DISCLAIMER: The following is an original work of fan fiction based on the television series "The Magnificent Seven". No infringement upon the copyrights held by CBS, MGM, Trilogy Entertainment Group, The Mirisch Corp. or any others involved with that production is intended. No profit is being made - enjoy!!

Mongoose: A Sensible Man

by
Eleanor Tremayne, Ezquire

ACT TWO

If you would like to see St. Barb's illustrations, click on the links as you read.

No words were exchanged when Ezra joined his fellow peacekeepers on the road outside of Four Corners. Standish tucked himself in a length behind the rearguard of Buck and J.D., Job keeping the slower pace asked of him without fighting to bring himself into the herd. The long-legged black had won Ezra's respect for its intelligent equanimity and stamina long ago, and riding him was turning into an unexpected pleasure. He felt a little peck of guilt watching Chaucer and Chris argue over Larabee's desire to set the pace and Chaucer's desire to fall to the rear and harass Job. He found himself disappointed when the human momentarily won the argument.

'Tomorrow,' Ezra silently promised his horse, smiling at Chris having to pull the bay's head forward from Chaucer's latest attempt to look back over its shoulder. 'I'll make it up to you tomorrow, my friend.'

It was early afternoon when Vin reined Peso in, holding up a hand to halt the rest of the troop. Swinging his leg over the back of his horse, he dropped to the ground. Kneeling down on the road, he pressed his ear to the dirt track.

"Riders comin'," he announced tersely. "Two of 'em."

"Ezra," Chris called.

Standish walked Job forward until the big black stood shoulder to shoulder with Chaucer.

"Riders comin'," Chris repeated, having the devil's own time making Ezra's bay behave.

"It is a public road," Ezra pointed out. "One would expect there to be traffic on it."

"Go find out what kind," Chris growled.

Ezra flicked a finger against the brim of his hat, looking over his shoulder to collect Buck and Vin to help him.

With a great exertion of will, Chris managed to turn Chaucer away from Ezra and lead Nathan, Josiah, and JD off the road.

++++

"Woah," called out the first rider blocking Ezra's further progress down the road. Buck and Vin moved their horses sideways, flanking the two in front of them.

Big men carrying big guns, Buck observed, noting that they hadn't been riding for very long as sweat had yet to turn the dust on their mounts to mud.

"Gentlemen?" Ezra prompted pleasantly, tucking his jacket behind the holster on his hip. Vin and Buck weren't so subtle, each drawing their weapon.

"You boys wouldn't be the law outta Four Corners by any chance?" the first rider asked.

"Forgive me if I fail t'see how that's any of your business," Ezra replied with a crocodile smile.

"Lookit that jacket," the second rider muttered to his comrade with a dubious look at Ezra's red tailcoat. "Must be the pretty boy the mayor told us t'look for."

Ezra's smile disappeared and the hand that had been hovering near his right hip landed on the hilt of his Remington.

"Easy, boys," the first rider soothed, raising both hands in token of his peaceful intentions. "We're deputies a Sheriff Conners, outta Domino Flats. Got orders from Mayor Rupert t'ride out and meet seven Federals comin' in from Four Corners. Said we'd recognize 'em by the number and the fella wearing the fancy red coat and ridin' the big black horse."

'Black horse?' Ezra repeated to himself. The mayor's informant had very up-to-date information.... Which meant that they had indeed been set up.

"You fellers are a pretty long way from Domino Flats," Vin observed, cocking his modified Winchester Repeater.

"Yeah, well, things are a mite riled up back in town," the first rider grinned. "Sheriff Conners hadta move his witness to a more peaceable locale."

Given the situation in Domino Flats as outlined by Judge Travis, it was a credible explanation, Ezra mused, but not one he believed for a moment.

"We are indeed the Condotierri^[i] you're seekin'," Ezra said, taking his hand off his pistol to shove his hat back on his head.

"Beg y'r pardon?" the first rider blinked.

"We're the fellers y're lookin fer," Vin translated.

"What happened t' the rest of ya?" the first rider asked, looking at the surrounding cover suspiciously.

"Circumstances dictated a Mycenean subterfuge,^[ii]" Ezra answered, fiddling with his watch.

The first rider shifted in his saddle, before turning a beseeching look in Vin's direction. Tanner nodded at the man, spitting his agreement with Ezra's explanation into the dust of the road.

"The other four doubled back," Buck guessed. "There's been a little local excitement, figured maybe we could flush it out if it looked like we'd left the town unattended."

"Oh," the first rider answered.

"Of course, we'd have t'be idiots to actually do that," Ezra said blandly. "As I'm sure you gentlemen would agree."

The two riders exchanged glances, not quite sure how to answer without insulting Standish.

"I'm Clem," the first rider introduced himself, electing to avoid the issue all together. "This here's Jasper."

"Let's git goin'," Jasper urged. "The sooner this boy's in your hands, the happier I'll be."

"Let us hope the gentleman in question feels similarly. Lead on, gentlemen," Ezra ordered, with a flat-handed English salute against the brim of his hat.

++++

"I heard ya the first time, Ezra," Chris muttered, hidden out of earshot but within sight of his three point men. Standish set the forward pace at a walk, giving their backup the time they needed to get into position to cover them.

"Let's get ahead of 'em," Chris ordered, leading the way to where the horses were tied. Even Chaucer waited patiently, as if aware that the time had come to put personal issues aside for some serious work.

++++

"It's a trap," Chris announced, looking down on the compact sprawl of sheds and chicken coops that lay down-slope and thankfully upwind of the four peacekeepers. They'd beaten the purposefully slowed down group on the road to their objective by some ten minutes, enough time to out-flank the sentries and dig in behind the scant cover of brush, boulders, and rubble that marked the borders of the compound. The horses waited patiently a hundred yards away, hidden in a clump of low sprawling trees and brush that provided insects and shade for the denizens of the chicken farm.

"Those men on the roofs could be look-outs," Nathan suggested. "In case a lynch mob shows up."

Chris shook his head. "Only reason to have this many chickens in one place is if y'got a lotta mouths to feed. Only places with that many people out here are the ranchers."

Nathan smiled, shaking his head. Chris's sneaky mind never failed to impress him.

"Josiah, you go right," Chris ordered. "Nathan, cover the left. Watch Ezra - let him talk them out of it if he can, but if he can't, follow his lead. J.D., you're with me."

The two big men nodded, crawling off on elbows to their appointed stations, their rifles clutched awkwardly in their hands and their gunbelts digging furrows in the sandy scrub.

"Here they come," J.D. whispered, crawling forward to get a better look at the five approaching riders.

"Keep your ass down!" Chris whispered back, whacking the kid's backside as it rose perilously upward, out of cover.

++++

"Good Lord," Ezra gagged, putting his handkerchief over his mouth. It was a stupidly blatant trap that had been laid for them: Only the need of meeting the demands of a ranch's commissary could possibly justify a chicken farm of this size with no other market for its production within any practicable delivery area.

"Damn!" Buck agreed, fanning his face with his hat to try and dissipate the overwhelming stink of chicken shit on a hot day.

"Pigs is worse," Vin said.

"Sorry 'bout that, boys," Clem apologized, grinning.

"Nonsense," Standish gasped. "What better place to hide our Good Samaritan - no self-respectin' miscreant would come near this place."

"Y'get used to it after a while," Jasper told them.

"As the devil says about hell, no doubt," Ezra muttered from behind his handkerchief. "I think we'll just wait here while you gentlemen retrieve our mutual friend."

Buck didn't glance over at Vin to see if the tracker had picked up Ezra's cue to be ready to run or fight. Standish would never let him hear the end of it if such an obvious move tipped their hand to their opponents.

"Don't you boys trust us?" Clem asked.

"Hell, no," answered Vin. "You got rifles on them roofs," he pointed out, nodding at the distant flat-topped sheds and coops that lay between them and the main house.

"Well, of course we do," Clem replied. "We're protectin' ourselves from any ranchers who might come callin'."

"Then you'll understand if we do the same," Ezra said. "I repeat, gentlemen, we'll stay here while you fetch our charge."

"Sheriff Conners ain't gonna let the witness outta his custody if he ain't seen you with his own eyes and made sure you're the real thing," Clem countered. "Reckon you fellers wouldn't neither, if you was in his place."

"We will await Sheriff Conners' pleasure," Ezra agreed.

"Do what?" the bewildered Jasper asked.

"Sheriff wants to meet us, he can ride out here," Buck translated.

"Now boys, don't you think that's pushin' it a mite?" Clem chided.

Ezra chuckled mirthlessly. "Y'all may be Indian lovers, gentlemen, but I am not. If you think for one moment that I am willin' to take any chances with our lives for the sake of one of those red-skinned reptiles, I would advise you to think again."

Vin shifted in his saddle, unsure if Ezra was conning the two ranch-hands, expressing his true opinion of Indians, or both.

"Hell, we still ain't sure you're who you say y'are," Jasper pointed out.

"We do indeed have the advantage of you there," Ezra agreed, conveying to Job through the subtlest of tugs against his bit that he wanted the horse to begin backing up. Job obeyed promptly and well, but Ezra missed the air of 'nervous horse' Chaucer would have put into the maneuver. "But I assure you that I will be pleased to present our credentials to Sheriff Conners - as soon as he presents his for my inspection."

Buck and Vin took Ezra's hint, backing away from the range of those rifles on the shed roofs as well.

++++

"Good, good," Chris chanted under his breath, his eyes glued to Job's swinging head. Ezra was giving the rancher's men something to look at, distracting them from realizing that Vin and Buck were nearly out of rifle range. Another few feet, and the boys could ride the hell out of there while the four of them pinned the ranchers down in a cross-fire that would let them all escape back to Four Corners, their job done. 'Almost home, boys....'

