This section contains spoilers.
Red Dead Redemption begins in 1911, following John Marston, a former outlaw in the Dutch Van Der Linde gang. Marston is told by Edgar Ross and Archer Fordham of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he will be granted amnesty for his crimes and his wife and son will be released from their custody if he captures or kills the members of his former gang. He agrees and sets out on his journey, starting with a gang leader named Bill Williamson.
Marston finds Williamson at his gang stronghold Fort Mercer, where they have a shootout. Marston is shot and the gang leaves him for dead. Bonnie MacFarlane, a nearby rancher, finds him and brings him home to help him heal. After recovering, Marston performs various jobs around the ranch to repay MacFarlane. In this town, he also works with Leigh Johnson, a U.S. Marshal, and his two deputies Jonah and Eli, Seth Briars, a treasure hunter, an arms dealer called Irish, and a traveling con artist named Nigel West Dickens.
Williamson learns that Marston is stays at the ranch and burns down the MacFarlane barn. Marston returns to the stronghold with Johnson, Dickens, and Briars to kill Williamson, but Williamson has fled the country, traveling to Mexico with Javier Escuella, who is another former member of Marston’s gang.
