his head and he starts swearing enough to make a sailor blush.

“Both of you, knock it off!” Susan says, her voice echoing throughout the camp.

She pulls John away from Arthur before he can launch himself back at him, fingers digging into his shoulder, and takes Arthur by the ear, causing him to yelp.

“Arthur Morgan, you’re a grown man now,” she hisses. “What’s got you actin’ like a child all of a sudden?”

“Marston’s bein’ a little shit!” he growls. “Won’t bathe or collect firewood or anythin’ like that but sees fit to hoard food ‘n the damn tent so we got ants and then he tells me off for havin’ a little bit of mud on my jeans ‘cause I was just takin’ care of the horses—”

“Well you’re an old asshole who’s too goddamn grumpy!” John spits back.

His voice is a hoarse, raspy thing. Still a high-pitched child’s squawk, but to Hosea, it sounds like he’s been gargling glass in his free time.

“I wonder why that is, boy—”

“Enough, both of you.”

Dutch’s voice echoes around the camp and he walks towards them with a disappointed look on his face. Susan keeps her grip on the boys but looks up, surprised. Generally speaking, Dutch doesn’t dispense discipline. That’s always been Susan’s forte, keeping their little family organized and alive. Hosea prefers to have talks later, to make sure it is understood what was wrong. Dutch tends to keep to himself unless there’s a lesson to teach, a job to be done. Happy to spend time with Arthur—and now John—when Hosea suggests they go fishing or hunting or just for a ride, content to watch from afar. Hosea’s never really questioned it. He’s always figured Dutch was only indulging Hosea’s fondness for children, never harboring any interest himself.

The way he looks right now though, could almost be an expression on Bessie’s face. It weighs heavily, makes both Arthur and John look at the ground just to avoid having it rest on their shoulders.

“John, Arthur’s right that you need to wash up and help out a bit more. Not because you owe us—” Dutch is careful with his words, always has been. “—But because it is how things are done, son. We all have to look out for each other. It is our sworn duty, y’know. As much as it’s our duty to do what we can to help those with less than us.”

John mumbles something under his breath but looks reasonably chastised. Arthur has a pleased look in his eye. A bit too prideful for Hosea’s taste. Dutch picks up on it quick, his attention shifting to the eldest like a whip.

“And Arthur, you ought to be a bit kinder to our youngest member,” he says. “You remember what it was like, when we brought you back with us. You didn’t know your ass from your head for several months. I think young John is doing well enough as he can, despite bein’ a little green to this. Do you understand me?”

“Yessir,” Arthur mutters, head bowed.

“You two are brothers now,” Dutch says, voice growing solemn. “Brothers help each other when one’s been kicked down. Squabble all you like, but never forget that.”

Neither boy has a response to this. Each of them have decided to not look at each other, even though Hosea can see Arthur’s ear growing ever redder between Susan’s fingers.

“Arthur, why don’t you teach young John here how to take care of the horses? Let him help lighten your load a little.”

“Alright, Dutch.”

“And John? Listen to Arthur. He knows what he’s talkin’ about.”

“Fine,” John says sullenly, still glaring at the ground.

Susan releases them both, pressing her fists into her hips and watches them walk to where the horses are grazing. She walks closer to where Hosea sits, reading a newspaper on top of a crate. He flicks it open again and resumes his reading, though he keeps one ear towards the horses, if only to make sure they don’t start fighting again.

“What do you think, Mr. Matthews?” Susan says, her voice quiet. “Think they’ll start to get along now?”

He snorts.

“They’re young boys, Ms. Grimshaw,” he says. “Arthur may be all grown up now, but he’s still young. And John seems to have found a knack for pushing his buttons. I bet they’ll always be somewhat at each other’s throats. What matters more is if they’re there for each other when things get tough.”

“What do street urchins know of loyalty?” she scoffs. “Arthur’s one thing. We raised that boy. But John?”

“He’s young. He’ll grow, just as Arthur went.” He looks up from his paper, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t know the loyalty of our youngest members troubled you so much, Susan.”

