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 THREE

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


"Stay with me, Ezra," Buck muttered, rocking the dead weight of the man he held in his arms. Standish had stopped calling for water, and the only way Wilmington could tell Ezra was still alive was the frantic, fractional heaving of his chest as he gasped for air. Afraid that Standish would choke, Nathan had removed the handkerchief some ten minutes previously. Ezra had let him do it without protest and that more than anything was twisting Wilmington's guts into wriggling knots.

"See anything?" Buck asked J.D. for the fifth time in as many minutes.

"Dead chickens," J.D. answered, just like he had four times before. "No, wait - ! Here comes Chris...."

Larabee strode through the door, his familiar Colt .45 Revolver once again buckled across his hips.

"What's it like out there?" Josiah asked him.

"Dead, gone, or on fire," Chris replied, dropping down on his haunches in front of Buck and Ezra. "Damn..." he muttered, shaking his head at the changes for the worse that had taken place in Ezra's condition during his twenty-odd minute absence. "Time to get the hell outta here."

Buck was oddly cheered by the moan Ezra let out when Chris hoisted him up, managing to give J.D. a nod and a grin, just to let the kid know they were on the downhill side of things now.

"Easy," Chris told Ezra, looking back for a moment to make sure that Josiah and J.D. were indeed helping Buck to his feet while Nathan grabbed the canteens and loose weapons.

"Where's Vin?" J.D. called as Chris led them out into the hazy daylight.

"Busy," Larabee answered shortly, his attention on the man in his arms. He headed away from the crackling dénouement of Ezra's conflagration, heading for the stream that ran close to the ruins of the chicken farm.

In a month or two it would be no more than a trickle, by mid-summer it would be a dry track, but right now it was fast and broad, fueled by the melting snows in the mountains of the Apacheria. The late occupants of the flattened poultry farm had dammed a section of it, diverting some of the rushing current into a deep and relatively calm swimming hole under the shade of opportunistic scrub pines. Here it was almost possible to imagine the feel of a cooling breeze stirring the thick humidity of the air over the narrow bank, and it was here that Chris carried Ezra, laying him down on the tough grass rooted deeply into the sandy soil.

"Jesus, you're a mess," he told the unconscious man, reaching out a tentative hand to touch next to the jagged pucker of snapped stitches and the oozing, cracked scab of the wound left by the assassin's bullet.

Nathan knelt down across from Chris. "How long you think we got before them ranchers head back here with reinforcements?" he asked, cautiously laying a hand on Ezra's chest to feel his heartbeat.

"Minutes," Chris replied, hearing the faint jangle of Vin's spurs. "Days. No way to tell." He looked away from Nathan toward a lurching Vin, over-burdened with gear Larabee had never expected to see again. From the corner of his eye, he saw the blurred edges of J.D. easing Buck down into the shade of the scrub pine. Josiah appeared in his main field of vision, jogging out to help Vin with his load.

"Looks like Ezra's been extrapolatin' again," Vin said, setting the gambler's saddlebags and bedroll down with a huff of relief. "Found these where y'all were hidin' when we rode up."

'So Ezra did infiltrate the compound,' Chris thought 'Probably got lucky and found the supplies when he went to open the stables....'

They could probably thank the arrival of Stewart James that their packs were unrifled - either by distraction or discipline, his presence had left their kit untouched. Watching Nathan eagerly take his medical kits and his weapons from Josiah, Chris felt his spirits start to lift. He even managed a grimace of a smile for J.D. when the kid came to collect his and Buck's Colt pistols.

"Any sign of the horses?" Chris asked. "Especially that God-damned one?"

Dropping down beside Larabee, Vin shook his head. "Reckon he's wherever Ezra told him to stay put," he said, tracing the floral patterns on Ezra's saddlebags with a grubby finger.

"Get them bags open," Nathan ordered, all business now that he had the tools he needed to work with. "We're gonna need that soap of his - we gotta get him clean before I can do anything proper t'help him. Josiah, get a fire started. J.D., you sit on Buck, make sure he don't go movin' around on that leg, now."

"Damn it, Nathan, I don't need a nursemaid," Buck protested, making a symbolic attempt to rise. Taking Nathan's orders literally, J.D. jumped on top of him. "Ow!" Buck yelped, more in surprise than pain.

Despite the danger of the situation, Chris found his smile growing. The smile became a grin when he turned his attention back to Vin, holding Ezra's kit like it was a basket full of snakes. He answered Tanner's speculative gaze with a shake of his head.

"God only knows," Chris agreed. "And I ain't guessin'."

Grinning, Vin opened the first saddlebag - and found his brass spyglass, neatly dismantled and lying on top of Ezra's things. A squawk of protest throttling in his throat, he picked the pieces up, showing them to Chris with an expression of bewildered anger.

"You son of a bitch..." Chris cackled with delight.

"It's busted," Vin pointed out, sorely aggrieved at Chris's lack of sympathy.

"Only the lenses," Larabee gleefully explained. "Look, see - he took it apart to get the lenses. That's how he did it - that's how he timed those explosions, by using pieces of the lenses to ignite gunpowder fuses. The little weasel eye-balled it - sunrise, angle, distance, charge...."

'Half-dead and nearly naked in a pitch black, cold desert night, in a compound crawling with excitable chickens and homicidal ranchers, and the little weasel had eye-balled it with the precision of a goddamned surveyor - !'

"Ratfucking bastard," Chris growled in admiration

Buck lowered his chin, hiding under his hat brim. Now that was a compliment he hadn't heard Chris give anyone since his reluctant admission of regret when they'd learned that Stonewall Jackson had been killed.

Vin studied the segments of the telescope, his face taking on a troubled frown. "Reckon he was plannin' on meetin' us down the road?" he asked Larabee.

The base of Chris's throat suddenly grew tight. Vin's question forced him to reassess the strategy behind the decimation of the chicken farm: The lull in the explosions, the herding of the ranchers away from the road....

Ezra had based his entire plan on the assumption that they would take their chance and escape without him, even though they knew he was injured, possibly even dying. He had expected them to leave him behind for the ranchers - or the buzzards. In fact, he had counted on it....

"It ain't like that," Nathan chided gently, glancing at Chris before returning to sorting through his bundles.

"Like what?" Larabee demanded, his anger and hurt over Ezra's opinion of him making his tone surly.

"Like you're thinkin'. It never woulda occurred t'him that we might think he'd need rescuin'. He ain't like you, Chris," Nathan explained. "He sees t'us, but we don't see t'him - it don't work both ways for a man like Ezra. He might die tryin' to haul us outta the fire, but he'd be damned before he let one of us get burned goin' after him. Ain't our place - he's the Massa."

"Or the Captain," Vin countered, his voice soft but his tone sharp enough to slice to the bone.

"Sure sounds like Chris t'me," J.D. murmured to Buck.

Chris pursed his lips, looking at Ezra's torn-up, dirt encrusted hands. He had no doubt that Standish would tear a stripe a mile wide down his back for not following the plan it should have been obvious Ezra had spent so much time perfecting. He would have been counting on Chris to follow his own orders to follow Ezra's lead; not doing so had only endangered the others and gotten Standish hurt even worse. He looked across the distance, over at Josiah out in the brush gathering fuel for Nathan's fire.

'Guess I couldn't take the chance, either,' he acknowledged silently.

"God damn him!" Nathan abruptly swore, smacking the side of a leather satchel with the flat of his hand. "It ain't here!"

"What ain't?" Chris demanded.

"The laudanum," Jackson answered. "Bottle's gone."

"Maybe the ranchers...?" J.D. asked.

"Nope," Chris shook his head. "Ezra ditched it."

J.D. didn't ask why. He didn't have to: He knew that Ezra had ditched the opiate because he didn't trust them not to make him take it.

"Selfish bastard," Nathan growled. "What if someone else needed it?"

"Maybe he figgered we owed him that chance," Vin said, in that same soft, sharp tone.

"Get that soap," Nathan said after a long moment of uncomfortable reflection, rising to his feet and unbuttoning his shirt. "We ain't got time t'waste."

Chris nodded, getting to work on pulling his boots off. 'Gotta get my spurs,' he reminded himself. Peeling off his socks, he stood up and began to strip.

Vin put the pieces of his spyglass into his jacket pocket, carefully removing the neat parcels of Ezra's clothes, folded and rolled for the road and wrapped in brown paper and tied with string to protect them from the dust and soot of a long trip by horse and train. Stacking them up far enough away to be out of the general path, he fished out the silver soap dish, discovering that it had a twin.

"How much soap does one man need?" he asked, looking up at Larabee.

"One's for his hair," Chris explained, slithering out of his jeans like a snake wriggling out of its skin. He threw the denim pants on top of his shirt, putting his hands on his bare hips. He looked down at Ezra, still wrapped in the scant protection of his duster.

'Poor bastard...' he sighed. 'This is gonna hurt like hell.'

"More soap? Vin asked, holding up a larger round container made of chased silver.

"It's a pounce," Chris corrected, glancing away from Ezra's brutalized face for a moment to see what the tracker was talking about.

"Do what?" Vin asked, opening the screw top lid to release a fine cloud of talcum that made him sneeze all over the sleeve of his capote. Blinking, he shook the snot off his arm before picking up a round white pillow filled with unscented white powder. Another fine cloud of dust poofed out of the little cushion, decorating the brim of his hat like snow.

"It's a powder-puff!" he realized with a dreadful shock.

"Pounce," Chris corrected. He jerked his head in the direction of Nathan trying in vain to slide the point of a pair of scissors between Ezra's skin and the filthy silk of his drawers without cutting Standish. "How else you think he gets them underpants on?"

All eyes turned their gaze to the crumpled denim trousers at Chris's feet. Without a word, Vin replaced the lid of the pounce and set it aside with Ezra's shirts.

Making very sure Larabee couldn't hear him, J.D. leaned in close to Buck and asked, "Chris knows this stuff 'cause he was married, right?"

"Nope," Buck answered.

J.D. blinked at him. Sighing, Buck closed his eyes against the memories of bygone days. "He don't like it mentioned, but once upon a time, Chris Larabee was an educated man."

Throwing the remains of Ezra's formerly powder blue unmentionables behind him, Nathan put his scissors away and rose to his bare feet. He debated for a moment about peeling off his last layer of protection against the cold water of the stream to join Chris in what was evidently a habitual naked and manly disdain for the civilized fripperies of underwear, but elected to keep his long red cotton drawers firmly on his person.

