' ~𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐶𝑎𝑖𝑛'✓ [RDR2 OC]

An Eye For An Eye

"This is becoming quite a repetitive onslaught. They think they can... stalk us, trip us up, in the shadows? All while trying to remain in the light. We will not fall for such...folly."
Dutch had been extremely worked up about the Pinkertons. So far, they'd stumbled briefly upon Arthur and then to Charles and Cain.

Turns out, people had been reserving information about the Pinkertons paying them a social call from Cain. He didn't know how to feel about that. Was it perhaps paranoia that he might have told the pinkertons of their whereabouts in order for a plee deal, or maybe they were too afraid of shocking him back into disrepair.

Still, he listened to Dutch's improved, paced speech, some phrases annotated directly from The American Inferno. Evelyn was, according to his fellow camp members, a stuck-up rich hooligan hunkering down to observe the muddied obsolete, exploited, and abused of the population, and the claiming to know how to fix all of their problems. Golden prophet, some of the campers called him. Never around Dutch, though. Cain had tried to read some passages in the book, but ones that weren't annotated by Dutch had words much too long for a previously rancher and shepard to understand.

Since he'd apparently taken to chatting with the Keiran boy, he stood next to him, just as tired and hollow looking as each other. He stole a quick glance at Keiran, who tried to stand up straighter when Dutch looked around at them. After his speech of liberty, freedom, something about monkeys, and persute of happiness had drawn to a close, Keiran and Cain continued over to the scout fire. Keiran was working on leather work of a saddle while Cain carved a stake with his knife.

"Fellers been calling you Luan, behind your back. Thought you should...oughta know."
Keiran had a knack for blurting out important or otherwise at the most random junctures of silence. Cain shrugged.
"It's a name. I used. Mostly due to the fact I had to change my last name because it was too long. Wasn't quite the writer when I first arrived. I took Cain on because it was a... whole thing."
He summarised.
He'd best leave out how the local Bush school had gone to expelling him from the congregations after the situation with his brother, and how the kids in the village, even ones he considered friends, had began calling him that name. Soon, he was responding to it, and soon it became him. In a lot of sense, it was him. He just eventually came into his own.

"Right. I just stuck with Duffy. S' pretty easy to remember."
"Isn't that a good thing."
He looked up and raised an eyebrow. He waited for Keiran to add something else.
"The man you killed in camp. That was your brother?"
"Ciarán, yes, only, spelt properly."
Keiran made an annoyed but lighthearted noise, recalling Sean's breakout about the whole "Colm-Colom" misunderstanding. Anglisicing words from different languages that have developed differently over the years will cause that misdemeanour.

"I heard them O'Driscolls were set to rob a homestead. They was talking outside of camp, real loud. Real boasty. Probably at the bottle, knowing them, and probably was waiting for Arthur. He chases 'em off soon after but-they was talking."
Keiran offered. He sat up slightly upon hearing this.

"Sounds...iffy."
"Iffy?"
"Suspicious. Conspicuous. Alarmingly blatant."
"Maybe... I didn't want to tell Arthur because he had a lot on his plate, being the workhorse and all. Not that.."
His face paled a bit in thought, and he trailed off searching for words.
"It's just if it were a trap..."
Cain held up his hand with the stake in it.
"I get it, I'm expendible. Well, more so. I don't know what Dutch thinks of me. He invited me in so swiftly... his hospitality was disturbing."
He thought for a moment. A good chance to prove Dutch was right for taking him in and finally getting money for them without weighing them down with a fatality seemed like a pretty good opportunity.