Notes

When he'd first met Dutch, he'd still been a member of the clergy, a relatively honorable reverend with faith in god and a family to come home to. He'd seen Dutch as one of those poor, lost souls it was his duty to assist, so, of course, like any clergyman would have, he hid him away from the rising tide of the mob in his own home, ignoring the protests of his wife. He'd sat there in the living room while his wife paced around and tentatively peeked through the blinds every few minutes, waiting with the haggard stranger he had met on the street for the mob to subside.
His name was Dutch, he said, and he was an outlaw. Despite his appearance, he was well-spoken, polite, and thoughtful, and when the angry shouts of the mob abated, he grasped the reverend's hands and expressed his deepest gratitude.
"I do believe," he said with a faint trace of bemusement, "you have just saved my life. I am forever in your debt, Reverend Swanson." He bowed even as Swanson humbly protested that he had done what any decent man would have, but when Dutch departed with his spirits seemingly restored, his wife had shouted at him with impassioned fervor.
"Oh god, if only the town knew what you just did. Gave refuge, refuge to a goddamned outlaw! He's a criminal, Orville, and if there was a mob after him it was probably because he deserved it," she screamed, a trembling index finger digging into his chest.
Swanson had protested - did all people not deserve a chance at redemption? Why should it matter what Dutch's crimes were so long as he lived another day to atone for them? His argument, he knew, was naive and simplistic, but his wife relented with an exasperated smile and a promise given under duress that he would endeavor not to bring any more criminals home with him. She, too, was a person of God, but she had always showed an alarming tolerance for traditionally ungodly acts as long as they helped her family. She was devout to two things, and her family came first.
A year later, Swanson's own convictions weakened as he drunk a mixture of opium and quickly became obsessed with the sensation. At first, he used only his own savings accumulated over the course of a decade to purchase more, but as the price rose, so did his desire, and he shamefully resorted to stealing from church donations to fund his drug habit. He was perfectly aware of what a terrible thing that was to do, but by the time he had reached that point his need for the drug had more than surpassed his conventional sense of morality and decency.
A year after that, his wife announced to him she was pregnant with a radiant smile. Swanson managed to stay clean for two entire weeks, and for a time it almost seemed as if everything would be alright, or become alright eventually. His addiction was far from gone, but as far as he knew nobody knew of it yet, which meant he could safely find a way to get rid of it before the birth of his child. He figured he would start off by slowly weaning himself off the stuff, decreasing his daily dosage until, hopefully, his need faded as well.
He had, however, completely depleted his savings, and his fellow reverends had become suspicious of the inexplicable decrease in church donations. He tried to be more careful from there on, sneaking into the church at night and asking his supplier to meet him outside of town from there on. Perhaps, though, that had been the wrong thing to do. His wife, ever observant and cynical of his habits, quickly noticed how he slipped out of the house every other night and seemed to come back with fatter pockets, until one day her suspicions had escalated to the point where she followed him out with her swollen belly and feet and watched as he slipped bills and change into his deep pockets with shaking movements and sweaty fingers.
For months she stayed silent about it, perhaps thinking that it was more important her child have a father, even an immoral scoundrel of one, rather than none at all. She became reticent, withdrawn, and Swanson barely noticed through the haze of Morphine.
Then, her water broke while Swanson lay insensibly in bed, hugging his pillow and muttering some old church song. The doctor rushed in with several members of the church who had once been close friends of Swanson and his wife, and after the child had been born and lay wrapped up and crying in the arms of her mother, she finally broke down and confessed all that she knew of Swanson's immoral habits and deeds. Swanson awoke from his drug-induced slumber to a circle of faces that seemed to surround him, surveying him and his appearance with as much disappointment as disgust and dismay. Her wife huddled with the newborn and sobbed quietly as Swanson was effectively banished from his home.
Months passed as Swanson wandered through towns and plains, a bare shell of what he had been, living off the remnants of the cash his wife had secretly given to him as he was leaving town with a glare that seemed both hateful and sorrowful. When he finally ran out, he began sleeping on benches and in the wilderness with only spare clothes to help keep him warm. He became accustomed to the routine of begging and looking pitiful - had once even tried the blind beggar routine until a shrewd bandit had stuck a pistol between his eyes.
Then, a month into his life on the streets, he met Margaret.

Margaret was, undoubtedly, not a woman of God. If anything, she seemed very intent on not being a woman of God, purposely committing crimes and saying crude things only to scorn Him. To Swanson, who had long since abandoned his faith and felt his faith had abandoned him, this improper, uncouth, vulgar woman who indulged regularly in obscene things was nothing short of an angel.
Most likely, she tolerated Swanson because association with the homeless was yet another inappropriate, unladylike thing for her to do in her quest to be as coarse and uncivil as possible. She delighted in aggressively violating every unspoken social rule there ever was, and she made quite a show of interacting with Swanson, giving him morphine and money for him to waste on more morphine, sitting down with him on the street with overalls on and talking loudly about anything and everything that might make a member of high society red in the face.
Swanson, on his part, was simply grateful he'd found someone willing to support his addiction. If she was seeking a willing partner to engage with in conversations about sex, drugs, and murder, often all at once, then he was happy to give one to her so long as she continued to supply him with Morphine.
Eventually, though, simply conversing with the homeless drug-addict was no longer enough for her - she had to something even more remarkable, even more unbelievable, to solidify her status as least ladylike lady in all of the western U.S.
So she married him. It was easy enough for Swanson to agree to it once she had threatened to pull back on her Morphine supply, and so they went to a church and convinced the priest to marry them with no big fuss they couldn't afford in the first place, and, afterward, Swanson sat on a bench and gave himself another dose of Morphine while Margaret yelled to the crowd she had just married a homeless man and didn't intend to make an honest man of him. A man pushed through and yelled at Margaret to get down, stop yelling nonsense, and come home, and it was then that Swanson realized Margaret hadn't just done something immoral and indecent, she had actually broken the law.
The whole affair, as had been that entire period in his life, was a bit of a blur. He remembered Margaret cackling with manic excitement as she pulled him through the streets and onto a train, and a suddenly new routine consisting of checking into a new motel, wasting the day away at the local bar, and running away again with their sparse belongings whenever the law came looking for them. Margaret, though, grew quickly tired and weary of the on-the-run lifestyle, and though Swanson could barely recall the specific conversation, he remembered Margaret announcing they were escaping the law by sea, to Shanghai, which she had heard was very nice this time of year.
Perhaps, though, she had never had any intention of bringing him along. Perhaps, she had simply let him tag along as a decoy while she slipped away on the ship, because, when they arrived at the port in San Francisco, she suddenly disappeared without so much as a goodbye. It didn't take long for the law to get Swanson after that.

They transported him in a small wagon dragged along by two horses. Swanson sat on the sweltering wooden bench for hours in silence, the lawmen having long since exhausted their typical list of insults for those who had committed bigamy, trying to ignore the mounting symptoms of withdrawal and the chafing of the manacles on his wrists.
People sometimes passed by on horseback, but Swanson only turned his head and tried to ignore them. A more desperate man might have shouted for help, but Swanson had lost all hope long before he had been properly detained. He wasn't too knowledgeable about the punishment for bigamy, was pretty sure it wasn't such a severe crime he had to be hanged for it, and also honestly didn't care. He was alright with dying. He had nothing to live for. He felt terrible all the time, and the only way he knew not to feel terrible was by sinning and injecting himself with a drug he had no legal method to obtain. He wasn't even sure why he hadn't considered dying as a viable solution to all of his problems before.