"You get his feet," he told Chris, putting his own hands under Ezra's arms.

"On three," Larabee agreed, getting his grip under Ezra's kneecaps. "One - two - three!"

They lifted together, Chris walking forward into the split of Ezra's legs. He trapped the smaller man's calves against his sides with his arms, balancing the weight he was carrying to make the sideways walk to the water easier.

Chuckling, Buck caught J.D.'s gaze. "I'd pay real money for Ezra t'wake up right now," he whispered to the kid.

J.D managed a smile. "Good Lord, Mr. Larabee," he agreed, handing Wilmington an open canteen and pressing the back of his hand to the older man's forehead to gauge his fever.

"No kissin'," Buck warned.

"But my Ma always said -"

"I'd let your Ma, kid."

Chris went up on tiptoe when the cold water of the swimming hole sloshed up over his stomach, all of his muscles contracting in a vain attempt to retreat upward to a point somewhere behind his ears. Once the depth of the creek had overwhelmed his body's instinctive retreat, the coolness of the little pool was more than welcome.

"Soap," Nathan ordered, handing Ezra's head and shoulders over to Chris to manage.

"Which one ya want?" Vin asked.

"The blue one," Chris replied for Nathan. The tracker duly removed the lavender scented cake, tossing it to Jackson.

After putting a generous amount of the expensive soap on the bristles of his scrub brush, Nathan paused for a moment and took a deep breath before grabbing one of Ezra's feet and getting started.

Buck knew the scrubbing had to hurt like hell, but Ezra just floated there in Chris's arms, the sharp laboring jerks of his chest the only indication that he was still alive. The water thinned the mud covering Standish, staining the clear water of the pool a greyish pink as it separated the blood from the dirt and manure. Buck had to look away, and discovered that Vin hadn't been able to stomach the sight, either.

"What'dya think this one's for?" Vin asked, distracting them both by pulling a thin rectangular box of silver about three inches wide and ten inches long from the saddlebags. If Ezra found out about the snooping, the tracker decided he'd just tell him he was looking for the rest of his spyglass.

"Ya don't think..." Tanner wondered aloud, opening the box and having his suspicion confirmed. "Hoo whee - Dr. Powers himself!"

Buck chuckled. "Well now, guess the boy does take it out in the rain every now and again!"

"What?" J.D. demanded. "What is it?"

"French envelopes," Tanner replied.

J.D. squinted at the box. "Awfully funny shaped paper to fit in an envelope that size."

"Those kinda envelopes are strictly used for invitin' a lady t'take a little horizontal refreshment, kid," Buck explained.

"Hey!" Vin said "This ain't got no seams!"

"It don't!?" Buck cried in delight, leaning forward for a better look at the item in question.

Picking the vulcanized rubber sheath up between a thumb and forefinger, Vin held it out for all to see.

'Wake up, Ezra!' Chris pleaded silently, looking down at the unconscious man he was supporting against his chest in the deepest part of the pool. 'Oh, please wake up!'

"No seams?" J.D. repeated weakly, recognizing the article from the orientation Buck had given him before taking him to Wickes' Town.

"Ladies hate the seams," Buck assured him. "Come to think of it, I ain't too fond of 'em, neither."

Tanner shook his head, putting the gentleman's equipage back in its custom-made home. Ya had to hand it to Ezra - the man knew how to make an impression.

Digging back into the saddlebag, Vin whistled, holding aloft a thick folio book with a tooled leather cover and gilt decoration and a firm latch to keep it from popping open. "Now this here's a book."

"That's the illustrated bible he won off that fella who'd ran outta money last month," J.D. remembered. "Ezra let him use it for a stake, said it would come in useful on a later occasion."

"A picture bible?" Josiah repeated from beside the fire.

"Must be some kinda pictures," Buck mused.

Unhooking the latch, Vin opened the bible to look at the illustrations. Both of his eyebrows shot up and a grin crooked itself across his face. He turned the page, then turned the book sideways.

'Ah ha,' Josiah thought, leaving the tin pot of water he'd gotten from the clear, fast current upstream from the swimming hole on the fire and coming to look over Vin's shoulder.

"That's what I'd call a French sermon, brother," Sanchez grinned appreciatively.

"Lemme see that!" Chris demanded, making the fatal mistake of taking his attention away from Ezra just as his eyelids began to flicker open.

"Don't think you're old enough, Cowboy," Vin said, turning the centerfold so that Buck and J.D. could see it. Buck whistled appreciatively and the kid blushed.

Ezra's slowly reviving mind recognized that the agonized body it belonged to was wet. Then it realized that he was in water up to his chin with hands holding onto his shoulders and that someone else had an iron grip on his ankle and was dragging a steel rake up the inside of his thigh, heading straight toward....

Common sense took over from disassociated reason and Ezra's eyes popped open. His vision was blurred, but he could see well enough to aim the heel of his free foot in a slamming kick between his torturer's legs. A head butt against his second captor's chin guaranteed that he, too, sank like a stone beneath the water, leaving Ezra free to crawl for the bank.

He heard the roar of unintelligible shouting, felt the cold shadow of a big, big man fall across him when he heaved himself up onto the wiry grass of the shore.

Fear pumped adrenaline through him and he howled in pain and rage, flipping on to his side. He used the momentum of the move to bring extra force to his punch, aiming for the spot where all four seams of a pair of trousers meet.

Josiah crashed backward, like some great felled tree. Ezra heard more shouts, saw the blurs of more men running toward him and clawed and pushed his way off the bank, back into the water. He could hear a current rushing and made for it. It might drown him, but it certainly offered better odds than the ones to which he had awoken.

Chris managed to grab Ezra's arm when Standish floundered past him, letting go when the flat of Ezra's foot kicked into his gut.

"Go! Go!" Buck yelled at a Vin torn between running down the bank to follow Ezra's bobbing course or going after the air bubbles rising to the surface of the swimming hole from where Nathan and Chris lay on its sandy bottom. Dropping his hat and gunbelt, Vin jack-rabbited after Ezra.

J.D. beat Buck into the water by a few seconds, knifing into the churned up pool in the general vicinity of where Nathan had been the first to go down. It took him a few wide swipes of his arms to find him. Cussing Jackson's short hair, J.D. grabbed hold of the waistband of Nathan's drawers and one of his upper arms and stood up, barely managing to haul Nathan's head out of the water.

Chris was hanging onto and over Buck's arm when J.D. surfaced. Despite the disturbed bottom of the lake giving Buck's shaky-legged balance fits, they managed to beach their charges, collapsing beside them on the bank in order to catch their own breaths.

When Chris started to cough and swear, Buck rolled over to look at Jackson.

"Nathan?" he asked, observing Jackson's all-too-well remembered curl and clutch position of a man trying to protect his nearest and dearest after it was far, far too late. He got no answer, but then again, he hadn't really expected one.

Swiping his hair out of his eyes, J.D. staggered to his feet. "You okay?" he asked Wilmington.

Buck waved him on, and J.D. handed him one of the captured rifles before racing out after Vin and Ezra.

"Josiah?" Buck called, using the butt of the rifle to sit himself up. A barely audible groan of a gasp answered him. Wilmington shook his head, wincing in sympathy.

"Every time that boy gets hurt, it damn near kills us," he wheezed to the puking Chris.

++++

'Crooked shoes ain't no good fer runnin',[i]' Vin thought to himself, missing the sure touch of a bare sole or a moccasin-covered foot on the uneven ground of the curving bank. He didn't have to run far to find Ezra - the gambler was sprawled face down in the stream, his body caught by rocks that raised the bottom of the creek too high for the current to carry him any farther.

'Damn, damn, damn!' Vin swore silently, splashing into the shallow water toward Ezra's limp body. Slipping and sliding like a drunk calf across the limestone chunks, the tracker tripped and fell, the sharp edge of a jutting rock gashing open his trousers and knee.

"Shit, shit, shit!" he yelped, scrambling forward on hands and knees to get to Ezra. Grabbing his arm and the hair on the back of his head, Vin hauled him up out of the current.

"Ezra!" he cried, shaking Standish until his teeth rattled. "Damn it, Ezra - ya can't die on me now!"

Ezra's head rolled against the shaking, and Vin froze.

"Ezra?" he breathed.

The muscles jumped in Ezra's stomach and his Adam's-apple bobbed in his throat. Heart soaring, Vin sat down on his heels and threw Standish across his legs, pressing his knees into his stomach to help with the inevitable.

"Easy, easy," Vin chanted, carefully rubbing Ezra's bruised and torn-up back to help him heave up the water he swallowed. He'd give damn near anything to hear Standish tell him how useless such an admonition was, given the circumstances. Ezra finished retching and began to cough.

"Y' with me, pard?" he asked anxiously, ready to defend himself just in case Standish wasn't. He thought he heard Ezra say something through his hacking and threw caution to the winds, turning the smaller man over onto his back and hauling him up to where he could see his face.

"Ezra!?" he demanded.

Vin's welcome and familiar voice called his name through a roaring blackness strafed with sparkling red and white lightning and Ezra took a chance and let himself fall forward toward it. The smell of wet leather and the feel of rough buffalo hide confirmed the miracle: Vin had him; he was safe....

Vin felt one of Ezra's arms clutch around him and heard Standish mutter something that was again distorted by a coughing groan.

"Do what?!" Vin demanded, bringing Ezra's head to his chest and tilting his ear down toward him to try and hear him.

"...terrible..." Standish gasped out.

"What's terrible?" Vin demanded, his arms tightening around Ezra. "Damn it, tell me, so's I can fix it!"

"...screams..."

A cold that had nothing to do with sitting up to his waist in snowmelt shivered down Vin's spine. "Ain't no one screamin'!"

'Not any more, anyways....'

Ezra's head moved against Vin's chin and he tried to twist his hand into the slack of the buckskin coat.

"...drownin'..."

"Ya ain't drownin' - I got ya - I ain't gonna let ya drown," Vin said, his voice breaking.

"...tiny...Tanners...all drownin'..."

"Damn it, Ezra!" Vin howled in relief. "I ain't got fleas!"

Laughing because he'd be damned if he'd blubber like some kid finding his lost pup, he rocked Ezra in his arms, rubbing on his head.

