Arthur Morgan

Origins

The Complete Official Guide presents Arthur as "Dutch's trusted right arm and the story protagonist", and adds: "His loyalty to the gang leader has been unwavering in this time, though the recent events at Blackwater have clearly troubled him." Red Dead Redemption 2 never gives Arthur Morgan's year of birth. A fishing conversation in "The New South" places it in the early 1860s: Dutch and Hosea recall an episode from about fifteen years earlier, when Arthur was around twenty-one. If he meets the veteran Hamish Sinclair, Arthur calls himself "a wanderer" who was "born further north" and "spent a lot of time out west". His parents were Lyle and Beatrice Morgan. Beatrice died when he was a small child. He says he barely remembers her, but keeps her photograph by his bed, next to a flower, because she saw flowers as a sign of good luck. Lyle Morgan was a petty criminal. He was arrested for larceny in December 1874, when Arthur was about eleven; the mugshot Arthur has kept is dated December 7, 1874.

In "The Fine Art of Conversation", if his honor is high, Arthur tells Sister Calderón that he saw his father die. The relationship was a bad one: in a journal entry written after his tuberculosis diagnosis, Arthur calls Lyle a "no good bastard" and writes that his death "weren't soon enough". He nonetheless wears his father's hat and keeps his picture beside Beatrice's. The two men share an almost identical scar on the chin. When Sean MacGuire nicknames him "English" or "Englishman" in camp, Arthur answers that his family "weren't even English". Agent Milton, who has read the Pinkerton files on him, later sums up his youth in one phrase: an "orphaned street kid".

Around 1877, Arthur was living on the streets when Dutch van der Linde and Hosea Matthews took him in. In "Eastward Bound", Hosea says they found him at "about" thirteen, "maybe a little older", and adds: "A wilder delinquent you never did see. But he learned fast." The official guide gives his age as fourteen. In "The Aftermath of Genesis", when Charles asks how long he has ridden with the gang, Arthur answers: "Twenty years, something like that. Since I was a boy." Dutch taught him to read, as he would later teach John, and Arthur adds: "Taught me a few other things, him and Hosea." Arthur was the first boy the two men raised, and he counts among the founders of the Van der Linde gang. He took on Dutch's vision of outlaws living free of the law, on the margins of settled society. According to the official guide, Susan Grimshaw has been with the gang about as long as Arthur. For a time she and Dutch were a couple, and she went on to run the camp with a firm hand, acting as a stern mother to its members.

As a young man, Arthur fell in love with Mary Gillis, and the two became engaged. He got on well with her younger brother Jamie, whom he taught to ride and who knew about his outlaw life. Mary's family disapproved of the relationship, her father above all. Some of the gang's women did not like Mary either, Susan Grimshaw among them; Abigail Roberts later remembers Arthur and Mary playing dominoes together. Arthur's refusal to give up crime and the hostility of the Gillis family ended the engagement before 1899. Mary married a man named Barry Linton, who died of pneumonia. Arthur never stopped caring for her: in "The Fine Art of Conversation", he tells Sister Calderón about a woman who had loved him and says he regrets not leaving with her.

Two anecdotes from those years come up when Arthur fishes with Dutch and Hosea in "The New South". In 1884, sent out to fish, Arthur returned with three fine bass, and the gang feasted and toasted him all night. A week later, at a local market, Dutch discovered that Arthur had bought the fish from a fishmonger. In 1885, Dutch saved a twelve-year-old John Marston from being hanged by homesteaders in Illinois. John was brought into the gang and raised alongside Arthur, and the two grew up like brothers. Both boys grew up hearing Dutch denounce the government as corrupt and warn them against seeking revenge; in "Old Friends", Arthur reminds him of his own rule, "revenge is a luxury we can't afford". Within the gang, the two young men became the ones Dutch favored above all others.

A newspaper scrap kept in Arthur's tent, dated April 15, 1887, reports a bank robbery by three men it does not name; the in-game description calls it an article about Arthur's first bank robbery. At about two o'clock, three strangers walked into the banking house of Lee and Hoyt. The cashier, Major T.J. Bellard, described the eldest as "a fine talker" who kept him in conversation, "a big, sullen young man" who held a gun to his face, and a third who gave the orders and announced that his "fine patriotic friends" were going to "relieve you of that gold and introduce a few folks to the benefits of civilization". The three left with 5,000 dollars in gold and refused the silver as too bulky. The paper adds unproven claims that the men stayed in town and handed money out in hovels, shanties and an orphanage.

Some time later, Arthur had a brief relationship with a young waitress named Eliza, who became pregnant with their son, Isaac. According to the official guide, he sent them money. Arthur tells the story to Rains Fall on the ride in "Archeology for Beginners", and can mention Isaac to Sister Calderón in "The Fine Art of Conversation". Eliza knew who he was and how he lived. Arthur did not want to make promises he could not keep, and sums up what he did instead: "I said I'd do right by them. Every few months I'd stop by there for a few days." He speaks of Isaac as a good kid. On one of those visits, he found two graves marked with crosses outside the house: robbers had shot Eliza and Isaac. Arthur never fully got over it; he describes the loss as the lesson that an outlaw cannot expect good things to happen to him.

Arthur also found a dog, Copper, and took him into the gang. The two shared a bath now and then, a memory Arthur can bring up when he pays for a deluxe bath at a hotel. Copper was hard to handle, but Arthur liked his energy and says the dog "never lost the puppy in him". Arthur also owned a mare, Boadicea, whom he lost before Colter in circumstances the game does not show; in "Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego", he tells Hosea that his new horse is "okay, but ain't no Boadicea". In 1894, according to the official guide, Uncle brought a young woman named Abigail Roberts into the gang. She and John became a couple, and Jack was born around 1895. Arthur became a kind of uncle to the boy, who calls him "Uncle Arthur". When Jack was a baby, John left the gang for about a year. Dutch and most of the gang welcomed him back; Arthur did not forgive the desertion, and the rift between the two men was still open in 1899.

Several earlier jobs are recalled in conversation during the game. In optional dialogue on the ride in "High and Low Finance", Uncle brings up a bank he robbed near the Canadian border with Arthur and Bill Williamson; Arthur answers that Uncle was a poor lookout. In an optional exchange during "Sodom? Back to Gomorrah", Arthur mentions a bank he robbed in Tucson, Arizona, in the mid-1890s with Javier Escuella and Karen Jones; Karen went in disguised as a nun with two pistols hidden under her habit, and the job succeeded. Before 1899, Arthur and Javier set out to rob a stagecoach on a tip from a crooked lawman in Reno, Nevada, then let it go when they found it full of women and children; the O'Driscoll Boys robbed the same coach the next day and killed everyone aboard (recalled while fishing with Javier).

By 1898, the gang was in Montana. After a good day's fishing, Hosea meant to cook his catch of large salmon for the whole camp, but Copper got to the fish first, ate them and died shortly afterwards. Arthur kept the dog's photograph on his wagon. A fire destroyed his old journal and, after some trouble further north, the gang moved on toward the southeast. To throw off any pursuit, it took a long detour through the northern part of the Grizzlies and lived for months away from any town, wintering on the western side of the range. The group grew on the way. Charles Smith joined while drifting alone as an outlaw, and Jenny Kirk after the gang came upon her, abandoned by the side of a road. Micah Bell, a criminal by trade, earned his place by saving Dutch's life during a gunfight. Dutch grew fond of him; Arthur and Hosea made no secret of their dislike.

In the spring of 1899, the gang settled near Blackwater, a growing town in West Elizabeth, hiding in plain sight. Arthur and Hosea were preparing a large real estate swindle. Dutch, encouraged by Micah, was planning to rob a ferry carrying bank funds; newspapers later put the sum at 150,000 dollars. Arthur and Hosea thought the job wrong and stayed out of it to run their own scheme. Hosea later puts it to Dutch bluntly: "Arthur and I were about to prosper in Blackwater. We were on to something big... then Micah got you all excited about that ferry and here we are." The plan was to rob the ferry, then head west, possibly into New Austin, with Arthur and Hosea rejoining the gang the following day.

The robbery went wrong. Javier sums it up: "We had the money, it seemed fine, then suddenly they were everywhere." They were Pinkerton agents, and Dutch killed a young woman "in a bad way", Javier says; her name is Heidi McCourt. Davey Callander, Mac Callander and John were shot. Arthur and the others reached the far side of town late: "By the time you boys showed up on the other side of town", Javier says, "we were only just holding on." In his speech at Colter, Dutch counts Jenny Kirk among the people the gang has lost. Of Sean MacGuire, Javier says only that they do not even know; the gang later learns that bounty hunters captured him. The money stayed in Blackwater, stashed there by Dutch. The gang fled north through a blizzard into the mountains of Ambarino. At Colter, if the player chooses the question in conversation, Arthur asks Dutch: "Do you think it was a trap? In Blackwater?" Dutch answers that with that many men, they knew the gang was coming, that there was money on the boat, a lot of it, and that he hid the take with the rest of their money in town just before they fled.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (1899)

Chapter 1: Colter

In "Outlaws from the West", the opening mission, the gang's wagons push through a snowstorm; Hosea notes that it is May. Arthur, who was scouting ahead, has found an abandoned mining town, Colter, and leads the gang there. Davey Callander is carried into a cabin on a stretcher, already dead. Dutch tells the gang they have been through worse and asks Simon Pearson and Susan Grimshaw to turn the place into a camp. Arthur rides out with Dutch to look for food and for Micah and John, who were sent to scout. They find Micah, who leads them to a homestead where he has seen a party going on. While Dutch, posing as a lost traveler, talks to the men inside, Micah spots a body in a wagon. The men are O'Driscolls, and a shootout follows.

Arthur searches the house for food and ammunition, then the barn, where he is ambushed by an O'Driscoll who was hiding inside. Arthur beats him and makes him talk: the man gives up a camp by a lake to the southwest and mentions a train the O'Driscolls mean to rob. Dutch leaves his fate to Arthur, who can kill him, knock him out or let him go. In the barn, Arthur calms a Tennessee Walker, which Dutch tells him to keep. Inside the house, Micah has found a terrified woman hiding in the cellar; she throws a bottle at him, then grabs a knife from the table and threatens him with it. Micah flips the table over, a lantern falls and the house catches fire. Dutch calms her down and takes her back to Colter. She is Sadie Adler, whose husband Jake was killed by the O'Driscolls three days earlier.

In "Enter, Pursued by a Memory", Abigail asks Arthur to look for John, who has been missing for two days. Arthur is reluctant: "For all we know, he kept riding north and never looked back." Hosea tells him to at least take a look and asks Javier to ride out with him; Javier agrees, saying that if things were reversed, John would look for him. On the way up, Javier gives his account of Blackwater. They find John's dead horse. Javier fires a shot into the air, and John's shouts lead them to him, lying on a ledge, his face torn by wolves. "Never thought I'd say this, but... it's good to see you, Arthur Morgan", John says. Arthur carries him down and holds off two wolf attacks. Back at Colter, Hosea thanks the two men and says the gang will head east once the storm passes. Arthur worries about moving toward civilization; Hosea answers that their problems in the west are worse.

In "Old Friends", Micah punches Bill Williamson in a cabin at Colter; Arthur, Javier and Lenny hold the two apart, and Dutch comes in and puts an end to it before taking the men out to attack the O'Driscoll camp at Ewing Basin. Arthur asks whether a raid is wise in their state; Dutch replies that the O'Driscolls were talking about trains and detonators, and that the gang needs that information. He hands Arthur a Carbine Repeater and a lasso. On the ride, Dutch recalls that Colm O'Driscoll killed Annabelle, the woman he loved; Arthur reminds him that he had killed Colm's brother. From a ridge, they watch Colm strike one of his men and ride off. The gang wipes out the camp and finds dynamite and plans for the train robbery. On the way back, Arthur chases and lassos the young O'Driscoll Colm had hit, Kieran Duffy. Dutch has him tied up in the barn and starved until he talks.

In "The Aftermath of Genesis", Pearson tells Arthur the camp is running out of food. Charles Smith, whose hand was burned during the escape from Blackwater, takes Arthur hunting and gives him a bow. Arthur kills two deer. On the ride, Charles says he still does not know what happened on the ferry; Arthur answers that Javier told him a bit, "but it sure weren't good". Charles explains why he stays: the gang treats him fairly, despite his Black father and Native American mother. Asked why he never ran off, Arthur gives his "twenty years" answer and adds: "Dutch saved me, saved most of us. That's why we need to stick by him through this." Back at Colter, he helps Pearson skin the deer, and Pearson tells him pelts sell in almost any town.

In "Who the Hell is Leviticus Cornwall?", Dutch decides to rob the train the O'Driscolls had planned to hit. Hosea objects: the weather is breaking, the plan was to lie low and head back west, and Leviticus Cornwall is "no joke". Arthur asks who Cornwall is; Hosea answers: "a big railway magnate, sugar dealer, oil man". Arthur helps Bill plant the dynamite on the tracks, but the detonator fails and the gang chases the train on horseback. Arthur, Lenny and Javier jump onto the train from the top of a tunnel. Javier falls off at once; Lenny slips and hangs on to the side of a carriage, and Arthur can pull him up. The two fight through the guards and stop the train. The gang blows open Cornwall's private car and Arthur finds railroad bonds, which Dutch calls bearer bonds and thinks can be sold easily. Dutch then leaves Arthur to deal with the last three employees, who have come out with their hands up: "It's up to you." The choice changes only the player's honor.

In "Eastward Bound", the gang leaves Colter. Arthur drives a wagon with Hosea, who has chosen a spot near Valentine, Horseshoe Overlook: "We'll be able to hide out there no problem, as long as we keep our noses clean." A wheel comes off after a stream crossing, and Charles helps put it back. Hosea points out Native Americans watching from a cliff and explains that the Heartlands were taken from them. He calls Arthur "our blockheaded driver". When Charles says he struck out alone at about thirteen, Hosea replies that this was about the age they found Arthur. Hosea also tells Arthur that the two of them kept telling Dutch the ferry job "didn't feel right", and that it "isn't like Dutch to lose his head like that". At the new camp, he gives the men one instruction for Valentine: "Remember, we are itinerant workers."

Chapter 2: Horseshoe Overlook

In "Polite Society, Valentine Style", Arthur wakes Uncle and takes him to Valentine for supplies; Karen Jones, Tilly Jackson and Mary-Beth Gaskill come along. On the way, Arthur calls Uncle his "second favorite parasite", after ringworm. In town, the women look for leads while Arthur and Uncle shop and drink. Mary-Beth comes back with a tip: a train of rich tourists bound for Saint Denis will cross a stretch of empty country at night, near Scarlett Meadows. Arthur chases off a man harassing Tilly and deals with a client who hit Karen at the hotel. Outside, a man asks if he was in Blackwater "a few weeks back". Arthur denies it; the man flees, and Arthur chases him on a borrowed horse until he falls and hangs from a cliff. If Arthur saves him, Jimmy Brooks gives him a steel pen, and Arthur admits he was in Blackwater and that he "maybe shoulda killed" him. Letting him fall costs honor.

In "Americans at Rest", Arthur drinks with Javier and Charles at Smithfield's Saloon until Bill, drunk, headbutts a patron and starts a brawl. Arthur knocks out the men who come at him. Tommy, the town's strongman, comes down from upstairs and beats Javier; Arthur goes to free him, and Tommy throws him through the window into the muddy street. Arthur wins the fight outside and keeps hitting Tommy until a bystander, Thomas Downes, begs him to stop. Dutch then arrives with Josiah Trelawny, who has learned that Sean MacGuire is alive and held by bounty hunters near Blackwater. In "The First Shall Be Last", Arthur joins Charles and Javier on a cliff above Blackwater, where Pinkertons and bounty hunters patrol and posters of Dutch and Hosea are up. Trelawny reports that Ike Skelding's men are moving Sean up the Upper Montana River toward a federal prison. Arthur says they must rescue him now or "cut him loose"; Charles refuses the second option.

Arthur sends Charles to the far side of the canyon and attacks from the other with Javier and Trelawny. Trelawny distracts two guards so that Arthur and Javier can take them quietly, then leaves. Arthur and Javier fight their way up the canyon, meet Charles and find Sean hanging by his legs from a tree. When Sean asks for a hug, Arthur tells him: "Nothing means more to me than this gang. The bond we share... it's the most real thing to me. I would kill for it, I would happily die for it... but in spite of all that, I would have easily left you here to rot if Charles hadn't stopped me." Javier escorts Sean back to camp, and the gang holds a party that night for his return. Later in the chapter, Sean brings Arthur a tip about train robbers using Lonnie's Shack as a hideout, and the two rob them of their stash.

