Outlaws from the West

Before the mission: Blackwater

The game opens on white text over a black screen: "By 1899, the age of outlaws and gunslingers was at an end. America was becoming a land of laws... Even the west had mostly been tamed. A few gangs still roamed but they were being hunted down and destroyed."

The mission follows a failed ferry robbery in Blackwater, in April 1899. The robbery itself is never shown. The gang has fled into the Grizzlies, where a late spring storm has caught it.

The storm and Colter

At night, the gang's wagons push through a snowstorm in the Grizzlies. Reverend Orville Swanson tells Dutch that Abigail says Davey is dying and that they must stop. Hosea adds: "If we don't stop soon, we'll all be dying. This weather, it's May..." Arthur, sent ahead by Dutch, rides back and reports an abandoned mining town nearby. He leads the wagons there. The title card "Chapter I: Colter" follows.

Hosea opens the first cabin, revolver drawn. Abigail walks in first, followed by Bill Williamson and Arthur, who carry Davey Callander on a stretcher. Susan Grimshaw sends Mary-Beth to light the fire, Karen to fetch blankets and Pearson to check the food. Abigail says: "Davey's dead." Swanson tells her there was nothing more she could have done, and Hosea asks how they will get supplies. Dutch announces that he sent John and Micah ahead to scout and that he and Arthur will ride out to find one of them.

Dutch then addresses the gang. He names the people they have lost or cannot account for: Davey, Jenny Kirk, Sean MacGuire and Mac Callander, saying of Sean and Mac: "they may be okay, we don't know." He says: "There ain't nobody following us through a storm like this one." He adds that they may be at Colter for a few days, and asks Pearson and Susan to turn the place into a camp. He ends with: "Stay strong. Stay with me. We ain't done yet!"

The ride to the homestead

Outside, Arthur asks what really happened on the boat. Dutch answers: "We missed you, that's what happened." Charles Smith brings them two horses; Dutch tells him to get indoors and rest his hand. Arthur rides Charles's mare, Taima. On the trail, Arthur says he cannot believe they lost Davey too. Dutch answers: "He's the last one, Arthur. No more." He tells Arthur he is the only one he can rely on to stay strong. The player can then ask about the money or about whether Blackwater was a trap (see Choices and variants).

They meet Micah Bell, who has found a homestead "blazing with light and noise", where it sounds like a party. Dutch tells him that Davey and Jenny did not make it. Micah has not seen John since the storm came in.

The shootout at the Adler Ranch

At the homestead, Dutch sends Micah behind a wagon and Arthur behind a shed. He goes to the door alone: "One lonely man is a lot less intimidating than three nasty-looking degenerates." He poses as a lost traveler and asks for a few cans of food.

Micah finds a body under a sheet in the wagon. One of the men recognizes Dutch and shouts: "It's goddamn Dutch van der Linde, you morons!" The men are Colm O'Driscoll's gang. Arthur or Micah fires first, and the three outlaws kill the O'Driscolls at the house. Two of the dead are named Billy and Declan.

Dutch and Arthur search the cabin for food, medicine and ammunition. Arthur points out a large pool of blood on the floor. Arthur notes that there is a large price on Colm's head; Dutch answers that wanting Colm dead "is about the only thing me and Uncle Sam agree on." Arthur suggests moving the women and Jack to the house, but Dutch does not want the gang to split up.

The barn

In the barn, an O'Driscoll who hid during the shootout jumps Arthur from the loft, shouting: "You bastards shot my cousin!" Arthur beats him while Dutch watches. Under questioning, the man says the others are at an old mining camp southwest of the ranch, near a lake, and that they plan to rob a train and blow the tracks. Dutch leaves his fate to Arthur (see Choices and variants). Arthur then calms a Tennessee Walker in the barn, and Dutch tells him to keep it.

Sadie Adler

A woman screams inside the house. Micah has found her hiding in the cellar and insists she is one of the O'Driscolls. She throws a bottle at him, then holds him off with a knife from the table. Dutch tells Micah: "No, she ain't, Micah. Look at her." Micah flips the table, a lantern falls and the house catches fire. Dutch and Arthur push Micah away, and Dutch calms the woman and leads everyone outside. She says the men came three days earlier and killed her husband. Arthur helps her onto Dutch's horse and tells her: "We're bad men, but... we ain't them." On the ride back she gives her name: Sadie Adler. The house burns with her husband Jake's body still in the wagon.

