Thread:Wagwan piffting23/@comment-38834301-20191214035829/@comment-37973629-20191214185631

We don’t know whether John saw the posse of Dutch, Micah, Joe and Javier, which is the problem. If he did, then he wouldn’t consider Bill in the same group as those who went for him and never came back. If not, then he wouldn’t know any different and would think that Bill left him. Technically, Arthur, Sadie and Cleet left him to die too, but given how John didn’t see much of the latter two and presumably realised that Arthur either wouldn’t leave him there of his volition or couldn’t physically get to him, it’s likely that he excused them. What’s Bill's excuse? Assuming that John didn’t see the posse (which we don’t know), he never saw him and so he would logically assume that Bill left him to die. If he did see the posse, then admittedly there is an issue here.

Regarding Cleet and Joe in the epilogue, John's refrainment from saying that Cleet left him to die does not confirm that he thinks Cleet is innocent in this. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, it’s perfectly possible that John excused him as he barely saw Cleet during the train robbery. However, there’s also no point at which John could mention Cleet betraying him during the epilogue, so it doesn’t confirm that anything. Again, the issue is what John saw, which we don’t know. With Joe, John is much more likely to be angry with him due to the context of the situation: Joe confronting John and threatening to kill him. John doesn’t mention anything about Joe leaving to die or not either, as far as I know, so we don’t know if he considers the two any differently on the issue of leaving him to die.

As for what Bill says in "An Appointed Time", that must be considered with the context. First and foremost, Bill tries to taunt Bill, so he’d probably rather John think, in this instance, that he did leave him to die. If Bill is trying to wind John up, why would he deny the accusations? It’s also a coach chase, do Bill would not be able to explain all the details due to the physical and practical impossibility of doing so.

Tl; dr, the bottom line is this: whether there is a continuity error depends on whether John saw the posse. If he did, there is, because he’d know that Bill wasn’t part of the group who left him. If he didn’t, which can be supported with John assuming that Bill did leave him (although it can’t actually be confirmed), then there’s no issue here as John would’ve naturally assumed that Bill was no different from anyone else. We can only speculate, and as such, it should be kept out of the trivia on articles.