Golden Gun: Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James & More in RDR2

Wild West gunmen like Wild Bill Hickok, Ike Clanton, and Jesse James inspired characters in Warlock and RDR2.

All articles on this site feature detailed discussion of literary allusions in Red Dead Redemption 2, and as such contain unmarked major and minor spoilers for the game, and occasionally the eventual fates of some characters in Red Dead Redemption. Read at your own risk.

We’re nearing the end of the literary works that Rockstar used to create RDR2. I want to close with an essay, so I’ll be publishing that two weeks from now. After that, I’ll be sharing more of my research into the game’s historical and cinematic influences.

Until then, here’s part 1 of more allusions to Warlock in RDR2.

Characters

Dutch and Hosea, McQuown and Curley: Parts of Warlock are written as the journal entries of character Henry Holmes Goodpasture. He writes that “Abe McQuown is a red-bearded, lean, brooding fellow, who has about him an explosive aura of power and directionless determination . . . in conversation with the man, it is difficult not to think him a fine fellow” (4). Much of this description matches Dutch Van der Linde: the powerful aura, the charisma, the determination.

Furthermore, McQuown is loosely based on the historical figure Ike Clanton. Clanton was shot and killed by Jonah V. Brighton — the same man who was later responsible for the recapture of Christopher Evans. (In Warlock, Tom Morgan is the one who kills McQuown — there’s another possible, if very loose, inspiration for Dutch’s paranoia about Arthur Morgan betraying him.)

In some chapters, Abe’s closest friend, Curley Burne, is the point of view character. He reflects that “Abe was a man he had respected and loved as he had no other man, and did still, but lately he could not bear to see where Abe was heading” (52). This is also how Hosea Matthews feels about Dutch, although he’s more vocal with his concerns. Curley “felt for Abe. It was hard when everybody turned against you. It would be hard on any man, but it was a terrible thing on Abe” (115). Dutch, too, is hypersensitive to anyone “turning on” him.

When Curley is banned from the town of Warlock, he goes back to make the point that he has the right to be there. He also means to prove that he isn’t a coward, since he knows Clay Blaisedell is going to shoot him. Hosea’s last gesture of turning back toward Agent Milton, to look death in the face, also shows his courage. Like Hosea, Curley dies in the street. (Hosea’s death is also based on John Sontag’s.)

The veteran. There are two veterans in RDR2 who had a leg shot off in the Civil War: Joe Butler, the Rhodes Veteran, and Hamish Sinclair. Both are allusions to George Holloway in Warlock, who lost the same limb the same way in the same conflict. George probably has more in common with Joe, as they share a disregard for their fellow humans, which is generally returned.

Archibald Jameson. Although mostly cut from the game, Archibald Jameson is largely based on the Warlock character Charlie MacDonald. Jameson owns the coal mine in Annesburg; MacDonald manages the silver mine in Warlock. The last section of Warlock is about the miners striking over dangerous working conditions and pay cuts. Workers at Jameson’s mine protest the same things, as mentioned in the in-game newspaper article “Annesburg Mine Accident.” In one confrontation, MacDonald defends himself: “‘I have heard from the company,’ MacDonald said. ‘They are backing me completely—completely! There is no pressure upon me to settle this strike, whatever lying rumors have been circulated to the contrary’” (352). In a letter to Leviticus Cornwall, Jameson writes, “any news you have received of mismanagement or financial difficulties at the mine in Annesburg are simply fake and I would urge you to question your sources.” (Obviously, this is also an allusion to the famously incompetent Donald Trump.) On one of the posters in Annesburg (“Notice. 50-100 Miners & Underground Men Are Wanted Immediately”), the mine manager is listed as “G. O’Donnel,” which is a regional variant of “MacDonald.”

Clay and Clive. In Warlock, two of the cowboys are twins, “the bantering Wash and the silent Chet—alike as two peas” ( Hall 60). In RDR2, horse fence Clay Davies says that his twin, Clive, doesn’t talk much. Clay is named for Clay Blaisedell, not because they share any characteristics, but to make the allusion more clear. The looseness of that allusion continues to Red Dead Online, which features the character Marshal Tom Davies. “Davies” is probably not an allusion to anything, but a way of loosely tying the characters together: Clay Blaisedell is hired as Warlock’s Marshal. “Tom” refers to Tom Morgan. Warlock blurs the lines of heroism and villainy between the two men.

Colonel Favours. Favours is partially based on General Peach. Both are older men at the end of their military careers, although Peach’s was illustrious and Favours’s was not. Both are dedicated to genocidal efforts against specific Native American tribes. Both last names are unserious English-language nouns with vaguely sexual connotations. General Peach becomes involved with suppressing the miners’ strike; Colonel Favours tries to defend against Eagle Flies’s assault on Cornwall Kerosene & Tar. General Peach assaults and badly beats a much better man than he is (Blaisedell); Colonel Favours shoots and kill Eagle Flies. Both men are killed before the story ends.

Furthermore, both characters take partial inspiration from the historical personage General George Crook. (Much more on that to come!)

Otis Miller. Otis Miller is an important figure in RDR2‘s in-game lore. Broadly speaking, Miller is based on Jesse James — he’s an outlaw who works with his brother (named Frank), and he was murdered by a cowardly member of his own gang. The song that the gang sometimes sings in camp is based on “The Ballad of Jesse James,” penned shortly after Robert Ford murdered James. Here’s a side-by-side comparison:

The James boys were cousins to the Youngers, with whom they attempted to rob the Northfield Bank. (Wallace Smith claims that young John and George Sontag were among those who saw the gang pass through their town on their way to rob Northfield.) The RDR2 song about Jack Hall is based on Cole Younger, who was sentenced to life in Stillwater Jail: the line “we tried a desperate game and lost” is often attributed to him (“Cole Younger”).

