RDR: NO REGRETS - Chapter 301: Out of Ammo and Provisions (Patreon)

The night was quiet as the heavily loaded wagon came to a discreet stop deep in the forests of Lemoyne.

“Finally shook those bastards.”

Javier looked around at the silent woods and let out a long breath of relief.

“Arthur, where the hell did you get this monster?”

He reached out and slapped the machine gun beside him.

“This thing is incredible!”

“No kidding! Did you see them? When Arthur opened fire, those Pinkerton bastards dropped like wheat under a scythe! Hahaha!”

Sean, sitting up front, burst out laughing.

“Shut up, Sean. You’re getting on my nerves.”

Karen immediately smacked the back of her man’s head, cutting his laughter short.

“We owe this one to Karen. She found it.”

Arthur pointed at her with a smile.

“When we came across it, it was sitting in a stable.”

“The driver had been wounded, so the detectives never took it out to use against you.”

“So you decided to borrow it for a while?”

Lenny laughed from the back of the wagon.

“Then how did you end up wearing Pinkerton uniforms? And how the hell did you manage to blend in with them?”

“Now that’s the interesting part.”

Karen rested one arm on the side of the wagon and fanned herself with the other.

“At first, we were planning to drive this thing straight over and rescue you.”

“But just as we were about to leave, a squad of Pinkertons cornered us inside the stable.”

“We had no choice. Since we were trapped, we put on Pinkerton uniforms and slipped right into their ranks.”

It was quite a story.

The two of them had somehow walked straight into the Pinkerton force as if they belonged there.

“Yeah. We finally managed to fool them, and then those idiots assigned us to the force attacking the church.”

Arthur climbed down from the wagon, dropped heavily onto the ground, and leaned back against one of the large wheels.

“Actually, sometime this evening, I even pretended to help by firing a whole burst into the church.”

“I have to say, though, the stunt you pulled tonight was something else. When you first came charging out, even I nearly jumped out of my skin.”

“That was Dutch’s idea,” Javier said, pointing toward him.

Only then did everyone notice that Dutch had been silent the entire time.

“Dutch, you all right?”

Arthur looked at him with concern.

“You hurt?”

“No. I’m fine.”

After a long silence, Dutch finally spoke.

“Arthur, Karen... if it weren’t for the two of you, we might not have gotten out alive.”

As he spoke, Dutch pulled off his tie and undid a few buttons on his shirt.

He looked nothing like the confident, handsome man who had stood on the podium earlier that day.

His carefully styled hair was now a tangled mess, with several strands singed by the flames.

His clothes were even worse, covered in scorched holes.

“Thank you, Arthur. And Karen. Thank you both.”

“And the rest of you. Lenny, Sean, Bill, Javier. We only made it out because none of you gave up.”

Dutch looked at each of them in turn, then spoke with pride.

“I’m proud of all of you. I truly am.”

“But we lost a lot, Dutch.”

Seeing that Dutch was unharmed, Arthur couldn’t resist dampening his enthusiasm.

“And I don’t just mean money. We lost everything this time.”

Everything.

They had even left their horses behind in Rhodes.

At the mention of that, silence immediately settled over the forest.

Karen and Sean sat together at the front of the wagon, leaning against the driver’s seat without saying a word.

Once the first joy of being reunited had faded, the loss began to sink in.

One of the cruelest things in life wasn’t never having something.

It was finally getting it, only to lose it almost immediately.

They had only just found a home of their own.

They hadn’t even properly moved in yet, and now it was gone.

Their dream had barely begun before reality slapped it out of their hands.

The others weren’t much better off.

They sat in the back of the wagon, sighing one after another.

What had happened was too much to take in all at once.

Lenny leaned against the back of the wagon, one leg hanging weakly over the side.

Between having a dead horse pin him down and then running for his life afterward, his ankle had swollen badly.

He stared at the raised, purplish swelling and asked quietly, “What do we do now?”

No one answered.

No one knew.

“Everything we had is gone. Either left behind at Clemens Point or in Rhodes...”

