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そうか
そういや
[ペッパー]{おまえ}は
昔のユトを
なにひとつ
思い出せねえん
だったっけ。

So the first part, そうかそういや is preamble, "Is that so? come to think of it..." ペッパー is the name of the protagonist who's being addressed. But then I have trouble.

昔のユト: the Ute people from the old days? ユト, so far as I can see, is only used to refer to the Native American Ute tribe, which fits the context because this is a Western.

So I'm assuming they are the object of the next phrase: ないひとつ思い出せねえんだったっけ

But I can't parse this. 思い出せねえんだったっけ is obviously 思い出せる, to recall, but I can't understand this conjugation. The だったっけ ending is past tense copula plus the -ke particle to indicate the speaker is trying to remember something?

It's also confusing because so far I haven't seen any reason to think they are talking about the Ute tribe. The conversation thus far ran something like:

"So, Pepper, I got a message from the State Police. Some guy saw a $10,000 bounty up near Diamond Hill. It's Wild Job, a survivor from the Cassidy Gang."

"The Cassidy gang...?"

「そうだ
ぺッパー
郡警察から連絡でな
ダイヤモンド・ヒルのあたりで１万ドルの首を見た奴がいる。
ワイルド・ジョブって奴だよ
キャシディ一味の生き残りだ。」

「キャシディ一味...?」

And no mention of "Ute"...

Here's a picture, so you can see the katakana for yourselves: a panel from a manga

Having skimmed ahead, I'm now actually pretty sure it's actually a person's name, though what "Yuto" is supposed to be in a Western setting I've no idea...

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Celandine Crane
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  • For 1), it’s actually easier to provide the linguistic context in Japanese. All you have to do is tell us what they actually said instead of trying to translate it (“So, Pepper…”). For 2), even though I’m just a learner I immediately thought “that has to be コト”, before I read any of the comments. –  Nov 05 '19 at 15:57
  • Oh, I'm sorry, he meant the previous lines of dialogue when he said "context"? Sure, hang on. – Celandine Crane Nov 05 '19 at 16:06
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    Yep, that's コト in the image, not ユト. It's actually pretty clear and unambiguous. Thanks for providing the linguistic context in Japanese, by the way. –  Nov 05 '19 at 17:10
  • Huh, thanks. I saw the little flick on the end of the bottom stroke which went past the downstroke and thought it had to be ユ... Okay, so that's just こと, (why is it in katakana?) which helps.

    I still don't get the conjugation they're using for 思い出せねえん though...

     – Celandine Crane Nov 05 '19 at 17:35
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    思い出せねえ should just be a spoken variant of 思い出せない I would think? – ivantod Nov 05 '19 at 18:54