In "Who is Not Without Sin", Arthur goes to Flatneck Station to find Reverend Swanson, drunk at a poker table. Arthur can play his hand. Swanson wanders off; Arthur finds him being beaten by a man, then stops a witness to the fight from fetching the law. Swanson gets his foot stuck in the rails of the railway bridge, and Arthur pulls him clear just before a train, then brings him back to camp. In "Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego", Hosea takes Arthur hunting for a bear he puts at nearly a thousand pounds, the Legendary Bharati Grizzly Bear, in Grizzlies East, after a stop at the Valentine stable to sell or keep a black Shire. They camp for the night and cook rabbit. In the morning Arthur prepares bait, and at the end of the trail he can set it or split up with Hosea to search. The bear charges them and Arthur drives it off with his revolver. Hosea, grateful to be alive, hands him a Legendary Animal Map and rides back to camp; Arthur can stay to hunt the bear.

In "The Spines of America", Hosea introduces Arthur to Seamus at Emerald Ranch, a prospective buyer of stolen goods who wants proof they are not amateurs. The test is to steal a stagecoach, itself stolen, that his cousin by marriage Bob Crawford has bought and keeps at Carmody Dell, without killing anyone. Arthur and Hosea take it by day, Hosea distracting the Crawfords, or at night while the family sleeps. Seamus then becomes the gang's fence. In "Good, Honest, Snake Oil", on Uncle's advice, Arthur takes a bounty from Sheriff Curtis Malloy in Valentine: Benedict Allbright, a patent-medicine seller whose cure is killing people. Arthur poses as a customer buying for his sick mother, pulls Allbright back up when he slips off a cliff, then, when he jumps into the river, lassos him out of the water and brings him in alive. In "Paying a Social Call", Dutch threatens to have Bill castrate Kieran with hot tongs. Kieran talks: Colm is supposed to be at Six Point Cabin.

Arthur rides to Six Point Cabin with Bill, John and Kieran. Bill has slipped throwing knives into Arthur's saddle. Kieran remarks that the O'Driscolls and the Van der Linde gang are not so different; John tells him he knows nothing about them. The three men kill the sentries quietly, then fight the rest. In the cabin, an O'Driscoll knocks Arthur to the ground; Kieran shoots him dead. Colm is not there, and Arthur, convinced Kieran set them up, draws on him. Kieran points out that he has just saved his life. Arthur tells him he is free to go; Kieran answers that alone, with Colm's men after him, he would not last, and that he is one of them now. Arthur gives in, lets him join the gang and sends him to camp with the other two. He then takes the money Kieran mentioned from the chimney and a shotgun from above the fireplace.

Leopold Strauss, who runs a money-lending business from the camp, asks Arthur to collect three debts in "Money Lending and Other Sins I" and "II". Chick Matthews, a ranch hand at Guthrie Farm, flees on horseback; Arthur lassos him and gets a map to the tree where the money is hidden. Mr. Wróbel, a Polish smallholder at Painted Sky, barely speaks English; Arthur beats him and takes possessions in place of cash. Lilly Millet, at Emerald Ranch, has no money, and her boyfriend Cooper attacks Arthur, who beats him and takes the sum from him. The collections unlock the camp ledger. In "Money Lending and Other Sins III", Strauss sends Arthur after Thomas Downes, the man who stopped the fight with Tommy, with the words: "If he doesn't have the money, beat him." Arthur replies: "Well, I usually do."

At Downes Ranch, Thomas raises a rake, then pleads that he has a family. Arthur answers: "I don't care about your family. Your debt's caught you, mister. And it ain't letting go." He beats him, and Downes coughs blood into his face. Arthur tells him to sell his place; Downes says they already owe more than it is worth. His wife, Edith, comes out and says her husband is not well. Arthur leaves with the words: "We ain't nobody's idea of charity. Get us the money!" Back at camp, he tells Strauss that Downes is almost dead, that the family is destitute, and that Strauss "was a fool for lending them the money". Strauss answers that people who are not desperate are not interested in his loans. The mission cannot be skipped, and the game returns to it later.

In "We Loved Once and True I", Susan Grimshaw tells Arthur that a letter has come from Mary Linton, who has seen "a couple of the girls" who ride with the gang in Valentine. Mary writes that she has written the letter "a hundred times or more", that she has had bad luck and been in Valentine for "a couple of months", and that she rents a room at Chadwick Farm. In part II, Arthur rides there. Mary tells him her husband is dead and asks him to find her brother Jamie, who has joined the Chelonians, a cult camped in Cumberland Forest. Arthur can refuse; if he lets the moment pass, Mary storms inside saying he has not changed.

If Arthur agrees ("We Loved Once and True III"), he finds Jamie among the cultists, talks or fights his way to him, and chases him when he runs. Jamie puts a revolver to his own head; Arthur shoots it out of his hand. At Valentine station, Jamie tells Mary he is coming home and the two board a train. Arthur draws their initials in his journal with a heart. In a second letter, Mary writes that Jamie is thinking of returning to college and asks why Arthur could not "put down all those fantasies".

In "A Quiet Time", Lenny comes back from a scouting trip with news that Micah has been arrested for murder in Strawberry; Sheriff Hanley means to hang him. Dutch tells Arthur to deal with it later and first take Lenny to Valentine for a drink. The night turns into a blur: Arthur loses Lenny several times, ends up seeing every patron as Lenny, dances with the crowd, and the pair can end up in the Valentine jail. In "Blessed are the Meek?", Arthur goes to Strawberry. Hanley refuses to release Micah, so Arthur tears the bars off the cell with a steam donkey. Micah shoots his O'Driscoll cellmate, and the two kill most of the town's lawmen, Hanley included. Micah refuses to leave until he has recovered his revolvers from a former associate, Norman, whom he kills along with his wife, Maddy. Arthur berates him afterwards. Micah gives him a second holster, calls them both "sons of Dutch" and asks Arthur to come and see him at his camp near Strawberry.

In "An American Pastoral Scene", Arthur and Micah hold up a banking coach bound for Strawberry, a target Micah learned about from his O'Driscoll cellmate. Micah hands Arthur a Lancaster Repeater, saying it is more his style. Near the Dakota River, O'Driscolls fell a tree across the road and blow up the coach with dynamite; Arthur and Micah kill them from the far bank, shoot open the lockbox and split the take. In "A Fisher of Men", Abigail asks Arthur to take Jack fishing on the Dakota River. Jack says he forgot a story book when the gang left Blackwater in a hurry; Arthur tells him someone will surely get him another. Two men interrupt them: Agents Andrew Milton and Edgar Ross of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Milton calls Arthur "Van der Linde's most trusted associate", an "orphaned street kid seduced by that maniac's silver tongue" who matured "into a degenerate murderer", and puts the price on his head at 5,000 dollars.

Milton's offer is simple: bring in Dutch, "and you have my word, you won't swing". He adds that he has already heard the gang's philosophy from Mac Callander, who was "pretty shot up" when found and whose killing was "slow, but merciful". Arthur refuses. Riding back, he tells Jack not to worry about the "disagreeable men", then reports to Dutch, who concludes that the Pinkertons want to scare them and that the gang should stay calm and do nothing. During the chapter, Arthur can also hunt bison with Charles in the Heartlands, where Charles kills a poacher who had slaughtered the animals to frame the local tribes, and rob the Porter family's isolated homestead, Chez Porter, with Javier, for 175 dollars each.

John picks up Mary-Beth's train lead in "Pouring Forth Oil I" and proposes parking an oil wagon across the tracks to force the train to stop. Arthur steals one from Cornwall Kerosene & Tar in "Pouring Forth Oil II" and hides it at Old Trail Rise; in part III he suggests bringing Charles. In "Pouring Forth Oil IV", Sean is waiting at the wagon, practicing his quick-draw on bottles. Arthur says taking him along would be like bringing Micah; Sean calls Micah an "oily turd". At night, on a crossing at the New Hanover and Lemoyne line, the train stops, Charles knocks out the engineer, and Arthur and John rob the passengers while Sean looks for the baggage car. Arthur then saves Sean from a guard who has knocked him down. Lawmen arrive fast, and John wonders whether it was a setup. The four split the take and ride back separately.

In "The Sheep and the Goats", John has a new plan in Valentine. On the way through town, Arthur tells him that going back to Blackwater is still too dangerous whatever Dutch says, that the world is changing around them and that they may be "the last". Arthur gets a Rolling Block Rifle from the gunsmith without paying, because John has fallen out with him, and tells John not to be "two people at once" with Jack. From a cliff, Arthur fires into the ground to scatter the hands driving a flock from Emerald Ranch, and the two men herd the sheep into the auction yard. The auctioneer suspects their origin; John talks his cut down from 25 to 18 percent. At Keane's Saloon, Dutch sends John and Strauss to collect the payment. Leviticus Cornwall arrives with armed guards, takes both hostage outside and demands Dutch. Dutch talks while Arthur draws and frees them. In the running fight through town, Strauss is shot, and Arthur lifts him onto John's horse. Dutch decides the gang must move.

In "A Strange Kindness", Arthur rides back to a camp already packing. Dutch sends him and Charles to look at Dewberry Creek, a site suggested by Micah. The dry creek holds a corpse and, nearby, a German family hiding under a wagon; the daughter makes them understand that her father has been kidnapped. Arthur wants to leave, Charles insists, and they follow the trail to a clearing on Flat Iron Lake, kill the kidnappers and free the man, Andreas, who thanks Arthur with a gold bar. Charles judges the lakeside, Clemens Point, a better camp than Dewberry Creek, and much easier to defend, and the gang settles there. Among the strangers Arthur can meet during this chapter are Theodore Levin, a writer in Valentine who sends him to interview old gunslingers for a book on Jim "Boy" Calloway ("The Noblest of Men, and a Woman"); the photographer Albert Mason ("Arcadia for Amateurs"); Deborah MacGuiness, who collects dinosaur bones ("A Test of Faith"); and Miss Marjorie's sideshow at Van Horn ("The Smell of the Grease Paint").

Chapter 3: Clemens Point

The gang settles at Clemens Point, on the shore of Flat Iron Lake near Rhodes, in the state of Lemoyne. In "The New South", Arthur rides out with Dutch and Hosea for a fishing trip. On the road they meet Sheriff Leigh Gray and his deputy, Archibald MacGregor, who are moving a wagon of prisoners. Josiah Trelawny is in the cage, accused of running a gold mining investment scam. While Dutch talks, a prisoner named Anders Anderson picks the lock, and the Anderson boys jump onto a passing train. Dutch offers to help and sends Arthur after them, then asks the sheriff to discuss Trelawny. Archibald climbs onto Arthur's horse; the train is too fast, so Arthur jumps aboard, knocks the men out one by one and beats Anders unconscious when he draws a knife. Once Arthur has brought Anders back to Rhodes, the sheriff releases Trelawny and invites the three men to visit. Arthur can then go fishing with Dutch and Hosea.

In "American Distillation", Sheriff Gray makes Dutch, Arthur and Bill temporary deputies. Their job is to help Archibald shut down a moonshine still in the swamp. On the wagon, Archibald tells Arthur the history of Rhodes and of the feud between the Gray and Braithwaite families. The group passes the body of Fredrick Mitchell, a Lemoyne state legislator killed by the Lemoyne Raiders. Arthur and Bill knock out the moonshiners on one side of the camp while Dutch and Archibald take the other. Arthur blows up the still with dynamite, which brings the buyers, a group of Lemoyne Raiders, into a gunfight. Archibald then says he normally takes the seized liquor "for personal consumption", as part of the job, and leaves most of it to the gang. Bill drives the wagon back to camp. On the ride home, Dutch says that with Hosea's help they can play the two families against each other. Arthur tells him he sounds like "the young Dutch", and Dutch challenges him to a race.

At camp, in "Further Questions of Female Suffrage", Arthur breaks up an argument between Sadie Adler and Pearson: Sadie refuses to spend her days chopping vegetables, and says that she and her husband shared the work on their ranch. Arthur takes her to Rhodes to buy supplies, with a letter from Pearson to his aunt Cathy to post. Sadie reads the letter aloud on the way, imitating Pearson. In town she wants to rob the store; Arthur tells her they are there to avoid trouble. She comes back in new clothes. On the way home, she talks about her burnt house and the harmonica she used to play; Arthur says he may keep an eye out for another. Two Lemoyne Raiders order the wagon to stop. Sadie shoots one and runs the other down, and the two fight off the rest. When she asks whether he will tell Dutch, Arthur answers: "Maybe, if he asks. But maybe not." Back at camp, he says he would be happy to ride with her again.

In "Advertising, The New American Art", Abigail sends Arthur to the hidden moonshine, where Hosea and John are waiting. Dutch has given John another task, scouting the Braithwaites' race horses, so Arthur takes his place. Hosea's idea is to return the liquor to Catherine Braithwaite as "lost goods" and ask for half its value as a reward. Catherine already knows Sheriff Gray had the moonshine taken. She pays them ten dollars extra to hand it out for free in the Rhodes saloon, which belongs to the Grays. Hosea plays "Melvin" and Arthur his slow-witted brother "Fenton". They serve drinks into the night until Lemoyne Raiders recognise their own moonshine and open fire. The two shoot their way out and escape by wagon.

Back at camp, Dutch and Micah lay out the plan: play the feud to get at the families' gold. Arthur doubts it, given the trouble they already have with the law, and says he does not believe in revenge; Dutch, whose father died in the Civil War, speaks of the South with hatred. Arthur goes along: Dutch will work the Grays while Hosea works the Braithwaites. Arthur's next move is left to the player: join Hosea and Sean at Braithwaite Manor about the Grays' tobacco fields, or John and Javier at Caliga Hall about the Braithwaites' horses.

Dutch also sends Arthur to Caliga Hall to learn more about the Grays. In "The Course of True Love I", Arthur gets past the guards by invoking Leigh Gray, and a servant directs him to Beau Gray. Beau is in love with Penelope Braithwaite, a daughter of the rival family, and pays Arthur to carry her a letter and a gift. In part II, Arthur sneaks to the back of Braithwaite Manor, delivers the letter and brings back Penelope's reply. In part III, Beau reads that she means to join a women's suffrage march and says her life is in danger. Penelope refuses to leave the protesters' carriage but lets Arthur drive it through Rhodes, in a rally led by Olive Calhoon. Beau's cousins Iain and Scott try to drag him away; Arthur talks them down or knocks them out, then rides with Beau to Bolger Glade, where Beau pays him.

In "Magicians for Sport", Arthur remembers Trelawny's warning about bounty hunters in the area. Dutch thinks it is probably a rumour but sends Arthur and Charles Smith to check on him. Trelawny's caravan in Rhodes shows signs of a fight. The trail leads to two men in the woods, with Trelawny's cane beside them; one of them, questioned, gives up a farm near Braithwaite Manor. The bounty hunters, who work for Cole Stoudemire, scatter into the corn fields when they are spotted. One of them takes Arthur hostage, and Charles kills him. Two more are hiding in the barn. Trelawny insists he told his captors nothing and decides to stay at the camp until it is safe to live alone again.

"An Honest Mistake" begins with Molly O'Shea calling Arthur over to talk about Dutch. Uncle interrupts with a tip about a supposedly unguarded supply wagon. Arthur agrees on condition that Uncle comes along, and Charles and Bill join them. At the crossroads, the driver turns out to work for Cornwall Kerosene & Tar, and Cornwall's hired guns pour in while Arthur and Charles are looting the wagon. The four flee into the woods and hide in an abandoned barn. At nightfall the guards search the property. Bill knocks over a bucket, the fight starts, and a smashed lantern sets the barn on fire. The men escape into the trees, split into pairs, Arthur with Uncle, Charles with Bill, and finish off their pursuers before dividing the take.

In "Preaching Forgiveness as He Went", Lenny Summers has heard, from talking with the Black community in Rhodes, that the Lemoyne Raiders, former Confederates who still dream of an army, keep a stockpile of weapons at a manor called Shady Belle. On the ride, the two men talk about how black people are treated in the South, and Arthur tells Lenny that his work is noticed. From Bolger Glade they follow a wagon of dynamite to the manor. Arthur studies the place through a scoped rifle; Lenny can approach the Raiders pretending to be friendly, or Arthur can shoot a crate of dynamite. After the firefight, they drive off with a cart full of guns and kill three more Raiders on the road. At camp Arthur keeps a Bolt Action Rifle for himself and says the rest will be sold.

