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Arthur had nodded at Dutch as he passed him, reading on the bench outside his tent, like he had a hundred times. He was nose-deep in one of those little philosophical books Arthur liked less and less the more Dutch raved about them. Half the time Arthur greeted him like this, Dutch didn't even register he was being greeted, maybe hummed a little acknowledgement if Arthur was lucky. This time, Arthur was unlucky.
"I expect you'll betray me in the end, Arthur. You're the type."
Arthur almost dropped his sack of grain he stopped so fast. He turned to Dutch, mouth working on air. What the hell was a man to say to something like that?
"That so?"
"You tell me."
His floundering mounted into a hard shell of anger and action, like spotting the metal wink of the gun firing on you from the trees.
"You don't seem so interested in what we got to say lately."
Dutch's eyes narrowed, "See?"
"You ain't being fair. When have I ever - "
"It seems I have failed to teach you what fair is, Arthur," his voice was raising now, drawing looks from Tilly and Javier, though their eyes snapped back to their dominoes when he noticed, "Seems I am the only one in this damn camp with the guts to imagine what fair looks like for people like us! And I'll tell you what it isn't – it isn't running like kicked dogs from Christ-cursed Pinkertons!"
Arthur didn't much see what fair had to do with that. Pinkertons were the law, and they had broken it. Was it fair for thunder to follow lightning? He crossed his arms.
"I already told you they offered me a pardon to see you swing. Ain't you still standing? Even Charles said they asked the wrong man when he heard that."
"Oh, well if Charles says so, my doubts are all allayed! He and his five months with this gang - "
"Six."
Dutch glared. Arthur couldn't quite bring himself to regret cutting in. People had a way over overlooking Charles Smith and if Dutch wanted to talk about what was and wasn't fair, he could start there. Dutch, of course, didn't really want anything of the sort.
"Well after six months, he surely must know you better than the man who raised you."
"Charles sees – oh, it don't matter," Arthur dragged a hand through his hair, hurling away his childish desire to get back at Dutch like a too-small fish, "What matters is that I ain't got it in me to betray you, Dutch. You and Hosea is the most family God ever let me keep, you know that."
He'd made the right choice. There was a more of the Dutch he loved in the look he got now, less of the other.
"And John."
"Yeah, sure, and Marston."
"Raised you too good I think, sometimes, for my own sake." Dutch's voice came out thinner than he'd heard it since Annabelle's end, and more tired even than Hosea's.
"Yeah, well," Arthur scratched the back of his neck, "Wouldn't worry about me being too good for anything if I were you."
"I'm not wrong, Arthur."
Arthur groaned, "What more do I gotta do? Ain't I here? Ain't I always been right here?"
"You know what the worst of it is?"
Dutch was done listening. Arthur hated when he got like this. Didn't know how to make it right. His eyes lit on Hosea, across camp, taking a slow seat next to John by the coffee pot and the campfire. He was the only one with a shot at saying something Dutch would hear when he was running wild like this, good or bad.
"It gets worse?" He muttered.
"Hosea knows it too."
All of Arthur clenched up at that. Indignation, denial, and hurt turned him into a cornered animal. Rock-solid grains of rice dug into his fingertips with how hard he clutched the burlap sack on his shoulder. He pictured bringing it down on Dutch's face and filled up with shame right after.
"Hosea's smarter than that," he hissed. Smarter than you.
"Ask him," Dutch said, goading, "Ask him and watch as well as listen. I know he sounds like he's not holding back, but Hosea's always softened the edges of things for you boys."
In the small piece of Arthur's mind not abuzz with anger, he had the fleeting sense that most of Dutch's disgust was too used up internally to make it out to Arthur. What did make it out though, still hurt plenty.
Hosea had been enjoying a hot tin mug of coffee while John read him out yesterday's headlines when Arthur came up to stand behind him. He recognised him in the jangle of clean spurs and the ends of rope on the hat of the shadow that fell over him.
"Hosea."
His tone made Hosea pat the felled log beside him for him to sit and share, but the way John's eyes narrowed up at Arthur started a wriggle of concern in his gut.
