"No, Mr. Callander, you can't do this!" Benedict cried out in terror.
Davey didn't answer. He slowly raised his Colt and leveled it at Benedict's head.
"No — please! I can work for you. I'll brew moonshine. I will — it's not hard for me, sir!" Benedict shouted, seeing Davey's finger already on the trigger.
"Oh, you deceived me, Mr. Benedict. So you lied to me, did you?" Davey said, his voice cold. "I hate being deceived."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Callander, it's my fault. I'll never lie to you again. Please spare me — I… I'll work for you properly!"
Faced with Benedict's pleas, Davey slowly lowered the Colt. Just as Benedict let out a shuddering breath, Davey's cold voice cut in: "Those who deceive me must pay. Mac, break his left leg."
Mac chuckled, snatched a wooden club from the ground, and brought it down hard on Benedict's calf.
Benedict screamed in agony — his left shin snapped.
Davey had no patience for quack peddlers. Given any chance, Benedict would have run; breaking a leg would keep him honest. Besides, as the deputy from Valentine had said, men like him had killed who knew how many people — shooting them wouldn't be excessive.
"John, take him. We're going to Painted Sky."
A broken leg wouldn't kill him. They wanted Benedict to feel the pain now so he wouldn't think of running later. Mac and John hauled Benedict out of the cellar and strapped him onto John's horse.
...
John was stunned. Not by the brutality — a broken leg was nothing to someone who'd been on the wrong side of the law since childhood. What shocked him was Davey's plan: going into the moonshine business.
He wanted to speak, but didn't know how to start. Mac, however, asked bluntly, "Davey, we getting into the moonshine business?"
Davey nodded. "That's right. With Dutch, I can't see any other way out."
"All he thinks about is robbery. Tahiti and mangoes — the man's lost in his own head," Mac spat. "Back in Colter Village I realised times are changing. If we keep doing things the old way, we'll end up caught by the Pinkerton Detective Agency and swinging from the gallows."
"Bootlegging has competition, sure, but those revenue agents aren't the Pinkertons. We'll have an easier time dealing with them," Davey went on. "I checked — Valentine's crew is mostly O'Driscoll. We were going to handle them anyway."
In that moment Davey made clear his distrust of Dutch and his intent to leave the gang.
"Davey, my brother, I'm with you," Mac said without hesitation.
John fell silent, regretting that he'd come.
John Marston was born in 1873. His father, a Scottish immigrant, had conceived him during an encounter with a prostitute aboard a ship bound for New York. His father longed for Scotland but despised his own great-grandfather and left home. Illiterate, he taught John little; later he drank himself blind in a bar on Chicago's South Side, was beaten and blinded, and died in 1881. John was eight and was sent to an orphanage.
After some time there, John escaped and, in 1885 at just twelve, joined the Van der Linde Gang. Under Dutch's guidance he learned hunting and how to handle weapons. Like Arthur, John regarded Dutch as a father. Dutch always called Arthur and John "my children." John's loyalty to Dutch ran deep.
Davey had chosen to tell John because he knew how much John loved Abigail, despite her painful past. Abigail's dream was to leave the gang's violent life and raise little Jackie properly. Davey — who knew the plot of the game from a previous life — understood that when push came to shove, John would choose Abigail. It was a natural choice: nobody asked him to kill Dutch, only to secure a better life for little Jackie.
John was torn now, but Davey was confident Abigail could persuade him.