“Ain’t like that. I doubt either of them would turn on us in our sleep.” She crosses her arms across her chest, sighing. “I just wonder what Dutch is playin’ at. Takin’ another one in. To what end?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Please, Hosea. You and I both know he confides in you like you’re a Catholic priest and it’s time for confession.”

“A bit blasphemous, don’t you think? Considering I’m Jewish and we share a bedroll on occasion. Though,” Hosea says, pretending to get thoughtful. “I wonder if that’s why so many people go to confessional.”

She whacks the back of his head, though he can see her fighting off a smile of a sort.

“You’re a filthy man, Mr. Matthews.”

“Only when it’s entertaining.” He smiles. “At any rate, I think Dutch just felt strongly about the boy and his circumstances. Gettin’ hanged for stealing food. Hits a bit too close to home, that one.”

“For you, maybe. As far as I know, Dutch van der Linde has never gotten in trouble for anything like that. Plenty of other things, for sure. But chicken-theivin’?”

“Less the crime and more the principle of it all. Goes against everything he believes in.” Hosea flips a page. “You should’ve seen him when we rode up. He looked fit to shoot them all, consequences be damned. Only didn’t because I didn’t I reckon.”

“He cares for you.”

“He does. He cares for you too.”

“Not the way he cares about you.”

Hosea doesn’t have much to say to that. He’s noticed the distance growing between Dutch and Susan—more on Dutch’s part than Susan’s—though he’s not commented on it. Who Dutch takes up with is none of Hosea’s business unless he makes it his business and as a general whole, he finds he’s not all that comfortable speaking to another person who would be called his lover. Not out of jealousy, Hosea is quite confident of the bond they share. He wouldn’t have returned if he wasn’t. Moreso, it’s that he cannot agree with the assessments these women make.

Before Susan, Dutch would occasionally introduce Hosea to the women he was with. Never long enough to leave a lasting impact, just a passing fancy, as Hosea took to understand it. The way they looked at Dutch sometimes—like he was a god in need of veneration—always tasted foul on his tongue. Dutch van der Linde is many things, but a god he is not. Nor a prophet. He bleeds red, the same as Hosea. Pretends to be in complete control at all times until Hosea gets his hands on him and makes him come undone. Hosea cannot praise his name to the heavens like these women—and sometimes men—do. He cannot pretend Dutch is anything less than mortal.

Dutch is a man of many complications and contradictions, some more annoying than others. Proclaims he hates all things civilized yet adores things associated with the rich. Says they only rob from the well-off but still takes from those who work hard just as often as he does from those with more than enough. Hosea cannot summon that blind devotion that these other lovers could. All he can provide is clarity, sharp against Dutch’s pale skin. Telling him no when others say yes. Pulling him back from the edge when others want to shove him off that cliff just to see if he’ll fly. For Dutch van der Linde is mortal, delightfully so, and that is the reason Hosea loves him, the reason he still follows him.

He is a fool, goddamnit, but that’s Hosea’s fool. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

That being said, he has lived alongside Susan for quite a number of years. He wouldn’t consider them friends necessarily, not in the way she and Bessie are, but he likes her well enough. Has to, really. She’s a hard worker, stern yet mostly fair and it was clear for quite some time Dutch was besotted with her. That’s seemed to change now. And unlike before, Hosea does feel a pang of pity for the poor woman, who so clearly loves Dutch but he doesn’t love her.

Not in the same way he’s always been remarkably steadfast with Hosea, as she’d already pointed out.

Susan seems to pick up on what’s being unsaid, because she shakes her head. Eyes, still fixed on where Arthur and John are brushing one of the wagon horses. Arthur has flipped a bucket upside down for John to stand on so he can reach the horses back and keeps a hand nearby just in case he falls off. The younger boy grips the metal with bare feet. They still haven’t gotten around to getting him shoes yet.

“I don’t blame you for this,” she says. “You and him, and me and him are different matters. I just feel a bit of a fool for lovin’ him so much when it’s clear he doesn’t give much of a damn about me like that.”