"It is far too fine a morning for brawling," he declared, draining the rest of his coffee just in case, "At least do an old man the courtesy of waiting until I'm far enough away that it falls to someone else to separate you."
John opened his mouth but Arthur got there first.
"Don't want to fight."
"Well, we are glad to hear that, aren't we John?"
John rolled his eyes and went back to the stale paper, lips twitching over a word every so often. Hosea thought about asking him to continue reading it out to the both of them, but the storm that loomed over his back in the shape of his eldest was too loud for it.
"And what is it you do want, Arthur?"
"Hunting."
"Hm, I haven't seen Charles since he rode out yesterday at the crack of dawn, but," his smile fell on John, who must have felt it because his intensity on the paper doubled, "It's been a good while since you and - "
"You and me, old man," Arthur cut in, and the tension left John's shoulders, "If you got the time."
The fact that Arthur sounded like he didn't already know the answer made Hosea put on his hat and turn at last, squinting up against the sun to find a very unhappy silhouette of a man looking at his own boots.
"I don't know if I have another bear hunt in me, son," he said, hoping for a smile.
He realised he'd misjudged the depths of Arthur's disquiet when he only nodded and stepped back.
"Now hang on - "
"Saw plenty o' whitetail tracks south of the oil fields when I was scouting them wagons," John said from behind his paper, "Might be a herd."
Arthur hesitated just long enough for Hosea to make it to his feet and get a hand on his shoulder. Boy was wound tighter than a crank.
"Wouldn't do to waste John's good eye now, would it?"
"I'll bring the horses 'round."
It sounded like relief.
There was a reason Hosea thought of Arthur and John as the sons he'd never have. Privately, he believed he knew them better than Dutch, better than any of the lucky-unlucky ladies they had at times enthralled, and a damn sight better than they knew themselves. Both were riddled with all manner of things beneath the surface, eating at them and buoying them up in turn. With John, you got at those under-things by sweetening him up until he remembered you cared, then going in on it with him like a firefight until he ran out of bullets. Digging into Arthur, on the other hand, was ninety-percent waiting for him to poke his head out of his burrow (which was why Dutch would never know him all the way down) and ten-percent opening up your own chest when he did, to prove that a man could survive showing a little of those deeper things.
The stars were twinkling above by the time Arthur poked his head out of this hole.
"What's the worst thing I ever done t'ya, Hosea?" Arthur asked him across their fire, face hidden by his hat as he slit open the stomach skin of the buck he'd taken down.
"How long have you got?" Hosea said because you didn't let a shy creature know you'd seen them straight away, "I still have nightmares 'bout that damn wakeup call command you taught Copper."
That won him his first smile of the trip.
"Not a very pretty question," he continued after a moment of the fire, "Who gave it to you?"
"No-one," Arthur said, then - "Not exactly."
"But you're set on asking?"
Arthur's hands stilled in the buck's guts, "S'pose I am."
"Give me a moment then, you haven't wronged me so very much."
Mostly what came to mind was people Arthur shouldn't have hurt: the lame bounty hunter, the visiting city-man who'd laughed at Dutch, the homesteading woman who'd shot at his horse when she judged he'd gotten too close. There were times Arthur had hurt Dutch and himself too, not with fists after that first month, but jealousy had made him cruel to Bessie before she won him over, and the one time he'd acquiesced to Dutch's needling about reading one of his philosophy books so they could debate greater things than a menu, Arthur had been too rough with Dutch's dreams. Hosea sighed and swirled around the tonic he was brewing over the fire, though it didn't need it. He didn't need a moment to know his answer either.
"What hurts me most, Arthur, is when I can't say for sure if you do hate John. Only time I've ever truly been disappointed with you was when you broke his nose for coming back."
Arthur's head snapped up.
"I broke his nose for leaving."
"Well, you didn't do it after he left."
"Because he was gone, old man, what do you - " Arthur gestured helplessly with the hunting knife, "If I could have drug him back and broke his nose then, I would have, but you and Dutch said we wasn't to chase, once we realised he weren't caught. And Dutch only started saying that after you talked to him."