'Fleas?' J.D. repeated to himself, standing on the bank watching Vin and Ezra hang onto each other, listening to the tracker laugh and cry at the same time. Suddenly J.D. felt like he was intruding. A sick sort of anxiety squeezing his stomach, he realized that even if Ezra was alive, he might not ever hear a scolding "young man!" again or have another midnight lock-picking lesson.... The next time Ezra called him 'Mister Dunne' it might only mean his name.

"J.D.!" Vin yelled. "Git over here and give me a hand!"

Swallowing down his fear and remorse, J.D. obeyed.

++++

"God-damned horse," Vin muttered to himself. His twisted knee jabbed pain through him with every uneven step he took and he had Chaucer's bite to thank for the murderously hurtful numb ache radiating from his upper left arm.

"Want me t'carry him?" J.D. asked when Vin stumbled for the third time.

"I got 'im," the tracker snapped. When J.D. looked like a whipped pup, he sighed. "Not sure I wouldn't drop him if we tried to switch, kid."

"We're almost there," J.D. encouraged, hovering at his side. Vin didn't spare the breath to answer him.

++++

"Here they come," Buck announced, poking Chris in the side with his index finger. "Looks like Ezra added Vin to the butcher's bill."

Lying face down on the ground with his fingers dug into the roots of its tough grass, Chris raised his head, squinting Vin, Ezra and J.D. into focus.

"Hell..." he sighed. Vin looked like he was about to drop Ezra, and Chris could tell that the tracker's bleeding knee was swollen from twenty feet away. Awkwardly shoving himself to his feet, Larabee instinctively pressed his forearm against his aching gut. Carefully maneuvering around Josiah and Nathan, he walked out to meet the staggering Tanner.

"Grab his feet, J.D.," Chris told the anxious kid, getting his grip under Ezra's arms. "On three... one - two - three - !"

Even though Chris knew Standish was heavier than he looked, Ezra's weight still caught him by surprise, tearing pain through his clenched stomach muscles that bore the brunt of the burden when Vin's knee decided it was time to give out.

Taking the profane commentary upon Ezra's ancestors Tanner was making under his breath to mean that Vin would live, Chris jerked his head toward the triage area further down the bank. With a glance at Vin, J.D. obeyed, thinking better of asking Tanner if he was okay.

'Kid's learnin',' Chris thought with approval.

++++

They put Ezra down more or less gently on the ground between Buck and Nathan. J.D. took a moment to glance worriedly around at his fallen comrades before trotting back to help Vin.

Chris collapsed into a sitting heap beside Ezra, thinking he must look like the Dying Gaul.

'Damn it, Ezra!' he frowned down at the unconscious man. 'What the hell are you doing to me?"

The days when Chris Larabee had thought about things like Roman statues and Latin conjugation belonged to another lifetime, one that he preferred to leave where he'd buried it.

"Now what?" Buck asked, patting Ezra's leg to reassure himself that Standish was still alive.

"Still gotta... get him... cleaned off," Nathan gurgled out between gasps.

"Best wake him up first," Vin advised, limping into the conversation. J.D. was tucked under his shoulder with an arm around his waist, doing most of the work of keeping Tanner moving.

Giving Vin a dirty look, Chris swept his hand in Ezra's general direction. "Be my guest," he invited.

Freeing himself from J.D's assistance, Vin lurched over and grabbed Chris's hat off the top of his duster.

"Fucker," Chris muttered.

Vin didn't even try to kneel, simply walking into the pond until he was in far enough to dip Chris's hat under the water and bring it back up full to its brim. Climbing back up the sloping bank was more effort than he'd expected, but he managed to keep the hat steady nonetheless.

The subtle but distinct aroma of lavender wafted into the air. Leaning in the direction of the hat Vin held over Ezra's head, Buck took a sniff before sending a pointed look in Chris's direction.

'Fuckers," Chris thought at Buck, Vin, and Ezra - deciding that when this was all over, Standish was buying him a new hat.

Vin took a position a few steps away from Ezra, aimed carefully and then threw the contents of the hat into his face.

The impact of the cold water had the desired effect, and Ezra came up swinging to his right - and right toward Larabee's face. Chris was ready for him, congratulating himself as he caught Ezra's right fist in his hand, holding it away from his face.

He never saw the left uppercut that slammed into his already bruised jaw and chin, sending him backwards to bang his head against the hard ground of the creek bank.

By the time Chris had shaken off the stars exploding in his brain and gotten himself up on both elbows, Vin was on the ground, groaning and clutching the ankle of what had been his good leg, J.D. was sitting on the ground with his hands clamped over his nose with blood seeping through his fingers, and Buck had corralled Ezra, hanging onto the struggling Standish by a thread.

'That God-damned money!' Chris thought raggedly.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Buck yelled, with a shake that made Standish cry out with pain. "Calm down, Ezra!"

Only able to open his red and swollen eyes a crack, Ezra grated out a frightened, "Buck?"

"Right here," Wilmington soothed. "War's over, Hoss."

"Did we... win...?" Ezra gasped, collapsing against Wilmington's chest.

"Yep," Buck told him, surveying the human wreckage moaning and bleeding around them. "You sure did...."

Ezra tried to push himself up into a sitting position. It was frighteningly easy for Wilmington to prevent the bid for independence and keep Standish where he was. Closing his eyes, Ezra hid his face against Buck's shoulder.

"Damn fool doesn't know when to give up," Chris complained, spitting blood from a bitten cheek onto the grass.

"Good thing - or we'd be how dead?" Buck angrily reminded him.

"Little weasel," Chris said roughly, acknowledging Wilmington's point. "C'mere, J.D."

The kid reluctantly did as he was told.

"Lemme see," Larabee instructed.

"Bno," J.D. answered.

'Kid's learning,' Buck thought to himself.

"C'mon, lemme see your nose," Chris coaxed. "I won't touch it."

"Pwohmis?"

"Would I lie?"

"Hhyess."

"Lemme see your God-damned nose, J.D.!"

Slowly, and with more than a little help from Chris, J.D. took his hands away from his bloody nose.

"Yep, he broke it all right," Chris said, wincing at the crooked course the kid's nose now ran. "Hold still," he warned - after he reached out and squeezed the cartilage back into a straight line.

"Ooooowwwww!" J.D. howled, clapping his hands back over his nose.

"Ya didn't want a bump, didja?" Chris asked. "Now go wash your face and get a wet rag on it."

Ezra mumbled indistinctly, struggling against Buck's restraining grip.

"The kid's fine," Buck growled. "Damn it, tell 'im you're fine, J.D.!"

"I'mb fhine, Ezhra," J.D. promptly obeyed, grinning with happiness despite the pain it caused him.

"But you ain't," Buck told Standish. "You're busted up somethin' bad."

Somehow Ezra managed to convey the feeling of a glare without actually opening his eyes. Mustering all his strength of body and will, he whispered, "Ah... know...."

Buck chuckled. "You got dead rancher and chicken shit all over ya and until it's scrubbed off, we can't patch you up right."

Ezra made a noise of distaste, twisting his left hand up over Wilmington's arm to scrub at his face. Buck caught his wrist, not wanting Standish to make his lacerations and bruises any worse.

Ezra blinked at his hand, tugging once or twice against Buck's grip until his eyes managed to focus on his bare fingers. He stared at them, blinking rapidly, as if somehow blinking could conjure what he was looking for from beneath the filth covering his ring finger. When he realized that it would not, he clenched his hand into a fist and this time when he pulled against Buck's grip, Wilmington let him go, allowing Ezra to bring his hand to cover his face so he could hide behind it.

Buck bit his lip and tightened his arms, looking away from Standish in a futile attempt to give him privacy and protection at the same time. Chris pulled up tufts of grass and tossed them back to the ground, not wanting to look at Ezra either. J.D. stared silently at the ground around the swelling of his nose.

Only Vin watched Ezra without flinching, his frown darkening his face into ugliness. Without a word, he shoved himself to his feet and lurched over to where he'd dropped his gunbelt. Picking it up, he drew his mare's leg from its holster before putting the belt over his shoulder to reload the repeater's long chamber from its supply of .44-40 ammunition. Sliding the fully loaded repeater back into its holster, Vin shrugged out of his soggy jacket and buckled the gunbelt low across his wet trousers and hips. Picking up his slouch hat with a swallowed groan, he shoved it on his head, drew his gun, cocked it, and limped off toward the swirling dust of the cratered chicken farm.

"Good hunting," Chris murmured, only the knowledge that Buck couldn't stand on his good leg long enough to hold Ezra's head out of the water keeping him from following the younger man.

"Go," Buck said. At Chris's questioning look, he explained, "I can sit on the bank."

Moving faster than his body liked, Chris snatched up his jeans and dove into the deepest part of the swimming hole. When he came up for air, he was sucking in his gut and everything else to allow the buttoning of his fly. Sloshing out of the creek, he took his gun belt from J.D. and jogged after Vin.

Ezra stirred in Buck's arms. "...Thirsty..." he murmured.

"I know," Wilmington soothed. "Give me the water, J.D."

"Dwhat's next?" J.D. honked, uncapping the canteen before he handed it over.

Buck pointed to the pond where the scrub-brush was bobbing in Chris's wake.

"Find the soap."

++++

Mary put her knitting down on her lap and pressed the knuckles of her fingers into her eyes.

"You all right?" Travis asked her, looking up from the briefs he was trying to read.

"It's this house arrest," she complained, putting her hands on top of her needles and blinking her parlor back into focus. "It makes me feel useless."

"It's not forever," he reminded her. "As soon as the boys get back with Jim's witness, we can deal with Hopewell for good."

"I hope so," she sighed. "Because a lot more people will die if we don't stop the governor."

A knock on the front door stopped their conversation. Mary automatically rose to answer it, but Travis raised a hand to stop her.

With another frustrated sigh, Mary resumed her seat and waited for her guards to come and tell her who was at her door. After an eternity, Francis Corcoran appeared outside the parlor.

"Come in," she told him, and this time Travis didn't stop her when she stood up and put her knitting aside.

"Wire for His Honor," Corcoran explained, handing the paper telegram to Travis. "From Domino Flats."

"What does it say?" Mary demanded.

"Give me a minute," Travis answered. "Jim's sent it in code."