Bill and Karen Jones have been planning to rob the Valentine bank since Horseshoe Overlook. In "Sodom? Back to Gomorrah", Bill complains that when he gets into trouble he is called a fool, while for Arthur "it's just one of them things". Karen settles it: "It's a bank, Arthur." Lenny joins them. Before they leave, Strauss tells Arthur that Thomas Downes is dead and that his widow now owes the debt. In Valentine, Karen goes in first as a lost girl or a drunken harlot, distracts the guard and knocks him out, then the three men storm the bank. Arthur forces the teller to open the vault, then cracks the safes or blows them with dynamite; the second method brings the law before they reach their horses. A passing train helps them lose their pursuers. Arthur then rides to the Downes ranch, offers Edith Downes a half-hearted apology, squares up to her son, and leaves with the money.

Two more debts are collected in "Money Lending and Other Sins IV". Gwyn Hughes, an apprentice undertaker in Rhodes, pays by digging up a Mrs. Claypole for her jewellery while Arthur keeps people away from the cemetery gate; the debt is settled with a diamond brooch. Winton Holmes, an unemployed refinery worker camped north of Strawberry, has no money but has tracked a rare cougar whose pelt would cover the debt. He leads Arthur into the animal's den, where the cave forks; Holmes takes the left passage and is killed by the cougar. Arthur kills it, skins it and sells the pelt to the butcher.

In "Friends in Very Low Places", Trelawny introduces Arthur to Alden Carruthers, a clerk at the Rhodes post office who sells tips on stagecoaches for cash, and mentions a colleague in Strawberry who does the same. On the way to Siltwater Strand, Arthur admits he is wary of going back to Strawberry after the Micah affair. Trelawny says the gang is becoming famous for all the trouble it causes and that they will all be dead soon enough; Arthur hopes they will be free first. Trelawny wants no shooting: he rides up to the coach and persuades the opera singer Chester Damsen to sing for him while Arthur quietly opens the strongbox at the back with a lock breaker.

During this chapter Arthur can also rob a coach with Sean and Mary-Beth, who feigns amnesia to distract the guards, another with Bill and Tilly: Tilly rides off after a remark from Bill, and Bill and Arthur rob the coach themselves, for 307.50 dollars, and a homestead with Sean. He can fish with Kieran, who is told about a legendary bluegill by a naked swimmer, and with Javier, who gives him crickets as bait.

In "Blessed are the Peacemakers", Pearson reports that O'Driscolls he met on the road want a parley between Dutch and Colm O'Driscoll. Hosea says at once: "It's a trap." Micah says it is probably a trap, but asks what they have to lose by finding out, and Dutch decides: "you and me, with Arthur protecting us... no one else". On the way, Dutch tells Arthur that with him watching "I would walk into hell itself"; Arthur answers, "This is horse shit. From both of you!" He takes a position above the meeting. Colm tells Dutch that the law has offered him a price for bringing Dutch in. While the two talk, O'Driscolls creep up on Arthur, knock him out and carry him off.

He wakes wounded in the shoulder, a prisoner in their hideout. Colm comes to gloat and explains the plan: lure an angry Dutch into a rescue, hand the whole gang to the law, then disappear. He offers Arthur a place with his gang; Arthur replies, "It ain't about the money, Colm." Once alone, Arthur frees himself, cauterizes his wound, kills a guard and rides back to Clemens Point, where he collapses: "I told you it was a set up, Dutch..." Susan Grimshaw sits with him ("You'll be okay, Mr. Morgan... you're home"). His recovery, in the care of Susan and Tilly, takes a few weeks.

The gang then works both families at once. In "The Fine Joys of Tobacco", Arthur finds Catherine Braithwaite, Hosea and Sean playing cribbage at Braithwaite Manor, with one of her sons (Bartholomew) looking on. Catherine asks whether Arthur is "as dumb as he looks"; Hosea answers with a joke of his own. The job: burn the Grays' tobacco fields at Caliga Hall with the leftover moonshine. Sean drives the wagon in as a new delivery boy while Arthur hides in the back, since the Grays know his face. A guard named Hamish shows them to the warehouse, where Arthur kills him from behind. They wait for dark, spot a payroll wagon arriving, then Arthur pours moonshine across the fields while Sean douses the barn. A fire bottle sets everything ablaze, the guards open fire, and the two shoot their way to the payroll wagon, take its horses and the money, and ride off.

In "Horse Flesh for Dinner", Tavish Gray meets Arthur, John and Javier at the Caliga Hall stables and asks them to steal the Braithwaites' prized horses, which he says will fetch 5,000 dollars. At the south gate of Braithwaite Manor, John claims they have come to invest in the stables. Arthur questions the stablehand, who first pretends to know nothing, then leads them to the horses; while he talks about their names and bloodlines, he is dealt with: Arthur can kill him, or Javier knocks him out. Javier ropes the three horses together, John leads the way out and Arthur covers the rear. One stallion breaks loose and Arthur lassos it back. At Clemens Cove, the fence Clay Davies pays only 700 dollars.

Bill has been drinking with the Gray boys, who say they want extra security. In "A Short Walk in a Pretty Town", Arthur joins Micah, Bill and Sean in Rhodes for the job. He and Sean both sense something wrong; Sean's last words are "Now it don't feel right? I could'a told you that-" before a bullet hits him in the head. Bill is shot in the shoulder and captured by Sheriff Gray during the gunfight. Arthur and Micah take cover in the gunsmith's, clear the street and demand Bill at the sheriff's office. Gray comes out with a gun to Bill's head; in Dead Eye, Arthur and Micah kill him and the lawmen with him, Archibald among them.

Arthur blames Bill and Micah for their carelessness, asks Bill to give Sean a proper burial, and tells Micah: "best you and I don't speak for a moment". With high honor, he later writes of Sean as an annoying little brother and remembers the fun they had riding together. Sean's death also marks Karen, who turns to drink. Harmon Thomas later replaces Gray as sheriff.

Back at camp, Abigail tells Arthur that Jack has vanished. The gang concludes that the Braithwaites took him in revenge for the horses. In "Blood Feuds, Ancient and Modern", Dutch, Arthur, Hosea, John, Charles, Bill, Javier and Lenny ride to Braithwaite Manor while Micah and Kieran guard the camp. Dutch shouts "Get down here now! You inbred trash" and a gunfight breaks out. Once the grounds are cleared, Catherine and her sons barricade themselves in a room; Arthur finds a way in and two sons are killed. A search of the house finds no trace of Jack, and the gang sets it on fire. Dutch shoots a son who is barely alive, then drags Catherine outside. She says her boys gave Jack to Angelo Bronte, and that the child is in Saint Denis or on a boat to Italy. The gang leaves her alive; as they ride away, she runs back into the burning house.

The next morning, in "The Battle of Shady Belle", Dutch and Hosea try to reassure John. Asked his opinion, Arthur says the boy will be fine, then adds: "We killed all those people... we stirred up all that trouble... for nothing." Agents Milton and Ross then walk into camp. Milton greets Arthur by name and offers a deal: Dutch comes with him, and the others get three days to disappear and are pardoned. Everyone refuses, and Milton leaves with a threat: "when I return I'll be with fifty men".

Arthur proposes the house at Shady Belle he and Lenny cleared. On the ride, John counts the losses, Sean, Mac, Davey, Jenny, and asks "for what?"; Arthur answers that he does not think they chose this life, "this life chose us". The two kill the Raiders who have moved back in and dump the bodies in the swamp. Arthur welcomes the caravan: "Ignore the corpses and the alligators, it's paradise." Dutch then takes him to see Saint Denis and says that, after the two families and Sean, he no longer believes a paradise waits in the West; the gang may have to leave the country. When Arthur starts to describe big cities, Dutch finishes the sentence with "always repellent?", and Arthur agrees.

Chapter 4: Saint Denis

In "The Joys of Civilization", Arthur arrives at the Bastille Saloon in Saint Denis, where Dutch jokingly puts a gun to his head. Dutch has learned nothing about Bronte and sends Arthur in to try. The bartender refuses to talk, but a customer points him to the street children in the back alley. For five dollars, two of them agree to show him the way and walk him across the city; one of them, a street kid named Cleet (not Micah's later recruit of the same name), then grabs Arthur's satchel and runs. Arthur chases him. Depending on the player, Cleet hands the satchel back along with Bronte's address and Arthur sends him on his way; or Cleet leads him into an ambush of armed children whose leader gives him the address along with the satchel. Arthur reports to Dutch, and they arrange to meet John across from the house.

In "Angelo Bronte, A Man of Honor", Arthur meets Dutch and John in the park facing the mansion. He worries that any violence will get Jack killed; Dutch says they will be fine if they keep calm. At the gate, Dutch grabs a guard and orders him to fetch Bronte. Dutch presents the three as "simple, country folk" and plays down the kidnapping, and Bronte warms to him: "You twist words. You lie shamelessly. You think you are better than everyone else... I love you! Give these men drinks!" His condition for returning Jack: clear the grave robbers out of the Saint Denis cemetery.

On the way, Arthur compliments John on his calm; John says he does not trust Bronte and returns to his failures as a father. Arthur reasons that the Braithwaites, now dead, can no longer pay Bronte, so he has no use for the boy. The two kill the robbers, take their loot and slip past the police. Dutch is waiting outside with Jack, who talks about his room full of toys, regular baths, spaghetti, and the Italian words for "horse" and "slipper". Bronte has also invited Dutch to the mayor's party. At Shady Belle, Abigail is overjoyed and the gang celebrates.

Saint Denis brings Arthur several side jobs. In "Help a Brother Out", Brother Dorkins, who says slaves are being shipped from Saint Denis to the islands, sends him to a pawnbroker's shop, where two Spanish-speaking captives are chained behind a bookcase. In "Brothers and Sisters, One and All", a street boy steals Sister Calderón's crucifix while she and Dorkins teach children to read; Arthur recovers it, then runs into Edith Downes, now a prostitute, who sets the police on him. For Strauss, in "Money Lending and Other Sins V", he collects from Algie Davison at Catfish Jacksons, who attacks him; the money is in the footlocker of Davison's son Nate. With Micah and Bill, he dynamites a Boles Overland coach in Bayou Nwa. A coach job with Lenny turns out to be a trap: marshals appear on the road, and Arthur explains that the stage companies do this all the time, setting traps "to catch fools like you and me". With Uncle, he rustles the cattle of a drunk named Squears at Hill Haven Ranch and haggles the Davies twins up from 50 to 100 dollars. With Pearson, he gathers crayfish and alligator eggs in the swamp.

In "The Gilded Cage", Dutch announces they must buy proper clothes for Mayor Henri Lemieux's garden party, to Arthur's disbelief. Dutch, Arthur, Hosea and Bill ride there in a coach driven by Lenny; Dutch laughs that the guest of honour is "the worst crook in town". They hand in their weapons at the door. On the balcony, Bronte points out the guests to Dutch and Arthur: the mayor, Alberto Fussar, Hobart and Brenda Crawley, Rains Fall and Eagle Flies handing a letter to the mayor, and the newspaperman Hector Fellowes, whom Bronte suggests Dutch might kill for him one day. When Dutch says they need money, Bronte names the trolley station.

Downstairs, Arthur pulls a drunk away from the writer Evelyn Miller and is introduced to the mayor. The butler Pierre announces a telephone call from Leviticus Cornwall; on Dutch's orders Arthur tails him to the mayor's office, unlocks the desk and takes documents the mayor was meant to sign. Hosea leaves with a lead on the Lemoyne National Bank, and Dutch has heard of a high-stakes poker game on a riverboat; Bill calls the evening "torture". The next morning Dutch wakes Arthur with the plans, mentions Miller and the Indians they might help, and says they are "almost home".

In "A Fine Night of Debauchery", Trelawny takes Arthur to a tailor and a barber before the riverboat, the Grand Korrigan. The mark is Desmond Blythe, who keeps collateral in the ship's safe; Arthur's cover is that he is an oil man, and Trelawny has bought the carriage driver and the dealer. Arthur, Trelawny, Strauss and Javier board without weapons and split up. Javier poses as a guard while Strauss, seated in Arthur's line of sight, signals how to play. Arthur empties the table, then beats Blythe again when he wagers his Reutlinger pocket watch.

The pit boss escorts Arthur upstairs to the vault; Javier knocks out a guard and draws on the pit boss, who pulls a second hidden gun while Arthur is emptying the safe and is shot. Downstairs, Blythe is accusing Arthur of cheating when the guard Javier stripped of his uniform appears and the shooting starts. The four fight their way to the deck, jump into the river and swim ashore to divide the money. Strauss confirms the watch is valuable and Arthur keeps it.

In "American Fathers I", Arthur finds Rains Fall, chief of the Wapiti, his son Eagle Flies and Evelyn Miller outside the Saint Denis courthouse. They believe Cornwall's takeover of the reservation may be illegal and that documents inside Cornwall Kerosene & Tar could prove it. In part II, Arthur meets Eagle Flies near the refinery and tells him to stay out of it. Under heavy rain, he hides in a wagon to get inside, slips past the guards to the office of the foreman, Danbury, barricades the door and forces him to hand over the papers; when a guard knocks, Arthur makes Danbury answer that all is well. Climbing out of the window, Arthur slips and lands among guards who order him to surrender. An oil well explodes, set off by Eagle Flies, and Arthur shoots his way clear. The two ride off; Eagle Flies pays him and hopes the papers will keep his people on their land.

In "No, No and Thrice, No", Arthur is talking with Mary-Beth, whom he has found reading at camp, when Susan Grimshaw announces that Tilly Jackson has been taken by the Foreman Brothers to Radley's House. Susan grabs a revolver and rides with him. At the house she kills a lookout with a knife; Arthur takes two more men by surprise inside and frees Tilly, tied to a chair in a bedroom. Anthony Foreman and two others flee on horseback. Tilly asks for Anthony alive, so Arthur lassos him and brings him back. Susan and Tilly confront him, and he promises to leave Tilly alone when Arthur threatens to kill him. Susan leaves the choice to Arthur, kill him or let him go, and takes Tilly home.

In "Horsemen, Apocalypses", Sadie first talks to Arthur about her place in the gang. Dutch then calls him up to plan the trolley station robbery Bronte suggested. They need a third man: Arthur proposes Lenny and, when Dutch asks why not Micah, calls Micah too reckless. Dutch notices a strange rider entering camp. Mary-Beth screams: it is Kieran, missing since the party for Jack. He has been beheaded and blinded, and his head has been set in his own hands.

O'Driscolls attack. Arthur fires from the balcony, then holds the front of the camp until the gang is pushed back into the house. Dutch assigns John, Charles and Arthur different positions to defend the house. Hearing Sadie screaming outside, Arthur runs to her and finds her killing three O'Driscolls with a knife; she refuses to go inside. The attackers are driven off. Dutch has Charles, Swanson and Pearson bury Kieran while Arthur and John clear the bodies. Arthur tells John how much hate Colm carries. His journal entry depends on his honor: with high honor he regrets not having been able to save Kieran, whose life he had saved once already, and praises Sadie; with low honor he only describes the beheading and the swamps.

In "Urban Pleasures", Arthur joins Dutch and Lenny in an alley across from the trolley station. Dutch explains that once they have enough money he will take the gang to Tahiti or Australia, and that he has met a ship's captain willing to carry them. Arthur asks where the money for a boat and a new home will come from, and Dutch points at the station. He reminds Arthur that the Pinkertons will not take long to find them, and that the station should hold the money they need.

Masked, the three announce the robbery; on Dutch's order Arthur robs three customers, then forces the clerk to open the safe, which holds almost nothing. Lenny sees the street filling with police. Dutch leads them onto a passing trolley ("Does this trolley go to Tahiti?!", Arthur asks) and they shoot their way through the streets until the brakes fail and the car overturns into a fence. On foot, then in a stolen wagon driven by Lenny, they escape the city. Arthur splits the take: each of the three ends up with fifteen dollars and a quarter. Dutch rages at Bronte's betrayal; Arthur says Bronte simply does not want men like them in his city. Dutch credits Lenny with saving them and decides the Saint Denis bank is now their only way out.

