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Logically, short in supply as that may be, Dutch knows that it’s a dream. The setting sometimes changes - the clawed shadows of pine trees replaced by gentler valleys or the flat cut of a rocky plateau - but everything always starts the same way.
He’s lost.
The night-spun darkness smothers him as he blunders blindly through the terrain. Rolling waves of clouds created a vast-less ocean overhead, one neither the stars nor the moon can cut through with their light.
And Dutch is hardly afraid of the dark (maybe he had been once when he was a boy. Just a boy sitting by his small bedroom window and waiting for his father to march home with the other bloodied soldiers). But this sort of night? It prods at him like the fingers of corpses, shivers running the length of his arms even as he continues walking. Continues searching. For what? He never knows. Maybe if he had that answer, it would all just stop.
Just finally end.
He never knows how long he walks. Some nights it feels like only minutes. Others, he could be crossing the entirety of the world in one dream, his silent booted feet eating up the ground beneath him in a steady, endless pace.
But eventually, it always ends. Eventually, he’ll see the barest haze of light.
It guides him forwards even as his skin crawls with some terror he cannot name. It’s too ancient. Maybe it’s the very first fear of all. Light and all that it is capable of revealing.
As he nears, he realizes the brightness is being cast by a healthy campfire. And this is always the second hint that he is indeed dreaming. Because though the fire crackles and the flames jump, he can never feel the heat. Not even a lick of it against his exposed face.
The third hint is the figure sitting hunched over with his back to Dutch.
And though all he can see is the stranger’s narrow back, the nape of a neck, the edges of grey hair, he always knows who it is. He opens his mouth, a desperate and relieved greeting gurgling in his throat, choking him.
But the other man always beats him.
“Dutch,” he’ll say in that terribly familiar, reedy voice.
And then, finally, Dutch is able to whisper, “Hosea.”
The older man hums, gesturing lazily with his small carving knife for Dutch to take a seat on the tree stump beside his own. And Dutch does so gladly, sinking down onto the wood as his dark eyes dart all over his oldest and most trusted friend.
Hosea comes to him wearing different things but never the dark suit he had on when he was shot through the chest that day in Saint Denis. But the blood? That remains - soaking through his shirt (tonight a blue one with thin white stripes) and splattered across his face. It never seems to bother Hosea much. Not in the way it bothers Dutch.
Once, he tried to wipe the blood off. Searching his pockets revealed no handkerchief so he’d offered his shirt sleeve, wanting to rid that lined face of evidence of yet another of his infamous failures.
Hosea had caught his hand then in an iron grip, leveling Dutch with an unimpressed glare that deepened the lines around his eyes, stealing away any softness that may have once existed. One more thing stolen by death.
Tonight, Dutch makes no attempt to touch the other man. There’s not enough strength in him to weather that scornful look. Not right now. Maybe never again.
He keeps his hands dangling loosely between his knees, fingers flexing as he attempts to feel even a breath of the fire. There’s so many words he wants to say, all of them crammed inside his lungs so he feels like he can barely suck in more than a teaspoon of air.
“Hosea, I… I miss you,” he finally chokes out. “Everything's… it’s all gone wrong.”
He doesn’t know how many nights he’s said these words here. Probably far too many. Maybe that’s why he keeps having this dream; he nevers says the right thing.
Hosea’s carving knife doesn’t so much as tremble at the words. Instead, it continues its slow slide across the surface of the small wood block, biting in at regular moments to dislodge a chunk of pith and toss it carelessly into the fire to be consumed. Dutch is unsure what he’s carving. Tonight, it looks like the head of a deer.
“Has it?” Hosea finally responds, still absorbed in his carving. “I recall things being wrong for quite some time.”
Dutch instinctively shakes his head. “Those things were temporary. Blackwater, the train robbery, Valentine… We could have overcome all that. We just needed more time .” More faith.
“And the bank robbery?” Hosea chuckles but there’s no warmth to it. His words have iced over, as impartial to the fire as Dutch is.
“That, my friend, was your plan. I had more than a few concerns, but you and Arth-” The words fail. Dutch, the master of a thousand bits of flighty flattery and powerful invocations and fear-inducing insults, is so often failed by words now. That word in particular. It burns his tongue like swallowing a bullet still hot from the gun.