The knife jutted out toward him in accusation. Hosea shrugged.
"I know. You think I wasn't angry too?"
"Sure got over it quick, you and Dutch."
"John is worth forgiving."
Arthur let out a grumbled breath of things Hosea didn't strain himself to catch.
"Guess I just ain't as much a saint as the pair of yous."
Hosea rolled his eyes and set the mug of tonic down to cool. He loosened his shoulders with a roll and glanced up to pick Orion out of the night sky.
"You're far closer to sainthood than us, son. Not without sin, no, but... sometimes I wonder if we raised you too good. This life is harder when you know what it's costing. Then again, the older I get, the less credit I think I can claim for how that heart of yours turned out... Arthur? You hear something?"
There was a wildness in Arthur's eyes that made Hosea twist around and scan the night behind. What the hell had gotten into the boy today, he did not know, but it was starting to itch at him the way worries only ever did for Arthur and John; a parent's gnawing, growing worry, ever just this side of irrationality.
"What do you mean, too good?" Arthur demanded, startling him into swiveling back, "Dutch said exactly that: raised you too good. Like my hands ain't dirty as anyone's. He said you felt the same and I told him he was stupid for it, but you do! How long - " his voice cracked and he dug the knife into the dirt and wiped his hands on his jeans before looking at him, eyes big and blue and worse than any bullet, "Hosea, tell me what I did. I'll fix it, I swear, just – I don't know what I did."
Hosea took in a deep breath and let it out slow.
"Dutch fucking Van der Linde."
Arthur's head tilted like a puppy's. When Hosea ambled around the fire and jerked the knife out of the earth to take up work on the buck, Arthur scurried quick out of his way. Reminded Hosea of how he used to duck a warm hand to the shoulder or a casual ruffle to his hair. Hosea hadn't seen him this skittish in near nineteen years but maybe things like that were never all the way gone.
"You're breaking my heart, boy, get over here and hold back the skin for me."
Arthur did as he was asked without a word.
"Out with it then, what is our dear Dutch terrorising you with this time?"
"He ain't – " Arthur started, then stopped.
Maybe that had been a mistake too, Hosea thought, letting the boy copy his loyalty so well he had as much instinct to defend Dutch as to shy away from him. Cult-like. But Dutch was worth following that hard. Hadn't Hosea staked his life on that? When Dutch had his head on right, or at least had the right people keeping it on, there was no better place to be than his side. Not even Bessie had managed to change his mind on that in the end, God rest her.
"Hell of a way to put it," Arthur muttered.
"He's got a hell of a tongue. And when he's scared or hurting, like now, he feels a great need to share that around - more's the pity for us that he knows the words to do it. Nothing hurts like Dutch."
Hosea almost burst a deer kidney all over his hand ripping out the last of the organs. It wasn't pleasant, opening up his chest and flashing around his own ugly insides, but never let it be said that Hosea Matthews was too proud to help his sons. It was up to Arthur now whether to meet him in the light or stew in whatever fool thing Dutch had accused him of.
"Nothing hurts like Dutch..." Arthur echoed, testing the words.
Hosea was interested to note that Arthur didn't sound like he quite agreed. Well, let him be his own man. Perhaps he had a little more spine against the pull of Dutch's gravity than Hosea had ever managed. The thought gave him a kind of hope even as it sunk sad in his stomach. If John and Arthur ever left - really left... He began to slice up the meat and motioned for Arthur to wrap what he was handing over.
"Dutch told me," Arthur said somewhere around the fourth slice, "He said he expects me to betray him in the end. Said I'm the type… said you think the same, even if you won't ever say it."
Goddamn it, Dutch. Was there ever a man who made things harder for himself? And, by extension, for Hosea?
"Seems hardly fair," he said, "How am I supposed to prove I don't agree if he's already got it in your head I'd be lying?"
"You don't think I'm the type?"
"A traitor? No. Can you believe me?"
The simple quickness of his answer lifted a little of the sadness in the corners of Arthur's mouth, but he was still strung like a rabbit trying to tell if a shadow is a leaf or a hawk.
"...I want to."