A letter from Mary Linton asks Arthur to meet her in Saint Denis. In "Fatherhood and Other Dreams", she asks for help with her father, Mr. Gillis, who is sinking into drink, gambling and whoring; Arthur refuses, then gives in. While Mary looks for him at the stables, a young man sweeping the pavement tells Arthur to move on, and Arthur threatens him. Gillis storms off when his daughter speaks to him. They follow him and watch him sell her mother's brooch to a loan shark named Ashton. Mary confronts her father while Arthur chases Ashton's wagon on horseback, jumps aboard, throws the driver off, drives it into the swamp and takes the brooch back.

Mary says her father has disappeared and that she no longer cares. She asks Arthur to take her to the Théâtre Râleur; the player can accept or refuse. If he goes with her, she asks him at the trolley stop to run away with her. Arthur says he wants to, but that he is a wanted man who would put her in danger, that people depend on him and that they would need money; he promises to come once his business is finished. The two part.

In "Country Pursuits", Arthur finds Dutch and Hosea arguing. Dutch wants to kill Bronte before the bank job, saying Bronte controls the whole city; Hosea answers that they do not need revenge on a man they hardly know and that there is always an easier way, and warns Dutch that he will damn them all. Hosea tells Arthur that he has the deciding vote, and Arthur sides with Dutch. On the ride to Lagras, Arthur asks whether this is for the bank or for the trolley station; Dutch says that is not important. He complains that nobody seems to trust him any more except Micah, says Arthur is starting to sound like John, and blames Abigail for turning John against him. Arthur replies that he is riding with him now, as he has for twenty years.

At Lagras they help a fisherman named Thomas check his crawfish traps and go looking for his young helper Jules, whom Arthur finds up a tree, hiding from a "monster". The skiff gets stuck; when Jules climbs out to free it, the Legendary Bullgator seizes his leg. Arthur goes into the water, drags him back aboard, and he and Dutch fire at the animal until it lets them go. Arthur binds the leg. Thomas agrees to ferry the gang to Bronte's mansion.

In "Revenge is a Dish Best Eaten", Thomas lands Dutch, Arthur, John, Bill and Lenny at the pier behind the mansion. They climb the wall and move in quietly until the first guards are taken down, then fight across the courtyard and through reinforcements. Arthur blasts the lock off the front door and the gang clears the ground floor. Upstairs, Bronte throws his Mauser pistol at John and starts bargaining, and John knocks him out. Arthur carries him down to the boat under police fire. On the water, Bronte insults Dutch, then offers a thousand dollars to the man who kills him and sets Bronte free. Dutch holds his head under water until he drowns, throws the body overboard and watches an alligator take it. "It is us, or him! I figure it might as well be him", he tells John. Arthur and John are visibly shaken.

"Banking, The Old American Art" is meant to be the last job before the gang leaves the country. Dutch hesitates on the morning of the robbery; Hosea tells him the planning has been thorough. The plan: Hosea and Abigail set off a diversion to draw the police away, while the rest of the gang walks in through the front doors of the Lemoyne National Bank. Arthur forces the manager to open the vault and is working through the safes when the Pinkertons surround the building. Milton has caught Hosea, Abigail having got away, and holds him in the street. Dutch calls out: "Mr. Milton, let my friend go. Or folk, they are gonna get shot unnecessarily!" Milton says the gang has had its chances, shoots Hosea in the chest and calls the killing their deal. The gang opens fire.

Dutch has Arthur plant dynamite against an inside wall to open an escape route. Arthur blows the wall, climbs to the roof and lays down covering fire while the others follow; John is seized by the Pinkertons on the way up and will be sent to Sisika Penitentiary. Crossing the rooftops, Lenny is shot dead by two Pinkerton riflemen on the roof of the Hotel Grand. Arthur stops at his body for a moment, then has to run on. Dutch, Arthur, Micah, Bill, Javier and Charles hide in an abandoned apartment until nightfall and make for the docks, which are under heavy watch. Charles creates a diversion so the other five can board a ship. Abigail later says the gang took Lenny's body from the city morgue and buried him beside Hosea in Bluewater Marsh. The ship sinks at sea, and Arthur wakes up alone on the island of Guarma at the start of chapter 5.

Chapter 5: Guarma

"Welcome to the New World" opens on a beach. Arthur wakes up alone, without food or water, and walks along the shore until he sees smoke; the sun burns his face. For the rest of his time on Guarma his hair and beard grow out, and he wears the remains of the suit from the bank job. He finds Dutch, Micah, Bill and Javier around a fire. Dutch explains that they are on Guarma, a sugar island east of Cuba. Soldiers led by Levi Simon, who runs the plantation for Alberto Fussar, arrest the five men and chain them together. Simon talks about his "labor troubles" with the locals and promises to free them once he knows who they are, then orders his men to take them to jail. Dutch gives a false name, Aiden O'Malley, and tells Arthur the soldiers must not learn who they are. On the way, rebels attack the column. Arthur takes a gun from a dead guard and kills the escort while the others free themselves. Hercule Fontaine, the rebel leader, tells them to follow him. Javier is shot in the leg and captured; the others cannot reach him.

The four men and Hercule reach an old building, El Nido, where they take up weapons and drive off the soldiers who follow them. Hercule and another rebel, Leon Fuentes, then describe how Fussar runs the island and keeps its workers in servitude on the sugar plantation. Hercule points out the Aguasdulces refinery and the rebel stronghold of Cinco Torres. He offers to help the gang leave Guarma if they first help Leon with a group of workers who have escaped and are being hunted by Fussar's men. Dutch has doubts, and Hercule answers that he is their only option. At La Capilla, Dutch promises to try. The men sleep, and Dutch plans to scout the refinery to get Javier back.

In "A Kind and Benevolent Despot", Arthur meets Dutch on a cliff ledge. Dutch says that, once off the island, the gang will go back to Saint Denis, the last place anyone would look for them; Arthur does not hide his doubts. An old woman, Gloria, agrees to guide them through a cave for a gold ingot. On the way, Dutch wonders aloud why Hosea and Lenny were killed at the bank while John was only arrested and Abigail got away. At the foot of a ladder, Gloria demands more money; Dutch has no gold left, she draws a knife, and he strangles her. Arthur protests, and Dutch answers that he will do whatever the gang's survival requires.

Outside Aguasdulces, they see Fussar and his soldiers dragging Javier behind a donkey. Arthur and Dutch slip into the refinery, tear open sugar sacks and blow up the furnace to create a diversion, free Javier and fight their way out through the cane fields. At a stream, the Arroyo de la Vibora, Dutch carries Javier on while Arthur holds the bank, then heads for Cinco Torres.

In "Savagery Unleashed", Arthur comes upon a hanged man in the jungle and is hit in the neck by a dart. He wakes up tied to a chair, beaten and questioned by a tall man named Angel, and gives a false name. Two other rebels, Leon and Baptiste, are held with him. Arthur works himself free, knocks Angel out and takes his knife. Baptiste hands him a rifle, and Leon leads him through ruins where soldiers are about to hang three captured workers. Arthur shoots the ropes, saving the three men, and he and Leon kill the soldiers in the gunfight that follows. Baptiste tells him that Hercule is looking for a boat to take the gang back to America, and gives him some money.

In "Hell Hath No Fury", Arthur reaches Cinco Torres as Dutch argues with Hercule about the promised boat. Hercule explains that Fussar knows who they are and has sent for a warship from Cuba; if they help silence Fussar, Hercule can get them away before anyone arrives from America. The ship appears offshore, and soldiers land on the beach. From the roof of the fort, the men fire on them while Hercule readies a cannon, which Arthur helps push into position. The fort is breached; Micah and Bill guard the cannon while Arthur, Dutch and Hercule go down to hold the walls under fire from the ship. Arthur assigns positions as more boats row in from both sides. Dutch stays below to hold off reinforcements, and Arthur and Hercule sink the warship with the cannon. Arthur is sent to meet the others at the boat; Micah goes to see its captain, and Dutch and Bill fetch Javier.

In "Paradise Mercifully Departed", Bill stays with Javier, who is recovering, while Arthur, Micah, Dutch and Hercule destroy the coastal gun batteries that would block their departure. Arthur then goes to the workers' cabin to get the ship's captain out. Inside, Levi Simon tackles him and holds him at gunpoint; Dutch comes in and aims at Simon; Fussar then aims at Dutch. Arthur kicks a rifle to the captain, who shoots Simon in the chest. Fussar escapes in the confusion and opens fire with a cannon from the top of a tower. Arthur brings the tower down with a cannon shot, killing Fussar. The five gang members sail for America.

In "Dear Uncle Tacitus", Dutch asks Arthur, while they are still at sea, to go to Shady Belle after landing and find out where the gang has gone. The boat puts them ashore across the river from Van Horn Trading Post. Arthur borrows a Hungarian Half-bred tied up nearby and rides to Shady Belle, now empty. In one of the rooms of the house he finds a letter signed "Caroline": it is from Sadie Adler, and it sends him to Lakay, a small settlement in the swamps north of Saint Denis. Pinkertons reach the house while he is reading. Arthur can slip away unseen or kill the agents; he then rides to Lakay.

In "Fleeting Joy", the gang welcomes Arthur at Lakay and gives him a drink. Sadie tells him that John was arrested during the bank robbery and is on a chain gang at Sisika Penitentiary. Micah and Javier arrive, then Dutch, to the surprise of the others; Strauss tells Dutch that the rest of the gang owe their survival mostly to Sadie, and Abigail says they took Hosea's and Lenny's bodies from the morgue and buried them. Bill arrives last, complaining that he asked everywhere for the gang.

Agent Milton and his Pinkertons then surround the camp, call for a surrender and open fire with a machine gun. Sadie leads Arthur through a trapdoor to flank the agents, who set the village on fire; Bill joins them, and Arthur ends up at the machine gun and drives the Pinkertons back. Dutch thanks Arthur and remarks on his cough, which Arthur brushes off, then asks for time before deciding the next move. Abigail reminds him that John is in prison and that there is talk of hanging him; Dutch answers that it is not the moment. She turns to Arthur and Sadie, who agree to get John out, and Sadie asks Arthur to meet her in Saint Denis.

In "That's Murfree Country", Dutch decides that the gang cannot go further east and must move north. He sends Arthur and Charles to Beaver Hollow, in Roanoke Ridge, a cave occupied by the Murfree Brood; before they go, Dutch asks Arthur whether he still has his back. The pair can ride there or go by canoe. On the way, Arthur tells Charles about Guarma, and Charles describes the gang's flight to Lakay and says he has been helping the Wapiti, Rains Fall and Eagle Flies, while Arthur was away. The two men kill the Murfrees outside the cave quietly, then clear the cave itself. Inside, they find a young woman, Meredith Buckley, held and abused by the gang; Arthur takes her back to her mother in Annesburg while Charles goes back to guide the others.

While the camp is being set up, Uncle brings in Molly O'Shea, drunk. She says it was she who told the Pinkertons about the Saint Denis robbery and goads Dutch. Arthur asks Dutch to let her leave; Dutch moves to shoot her anyway. Susan Grimshaw gets there first and hits her in the stomach with a pump-action shotgun. To Arthur she says that Molly was aware of the rules, then has Bill and Pearson put the body on the fire.

"A Fork in the Road" sits between the two chapters: it becomes available after "Fleeting Joy" and can be played before or after the move to Beaver Hollow. Arriving in Saint Denis to meet Sadie, Arthur is seized by a coughing fit and passes out. A passer-by drags him to the office of the local doctor, Joseph R. Barnes. Barnes asks to be paid before examining him, listens to his chest and diagnoses tuberculosis. Arthur does not believe it at first. The doctor describes an illness that will keep getting worse, does not say outright that it is fatal, and recommends a warm, dry climate. Arthur answers that he can hardly spend his winters at a country club in California. Before he leaves, the doctor gives him an injection meant to give him some energy for the day. Outside, Arthur remembers lines from people he has met; the lines differ with his honor. From this point on his appearance changes: his face is pale, his eyes watery with bags under them, and he stays underweight for the rest of the game.

• But you said you knew Spanish.

  A Kind and Benevolent Despot (RDR2, chapter 5), to Dutch

• Sure, I can just take my winters in my country club in California. No, it's not possible.

  A Fork in the Road (RDR2), to the doctor who advises a warm, dry climate

Chapter 6: Beaver Hollow

In "Icarus and Friends", Arthur meets Sadie at Doyle's Tavern in Saint Denis. Her plan is to scout Sisika from a hot air balloon to make sure John is still there. The balloonist, Arturo Bullard, refuses to take Sadie, saying that flying upsets a woman's "vapors". Arthur flies the balloon, spots a prisoner in a field whom he takes to be John, and the guards open fire; the balloon drifts out of range.

Near Annesburg, Bullard sees Sadie chased by O'Driscolls. Arthur fires on them from the basket. Two bullets strike Bullard, who tumbles out of the basket, dead. Arthur clears a bridge, throws Sadie a rope and pulls her up, but the balloon runs out of fuel and crashes on a riverbank. The two survive and kill the O'Driscolls who attack from across the river and from the woods. Arthur holds Sadie responsible for Bullard's death and for starting a fight that could have been avoided. She asks whether he saw John, and he confirms it; she proposes that the two of them break into the prison. She also tells him that Colm O'Driscoll has been caught and sentenced to hang, and that she intends to make sure he does not escape again.

In "Visiting Hours", Abigail asks at Copperhead Landing to come along; Arthur and Sadie refuse, saying she would be one more thing to worry about, and she thanks them. They row to Sisika. Arthur shoots the guard in the watchtower, then two guards in the fields near a prisoner Sadie mistakes for John. While Sadie questions a wounded guard, another, Milliken, orders her to drop her gun; Arthur comes up behind him and takes him hostage. At the main gate, Arthur threatens to kill Milliken unless John is brought out. The guards comply, Arthur releases Milliken, and the prison opens fire. The three fight their way to the boat and escape.

On the way back, Arthur tells John that Dutch did not want him rescued; John answers that Dutch saw the Pinkertons take him during the robbery and did nothing, and Arthur says Dutch may no longer be himself. At camp, Dutch is displeased, says he had a plan, and that the law will now hang all of them rather than John alone. Later, Mary-Beth wakes Arthur: Dutch wants him in Annesburg with Micah.

Two optional missions in Annesburg, "Do Not Seek Absolution I" and "II", are open only if Arthur's honor is high enough. In town, Edith Downes, the widow of the farmer Arthur beat in chapter 2, blames him for her husband's death and for her son Archie working in the mine. Arthur finds miners taunting Archie, fights the foreman, Mr. Dockery, and another man, and sends the boy home on a horse. Later, Archie tells him that his mother refused Arthur's money and still works as a prostitute; she has left with a man he found frightening.

Arthur finds them near Willard's Rest, threatens the man, who leaves, and talks to Edith. She notices his cough and recognises the disease that killed her husband. Arthur apologises and tells her not to get herself and Archie killed out of pride. On the ride back she refuses his apologies, tells him to stop looking for penance, says that the time he has left is his to decide what sort of man he will be, and adds that her hatred for him has not changed. Back with Archie, Arthur insists they take his money and leave Annesburg; they accept.

Two other optional threads run through the chapter. In "Of Men and Angels" (playable in chapter 5 or 6), Sister Calderón is collecting for the poor outside the Saint Denis cathedral. She tells Arthur that she too once did terrible things, and that actions lead while the heart follows; Arthur says he hopes for "a dignified exit". He gives her food or some money, which raises his honor. In "The Course of True Love IV" and "V", a letter from Penelope Braithwaite asks Arthur to help her run away with Beau Gray. He escorts her from a cabin behind Braithwaite Manor to Rhodes station, fights off Beau's cousins Iain and Scott Gray, and rides the train with the couple. Braithwaite riders attack the train, the conductor abandons it, and Arthur drives it to Riggs Station. Penelope offers him her sapphire bracelet, a family heirloom, which he can accept or refuse, and the couple leave by stagecoach for Boston.

In "Just a Social Call", Micah grabs Arthur on his arrival in Annesburg and asks whether he was followed; Arthur shoves him back and coughs, and Micah remarks that he does not look well. Dutch explains that Micah suspects a rat, since the Pinkertons found them so soon after Guarma. Arthur replies that the gang has been on the run since Dutch and Micah botched Blackwater and has grown sloppy enough to be tracked. The target is Cornwall; Arthur asks whether this is revenge, and Dutch calls it "just a simple social call". From cover in the harbor, they watch Cornwall step off his yacht with Agents Milton and Ross, whom he berates for their lack of progress and threatens to stop funding. Micah is sent after Cornwall's secretary, Janson, who is to send a telegram to New York.