“I think you have to be a bit of a fool to fall in love, truth be told,” Hosea says. “God knows how often I’ve done something to upset Bessie. And she still keeps me around. Could’ve done a lot better than me and I know that.”

“That’s the difference between you two. You know you’re a fool. He needs remindin’.”

Hosea makes a noise in the back of his throat that could be nothing, but could also be construed as agreement. He’s often thought that himself, but never found the need to voice it out loud.

“I had hoped…” Susan starts, but then trails off.

Hosea doesn’t prompt her to continue, just continues to pretend to read the paper. Letting her talk, at her own speed.

“I’d hoped that maybe, if I went with him, we could’ve been like you ‘n Bessie,” she admits, her voice quiet. “She knows you love him, but you’re just as crazy about her. It balances out. But I think that was even stupider than fallin’ in love with that smug bastard. Can’t make a man change. Should’ve known that, given my former profession.”

“I don’t think it’s foolish,” he says. “I think it’s unfortunate. And I offer my condolences, as empty as you probably think they are. But I don’t have much else to offer you, as harsh as that sounds. The man you want to talk to is in his tent, readin’ something. And I can’t give you the comfort you want, no matter how much I could try to.”

She huffs out a laugh. “Always the straight-shooter, Mr. Matthews.”

“Honesty is the best policy among fellow robbers,” he says faux-solemnly, cracking a smile at the end. “And to be frank with you Ms. Grimshaw, I think you can take it.”

“I can, as much as I wish I didn’t have to.” She sighs again.

“Could always leave, if you wanted. I’d give you a ride to the station and the fare to match if you asked.”

She shrugs. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. I’ll think about it.” She looks back to him, face softening just a smidge. Barely enough for anyone who isn’t Hosea, a master of observation, to pick up on. “Thank you for your time and your honesty. For what it’s worth, I think Bessie found herself a wonderful man.”

Hosea tips his hat to her; the wide-brimmed one Bessie says makes him look like an old man. “You’re very kind, Ms. Grimshaw. Let me know if you need anything.”

She leaves him to his paper then, largely forgotten as a prop in pursuit of an unobstructed view of the boys. They’ve come to Boadicea. The bucket is barely helping John now, she’s just too big. But Arthur’s picked him up under the armpits and holds him up so he can run the brush along her spine. Even more miraculous is the fact that Boadicea stands there, passive as anything. Her dislike of anyone but Arthur waylayed for now through inexplicable means. Eventually, John finishes brushing her back and Arthur sets him back on the ground. He slips his hand in his pocket and presses something in John’s hand, says something quick and points to Boadicea. John looks doubtful—and just a tad suspicious—but eventually approaches the mare’s head.

She looks down at him with a wad of grass in her mouth, chewing slowly. Unimpressed by his presence, Hosea would wager. Until, that is, that he holds out his palm, fingers pulled back far to make a flat surface. Her ears flick forward, the breath she huffs blowing John’s brown hair back from his face. When she finishes her grass, she leans forward and takes the peppermint from him, crunching loudly. Arthur leans against her, smiling slightly. Hosea just manages to catch out the words.

“See? Told ya she weren’t gonna bite you.”

“Yeah,” John replies. “Guess so.”

He kicks at a clump of mud, twisting his hands together and looking like he’s swallowed something foul. Arthur isn’t really looking at him, just patting Boadicea’s side, fond as anything.

“Can you teach me how to find firewood?” John says, the words coming out quick like an exhale. “I never learned how.”

Arthur looks down at him, eyebrows raised. “Sure, kid. Let’s go now. Cookin’ fire’s usually pretty low ‘round this time.”

Hosea smiles to himself. He thinks they’re going to be alright.

July 1886

John takes to following Arthur around almost everywhere.

Hosea’s not quite sure why.

Could be that Arthur’s the second youngest person and even a grouchy twenty-two year old is preferable to the older adults in terms of company. Could be that Arthur—though quick to lose his temper at John on occasions such as the times he tries to steal his journal or when he spills half a can of oranges in his bedroll and didn’t tell him, leading to Arthur getting so stuck to the blankets Bessie has to take a knife to it—seems to be tolerant of his presence.