Back at Colter

At Colter, Lenny Summers is on watch and calls the others out. Dutch tells Hosea that O'Driscolls are in the area, scouting a train; Hosea answers: "That's the last thing we need right now, Dutch." Dutch asks Tilly and Karen to look after Sadie. He tells Abigail: "They turned her into a widow... animals." He says he has not slept in three days. Susan hands out the rooms. Micah protests that Arthur gets a room to himself while he shares a bunk room with Bill and others, using a racial slur, and Hosea sends him to bed. The mission continues directly into Enter, Pursued by a Memory.

Deaths

• Davey Callander: carried into Colter already dead, from wounds suffered at Blackwater.
• Jenny Kirk: already dead when the mission begins; Dutch tells Micah she did not make it.
• Jake Adler: killed by the O'Driscolls three days before the gang reaches the ranch.
• The O'Driscolls at the house, two of them named Billy and Declan, killed by Arthur, Dutch or Micah; the O'Driscoll in the barn only if Arthur kills him.

On the ride: the money or Blackwater

On the ride to the Adler Ranch, the player picks one of two questions.

• "What about the money?": Dutch says the money is "stashed with the rest of the money in town" and that the gang cannot go back for it any time soon.
• "Was it a trap?": Dutch answers about the Pinkertons, "That many men? Oh, they knew we were coming", and adds that there was money on the boat, which he stashed in town before they fled.

In one of two optional exchanges with Arthur on the same ride, Micah says the gang has "too many mouths to feed."

The shootout and the search

• If Arthur does not shoot to protect Dutch, Micah does it instead, and Dutch comments if Arthur takes cover in the wrong spot.
• Arthur can find a wedding photograph of the couple in the house and remark that "the poor bastard was married too"; if Dutch is still in the room, he tells Arthur to put down anything they cannot eat or drink.

The O'Driscoll in the barn

After the interrogation, Dutch leaves the man's fate to Arthur, who can kill him, knock him out or let him go. A spared O'Driscoll reappears in Old Friends, shouting "You should've killed me when you had the chance!", and is killed there.

The horse from the barn

Arthur can later offer to give the horse from the barn back to Sadie at Colter; she says it belonged to an O'Driscoll.

Mission failure

The mission fails if the player:

• aggravates, assaults, kills or abandons Dutch or Micah, or lets either of them be killed;
• abandons the homestead;
• assaults, kills or abandons his own horse or the horse in the barn;
• dies.

The mission counts toward the Gold Rush trophy (70 Gold Medals in story missions) and Best in the West (100% completion).

• Now, if I could... throw myself in the ground in their stead... I'd do it... gladly.

  Dutch, about the dead and the missing, in the cabin at Colter

• Least we don't need to worry about Pinkertons tailing us in this.

  Arthur, on the trail with Dutch

• Davey was a real fighter. Both of them Callander boys is, or... was.

  Micah, on learning that Davey is dead

• He'll be fine. Things always turn out right for that boy.

  Arthur, about John, whom Micah has not seen

• Well, he started it!

  Arthur, to the O'Driscoll who jumps him in the barn

• Sneaky little bastard... should I kill him?

  Arthur, to Dutch, after the fight in the barn

• Hosea's line in the opening storm (see Story) is the one Arthur remembers in A Fork in the Road with high honor.
• Davey Callander's grave is in a small graveyard at Colter and counts toward the "Paying Respects" trophy.
• The opening scene of the caravan in the storm takes place outside the playable map, northwest of Spider Gorge.
• The map can be opened during the opening cutscene; Micah, Charles and Dutch have markers on it.
• The Old Lantern exists only in this mission, and the compendium can be opened during it, then stays locked until The Aftermath of Genesis.
• Charles's mare Taima is the only gang member's horse the game intends the player to ride in a mission.
• A few of the O'Driscolls' horses stand outside the barn and run off during the shootout. Once Arthur has led the horse out of the barn, an invisible wall stops him from going back in.