Dutch then steps out, tells Cornwall he is a worse man than himself, and demands 10,000 dollars, the ship and safe passage out of town for his life. Cornwall laughs and refuses. Dutch shoots him in the chest. Arthur and Dutch fight their way out past Cornwall's guards and the Pinkertons, find Micah knocking Janson out, and escape into the forest on stolen horses. Micah shows the papers he took: the Cornwall company has a contract with the Army and is moving dynamite from Annesburg to Saint Denis. Dutch tells Micah and Arthur to look into it with Bill, then takes Micah aside to talk.

In "The Delights of Van Horn", Micah meets Arthur and Bill at an old house in Roanoke Ridge and tells them to steal the dynamite while he keeps "planning". Arthur and Micah argue about Micah's new place at Dutch's side, and Micah mocks Arthur's illness; Bill breaks it up. On the ride to Van Horn, Arthur tells Bill that Dutch has lost his mind; Bill gets angry and says Arthur has "gone soft". They stop to let a Pinkerton patrol pass.

In Van Horn, Bill suggests that Arthur play drunk in the road while he covers from above; Arthur reverses the roles, saying he is the better shot and Bill the better actor, takes Bill's Carcano rifle and climbs to the upper floor of an abandoned building. Bill staggers out and collapses in front of the stagecoach; when a rider dismounts to move him, Bill shoots him, and Arthur picks off the rest. They drive the wagon south and fight off several waves of riders, Bill at the reins. Near Beaver Hollow, they hand the dynamite to Micah and John, and Micah sends John to Bacchus Bridge with it. Alone with Arthur, Micah says he is not the "bad guy" Arthur thinks, only "a survivor", and asks him to go help John at the bridge.

In "Goodbye, Dear Friend", Colm O'Driscoll is to be hanged in Saint Denis. Because he has escaped the noose twice before, Dutch and Sadie decide to attend, and bring Arthur. Dutch and Arthur wear Saint Denis police uniforms, Sadie dresses as a society lady. Near the gallows they spot two O'Driscolls; Dutch and Arthur follow one, overhear the rescue plan, and Dutch sends Arthur to deal with a sniper on the rooftops. Arthur deals with him, killing him or knocking him out, and takes his place with a rifle while Dutch and Sadie each hold an O'Driscoll at gunpoint in the crowd. Colm is hanged. Sadie then kills both hostages, which starts a shootout with the remaining O'Driscolls; Arthur covers from the roof. Dutch and Sadie ride back to camp, and Arthur dumps his disguise in a trash can.

At the end of the mission, Arthur receives a letter from Mary Linton, who has read about the gang in the newspapers. She writes that she cannot live his way and that he cannot live any other, that "there's a good man within you, Arthur, but he is wrestling with a giant", and she returns the ring he gave her years before, hoping he will find "some people in love who can use this". The letter's wording varies with Arthur's choices in chapter 4.

"Money Lending and Other Sins VI" is Strauss's last assignment: two debtors, J. John Weathers and Arthur Londonderry. Weathers, found at Three Sisters, has no money and offers the supplies in his wagon, meant to last the winter. Soldiers from Fort Wallace arrive to kill him: he is a deserter. Arthur helps him fight them off, but a lantern sets the wagon on fire and the supplies burn. Weathers then calls out a pregnant Wapiti woman who is with him, and Arthur says he should simply have helped fix the wagon. Weathers offers a locket to settle the debt; Arthur can take it or forgive the debt, then tells him to get the woman somewhere safe.

At the Annesburg mine, the foreman tells Arthur that Londonderry is dead and sends him to the widow at Sawbone Clearing. Mrs. Londonderry, with her son, says they have nothing left, that her husband worked himself to death to pay his debts and that they are about to lose the house. Arthur can forgive the debt, or forgive it and give her money. She thanks him but tells him they should not do this to people, and Arthur apologises.

In "Money Lending and Other Sins VII", Arthur rides back to camp and confronts Strauss. He packs Strauss's bag himself and tells him that he will not kill him, but probably should. With high honor, he tells Strauss that he shames the gang and has ruined the lives of desperate people; with low honor, he is angrier about his wasted time and calls Strauss a creep, a maggot and a parasite. In both cases he throws money at Strauss's feet and orders him out of the camp. Strauss leaves.

In "The Bridge to Nowhere", Arthur joins John at Bacchus Bridge to wire it with dynamite. They talk about Dutch; John says Dutch could have saved him at the Saint Denis bank and chose not to. Arthur tells him to take his family and leave the gang. John raises the question of loyalty, and Arthur answers that it is over and that, when the time comes, he must run and not look back. A handcar carries the crates of dynamite out onto the bridge. The two men lower the charges beneath the deck and tie them to the beams, where the wiring to the detonator is already in place. A train appears while Arthur is fastening the last charge. They pump the handcar towards the far end with the locomotive gaining on them and leap off just in time. Arthur triggers the detonator, and the central span drops into the river.

Arthur jokes that this will not take any attention off the gang, and John says he does not understand Dutch's plan. Arthur tells him again to forget about loyalty, which has done him no good, and says that he has been thinking: the two of them are risking their lives for nothing, and the days of gangs like theirs are ending. He suggests using the money Dutch has hidden; John says Abigail thinks she knows where it is, and Arthur asks to be told once she is sure.

In "A Rage Unleashed", Arthur is talking with Reverend Swanson when Dutch calls him over. Dutch now talks of going north to New York before the tropics, of "smoke and commotion" and of making money; Arthur answers that the gang is "not so good at doing scores anymore". Eagle Flies rides in, escorted by Karen and Javier: the Army has confiscated the Wapiti's horses, his people will starve without them, and he calls it an act of war. Charles says he told Rains Fall he would not fight over some horses. Dutch decides on the spot to help and tells Eagle Flies to keep his money. Suspicious, Arthur and Charles go along. On the ride southeast, towards Copperhead Landing, Arthur asks Dutch what he gains from this; Dutch quotes the gang's motto, then says that the Natives' fight with the Army may draw attention away from the gang.

They meet Paytah, who brings canoes, and wait for dark. Paytah stays behind ("Good luck."); the others paddle to the Army boat carrying the horses, board it and silently overpower the soldiers, including a group playing poker. Dutch takes the helm, loses control and runs the boat onto the rocks; it starts to sink, and the men bring the horses ashore. Arthur rounds up the last three by riding one through the water. On the bank, Dutch rides off with Eagle Flies to return the horses and promises him that they will defeat the Army. Charles asks Arthur to go and see Rains Fall; the player can accept or decline.

In "Archeology for Beginners", Arthur visits Rains Fall at the Wapiti reservation. The chief hears him cough and asks after his health, and regrets that Arthur went raiding with Eagle Flies, whom he calls "the impetuous prince". He asks Arthur to accompany him to a site sacred to his people. On the way, Captain Monroe, an Army officer who has been helping the tribe, reports that a meeting about their land went badly and asks Arthur for help later; the player can agree or refuse. Riding on, Rains Fall gathers herbs meant to ease Arthur's cough; the two men can talk about Eagle Flies, about Dutch, about Arthur's illness and about his dead son.

The sacred site has been burned and the Chanupa, a sacred object, taken. Whiskey bottles on the ground point to soldiers, and Arthur spots an Army camp in the valley below. He offers to get the Chanupa back; Rains Fall agrees on condition that no soldier is harmed. Arthur finds the pieces by the central campfire and returns them. If nobody was killed, Rains Fall praises his restraint and gives him an Owl Feather Trinket; otherwise he fears the Army's revenge.

In "Honor, Amongst Thieves", Monroe shows Arthur the sick on the reservation, children among them: Colonel Favours is withholding the smallpox vaccines Monroe was supposed to administer, to punish the tribe for the unrest. Arthur decides to steal the vaccines back, and Monroe, who first asks for "due caution", goes with him. The shipment has been redirected to Valentine and can be intercepted in Cumberland Forest.

On the way, Monroe describes Favours as an insecure officer with a poor Civil War record, looking for one last victory before retirement and probably trying to provoke the Wapiti into giving him a pretext for war. From a ledge, they see the Army wagon. Arthur sends Monroe away, rides the wagon down, takes the vaccines and brings them back to the reservation.

In "Favored Sons", Arthur joins Dutch, Eagle Flies, Paytah and a group of Wapiti warriors on a clifftop in Cumberland Forest. The plan is to fell trees with dynamite to trap an Army patrol in the valley and tar and feather the soldiers. While they set the charges, Dutch tells Arthur his real purpose: to "draw attention to one problem and a veil over the other", that is, to turn the government's attention from the gang to the Natives. Arthur objects that these are good people being used, and Dutch denies it. The felled trees block the road and trap the patrol, and Dutch tells the trapped soldiers to surrender and accept the humiliation; more soldiers appear and open fire.

After the fight, a cannon opens up on them as they search the bodies; Arthur deals with it, Eagle Flies goes to help a wounded Paytah, and Arthur and Dutch argue briefly before the sound of reinforcements from Fort Wallace sends them to their horses, leaving Eagle Flies behind; most of the Wapiti warriors have been killed or captured. The pursuit ends at a broken bridge on a cliff edge. Dutch tells the approaching soldiers that fighting is all he has ever done, and the two men jump into the river below under fire. On the bank, Dutch assumes Eagle Flies has been captured or killed, says he will have Charles plan a rescue, and tells Arthur to "have faith".

In "The Fine Art of Conversation", Arthur finds Trelawny packing to leave camp again. Trelawny promises to return, and Arthur tells him to go and not come back, since everything is hopeless; Trelawny thanks him. Rains Fall then arrives: Colonel Favours has agreed to talks, and he asks Arthur to come with Charles to help keep the peace. Arthur agrees after Charles presses him. At the meeting, with Favours and Monroe, Arthur has a coughing fit and is taken to a tent for water. There he overhears two soldiers: Favours intends to try Monroe for treason and hang him.

Back at the table, the talks have collapsed. Rains Fall leaves, Monroe protests, and Favours has him arrested for insubordination, disobeying orders and treason. Arthur and Charles seize a soldier and trade him for Monroe, then ride off under fire. Monroe's horse is shot; the three take cover in the trees, where Monroe refuses to fire on soldiers. At Emerald Station, Arthur apologises for the end of Monroe's career and gives him money before he boards a train. Charles leaves. Arthur, coughing, then meets Sister Calderón, bound for Mexico, if "Of Men and Angels" has been completed and his honor is high; otherwise he meets Reverend Swanson, who is leaving the gang. To the Sister, Arthur admits "I guess... I'm afraid"; she tells him to be grateful that, for the first time, he sees his life clearly. Swanson tells him to save who he can, let the rest rot and look after himself.

In "Mrs. Sadie Adler, Widow I", Sadie, practising with throwing knives at camp, asks Arthur to help her wipe out the last O'Driscolls at Hanging Dog Ranch. Arthur says he no longer has the energy and no longer cares about the O'Driscolls since Colm's hanging; Sadie reminds him that they killed her husband and that he is "the only one of these fools that I trust". Declining lowers Arthur's honor and closes part II. If he accepts, he asks a favour in return: that she help John, Abigail and Jack get away from the gang when the time comes. Sadie promises.

In part II, they attack the ranch from a small camp nearby. Sadie asks Arthur to leave a fat, bearded man to her: he killed her husband. Arthur clears the barn area, Sadie the house. Upstairs, Arthur finds her covered in blood, closing in on the man with a knife; she stabs him to death. Asked if she is all right, she talks about her life with her husband and how far she has fallen.

In "The King's Son", Charles sends Arthur into Rains Fall's tent at the reservation. The chief calls his captured son foolish but says he loves him; Arthur decides to get Eagle Flies out of Fort Wallace despite Rains Fall's protests. On the ride, Charles sets out his plan and condemns Dutch's exploitation of the Wapiti; Arthur answers that the gang shares the blame for going along with it, and hopes he can still pull Dutch back. He then tells Charles that he is dying. Charles replies that, in a way, he is lucky: unlike Hosea, Lenny, Sean or the Callander brothers, he has time to make amends.

They wait for night, kill the sentries outside the fort with bow and knife, and climb the back wall with a grappling hook. From a tower, Arthur shoots out a distant lantern to start a fire and draw the guards away. Charles kills the jailer, Arthur takes the keys and cuts Eagle Flies loose. An alarm sounds; after a gunfight, Arthur breaks a weak section of the wall with dynamite or a cannon. They reach the horses, then the canoes Charles left on the river, and shoot their way down the rapids. On the bank, Eagle Flies says Favours will not let this pass and that war is likely, and thanks them. Charles takes him back to the reservation on a soldier's horse while Arthur rests.

"My Last Boy" begins at Dutch's tent, where Arthur complains about the presence of Cleet and Joe, two new recruits, and asks Dutch what is happening to him. Micah tells him to show respect. Eagle Flies then rides into Beaver Hollow with a war party in paint: the Army has tried to kill his people for their oil, and he asks the gang to ride against it. Rains Fall arrives and begs him not to die for pride, calling him "my last boy"; Eagle Flies answers that his father's words mean nothing to him and leaves for the Cornwall refinery at the Heartland Oil Fields.

Rains Fall turns to Arthur for help, as he helped before, which reveals their dealings to Dutch. Arthur agrees, then Charles, then Dutch and the rest of the gang except Micah, Cleet and Joe. On the way, a wounded warrior says Eagle Flies is in trouble. Dutch asks Arthur what else he has done behind his back, and Arthur says he was trying to stop things getting worse; the exchange turns into a row about loyalty and Dutch's plan.

At the oil fields, where many of the Wapiti are already dead, Arthur and Charles spot Eagle Flies fighting on a walkway. Arthur, Charles and Sadie ride with a few Wapiti to reach him while Dutch leads the others around the other side. Arthur kills a soldier grappling with Eagle Flies, who then fights alongside him. The two groups regroup, deal with reinforcements arriving by train and a Maxim gun, and clear most of the soldiers. Dutch and Arthur enter the warehouse and find the state bonds Dutch was after in the office. Coming down, they hear Favours order his men to find and kill them, and shoot their way to the exit. A pipe bursts and sprays steam into Arthur's face, leaving him on the floor. Soldiers close in on him and he calls for help; Dutch looks on and walks away. Eagle Flies bursts in and kills the soldiers, but as he helps Arthur up, Favours shoots him in the abdomen. Favours turns his gun on Arthur, and Arthur kills him first.

Outside, Arthur accuses Dutch of leaving him to die; Dutch denies it and tells him not to be a fool. Arthur puts Eagle Flies on his horse and rides to the reservation with Charles and Paytah, talking with Charles about Dutch, about how far the gang has fallen and about the war they have helped start. In Rains Fall's tent, Eagle Flies dies of his wound after a last moment with his father. Charles tells the Wapiti they must move away and decides to stay with them; Arthur offers to stay too, but Charles reminds him that he has other people to look after, and the two men embrace. On the ride back, Arthur has a severe coughing fit, falls from his horse and loses consciousness. He is found by the German family he had helped earlier in the year; they carry him to Annesburg, and he comes to in a bed there. The mother gives him a drink and says she wishes she could do more; Arthur says he has to go.

In "Our Best Selves", Dutch tells Arthur that Uncle, Pearson and Mary-Beth have run off and calls them cowards; Arthur answers that they do not want to die. Dutch announces one last job, a train carrying Army payroll and supplies for the destroyed Bacchus Bridge. Arthur agrees to take part on one condition, which he insists on: that John and his family be allowed to leave the gang. Dutch is hurt, then seems to agree, but his anger is plain as he rallies the others. On the way to Saint Denis, John goes to fetch the dynamite he hid, and Arthur rides with him. Arthur promises to do everything he can to get John's family to safety, and John thanks him for always looking out for him. The gang waits to board the train at a stop, but it thunders past without stopping. Arthur, John, Cleet and Sadie chase it on horseback and climb aboard, and the fight with the soldiers begins.

