Arthur Morgan did not intend to survive when he gave his hat to John Marston and stayed behind to gain his redemption. As he crawled towards his final resting place, he never intended to wake up again.
But he does wake up. Thanks to time travelers F...
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1899
"What do you mean we ain't buyin' land, Dutch?" Arthur grunted, staring at his mentor in the glow of a spring sunset. "Wasn't that the plan? We got too many folks now to keep this up for much longer."
It was springtime in the Western Grizzlies, one of Arthur's favorite times of year. In fact, it was early April, and while the nights here were still bitter cold, cold enough for snow to fall, the days were warmer, and the snows were melting at lower altitudes. Game was plentiful now that green things were starting to grow again, and Arthur liked this country. It reminded him of Bear Glen further to the south with its remoteness, its thick, pine forests, and the boundless beauty of nature all around them, set against the beautiful backdrop of Mount Hagan to the east.
There were elk and moose alike here, as well as plenty of deer and even the occasional small herd of buffalo. The skies were thick with ducks, geese, and small game birds like dove, quail, and grouse, and the rivers swelled with trout, bass, and panfish.
Arthur could have lived in country like this for the rest of his life, and in fact Dutch had been swearing up and down that they all would. Hosea had managed to find a broker who would sell them land at a good price, and they had been robbing banks and trains for months to save up enough. Thanks to Hosea's help, they even managed to rob the big bank in Denver, which was the first and only big city bank Arthur had ever stolen money from.
His headspace these days was even more lonely and sad, although he refused to admit it to himself. Being here in the western Grizzlies made him think more often of Eliza and his son. Even years after their deaths, the grief still pained him something fierce.
He even felt lonely now that the gang had grown in size, again. There were two new men now: a wild, quick-tempered man named Micah Bell who Arthur did not trust as far as he could throw Boadicea, and a calm, even-spirited man named Charles Smith who seemed to be Micah's polar opposite.
Micah could be awful and cruel. In fact, on their latest stagecoach robbery, Arthur and John had to stop him from raping a woman who happened to be riding inside the coach, and Micah had actually seemed shocked that neither man would even consider such a thing. But, he was also incredibly efficient, and with him around, Arthur couldn't deny the gang became infinitely more profitable, even as the bodies stacked up behind them.
Meanwhile, Charles was like a gentle giant, with a stocky, muscular build even more powerful than Arthur's, and kind, brown eyes that Arthur caught watching him far too often. He never raised his voice unless he was furious, and he was the best shot with a bow and arrow Arthur had ever seen. Besides that, there was an odd way he looked at Arthur, with an expression that almost seemed like he knew something Arthur didn't.
Besides the men, however, there was a new girl as well. Her name was Jenny Kirk, and apparently Mac and Dutch had found her half frozen to death in the snow on the side of a road after her horse had been stolen by bandits. She was a young woman of about twenty-three (she didn't know for sure because she didn't know her birthday), and she had one of the wildest looks in her eye that Arthur had ever seen.