Teaches him how to use a knife to skin kills, teaches him how to tan a hide, how to sew (though this lesson goes poorly as John somehow manages to sew his finger onto the shirt he was trying to repair), how to bandage a wound and where to find the best blackberries on occasions he takes him out of the camp. Gets him to make change by taking him into town on supply runs, lets him help him load up the wagon one day. Hosea goes with them both on these trips initially, wary of how the two might behave without a proper adult keeping watch, but these fears are proved unfounded.

Admittedly, Arthur does cuff the boy rather hard on the head when he makes a fuss about a sack of potatoes and John “accidentally” throws a small ball of mud at Arthur’s head when he takes too long chatting with some girls to get going back to camp, but it’s only that. Just small, brotherly pranks and teasing occasionally interspersed with one of them shouting at the other and offering an apology in the form of favorite food shared and, in one instance, a weird looking tree root left on Arthur’s pillow when John had stomped off after some argument no one had ever really heard the bulk of.

Life is peaceful, in a strange way.

There’s robbery and cons that Dutch and Hosea work out. There’s wandering, north and south and ever further west slowly over time. Running from law, running from people who’ve been scammed, and sometimes—though very rarely—just moving on. Susan gets her own tent and studiously ignores Dutch for a solid month but treats everyone else well enough. She and Bessie take to going into towns on their own and returning with a little extra cash.

Dutch brings back a new woman, by the name of Annabelle. She has hair as dark as his, a proud Roman nose and a mouth that’s quick to laugh and smile. Hosea watches Susan carefully when the women are introduced but she shakes her hand civilly enough and asks her if she knows how to cook over a fire.

Annabelle’s smile only broadens. “Of course I can. What’re you preparing for dinner?”

He catches Susan’s eye one day as he brings her an armful of oregano, raises an eyebrow. She’s wiping down the table. Bessie has her arms in one of the washtubs, cleaning the plates and utensils they use to eat, humming a song to herself. He can see Annabelle perched on a rock, mending one of Arthur’s shirts.

“Did you think we were going to fight each other, Mr. Matthew?” Susan says without looking up from her task.

A strand of her hair has fallen in front of her eyes and she tucks it behind one ear, drawing back to full height to look at him.

“I expected something a bit different from how you’re acting now,” he says, setting the herbs on the counter she and the other women use to prepare food. “Given our last talk on the subject, I expected you to be rather pissed off about the whole affair.”

“Oh, I’m mad as hell. But not at her. She’s just a girl.” Susan shrugs. “Ain’t her fault Dutch is a terrible lover.”

“Yet you stay.”

“’Course. Just because he’s a shitty lover don’t mean he ain’t a decent man. Besides, who else is going to make sure we live civilized? Just the other day, I saw John throw mud at Arthur before he went out to see Ms. Gillis. You and Bessie are far too soft on those boys.”

“Only because you’re so firm with them, Ms. Grimshaw.”

“Well. Someone has to be,” she sniffs, and returns to scrubbing the table.

And that had been it.

Hosea grows to like Annabelle. She can spin a yarn almost as fast as Dutch can, likes to beguile the unexpected with a flash of dark eyes and well-spoken words. She pretended to be a witch for the hell of it, confessing this to Hosea one evening as she carefully applied cosmetics to her face, donning a shawl made of airy fabric and binding her hair back with a purple ribbon.

“Why a witch?” he asks her.

She’s perched at Dutch’s desk, his shaving mirror propped in front of her and she smiles at Hosea’s reflection as she dabs the same mascara stuff Susan likes to wear for the hell of it around her eyes.

“When you look like me, people assume things of you,” she says. “I’d rather pretend to be something I’m not that meets some of their expectations while I rob them blind, than let them tell my story for me. It’s better that way.”

Hosea doesn’t feel it’s his place to argue, so he doesn’t.

June 1887

On a fine Tuesday in June of 1887, at exactly 2 PM, they rob thier first bank.

Dutch’s been talking about doing a big job, a proper one for a gang, for several years now. Ever since Arthur proved he could handle his own, really. John’s presence seemed to only increase the urge. Said boy followed Arthur, Hosea and finally Dutch in turn as they talked over the details, begging to join them.