A dying soldier's shot hits a lantern and sets a carriage on fire. Arthur jumps onto the back of Dutch's horse and John onto Bill's to get past it and back onto the train. Arthur sets up a Maxim gun on the new carriage while John uncouples the burning one; John is shot in the left shoulder and falls from the train. Dutch says he will go back for him and leaves with Javier, Micah and Joe, while Arthur, Bill, Sadie and Cleet deal with the soldiers following. Arthur blows the door of the armored car with dynamite and finds more money than expected. The gang jumps off as the train reaches the broken Bacchus Bridge and plunges into the gorge. When Dutch and Micah rejoin them, they tell Arthur that John "didn't make it". Arthur rides back to camp with the others and the money.

"Red Dead Redemption", the last mission of the chapter, follows directly. On the road, the gang meets Tilly and Jack: Agent Milton has taken Abigail to Van Horn to put her on a boat and try her for murder. Dutch says he is sorry to hear it. Challenged by Arthur, he protests that it is not like that, then concedes that Arthur is right, and finally says that it pains him but that Micah is right: he rides for Beaver Hollow with most of the others. Arthur refuses to let Jack be orphaned, gives Tilly a sack of money and tells her to wait with Jack at Copperhead Landing, and leaves for Van Horn with Sadie.

The talk on the ride depends on Arthur's honor. With low honor, he says that not leaving their own behind is what Dutch taught them, recalls Dutch once rebuking him for robbing a man who was "too poor", and talks about reaching the gang's hidden money before the others; Sadie tells him they do not need the rest of the gang and will put this right together, "what's left of it". With high honor, he says that all of Dutch's talk over the years "was always a lie", or that he went crazy, and apologises to Sadie for dragging her into the gang's troubles; she answers that she would be dead if he had not come to her house that night.

At Van Horn, Sadie, hearing Arthur cough, asks him to take the lighthouse with a sniper rifle. He covers her as she advances through the town, until Milton's men seize her at the fence's store. Arthur says he and Milton will have to settle this "like gentlemen", comes down, fights through the agents and kills the two holding Sadie and Abigail. As he cuts Abigail free, Milton holds a gun to his back. Milton remarks on his cough, and Arthur answers: "Sure. Tuberculosis. I'll be dead soon... and you with me, Mr. Milton."

Milton reminds him of the deal he refused and says not all of his friends had so many scruples: the Pinkertons "sweated" Molly O'Shea a couple of times and she never said a word, whereas Micah Bell was picked up when the gang came back from the Caribbean and "he's been a good boy ever since". Arthur grabs the revolver but lacks the strength to turn it. Abigail frees herself, takes Sadie's revolver and shoots Milton in the temple. The three fight their way out of Van Horn.

During the ride, Arthur stops and sends the two women to Copperhead Landing to find Jack. He tells Abigail that John loved her and Jack, imperfect as he was, and that she must go and get the boy. Sadie asks what he is doing; he says he has to go and have "a little chat" before he gets much sicker. Abigail gives him the key to Dutch's chest at Beaver Hollow, where the gang's money is. Arthur puts on his hat and rides to camp. The song "That's the Way It Is" plays, in a version that depends on his honor, and lines from earlier in the story come back to him: with high honor, among others, the doctor's "I'm really sorry for you, son", Edith Downes on deciding the man he wants to be, Charles's "In a way, you were lucky" and Mary's "There's a good man within you"; with low honor, Thomas Downes begging for his family, Dutch's "You have turned into my son" and Mary's "your world is not a world from which one can escape".

At Beaver Hollow, Micah is hurrying Susan Grimshaw and the others to pack. Arthur tells them that Abigail is safe, that none of them care, that they are rats, and that Micah was close to Milton. Micah calls it a lie; Dutch says nothing. John then walks into camp and says Dutch left him to die on the train; Dutch claims he had no choice. Arthur tells everyone to choose a side, saying it is over. Susan sides with Arthur and John and levels a shotgun at Micah, ordering him to drop his guns. Javier shouts that the Pinkertons are coming; Susan looks away, and Micah shoots her. Dutch draws both revolvers over her dying screams and demands to know who is with him and who is betraying him. The rest of the gang lines up behind Dutch and Micah, guns on Arthur and John. Before anyone fires, Agent Ross and his Pinkertons attack the camp and the gang scatters.

Arthur and John flee through the caves with the Pinkertons behind them, Ross ordering his men to bring them out dead or alive. Arthur tells John that Micah was the rat and that Milton told him. Arthur points out that the money is right there in the cave and asks about it; John answers that there is no time and that they will have to come back for it. At the top of a ladder, Arthur tells him that Abigail and Jack are safe with Sadie at Copperhead Landing. John thanks him and calls him brother; Arthur asks him not to look back, "like I said". They ride off under fire from Dutch, Micah, Cleet and Joe, who call them traitors, with Pinkertons in the trees ahead. Both horses are shot; if Arthur's bond with his horse is at least level three, he kneels by it and thanks it as it dies. Climbing on foot, Arthur mentions the money and the key Abigail gave him. John answers that if he goes back down he is dead in five minutes, and that his family matters more. The player then chooses.

If Arthur helps John, he says: "I'm coming with you. I'm gonna get you out of this bullshit... if it's the last goddamn thing I do." His honor rises. They climb towards higher ground under fire until Arthur stops, coughing, and says he has pushed all he can. He takes off his hat and tells John that they will not both make it; he will hold the agents off. He puts the hat on John's head, saying "It would mean a lot to me... please" with high honor, or "just take it, ain't no use to me now" with low honor, hands him his satchel, and tells him to go to his family and "be a goddamn man". John says "You're my brother"; Arthur answers "I know... I know."

Alone, Arthur fires on the Pinkertons until Micah seizes him from behind. The two fall from the ledge and fight with their fists; Micah calls him "Black Lung" and repeats that he is a survivor. Pinned against the rock, Arthur strikes Micah across the face with his revolver but loses it, and crawls towards it, saying that despite his best efforts he has won. Dutch steps on the gun: "It is over now... Arthur. It's over." Arthur tells him Micah is a rat and that "I gave you all I had... I did." Micah urges Dutch to leave with him. Arthur adds: "John made it. He's the only one. Rest of us... no. But... I tried. In the end... I did." Dutch stammers "I... I..."; Micah says "Come on, Dutch", and Dutch walks off.

• Helping John, high honor: Micah growls and walks off. Arthur crawls to the edge of the cliff and dies watching the sunrise, from his illness, his injuries and exhaustion. A deer grazes nearby, then walks away.
• Helping John, low honor: Micah picks up the revolver and aims it at Arthur's head: "You're not better than me, Morgan." Arthur answers "Whatever you say, you fool", then "Damn us both!" Micah shoots him in the forehead, laughs, spits on the body and leaves. A coyote is shown.

If Arthur goes back for the money, he gives John his satchel and hat with the words "I'll see you around, John Marston", and John answers "Be safe." Arthur's honor drops. He shouts for Dutch and Micah to come and get him, fights back through the Pinkertons to Beaver Hollow, opens Dutch's chest in the cave and takes the sack of money. As he comes out, Micah grabs him and stabs him in the side with Arthur's own knife, telling him he should have left with Marston and let the money be. Arthur pulls the knife out, Micah draws his own, and they fight with knives.

• Going back for the money, high honor: Arthur slashes Micah's left eye. Micah tackles him and tries to stab him; Arthur bites his hand and punches him off. Dutch arrives and tells them both to stop. Micah says Arthur has turned and came back to rob them; Arthur answers that he did not turn, tells Micah to repeat to Dutch what he said to Agent Milton, which Micah dismisses as "nonsense", and insists: "You're the rat, Micah. Not Molly, Dutch. Him." Micah says "You're dying, Black Lung"; Arthur replies "And you're dead. Inside you're dead." Dutch leaves. Micah takes the sack of money and goes. Arthur dies watching the sunrise.
• Going back for the money, low honor: Arthur loses his footing, Micah tackles him and stabs him in the chest. Arthur says he did not lose: he stopped Micah and told everyone he was a rat, "that's winning enough for me". As Micah pushes the knife in, Dutch arrives and stops him. Arthur begs Dutch to kill Micah: "Not Molly... not Miss Grimshaw... not even Colm. It's him", and tells Dutch he let Micah damn them all. Dutch walks away. Arthur crawls off; Micah says it has been "a lotta fun" and stabs him in the back.

After the mission, the game shows a deer in sunlight with high honor or a coyote in the rain with low honor, over the song "Crash of Worlds" by Rocco DeLuca, whose tone also changes with honor. John inherits Arthur's weapons and ammunition, outfits, unique valuables, documents and collectibles; provisions, tonics, ingredients, crafting materials and ordinary valuables are lost, as are Arthur's money and horses. Once the gang has fallen apart, Charles buries Arthur and Susan Grimshaw: Susan in Roanoke Ridge, Arthur in the Grizzlies East, in Ambarino. The grave sits on a hilltop north-east of Bacchus Bridge, with a wide view over the land below.

• You know, all that ever mattered to me was loyalty... It was all I ever believed in.

  The Bridge to Nowhere (RDR2, chapter 6), to John

• Sure. Tuberculosis. I'll be dead soon... and you with me, Mr. Milton.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to Agent Milton at Van Horn

• We ain't both gonna make it. Go... now. I'll hold them off.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to John, before handing him his hat

• It is over now... Arthur. It's over.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), Dutch to Arthur, his foot on Arthur's revolver

After 1899

The 1907 epilogue is played as John, who carries what Arthur handed him; that year John buys the Beecher's Hope ranch and settles there to raise cattle. In "Jim Milton Rides, Again?", John's default hat is Arthur's. Arthur and John write in the same journal: John's pages follow Arthur's. After whichever of "Jim Milton Rides, Again?" and "Fatherhood, For Idiots" is completed first, John remembers a piece of advice Arthur gave him in "The Sheep and the Goats": "Look, just do one thing or another... not be two people at once. That's all I'm saying." In "Trying Again", Jack recalls the day Arthur took him fishing before the Pinkertons appeared. In "A Really Big Bastard", John tells Sadie he intends to propose to Abigail with the ring Arthur once gave Mary, and in "A New Future Imagined" he does.

In "Bare Knuckle Friendships", John and Charles talk about Arthur on their way to the Saint Denis docks. The conversation depends on Arthur's honor: with high honor, Charles says Arthur "was a good man" and that his illness gave him "some kind of understanding... what his life was really all about"; with low honor, that he "wasn't a good man" and that the illness gave him "something to cling on to". John mentions Arthur's final choice, and Charles says that Arthur is where he would have wanted to be, on a hillside facing the evening sun.

In "American Venom", John tells Abigail that none of what they have would exist without Arthur, Sadie and the people who died. On the road, Sadie says "We owe this to Arthur", and Charles wonders whether Arthur cared about revenge, "especially not at the end", if his honor was high, or says revenge is something he could have understood if it was low. At Mount Hagen, Micah wears a scar over his eye if Arthur slashed it. John tells Micah "Arthur saved my life... more than once"; Micah answers: "Arthur's been dead a long time... this, is a new century." John also reaches the mountain wearing an outfit that includes Arthur's hat.

The grave can be visited from the epilogue onward, after "Simple Pleasures"; doing so counts towards the Paying Respects trophy, along with the graves of Jenny Kirk, Davey Callander, Sean, Kieran Duffy, Hosea, Lenny, Eagle Flies and Susan Grimshaw. Its appearance depends on the honor Arthur died with. With high honor, the stone is clean and covered in flowers, an eagle perches nearby, and the epitaph reads "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness". With low honor, the stone is weathered and bare, a coyote appears, and the epitaph reads "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted".

In a camp conversation earlier in the game, Arthur says he would like to be buried facing the sunset, to the west. During the end credits, Mary Linton is seen visiting the grave in mourning; the grave has flowers or none depending on Arthur's honor. In the scene that rewards 100% completion, John is shown at the grave writing the last entry in Arthur's journal. Arthur does not appear in Red Dead Redemption (2010), set in 1911, nor in Red Dead Online.

Rockstar's official description introduces Arthur as "Dutch's most dependable and capable enforcer since he was a boy", a man for whom "the outlaw life is all Arthur has ever known". Others describe him in the game. Agent Milton calls him an "orphaned street kid" taken in by Dutch. Colm O'Driscoll calls him a "fine gun" and asks why he still rides with Dutch. Mary Linton writes in her last letter: "There's a good man within you, Arthur, but he is wrestling with a giant." Hosea jokes: "Well, he's surely big but his intelligence is a matter of some conjecture."

Arthur is sarcastic with friends and gentle with Jack. He keeps to formal address: "Miss Tilly", "Mrs. Adler", "Herr Strauss". He turns down every offer to change sides: Milton's deal, twice, and Colm's invitation to join the O'Driscolls. He tells Sadie, the night the gang finds her, "We're bad men, but... we ain't them." At camp he can tell Mary-Beth, Karen or Tilly that he feels angry and lost about his crimes, even that he feels he has lost his mind; at Emerald Station he tells Sister Calderón he is afraid of dying. In his journal he writes of a "raging battle of good and evil" inside him. He says he is irreligious.

The rest depends on the honor system. Honor is capped until "A Fork in the Road", and chapter 6 actions count 1.5 times. It changes cutscene lines, the animal in his visions (a buck in sunlight or a black coyote in the rain), his last ride and how he dies. A high-honor Arthur tells Dutch on Guarma that he keeps "killing folk"; a low-honor one says they "have all gotten rotten". In "That's Murfree Country", with high honor, he says he is interested in saving lives. When Tilly says she will miss him, a high-honor Arthur admits he will miss her too, a low-honor one brushes her off. With high honor he also writes that he felt like "a fraud" trying to help the Downes family.

In his own words

To Charles, in "The Aftermath of Genesis": "Dutch saved me, saved most of us. That's why we need to stick by him through this." To Dutch, in "Old Friends": "I would never doubt you, Dutch, you... you always said revenge is a luxury we can't afford." To Strauss, in "Money Lending and Other Sins VI & VII", with high honor: "You and me, we ain't decent... but those folk... they was." To John, in "The Bridge to Nowhere": "Listen to me. When the time comes, you gotta run and don't look back. This is over." To Sister Calderón, in "The Fine Art of Conversation": "I guess I... I'm afraid." To Dutch, in "Red Dead Redemption": "I gave you all I had... I did." To John, in the same mission, when John says "You're my brother": "I know... I know."

Names and nicknames

The gang's mail is addressed to Tacitus Kilgore, the gang's mail alias. Micah calls him "cowpoke" from chapters 2 and 3 on ("Blessed are the Peacemakers"), then "Black Lung" once Arthur starts coughing after Guarma; he also uses "Coughing Billy" and "Misery-guts Morgan". Sean calls him "English", "Angry" and "King Arthur"; Arthur answers that his family "weren't even English". Dutch says he is "like a son" to him. Susan Grimshaw also calls him "son", or "clean fool" and "pathetic wretch" when he is dirty; she, Strauss, Swanson, Sister Calderón and Agent Milton say "Mr. Morgan", Strauss also "Herr Morgan". Others: "Pretty Boy" (Tommy, in Valentine), "the angry cowboy" (Angelo Bronte), "Farmboy", "Slowpoke", "Old Man" and "Yokel" (Cleet, the Saint Denis street kid), "Alan" (Mickey, the Valentine veteran), "Friend with No Name" (Theodore Levin), "Rip Van Winkle" (a coach driver); Agent Milton calls him Van der Linde's most trusted associate. His own aliases: Arthur Callahan in Rhodes and on the Grand Korrigan, Leviticus Cornwall on Guarma.

What the creators said

Roger Clark told Shacknews on 1 February 2019 that he borrowed little from Clint Eastwood, whose Man With No Name was "too stoic for what I think Arthur needed". His other statements, and Dan Houser's, are in the development section below.

Gunfighting and Dead Eye

Arthur is the gang's main enforcer, and the game states his reputation through others: Colm's "fine gun", and the 5,000-dollar bounty Agent Milton quotes in "A Fisher of Men". He covers Dutch with a rifle at the parley with Colm, and in "The Sheep and the Goats" he shoots the Cornwall men holding John and Strauss at gunpoint in Valentine. On Guarma he sinks a warship with the cannon at Cinco Torres and destroys Fussar's tower with another. Even with advanced tuberculosis he holds his own against Micah in the final mission, with knives or bare hands depending on the ending.

Dead Eye slows time so the player can place shots. In Red Dead Redemption 2 it has five levels tied to the story: automatic marking after "Old Friends" (chapter 1), manual marking after "Pouring Forth Oil IV" (chapter 2), staying in Dead Eye after firing after "Urban Pleasures" (chapter 4), fatal zones (brain, heart) shown after "Fleeting Joy" (chapter 5), and other critical zones after "Goodbye, Dear Friend" (chapter 6). Unlike in the 2010 game, Arthur still takes damage while using it. Its sound effect is a ticking clock, different from the one John gets in the epilogue.