She passed the time it took for the judge to pull out his reading glasses and paper, pen and ink and begin his translation by offering Francis a cup of tea. The guard the Irishman had posted at her back door smiled and nodded to her through her kitchen window as she fixed the pot and gathered the cups. Francis met her in the hall to take the heavy tray away from her, waiting for her to precede him back into the parlor. His reason for coming to fetch her from the kitchen was immediately apparent: Her father-in-law sat with his reading glasses in one hand, the paper with his notes on it crushed in the other, smearing the fresh ink in black streaks across his white fingers.

"Orrin?" she asked softly. "What is it?"

"The witness is dead," he answered, his voice brutally matter-of-fact. "Killed by one of Hopewell's men. Jim's been shot - J.T. isn't expected to live."

"Oh, no.... Poor Angela!"

Francis put the tea tray down on its table, looking from the judge to Mary, their conversation as much a mystery to him as the nonsense message of the telegram had been.

"Angela is my daughter," the judge explained. "J.T. is her husband - Jim Rupert's son. Seems that Hopewell bought himself a universal agent."

"Do we know who?" Mary asked.

"Robert," Travis answered heavily.

"My God...." Mary raised her hands to her throat, crossing them over the base of her neck. "Maybe he can testify against Hopewell instead?"

Travis shook his head. "Emily blew his head off. Seems she didn't like the idea of her husband trying to kill her father and her brother."

"That's it then," Mary said, struggling to keep her voice from breaking. "Hopewell gets away with it...."

"Robert knew I'd sent the boys for the witness," Travis told her. "Ezra called it right down the line - I sent those boys straight into an ambush."

Corcoran laughed. Travis frowned and Mary glared, and Francis turned his mirth into a cough.

"Beggin' y'r pardon," he said. "But I'm after thinkin' I wouldn't like to be part of an ambush those lads knew was waitin' for 'em!"

Neither Mary nor Travis could find any humor in the situation.

"Angela," the judge murmured. "I - have to go to her...."

"I'll pack our bags," Mary agreed, turning toward the parlor door. Francis blocked her way, compassion in his gaze as he shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Yer Honor, Missus," he apologized. "I'm afraid that isn't possible. It won't do yer family any good t'have the two of you lyin' dead somewhere between here and Domino Flats."

"Damnit, she's my daughter!" Travis exploded, slamming his fist against the top of the desk.

"Aye," Francis agreed quietly. "An' y'owe it t'her and those lads of yours to sit tight and let this hand play out."

++++

Buck closed his eyes, hanging on to a suddenly rebellious stomach as the last dregs of adrenaline faded from his system, leaving him in a world of hurt.

"Bhuck?" J.D. asked from between Ezra's knees.

"I'm fine, kid," Wilmington snapped, opening his eyes.

"Sooner you get... done, the sooner... we can... take care of Buck," Nathan encouraged J.D. from where he floated in the swimming hole, supporting his body by pressing his hands against its sandy bottom. He'd tried to convince Josiah to join him, to let the cold water do what little it could to help his swelling and his pain, but Sanchez refused to be moved by his words - or anything else short of divine intervention.

With a last look at Buck's pale, sweating face, J.D. got back to the job of trying to remove the filth determined to stick to Ezra. Standish had mustered enough spirit early into the endeavor to claim that J.D. was trying to remove the top three layers of his skin as well, but the gasping bravado had quickly subsided into a clenched-jawed silence.

"Hhere dey come," J.D. announced, looking up at the approaching Vin and Chris.

"Watch what you're doin'," Buck commanded sharply. The kid was in far too sensitive an area to take any chances in riling Ezra again. One more time of thinking he had to fight for his life just might kill Standish - not to mention the damage it could do to the rest of them.

"How's he doin'?" Chris asked, arriving beside Buck on the creek bank. He carried Ezra's boots in his left hand, his right arm supporting Vin. The tracker in his turn carried Ezra's Remington and its gunbelt over his shoulder, and Ezra's silver flask was tucked in the waistband of Vin's pants.

"He's still with us," Buck answered. "Can't say the same for Josiah."

Chris took the hint, letting go of Vin and dropping Ezra's boots next to his discarded black duster to go check on Sanchez.

Vin put the whiskey flask into one of the boots and laid the gunbelt over their tops before once more limping into the makeshift pond, heading for Ezra's left side. With Buck sitting where the water just came up to the bottom of his ribcage to support the smaller man's shoulders against his chest and keep his head out of the water, the tracker had to sit down on the sandy creek bottom to be able to reach Ezra comfortably.

Once down, he took the bar of blue soap from J.D. Lifting Ezra's left hand out of the water, Vin methodically soaped it and the arm it was attached to, borrowing the scrub brush from J.D. to do the job right. When Ezra's fair skin glowed clean and red through the lather of the soap, Vin lowered it into the water and rinsed it off. Letting the wooden handled brush float next to him, he put the soap down on Ezra's faintly moving chest.

Reaching inside his shirt he pulled a small, plain pouch of smoked buckskin out from under his collar. Opening it, he reached inside and fished out Ezra's ruby ring. Vin gave it a scrub or two with the soapy brush to remove blood and the torn threads of flesh clinging to the tines of its stone's setting before dipping it beneath the water to rinse it clean. Putting the ring on the first knuckle of his index finger for safekeeping, he went back into the pouch for the slender gold wedding ring that Ezra hid under the ruby's broader band.

Chris found himself looking away when he saw the flash of the ring. He met Buck's gaze, then both men found something to interest them on the creek banks. The ring begged too many questions, stirred too many memories, for them to watch.

Nathan shook his head, sighing to himself. 'You know he only wears that ring so's he has it when he needs it to con folks like you two idiots,' he reassured himself, nonetheless finding himself preferring to study the pattern of bruises across Ezra's chest rather than watch Tanner. 'Least ways I hope so....'

Vin gave the gold band a wash and rinse as well, removing the dried blood dulling its shine before handing J.D. back the scrub brush. The kid accepted it in silence, watching from the corner of his vision as Tanner slipped the wedding ring back into its accustomed place. The gold band settled easily into the groove it had worn in Ezra's ring finger over the years that it had lain there, and J.D. bit his lip and turned his head away, feeling embarrassed, like he'd stumbled into something that wasn't any of his business. To distract himself, he went back to scrubbing the packed filth off Standish.

Ezra's hand twitched in Vin's grip, then suddenly grabbed Tanner's fingers with a startling splash. His heart pounding in reaction, Vin realized Standish was putting everything he had into just holding on to him. He covered Ezra's hand with his free one, making sure Standish wouldn't lose his precarious grip. Ezra's grip jerked and he strangled a moan deep in his throat.

"Ezra?" Buck and Vin chorused, leaning in close to Standish. Wilmington had to reach out and stop Ezra's twisting head before his nose and mouth went under the sloshing waterline, cradling his neck to stop Standish from drowning himself.

"Hold still!" Buck demanded.

Vin brought his face down level with Ezra, squeezing the hand shaking in his until Ezra's fingers grew as white as his own knuckles. "What is it?" Vin asked him. "What's wrong?"

"J.D.," Nathan said, his voice hollow, "that ain't dirt."

Vin and Buck's heads snapped up and around, glaring down at J.D. who stood frozen over Ezra's blue-black abdomen, the soapy scrub-brush still in his hand.

The kid's face blanched under the rising bruises of his black eyes. "Whad iz it?" he asked hoarsely.

"Blood," Nathan answered.

J.D. dropped the scrub-brush.

"That's what gives bruises their colors," Jackson explained gently. "A man gets hit that hard, somethin's gotta give."

A tense silence held for a moment, before Vin looked back at Ezra.

"Reckon he's bleedin' inside?" Tanner quietly asked.

"Nope," Nathan answered. "His belly's flat and he ain't screamin'. That there's from where he landed."

"Y'all right, kid?" Buck asked gruffly. J.D. shook his head, his gaze riveted to Ezra's agonized expression. Slowly, he backed away from Standish, unable to touch the scrub-brush again. Buck looked to Tanner to take over and found the same fear that held J.D. frozen in Vin's suddenly young eyes.

"J.D.," Buck called gently. "Come here and help Vin hold Ezra."

"I'll do it," Chris interrupted, joining the rest of them in the water. It took him a couple of tries to snag the bobbing brush out of his wake. "Come help hold him steady, J.D.", he ordered, lathering up its bristles with the soap.

"This is gonna hurt," he warned Ezra, laying into the dirt that had worked itself into the snapped stitches of the half-healed wound on his chest.

J.D. went under first, soundly dunked when Ezra tried to throw him at Chris.

"You're makin' it worse!" Buck scolded, sliding down the bank into deeper water with the effort of keeping Ezra from slithering out of his grasp. Vin and J.D. each grabbed one of Ezra's legs, gamely hanging on despite the drenching cascades of water his struggles to get away churned over them.

Finally satisfied that the wound was as clean as he could make it, Chris stopped scrubbing and rinsing it. Ezra sagged, his chest jerking with the effort to pull air into his lungs past the agony choking him.

"Turn him over," Chris ordered.

J.D. and Vin lifted Ezra up and out of the water while Buck pushed himself back up on the bank. Ezra moaned, managing to curb his instinct to squirm out of their grasp when they turned him over and put his back to Chris. He used what strength he had to grab Buck instead, pressing his scraped cheek against the wet calico sleeve covering Wilmington's bicep.

"Almost done," Buck encouraged him, bringing his hand up to support Ezra's head where it lay against him. He put his other arm around Ezra's waist, holding him securely.

"It's bad, Ezra," Chris said, examining the jagged edges of the dirt-packed furrow cut by the bullet that had taken Standish down.

"...Do...it..." Ezra gasped, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his teeth in anticipation of the suffering to come.

Taking a deep breath, Chris attacked the laceration, tearing the stiff boar bristles into the wound. Ezra made a sound no human throat should be capable of, struggling to lift his head, to move his arms, to kick out, to do anything, anything to get away from the pain smothering him from the inside out. The best he could do was press his face into Buck's shoulder and try not to make a sound as he cried.

Feeling a hundred times a bastard, Buck tugged at the wet strands of hair on the back of Ezra's head when he felt the younger man's grip begin to falter. Standish was most likely far enough gone that if he passed out now, he'd stay out for the duration, but the chance that he wouldn't was not one Buck was willing to take. It was too easy to imagine Ezra killing himself or someone else before he realized where he was and who they were.