“C’mon, I can shoot a gun,” he whined. “Hit most of the cans off the stumps when we set ‘em up now. I’m big enough.”

“You’re fourteen,” Arthur says, frowning. “Ain’t nearly as big as you think you are.”

“You were fourteen when you got to go out on jobs!” John glares. “Ain’t fair.”

“Those jobs were home robberies or pickpocketing in large towns,” Hosea says, putting a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder. “Not a bank robbery. Ain’t the same thing, son.”

“Still ain’t fair.”

“We need you to stay here, help Susan in case any trouble comes by,” Dutch says. “Arthur can’t do that if he’s with us. So the responsibility falls to you.”

John’s scowl lessens a little. “Do I get to use the Cattleman?”

“Sure, son. And someday, you’ll come with us. Just not this time.”

Dutch placed his hand on John’s head, smiling a little.

“Alright, fine.”

“Glad to hear it. Remember, we’re countin’ on you!”

And the job itself had gone off without much of a hitch. Well, aside from having to split up. Arthur took the bulk of the funds they’d grabbed, stashed it in his saddlebags.

“Meet you back at the camp!” he’d shouted. “Reckon we shouldn’t head back there all together.”

“We’ll be there!” Hosea had replied.

Then Arthur had squeezed his legs and Boadicea needed very little further encouragement to gallop off. She disappeared into a cloud of dust, and with her, went most of the law on their tail. When Dutch and Hosea managed to lose their own tails, it was just a tad too dark to justify the continued hard riding. The horses were tired. Queenie and Empress weren’t as young as they used to be. It’d be time soon for Dutch and Hosea to find their replacements, as much as it hurt something fierce to consider selling his proud mare.

He rubs the palm of his hand up and down her weathered face gently, having slipped the bit from her mouth for the night while Dutch finishes setting up their tent and got a fire going.

“Been awhile since we camped out like this, old girl,” Dutch remarks when Hosea joins him at the fire.

“We’ve been busy,” Hosea says, pressing his side into Dutch’s.

He hides a smile as Dutch practically melts into him, hip digging almost painfully into Hosea’s. He doesn’t mind the ache, as annoying as it’ll be. Being close to Dutch in any capacity is worth the pain.

He pops open a can of corned beef, sets it close to the fire so it can warm up a little. Leans his head against Dutch’s, smiles a little.

“I’m surprised that went off as well as it did,” he says, voice soft. “I know we’ve been plannin’ this for half a year now, but still. Couldn’t help but be worried.”

“You were wonderful. Still the fastest lockpicker I’ve ever met.”

“Arthur did well too.”

“He did.” Dutch’s voice is fond. “Quite a change from the scrawny boy he used to be, don’t you think?”

“Yes indeed.”

It does bother Hosea a bit, that Arthur’s imposing form is being used for nefarious purposes. He’s a strong boy, dedicated and hardworking. He’d do well on anyone’s ranch, anywhere he could be outside and near horses. It feels perverse to use those gifts to commit crime when he could be so much more. Part of Hosea wants to encourage him to look for a more honest line of work and it shows with how often he’s told Arthur to pick up odd jobs at farms and ranches over the years.

But another part is still full of pride for how well his boy has done, despite the unpleasant business of stealing from people. No one had died, no one had to get shot. The mere sight of Arthur glowering at the bankteller from behind his bandanna had been enough to get them the five thousand in gold bars without much fuss. He had remained cool, calm. Collected, even when the law had shown up and demanded they surrender. Only shot above their heads as they escaped through the back.

He voices none of this to Dutch, content to enjoy his presence and wait for their dinner to heat up.

“Honestly, I was a bit worried John was gonna follow us,” Dutch says, interrupting his thoughts.

“You told him to stay put,” Hosea says.

“Yes, but he often follows Arthur even when he’s been told not to.” Dutch sighs. “Arthur rode out once to see the charming Ms. Gillis and apparently, John took one of the wagon horses and followed him. Nearly got arrested, though Arthur never said why.”