Lenny’s voice began to tremble.

“We... we don’t even have our weapons or horses anymore...”

They were completely out of resources.

That was the best way to describe their situation.

Everything they had spent years accumulating had vanished overnight.

They didn’t even know where tomorrow’s breakfast was going to come from.

Hearing Lenny, Dutch slowly straightened up.

He reached into his pockets, apparently checking whether he had anything left.

After searching for a while, all he found was half a pack of cigarettes.

Better than nothing.

Dutch took them out and passed one to each person.

Then he tried to light his, only to realize his matches were gone.

With the cigarette between his lips, he looked around.

Everyone searched their own pockets.

Nothing.

They didn’t even have a way to light a cigarette.

“At least we still have each other, right?”

Dutch drew a deep breath, then looked at Arthur.

“Arthur, what happened to everyone else?”

“They got away by ship. I told them to head south so we could meet them there.”

Arthur took off his hat and stared absently at the Pinkerton bowler hat in his hands.

“By now, they should’ve been waiting for us there for quite a while.”

Hearing that the others had made it out safely, everyone visibly relaxed.

It was about the only good news they had received in the last two days.

“I stored supplies aboard the ship before all this. Food, medicine, plenty of weapons. Once we get there, we’ll be all right.”

Javier forced a smile.

“At least we still have a ship, right?”

“But what happens after that?”

Arthur tilted his head back and looked at Dutch.

“We can’t stay here. After what happened in Rhodes, all of Lemoyne is going to be locked down.”

“This was even worse than Blackwater. They’re not going to let us go.”

The Blackwater disaster had caused enough trouble to put the whole town and nearly half of West Elizabeth under lockdown.

What had happened in Rhodes was far worse.

The death toll alone was several times higher.

And after everything the detectives and gunmen had done in Rhodes, the blame was obviously going to be dumped on them.

Arthur honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if the army was sent after them now.

“I need time to think.”

Dutch removed the unlit cigarette from his mouth and looked at the dejected faces around him.

“But before anything else, we need to pull ourselves together.”

“No matter where we go next, we have to keep our heads up. That’s the only way we’re getting through this together.”

His voice gradually rose.

“We’ve failed before. Many times. But that doesn’t matter. Eventually, we’ll succeed!”

“Look at us. We fought our way out!”

Dutch stood on the gently rocking wagon and raised his voice as the others slowly began to recover.

“Think about it. We broke through an encirclement of two or three hundred gunmen. Who else could have done that?”

“No one! Blackwater, Valentine, even Rhodes. Every time, as long as we stand together, we make it through!”

“As long as we stick together, there is no hardship we cannot overcome!”

“Right now, we need food, medicine, weapons, and most importantly, somewhere safe for everyone to rest. The ship has all of that.”

Dutch turned toward Javier.

“And Javier, I have to say, you did a damn good job.”

Javier quietly nodded.

At a time like this, the praise did little to cheer him up.

“Think about it. Our situation isn’t actually that bad!”

Dutch suddenly laughed, his energy returning.

“We have a ship, and Flat Iron Lake is right ahead of us. All we have to do is cross the lake and we can return to the West!”

Arthur raised an eyebrow.

“You mean...?”

“Exactly!”

Dutch spread his arms.

“We can sail straight to New Austin, rest and resupply there, then head farther west where it’s safer!”

“Think about it. Wasn’t everything we did in Rhodes meant to help us find somewhere safe, somewhere that truly belonged to us? Out West, there’s vast open land with no one laying claim to it. We could build something of our own there!”

That put some life back into everyone’s faces.

The thought of the free, open West gave them something to hold on to again.

Not long ago, they had been wondering how they could possibly make it back west.

Now they had a route.

That made their failure in Rhodes feel a little less overwhelming.

“But... what about Molly?”

Karen suddenly spoke from the front of the wagon.

Everyone froze again.

Only then did they remember.

Molly had been captured.

At the mention of her, all of Dutch’s renewed enthusiasm vanished.

He fell silent for a long time.