"Stay with me," he ordered. "C'mon Ezra, stay with me."

Ezra made a guttering sound, his arms tightening around Wilmington.

"Hurry, damn it!" Buck swore at Chris.

"I'm goin' as fast as I can, damn it!" Larabee swore right back, splashing water across the spasming muscles of Ezra's back to wash away the blood obscuring the bullet's path.

"Almost done," Nathan interrupted, having somehow summoned up the fortitude to stand up on his knees beside Chris. "J.D., go roll out... Ezra's blanket...."

J.D. splashed out of the pond, grateful for the reprieve. Careful not to drip on Ezra's saddlebags or his very interesting book, J.D unbuckled the gambler's leather bedroll cover, liberating the thick wool blanket with its broad red stripe across the bottom.

"Hey, Djosiah," he said, noticing that Sanchez had rolled over so that he was now facing the others. It was the only sign of life he'd shown in nearly half an hour, but considering the circumstances, it was a promising beginning.

Chris took a step away from Ezra's back, looking at Nathan for approval. Jackson nodded, instantly regretting it. Eyes squeezed shut, he whispered, "Whiskey...."

"J.D.!" Vin called. "Get a bottle of redeye outta Nathan's bag."

"Bowl..." Nathan wheezed.

"And bring down one of them wooden bowls, too."

Waiting for J.D. to comply with Nathan's instructions, Chris took stock of their circumstances. Buck's eyes were closed in his gray face and he'd laid his cheek against the side of Ezra's head. Vin was holding them both up, letting Wilmington lean into him and keeping a steadying hand on the flinching muscles in the small of Ezra's back. Even through the reddish, murky water around Standish, Chris could tell that Vin's knee was twice the size it ought to be and he was willing to bet money they were going to have to cut his boot to get it off his ankle. It would be at least a week before either Nathan or Josiah would be able to walk right, let alone ride a horse, and in another hour, J.D. wasn't going to be able to see. As for Ezra....

"Wash his head..." Nathan panted, the command a welcome interruption of Chris's line of thought. "Gotta make sure... it ain't cracked...."

Chris raised an eyebrow at Jackson, but otherwise kept his thoughts to himself.

"J.D.," Vin called. "Bring Ezra's other soap fer Chris."

The kid grabbed Ezra's other silver soapbox, tossing the rich brown cake inside it to Larabee. Using the pine tar and rosemary shampoo soap instead of the lavender body bar on Ezra's hair was the sort of detail that was important to the tracker - like finding a slim gold ring amongst the fatal disarray of dozens of ruptured bodies strewn across half an acre.

J.D. slid back into the water, holding a shallow wooden bowl and a bottle of bourbon over his head. Letting the bowl float, he uncorked the whiskey and helped Nathan take a swig, then joined Chris to assist him in washing the crud out of Ezra's hair.

Between the two of them and Nathan's bowl, they were able to keep everyone from drowning and get Ezra's hair washed and rinsed.

"He's got a knot right here," Chris told Nathan, pointing at a spot on the back of Ezra's skull, "but I can't tell if it's a new one or an old one."

"Don't worry - he'll be able to," Nathan predicted, sloshing whiskey across the bloody crease running the width of Ezra's shoulders. Standish made a horrible little sound against Buck's arm, unable to find the strength to even move his head in protest of the alcohol's searing benediction.

'Shit,' Chris thought.

"J.D.," Nathan called, bringing the kid to his side. "The green bundle...."

Dunne nodded as Jackson fought painfully for his breath.

"There's a sheet in it.... Put it over... the blanket...."

J.D. slogged up the bank once again, his wake slapping Nathan into a groaning, protective clutch of his aching anatomy. Chris reached out and caught Jackson before he fell over.

'Damn it, Ezra!' he thought raggedly, watching J.D. spread the winding sheet Nathan carried to cover Someone Else's Body over Ezra's blanket.

"Chris?" Vin asked.

Larabee pulled himself away from useless regret and back to the crisis at hand, frowning down at Vin.

"Can you carry him?" the tracker asked, pointing his chin at the shivering Ezra.

Chris wasn't sure - but he was certain he was the only one left who could try.

Handing Vin the whiskey bottle he managed it somehow, despite Ezra digging up a spurt of strength from somewhere to hang onto Buck, fighting against Chris's first lifting tug. The resistance didn't last long, and Chris heaved Ezra up onto his shoulder, staggering up the bank.

"Put him on... his stomach..." Nathan instructed, the volume he needed to produce to be heard nearly crippling him. "Dry 'im... off...."

With J.D.'s help, Chris was able to do as he'd been told. Reaching out for Ezra's unopened saddlebag, Chris unbuckled it, rooting through it to find the soft towel he knew would be there. His fingers found the cotton loops of its deep pile and he tugged it free from the confines of the saddlebag, along with a two-pound flatiron that fell out of the folds of the towel onto his bare foot.

"Y'owe me a dollar, Cowboy," Vin said with satisfaction, watching Chris hop by in front of him, clutching his bleeding toes and swearing a blue streak. J.D. rescued the towel and got to work drying Ezra off.

"Vin..." Nathan ground out, handing the tracker one of his small, sharp knives. "Buck...."

Nodding, Tanner traded Nathan the whiskey bottle for the blade, fishing Wilmington's wounded leg up out of the water and cutting through the dirty bandanna Jackson had used to bandage it less than twelve hours before.

Growling out a string of profanity that rivaled Chris's lexicon, Buck's fingers dug into the mud of the creek bank when Vin yanked off his boot, spilling fresh, bright blood out into the water to tangle in thin streams around them.

'Not as bad as it could've been,' Nathan thought with relief. "Use the soap..." he told Tanner, forcing himself to push the bobbing scrub brush toward the tracker.

Washing out the brush with the whiskey like his Kiowa Uncle had taught him to, Vin scrubbed out both sides of the puncture wound, leaving Buck on his back, white faced, gasping for air - and sliding down the bank toward the tracker and deeper water.

"Dang it, Buck!" Vin yelped, losing the fight to keep his balance. As his head went under water, he saw Chris hobbling down the bank at a speed that made Vin's injuries throb in sympathy. Clawing his way back to the surface, he swiped his hair from his eyes in time to see Larabee sitting on the ground and hauling Wilmington back up the bank, the muscles of his lean frame knotted with the effort.

"Stay off that leg!" Chris growled when he had Buck safely in his grasp, giving him an open-handed smack on the top of his head.

Buck didn't answer, closing his eyes and letting his head drop back against Larabee's shoulder.

"Ya gotta tie a knot and hang on, Big Dog," Chris murmured, patting Buck's head where he'd hit him. "We're a long way from outta the woods."

Buck nodded and Chris looked over at Vin.

"How you doin', Cowboy?"

Vin smiled. "Just fine, Mister Larabee."

Chris chuckled, taking a moment to rest before finding the strength to haul the three of them up to level ground.

++++

J.D. blinked painfully, peering out at the hazy images of Nathan and Vin chopping the onions that were making tears roll down his cheeks and snot slide unchecked from a nose he was unable to make sniff.

"Here y'go, kid," Chris said gruffly, limping up to Dunne. J.D. felt a handkerchief pressed into his hand, and even though he couldn't smell the aroma of Number 4711 faintly edged with lavender and rosemary, he knew from the feel of the soft cotton lawn that Larabee had helped himself to one from Ezra's stock. His sore nose was grateful for the gentle touch of the delicate fabric as he wiped the mucus off his face.

"You'll be all right," Chris told him.

J.D. gave him a miserable look made sinisterly effective by the fact that his eyes were swollen nearly shut. "Phwomiss?"

Chris grinned and tousled the kid's hair, absently wiping his hand off on his trouser leg when he'd finished. "Think you're up to helping me carry a stretcher?"

J.D. squinted at the wounded men in front of him. "Dhow many?"

Larabee chuckled. "Good. We gotta get the hell out of here."

Leaving J.D. with Ezra's handkerchief, Chris returned to where Buck lay beside Standish. Ezra was chest-side down on the clean white sheet, wet now with pond water, whiskey, and blood. His face was turned toward Wilmington, his arms bent at the elbow and his hands along the sides of his head as if he were about to push himself to his feet.

Buck had rolled onto his side, his head propped up on J.D.'s bedroll and his hand resting on Ezra's shoulder. He was talking softly to Standish, and even though Ezra's eyes were closed, Chris could feel him listening.

"...just as well she said no," Buck murmured. "I mean, marryin' a redhead's just askin' for trouble - 'bout as much trouble as goin' into partnership with that mother of yours."

With a jolt, Chris realized that he was eavesdropping on a private conversation between good friends, and that he had no idea who Buck was talking about marrying.

"Now you know you hate Saint Louis," Buck continued, as if he'd heard some reply from Ezra. "Too many Yankee politicians and carpetbaggers tryin' to put honest gamblers out of business. That's your Ma's game - not yours."

Chris licked his lips, remembering when Buck had been so much a part of his life that he had been the one who hadn't had to say a word for an entire conversation.

Ezra's fingers trembled on the hand Buck could see, the index finger twitching.

"Y'think?" Buck asked frowning.

The index finger twitched again.

"Yeah," Buck sighed, "she might like 'Frisco... but I'm not sure how she'd take to our particular kind of friends."

Chris turned away from Buck and Ezra, toward Josiah's hunched body. Try as he might, he couldn't remember a time when he'd been able to read Buck's mind like Ezra just had.

Vin looked up with streaming eyes when Chris's shadow fell over him. Larabee had put on a pair of dry socks from his kit and gotten back into his boots and duster to protect him from the worst of the bright morning sun and the dust, but his wet hat lay next to his discarded shirt - and no doubt would until it stopped smelling like a New Orleans Parlor House.

"Gonna get my spurs," Chris announced, buckling on his peacemaker.

"I'm gonna need Vin here," Nathan said.

After a moment, Tanner nodded. "Watch your back," he told Chris, and returned to smashing up the onion for the drawing poultices they needed for the bullet wounds.

"Dhow can Ih help?" J.D. asked, not needing to see Buck's shake of the head to figure out that following Chris was not the answer to his question.