“When did this happen?”

“Couple of months back. You were busy with that politician…that mayor who liked his whores a little too much and wanted to be reelected.”

“Ah, yes. I remember now.” He’s silent for a minute. “Arthur got him out of it, I take it?”

“Always does.”

“Good.”

Hosea pulls the can of corned beef back from the fire, wraps it in his bandanna and offers it to Dutch. He pulls out another can when Dutch begins to eat.

“I hope I haven’t made you feel neglected, recently,” Dutch says when they’ve both had a bit of food in thier stomach. “Taking up with Annabelle, I mean. She knows about us, of course, but I’m afraid I’ve been a bit preoccupied with all the plannin’.”

“It doesn’t bother me, Dutch. Honest.” Hosea smiles a little. “I know you. And I’m here with you now. I don’t need much to keep me happy.”

“Most men get jealous, is all.”

“Well, I’m not most men, am I?”

“You most certainly are not, old girl.”

There’s something glinting in Dutch’s eyes that Hosea recognizes immediately. He laughs a little, shoves the other man gently.

“Finish your supper, you old fool. Then, perhaps if you’re good, I’ll indulge you.”

Hosea’s never seen Dutch eat a can of strawberries so fast in his life.

December 1887

One day, Dutch goes into town for a drink and returns with a young, dark-skinned girl.

It’s been three years since Arthur shot John down from the gallows, since the older boy himself had become utterly besotted with the eldest child of a man named James Gillis, a young woman named Mary. The job Dutch proposes they do concerning Mr. Gillis turns out to not be worth the effort: the man is too smart to con, and too prone to losing money to drink and gambling anyways. Some good comes of it anyways, at least as far as Arthur’s concerned. They write letters weekly and he rides out to see her as often as they can, since Dutch has decided to linger in the area.

The girl he returns with, is wrapped in his jacket. She shivers in the cold and looks around the camp with wide eyes. It’s the fourth person Dutch has brought back with him on one of his excursions in the past few months, though certainly the youngest.

Uncle looks up blearily from the bottle he’s working on. Josiah Trelawny is trying—and failing—to successfully draw Arthur into a conversation as he chops more wood just beyond the porch of the large, abandoned cabin they’ve taken up residence in for the time being. Mac and Davey Callander are playing blackjack with John, who’s looking more and more annoyed as he keeps losing. Susan, Bessie and Annabelle have just finished dinner and are in the process of getting it into the plates. Copper looks like he’s getting ready to steal a bite or two if they aren’t careful.

“This is Miss Tilly Jackson,” Dutch announces when they all look up to see who let in the cold air. “She’ll be stayin’ with us for the foreseeable future. Miss Jackson, let’s get you into warmer clothing. Ms. Grimshaw? Mrs. Matthews?”

The women approach quickly, taking the girl to Susan’s room presumably to make her a palette and get her warm. Arthur comes back inside, stomping the snow off of his boots as he sets the axe he was using next to the door. Trelawny trails after him, waving his hands in a wide expression.

Hosea turns back to his crime novel propped up on the table in front of him. Fat, fluffy snowflakes fall outside of the window but the cabin is mostly intact and it’s warm with so many bodies pressed close together. Dutch takes a seat across from him, sighing heavily.

“Where’d you find this one?” Hosea asks without looking up.

“Behind the saloon. With some unsavory characters.”

“Ah.” Hosea presses his mouth into a thin line, frowning. “The men?”

“Laying in the snow. Their blood should be freezing.”

“Think we’ll have to move?”

“Used a knife, not a gun. I ain’t stupid.”

“Only some of the time.”

Dutch smiles despite the jab, reaches over to squeeze Hosea’s hand. His black gloves are still cold from the snow and presumably blood that hasn’t dried yet but Hosea doesn’t flinch. He flips another page and squeezes back.

“Does she have any family we could return her to?” Hosea says after awhile.

Dutch shakes his head. “Asked her that myself. Her mama died awhile ago it seems. She was runnin’ with the Foreman Brothers before she escaped after killin’ one of them in self-defense. Been livin’ rough ever since then.”