++++

Jasper was getting restless, his hand moving back toward his holster. A bright spark of light from the roof of the closest coop dazzled in Ezra's peripheral vision, the light from the evening sun reflecting off the barrel of a rifle as its owner shifted his position for a better shot at the retreating Vin. The angle was wrong for the tracker to see it, Ezra realized, but Buck could - and Buck's instincts would be to protect Tanner at any cost to himself.

"Go!" Ezra yelled, pulling back on the reins and pressing his legs tightly against the sides of his horse.

Job obediently stopped in his tracks, too disciplined to join Peso and Clyde as their riders sent them galloping away from the chicken farm.

++++

"Shit!" Chris swore, helpless to do anything but watch Vin and Buck disappear from the range of the snipers, both men dropping from their saddles to ride Indian-style out of the ambush, leaving Ezra behind, because Job - intelligent, patient, willing Job, with all the heart and stamina in the world - had been born, bred, and raised a cow pony... and cow ponies don't know how to dance airs above the ground.

++++

'Ah, hell,' Ezra silently swore, not allowing his chagrin to show in his expression. Smiling sardonically, he slowly raised his hands high and wide in response to Clem and Jasper cocking and aiming their pistols squarely at his head.

"Damn it!" Buck swore, swinging back up into the saddle and reining Clyde in along side Vin. They were out of range of the rifles, but close enough to see Jasper removing Ezra's Remington from his hip holster.

"Never thought I'd miss that damn horse," Vin sighed, shaking his head in disgust.

"Drop your guns, boys!" Clem's voice cracked with the strain of making them hear him. He rode up beside Job and put the muzzle of his pistol inches away from Ezra's temple. "Drop 'em and ride back here real slow, or I'll blow Pretty Boy's head off!"

"Stand fast!" Ezra barked, his voice easily rolling across the distance, carrying with it his expectation of being obeyed. The snap of it erased fourteen years and the Mason/Dixon line for Buck and Vin, brought them up to attention and held them frozen with its authority.

The spell lasted until they saw Clem turn his horse into Job's side and put his gun against Ezra's head. Vin's rifle and Buck's pistol hit the packed earth of the trail to the chicken farm at the same time.

"We're comin'!" Buck bellowed back at Clem.

"Nice and slow, now," Jasper instructed.

++++

"Shit, shit, shit!" Chris swore again. More of the ranchers' men were appearing, coming out from their hiding places to add to the guns covering the three captives.

"Larabee!" Clem hollered. "I know you're out there, Larabee! I'll give you to a count a' five, then I'm blowing Pretty Boy's head off!"

++++

"You're wastin' your time," Ezra advised him, eyeing Clem's approaching reinforcements. The odds of wiggling out of this trap were going from long to astronomical.

"Shut up!" Jasper ordered and Clem yelled out, "One!"

"I know it might be hard for an inbred, slope-browed, slack-jawed scalawag like yourself to grasp, but Mister Larabee and the rest of our colleagues are in Four Corners."

"Two!" Clem yelled, uneasy about the docility of Vin and Buck as their horses came to a halt two lengths from him.

"You're wastin' your breath," Buck advised. "Ain't nothin' out there t'hear ya but chickens and cayotes."

"Three!"

"Sir, you're insultin' your intelligence," Ezra complained, grateful that Vin and Buck had left him room to work. While it wasn't the hand he'd hoped to play, he was confident that it wouldn't take more than a well-telegraphed escape attempt to convince the intellectual midgets surrounding him that Chris and the others were indeed elsewhere.

"Four!"

Licking his lips nervously, Ezra moved his head to look at the approaching gunmen and the surrounding area. He lowered his hands a few inches, scrunching his shoulders up as he glanced furtively over at the counting Clem, just to make sure the idiot was paying attention.

Buck had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at the performance and Vin hid his amusement in the shadow of his slouch hat.

"Five!" Clem bellowed, waiting.

Behind the scant shadow of their sheltering boulder, J.D. looked over at Chris. Feeling the panic radiating from the kid, Chris winked at him.

"I mean it, Larabee! I'll kill your boy if you don't give yourself up!"

'Sucker!' Ezra thought at Clem, fighting his instincts to keep his grab for his reins clumsy and slow. "Whoa!" he heard Vin cry as he and Peso helpfully kicked up dust and Buck and Clyde muscled into Jasper.

Congratulating himself on his powers of observation, Clem was ready to stop Ezra, lowering his pistol in order to grab the reins of the big black horse. The desperate try to make a getaway in the face of impossible odds convinced the ranch hand as nothing else could that Larabee and the other three Federals had indeed doubled back to town.

'Nearly there!' Ezra thought, putting up a token resistance against Clem when he grabbed Job's reins. The dodge was almost in the bag when a shot from Josiah's rifle rang out from the right flank of the only cover available. It caught Clem in the side, tumbling him off his horse.

'Damn it, Josiah!' Ezra silently swore, too busy to curse Sanchez aloud. Kicking Job forward, he turned him like a corkscrew. Even as he told the horse to jump over the moaning Clem, Ezra knew he wasn't going to make it and cursed his own stupid lapse of concentration for getting them all into this mess.

He felt the bullet hit his back at the same time that Job launched himself, the impact combining with the momentum of the leap and the shock of the horse's front legs hitting the ground to throw Ezra over the animal's neck. He threw his arms up and around his head, trying to shield it before he hit the ground hard, bouncing into Job's path. He felt the dull thud of hooves trampling him, heard Buck scream his name, and wondered if he'd die before he started to feel the pain....

++++

"Ezra!" J.D. yelled, scrambling out of cover in an unthinking attempt to try and get to Standish.

"No!" Chris bellowed, tackling the kid and bringing him down within the brush line. "Damn it, J.D., you can't help him if you're dead!" he panted, watching Ezra's body roll under Job's driving legs and Buck dive off Clyde toward Standish.

'And he won't be worth helping if they've already killed him...' he added silently to himself, his fingers digging into J.D.'s arms. Job thundered down the road in front of them, leaving Ezra splayed in the dirt like he was a rag doll a child had flung to the ground in a fit of temper.

From the left, Chris heard Nathan's rifle join Josiah's, drawing fire from the rooftops to cover Vin's retreat.

Tanner didn't go far, leaping off his horse at the place where his modified Winchester lay on the ground. Peso raced on, Clyde right behind him, the two horses following Job out of sight down the road.

Vin came up firing, balancing himself on one knee. Two of the ranchers' gunmen went down, then a third, and just when Vin thought they might make it out of this one after all, Buck went down an arm's length from Ezra with a bullet in his leg. Jasper was on him in a heartbeat, using Ezra's body to shield his back and Buck to cover his front.

"Stop shootin' or he's dead!" Jasper yelped, his arm around Buck's neck and his gun's barrel stuck in Wilmington's ear.

Vin had no choice but to obey, holding his fire while his heart hammered against his ribs.

"Y'hear me, Larabee?" Jasper yelled. "Stop shootin' and give yourselves up, or he's dead!"

J.D. looked beseechingly at Chris, his young eyes begging what he wouldn't ask.

"Hold your fire," Chris called back. "We're comin' out."

There was no other choice, now. Every chance Ezra had worked so hard to give them had been blown straight to hell, taking Standish along for the ride.

Chris led the way out into the open, J.D. behind him and Nathan and Josiah appearing from their flanking cover.

"Throw down your guns!" Jasper yelled, keeping his pistol against the back of Buck's head. "Yer gunbelts, too!"

Teeth grinding, Chris did as he was told, counting the thuds from the weapons of the others hitting the ground behind him to make sure nobody pulled another stupid stunt.

With five of the seven Federals disarmed and holding their hands in the air, the sixth one legged and held in check by a very persuasive gun, and the seventh lying in a broken-backed jumble on the ground, the ranchers swarmed out from behind sheds and coops to celebrate their victory.

Chris didn't feel the hands pushing and pulling at him, didn't see the men swarming around him, didn't hear their threats. His whole world had become the sight of Ezra's face, with its blood-spattered mouth and its wide-open green eyes that stared up into the sun without blinking....

'Breathe, damn it!' Chris silently begged Ezra. The only comfort he had was the knowledge that if Standish had been riding Chaucer, that damned horse's toe-clips would have split him open like a ripe tomato.

"Hold up there, nigger," Chris heard one of the hands order. He couldn't make himself turn to look; if someone had put a gun to his head to make him, he wouldn't have been able to look away from Standish. His rough landing had thrown open the lapels of Ezra's coat, giving Larabee an unobstructed view of the stiff white collar wilting into a soggy, bloody mess from the shot that had brought the younger man down.

"Let me help him," Nathan's voice pleaded, and Chris knew Jackson was fighting to get past the guns and the hands holding him back from Ezra.

Letting two of his compatriots wrestle a cursing, uncooperative Buck to his feet, Jasper limped over to peer down at Standish.

"Hey there, Pretty Boy," Jasper called. When the rancher kicked the brown stain dulling the bright metal brocade of Ezra's waistcoat that was spreading just above his chest wound, Chris lunged forward to intervene, but hard rifle barrels and rough hands held him back.

Ezra's body heaved up with the force of the blow, but no flicker of pain complicated the vacancy of his expression.

'God damn it, Ezra! Stop playing Possum!' Chris ordered in silent desperation, but for once, Standish didn't read his mind. He just lay there, his right leg twisted under him and his arms flung gracelessly wide of his body. Sand had crept into the creases of the pleated white cuffs that framed his wrists and his hands were empty, his skinned knuckles making his unmoving fingers look clumsy and harmless....