“So it was,” and Hosea’s voice shakes even as his head dips like he has not the strength to hold it up anymore. “So it was. You were always right about one thing. The world? It had no more room for us. Not for outlaws or for the plans of old men.”
“We never should have done it,” Dutch grasps frantically onto the small lifeline. Even though he’s done this a hundred times now. Even though he knows about the encroaching trap. Because maybe this is finally the time he can convince his friend it’s not his fault. “If we had just taken what money we’d had and booked passage somewhere, none of the rest would have happened. We’d all have still been together and safe and-”
“And our boy wouldn’t be dead.”
The words are soft but still they strike Dutch in the chest like a kick from a skittish horse. There’s no air in him, all of it driven out by a burning pain. Something’s broken, he can feel those jagged edges shaking and twisting inside him, carving him up.
“Arth- he betrayed me!”
“You fucking liar!” Hosea roars, staggering to his feet. He raises the half carved deer like he means to crash it down on Dutch’s head. “Arthur was loyal-”
“He doubted me!” He wants to rise and scream back but there’s no strength left in him anymore, not with whatever’s wrong in his chest bleeding him dry.
“Because he loved you, the goddamn fool!” Hosea’s voice breaks across a wet sob, and now he’s not powerful anymore. He’s crashing to the ground onto his knees, shoulders shaking. “He was such a f-f-fool, our boy. And we killed him for it.”
“We didn’t kill him. He was sick.” He wants to reach for Hosea, to steal some of that grief plowing the other man down into the ground, but he’s still frozen.
Always frozen when it matters the most.
Hosea shakes his head, eyes bright with hopeless tears. “I did. I never pushed him to leave you, never could see what was right in front of me. Him and John, I didn’t do right by either of them.”
“Push them?” he echoes. “They didn’t want to leave, not fully. Not until the bank robbery.” The real moment things went wrong, Hosea’s arguments be damned. Dutch knew. He’d heard all the doubting comments, seen the exchanged glances. So much plotting that had ruined them all in the end.
“They didn’t know better. I may have taught them to read and write, but I couldn’t teach them that - to want something more for themselves. They were so close . Arthur and Mary… John and Abigail and Jack…
Dutch scoffed. “Please, Hosea, spare me your little romantic notions. Those boys were outlaws through and through. They knew the lives they were leading. And they knew the goddamn rules!”
Hosea lunges forward, fists wrapping in Dutch’s shirt to yank them nose to nose. “Is that why you left him to die alone? Left him terrified and hurting up on that cliff?”
In all the time he’d known him, Hosea had never once raised a hand to Dutch. It just wasn’t the conman’s way. He’d always favored words, cutting people open with his tongue in the way someone else might wield a blade. But there’s violence in him now, in his hands that rip at Dutch like claws, at his teeth bared like a wild animal.
“He was a traitor-”
Hosea shakes him, spittle flying from his lips even as tears drip from his eyes. “He was your son . Our son. We took him in. We promised to protect him. We bandaged his wounds. We listened to him when he was hurting. Held him when Eliza and Isaac died. Everything our own fathers never did for us.”
“The Pinkertons were closing in all round! I barely escaped being shot down. What could I have done? What would you have done?” He wraps his hands around Hosea’s, trying to force him off. But the older man clings with such ferocity the fabric of Dutch’s shirt begins to tear.
“I would have died for him! Just like he would have died for any one of us. Because that’s the sort of man he was.”
“Oh, absolutely. Except for when he was sneaking around behind my back and making his own decisions. Now get off me.” He shoves with all he has and Hosea tumbles backwards, sprawling across the ground with a grunt that breaks into a weak coughing fit.
Like how Arthur had coughed. Grumbling and clearing his throat and beating his chest and spitting sprays of blood as he’d grown paler and thinner and more ragged. Until he was hardly a man. Just a ghost haunting Dutch’s every step, every word, every decision.
“What if it’d been me?” Hosea wheezes out as his lungs begin to settle. He’s still on the ground. Dutch is still on the stump. Every fucking time.
“If what had been you?” he asks without bothering to apologize. There’s no point.
“If it’d been me instead of him laying there on the ground too sick to escape. Me who always questioned you, just like Arthur did. Who knew there were lines you ignored, lines we were never meant to cross. Would I have been a traitor too?”
If Hosea had asked a few months ago when they were camped out at Horseshoe Overlook - or even Shady Belle, maybe - Dutch knows he could have easily said no. Never. He’d have leveled Rhodes for Hosea, just like they leveled Braithwaite Manor for Jack or shot through the entirety of Valentine for Strauss and… and John.
