Know My Name - a RDR2 Story

Camp Arrest

Let me tell you a story about a young woman who fell into two crowds: the good and the bad.
Of course, there are pros and cons to each category, but I suppose it only depends on the way you look at it...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It turns out that camp arrest was going to be a lot harder than Kam thought it would be. Every minute of every day for the past three days was the same: Grimshaw and Dutch leaning over her shoulder to get stuff done. No doubt, Dutch put her up to this. Grimshaw would hardly make eye contact with her before, now it felt like that's all she would do. It was getting on Kam's nerves.

So far, she had done everything Dutch had said; chop would, mend clothes--though, all clothes she mended were her own--, and polished a saddle or two. The saddles being her own, of course, and Hosea's. Kieran tended to the horses most of the time anyways, so there was hardly any room for her to sneak in to do improvements.

She had gone fishing twice already, and she hated to admit it, but it was becoming tiresome. Fishing was supposed to be the thing that soothed her mind and calm her thoughts. Now, not only was she bored from fishing, but she was rocking a rather gruesome sunburn on the back of her neck and atop her crown. A farmer's tan had made its way across the majority of her skin, leaving her normal, pale skin tone untouched from underneath her shirt and pants. Her gambler's hat did little to protect her face from the sun's harmful rays, represented by the redness of her cheeks and nose.

Her skin felt dryer than it had any right to. She had given Brutus a good wash in the lake, leaving her soaking wet from his rebellion, and yet her skin cracked in streaks of white. The majority of her forearm had started to peel in layers of dried, dead skin. She felt like a mummy encased in wrapping after wrapping after wrapping.

It was dark around the time Kam was allowed 'time off'. She built up a habit of staying up late and waking up early over several years, and only now did it finally benefit her. Because Grimshaw went to bed early, and Kam went to sleep later than the sun had set. She found this time useful when under camp arrest, for she could do anything she wanted without Dutch's supervision.

The first night of her containment, she rode out along the shore with Brutus in search of a clay deposit. She found one near the Northernmost part of Flat Iron Lake and scooped buckets full of the smooth material.

The second night, she simply read. She read because there was nothing else to do, and she found herself bored once again. She finished her Evelyn Miller book that same night.

On the third night, Kam decided to write a letter to her employers. She told them about how the funeral 'really struck her down' and that she was 'sorry' for missing multiple days of work when she should leave her family ordeal back up North. She finished the letter signing 'Dante Beckett' and drooled a melting candlestick over the seal of the letter, stamping it shut with the rose stamp she had stolen days before.

She'd give the letter to someone tomorrow morning. She'd tell them to drop it off at the Sheriff's Office while they were out and that she'd reward them with the privilege of not being suffocated in the night by hers truly. Kam thought it a fair trade. Until then, she'd promised to get herself to bed slightly earlier than recent nights, sometime around 10pm was preferrable.

The morning she woke up, she found her stomach in knots and her ears ringing up a storm. She wasn't sick, because she hadn't done anything to provoke an illness amongst her body. However, it could've been from Pearson's stew. Kam had seen the face of all who eat his stew and how they grimace in disgust from the chewy textures and suspiciously hard ingredients. Perhaps she had overlooked a simple detail of possible E-Coli due to the fact that she was too stubborn to turn down food when she had never earned a home-cooked meal in fifteen years.