Just to make sure Ezra was dead, Jasper kicked him again, rolling Standish over onto his face. Suddenly, Chris had to look away, unable to face the torn fabric puckered over the bloody furrow stretching across Ezra's back.

'Not much of a hole at all,' Jasper thought, inspecting the entrance wound. 'I oughtta be able to get it patched pretty good in town....'

"Pretty Boy's past helpin'," Jasper said aloud, jerking his head to his fellows in an order to drag Nathan back into line. Jackson struggled against the men taking him away from Ezra, until they shoved him to the ground and made a circle of guns and rifles around him to keep him in his place, blocking Standish from his view.

'You,' Buck promised Jasper silently, 'are a dead man.'

"Boss ain't gonna like this," a nervous, rabitty ranch-hand whined. "We was s'posed to take 'em alive."

"Six outta seven ain't bad. 'Sides, ain't our fault if Pretty Boy don't know how to ride a horse," Jasper replied.

"He ain't gonna like it," the rabbit insisted with a worried glance at the five angry, silent men and one crying boy who stood like rocks around them, their grief over their dead friend making them heedless of their own danger.

"Seems a shame to let them fancy clothes go to waste," Jasper grunted, beginning to wrestle Standish out of his jacket. If it didn't fit, he could always sell it.

"Leave him alone!" Buck cried, trying to break away from the arms restraining him. A rancher kicked his wound, dropping him to the ground in agony.

"Buck!" J.D. cried, earning a punch in the gut from a rifle butt when he tried to go to Wilmington's side.

"He ain't gonna need a fancy jacket where he's goin'," Jasper grinned, displaying his prize to his laughing fellows. He rifled its pockets, tossing the unopened decks of cards he found to his audience. "From what I hear, it's hot in hell."

"He'll be waitin' when ya get there," Vin reminded him. "And we ain't gonna be far behind."

"Reckon you'll be there long before me," Jasper chuckled.

Chris smiled, and the rabbit took a step that put Jasper between him and Larabee.

"Ever seen a man gut-shot?" Chris asked, his gaze locked on Jasper. "They can last for weeks, if you shoot 'em just right..." he promised.

Jasper kept grinning, going back to the body to collect Ezra's watch, fob, and chain.

Greed got the better of the rabbit and he decided to help himself to Ezra's boots. It was a struggle, but finally the first boot came off - and with it came a thick fold of cash.

"Hoo whee!" the rabbit cried, abandoning the boot for the loot. "There's nigh on a thousand dollars here!"

"There's at least five hundred here!" Jasper crowed, plucking a thick fold of cash and an elegant silver penknife from Ezra's vest pocket. "They must pay you Federals somethin' good!"

Buck closed his eyes in anguish. 'One thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars short this week, Ezra?' he silently asked the dead man.

Jasper, the rabbit, and three other men with enough seniority to assert their rights to the spoils were on Standish like hounds worrying a fox to pieces. Ezra's body was graceless as they stripped it, flopping and flailing as the ranchers jerked and pulled at it.

Only Vin watched the scavengers without flinching. He studied every face, took note of which rancher stole Ezra's ascot and tie pin; who made off with the Derringer and its carriage; which one took his bullet-furrowed white silk shirt, all soiled now with bloody mud; marked the vaquero who got the Colt Richards Conversion and its beautifully tooled holster; memorized the squat-nosed features of the one who took the Remington's gunbelt and holster and the hammered silver flask filled with its expensive whiskey. He knew who had taken Ezra's ruby ring, and who was wearing the slender gold wedding band that had lain hidden beneath it. Vin had noticed the wedding ring the first time he had met Ezra, holding a roomful of men at bay with one bullet and their own cowardice. The tracker had never asked about it, and the gambler had never offered any explanation, but Vin knew he had to bury Ezra with that ring on his hand. He would leave the finger he would cut off to get it back for the buzzards.

In a matter of moments, the ranchers had stripped Ezra down to his trousers and the dusty bandages wrapped around his chest in now pointless protection of his original wound. They tore his braces from their anchor, shattering the dark shell buttons on his waistband.

'God, don't do that...' Chris silently begged when they ripped open the side-buttons on Ezra's trousers, making it easier for them to root around in their precisely tailored hidden pockets. He knew if he made a move to stop them, let them know they were getting to him, the disrespect of their greed would turn to gleeful mutilation, just so they could watch him twist.

'I'm sorry, Ezra,' he apologized, too damn little and too damn late. 'I'll get them, I'll get all of them, from Hopewell to these scum.'

He'd have to, because every hooting "Pretty Boy", every vulgar slight, every vicious indignity the bastards were inflicting on Ezra's body, would haunt him for the rest of his life. He would try to erase it from his memory by putting a bullet between their eyes, but he knew he would remember the shame of this moment for the rest of his life. Even at the bottom of a bottle of Kentucky Mash, he would still remember it.

"Skin 'im, boys!" Jasper chortled, helping to pull Ezra's trousers off. No union suit of red wool or flannel was revealed, nor a naked and manly disdain for such frippery of civilization as underwear. Silk came to light; fine, powder-blue silk, buttoned on the sides and tailored like a second skin from hip line to mid-thigh and made translucent by the sweat rapidly drying in the heat of the evening.

Chris clenched his fists, preparing himself for the final insult to Ezra's corpse.

It didn't come. Strangely silent, the ranch-hands kicked Ezra's body on to its face and turned to counting the money they had found.

'God damn you!' Chris thought raggedly at Standish, his chest heaving with silent, painful laughter. Only Ezra could be intimidating while lying dead, wearing nothing but see-through sissy silk drawers.

"Two thousand, four hundred twelve dollars and fifty-two cents," Jasper announced with satisfaction, pocketing the change and dividing the dollar bills and silver eagles between his cohorts.

'Two thousand, four hundred twelve dollars and fifty-two cents,' Chris repeated to himself. More than enough for a stake in the kind of poker game where Ezra could win ten thousand dollars in one hand, if he'd left Four Corners to its fate.

But Ezra hadn't left. He'd stayed long after thirty days of dangerous, filthy work had made him a free man. He'd stayed with enough money in his pocket to buy him a saloon in St. Louis, or any other place where there was good food, fine clothes, and money to be made. He'd stayed, until Chris had made it impossible for him to stay.

"Get movin'," the rancher closest to Chris instructed, directing him with a push in the small of his back.

Chris went reluctantly, all the others trailing after him with the exception of Josiah. Sanchez refused to move, staring at Ezra's bloody back.

"Josiah..." Nathan called softly as Sanchez's guards cocked their guns in his face and prodded him with the muzzles of their rifles. "Come on, now...."

Josiah didn't answer, walking forward to stand over Ezra, carrying his increasingly worried guards right along with him.

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" Josiah rumbled quietly, speaking to the dead man as if he could hear him. "Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."^[iii]

"Josiah," Nathan said again, trying to pull the big man away from the unthinking rage that could grip him in moments like these. The rancher's men guarding Sanchez were shifting their weight and glancing at one another, getting spooked enough by the big preacher to start shooting.

"He wouldn't want ya t'play a bad hand, Josiah," Buck said, his voice unsteady.

Sanchez knew Wilmington was right. He spread his arms out wide, letting his guards know that he would go with them quietly, as quietly as he was crying.

Leaving Ezra's body for the coyotes, the ranchers carried the now-dead Clem into the compound with them. Within minutes, only the wind moved in the desert, ruffling the hair on the back of Ezra's skull like a lover's hand.

Fifteen minutes later, his tie-down a thing of history, Chaucer trotted up to where Ezra lay. Whickering softly, the horse lowered its head to snort hopefully in its fallen master's ear.

"Aaaaaoooooowwwww," Ezra answered softly.

++++

They put the six of them in a small adobe guard shack identical to three others in the compound that sat at the cardinal points of the compass. It had a barred window in each wall, suitable for men with rifles to have some cover while protecting the precious water supply of the creek.

Chris stood in front of the window that faced out toward the road, staring at Ezra's unburied corpse. He held the ace of spades Standish had left for him in his right hand, his thumb constantly stroking across the single spade in its center.

'Credo non nunnulos hic mortuos esse,' his memory mocked him in Ezra's ironic drawl.

'Screw you and the horse you rode in on,' he answered, clenching the ace in his fist, bending it in two over his index finger with his thumb. He had to blink several times to bring the watery blur of Chaucer standing over Ezra back into focus. He could see the two of them silhouetted against the sunset stretching out red and black along the horizon.

Chris hoped the bay's toe clips would be enough to keep the coyotes and other carrion away through the night, though not even the horse's loyalty and valor could stop the flies from laying. By morning, Standish would be a mess of maggots....

"Hold still," Nathan ordered Buck.

"I been holdin' still," Wilmington growled, breathing hard with the pain from his wound that Nathan's third bungled attempt to bandage had aggravated.

"Sorry," Nathan acknowledged. "It's hard to see in here...."

Taking a deep breath, Nathan pressed the heels of his palms into his watering eyes. What was wrong with him? Hell, Ezra was everything he hated in a man: Arrogant, condescending, always looking for a way to profit from someone else's sweat or misery. With a world of learning in his head and all the brains and good sense God had ever given a man, he was a lazy, shiftless cheat, squandering all the gifts Nathan would have traded his right arm to have. How could he be sitting here, crying for a son of a bitch like that?

'Because,' he admitted to himself, 'that son of a bitch was Ezra.'

Wiping his hands off on his trouser legs, he picked up his bandanna and steeled himself to try and wrap Buck's wound again. They were lucky - the bullet had gone through the meat of Wilmington's calf, leaving a neat wound with little bleeding. If they could manage to get out of their jail, or he could persuade the guards to bring him some whiskey and an onion or two, Buck stood a good chance of keeping his leg.

