Blessed are the Meek?

At the sheriff's office

Lenny brought the news to camp in A Quiet Time: Micah is held in Strawberry, and there is talk of hanging him. Arthur knocks on the door of the sheriff's office, and a deputy answers. Arthur introduces himself as a man from Blackwater on the trail of a dangerous gang, Colm O'Driscoll's, and says he heard there had been an incident.

Sheriff Hanley cuts him short: "We don't deal with bounty hunters round here, son." When Arthur asks for a description, the sheriff says they were not friends, they got in a fight and two men were killed; of the two he is holding, one is an idiot, the other "some kind of dumb mick". Arthur can look at them "when we hang 'em."

At the cell window

Outside, Arthur hears Micah shouting from inside: "Let me outta here, you maggots!" He goes to the barred window of Micah's cell. Arthur: "Hello, old friend. Had a good time, did you?" Micah asks whether he is going to get him out. Arthur: "I ain't decided yet." He has heard so much bluster from Micah over the last six months that he would enjoy watching him be silenced.

Micah: "I always looked up to you, Arthur." Arthur: "Well that's your first mistake. Listen, there's one little problem... there's only one of me and there's a whole town full of people... wanting to see you swing." Micah points to a steam donkey nearby and tells him to hook it over the bars and pull them off.

The jailbreak

Arthur hooks the cable over the bars and pulls the lever: the steam donkey tears them out of the wall, and Micah climbs out. Arthur hands him a revolver. Micah immediately shoots his cellmate in the head. Arthur: "What the hell are you doing?" Micah: "He was an O'Driscoll."

The sheriff shouts: "I should've known you were up to no good!" Someone calls for a wire to the state marshals. Arthur wants to leave at once, but Micah heads the other way: "I got some unfinished business. Trust me, Morgan!" Arthur: "Trust you? You have finally lost your damn mind." The gunfight spreads through the streets, and Hanley is killed, by Arthur or by Micah.

Micah explains only that they have something of his and that he is not leaving without it. Asked where they are going, he answers: "Making a house call. There's more of these morons." Arthur insists they should get out of town; Micah: "Calm yourself, woman. Like I said, I need to see someone."

Norman's house

At a house in town, Micah calls out: "Skinny, get out here!" The man who opens the door answers: "It ain't 'Skinny', Micah, it's Norman..." Micah shoots him and throws him to the ground, says "Excuse me a minute, Arthur... Hello, Maddy...", and goes inside, where he kills Norman's wife. He comes back out with his revolvers: "They had something of mine... my guns."

Arthur: "We could've been long gone but, no, you have to shoot the entire town!" Micah: "I work clean, I don't leave loose ends." More lawmen keep coming. Micah urges Arthur to keep shooting, then leads him to the horses.

The escape

The two men gallop out of Strawberry with mounted lawmen behind them, in several waves. Micah: "Dammit. How many of these sons of bitches are there?" When Micah tells him to keep riding, Arthur answers: "I don't have much choice!" Once the last riders are down, Micah compliments him: "That was some good shooting, Morgan. I gotta hand it to you."

Sons of Dutch

Arthur asks what that was about. Micah admits it got a bit wild: "Ain't much I care about more than those guns." Norman, he explains, rode with him for a while; they did a bank job down south that did not end well, and Norman was going to let him hang. Arthur: "I'm starting to wish I had." He reminds Micah that he owes Lenny too, and that he is lucky Dutch has his back.

Once they have lost the law, Micah gives Arthur a holster: "my way of saying thank you." Arthur answers sarcastically that he was having a dull day until Micah livened it up by letting him help shoot up half a town. Micah then apologizes: "Alright, listen... I'm sorry, but we're family now, Arthur. You and me... sons of Dutch. Makes us brothers... and sometimes brothers make mistakes."

He is going back to his little camp round the back of Strawberry and asks Arthur to come and see him there, so that he can make things up to him. Arthur asks whether he is not heading back to Dutch. Micah: "No, I've been a bad boy, Arthur. I ain't seeing Dutch till I can bring him a peace offering. Bye now."

In the newspapers

The Blackwater Ledger (No. 65) and the New Hanover Gazette (No. 30) report the jailbreak under the title "Prisoner Escapes", with the deck "Murderer was set to hang. Score of lawmen dead in wild shootout. Small mountain town in mourning. Residents of Strawberry in fear." The article calls it "the most brazen jailbreak in years", says the local doctor has not been seen in town since, and mentions a handkerchief found on the escape route with part of a tooth.

Mission failure

The mission fails if the player:

• assaults, kills or abandons Micah, or lets him be killed;
• abandons Strawberry;
• alerts the law too early;
• kills or abandons his horse;
• dies.

Deaths

• The O'Driscoll prisoner, Micah's cellmate, shot by Micah.
• Sheriff Hanley, killed by Arthur or by Micah in the gunfight.
• Norman, shot by Micah at his door.
• Maddy, Norman's wife, killed by Micah inside the house.
• Many lawmen, killed by Arthur and Micah.

Visiting the sheriff or not

The visit to the sheriff's office is not required: Arthur can go straight to Micah's cell window.

Other ways to free Micah

• Instead of the steam donkey, Arthur can blow the bars off with dynamite.
• He can also kill the lawmen in the sheriff's office, take the cell keys and free Micah from the inside, or blow open the cell door with dynamite; the mission then continues as normal.
• If Arthur uses dynamite on the bars and runs quickly to the sheriff's office, the game puts him back beside Micah when the cutscene plays.

Chewing tobacco and Dead Eye tonics do not count as health items, so they can be used freely for the first three objectives. Automatic Dead Eye targeting can keep firing at enemies who are already dead, which lowers accuracy. Micah tends to rush ahead and get killed: it helps to move ahead of him, and to use Dead Eye on the lawman who rides up during the chase.

• What a modern disaster this is going to be.

  Arthur, at the steam donkey

• You goddamn maniac, I should've left you to hang.

  Arthur, as Micah opens fire on the lawmen in the street

• Hell's coming for ya, right now!

  Micah, to the lawmen

• Yes, you will all be thanked profusely, I promise.

  Micah, when Arthur tells him he owes Lenny

• The title comes from the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew (5:5): "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."
• In an interview with VentureBeat published on 5 December 2018, Rob Nelson, co-head of Rockstar North, said that the night out with Lenny in A Quiet Time was placed before this mission so that Arthur would not be seen rushing out to rescue someone he did not really care about.
• After A Quiet Time, Micah can be seen in his cell, cowering by the window, until the player frees him. The O'Driscoll prisoner cannot be killed by the player before the mission.
• While the mission is available, Arthur can no longer surrender to lawmen or bounty hunters when he is wanted in West Elizabeth: they shoot on sight.
• Before he gets his own revolvers back, Micah fights with two Cattleman Revolvers, although Arthur hands him only one. Once he has them, he draws them by spinning them on his fingers through the trigger guards.
• Sheriff Hanley appears in no other mission. Outside this mission, the sheriff of Strawberry is Vernon Farley.
• After the mission, the shopkeeper of the Wallace Station general store says that the jailbreak in Strawberry is the bloodiest he ever heard of and that the town will take a while to recover.
• In Friends in Very Low Places (Chapter 3), Arthur says he is not sure about going back to Strawberry after the Micah business. A 1907 article in the Blackwater Ledger (No. 74), "'We Are Helpless'", names Micah as a long-standing suspect in the "Strawberry massacre back in 1899".
• The mission can become unavailable if the player commits a crime or becomes wanted; the O'Driscoll prisoner can then appear outside the jail and wander the town like an ordinary passer-by.