"Go see if you can get Josiah movin'," Nathan answered, wanting nothing more than to lie down on the hard ground and curl up himself. "And keep the fire goin' and the water boilin'. And get those clean shirts of Ezra's out of his pack, cut 'em up for bandages.

"Onions 're chopped, Nathan," Vin said, looking expectantly at Jackson.

Gritting his teeth, Nathan took a shallow breath and held it a moment. Telling someone how to doctor was turning out to be a lot harder than just doing it.

"Put them wide, square bandages in the hot water..." Nathan began.

Following Jackson's instructions as best he could, Vin steamed the gauze bandages, wrung out a single square of cloth, filled its center with a double handful of onions, folded it over, and wrapped it with a second. Nathan made him wait to put the poultice over the wound in Ezra's back until the skin on the inside of his wrist could only just stand the heat from the poultice for a moment. It took three of the rectangular dressings to cover the long red tear, and Vin had to call J.D. away from Josiah's side to help hold and lift Standish so they could be bound in place. Once Nathan was satisfied that they were secure, they carefully turned Ezra over onto his back.

"You with me?" Buck demanded of Ezra, reaching out to grab the hand closest to him. Standish answered him with a press of his fingers so slight that at first Wilmington mistook it for a shiver.

"Good," Buck said gruffly, his fingers opening and closing along the length of Ezra's hand. "You stay with me, hear?"

"Shirts..." Nathan panted, swatting at J.D.'s shoulder. Peering out through a quickly narrowing field of vision, the kid made his way over to Ezra's saddlebags.

"Damn..." Jackson muttered, his hands shaking so badly he couldn't pull his fine pointed scissors from their place in his leather tool roll-up. Vin did it for him, drawing them free.

"Them stitches..." Nathan panted. "Doin' him more harm n' good...."

Vin acknowledged what Jackson was asking him to do with a clench-jawed nod. He'd had popped stitches cut out of his hide once, and even drunker than a lord the pain had been fierce.

"Sorry, Ezra..." he apologized, hunkering down between Standish and Wilmington. Buck moved the gambler's arm to make room for Vin, raising it up on its elbow and rolling up on his own shoulder to keep his hold on Ezra's hand.

Vin sucked his breath in over his teeth as he got a good look at the ruptured stitches and the remaining dirt and filth that had worked their way into them. Nathan was right - they had to come out, the sooner the better. He steadied himself with a hand on the left side of Ezra's chest, keeping his touch light and avoiding the red, U-shaped welts swelling up everywhere across the smaller man's body.

Five minutes later, Vin sat back on his heels as he heard the ch-chinging of Chris's spurs in an unfamiliar rhythm. Larabee was favoring the foot with the smashed toes, four scavenged rifles balanced two over each shoulder to serve as stretcher poles. Vin sighed, blotting the sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes with the cuff of his shirt. It was going to be a long walk home....

"All's quiet in the chicken cemetery," Chris announced, stopping with a lop-sided jangle beside the tracker.

Vin got back to work on the stitches, stealing a look over at Ezra's hand twitching against Buck's each time a piece of Doc Sinclair's imported silk thread was tugged out of his puckered skin.

"Any sign of two-legged critters?" Vin asked, his relief at finding himself down to the last two stitches plain in his voice.

"Not for miles," Chris told him, swinging the rifles down off his shoulders to balance them butt-first on the ground in front of him. "The bastards must've thought a full brigade's artillery batteries opened up on them from point-blank range."

"Didn't see James out there anywheres, did ya?"

"Nope. If he survived, maybe we'll get lucky and he'll think the pro-statehood politicians got the Army sent in to restore order to the territory."

"If they do, we'll be out of a job right quick." Finally finishing his task, Vin tossed the scissors he'd used in the general direction of their home in Nathan's pack.

Ezra's cracked lips moved, forming the word 'water'. Buck had anticipated the request and was ready with the canteen, Vin helping him to lift Ezra's head so he could drink. Taking a few gulps from the canteen exhausted Standish's ability to swallow long before he'd had his fill of its tepid contents, and it broke Buck's heart to take it away from him.

"More later," he promised, capping it firmly. "You rest now."

Closing his eyes, Ezra licked his lips, biting and tearing at the raised flakes of dry skin for the blood he could suck from them.

"Stop that!" Buck scolded, unable to do anything more than crush Ezra's clammy hand in his. "You know that ain't gonna help."

"Hand me that whiskey, Chris," Vin ordered quietly.

Larabee did as he'd been asked, looking away when Vin poured the alcohol over Ezra's raw flesh, his skin crawling at the anguish Standish throttled back into the silence where he kept his real pain.

'Just scream, damn it!' Chris thought at him. 'Yell, cuss, cry... Jesus Christ, at least pass the hell out.... There's nothing left to fight, nothing you have to prove, you stubborn son of a bitch....'

Unbidden and unwelcome, words from Ezra's letter came back to him: 'If I have failed to earn your trust and respect....'

Chris slipped his hand inside the deep outside pocket of his duster, finding the bent ace of spades shoved into its bottom corner and running his thumb along its torqued edge. 'Maybe you'd be a damn sight better off if you were your mother's son....'

The sound of soft, nasal swearing caught Chris's attention and he looked over at J.D.

"Kid," he said, letting go of the card to rub his hand over the stubble sprouting on his chin, "what are you doin'?"

J.D. peered up in the direction of Larabee's voice. "Dnathan dneeds mohre bandahghes."

Dragging the rifles behind him, Chris walked over to where J.D. sat beside Josiah, three of Ezra's best silk shirts folded on his knee and one open in his hands. On top of the folded shirts was the most elaborate housewife Larabee had ever seen, made of red velvet brocade with silk straps and silver buckles, and it held everything from a thimble to things whose function and purpose Chris couldn't even begin to guess. J.D. held a silver-handled, steel-bladed seam ripper in his right hand, using the left one to hold Ezra's shirtsleeve an inch away from his watering, puffed up eyes. He was diligently taking the garment apart at its French seams.

"J.D..." Chris sighed. "Just how hard did he hit you?"

J.D. blinked painfully up at him. "Dreally hard," he answered earnestly.

"Ya gotta tear the shirts into strips, kid - narrow strips, or they won't work for bandages."

"Ih know," Dunne said. After a moment, his eyes closed in frustration and pain. "Doh..." he realized, his shoulders sagging. "Zhshit."

'Kid, you're killing me,' Chris silently told the boy, lowering himself to the ground beside J.D. with a grunting groan. Trying to ignore the fact that Ezra didn't hear the unmistakable sound of his silk shirts being ripped into unmendable shreds, Larabee got to work stripping the rifles he'd scrounged down to their lightest weight.

In the time it took Chris to unload and disable the four carbines, Vin and Nathan had used some of the silk strips to put a fourth poultice over Ezra's old wound and done the other things necessary to prepare a disabled man for a long trip down a hard road. He didn't watch them wrap the cotton sheet around Standish, telling himself that it looked like a baby's swaddling cloth instead of a shroud.

Vin used one of Nathan's sharp-pointed surgical probes as an awl to punch holes through the outside edge of the wool blanket from Ezra's bedroll that lay under the sheet before wrapping it around Ezra. He ran leather thongs through the holes, using the probe to lace them into the fabric of the blanket that ran beneath the outside edge of the wrapping, tying Ezra into a fabric cocoon. He wanted to make sure Ezra wouldn't be able to do any more damage to himself or anyone else.

"He ain't gonna like it," Buck warned.

"I don't hear him complainin'," Nathan replied, pleased with Vin's handiwork.

"You will," Tanner smiled.

"If we're lucky," Nathan admitted, enduring the pain it cost him to put the back of his hand on Ezra's forehead to judge the strength of his building fever.

The last of the onions went for Buck's leg wound, the light scent of Ezra's eau du toilette and lavender soap colliding badly with the pungent raw onion as they bound the poultice firmly in place.

They used most of the rest of Ezra's shirt to brace Vin's knee and ankle, tightening the short strips of tough, costly material over his trouser leg and boot. The tracker shook his head in regret, knowing they'd have to cut the boot and the trousers off him when they got back to town. Just when he'd finally gotten the damn things broken in....

'Who gets left behind?' Chris asked himself, taking off his duster and pulling its sleeves to the inside of the long jacket's body. 'Even if we could fit Buck and Ezra together on one stretcher, there's no way J.D. and I'd be able to lift it, let alone carry them the twenty odd miles back to Four Corners. There's no way of knowing how far Vin can make it before his legs give out, and Josiah and Nathan....'

Chris's mind veered away from the empathetic memories Josiah and Nathan's injuries provoked, racking his brains for a solution that would get them all home safely instead.

Buck raised himself up on one elbow when he heard Chris laugh, staring at him.

"Chris?"

"Ah horse," Chris declaimed, nailing an imitation of the Virginia drawl Ezra reverted to in those moments when he forgot he was a no good black-leg son of a bitch. "Mah kingdom for a horse!"

"Y'all right there, Cowboy?" Vin wondered aloud, nonetheless reassured by the joke he didn't get.

Chris shook his head, distracted from an explanation by J.D. standing up and trying to whistle.

"Stop it, kid," Buck ordered, laying back down. "You're making my head hurt."

J.D. ignored him, managing to produce a recognizable tune but not much volume on his second try.

"Hey!" Buck squawked, sitting up again and glaring at J.D., his mustache indignant. "That ain't my favorite song, kid!"

"Cahn yhou whistle iht?" J.D. asked, tears streaming down his face.

"Reckon I can, kid," Vin grinned.

'I'll just bet you can, you son of a bitch,' Chris thought as the sprightly melody of 'Dixie' pierced the heavy morning air and the words, 'sharpshooter, 17th Mississippi' echoed in the minds of three veterans of Army of the Potomac.

"NNnnnnggghhhhhh!!!!!" came a distant reply, punctuated by the growing drum-roll of a horse galloping toward them.

"J.D..." Chris said, with an uneasy glance at Ezra's prone form. "Can you handle that damned horse?"

"Hyes," the kid honked.

J.D. was as good as his word, calming the anxious bay with soothing hands and even more badly pronounced Latin than usual. In the time it took Chris to button his duster closed and for Vin to wrestle the sleeves of his wet buckskin capote inside out, J.D. had managed to get Buck - minus his spurs - into Ezra's saddle.

