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Arthur Morgan had never much liked to read or write.
Of course, he appreciated the ability; it opened locks for him -- sometimes literally -- and gave him access to a world most dumb outlaws didn’t even know they missed out on.
But even still, he had never been one to sit down with a book like Dutch or Hosea. Dutch understood, reminded Hosea that not everyone had the temperament for stillness. Arthur had liked that compliment a lot when he was a kid, had puffed his chest out and strutted a little over being a man of action. Teenagers were like that.
He had shaped his identity in the glow of that compliment: always the first man in the door on a job, always the one to pull the trigger for the most critical shot, always the one to chase down the witness fleeing the scene. Dutch’s right-hand man. Hosea’s constant worry. The gang’s most feared and revered front man.
But then one day, Dutch showed up at camp with a kid in tow, scrawny and dark-haired and hungry, and suddenly the camp priority was turning little Johnny Marston into a child prodigy.
“Even a boy’s got to know how to feed himself. Mr. Pierson, give him his own hunting knife and a couple lessons.”
“Teach him to shoot, Arthur. Now he’s waving that gun around like it’s a stick in a child’s game of War, but he’s got a good eye.”
“Give me a month, and I’ll make him the best horseman the West has ever seen.”
Arthur had heard that one before. The memory of it still hummed in his ears from his own youthful lessons in the saddle of his first Van Der Linde horse, a pretty Paint gelding he had called North.
Little John took to everything like a duck to water. At least when it came to enthusiasm. At least when it came to wanting to do what was asked of him. At least according to the beaming, proud fathers who had taken him in and made him their own.
Except for one thing.
“Hosea, listen, you’ve got to teach him to read. This boy’s twelve years old and has never heard the story of the Captain and the great white whale. Yes, son, give old Hosea a little of your time each night, and he’ll have you on the oceans with Ahab.”
John hated it. He would look for any excuse to avoid his nightly lessons. One evening, a frustrated Dutch had searched all over for John, only to find the kid chopping firewood by lamplight, stacking more and more logs on an already tall pile.
“I don’t want to read,” John had complained. “I’ll never need it.”
In the midst of their argument, Arthur slipped into Hosea’s tent and grabbed himself a copy of The Last of the Mohicans. He had learned to read listening to Dutch and Hosea take turns, chapter by chapter, until one night they refused to continue until he could pull his own weight. He had mastered it in no time flat, and the three of them had finished the story together by crackling firelight, passing the book between them.
Now Arthur sat himself right by the fire for the evening -- and every evening thereafter -- and read alone like it was his favorite activity. The familiar story distracted him from any risk of introspection.
Hosea patted Arthur on the shoulder the first night, a knowing glint in his eyes, but Dutch just took over John’s lessons himself, dragged the boy laboriously through the learning of every letter. Before long, Arthur took to writing in a leatherbound journal stolen off a pig farmer. He would swirl his handwriting across the page to the rhythm of John’s complaining.
And somewhere along the way, John learned to read and got to stop his lessons. Arthur never stopped.