Hunting, tracking, fishing and crafting

Arthur's tracking relies on Eagle Eye, which Charles shows him during the first hunt of "The Aftermath of Genesis", the mission in which he also hands him a bow. The effect slows the action and colors what the eye would otherwise miss: an animal's trail in blue, a wounded animal in flickering red, a legendary animal in yellow, a plant that can be gathered as a white shimmer. One use lasts about ten seconds, fifteen with the Fox Claw Trinket. In "A Strange Kindness", if the player follows Andreas's trail fast enough, Arthur is the one who calls the direction, before Charles. The animals he kills, he skins; perfect pelts handed to Pearson turn into satchel upgrades once the camp has bought leather working tools. His fishing companions are Jack in "A Fisher of Men", Javier, who supplies bait and advice, Kieran, and Hamish Sinclair, who is after a giant pike. In chapter 6 Charlotte Balfour learns from him how to catch and skin a rabbit, then how to shoot. Herding gives him no trouble, unlike John: the two drive a stolen flock into Valentine in "The Sheep and the Goats".

Riding and horse bonding

A horse's bond with Arthur grows through riding, feeding, brushing and patting, and the game grades it in levels. A horse that barely knows him answers his whistle only from a short distance, panics at gunfire and may kick him; a horse at full bond holds its ground in a shootout, comes from much further away and unlocks the drift, the rear and the sliding stop. Arthur draws every new breed he rides in his journal. He is a confident rider, but not with every horse: he tells Charles that Dutch's horse, The Count, bucked him "faster than a bull" the one time he tried. At a trot he may hum, and when drunk he sings camp songs in the saddle and sways.

Reading, writing and drawing

Dutch and Hosea taught Arthur to read. His journal is the record of what he does: missions, places, people, plants and animals, a drawing on the left-hand page and text on the right. New pages appear after a time skip, that is after a sleep at camp, a night in a hotel or a rest by a campfire, and also after a death or an arrest. The opening and the end of a chapter take two pages or more, and the tone of some entries follows his honor. He draws the points of interest he visits, and the game files contain his sketches for New Austin, a region he cannot normally enter. With Mary-Beth he talks about their shared taste for writing: stories for her, his own days for him. John takes over the journal in 1907; to tell the two hands apart, the illustrator Reuben Dangoor drew Arthur's sketches with his dominant hand and John's with his non-dominant hand.

Swimming and languages

Arthur can swim; his stamina drains in deep water. John can swim too in Red Dead Redemption 2, but with sharply reduced stamina; the instant drowning belongs to the 2010 game. Arthur speaks no Spanish: on Guarma, when Dutch fails to make himself understood in "A Kind and Benevolent Despot", Arthur reminds him that he had claimed to know the language. He uses a few words of German with Strauss ("Herr Strauss").

Other skills

Arthur fights with his fists as readily as with a gun. In "Americans at Rest", in the Valentine saloon, he knocks out three opponents in a row, frees Javier from Tommy, is thrown through the window into the street, gets up and beats Tommy until Thomas Downes stops him. The lasso, given in "Old Friends", lets him catch horses, hogtie people and bring bounties in alive. He collects Strauss's debts by intimidation and interrogates with threats or persuasion. At camp he plays poker, dominoes and five finger fillet with gang members; blackjack is only played in saloons, at Van Horn, Rhodes and Blackwater. He drives the stolen oil wagon onto the tracks in "Pouring Forth Oil IV". In "The Aftermath of Genesis" he tells Charles he "never really got the hang of" the bow, then hunts with it anyway. He donates money, food, medicine and pelts to the camp ledger, which funds upgrades to the wagons.

Weapons

Arthur starts with a Cattleman Revolver and a Hunting Knife, the only knife used for skinning, five finger fillet and splitting bullets. Javier hands him a Sawed-off Shotgun in "Enter, Pursued by a Memory", a Carbine Repeater comes with "Old Friends", Charles gives him the bow in "The Aftermath of Genesis" and Micah a Lancaster Repeater in "An American Pastoral Scene". Gunsmiths sell the Volcanic Pistol after "Eastward Bound" and the Schofield Revolver after "Blessed are the Meek?", and the Mauser Pistol later. His weapons also include the Double-Barreled Shotgun, the Bolt Action Rifle and the Springfield Rifle, and, among throwables, dynamite, fire bottles, throwing knives and the tomahawk. Unique weapons he can obtain include the revolvers of Flaco Hernández, Emmet Granger and Jim "Boy" Calloway and Billy Midnight's pistol, in "The Noblest of Men, and a Woman"; the Rare Shotgun of the hermit at Manito Glade; and Micah's Revolver, which can be made to drop during "Old Friends". His satchel holds his items; Pearson upgrades it with perfect pelts, up to the Legend of the East Satchel, which raises most limits to 99. Arthur gives John his hat and satchel in the final mission.

Horses

Before 1899 Arthur rode a mare named Boadicea. She is gone by the time the gang reaches Colter, and the game does not show what happened to her; Arthur mentions her once, in "Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego", when Hosea asks about his new horse: "This one's okay, but ain't no Boadicea." In Colter he borrows Charles's horse, Taima, an Appaloosa, and in "Outlaws from the West" takes a Mahogany Bay Tennessee Walker from the Adler Ranch barn, which Sadie says belonged to the O'Driscolls; it is the first animal he draws in his journal. In "Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego" Hosea brings him a Raven Black Shire, which he rides briefly and can sell or keep at the Valentine stable, where the player can also buy a horse. The player then chooses his mounts. A wild White Arabian, always a mare, can be found north-west of Lake Isabella; Old Faithful, a white Arabian stallion, can be kept during "Horse Flesh for Dinner"; and Hamish Sinclair's horse Buell is Arthur's if he finishes "The Veteran". Every horse Arthur owns is lost in the final mission and cannot be brought into the epilogue.

Story missions by chapter

Arthur is the playable character in every story mission of chapters 1 to 6 of Red Dead Redemption 2; the player controls nobody else before the epilogue. Counting each numbered part as its own entry and leaving aside the cutscene "Lost and Not Quite Found", the table below has 6 missions in chapter 1, 24 in chapter 2, 19 in chapter 3, 16 in chapter 4, 9 in chapter 5 and 25 in chapter 6, 99 in all; these are our counts under that convention. Inside a chapter, many missions can be played in several orders, and the table follows one possible sequence. "Icarus and Friends" can be played before the move to Beaver Hollow, but the game files it under chapter 6 in the replay menu. After Arthur's death, his voice is heard once more, right after either "Fatherhood, For Idiots" or "Jim Milton Rides, Again?", two missions played as John.

Stranger missions

Red Dead Redemption 2 has 31 stranger strands. Five of them are filed with the story missions above as "honor missions": "Money Lending and Other Sins" (given by Leopold Strauss), "Help a Brother Out", "Brothers and Sisters, One and All", "Do Not Seek Absolution" and "Of Men and Angels". One strand, "The American Inferno, Burnt Out" (the writer Evelyn Miller, west of Blackwater), is the only one reserved for John. The 25 others, plus the three encounters with Charlotte Balfour at Willard's Rest, grouped under the title "The Widow of Willard's Rest", can be started by Arthur. Strangers are shown as a white circle with a question mark on the minimap. Only 10 strands are required for 100% completion. The table gives the stranger, the mission with its number of parts, and the place where it starts, with the chapter from which it becomes available.

Several strands carry over to John in the 1907 epilogue. "A Test of Faith" can only be finished as John, because part of the dinosaur bones lie in New Austin and western West Elizabeth, regions Arthur cannot enter; the same applies to the last three legendary fish of "A Fisher of Fish" and to the fifth hunting request of "A Better World, A New Friend", posted at Van Horn Trading Post. In "The Noblest of Men, and a Woman", John can take over the hunt for the gunslingers, reading the notes on the back of the photographs, and asks Theodore Levin to send the money to "Jim Milton"; a reward Arthur never collected can also be claimed by John. John can also continue "A Bright Bouncing Boy", "Arcadia for Amateurs" (part III is skipped), "Idealism and Pragmatism for Beginners", "Oh, Brother", "The Artist's Way", "The Ties That Bind Us" and "The Veteran", in which he introduces himself to Hamish Sinclair and tells him of Arthur's death. John can visit Charlotte Balfour in 1907 whether or not Arthur met her; she is found dead only if Arthur met her once and never returned. Two strands are closed to John: "Fundraiser", available before the epilogue only (if Arthur gave $20, his name appears on the hall's plaque in 1907), and "The Mercies of Knowledge", which disappears after "Our Best Selves".

Notable people Arthur kills

The story imposes three named deaths: Sheriff Leigh Gray, Alberto Fussar and Colonel Henry Favours. Every other named death in the list depends on the player's choices and is marked optional below, whether it happens in a story mission, a stranger mission, a bounty hunt or a random encounter. Unnamed enemies killed in shootouts are not counted. The two bounty targets can be brought in dead or alive. Arthur does not appear in Red Dead Online, so the list has no multiplayer entry; the only non-canon case, Mr. Wróbel, is given separately at the end.

Non-canon case. Arthur can kill one person who is nonetheless alive later in the game, which rules the killing out of the canon.

The lines below are given as spoken in the game, in the original English. Several of them exist in two versions, chosen by Arthur's honor level at that point of the story.

Chapters 1 and 2

• Miss, it's okay, alright? We're bad men, but... we ain't them, so... it's okay.

  Outlaws from the West (RDR2, chapter 1), to Sadie Adler, outside the Adler homestead after the house has burned, while helping her onto Dutch's horse

• Don't die just yet, cowboy.

  Enter, Pursued by a Memory (RDR2, chapter 1), to John, carried on his shoulder after the wolves

• Things go wrong sometimes. People die. It's the way it is, always has been. Me, you, Dutch... we've all been in this line of work a long time, and we're still here, so... I figure we must've got it right a hell of a lot more than we got it wrong.

  Eastward Bound (RDR2, chapter 1), to Hosea, on the way down from the mountains

• Desperately... You're my favorite parasite. No... ringworm's my favorite parasite, you're my second favorite parasite.

  Polite Society, Valentine Style (RDR2, chapter 2), to Uncle, who has just said that Arthur loves him

• You know... nothing means more to me than this gang. The bond we share... it's the most real thing to me. I would kill for it, I would happily die for it... but in spite of all that... I would have easily left you here to rot... if Charles hadn't stopped me.

  The First Shall Be Last (RDR2, chapter 2), to Sean, just freed from the bounty hunters

• Where's our money?

  Money Lending and Other Sins III (RDR2, chapter 2), to Thomas Downes; the line was used in the game's trailers

Chapters 3 and 4

• Micah... best you and I don't speak for a moment.

  A Short Walk in a Pretty Town (RDR2, chapter 3), to Micah, after Sean's death

• You speak as if killing were something I cared about.

  Sodom? Back to Gomorrah (RDR2, chapter 3), to Edith Downes; Arthur hears the line again on his last ride, with low honor

• We can't change what's done, we can only move on.

  The Battle of Shady Belle (RDR2, chapter 3), to John; Arthur hears the line again in A Fork in the Road with high honor

• Does this trolley go to Tahiti?!

  Urban Pleasures (RDR2, chapter 4), to Dutch

• Fire off a couple of warning shots, just to pretend you care.

  Country Pursuits (RDR2, chapter 4), to Dutch

Chapters 5 and 6, and the endings

• Always, Dutch.

  That's Murfree Country (RDR2, chapter 5), when Dutch asks whether Arthur still has his back

• I guess I'm more interested in saving lives than... winning at chess.

  That's Murfree Country (RDR2, chapter 5), to Dutch, high honor

• You and me, we ain't decent... but those folk... they was.

  Money Lending and Other Sins VII (RDR2, chapter 6), to Leopold Strauss, high honor, before throwing him out of camp

• I guess I... I'm afraid.

  The Fine Art of Conversation (RDR2, chapter 6), to Sister Calderón at Emerald Station; the scene with her only plays with high honor and if "Of Men and Angels" was completed, otherwise Arthur talks with Swanson instead. She answers: "Take a gamble that love exists... and do a loving act"

• Listen to me. When the time comes, you gotta run and don't look back. This is over.

  The Bridge to Nowhere (RDR2, chapter 6), to John, while planting the dynamite on the Bacchus Bridge, before the explosion

• You know, all that ever mattered to me was loyalty... It was all I ever believed in.

  The Bridge to Nowhere (RDR2, chapter 6), to John; Arthur hears the line again on his last ride, with high honor

• You know the women and the children and John and his family. I... I'm afraid I have to insist. I mean, we gotta let 'em go. 'Cause if the Pinkertons come through again... they will kill everyone.

  Our Best Selves (RDR2, chapter 6), to Dutch, high honor, before the last train robbery

• You're a good girl... you live a good life now, you hear?

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to Tilly Jackson, high honor, handing her the money and Jack

• I'm coming with you. I'm gonna get you out of this bullshit... if it's the last goddamn thing I do.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to John, if Arthur chooses to help him escape

• I didn't turn, Micah. You did. Tell Dutch what you said to agent Milton.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to Micah on the cliff, only in the branch where Arthur went back for the money, with high honor

• And you're dead. Inside you're dead.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to Micah, who has just called him a dying man; same branch, money and high honor

• In the end, Micah... despite my best efforts to the contrary... it turns out I've won. Goddamn you.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), crawling toward the revolver, if Arthur helped John

• I gave you all I had... I did.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to Dutch, who has his boot on Arthur's hand

• John made it. He's the only one. Rest of us... no. But... I tried. In the end... I did.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), his last words, high honor, after helping John

• Damn us both!

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to Micah, only in the branch where Arthur helped John, with low honor, just before Micah shoots him in the forehead

Camp and journal

• Our time... has pretty much passed.

  Camp conversation with Mary-Beth Gaskill at Horseshoe Overlook (chapter 2); recalled on his last ride with high honor

• We're thieves, in a world that don't want us no more.

  Camp conversation with Dutch

• Do you really have a plan, Dutch? Or you just keep telling us you do? ...I mean, a real plan, not eating mangoes on a tropical island plan... Any time you want to share it, I'm all ears.

  Antagonizing Dutch at camp

• He's a man who, not so long ago, I would have found weak and pathetic. Now I see him as wise and thoughtful and sensible. I would love to help him... or at least stop Dutch from pushing his son to do something real stupid.

  Journal entry about Rains Fall, written after Archeology for Beginners (chapter 6)

A single protagonist

After the three protagonists of Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar returned to a single lead. "Sticking with a single character felt more appropriate for the structure and narrative of a Western", Rockstar's Josh Bass told The Hollywood Reporter in September 2018; "this is Arthur's story." Producer Rob Nelson told Variety that the team "wanted to stick with Arthur through this story and see how he changes from the start".

Writing

Writer Dan Houser told GQ that Arthur's journey "is not about becoming a superhero, because he's almost one at the start", but that he "is going to be taken on a more intellectual roller coaster when his world view gets taken apart". To Vulture, he described a man "caught between the nastiness of nature and the brutality of encroaching industrialization", with "a feeling that his time may have come and gone".

Several ideas were cut. Arthur once had two love interests, but "we decided one of them didn't work", Houser told Vulture; according to Vulture, about five hours of the 65-hour game were cut. In a 2025 podcast interview, Houser said an early opening in which Arthur's baby died was dropped because "it was too tough in some ways" and made Arthur "very, very nasty" at the start. Roger Clark told Twinfinite that, after an early story event was cut, Arthur "came across as a pretty grumpy fellow", so the team went back and changed some scenes.

Roger Clark

Roger Clark was born in the United States in 1978 to an Irish mother and an Irish-American father, moved at twelve to Sligo, in Ireland, and studied drama in Wales. He has said, in an interview with TheGamer, that he auditioned without the script in advance and was asked to wear cowboy boots. "My first day on the project was in August of 2013", he told The Hollywood Reporter; director of performance capture Rod Edge added that "the first scenes we did were with Roger". Clark describes the role as five years of work, "predominantly performance capture" rather than voice work in a booth.

His inspirations, he told The Hollywood Reporter, were Toshiro Mifune, John Wayne and John Marston, rather than Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, because Arthur "needed to be a little more talkative". He told Twinfinite the aim was "a character who makes sense whether he's a complete bastard or if the player decides to choose the honorable path".