Molly was in the hands of the Pinkertons.

Rescue her?

How?

Throw their lives away trying?

But if they didn’t...

“We... need to plan that carefully.”

Dutch rubbed his forehead and gave the only vague answer he could.

He didn’t particularly want to go back for her.

But he couldn’t say that aloud.

Not now.

It would crush what little morale they had left.

“How much farther to the meeting place?”

After another short silence, Dutch quickly turned to Arthur.

“Where did you arrange to meet Hosea?”

“A small farmstead south of here, near the lake. We’ve still got a long way to go.”

Arthur pointed south.

“We’ll have to take the long way around. We’re too close to the Braithwaite estate, so we need to be careful.”

Arthur was right.

The Braithwaite estate stood right along the shore of Flat Iron Lake.

If they wanted to avoid being spotted, they would have to make a wide detour through the forest before circling back to the lakeshore to meet Stephen and the others.

Dutch straightened and looked around.

It was a long journey.

Even moving as quickly as they could, it would probably take three or four hours, especially at night.

But delaying was dangerous too.

The Pinkertons and Cornwall’s men were still searching for them everywhere.

And with the Braithwaite family helping them on their own territory, pursuers could appear behind them at any moment.

Dutch looked over the group.

After their short rest, everyone seemed slightly better.

Bill was awake now.

He hadn’t suffered any serious injuries, but his human cannonball stunt had ended with him smacking his head hard enough to leave a huge lump on his forehead, and he was still dizzy.

It probably wasn’t anything serious.

His head had never worked especially well to begin with, so another knock or two was unlikely to make much difference.

“Then let’s move!”

Dutch waved everyone onward.

Now that they were deep in the forest, the machine-gun wagon was simply too cumbersome to keep using.

They abandoned it and took only the draft horses.

Lenny, with his injured ankle, and Bill, still recovering from his knock to the head, rode while everyone else continued on foot.

The going was miserable.

The forest trails were rough and uneven, slowing them considerably.

They had also been running and fighting for an entire day and night, and everyone was starving.

Fortunately, Arthur still had a few biscuits in his bag.

They weren’t remotely enough to fill the stomachs of several hungry men, but something was better than nothing.

By the time the sun rose again, they finally reached the lakeshore.

But the lake was eerily calm.

Under the morning sunlight, the vast stretch of shoreline was completely empty.

“They... they didn’t run into trouble, did they...?”

Javier stared across the endless water.

“Could the Pinkertons have ships too...?”

He stopped himself before finishing.

If Stephen and the others had been captured, everything was over.

“Did they abandon us and leave?!”

Bill shouted.

“Where the hell else could they have gone?”

“Shut up, you idiot!”

Arthur’s shout immediately cut him off.

Why couldn’t that moron have knocked himself out for a little longer?

“Hosea and the others would never abandon us. Something must have happened.”

Arthur looked worried.

“We should follow the shore back for a while and see if they ran into trouble.”

“No. Not in this condition.”

Dutch rejected the idea immediately.

And he had a point.

Everyone was exhausted.

Their legs were trembling after the long march.

How were they supposed to turn around and keep walking?

And even if they forced themselves onward, what would happen if they ran into pursuers?

Between all of them, they barely had enough ammunition left for a single full load.

Once again, everyone looked toward Dutch, waiting for him to come up with an answer.

“We... we need somewhere to rest first.”

“Whatever else happens, we need to rest and find something to eat.”

Dutch took several heavy breaths and wiped his cracked lips.

They hadn’t even had a sip of water the entire way.

If they didn’t stop and recover soon, they were all going to collapse before they got anywhere.

He looked at Arthur.

“What about that little farmstead you mentioned? Maybe we can rest there for a while.”

“As for Hosea and the others... maybe the ship was moving slowly. Or maybe something delayed them.”

“Maybe by the time we’ve rested, they’ll be here.”

Dutch’s voice grew quieter with every word.

By the end, it was barely audible.

Even he didn’t believe what he was saying.

After all, how could a ship possibly be slower than men traveling on foot?