Swallowing hard, Wilmington tilted his head back to rest against the wall his back was braced against. He didn't really mind Nathan's clumsiness - the pain kept his mind off the persistent image of Ezra raking in a thousand dollar pot in a San Francisco casino, with Miss Lydia sitting on his right hand for luck, all dressed up like a lady in diamonds and velvet.

Nathan finally got the bandage tied correctly and Buck closed his eyes, willing his body to relax. He opened them again when Nathan patted his knee, and watched Jackson move away from him and pull himself inside his own thoughts.

Glancing around the guard shack, Buck realized that they'd all crawled off into their own little worlds. He was sharing a cell with five strangers, and when it came time to fight, it would be every man for himself, and that would leave them as dead as Ezra.

He had to do something to bring them back together, but what? He'd be lucky if Chris spoke a word before daybreak, let alone come up with a plan other than finding a way for him to kill all the ranchers he could before they killed him. Josiah was in some kind of woo-woo trance, Nathan was busy convincing himself that he didn't give a damn that Ezra was dead, and Vin was crammed through the bars of the window on the other side of the cell, his bent arms and elbows as far outside as his handcuffs and the wall would allow. The soft, soft sound of the tracker's harmonica floated through the tiny room, faltering into silence for long moments before raggedly picking up again. J.D.'s quiet sniffling would stop a moment after Vin's playing did, the kid holding his breath until the aimless notes once again masked the sound of his grief.

Buck frowned at J.D.'s hunched shoulders. The kid sat in the corner closest to Chris, his head down over his hands.

'Poor kid....'

Buck remembered the first time he'd realized that he could lose someone he loved when bullets started flying. Somehow, he hadn't thought about what kind of hell it was to be the one who survived when your friends didn't, until it had actually happened to him.

'C'mon, old son, you gotta do something...' he encouraged himself. 'Think, now.... What would Ezra do?'

Buck smiled, shaking his head. 'Blow the damn place up... after he got us out of these handcuffs and through that door without missing a bitch about not being paid enough to justify the ruination of his clothes in his efforts to emancipate us from our latest incarceration....'

'Incarceration,' he repeated to himself silently, swallowing down a laugh that threatened to break apart into a sob. 'God, I wish you were here, Ezra.... But you're not, and this time you ain't gonna come waltzing in at the last minute and hand the six of us a second chance at getting out of this alive -'

Click.

The sound of the lock opening on a pair of handcuffs struck the silence of the room like a knife against a crystal glass, making the hair stand up on the back of Buck's neck.

"Kid...?" he asked, using the wall and Nathan's help to work himself to his feet. Chris and Vin turned from their windows to stare at J.D., and even Josiah woke up, blinking in surprise at the unexpected sound.

Standing up, J.D wiped his face with the back of one hand and held an open pair of handcuffs in the other.

"He said..." J.D.'s voice wobbled and he closed his eyes with the struggle to steady it. "He said, with our penchant for finding trouble, it would be a useful skill for me to acquire."

"You son of a bitch," Buck laughed raggedly, watching Ezra's ghost waltz in and hand them a second chance yet again. Thinking Buck was talking to him, J.D. bit his lower lip hard and looked at Chris.

"You did good, J.D.," Larabee reassured him, holding his wrists out to be freed. Hooking the chain of his cuffs around a suspender strap, J.D. stepped forward with the lock-pick Ezra had insisted he start carrying in the lining of his boot and got to work.

"Let the others loose, then get started on the door," Chris told him, trying not to fidget with impatience at J.D.'s slowness. He wanted to get to Ezra's body while it still looked like Ezra.

"I - I can't, Chris," J.D. admitted miserably. "I don't know how to pick that kinda lock - we hadn't got that far."

"Don't worry, J.D., ya got far enough," Larabee promised.

"Chris?" J.D. asked, after a minute or so of tense work. Buck caught his breath, recognizing the kid's tone of voice. He had something to say that God or the devil couldn't stop, and Wilmington just hoped that it wouldn't hit Chris in the wrong place, or Larabee would crack and keep cracking until he crumbled.

"Yeah?"

"He called it, didn't he? I mean, he was right, wasn't he? It was a set up from the start, wasn't it?"

It took Chris a moment to reply. "Yep."

"Chris?"

"Yeah, Kid?"

"Thanks."

"For what?"

"For stoppin' me from doin' somethin' stupid." J.D. didn't look up at Chris, who suddenly had to fight to keep his balance as Dunne tugged at the cuffs. "See, I was all ready to go runnin' out shootin' when that fella reached five, if you hadn't stopped me."

Buck let his breath out low and slow, his gaze transferring to Josiah. He had a feeling the preacher was about to learn just how strong and sharp a half-grown pup's jaws and teeth could be.

"Ezra always told me to look behind what I was hearin' and seein', 'cause that's where the reality of a situation will lay," J.D. continued, wrestling with his metal adversary hard enough to make Chris wince. "If a man's trying to escape, he don't make sure his guards know it, does he?"

"Nope," Chris answered.

"He was protectin' us, wasn't he?"

"Yep."

"Thought so," J.D. agreed, and Larabee's shackles fell open. Rubbing his wrists, Chris watched their youngest turn to face Sanchez.

"What do you think, Josiah?" J.D. challenged.

'Lord, Kid, there are times when a blind fool would know you were raised by a woman,' Buck thought, nodding in agreement with the quick, worried glance Chris shot at him.

Josiah met the kid's angry gaze with a steady sadness. "I just couldn't take the chance," he explained.

"What the hell kinda 'chance' were you takin', Preacher?!" J.D. exploded. Chris reached out and grabbed a handful of the back of the kid's vest, keeping him far enough away from Sanchez to prevent him throwing a punch.

"You weren't thinkin' I was gonna leave Ezra hanging out to dry, were ya, Josiah?" Larabee asked pleasantly. His stomach muscles flexing into iron, Buck got ready to get between Chris and the big preacher if Josiah's answer was 'yes'.

Sanchez shook his head. "I know better. I couldn't take the chance that Ezra wasn't tryin' to prove somethin'."

"Prove what?"

Josiah sighed. "How close were you to Stutz when he shot at Mary?" he asked, unable to look at Larabee when he did.

Chris blinked. It took him a moment to go back to the assassination attempt; somehow, the events of a week ago felt like they belonged to another lifetime.

"'Bout twenty feet or so. Why?"

"How close was Ezra?"

"Maybe fifteen...."

"How long does it take a man to cover fifteen feet? And how long does it take for him to draw his gun?"

"Nuh-uh, no," Nathan said, shaking his head. "Ezra'd never have taken the chance that Stutz woulda seen him go for his gun and rush his shot at Mary."

"He wouldn't have seen it," Chris said slowly. "That's why he wears that sleeve rig - so you can't see the shot coming."

"I just couldn't take the chance I was wrong about what Ezra was trying to prove," Josiah repeated, and J.D. sagged in Chris's grip.

"He wasn't tryin' to prove nothin'," Nathan snapped, suddenly furious. "He was thinkin' about that money he stole, and how he could get away without Chris findin' out he had it on him."

"He was thinkin' about Mary," Vin corrected. "He'd made it to the livery and came back when he saw Stutz, figured out it wadn't gonna be a long shot."

Chris shook his head. "Ezra thought Stutz was after Hopewell. He came back to -"

'To help me,' he admitted to himself, but somehow he couldn't get his mouth to say it. Flicking a cold glance at Nathan, he finished, "He came back because he was doin' his job."

"For a damn sight more than a dollar a day and room and board," Jackson countered.

Chris said nothing, his face expressionless.

"Damn it," Jackson protested. "A man's dyin' don't change his faults, Chris. Ezra Standish was a liar and a cheat, through and through. He coulda been somethin' else, but he wasn't. All the bravery in the world don't change the fact that he stole that money and was runnin' out on us. You knew he was gonna take that money - you knew what he was like!"

"Yep," Chris agreed, letting go of J.D. to put his hand in his pocket to touch the letter Ezra had left with the ace of spades. "I do. And I'm starting to figure out why Ezra wasn't interested in ridin' with you in the first place."

It was Vin's turn to look at Buck, each man's eyes widening with the shared realization that Chris Larabee had just lost his temper.

Nathan squared his shoulders and straightened that much more as he looked down at Chris. "Because he was too good to ride with a nigger."

"Too good - or too smart to ride with a nigger who was drinkin' beer and grinnin' while some bastard tried to take his eye out?" Larabee asked with a dangerous smile.

"Wouldn't a been no problem if Ezra hadn't cheated that man. He was only doin' what you woulda done in his place."

The cell shrank as Chris Larabee grew to fill it. "I ain't never shot a man in the back," he snarled.

Nathan's eyes widened and he took an involuntary step backward. "I ain't sayin' that, Chris - I'm sayin', you'd a felt the same way if Ezra'd cheated you."

That dangerous smile flickered across Chris's face once again. "He wouldn't've cheated me."

"Come on!" Jackson scoffed.

"I wouldn't a been buyin' him drinks."

"No, he'd a been buyin' 'em for you," Nathan agreed. "Different kinda man, different kinda con. He'd a cheated you, too."

"That first shot wasn't a cheat."

Nathan took another step, this time to the side, shaking his head. "I know," he admitted.

Suddenly, he swung back around to Chris, angry and bewildered.

"He coulda won that bet fair and square - he coulda made the second shot - hell, he probably coulda made all six! Why didn't he think he was good enough to win on his own?" Jackson demanded, desperate for an answer. "Why did a man like that think he had to cheat?"

Astonished by the question, Chris looked at Buck, who shrugged helplessly.