Nathan lightened his saddlebags of anything other than medical necessities and Dunne strapped them onto the bay behind Buck. Jackson grimaced, thinking that his tough old kit bags looked shoddy against the gleaming coat of Ezra's horse.

"What about Josiah?" Vin asked, fastening the front of his jacket closed.

"First things first," Chris replied, not having an answer to the tracker's question. With Vin's help, he worked one set of the lashed rifles through the shoulder of his duster, down the sleeve, and into the cuff of Vin's capote, working them up through the soggy, fractious leather until the butts of the rifles were the only things visible outside the jackets. It was harder work getting the second pair of rifles down the other side of the make-shift stretcher, their movements and the coats hampered by the drag of the heavy weapons already ensconced in the jacket's other sleeves. They stuffed the fabric duster inside the stronger buckskin, tugging the tube they'd made with the two coats as flat and smooth as possible.

J.D. brought them the blanket from his bedroll, and they folded it in half and laid it down on the stretcher to pad the lumps and bumps from buttons and thick seams. The wool prickled against Chris's skin in the growing heat and humidity of the day. Scratching his hand against the itch it left, he reminded himself that evaporation through the layers of cotton and wool they'd wrapped Ezra in would keep him cooler than any of them through the heat of the day.

"I'll cache the rest of the gear," Chris said, taking his single spare shirt out of his kit and shrugging into it. Other than the canteens, some hard tack and jerky, their weapons were the only extra weight worth carrying.

Tanner hauled himself to his feet, hobbling over to Ezra's saddlebags. He repacked them carefully, including the flatiron and the brass pieces of his spyglass. Slinging them over his shoulder, he accepted Larabee's helping hand to stand up.

"Vin..." Chris said. Tanner's jaw set in a familiar stubborn line and he picked up Ezra's boots, tucking them under his other arm.

Shaking his head, Chris gave in. Gathering together the rest of their gear, he hung it in the highest, densest part of the scrub pines. They'd have to come back for it later.

Brushing pine needles out of his hair, Chris thought about Stewart James. If Ezra died, there'd be no trial for the rancher....

Chris took one last look around the creek area before walking over to Josiah.

"It's time to go," he told the preacher.

Like some great Leviathan rising from the depths of primordial creation, Sanchez stirred. Chris watched in awe as the big man came to his feet, bent, but not, it seemed, irrevocably broken.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Buck intoned reverently.

"But the devil is very straightforward, brother," Josiah graveled in response, accepting Chris's help to shuffle over to rejoin the others.

Nathan was wearing his boots, shirt, jacket, and red drawers. He was hanging on to one of Chaucer's stirrups, and Vin stood ready to take the other. Ezra's Remington and Colt were draped around Chaucer's saddle horn in a counterbalance, the Derringer and its rig tied onto Nathan's kit. J.D. stood beside Ezra's head, waiting for Chris to help him lift Standish onto the stretcher.

'I'm getting too good at this,' he thought to himself, getting his grip on Ezra's knees.

"One, two, three -!" he chanted, hoisting Standish on the last number.

Ezra moaned, the sudden movement bringing him around.

"Ezra!" Chris bellowed, managing to juggle Ezra's thrashing legs down to the stretcher, but J.D. wasn't as gentle, his instinct for self-preservation making him drop Ezra the last foot to the stretcher when Standish tried to head-butt his face.

"Ezhra!" J.D. cried, horrified at what he'd done. Chaucer didn't like it much either, and Buck had the fight of his life to keep the bay in check and his butt in Ezra's saddle.

"No!" Chris growled, realizing that Ezra was thrashing around inside his restraining cocoon, trying to find his gun - and discovering that he'd been hog-tied. Not in the mood to chase Ezra in a horizontal sack race, he launched himself at the gambler, landing on top of him a moment before Standish succeeded in rolling himself off the stretcher.

"Stop it!" he yelled in Ezra's startled, scraped face. "Just - stop it, damn it!!"

"Dhon't swear!" J.D. yelped, but the warning came too late.

Buck tried to save Chris by pulling hard on the reins to keep Chaucer's head up, but the bay simply dropped to its knees, sending Buck flying over its ears and putting the torn, tender flesh of Larabee's backside in range of its teeth.

"Aooooowwwwww!" Chris howled, his agony blending with Buck's cussing. Vin went down next, his bad legs not giving him the speed he needed to get out of Chaucer's way as the horse heaved himself back onto four feet. J.D. tried to catch Tanner, and they went down like dominoes in a line, Vin's elbow landing on the kid's nose.

Nathan and Josiah knew they never had a chance and took what the horse dished out with their eyes closed and their hands held low.

"...sssssssssssssss..." Ezra hissed in Chris's ear.

"I hate that horse!" Chris growled, wanting to slug Standish for caring more about one outraged whinny than the pitiful whimpering of the broken men around him.

"...ssssssssssssss!" Ezra insisted. Chaucer nickered questioningly, all gentleness as he blew Ezra's hair away from his face.

Eyes rolling back in his head, Standish tried again. "...ttt...ffffff!"

The feel of a knee struggling to raise itself upward in the general direction of his belt buckle corrected Chris's translation of Ezra's meaning from "Chaucer" to "GET OFF ME!"

Larabee obeyed the request promptly, especially as the bay seemed inclined to help him. His lacerated cheek hit the ground first and he kept rolling, until he was lying face down next to Ezra, his fingers once again digging into the sandy soil of the creek bank in a futile effort to ease the pain lancing through his ass.

"Da-ng it, Ezra," he panted into the tufts of grass beneath him. "Next time, let 'em hang us."

++++

"I'd almost forgotten how rowdy a town can be at night," Francis remarked to Judge Travis, squinting through the draped windows of the Clarion office at the people on the street outside. "It's a different kind of lively back in the village."

"Children?" Travis guessed.

"Quite a few. My woman and I've adopted some of the tribe's orphans, and we've got expectations of our own in a few months."

"I appreciate you coming to help us out."

"I had t'come when Standish asked me to. I owe him."

"I thought.... Didn't Chris send for you?"

"Yes. But I came f'r the squire."

'Interesting...' Travis thought.

"Anything happening?" Mary asked, walking into her front office fully dressed despite the lateness of the hour.

"Get away from the window!" Francis ordered, hauling Mary out of view of the street by her arm and handing her to Travis for safekeeping.

"Sorry," she apologized with a tired sigh.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" Travis asked.

"I won't sleep until they're back, so I thought I might as well do something useful with the time." Giving his arm a squeeze, she walked to the big desk that held so many memories of Stephen. Sitting down in its chair, she touched the edge of the worn ink stain peeping out from under the well-used blotter. She remembered the night they'd put it there, and the dress they'd ruined doing it. She still had it in a cedar trunk, its daring red silk wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine to protect it from the dust that got into everything in this little corner of the world. He'd laughed when she'd packed it to bring with them from Denver, but he'd left his marble and ivory chess set behind to make sure there was room for it in the trunk. They'd had to leave so much behind because of the press, boxed in its pieces and stacked in the baggage car. They'd had to buy oxen to pull the wagon that had carried it to the land Stephen had bought, land with the precious blessing of water in a country that was too dry in the summer and too wet in the winter....

Moving the blotter to cover the stain completely, Mary opened her stationary drawer and took out paper. Selecting her favorite dip pen from its stand on the desk, she flipped open her ink well.

"Writing Billy?" Travis guessed.

"Later," she told him. "This is going to be the front page of the next Clarion: An exposé of Governor Hopewell's nefarious attempts to silence the cry for statehood with an assassin's bullet. The papers and politicians back East will eat it like candy."

"You haven't got any proof," Travis warned her.

"I have all the proof I need."

"Mary, if you take this into a war of unproven accusations, Hopewell will have your reputation for breakfast. The papers back East will be more than happy to speculate about the habits of a widow living alone in the wild West, and the governor's people will be sure to feed them every innuendo or bald-faced lie they can concoct."

Mary smiled, twirling her pen through her fingers. "If writing this editorial puts enough scrutiny on Hopewell to stop him from killing anyone else, then it will be worth another smudge on my already tarnished reputation. Besides, nothing sells papers better than a good scandal."

"What if he sues you for libel?" Travis asked.

Mary dipped her pen into the well. "I can only hope he will. If he takes this to court, he won't be able to twitch his nose without twenty newspapers reporting it. I know I'm not the only enemy the governor's made during his career - and for every paper that will call me a harlot, there's another that will paint me as a widowed crusader against the men who killed my husband."

"You'll be making yourself an even bigger target. Hopewell might be scared off by publicity, but it won't matter to Stewart James and the other ranchers."

"Stewart James isn't stupid. Once this editorial goes out, if I die of anything other than old age the cause for statehood has a martyr. Martyrs are bad for his business."

"Martyrs also make bad mothers."

Mary's fingers tightened on her patiently waiting pen. "You sound like Chris...."

"He isn't going to like this, either," Travis warned her.

"I'm sure he won't. But if it keeps him from stepping in front of a bullet meant for me, I'm quite prepared to endure Mr. Larabee's displeasure."

"That's what I pay him to do, Mary - it's his job to get between the people of this town and bullets."

"The other people in this town don't run around yelling 'shoot me!'"

"Are you worried you're the reason Ezra quit?" Travis asked.

Mary blinked in surprise. "Ezra quit?"

Travis handed her the telegram of resignation Standish had sent to him and she read it with growing alarm. "But, Chris said Ezra'd gone to Ridge City to do some kind of errand for his mother... and Buck had gone along to try and keep him out of jail!"

Travis shrugged. "He seemed pretty serious about resigning."

"I don't believe it!" Mary said, putting the telegram on the desk and throwing her pen down on top of it, splattering ink along its bottom edge. "He wouldn't leave without saying goodbye!" She stood up from the desk, her skirts swirling around her. "He wouldn't," she repeated, trying to calm her agitation by pacing the confines of her office. "He couldn't...."

'Ezra?' Travis thought, suddenly very confused.

Two shots rang out in rapid succession, followed a few seconds later by a third, the agreed upon warning signal from Corcoran's sentries.

"Stay here!" Francis ordered, drawing his pistol and slipping out the door into the crowd milling in the street.

Mary stopped pacing, striding to the gun rack and taking down her loaded shotgun. Travis drew his Colt revolver and took up a station beside the door that opened onto the street, out of sight of the window. Mary went to stand to one side of the entrance that led into the rest of her home, each covering the other's blind spot.