Awards

• The Game Awards 2018: won Best Performance (Roger Clark).
• BAFTA Games Awards 2019: nominated for Performer; won by Jeremy Davies (God of War).
• D.I.C.E. Awards 2019: nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Character; won by Kratos (God of War).
• New York Game Awards 2019: nominated for the Great White Way Award for Best Acting in a Game.

Critics and rankings

IGN noted "an infectious authenticity" in Clark's voice. Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton wrote that Arthur first struck him as "deliberately unremarkable", but that by the end he had become "a character in his own right". In Game Informer, Javy Gwaltney called Arthur's arc "a fantastic take on memento mori and how ruthlessly messy and complex redemption can be". In The New York Times, Peter Suderman described "a bad man with a good heart, because his choices are, in fact, your own".

GamesRadar+ ranked Arthur 29th among the 50 most iconic video game characters in 2021. In an April 2024 BAFTA public poll of more than 4,000 voters, he was voted the 11th most iconic video game character.

Marketing and cover art

Rockstar announced Red Dead Redemption 2 on October 18, 2016 and released a first trailer two days later, without naming its protagonist. Arthur was revealed in the second trailer on September 28, 2017, alongside Dutch van der Linde. On April 30, 2018, Rockstar announced the third trailer for May 2 (GameSpot), and it was released on that date. Gameplay videos followed in August and October 2018, and the launch trailer on October 18, 2018, eight days before release. Rockstar's character bios of September 2018 described him as "Dutch's most dependable and capable enforcer since he was a boy". Arthur is the figure on the box art, standing in front of the silhouetted riders of the gang.

Merchandise

The Collector's Box, sold separately and without the game (Engadget, rdr2.org), included a deck of playing cards illustrated with gang members, Arthur among them, and a treasure map meant to start his hunt for buried money. Piggyback's Complete Official Guide had a Collector's Edition with a character art gallery. On November 29, 2018, the label Barking Irons launched an official clothing line based on Arthur's wardrobe (PlayStation LifeStyle): a Gunslinger Jacket at 250 dollars with "A. Morgan" on the inner collar and "Van der Linde Gang" stitched inside the pocket, a Railroad Shirt, a Denim Chore Shirt, a Union Henley, a saddle bag and a Riding Duffel Bag at 325 dollars.

Music

Two albums carry the music of Arthur's story. The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2: Original Soundtrack, produced by Daniel Lanois, came out digitally on July 12, 2019, with 13 tracks over about 42 minutes, including D'Angelo's "Unshaken" and "That's the Way It Is", the song of the final mission. The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2: Original Score, by Woody Jackson, followed on August 9, 2019; its tracks include "Doctor's Opinion", heard when Arthur receives his diagnosis, and a piece titled "Red Dead Redemption".

The Game Awards and after

Roger Clark received Best Performance for Arthur at The Game Awards on December 6, 2018. In May 2022, GamingBolt named Arthur the best video game protagonist of all time. Arthur does not appear in Red Dead Online, in Red Dead Redemption (2010) or in Undead Nightmare. Red Dead Redemption 2 reached Windows on November 5, 2019 and Stadia on November 19, 2019, and Clark has since narrated the audiobook of Tore Olsson's Red Dead's History (2024), a history book built on the game's period.

Development and cut content

• At the SacAnime Summer 2019 cast panel, Roger Clark said that an early draft of the game gave Arthur a newborn baby who froze to death on the way to Colter in the opening. The idea was dropped; a son who died before the story, Isaac, remained in his backstory.
• Five missions built around Eliza, Isaac's mother, were cut from the game; the files still identify them as ELZ1 to ELZ5 and keep their dialogue and animations, along with a character model and textures. The first of them was set during chapter 1: Eliza had run off, and Abigail sent Arthur to look for her camp near Colter.
• A cut chapter 3 mission, "tre2" in the files, was given by Trelawny and had Arthur and Dutch fighting bounty hunters on a train. Benjamin Byron Davis, Dutch's actor, has mentioned in an interview that the bounty hunters came from Boston.
• Another cut mission, "ind2", had Arthur, Micah, Hosea and Abigail testing how fast the Saint Denis police responded before the bank job of "Banking, The Old American Art". Arthur planted dynamite under the Cornwall Freight and Commodities building.
• On Guarma, a cut mission ("smg1") had Arthur and Bill rescue the niece of the rebel Leon. Her model, a mission photo and dialogue about getting her off the island survive in the files.
• Text and animations remain for a meeting between Arthur and Mary Linton in a rented room above the Rhodes saloon ("MRY2" and "FLME"), where she said the people she was hiding from might kill her.
• A cut mission had Arthur help Brenda Crawley escape her husband Hobart and his men, with a crypt involved. A cut random encounter had Arthur or John free a woman trapped under her horse and drive her to Valentine, Annesburg or Saint Denis.
• Arthur was originally able to ride into New Austin. Cut dialogue has Sheriff Freeman of Armadillo call him by name, shopkeepers talk to him, and Herbert Moon discuss the portrait of the Strange Man. The cholera outbreak in Armadillo was then a scarlet fever outbreak, which the finished game still mentions.
• He still has journal entries and drawings for New Austin, the Great Plains and Tall Trees that cannot be reached normally: plants such as Red Sage, Wild Feverfew and Blackcurrant, and the Legendary Tatanka Bison, Cougar and Pronghorn. The game files also hold his lines for catching the Legendary Channel Catfish, which was never meant to be caught.
• Dialogue, animations and a journal entry exist for Arthur completing "A Test of Faith" (all the dinosaur bones) and "A Fisher of Fish" (all the legendary fish), although he cannot finish either without glitches.
• Lines labelled "TAKE_HORSE" show that Arthur could once borrow the horses of other gang members, and cut dialogue shows he could ride with them outside missions.
• More than a hundred cut or partial outfits for Arthur remain in the files. In the beta his hat was browner and his shirt a darker blue, and the gunslinger jacket could be buttoned. A pirate coat and hat were also cut.
• Arthur has a military uniform built from models ported from Red Dead Redemption, unused face textures, and an early face model, visible in some trailers, that looked more like Roger Clark. His unique knife changed several times, and a photo shows him holding a folding shotgun that was cut.
• In "Advertising, The New American Art", Arthur and Hosea were to wear full hillbilly costumes with overalls and false beards. In "The Course of True Love II", getting caught originally ended with Arthur hogtied on the floor of the boathouse.
• A cutscene exists for Arthur being arrested in Annesburg: Charles arrives with a hostage and demands his release. Other cut scenes include Bill starting a fight in "Eastward Bound", a more threatening interrogation of the O'Driscoll in "Outlaws from the West", and a line from Charles telling Arthur to take Taima because his own horse was in bad shape.
• At Colter, cut camp scenes had Arthur threaten to cut Kieran's throat if he spoke to Jack again, remind Bill of something cowardly he did in Blackwater, and try to wake Swanson, who answered that he was contemplating the fact that "we're not alone".
• A cut chapter 4 mission, "ntv0", began with a conversation between Arthur and Charles that appears in the second trailer; it was trimmed into a rare camp interaction. The sacred site Arthur visits with Rains Fall in "Archeology for Beginners" was named Cohutta on a leaked map, a name the final game does not use.
• Dan Houser told GQ in 2018 that he avoided Roger Clark on set so as not to hear his real voice; across some 20,000 to 30,000 lines, Clark never drops the accent.
• Clark told Shacknews in 2019 that his lines to his horse were recorded in a booth and redone, because the first take sounded "a little too erotic".
• In the end credits, Mary Linton visits Arthur's grave. Clark has said that Julie Jesneck, Mary's actress, was unavailable that day, so he performed the scene himself in motion capture, as the scene has no dialogue (quoted by Vida Extra, November 26, 2024).
• Arthur is the favourite character of Rob Wiethoff, who plays John Marston, as he said at the same SacAnime 2019 panel.

Gameplay

• The two protagonists do not share the same "Wellbeing" entry in the Player menu: Arthur's warns that sickness cannot be easily cured, and John's repeats that warning with one added line, that John will not get sick.
• In "A Fisher of Men", Agent Milton puts the government bounty on Arthur at 5,000 dollars.
• Arthur's sickness is scripted: the symptoms and penalties only start after chapter 4. Once ill, all his cores drain 20 percent faster (5 percent before the diagnosis), and food restores less.
• In chapters 5 and 6 he loses his stocky build and looks underweight. At launch, overeating gave him his overweight model until he changed outfit. A patch then limited food benefits while sick, with the message "You are sick. While sick, you will only gain the benefit from consuming a limited amount of food and drink". Cigarettes and liquor keep their core drain after the message.
• Arthur has three face models, thin, average and chubby. A console bug can lock the chubby face whatever his real weight; it usually appears in chapter 4.
• Mission replays for chapters 1 to 6 reset Arthur's appearance: default Gunslinger Outfit with the collar closed (the winter jacket at Colter, the Guarma clothes on Guarma), level 3 hair and beard, and his current main horse with the default saddle, replaced by a Chestnut Tennessee Walker if he has no horse. Some rare weapons, among them Midnight's Pistol and Otis Miller's Revolver, can be used in these replays.
• Arthur cannot enter New Austin by normal means: an unseen sniper kills him when he crosses into the region. Players who glitch him there find his own point-of-interest drawings, voice lines and interactions with local characters.
• Some stranger missions can be started as Arthur but must be finished as John because a step takes place in New Austin. If Arthur finishes them through glitches, the dialogue adapts to him.
• After "Our Best Selves" begins, the player can no longer roam freely as Arthur once that mission and "Red Dead Redemption" are done. The lockdowns on Blackwater and New Austin, and the "Wanted Dead or Alive" marker on the map, are removed when "Our Best Selves" starts.
• The honor Arthur died with decides what John finds at his grave in 1907: a clean headstone ringed with flowers and an eagle nearby after a high-honor death, a weathered headstone without flowers and a coyote in place of the eagle after a low-honor death.
• The epitaph also depends on honor: "Blessed Are Those Who Hunger And Thirst For Righteousness" (high) or "Blessed Are Those Who Mourn For They Will Be Comforted" (low). Both are beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:6 and 5:4); John's epitaph in Red Dead Redemption, "Blessed are the peacemakers", comes from the same passage (5:9).
• At 100 percent completion, a scene shows John at Arthur's grave after his revenge on Micah. He says: "I guess we're just about done, my friend."
• The animal Arthur sees in his visions depends on honor: a buck in sunlight with high honor, a coyote in night rain with low honor. In "A Fork in the Road", the trance after the diagnosis is golden with high honor and grey with low honor, and the remembered lines differ accordingly.
• Honor changes several late lines. In "Mrs. Sadie Adler, Widow II", Sadie tells him "Apart from my Jake, you're the best man I've known" (high) or "you're a confusing man, Arthur, but you're the best friend I've got" (low). In "Bare Knuckle Friendships", in the epilogue, Charles says Arthur "was a good man... as much as any of us could be" (high) or "wasn't a good man... maybe he was true to himself" (low).
• The sound that plays when Arthur activates Dead Eye resembles a ticking clock. John's Dead Eye in the epilogue uses the sound from Red Dead Redemption instead.
• In the mission replay menu, the picture for "Epilogue, Part 1" shows Arthur and John together, taken from the standoff in "Red Dead Redemption", although Arthur does not appear in the epilogue.
• If "Arcadia for Amateurs" is completed before the third part of "The Artist's Way", Albert Mason's photographs hang in the first room of Galerie Laurent in Saint Denis, among them a photograph of Arthur. Nobody in the gallery comments on it.
• Donating 20 dollars to the Quincy Harris Memorial Hall in Saint Denis puts Arthur's name on the donors' plaque, visible in 1907. If John visits the finished hall, he says "Arthur Morgan... why hello."
• Two hats identical to Arthur's hang on the wall of Worths General Store in Valentine. Neither can be picked up.
• The flower kept by his bed at camp is a canyon live-forever (Dudleya cymosa), a succulent native to the American West Coast.
• Arthur sometimes hums while riding, only at a trot. When drunk, he sings the gang's camp songs out loud in the saddle and his body sways.
• The word "fuck", frequent in John's dialogue, is heard from Arthur on three known occasions: the camp song "One-Eyed Riley", the insult "kin-fucking bastards" aimed at the Murfree Brood, and the random encounter in which a man asks for help robbing his friend, where Arthur can answer "go fuck the deal".
• Arthur's journal is drawn and written with more care than John's: detailed sketches, some over two pages, against John's simpler doodles. A full journal can reach 568 pages. His previous journal burned a couple of months before the Blackwater job.
• A Companion App for phones and tablets came out on the game's release day, October 26, 2018. It mirrored Arthur's cores and stats, his journal and the map, which let players switch off the in-game HUD. Rockstar removed it from the iOS and Android stores on August 19, 2025.

Name and references

• "Tacitus Kilgore" is the alias under which the gang receives its mail at the post office.
• Sean MacGuire calls Arthur "English" and needles him about Wales and England. In one camp exchange, Arthur pushes back: "my family weren't even English". The game never states his family's origin.
• Boadicea, the mare he lost before Colter, carries the Latinised name of Boudica, the queen who led a British revolt against Rome in the first century.
• In "The Wheel", the first epilogue mission, Jack talks about the King Arthur stories he is reading, John says he likes the names in them, and gives Jack the nickname Lancelot.
• The hat colours of Arthur (black) and Micah (white) are the reverse of the old Western convention, where a white hat marked the hero and a black hat the villain.
• Arthur dies of tuberculosis in his thirties. The gunfighter John Henry "Doc" Holliday died of the same disease in 1887, aged 36.
• He is the second protagonist of the series to die in his own game, after John in Red Dead Redemption (2010), and the first in the story's chronology. Both send their family or friend away before facing their killers: Arthur sends John to Abigail and Jack, John sends Abigail and Jack away before Ross's men.
• The final mission bears the title of the game, "Red Dead Redemption". Its song, "That's the Way It Is", was written by Rocco DeLuca and Daniel Lanois and sung by Lanois; it starts after Abigail is freed at Van Horn and plays during the ride to Beaver Hollow.
• In "Favored Sons", looting the dead soldiers, Arthur tells Dutch one of them is "some poor fool from New Jersey". In "The Veteran", he tells Hamish Sinclair he was born somewhere in the north of the country.
• Rains Fall and Sister Calderón are the two characters with whom Arthur talks at length about his son Isaac. He also alludes to him, without naming him, in "A Fisher of Men".

Red Dead Online and other games

• Arthur is not a character in Red Dead Online, nor in Red Dead Redemption (2010) or Undead Nightmare. Two Online outfits borrow his clothes: The Haraway is modelled on his Summer Gunslinger outfit, and The Morement on the Winter Gunslinger outfit.
• The Wheeler, Rawson & Co. catalogue on the Rockstar Social Club website lets players buy clothing for Arthur from a browser: the price is deducted from his Story Mode cash and the item is delivered to his wardrobe.
• Two of Arthur's weapons were unlocked through Grand Theft Auto Online. The Double-Action Revolver came with a treasure hunt added in December 2017; in GTA Online it uses the firing sound of the Double-action Revolver of Red Dead Redemption (2010), a sound also used in Red Dead Redemption 2. The Stone Hatchet followed the After Hours update (GameSpot, August 1, 2018): five bounties for Maude Eccles, then 25 kills with the hatchet, unlock it at the Native burial site north of Owanjila.
• Special edition bonuses tied to Arthur included the Nuevo Paraiso Gunslinger Outfit (black wide-brimmed hat, indigo coat, denim chaps), the Eagle Talon Talisman and Iguana Scale, core boosts, and a Rhodes bank robbery mission.

Community

• Before The Game Awards of December 6, 2018, Roger Clark promised on Instagram to post a video of himself speaking if he reached 25,000 followers. He passed 26,000 within days and posted a video thanking the fans (ComicBook.com, November 28, 2018).
• Tombstone Redemption, a fan event in Tombstone, Arizona, drew an estimated 10,000 people on July 29 and 30, 2023, with fourteen cast members of the series; the town was dressed to look like Blackwater. It returned as Black Hills Redemption in Deadwood, South Dakota, on June 21 to 23, 2024, with twenty actors.
• University of Tennessee historian Tore Olsson built a course, "Red Dead America", around the game's period. His book Red Dead's History came out in August 2024; its audiobook is read by Roger Clark.