The Angel Butcher of Rio Bravo: An RDR2 Story

iii. "Appeal to me"

Arthur.

Dutch had asked Tine along on the train robbery as a mere afterthought, but the invitation wedged a dread into Arthur's gut all the same. He watched as she unfolded herself from the crate she sat upon, by an ailing John, her face alight. The three exited the cabin only to find Hosea, who was similarly fretting, but to a different end.

"The weather's clearing, Dutch," Hosea gestured to the clearing sky above their heads, the snow just beginning to melt underfoot. Beyond him, Bill, Javier, Lenny, and Charles were tacking their horses, loading guns onto their saddles. "Aren't we supposed to be lying low?"

Dutch stepped ahead to intercept his oldest friend and longtime partner, leaving Arthur behind next to Tine; her delight at impending crime still clear on her face.

"You ain't supposed to enjoy these," Arthur muttered as they gravitated toward their horses; the spotted Walker he'd taken from the Adler barn next to her Darling; a mink-coloured Paint with a white mane and tail.

"Oh, but I do," Tine gushed, throwing a blanket over Darling's back before pointing her saddle, slung over the fence, out to Arthur, obviously expecting his help with it. "And I think you do, too."

He snorted, bending forward to hoist the saddle up. "Yeah," he said sarcastically, the saddle clutched against his chest. "Always dreamed I'd grow up to rob folks, kill 'em."

Tine looked thoughtful for a moment. "You could have ran off with that Mary, but you didn't. Maybe you dreamed more about robbing than you did laying up with pretty women?" At the mention of Mary's name, Arthur froze, his knuckles in a white grip around the pommel and cantle of Tine's saddle. John must've told her, that idiot.

Tine blinked innocently at him, and Arthur forced himself to calm down, refusing to give the rise in temper she was expecting. "I'd ask you not to mention her again," he said, before turning back to her horse. And then, her voice, worming its way into his ear:

"I'd really rather you begged."

White rage flared in his chest, furious at both her and at his naïveté that he could weather her barbed teasing, her ability to get under his skin practised and potent. "Fix your own damn tack," he grumbled, dropping her saddle into the snow and stalking back to where Hosea continued to ask Dutch to see sense and abandon the plan.

But to no end. They were going robbing; the private train of a magnate named Cornwall. Magnate of what seemed to know no end: oil, sugar, gold. Arthur could see where Hosea's fears stemmed from - they'd just narrowly escaped another heist - but also knew that they were desperately short of cash.

While Arthur would have rather extracted his own tooth than admitted it, Tine was right about one thing: he relished being on this new horse, galloping among his brothers in the gang, Dutch waxing on about the task at hand in front of them. "Arthur, you and Miss Nilsen can work on opening up Cornwall's private car," he was saying, Arthur perking his ears to the mention of his own name and then cluing into his assignment, a sour knot in his stomach.

"Sure, Dutch," he called forward, his earlier enthusiasm tempered by his pairing with Tine, who rode beside him in silence, crouched low in her saddle, her hair and Darling's mane two streaming white banners.

They rode through the slowly-thawing wilds - their buffer between safety in Colter and civilization, the law - some long grasses poking out from the thick snow that had blanketed them a couple of weeks past. The stand pines creaked in the wind as they passed, eventually coming over a ridge to spot the water tower and beneath it, the hulking form of Bill Williamson, setting up the charges along the train tracks for their job. The Van der Lindes pulled up their kerchiefs and waited, the chugging drone of the train moving closer.