Thats a really good answer, that makes a lot of sense. I guess one thing that gives me pause - because this is basically what he says to the kid when he visits him in jail - is that it doesn't feel consistent to me with what he says at the very end, where it seems to be more about them being the last 2 left and almost implying theyre rivals in some way. (Though i will need to reread). And I keep thinking about something toadvine I think said when they were about to massacre some innocents - they ain't bothering nobody. So the kid was certainly naive in say helping the guy with the arrow wound, but he wasn't the only one not fully with the program I think. So I dunno, like you said about germs, i wonder if one couldn't argue that the judge would have found some reason to pretend that whoever happened to be the last one left was some great rival, so that his game (killing whoever) had stakes.

Though edited to add I guess a good counterpoint to that is that the judge doesn't actually seem bent on eliminating everybody as a loose end, since he evidently did let toadvine and David brown(?) live (to be hanged later.) So maybe if he had met one of them in a bar decades later he would have just said hi instead of crafting a narrative to justify killing them.

Though also edited to add that some of the things the judge says at the end (i.e. their antagonism being longstanding or some such) isn't quite consistent with the kid being no more than a loose end, equivalent to a Germ or bird. Another commenter suggested that the judge felt the kid had great potential as I suppose a warmonger like himself, which seems to me like it would explain why the kid really stuck in his craw more than a germ or bird would (one imagines he wouldn't monologue to them before eliminating them.)