"Maybe he wadn't good enough once," Vin said softly and unexpectedly, his eyes distant as they gazed into his own past for his answer. "Reckon it don't much matter now," Tanner concluded, turning back to his window and his harmonica.

'Ask a stupid question,' Chris thought miserably, recoiling from the all too likely reason for Ezra's insistence on leaving nothing to chance.

Shrinking back down to a tired, hurting man, he straightened J.D.'s bowler and gave the kid a pat on the arm before returning to his vigil. The sun was nearly down, and Dunne got busy on getting Josiah's handcuffs off before he lost all the light, even though Ezra'd made him practice with a blindfold on a couple of times, because lanterns do not grow on trees - or prison walls.

When Josiah's hands were free, J.D. went to Buck, who'd resumed his seat against the wall, his aching leg stretched out in front of him.

"He'd be proud," Buck told the kid softly.

J.D. began to manipulate the tumblers of Wilmington's shackles. "I just couldn't let him down again, Buck."

"You didn't let him down."

"Yeah, I did," J.D. sighed, taking the cuffs off Buck and handing them to him. "I shoulda said somethin' when I had the chance," he explained, looking up at Nathan. "Shoulda let him know how proud I was to ride with him.... That I trusted him, with my money, with my life.... With anything."

Buck nodded, beginning to get an idea of just how J.D. had got his kick in a week or so ago.

"What was I supposed to say?" Nathan demanded of J.D.. "What could either one of us say? He took the money."

"I know," J.D. sighed, standing up to free Nathan. "It just seems to me we didn't give him much of a reason not to."

Nathan shook his head and J.D. moved on to Vin. Looking down at Buck, Jackson noticed fresh blood on the fabric of Wilmington's makeshift bandage. Kneeling down, he began to check the wound.

"Tell me, if you'd been tried, convicted, and hung for a crime you hadn't committed - wouldn't you feel like you were entitled to the loot?" Buck softly asked him.

"Ten thousand dollars can provoke a lot of justifyin' in a man," Nathan replied, tightening the bandanna again.

"Fourteen hundred," Chris said from the window, straining to keep Ezra in sight in spite of the dark shadows of the night that were making it impossible.

"One seventh," Buck elaborated helpfully. "But you just go ahead and tell yourself Ezra's a cheat and a thief and a liar who'd stab you in the back and spit on your grave for a plug nickel. You might even start to believe it in a few years - but it ain't gonna stop you lookin' for him every time you go into a saloon, or wishing you could sit down at a table with him when you see a deck of cards."

Nathan was spared having to answer by the sound of voices heading their way. Quickly, everyone placed their loose handcuffs around their wrists, settling into the shadows and taking on a dejected, beaten air that not even Ezra could have found fault with.

Soon, lanterns were stabbing light into the room and Stewart James walked into the cell, flanked by Jasper and the rabbit. Chris took his time turning around to face the rancher.

"Larabee," Stewart grunted. "Like to have a word with you and your boys - got a little business proposition for ya."

"Not interested."

"You haven't heard what I have to say."

"Don't need to," Chris said with a smile that didn't reach his hazel-green eyes. "This is personal now."

Buck lifted his chin and squared his shoulders, backing Chris up. The others did too, each in their own way, and Wilmington smiled a mirthless little smile.

'We're back,' he realized with satisfaction. 'Thank you very much, Mr. James - because as long as you're still breathing, we're back.'

"I'm sorry about your brother," James sighed, flicking an angry glance at Jasper.

Chris's smile disappeared, his eyes narrowing as he stared James down.

"I'll just bet you are," he finally said. Far be it from him to correct any assumption that would make the rancher sweat.

'One last con, y'little weasel,' he privately explained to the dead man lying in the dirt outside the guard shack. 'One last ride together, Ezra....'

"My orders were for all seven of you to be taken alive," James replied.

"We weren't. That's gonna cost ya."

"You're responsible for my nephew being hung," James reminded him. "You could say that we're even."

"You could say that - but I won't."

"I was hoping you were a reasonable man, Larabee."

"I am. I got a reason for everything I do - and I got a damn good reason for everything I'm gonna do," Chris promised, ending the conversation by turning back to look out of his window.

Stewart frowned, wondering what the hell Larabee was looking for outside. It was hours before moonrise; the night was as black as the ace of spades the gunslinger held in his hand....

'They left him out there,' Stewart realized, flashing back to the green-eyed smirk of the young dandy who'd walked into his hacienda in lock-step with Larabee and kidnapped Lucas right in front of him.

'You idiots!' he silently seethed at the men standing beside him. 'It's not bad enough you had to disobey orders and ruin my plans, you had to make Larabee madder by pissing on his brother's corpse!'

Shaking his head, Stewart turned on his heel and strode for the door.

"Hang 'em at dawn," he ordered Jasper.

"But, I thought you was gonna swap 'em for Leroy?" the rabbit asked, ever one to be upset when the plans got changed.

"It's us or them now," Stewart reminded him, considering Jasper with something less than approval. "Pity... I could surely use better help."

++++

Chris waited until the ranchers and the lanterns were ten minutes gone before speaking. "Come dawn, we're gonna take these bastards down. Let's get some sleep."

"I'll take first watch," Vin volunteered.

Chris nodded, despite the fact that the tracker couldn't see him, and pulled up a piece of the floor. Tanner stepped over him, leaving his window to take up Chris's vigil, the soft, sad sound of his harmonica suddenly comforting.

++++

The moon rose late, the light from its thin crescent too dim to see anything in the night but stars. Josiah joined Vin at the window just after moonrise, the two men listening to the ring of Chaucer's tack as he stamped the ground. They could hear the horse's warning neighs and snorts as he protected his master from the carrion that had come to dine. Every now and again, the bay would give a little questioning whicker and they would picture him stretching his head down to tug on Ezra's hair and blow air down the back of his neck.

Chris gave up trying to sleep and sat up, his back against the wall next to Vin's leg. He could hear Buck's labored breathing where he slept with his head on J.D.'s lap. The kid was talking to Nathan, his worried murmurs indistinct. Nathan's answers to his questions were calm, reassuring Chris as well as the kid. Larabee had seen too many wounds go putrid in the war, knew too many men with cauterized stumps where they'd once had arms and legs, had buried many more who weren't that lucky to ever be easy about a bullet wound.

'Lucky,' he mused wearily. Ezra had believed in arranging his own luck....

"No!" Buck cried suddenly, snapping awake and shooting up to his feet, ready for action. Nathan and Chris caught Wilmington a moment later, when his wounded leg gave out.

"Damn," he groaned, leaning hard on Larabee.

"Easy, Big Dog," Chris soothed, getting Wilmington's right arm around his shoulder. J.D. put himself under the left one and they guided Buck back to his seat on the floor. Vin struck a Lucifer match to let Nathan see Buck's wound, letting it burn the tips of his fingers before he dropped it. After two more Lucifers' worth of an inspection, Jackson was satisfied that he'd done all that he could.

"Grab his legs," Nathan told J.D. "Put 'em across yours - raisin' em up 'll help some."

Blinking his dazzled eyes back into harmony with the darkness, Chris heard Buck hiss in pain when J.D. did as he'd been told. The clink of spurs and the scent of smoke-cleaned buckskin announced Vin's presence as the tracker sat down beside him. After a moment, the heavy darkness was lightened by the hum of a harmonica.

Chris's breath turned sharp in his throat, and he held it there as he realized that come morning, Vin might never be able to play again.

'You're thinking too much, Larabee,' he chided himself, 'and thinking too much is a good way to get the rest of your boys killed.' Sighing, he tilted his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and told his brain to shut up and go to sleep.

As usual, his brain didn't listen to him.

++++

Buck was in a bad way when morning came, sweating with a low fever courtesy of his swollen lower leg. Chris knelt down beside Wilmington, helping J.D. to get Buck sitting up.

"I can make it," Wilmington grunted, staring Chris's worry down with fever-bright eyes. Larabee nodded in reluctant agreement and turned back to the window facing the road. He'd taken the last watch, his eyes glued to where he had last seen Ezra. Some tiny sliver of hope still lived somewhere inside him that when the day came, Ezra and Chaucer would be gone, that it would all turn out to be the best bluff of the gambler's career.

That hope died as the sun peeked out, tinting the pre-dawn grayness into a rosy pink. Ezra still lay where he'd fallen and Chaucer still stood over him, his tail flicking in frustration as the first rooster began to crow in the distance.

Vin joined Larabee at the window, the disappointment in his expression when he saw Ezra's body making the tracker seem very young. Looking over at Chris, he smiled sadly and shrugged.

'How the hell are we gonna get him away from that damned horse?' Chris wondered, hearing a second rooster join the first. Chaucer was already agitated, prancing around Ezra and shaking his head until his mane flew.

"We might have to come back for Ezra," Vin said softly.

Chris glanced sharply at Tanner, equally reassured and unnerved by the tracker's ability to read his mind at times like this.

"If we don't get him now, there won't be anything left to come back for," Larabee whispered.

Vin shifted his weight to his other foot. "We ain't likely t'have time t'rope Chaucer. I s'pose... I mean, we could...."

Chris shook his head. "We ain't shootin' that horse."

"It might be the kindest thing. I'd hate t'watch him die slow, pinin' fer Ezra."

"You think you could shoot him? I know I can't."

Vin set his jaw, studying Chaucer through the bars. The bay was nudging Ezra's shoulder with his nose, trying to wake him up.

"Aw, hell..." Vin sighed.

"Didn't think so," Chris smiled.

"Here they come," Josiah called from the other window. "Looks like three of 'em, with the rest over by the hanging tree."

"Why don't they just shoot us?" J.D. asked. "Seems like it'd be a lot less work."