“I suppose we’re better than the Foreman Brothers. Think Bessie ought to keep an eye on her?”

“She’s remarkably composed. I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

Hosea hums and goes back to reading.

Tilly keeps to herself for the most part. She does chores as is asked of her, puts up with a lot of the verbal lashings Susan gives her with little more than a tight-lipped expression of annoyance. Hosea watches one day as Arthur gives her a tin of Vaseline one day after she mentions to him her hands have become cracked from washing the clothes. She thanks him warmly and is the first to offer him a bowl of stew when he returns the next day from wherever he’d been, caked in snow.

In fact, both John and Arthur take to her quickly. Arthur watches over her like she’s his little sister and John occasionally teases her but is quick to snap at Davey when he makes some sort of remark about her.

“Leave her alone,” he growls. Puberty has made his voice sound even worse than it did before. Still a scratchy mess but now, it cracks in addition to being a rasp.

“Or what, boy?” Davey laughs. “What’chu gonna do?”

“You don’t leave her be and maybe you’ll find out.”

It’s a childish threat, one John can’t back up, given that he’s still a scrawny, short thing with dead leaves caught in his hair, but before Davey can raise a fist to punch him, Arthur’s stepping between the two of them.

“Ms. Grimshaw catches you two fightin’ in here, she’ll make you both wish the cold had killed you first,” he warns. “Why don’t you go make yourself useful someplace else, Callander? Quit harrassin’ children for once.”

It’s clear Davey wants to fight but evidentially thinks better of it. Davey’s a mean son of a bitch, but Arthur can be a hell of a lot meaner. And Dutch is less likely to get angry at him for fighting, if its for a noble enough reason.

Davey spits on the ground and stalks off, muttering under his breath. Once he’s stormed outside, Arthur cuffs John over the head.

“What the hell was that for?” John says, rubbing where he was struck.

“Bein’ stupid, Marston. Don’t’chu know better than to pick fights with men twice your size?”

“He was bein’ nasty to Tilly!”

“Then you go to Dutch or Hosea or hell, me, for Christ’s sake. You ain’t big enough to win that fight yet, kid.”

John glowers, but doesn’t leave. “One of these days, that excuse ain’t gonna work on me no more.”

“No, it ain’t. You better hope you’re ready then.”

Arthur stalks off, mindful of Hosea as he goes to the room he’s sharing with John. The younger boy notices Hosea and huffs.

“’Suppose you’re gonna tell me off for bein’ dumb, same as Arthur?” he grumbles.

“No need. Arthur summed it up pretty nicely.”

“Was just tryin’ to help.”

“I know. And that’s real good of you.” Hosea wraps an arm around him, squeezes gently. “We should always try to help family when they need it. But preferably, we don’t pick fights with people bigger than us. That’s just common sense.”

“’Suppose I ain’t got much of that then.”

“Mind if I let you in on a little secret?”

John suddenly looks very interested. Hosea bites back a grin, turns it into a smile as John nods.

He leans down so he can talk into John’s ear and says “Arthur wasn’t much better when he was your age. I guess he’s tryin’ to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes.”

John snorts. “Does he have to hit me to do that?”

“I saw you fling a spoonful of potatoes at him yesterday because he suggested you take a bath. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

“What does that even mean, old man?”

“You do the same thing for different reasons. Can’t criticize him for doin’ it right back.”

John grumbles a bit, but doesn’t say anything else on the matter.

One night, when the fire is roaring and everyone else has found something to occupy their time, Hosea looks up from his book to see Tilly standing at the table, a box of dominoes cradled in her hands.

“Arthur said you liked to play,” she says by way of explanation.

“I do,” Hosea says. “I take it you do as well?”

“Used to. My mama played it with me, before I got taken.”

“My condolences.”

“Ain’t your fault.”

Hosea gestures to the seat across from him, puts the extra ribbon of Bessie’s he’s been using in his book to mark his page and sets it to the side. She sits down gracefully, setting the box on the table. He slides it open and begins to set them up.