Having said all of that, much of the Otis Miller lore is based on Warlock, and especially on Clay Blaisedell and Tom Morgan. The symbol most associated with Clay is a gift given to him by a writer who covers the Wild West: a pair of gold-handled revolvers. An unassuming man, Clay rarely carries them, but his fame is such that everyone knows about them nonetheless. Otis Miller’s revolver is the only special weapon in RDR2 that’s gold-plated. It’s also interesting that the barrel of the gun looks short in its Compendium icon: Tom Morgan (anachronistically) uses a Bankers Special, which has a very short barrel. Tom also has a portrait of a nude woman hanging in his office; the gun is found with some “Erotic Photographs.” These symbols, along with RDO character Marshal Tom Davies, meld Tom Morgan and Clay Blaisedell into one person, two sides of a coin: infamous and famous, “evil” and “good.”

The gun and photographs are found in Rattlesnake Hollow, which is significant for two reasons. The first is that someone hangs posters up around Warlock that call Tom Morgan “The Black Rattlesnake of Warlock” (to his great amusement). The second is that one of the most important events in the lives of several characters — the murders of the Mexican men by Abe and his followers — happened in Rattlesnake Canyon.

This event is heavily alluded to in the in-game penny dreadful “Otis Miller and the Black-Hearted Lady.” In this story, Black Belle tells her traveling companion she “got into a scrap with some Mexicans in a ravine outside Chuparosa. Two Apache warriors got caught rustling these Mexicans’ horses.” When Abe and his men committed the murders in the canyon — after getting caught rustling their cattle — they were disguised as Apaches. She also says, “hell of a mess the military caused with all them folk. Good people. Should have let them Apaches be. Instead they brought ‘em nothing but suffering.” One of Warlock’s major characters, General Peach, spent his military career driving the Apaches out of their lands. On the cover of the penny dreadful, Black Belle is shown shooting off Otis Miller’s hat. The last thing Tom Morgan does before dying is shoot off Clay’s hat.

In “Otis Miller and the Arabian Prince,” an assailant pins Otis to the ground, holding a knife to his throat. He’s about to kill Otis when someone shoots him from behind. This exact thing happens to Tom Morgan. (More on this below!)

In “Otis Miller and the Boy from New York,” Otis orders a whiskey at the bar and someone behind him pulls a gun on him. In Warlock, Clay orders a whiskey. His would-be assailant waits until he turns around to try to draw on him. Clay is faster, but Jack Cade, still sitting at the bar, tries to shoot Clay in the back. John Gannon stops him.

All three of the scenes alluded to in the Otis Miller penny dreadfuls are pivotal moments in Warlock’s narrative. With “Arabian Prince” and “Boy form New York,” once again we see Tom and Clay combined into one character, this time via events in their lives.

Frank Heck. Heck was mostly cut from the game, so what we know about the character is thanks to dataminers. In terms of valid literary interpretation, this puts us in a weird no-man’s-land — the information is from the complete entity of the game as it exists as data, but isn’t accessible within the game as it exists as playable text. Nonetheless, the reconstructed information about Heck is illuminating as regards the writers’ use of Warlock, and ultimately their approach to creating their text.

Heck is partially based on Wild Bill Hickok: he’s a famous gunfighter, a gambler, and likes to dress stylishly. However, the character takes more precise inspiration from Warlock. First, there’s his name. During the knife fight upon which “Otis Miller and the Arabian Prince” is based, Morgan and a man named Frank Brunk are about to kill each other when Morgan’s employee, Murch, shoots and kills Brunk. One of the witnesses to this pivotal fight is Old Man Heck.

The recombination of Brunk and Heck’s names points to another (in Warlock), which points to another (in RDR2): one of the defining moments of Hickok’s life was when he accidentally shot his friend, who ran outside to try to help Hickok during a gunfight (Rosa). In Warlock, a version of this haunting event happened to Blaisedell. After killing his friend, Hickok carried his body into a nearby saloon and laid him on a table, which is what Blaisedell does after killing Morgan. Although these events are borrowed from Hickok’s life, Blaisedell is mostly based on Wyatt Earp. RDR2 combining Tom Morgan and Hickok in Frank Heck is a yet more subtle way of imagining Morgan and Blaisedell as one person. These combinations show that Warlock‘s influence on RDR2 is not just thematic, but formal: the very method of combining different people and characters into new ones comes from Oakley Hall.

Tom Morgan, like Frank Heck, is a gambler by profession. The Red Dead Wiki speculates that the High-Roller Revolver may have originally been intended for Heck, which seems reasonable, given its similarity to Wild Bill’s guns. (All of the killable gunfighters have special weapons.)

Morgan is sometimes disparagingly called “the high-roller.” It seems one of the outcomes of the player character finding Heck was going to be Heck getting angry and starting to shoot; Tom Morgan accuses someone of cheating and starts shooting during a game of cards. Finally, Heck was supposed to be located in Tumbleweed (pariah87), which is at least partially based on Tombstone, Arizona, as is the town of Warlock.

Names

Skinner Brothers. In Warlock, the Skinner Brothers (Pike and Paul) own the Acme Corral, the fictionalized version of the O.K. Corral. This is where the Skinner Brothers gang from Tall Trees gets its name.

Tom Morgan. These allusions double pleasingly. In Warlock, the name “Morgan” mostly calls to mind Morgan Earp, Wyatt Earp’s brother who was murdered during the conflicts in Tombstone. However, the appellation is the also the first in a set of three allusions to Arthurian legend found in the novel: the name alludes to Morgan le Fay, as well. In the same way, Arthur’s last name alludes to both Morgan le Fay and Tom Morgan.

Jack Hall. Jack Hall gets his last name from the author Oakley Hall.

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Bibliography