"Because we hung Lucas James," Vin explained. In his mind he heard Ezra say, 'Edwin Stanton would have called it 'parity'.' He shook the words off, shifting his weight and clearing his mind for the job ahead. He sure as hell didn't have the time right now to get lost in bad memories.

"Get ready," Josiah instructed from the window.

Chris looked at Buck, who nodded. The big man shifted his position against the wall so that he was sitting directly across from the door. The men coming through it would see what they wanted to see: A wounded and docile prisoner, ready for the rope.

Josiah and Nathan flattened themselves against the right side of the wall, Vin and Chris doing the same on the left. J.D. crouched protectively beside Buck, ready to drag Wilmington out of the line of fire if the need arose.

The three ranchers died quickly and silently, one with a crushed larynx and two with snapped necks. Nathan was helping J.D. get Buck to his feet as the last body hit the floor. A thorough search of the corpses yielded three pistols and gun belts, two rifles, three knives, and a deck of Ezra's cards. Vin put the pasteboards away in the pocket of his capote before accepting the rifle Chris held out to him. Buck declined a pistol and gunbelt in J.D.'s favor, picking the best of the three knives for his weapon. Nathan took the second rifle and the remaining knives, and then they were ready.

"Move fast," Chris instructed them. "Get behind the jail and stay low. We'll have to go on the belief that our horses are still at their tie-down."

"And if they ain't?" Vin asked.

Chris shrugged. "Then we go to the back-up plan."

"What's the back-up plan?" J.D. whispered to Buck.

"He'll let ya know when he thinks of it, Kid," Wilmington answered with a grin.

Chris went first, followed by Buck with J.D. tucked under his good arm as a crutch. Vin was the last man out, having covered the exodus from the compound-facing window.

"That ain't good," Vin observed to Chris, pointing with his chin at the rising sun glinting off rifles on top of the chicken coops.

Chris risked a glance around the edge of the jail. The men in charge of the hanging were starting to get restless and were looking toward the guard shack. All the roosters that serviced the ranch were crowing in earnest now, attracting attention to the passing time.

"It's gettin' worse," Chris announced grimly. They were all looking at him now, waiting for his decision. "We need a distraction...."

"What kinda distraction?" Vin demanded, racking his brains for any idea, no matter how bad.

"Anything," Larabee replied. 'Damn it, Ezra, where are you when I need you?'

"Uh, Chris..." Buck said, an odd tremble at the bottom of his voice. "I think one's comin'...."

"What?" Chris demanded.

Buck pointed toward the road and Chris turned to look, hoping for the cavalry.

Instead, he saw nothing - nothing at all but flat road and strutting chickens.

"Down!" he bellowed, grabbing Vin with one hand and J.D. with the other and shoving them into the dirt. He landed on top of them a split second before hell exploded around them in a geyser of feathers and human body parts, rocking the ground under them and billowing solid walls of dust into the air.

'BBBBrrrrrrrrqwqqqqqqqqkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!" cried the front half of a rooster that executed a neat parabola over the roof of the guard shack to land on top of Chris with a wet thud. The branch of the hanging tree it had rested upon lanced harmlessly into the ground beside him a moment later.

"God damned little weasel!" Chris swore, plucking the twitching remains of the rooster off his butt and throwing it at Nathan's feet.

"I'm gonna kill him!" a furious Nathan swore, kicking the chicken a good fifty yards in the direction of where Ezra wasn't anymore.

"Get in line!" Vin coughed, crawling out from under Chris and toward the door of their former prison.

"Amen," Josiah rumbled, unable to stop grinning despite the dust and grit choking his mouth and throat.

"Fall back!" Chris ordered, grabbing Buck by the shirtfront and dragging Wilmington after him. "Fall back to the jail!"

"But, Ezra -!" J.D. yelled over the noise of coops blowing sky-high, the screams of dying men, and the frantic clucking of chickens hurtling through the air to a messy end.

"He and that damned horse are long gone, Kid!" Buck chortled, grabbing J.D.'s gunbelt to keep him from running off into God only knew what death-trap Ezra had rigged. Cussing and dodging through a rain of chicken shit and feathers, the six men crowded back into what had just become their shelter from the bombardment, Josiah hurling the bodies of their former guards out the door.

"What about Ezra?" J.D. demanded again, barely making himself heard over the ruckus.

"We gotta give 'im room to work, Kid!" Chris yelled back, covering the window that faced the road from the shelter of the wall beside it. "This is the one place I know'll still be standin' by the time he's through."

"Reckon he'll do a right good job on the rest of it," Vin grinned, covering the window on the compound side.

"Think they made him mad?" Buck panted.

"That stupid idiot!" Nathan fumed, coming to stand opposite Chris, covering his blind spot. "Bleedin', probably knocked in the head.... And lyin' out there all mornin' in the damn dew! What the hell was he thinkin'?"

Chris began to laugh. When Nathan glared at him, he laughed harder, grabbing onto one of the window bars as the coop closest to them erupted into debris, rocking the jail. A spinning chicken lodged between two bars, clucking frantically as it tried to work itself loose.

"Success," he reminded Nathan, "lies in the details, Mr. Jackson!"

"It ain't funny, damn it!" Nathan swore, using the butt of his rifle to push the upside down chicken free. "I'm gonna tan his white hide and nail it to the side of the damn saloon when I get my hands on him! What the hell kinda game is he playin'?"

"He's hurtin'," Buck answered from his position on the floor, his expression turning grim with the realization. "Otherwise, we'd a been outta here last night."

Chris sobered immediately. Buck was right - Ezra wouldn't have been able to resist trying to break them out from right under Stewart's nose if he'd been capable of sneaking into the compound. It was a realization that was silently acknowledged by all of them, transforming the giddiness of their angry relief into the sharp ache of angrier worry.

The patter of debris and clods of dirt raining onto the roof of the cell gradually ceased, replaced by the groans of injured men and the sporadic, pathetic squawks of shell-shocked chickens.

"Think he's done?" J.D. finally ventured to ask, after five full minutes had passed without a single explosion.

Chris considered the question. "Maybe.... He'd have known he could count on you to get the cuffs off, known we'd take our chance when the guards came...."

"But there's still buildings standing," J.D. pointed out.

Chris nodded, acknowledging the kid's point. Normally, the only sane thing to do when Ezra was in the middle of his devotions to St. Barbara was to hunker down and wait for Standish to make his entrance. But normally, Ezra would already have sauntered in by now, beating at the dust caking his jacket and grinning like a damn, gold-fanged coyote....

"Stay here," Chris decided, heading for the door. They all moved to follow him and he stopped, turning around to glare at them. "I'm gonna be shootin' anything on two legs that ain't nekkid," he informed them.

Buck glanced at Vin, who spat his annoyance on the floor. Chris was right - the dust was so thick outside a man would be lucky to see his hand in front of his face, let alone distinguish friend from foe.

"We'll be here," Vin promised.

"You'd better be," Chris told him, straightening his hat before he opened the door and walked out of the cell, his black duster trailing behind him as he disappeared into the dust storm.

++++

A lifetime of hard work had made it impossible for Stewart James to be in bed when the sun rose. His age weighed heavily on him as he limped into the kitchen of the main bunkhouse. His sons were waiting for him, standing respectfully as he came into their presence.

The laughter of the lynch mob outside made James shake his head. He hadn't wanted these seven men to die, and he took no pleasure in what was about to happen. He was a businessman, not a butcher. He'd wanted to sit down this morning with Travis's hired guns, discuss their contract, and make them a better offer. The worst he'd wanted to do was trade them for the man rotting behind bars for protecting his livelihood from encroachment by a group of desperate Indians and a greedy government, but the trigger-happy fools he'd sent to capture the seven had made that impossible.

Joining hands with his family, Stewart said Grace. He'd have the men who'd ruined his plan tie the seven's bodies to horses and drive them into Four Corners. With the town's partisan rangers dead, it was only a small risk and James was in a mood to make them earn their pay for a change.

"Pass the eggs," he told his youngest, who dutifully handed him the platter heaped with scrambled eggs and sausage. He helped himself to a generous portion, picking up a buttered biscuit in his left hand and taking his fork in his right.

The fork was on his plate when a twelve-foot long, nine-inch wide splinter of the hanging tree crashed through the kitchen shutters, slamming into the table and nearly killing his oldest boy. The bottom half of a chicken fell off the wood, landing on top of his scrambled eggs with a wet thud.

"Time to leave, boys," Stewart announced calmly. Standing up, he picked up his hat from where it hung on the back of his chair and led the way out, leaving the problem of Larabee and his men to the fools who had caused it.

++++

'Damn, Ezra!' Chris thought, shocked as well as impressed by the devastation around him. 'I'm not sure I want to see what you could do if you didn't have to improvise....'

Coughing, he tied his bandanna around his mouth and nose to protect him from the gritty sand as well as the stink of blood and manure.

'All right, Ezra, where the hell are you? Probably resting in the shade, laughing your fool head off.... Or lying dying somewhere where we'll never find you, like some wounded animal....'

A shadow moved through the dust cloud a dozen feet ahead and Chris picked up his pace as he headed toward it. There were two men in particular besides Ezra he was hoping to find alive, and unfortunately for Jasper, Larabee found him first.

Chris let Jasper go for his gun, let him clear leather before shattering his wrist with a well-placed bullet. Jasper dropped his pistol, clutching his mangled hand. He tried to run, but a bullet in his thigh stopped him.

Whimpering, Jasper scrambled away from Larabee, pain and fear addling a brain that had never been too sharp to begin with into thinking he could find some kind of security inside the darkness of one of the few remaining chicken coops. Chris followed him, his eyes quickly adjusting to the dimness of the stifling pen. Nervous chickens pecked and flapped at Jasper, hampering his struggle to squeeze through their nests and the planks that supported them in a futile attempt to hide.

