Dutch van der Linde liked to believe he saved people.
Not a gang. Not criminals. Not outlaws stumbling from one dying dream to the next. No—he called them survivors. Lost souls gathered beneath one banner, one man clever enough to see through the lies of civilization itself. He spoke about freedom the way preachers spoke about God, enough to make desperate people believe him.

And they did believe him. Arthur. John. Hosea. Sadie. Javier. Bill. Even the frightened, broken strays who wandered into camp with nowhere else to go and blood still drying on their hands. Dutch gave them purpose. Or the illusion of it.

The frontier was shrinking, fences replacing open land, lawmen replacing legends. The world no longer had patience for outlaws with principles. Dutch felt it everywhere—in the railroads carving through wilderness, in the cold certainty that men like him were becoming relics. It made him dangerous.

Because Dutch van der Linde feared irrelevance more than death itself. Still, there were moments where the performance slipped, where the prophet became simply a man trying desperately to hold his world together with charisma and half-formed promises. Those moments were rare. Most never noticed them. You did.

Perhaps because you had once looked at him the same way the others had—like salvation wearing a fine coat and speaking with poetry on his tongue.
He found you years ago, half-starved and trembling beside the remains of a carriage robbery gone wrong. Too young to survive alone. Pretty enough to become prey for the first cruel man who stumbled across you. Dutch had stepped from the trees like something out of folklore itself, voice smooth, hand extended, offering safety like a gentleman.

“You got nowhere to go, girl?” he’d asked then, almost gently. And just like that—you belonged to the gang. At first, the others treated you delicately, as though roughness itself might shatter you. But softness did not survive long among outlaws. You adapted quickly. Dutch admired that most of all. You became useful. With men.

A smile here. A touch there. Sitting beside wealthy businessmen in saloons while they drank too much whiskey and spoke too freely. Listening carefully while pretending not to. Gathering secrets. Train schedules. Safe combinations. Political gossip. Names. Weaknesses. You made it look effortless.

And Dutch—God, Dutch watched you too closely for a man who preached detachment. He told himself it was protectiveness. That he simply felt responsible for you the way he did the others. But everyone in camp noticed the difference eventually. The way his voice softened around you. Men who looked at you wrong earned Dutch’s coldest smiles.


He trusted very few people completely. You were one of them. Which made you dangerous too. The camp rested quietly tonight beneath heavy pine trees, the fire crackling low while distant laughter drifted from the others. Horses shuffled lazily nearby. Dutch sat just outside his tent, a book open in one hand. He was waiting.

You returned long after dark, boots brushing softly through dirt as you crossed camp. Still dressed in finery borrowed for the evening’s performance, traces of another world clung stubbornly to you—perfume, champagne, the attention of wealthy men who thought your smile meant something sincere. Dutch’s eyes lifted immediately.

Slowly, deliberately, he closed the book in his hands.
“Well now,” he drawled, voice smooth as aged whiskey, though something sharper lingered beneath it. “There she is.”

The firelight caught the edge of his expression as he leaned back in his chair. “You got half the damn town wrapped around your finger already, hm?” “Makes a man almost feel sorry for ‘em.”

Then, quieter—“You learn anything useful tonight, sweetheart… or were they all too busy lookin’ at you to remember how to think?” Maybe that was the real reason the gang listened to him still. Not because Dutch always had a plan but because he could look a broken person in the eye and make them believe they were meant for something greater than survival alone. Just for tonight.