“So, what do you think of our merry band of men, Ms. Jackson?” Hosea says as he passes her some tiles.

“Uncle ain’t too bad. Neither is Mr. Trelawny.” She places them neatly on a piece of wood to keep Hosea from seeing what she has. “Don’t care much for those Callander boys.”

“No one really does. They’re good as guns, and not for much else.”

“Why keep ‘em then?”

“Dutch says so.”

She doesn’t say anything to this. Hosea sets the first tile down and waits for her to go.

“Mr. Van der Linde is nice enough,” she says carefully.

“But?”

“I ain’t said ‘but’.”

“It was implied. Don’t worry, I’m the first one here who’d call him a fool to his face.”

She smiles a little and places a tile down, folding her hands on top of each other. “He talks a lot.”

“That he does.”

“I don’t understand much of what he’s sayin’. He let me borrow one of his books but…well, I don’t know how to read.” She looks down at the table, clearly embarrassed.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Neither Arthur nor John could when we first took them in. If you tell Dutch, he’ll be happy to teach you. Always is.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certainly. He likes to talk, sure, but he’s genuine in his enthusiasm. I wouldn’t lie to you, Ms. Jackson.”

“That’s a thing liars like to say,” she points out.

He smiles, sets down a tile. “Not this one and certainly not to new members.”

“How long John and Arthur been runnin’ with you anyhow?”

“Well, we’ve had Arthur with us since he was fourteen and he’s twenty-four now. John’s only been with us for three years now or so, but he’s settled in nicely. Only a little older than you, I reckon.”

“And Mr. Van der Linde, he in the habit of taking in kids?”

“Not usually. Just ones we think need help.”

Tilly lays another tile down and so does Hosea before he speaks again.

“Started with Arthur, really. I saw him in the saloon we were in and he stole from a man that would’ve killed him, had we not been there. We took him back with us and he’s been here ever since.”

“Why’d you help him? Couldn’t have been easy, takin’ in a kid.”

Hosea initially started this game hoping to get Tilly to open up to him, to understand how her brain works but he’s realizing quickly she’s doing the same right back at him. She’s shrewd but smart enough to use her youth to make the questions sound like ones expected to hear out of the mouth of a child. He smiles to himself as he places another tile down.

“He needed help and we could give him that help,” Hosea says simply. “Nothing more to it.”

“Hm.” She places another tile down. “Him and John talk about you a lot. Said you’re real nice.”

“I don’t think there’s a way for me to confirm or deny that.”

She smiles. “No, I suppose not.”

She lays down her last tile and laughs when he stares down at the game in shock.

“First time anyone other than Bessie’s beaten me in awhile,” he says. “You wanna play again?”

“Might as well,” she says, tucking her feet underneath her. “Ain’t much else to do in all this snow.”

“No, there certainly isn’t.”

Hosea knows this sort of peace can’t last for long. He knows as soon as the snow thaws, Dutch will have some sort of scheme cooked up. That Arthur will have to ride out either to get food or to run a few errands. That John will likely drive them all nuts with his pacing and fidgeting and complaining of boredom. He knows Susan will likely lose her patience at Uncle not picking up the slack or Bessie will end up getting that cold she’s prone to developing this time of the year and they’ll all end up sniffling sooner or later.

For now though, he is content playing dominoes with this little girl, who’s as quick as a whip and likes to ask him any question that comes to mind. Bessie leans against his shoulders to watch and make good-natured commentary. And he sees how Tilly’s shoulders come down from her ears, how she begins to laugh and smile more. Enough that the boys come over to see what’s so funny and then John is trying to steal her tiles and Arthur is wrestling him to get them back.

Next week, he’ll have a headache as Tilly and John conspire to steal Arthur’s journal and Arthur chases around them both, much to Annabelle’s displeasure. Dutch will likely give some sort of speech tomorrow, and Hosea will have to tell him to cut out the amount of references he makes to Evelyn Miller because for the love of God, Dutch, nobody but you reads those damn books anyways.

But today is Christmas Eve. And he thinks this is probably the best gift he’s got in awhile, spending time with these kids and having the youngest of them beat his socks off.