But now?
He doesn’t answer, staring at that fire he can’t feel. And he wonders if that’s dream logic or something more sinister. Does he feel the sunlight anymore when he’s awake? Or the wind ruffling his clothes as he rides?
Is he certain he’s still alive and it’s not Hosea who’s dreaming?
“I always did what needed to be done,” he responds flatly. It’s not an answer. He knows that. And so does Hosea, who has lost most of his venom now and just looks exhausted.
“Sometimes,” he says slowly, tracing a pattern on the ground with the tip of a finger, “sometimes, I think I must be in Hell. Retribution, you know? For all the horrible things we’ve done. Because every night I sit here and ask you to feel even a nip of regret, or even shed a single tear, for Arthur. Doesn’t he deserve that much, Dutch?
“But no. Every night, I sit here and you tell me how it’s not your fault. None of it. How everything is always everyone else’s doing. And I just cannot understand it. Not when I’ve seen the lengths you’ve gone for him. You saved his life, Dutch. I didn’t want a street pup under our feet, but you took him in. Raised him. Cared for him. Killed for him. How can that change? How can you… just stop loving someone after all that?” He wipes at his face, leaving behind a streak of dirt. “And then, sometimes after you leave here, I wonder if maybe that was your biggest con of all. Convincing all of us that you loved us.”
“Hosea… I had a plan,” he whispers, desperate to assuage some of that pain. Because it’s a lie. Dutch did love them all. Hosea especially. They were brothers. Had been for over twenty-five years. And losing him… in that moment Dutch had wondered if dying too might have been alright. “I was going to get all of you out.”
“Back to the west? To the mountains? To Tahiti?”
“If that’s what it took.”
Hosea shakes his head. “We had chances, and you never took them. Surviving? It was never something we were going to do.”
Their time is drawing to a close. Dutch can feel it, amongst all the broken things in his chest. And they’ve accomplished nothing. For all the hurt they spill each night, nothing ever changes.
“Do you see him?” he asks suddenly, just as he asks every night. And he’s not sure why. He’s still furious over the way everything ended, too many complicated emotions twisting and poking for him to ever truly unspool. But he doesn’t like to imagine Hosea out here alone, with just a fire and his wood carvings for company.
Neither of them were good men, but Hosea was surely better than he was. He deserved to be somewhere other than here.
“Who, Arthur?” Hosea answers tonelessly. “Why do you care? You can’t even say his name.”
He flinches but presses. “Do you?”
“No. And I’m thankful for that. I hope it means he’s gone to some place better than here. I hope he’s at peace. I hope…”
“Yeah?”
Hosea’s voice cracks. “I hope he’s with the rest of them. Bessie. Annabelle. Mary and Isaac. Jenny. Sean. Lenny. All the people we failed.” He runs a hand through his grey hair. “Do you remember how we used to dream? How we’d rob banks and distribute the money to the poor? How childish we were back then, fancying ourselves the heroes of the downtrodden.”
The memory is weak but soft. And Dutch nearly smiles. “I remember. They were good days.”
And they had been. Gallivanting up and down the street, tossing clips of money to passing children with wild eyes and women who shrieked first in fear and then amazement. The veterans who had offered to buy them drinks, the working girls with black eyes who had begun to pack their things. Everywhere they’d gone, they’d brought so much laughter, so much joy.
“They were the only days that ever mattered. Imagine who we could have been if we’d kept being so idealistic.”
“Poor,” Dutch says instinctively.
“Happy.” Hosea looks at him sadly. “I think we would have been happy.”
They fall into silence. Not quite looking at each other, not quite able to look away. Something howls far off. A coyote?
Eventually, that power which compels Dutch to walk every night compels him to stand. Their time together, it’s at its end for tonight. Tomorrow, they’ll see each other again. Have another conversation.
“I need to go.”
“I know.” Hosea has returned to his stump, facing away from him resolutely.
It tears at Dutch’s heart in a way nothing else thus far has quite been able to. “Old Girl,” the nickname slips out, “look at me? Please?”
“No. I don’t want to see you like he must’ve. I don’t want to know how you looked when you killed our boy.”