Chris tugged his bandanna off his face, smiling lazily down at the cowering ranch-hand. He made a show of sighting along his pistol barrel, picking just the right spot to put his next bullet.

"P-please, Mister!" Jasper begged, pulling his legs up against his chest. "Please! I didn't know he was your kid brother!"

Chris's smile disappeared. "Would it've made a difference if ya had?"

"I - I.... Please...."

"I don't think it would've. I think ya still woulda shot him in the back."

"It wasn't me that shot him!" Jasper protested, cowering under his upraised arm.

"Nah, you waited 'til ya thought he was dead to kick him, didn't ya?" Slowly and deliberately, Chris cocked the hammer of his pistol. "Even if he wasn't my baby brother, that's the kind of thing I take personally where my boys are concerned."

Larabee took aim on Jasper's kneecap - and the abdomen that lay beneath it. Bleating in fear, Jasper closed his eyes and tried to remember how to pray.

"Chris!" Ezra cried, thudding against the doorframe of the coop in a failing effort to keep himself on his feet.

"Shit!" Chris swore, realizing that he had mistaken the eye of the storm for its finish. He didn't waste the time it would have taken him to shoot Jasper, spinning on his heel and running for the door instead.

Ezra was in front of him, covered in dirt, black powder, and blood. He was losing the fight to stay on his feet, and Chris caught him as his knees buckled, scooping Ezra up in his arms like a girl and sprinting away from the chicken coop with every ounce of speed his desire to live could muster. They'd cleared nearly ten feet before the coop blew, the blast launching them through the air.

They slammed to the ground tangled together, Chris landing on top of Ezra, his duster flung over his head, its split tailed body twisted under Ezra's back.

Shucking out of his duster, Chris threw himself back on top of Ezra, shielding him from the Jasper bits, chicken parts, and eggs hurtling through the air to pelt them like grapeshot. Instinctively, he blindly searched the ground next to him with his right hand until he found his pistol and slid it back into its holster.

'You fucking idiot!' Chris wanted to yell, but the rapid sound of Ezra's heart beating beneath his ear washed his anger away in a surge of relief.

Fragments of Jasper's coop were still falling when more explosions rocked the compound behind them. With a grin, Chris realized that the first round of incendiaries had served to herd the ranchers away from the jail. The few minutes' respite from the bombardment had allowed them to regroup, gathering them together in a ring of the surviving buildings like cows in a slaughterhouse runway. It was Fredericksburg without the river and the snow, and this time he was on the right side of that damned Rebel artillery - but he'd be damned if he could figure out how Ezra had managed timed fuses....

"Ezra?" Chris asked, taking the risk of raising his head to look down at the other man's dirty face. It was a study in pain, the kind of pain that wouldn't let you breathe, let alone speak. A bright crimson patch of raw skin scraped down one side of Ezra's powder-blackened face, blood from a bit lip combining with snot and spittle to streak the other. His glazed green eyes looked up from a sea of red, seeing nothing as they trembled on the verge of passing out, and his left hand jerked feebly against the fabric of the duster twisted around him, making no impression on the denim.

"Shit!" Chris realized, his backside suddenly reminding him what it felt like to land on spurs from a great height. Heedless of the risk, he sat back on his heels and hauled Standish up against his chest, pulling the duster free. The added pain of the jostling overwhelmed Ezra's thin hold on consciousness and his head and his body went limp.

"Ezra!" Chris barked, dropping the duster and shaking him hard. "Wake up!" Ezra's arms flopped and his head wobbled on his neck, but when Chris stopped moving, so did he.

"C'mon, c'mon," Chris urged, rocking the body hanging heavily in his arms. "You can't die now...."

'Like hell he can't,' he reminded himself. 'Dying is easy - you just stop breathing....'

"Breathe!" Chris commanded, pulling Ezra's head back by his hair and slapping his face. There was no response: Not a twitch, not a whimper, not even a flicker of an eyelash....

"Ah, hell..." Chris muttered, reaching out to try and find a pulse in Ezra's neck.

He stopped just short of touching him, his fingers curling away from the filthy, fevered skin that lay beneath him. His other hand tightened in the matted hair it held.

"Don't leave me, y'little weasel," he whispered, wiping bloody spittle from the side of Ezra's mouth with his thumb. Swiping his hand against his shirt, he shifted his grip on Standish, getting him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Coming up on his knees, he got one foot under him and started to push himself upright.

"Nnugggnnhhh!" Ezra cried out, brought around by the stimulus of being turned upside down onto his head, a circumstance that in the past had always proved to be a bad thing.

"I gotcha!" Chris squeaked out through the stranglehold of Ezra's arm around his neck. "Hold still! I gotcha!"

Ezra didn't hold still, recognizing Chris's voice on an atavistic level as belonging to someone who would somehow make everything all right.

"I gotcha!" Chris wheezed, hanging on to Ezra and controlling his fall as best he could. He slammed back to the ground, his punctured cheek taking the brunt of the landing. Ezra whimpered, tightening his grip on Chris and trying to burrow inside his chest.

"Easy," Chris choked, managing to loosen the arm crushing his windpipe. "Easy now - I gotcha!"

"Ch-chris...?" Ezra gasped out, his face pressed against Larabee's neck.

"I gotcha," Chris repeated, hanging on to Standish with one arm while digging awkwardly into the pocket of his duster to find his spurs. Pulling them free, he threw them aside, cursing as one of the sharp rowels nicked his palm. He put the jacket around Ezra's fever-shivered body before he sucked at the cut on his hand, trying to ease the sting. If anything, the comfort of the coat made Ezra cling to him even harder, his head forcing Chris's chin upward in his attempt to run away from his pain.

"It's gonna be all right," Chris soothed, involuntarily tracking the flight of an iron stirrup that zinged past a foot away from his head. The explosions continued on their relentless path, taking out the empty stable and the wagons and every other obvious avenue of escape. Chris was grateful Ezra had opened the stall doors, sparing the animals that they both loved. Deprived of any other means of escape, the few human survivors of Ezra's onslaught would be running for the road - and straight for the jail.

"Get 'em, boys," Larabee muttered, rubbing Ezra's back as if he were Adam. Ezra was crying now, a gasping, broken sound that Chris could somehow hear despite all the noise around him.

"It's gonna be all right," he told Ezra. "Listen - that's Vin's mare's leg firin' behind us. Soon as he gets here, we'll all go home. You're gonna be all right...."

'Providing, of course, that it's actually Vin who's firing it,' he amended silently.

Someone else was running toward them, someone who would arrive before whomever was using Tanner's modified Winchester. Freeing his right hand from the burden of Ezra, he used it to search in the dirt and muck to find the pistol he'd dropped earlier, then Chris hunkered down over Ezra's trembling body and waited to see who would come out of the dust at him.

++++

"We shoulda stuck to the plan!" the rabbit jabbered to himself, scrambling blindly through a haze of dirt, smoke, and pulverized chicken shit toward where he thought the road lay. Kicking through a heap of mangled men and poultry, he told the uncaring world at large that bad things happened when you didn't stick to the plan....

The sound of a pistol's hammer being cocked in front of him registered in his ringing ears a moment too late. He skidded to a stop as a puff of wind cleared the dust in front of him and he saw Larabee on his knees, his dead brother hanging on his neck and yowling like a baby.

"We shoulda stuck to the plan," the rabbit whimpered. He wanted to run away, but Larabee's eyes held him where he stood, like a cobra mesmerizing its victim. They weren't quite as green as his brother's, but they were ice cold, and the rabbit knew they were the last things he would see on this side of life.

Grinning, Chris took aim at a spot that would put a bullet right between the rabbit's watery eyes. Slowly, very, very slowly, he began to squeeze down on the trigger.

Breaking free of the spell of those eyes in a last, instinctive grasp at survival, the rabbit went for his gun. Chris lowered his aim two feet, dropping him to lay gut-shot in the dirt but leaving his spine intact. Ezra whimpered at the report of the shot so close to his aching head, and Chris shushed him automatically.

The man coming up behind them stopped, shifting his weight as he did so to make a characteristic jangle with his spurs that Chris would have recognized in the grave.

"Nice shot, Cowboy," Vin said.

"I told you to stay put," Chris growled.

"Buck reckoned you might need a hand," Tanner explained, coming up even with Chris on his left side, where Ezra was laid cradled against Larabee's shoulder. Vin didn't need to add that they'd best make tracks back to the guard shack as fast as possible, before Wilmington fought his way through Josiah, Nathan, and J.D.'s objections to him collecting Chris and Ezra personally. Dropping down on one knee next to them, he couldn't resist putting a hand on the back of Ezra's head.

"Easy there, pard," the tracker soothed. "Y'got them bummers on the run."

Chris shook his head with a reluctant smile. "You ready?"

"I got your back," Tanner nodded.

With Vin's help, Chris climbed up to his feet and put Ezra firmly over his shoulder. "Hang on!" he told Standish before he took his first step.

It almost made him cry when Ezra tried.

++++

"Chris!" Buck bellowed, already three steps out of the cell despite J.D. hanging onto the back of his braces.

Chris didn't bother yelling at Wilmington, settling for giving him a searing glare as he went past him. Buck met it squarely, his jaw set in an unrepentant clench.

"I got 'im," Nathan grunted, getting his arm around Ezra's back and lifting Standish in his arms like a child.

"He's heavier than he looks," Chris warned, stretching his shoulder and neck.

"Nnnnnnnnhhhhhh..." Ezra moaned, twisting in Nathan's grip.

