RDR2: Faithless

1: Outlaws

For my age, my life was more than complicated. But I guess an outlaw in 1899 couldn't have a simple life, not when we were a dying breed. The age of gunslingers and outlaws was almost over, the west was almost fully tamed. Yet here I was, clinging to that life like it was my only option.

My name is Ann Wright. I am nineteen years old and an outlaw, part of the notorious Van der Linde Gang.

I'd been a member of the gang for most of my life. Dutch van der Linde found me when I was only a few months old, ditched at the side of the road. He took me in, raised me, taught me how to look after myself. He was a father to me.

He treated me differently to the other women who were part of our gang. They were all under orders from Miss Grimshaw, an older woman who kept all of us in line to be honest. They rarely took part in anything the men did, mainly they served as distractions during jobs.

I, on the other hand, did. Dutch treated me exactly as he did the men of our group, letting me take part in all robberies, even giving me a main role where necessary. I could pass as a young boy or just a lost young lady, and I was a quick shot. I was an equal to them, despite my gender and young age. It was bliss.

Well, until now. We had just hit a huge score in Blackwater, but a group of glorified bounty hunters called the Pinkertons were on us in a flash. We had to ditch the money and get the hell out, and now we were stuck out here in hellish snow on some mountains trying to keep them off our trail.

John Marston and I had somehow separated ourselves from everyone else in the rush to get free of Blackwater, all we knew was to head for the mountains but it seemed as though we were well and truly lost in the snow. John was another member of the gang, a good few years older than me, but he had joined a few years after. He was a man with good intentions, but plans with him tended to go wrong more often than not, as demonstrated by our predicament.

To make matters even worse, we were at the mercy of some wolves. John's horse had been mauled to death and Roach, my black Arabian, had thrown me and run off, spooked. Most of our bullets had been used in the escape from Blackwater, but we somehow had managed to scare the wolves off for the most part with the few we had left.

We didn't escape unscathed, however. John had hideous scratches running down his face and was barely able to move as we took shelter off the side of a cliff in the hope that the wolves wouldn't return.

I was in a worse state than him. My chest had been cut with sharp claws, the warmth of blood pooling over my shirt, and a bite on my inner thigh meant my blood loss was getting severe. John had used his belt on it to try and slow the flow of blood, and the freezing temperatures were helping somewhat, but I knew if we didn't get help soon, I was a goner.

"John, can you move?" I asked, my voice strained as I lay in the cold snow.

"I guess," he said, putting pressure on my injuries.

"Go and try to find the others," I said, "Its better one of us gets out of this."

"I ain't leaving you, Ann," he growled, "Besides, I wouldn't last long in this weather by myself without a horse. We don't even know where they are!"

"But if you stay here-" I was cut off by the sound of gunshots, my eyes widening, head snapping up. Had the Pinkertons tracked us?

"Over here!" John yelled at the top of his voice, his mind going straight to us being rescued. He was certainly optimistic in comparison to me, "We're here!"

"John?" it sounded like Arthur Morgan, but there was no way he'd found us. My head fell back again, my eyes closing slightly. Were we saved, or was this some injury-induced dream?