Repay in kind

Time, a relentless river, flowed onward, and in the blink of an eye, the witching hour settled over Hope Ranch. While other realms might suffer from unfocused night shifts, prone to slacking and the sweet allure of slumber, the guards at Hope Ranch, touched by the divine grace of Dutch's benevolence, harbored no such flaws.

For them, Dutch's kindness was the very bedrock of their existence, the air they breathed, the sun in their sky. He had plucked them from the gutter, dusted off their tattered souls, set their lives back on a gleaming track, and offered them a future boundless with possibility! Those who hadn't endured the biting scarcity of this era, the gnawing hunger, simply couldn't fathom the seismic impact of a man like Dutch appearing in their lives.

To each and every one of them, Dutch was their dawn, their living saint, the very angel who had snatched them from the precipice of oblivion. His boundless compassion, they knew, could never truly be repaid.

Therefore, every sinew of their being strained in devotion to their work. The women in the clothing factory toiled with a frantic, desperate zeal, yet Dutch, in his boundless mercy, still mandated their work end before 9 PM, a decree that only deepened their fervent gratitude. The guards were no different. They possessed no grand abilities, no soaring intellects; their sole purpose, their sacred mission, was to execute every task Dutch assigned. Like guarding.

At that very moment, nestled deep within the earth of the ranch entrance, near the looming, snow-capped mountains, two guards huddled in their concrete bunker, their voices low, a symphony of shared reverence.

"Oh, Jackson," Balke murmured, his hands resting on the narrow firing slit, his gaze lost in the inky blackness outside. He sighed, a wistful sound. "I heard you're sending your kid to school, eh? Damn it, buddy, I really envy you!" A genuine longing etched itself onto his face.

Jackson, his expression a tableau of pure, unadulterated happiness, nodded. He didn't tear his eyes from the darkness beyond the bunker. "Yes, Balke, I am. My son's going to school in Saint Denis, and my daughter's going with him to look after him there. Oh, Balke, I couldn't even dream of this kind of life before. If it weren't for Mr. Dutch, I might still be shoveling cow dung in that damned ranch, earning a measly fifty cents a day! And my wife… she would have died. Because there was no money. Do you know?"

Jackson's voice caught, thick with emotion. "I was desperate then. I even harbored the idea of robbing someone, anyone, to pay for her treatment. I even stole a pistol from the ranch owner! Damn it, I was truly desperate." His hand trembled slightly as he recalled the abyss.

"Who would have thought that at my most desperate hour, Mr. Dutch would suddenly appear before me? He didn't just give me a salary of a hundred dollars a month, Balke! He helped cure my wife, and then, he gave her a job! Can you imagine, Balke? Our family's income just a month ago was a pitiful fifteen dollars a month! But this month… this month, our family's income reached one hundred thirty dollars!" Jackson's voice rose, trembling with an almost religious fervor.

" I believed in God for half my life yet it did not improve my life at all; it plunged me into a quagmire! Yet, in just one month of knowing Mr. Dutch, he has brought about earth-shattering changes in my life! So what good is believing in God, damn it?!"

Jackson pulled out a battered pocket watch from his pocket. He snapped open its cover. Inside, instead of a watch face, or some dusty relic of a saint, was a crudely cut picture of Dutch from a newspaper. Jackson gazed at it, his face a mask of profound devotion, then raised it to his lips, reverently kissing the image of his savior.

"Mr. Dutch is our family's savior, Balke!"

Balke, witnessing this scene, didn't scoff. Instead, his own hand slipped into his pocket, extracting an identical, lovingly folded picture of Dutch. He joined Jackson in silent, fervent prayer.

After their shared moment of devotion, Balke carefully tucked the photo back into his pocket, his face alight with raw emotion. "Yes, Jackson, yes. Mr. Dutch is truly the one who cares about us. He never speaks in flowery, meaningless words, unlike those damned capitalists who are full of nothing but lies. Instead, he means what he says; whatever he promises to give us, he gives us! In all my years, I have never seen such a man!"

Balke clenched his fist. "Damn it, do you know what I heard last time, when I was patrolling inside? A gentleman asked Mr. Dutch if he was treating us too well, saying that no one outside had ever given such good treatment." Balke's eyes widened, a vein throbbing in his temple.

"And Mr. Dutch," Balke's voice dropped to a reverent whisper, "Mr. Dutch said, 'Their lives are already hard enough; there's no need for us to make their lives even harder for a small profit!' Damn it, Jackson, do you know how touched I was then? Damn it! Even now, just thinking about it, I'm still willing to go to the gallows for Mr. Dutch!" Balke slammed his fist against the bunker wall, a dull thud.

"Those damned politicians are full of empty promises and fake 'cakes,' those scumbag rich people are full of talk about 'work' and 'time,' but only Mr. Dutch, who is a wanted man, never asks anything of us, but always thinks about what to give us! Damn it, how can such a good person be a wanted man?

Their robbery of Blackwater must have been a lie! There must be a reason why Mr. Dutch robbed Blackwater Town; otherwise, why wouldn't he rob other towns and specifically choose Blackwater to rob?" Balke's voice rose, a furious, indignant roar. "These damned newspapers always like to deliberately slander truly good people! And the United States Government's promise of treatment for us veterans has not been fulfilled at all; they don't even treat us as human beings!"

Balke was absolutely seething. They had, in fact, stumbled upon Van der Linde's criminal past within their first week, courtesy of the Valentine newspaper. But who cared? Mr. Dutch had given them endless bread, kept their entire families fed and clothed, provided money for medical treatments, and even given them extra cash for entertainment!

So, even if Mr. Dutch was a wanted man, stepping back ten thousand paces, was Blackwater truly faultless? Were those damned Pinkerton Detectives not wrong? Why the hell did they publish the names of their whole family's providers in the newspaper?! Damn it, wasn't this just pure, unadulterated bullying of honest, struggling people?

As Jackson and Balke continued their fervent discussion, faint pinpricks of light slowly materialized in the distant, snow-covered mountains. In this era, untouched by light pollution, these distant glimmers were starkly visible, piercing the oppressive darkness. In the vast, empty wilderness, a sudden cluster of lights, appearing where only blackness had been, was a stark, unmistakable anomaly.

Though Jackson and Balke, their eyes constantly scanning the horizon, had been engrossed in their conversation, they noticed the anomaly immediately. And with each flicker in the darkness, more and more lights appeared, forming a winding, serpent-like procession snaking through the hills, a chilling, luminous convoy. A single point of light might be dismissed, but a winding chain of them, slowly, inexorably, approaching the ranch, was impossible to ignore.

Upon seeing the approaching lights, Jackson and Balke reacted almost simultaneously, a primal alarm shrieking through their very bones.

"Oh, shit! It's those damned gangs! It's definitely those damned gangs!" Jackson bellowed, his eyes red with a mixture of excitement and battle-lust. He didn't forget to instantly snatch the whistle hanging around his neck.

Then.

"Toot toot toot toot..."

A series of piercing whistle blasts ripped through the pre-dawn quiet of the factory, a shrill alarm. Balke, meanwhile, had already spun, his hands flying to the Maxim gun. A full wooden box of ammunition belts lay ready, gleaming menacingly beside the weapon.

"Hahaha, you damned gang members, come on!" Jackson yelled, his voice a raw, primal roar. He seized the rifle before him, his face contorted in a joyous, bloodthirsty grin, and blew the whistle again, a triumphant, defiant blare that heralded the coming storm. "We can finally repay Mr. Dutch's kindness!!!"