There’s nothing to say to that. Mostly because it’s untrue. Dutch knows he didn’t kill Arthur. His doubts did. Tuberculosis. And Micah. And the Pinkertons. John, to a lesser extent. Maybe Sadie, who was always dragging him off with her. Rain Falls and his problems. Strauss.
He hesitates, waiting to see if Hosea has any parting words. But the other man has returned to his carving, leaving Dutch to walk away in the same silence which had brought him.
A loud neigh jerks Dutch awake, and he rolls awkwardly onto his side, scanning the small camp for anything that might have spooked his horse. But there’s nothing to discern amongst the trees glowing as watery dawn finds the dew drops clinging to leaves. The grass. Himself.
He didn’t bother with a tent, hasn’t slept in one in quite some time. Not since he lost his last one at Beaver’s Hollow.
“Quiet, boy,” he murmurs to the horse as he gives himself a shake.
He thinks he had a weird dream last night. Or he feels like it, at least. Feels weighed by things he hadn’t gone to sleep bearing. Accumulated burdens leaving his skin tight and his eyes… swollen?
He touches his face. Had he been crying in his sleep? What the hell had he been dreaming?
It was something with Hosea, maybe. Maybe they talked? God, he wishes the two of them could have one last conversation. Everything that’s happened the last few months… Hosea would know what to say. He always had.
Breaking down his meagre camp takes only a few minutes. By the time the sun has properly risen, Dutch is sitting astride his new horse. He’s bigger than The Count, and it feels wrong somehow. Like he’s not in the saddle right no matter how he adjusts it.
Clicking his tongue, he takes the horse into a trot. The road isn’t far from here. They’ll rejoin it and head, well, somewhere. He doesn’t have a destination in mind. No schemes. No plans. Nothing. That used to scare him. Now? Now he’s not altogether sure why it ever even mattered.
They break through the foliage, the horse whinnying in protest, and back onto the dirt track they’ve religiously followed for the past two weeks. Or has it been three? It’s so difficult, remembering these sorts of things. Maybe he ought to buy a map next time they wander into a town-
There’s a deer.
He brings the horse up short, but the massive stag doesn’t leap away like Dutch expects. Rather, it stares at him from its position in the center of the road, unafraid.
He should shoot it. His supplies have been low for a while now given he’s been avoiding anything even remotely resembling civilization. Alone, that deer could feed him for days. Slowly, his hand drops to his gun belt.
The deer blinks, flicking its head. Like it’s waiting for Dutch to make a choice.
Seconds tick by, marked by the twitter of birds off somewhere in the trees. The metal of his gun is cool against his hand. He can have it up and firing off shots in under a second. Why is he hesitating?
A deer. Hosea was carving a deer.
He can’t do it.
Huffing a despaired laugh, he calls out. “Go on, boy. Get out of here. No one’s going to hurt you.”
The deer does so after another shake, legs bunching beneath it before it springs into the safety of the forest.
And Dutch continues laughing as he continues to follow the road. And slowly the laughter turns to tears and to sobs. He pulls the brim of his hat down low, obscuring his face. Not that there’s anyone to hide from anymore.
For maybe the first time in his life, Dutch is free. No more responsibility, no more burdens, nothing. It’s what he’s spent his entire life craving. Freedom.
No one ever told him that it was the sort of thing you could only achieve alone.
The road slants downwards between two large hills, the horse’s hooves skating across the loose rocks and pebbles. When they reach the bottom, Dutch looks up. Sometimes he forgets how beautiful this country is.
There’s movement atop one of the hills and it draws his eye. A person? No, it’s the deer. A deer. Hardly likely it’s the same one he saw before.
But… maybe it is. Because it watches him. Even as the road carries him onward and the deer shrinks to the size of a shot glass, then a penny, then almost nothing. Just a smudge against the horizon. Still, it stays.
And he feels an urge to say something, even though the deer can’t hear him and, even if it could, it’s still just an animal. But what do you say to a deer? What could it even want to hear?
What does everyone want to hear?
“I’m sorry,” he says softly, the words foreign in his mouth. Words that are safe here because the people who should be hearing them… they’re not here.
Another few steps, and the deer is lost from sight, swallowed by the mid-morning haze.
“C’mon,” he says roughly, kicking his horse into a gallop.
Faster.
Faster.
Until they’re racing with such speed it whips tears from his eyes even with him crouched low against the horse’s neck.
He can’t feel the wind. He can’t feel the sun.
He can’t see the deer.