"Easy now," Jackson soothed. "I gotcha."

"Nnnnnnghhh!" Ezra cried.

"Calm down, Ezra!" Nathan ordered. "Ain't nothin' gonna happen to ya now - you're safe; I gotcha!"

Buck limped back into the cell in time to see Ezra doing his level best to throw himself out of Nathan's grasp, and his mind flashed back to Ridge City and an Ezra who had been too sick to pick himself up off the floor - until he thought Nathan was about to walk through the door.

"I'll take him," Wilmington said, hobbling toward Nathan.

"I'll take him," Chris decided, stepping up to do just that.

Ezra settled the debate by elbowing Nathan in the ribs. He was too weak for the blow to do anything more than startle Jackson, but it loosened his hold long enough to let Ezra kick out of his grasp.

He did his best to fall in the direction of Buck's voice and Wilmington didn't let him down, lunging forward to catch Standish before he slammed into the ground.

The effort was too much for Buck's injured leg, and it collapsed underneath the strain of the extra weight. Chris and J.D. caught Wilmington in his turn, somehow managing to get both Buck and Ezra to the floor without any further injury to either man.

"Arrrggghhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" Buck growled, cradling Ezra's head and torso in a vain attempt to lift his weight off his injured leg. Standish wasn't helping much, blindly clinging to Buck's waist. He was making a sound that turned Wilmington's stomach, a bleating sort of pant that was disturbingly different from Ezra's usual stoic silence or stubborn denial of pain.

The sound shook Chris, too, and he pulled back from the two of them, scrubbing the side of his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Gimme a hand here," Buck barked at him and Chris responded automatically, helping Wilmington shift Ezra to a more comfortable position across his good leg.

"That's better," Buck sighed, using his working leg and Chris's assistance to scoot backwards far enough to get the wall against his back.

"Let me in there," Nathan ordered. Surprised at his own reluctance, Chris grudgingly gave way to Jackson.

"Good God..." Buck muttered, getting his first good look at Ezra when Nathan pulled Chris's duster off him.

"How is he?" J.D. demanded, kneeling beside Buck and peering down at Ezra.

Nathan shook his head. "Between all the chicken shit, blood, and horse slobber, I can't rightly tell. We gotta get outta here, get some place where we can clean him up and get those wounds treated. Buck's, too."

"Horses are back in town or half way to Mexico by now," Vin said, coming through the door with two canteens in his hand. He tossed one to Josiah and handed the other one to Nathan. "There's more where that came from," he informed them.

"It's a long walk back to town," Josiah observed, keeping an eye on his window at the same time that he took a long drink of water.

"We can't stay here much longer," Chris realized. "It's already too hot...."

"Reckon that last big 'boom' should finish it," Vin said, jerking his head at the open door to indicate the maelstrom of debris and dirt Ezra's campaign of wholesale destruction had kicked up.

"You sure?" J.D. asked, his faith in Ezra's thoroughness complete.

"Ain't nothin' left standin' but this cell," Tanner replied.

Ezra stirred, his head turning in the crook of Buck's arm to push against Wilmington's chest. He murmured something and they all leaned forward, straining to hear him.

"...please..."

"What is it, Ezra?" Buck asked, his voice gentle. "What is it?"

"...water..."

Chris looked at Buck and swallowed, the taste of dust in his mouth reminding him of his own thirst.

"...please..." Ezra moaned.

"Hush now," Nathan soothed, quickly opening the canteen he held. "Water's comin'."

Buck lifted Ezra's head to help him swallow and Nathan very carefully brought the tin container to Standish's cracked and swollen lips.

Pushing back into Buck, Ezra batted at Nathan's arm, trying to shove him away despite the water he offered.

"It's all right now," Nathan assured him, easily moving Ezra's trembling hand out of his way. "You're safe now."

"Nnnh," Ezra guttered, turning his face into Buck's chest to let the water Nathan offered splash across his lacerated cheek and down his neck.

Nathan sat back on his heels.

"A man gets this low, he ain't nothin' but what he is at the rock bottom of his soul," he said, his tone bitter and hurt plain in his expression. "Guess deep down, contraband like me ain't even good enough to help him."

Vin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, regarding Nathan soberly. Buck shook his head with an unkind chuckle and Chris stared at Nathan like a man seriously considering throwing a punch. Josiah smiled ruefully, wishing he hadn't forfeited the prerogative of judging Nathan.

J.D. made a sound halfway between a disgusted sigh and a tongue-clicking 'tsk-tsk', rolling his eyes in the universal condemnation of youth. Walking forward on his knees, he grabbed the canteen out of Nathan's hand, bumping Jackson out of his way with his shoulder and hip.

"Ezra?" he said softly, leaning in toward the huddled Standish. "Ezra, it's me, J.D. I got some water here.... Ya want some water, Ezra?"

He let a little more of the cool liquid splash out of the canteen onto Ezra's neck, letting it dribble onto his shoulder. Ezra pressed himself further into Buck, his shaking hand failing badly in its attempt to find J.D. and push him away.

J.D. didn't offer the water again, passing the canteen to Chris before he looked at Jackson.

"It ain't got nothin' to do with you bein' a - bein' colored, Nathan. He don't want you - or me - near him right now 'cause he knows he can't take care himself, and he don't trust us to do it for him." J.D.'s face twisted, the edge of his eyelashes suddenly wet. "And I don't see why the hell he should."

Wiping his sleeve across his nose, the kid bolted to his feet and took refuge in the dust just outside the door to the cell. When he was sure J.D. wouldn't hear him, Josiah turned back to his window and quietly observed, "Out of the mouths of babes."

Chris looked at Josiah's back, then to Nathan's stunned expression, and then to Ezra, clinging to Buck for what little he was still worth. Suddenly, Chris didn't want to know where he stood with Standish - or even think too hard about where he ought to stand.

Without a word he handed the canteen to Buck and followed J.D. out the door. He didn't say anything to the kid, just stood there beside him and studied the desolation around them.

Vin filled the space Chris left, dropping down on his haunches between Nathan and Standish, taking the canteen from Buck.

"Here y'go, pard," Vin said, bringing the canteen to Ezra's blood and dirt flecked mouth, trickling water over his lips before giving Standish his first small sip. "Just a little bit, now."

Ezra grabbed at Vin's wrist, trying to wrestle control of the canteen from him, but he was too weak to do more than touch the cloth-covered side of the tin container before his arm fell back to his side.

"I know ya need it," Vin soothed as he took the canteen away from Standish. "But too much too soon 'll make ya sick - ya know that."

"...please...!" Ezra pleaded, struggling to raise his head to follow the source of the water.

"Nathan?" Buck asked.

Pressing his lips together, Jackson shook his head. "You have some, though," he instructed Wilmington.

Buck obeyed gratefully, taking several long pulls from the canteen before capping it. He didn't want to remember the last time water had tasted so damned good....

"...please..." Ezra begged, trying to reach out to the canteen. "...Buck..."

"In a little bit, now," Vin soothed, pulling a neatly folded pink bandanna from the pocket of his capote. He quickly folded it in a narrow strip, folding the length of that in half. Signaling to Josiah to toss him the second canteen, he opened it with his teeth, helping himself to a quick sip before dousing the strip of bright fabric with it. He held the cloth over Ezra's chest, letting the over-flow wash across its quivering muscles and fever-hot skin.

When the cotton was thoroughly soaked, Vin handed the open canteen to Nathan along with a stern look.

Nathan accepted the silent reprimand and the water, taking several long pulls from the canteen before picking its lid up where it swung on the end of its lanyard and recapping it. Wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist, he studied Ezra's injuries from a distance.

Bruises were already rising up from the bone under the layer of dirt that covered Ezra. Black splotches were beginning to show through the camouflage of muck on his legs and one in the shape of a boot heel was coming up red and puffy on his upper abdomen under the torn stitches of his oldest wound.

"Lift his head," Vin told Buck, lightly putting the tips of his fingers on Ezra's chin and jaw to pull his mouth open. "Here we go, now," he murmured to the injured man, carefully placing the short edge of the sopping compress on the front of the gambler's swollen tongue. "Suck on that a while."

Ezra did so, pathetically greedy for it. Worry lanced through Vin and he rose to his feet in an attempt to distance himself from it. Ezra hadn't said a word about the state of his coat, the vermin it housed, and the pestilence a bandanna carried in its pocket was sure to carry, and that just plain was not right. Nothing about this situation was right, from Hopewell to Ridge City to Ezra lying like a child in Buck's arms, desperate for water that wouldn't slake his thirst or calm the fever building in his blood.

Frowning angrily, Vin shifted his weight again before swinging around and heading out the door.

Buck saw Chris turn to face the tracker when Vin joined him outside, and he recognized the unholy grin that stretched across Larabee's face in answer to Tanner's unspoken invitation.

"Stay here and keep watch," Chris told J.D. over his shoulder, just before he and Vin disappeared into Ezra's sandstorm, walking side by side.

"Good huntin' boys," Buck said softly.

End of Act Two

ST. BARB'S MONTAGES - The whole collection of Act Two montages in a smaller format.

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NEXT CHAPTER OF MONGOOSE: A SENSIBLE MAN

^[i] Mercenary families of the Italian Renaissance. Duke Federigo da Montafeltro is probably the most famous 'good' example. I recommend him to you; he's a fascinating chap. The most famous 'bad' example is probably Cesare Borgia.
^[ii] E.g., the Trojan Horse, where the Greeks packed up and left, but did a double-back maneuver by hiding a bunch of guys in the hollow 'gift' left for Troy.
^[iii] Matthew 7:3-5 (Incidentally, Josiah takes his apology from the same book he took his attack. How's that for luck?)