"Well, as my assurances are compromised, let us apply a dose of critical thinking instead. We already saw you pass up your own freedom for Dutch. How does a cool ten thousand dollars for his whereabouts sound? If there's five thousand on your head, that figure is not far off."
"I didn't come out here to be insulted, Hosea."
"Good boy. What about that Mary then, hm, if her father offered her hand for Dutch's head, would you be tempted to provide?"
"I'd sooner give his head to Dutch."
Hosea cackled at that.
"Neither love nor money... so," he let the laughter out of his tone, "What would make you go against Dutch? Everybody in that camp has something."
"Not me. He didn't raise everybody in that camp."
Hosea fought to keep the flash of pride off his face; it wasn't helpful now. Arthur was long overdue for taking his own look at his loyalty and if Dutch had chosen a poor time to force his hand, well, that was on him. Hosea wondered briefly what Dutch would make of him asking these questions. A sour thought. At least Arthur was too wrapped up in proving himself to catch on that Hosea hadn't excluded his own self from those bodies at camp.
"What if he told you to shoot Prospects?"
Arthur looked so aghast that Hosea saw the big Dutch warmblood mare rearing up before a shotgun in his mind and felt guilty for it.
"I'd run her off before he had to!"
"Say the Pinkertons got a real good look at her and Dutch was afraid she was smart enough to lead them back to us, even so."
"She just might be..." Arthur chewed a cheek for a moment, then shook his head unhappily, "I wouldn't turn on him over a horse, even if she is the best one on this rock."
"Say he – say he wanted you to set fire to an orphanage."
Arthur grimaced, "If he ever went that far, even I could talk him down. No bone in his body wants that. Heard he's suffering enough over that Blackwater woman."
More than Arthur knew. More even than Hosea had first judged.
"Alright, alright, I guess an orphanage is a little outlandish, let's see..."
Hosea's mind touched on Eliza and Isaac but doubled back, unwilling to cause Arthur more pain than it took to prove his point. One rung down in Arthur's heart, however, he suspected he'd find a familiar face. Hosea took his time with the last of the buck and they passed a bottle of bourbon back and forth with a few words on tomorrow before he worked himself up to pick at the thread again.
"If I got myself caught and you had to move on right then and there, would you follow if Dutch ordered you to leave me to my sins?"
"He never would," Arthur said, looking at the flames. Hosea tried not to warm to how he said it the same way he might tell you where you could find a certain mountain. He supposed to Arthur, who had only ever known them as Dutch and Hosea, they must seem that way, like a simple fact of nature.
"I'm talking about saving the gang, Arthur, not just two or three but everyone. Even you boys. He'd do it for you."
Arthur looked at Hosea with one eyebrow raised in an expression Hosea himself applied liberally whenever he, or John, or anyone else at camp was being a fool.
"Christ," Hosea muttered, then quieter still, "He'd better."
He took a swig of bourbon to fill that silence and had to cough at Arthur's next words.
"I wouldn't leave John, even if he ordered it."
Hosea pressed his eyes closed against that, wishing he could have done the same with his ears. His rush of relief and pride for Arthur were backed by a wall of despair over Dutch. He didn't quite believe Dutch would leave John any faster than Arthur or himself, but the thought of checking with the man filled Hosea with dread. Coward. Maybe this was why his daddy hadn't wanted a family - you slipped your whole heart into their pockets and just had to watch them do what they would with it. He sighed a rattled sound that had nothing to do with his cough. Arthur was watching him over their dead buck like it was a confessional screen.
"Well, then, Arthur Morgan, that there is the type of man you are. Can you live with that?"
Arthur deliberated with the same face he might have worn when looking over the price of a new gun belt or saddle. Hosea's heart burned so bright with love for the boy he'd seen into a man against all odds that he wondered at how Arthur ever doubted it. He resolved to tell him so just before they got back to camp so Arthur could slip away before he smiled too wide, if he needed.
"Reckon I can," Arthur nodded finally, then fixed Hosea with blue eyes just as bright, "But it won't come to that."
"No," Hosea gripped his shoulder and passed the bottle, "No, that's what we're for."