Fifteen long minutes passed before Corcoran showed his face at the window prior to coming in the front door.

"Their horses have come back," he explained. "All but the squire's big bay. They've all got their tack, but only Wilmington's and Tanner's horses have their kit. There's no sign of their riders."

"Oh, no..." Mary breathed.

"We'll send out a scout in the morning," Travis told her.

"You don't understand," she said. "You don't know Chaucer like I do!"

"I know him better than I wanted to," Travis grumbled, thinking of the scar he carried on his backside.

"He won't leave his rider if he's down," Mary explained. "He'll die first."

"He's a trooper," Francis agreed. "He'll stand and take fire where a man would run."

"Maybe they sent the horses back to tell us they need help?" Mary suggested.

Travis shook his head. "More likely the ranchers set them loose to try and get us to go runnin' out half-cocked tryin' to find 'em."

"You're right," she sighed, sinking into the hard-backed chair in front of the desk. "But there must be something we can do -!"

A tap-tap sounded on the back door and she sprang up to her feet.

"Mary!" Travis barked, hard pressed to prevent her from running to answer its summons. Making sure she stayed in the relative safety of the office, the judge made his way to the kitchen door. Opening it with all due care, he found himself face to face with a young lady he had frequently seen in the saloon, gracing the lap of Buck Wilmington.

"Evenin' Your Honor," she greeted him with a grin. "May I speak with Missus Mary?"

Travis frowned at the woman, wondering when his daughter-in-law had gotten to be on a first name basis with the local working girls. "You can speak with me, Miss."

"No, sir, I don't think so," she replied. "See, you're a judge, an' what I need t'talk t'Missus Mary about might not be strictly legal, hypothetically speakin'." She pronounced the multi-syllable legalese proudly, and with just a trace of a Southern drawl.

"Carlotta?" Mary's voice called out from the office.

"Comin'!" the cyprian replied, insinuating herself past the judge. Harrumphing, Travis followed her down the corridor and back into the office. He arrived in time to hear Carlotta explain that someone named 'Miss Lucy' had sent her.

"Cassie was entertainin' a cowboy who was awful curious 'bout the goin's on in town, so Miss Lucy said to treat him real special like, keep an eye on him. Well, when the horses came ridin' back inta town, this cowboy wants to know what happened to Chris Larabee's big bay."

"Not a local," Travis said.

"And he weren't in town yesterday mornin', neither - I mean, either, Y'r Honor. He came in tonight - so's if he saw Mr. Larabee ridin' Chaucer, it wadn't when they rode out!" she explained triumphantly.

"They could've passed on the road," Francis suggested.

"Maybe," Carlotta admitted, "but I reckon it ain't likely, and it's just the sorta discrep-ansee Ezra told us t'be on the lookout for!"

"He did, huh?" Travis grunted.

"Afore he left town," Carlotta confirmed. "He got all us girls together and explained that there might be trouble on account of that dead fella that almost kilt him, and while he and the other gentlemen were outta town dealin' with some of Mr. Larabee's personal business, we was to keep our ears clean and our eyes open, and come tell Missus Mary if'n we found out anythin' useful."

"Where's the cowboy now?" Mary asked.

"Cassie's got 'im tied to the big brass bed up in the saloon!"

"Perfect!" Mary cried, an unholy gleam coming into her eyes.

"Perfect?" Travis repeated in shock, wondering how in the world Mary had found out about the big brass bed up on the second floor of the saloon.

"This time of night, there's too much noise from the saloon for his friends to hear him yell through the gag," Mary explained. "Until we want him yelling for help, that is." Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she frowned at Travis. "Maybe you'd better stay here, Your Honor," she suggested.

"Aye," Francis agreed. "I'm after thinkin' yer professional ethics might take a hell of a beatin'. Beggin' y'r pardon, ladies."

"Mary..." Travis began, only to find that he had no idea what to say.

"It won't take long," she assured him.

"That's what I'm afraid of," he murmured to her back, watching her lead Francis and Carlotta out the back door. He remembered the first time he'd met Mary, the Baltimore belle his son had brought back from college along with his law degree. He'd wondered if the delicate beauty would be crushed like spun sugar by the exuberance of his life-loving son, or if her propriety would strangle him into a frustrated shadow. Stephen had laughed at his worries, assuring him that his bride to be was a banked fire, just waiting for the right wind to come along. Walking to Stephen's desk, he sat in his son's chair and looked around the office with its long file drawers, its maps, the wedding picture hanging crookedly on the wall, and contemplated the inferno that had left him in her wake.

++++

"Rut to your left," Chris heard Vin's tired voice warn J.D. Even with the tracker's guidance, they damn near dropped Ezra negotiating the pitted section of the road. Tough enough of a ride on horseback, the trail back to Four Corners was proving to be hell on foot. Ezra moaned and Chris thanked heaven for small favors. The honest admission of his pain meant that they hadn't jolted Standish awake this time, leaving him blessedly unaware of his body.

Chris wished he could say the same for himself. His shoulders felt like they had been pulled from their sockets and his back ached from the weight of Ezra and the 40 odd pounds of rifle and coats that made up the stretcher. Each step jolted pain from his mangled toes to his bruised backside, and the only thing that kept him going was that each step brought him that much closer to being home.

That, and the silence each time Ezra came around.

"We're runnin' out of daylight," Vin observed.

Chris said nothing. If they stopped now, he wasn't sure he could make himself start again.

"Can't make camp on a crescent moon," Tanner continued, relentless.

"It'll be light enough to see the road," Chris countered.

"J.D. cain't see now."

"DI cahn make it," Dunne insisted stoutly, sacrificing his ability to breathe to get the words out.

Chris ground his teeth together. "Rocks comin' up," he warned the kid.

They did their best, but the twilight and the treachery of their own tired bodies got the best of them. A rock hidden under a thin layer of sand shifted under Chris's heel and he stumbled and staggered, falling to his knees. J.D. tried to compensate, but he wound up on the ground as well, clutching his right hip.

Ezra stopped moaning a moment after he hit the surface of the road.

"J.D.?" Chris called, crawling up beside Ezra, lying face down in the road.

"I'm ohkay," J.D. panted.

"Ezra?" Chris asked, using the blanket to roll Standish back up onto the skewed stretcher.

Ezra didn't answer, but Chris knew he could hear him. There was a way Ezra had of taking a gulp of air and holding it until his lungs forced him to breathe again that said he was awake and aware and fighting his pain with every ounce of his will.

"We gotta keep going," he told Ezra as much as he told the others. They were vulnerable as hell out here on the road, and whoever had arranged their ambush most likely knew it had failed and was probably looking for them to finish the job. The way they were now, they'd never get a shot off if someone jumped them.

Ezra gasped for another lungful of air, his chin lowering in an imperceptible nod of agreement.

"Kid?" Chris asked.

"Dlet's gho," J.D. answered, spitting on his blistered hands before he bent over to pick up his end of the stretcher.

They dropped Ezra twice more, once on Chris's end and once on J.D.'s. The fourth time they dropped him, they both went down, tumbling like Jack and Jill over a sudden, dipping drop hidden in the contour of the road and the illusory light of the thin moon.

"Ezra?" Chris groaned. He could hear Vin talking to J.D. and hear the kid's harsh mouth breathing, so he focused on finding Standish. Crawling on his hands and knees, he headed toward the only dim silhouette of the bodies sprawled around him that wasn't cussing or moaning.

Ezra was on his back and, for a moment, Chris thought he was dead. Then he heard Ezra take a breath, then another and another, and then he was sobbing, quietly, helplessly sobbing....

"Ezra..." Chris choked, rubbing his hand up and down the outside of the blanket that covered the wounded man's arm.

"...s-stop..." Ezra begged him. "...make it...stop..."

"We'll stop," Chris promised him, his voice cracking. "We'll stop."

++++

They found a flat piece of ground with some cover from the road and enough dry wood for Vin to build a fire. They put Ezra next to it and Buck collapsed beside him.

"How close to town are we?" Chris asked Vin, helping the tracker lower himself to the ground on the other side of Ezra.

"Five miles easy," Tanner answered, his gaze riveted to Ezra's blue-lipped face. "He don't look good, Chris."

"He'll make it," Chris snapped, refusing to entertain any other option. He gave Vin a pat on the shoulder and moved over to Nathan, curled up with his head on Ezra's saddlebags.

"What about you?" he asked Jackson.

"Sore as hell," Nathan replied. "Slow as molasses on a winter's day - but Josiah's pissin' blood."

Chris blinked. "Did Ezra kill him?"

"Almost. He needs rest - and a good shot of laudanum wouldn't hurt none."

"He'll get some when we get back to town," Larabee answered. "Hell, we're more'n half-way there."

They all tensed, waiting for the sound of a disapproving neigh. It didn't come, and fear trickled down Chris's spine. They'd better not be riding that horse to death, damn it....

Leaving the light and the warmth of the fire, he went to where J.D. was taking care of Chaucer.

"How ya doin'?" Chris asked the bay, warily patting his sweaty neck.

Chaucer half-heartedly flipped his upper lip in Larabee's general direction, his weariness evident.

"Almost home," Chris told the kid. "Go show Nathan those hands of yours."

"Ih'm fhine," J.D. said, refusing the order and continuing to remove Chaucer's tack.

"J.D. -"

"I'm fhine," Dunne repeated, jerking the saddle off the bay's back.

"Don't you start, kid. One Ezra's enough."

"Dyou won't have that soon," he snapped. "Ezhra'll be dead come morningh."

Chris grabbed J.D. by his shirtfront. "Don't say that," he snarled.

"Iht's true," Dunne shot back, pulling out of Chris's grasp. Chaucer snorted a warning and J.D. put his arm around his neck. "Maybhe I ain't killed as bmany bmen as you, an' bmaybe Ih wasn't in the war, but Ih know what people look like when they're dyin', and Ezhra's dyin'."

"No, he's not," Chris whispered.

"Ih don't want him to," J.D. panted. "Bhut look at him, Chris - !"

Reluctantly, he turned to look at Standish. Nathan had joined Vin beside Ezra, despite the pain of sitting up. Jackson's expression was worried - and frightened.

"He's tiredh," J.D. explained, his voice thickening for more reasons than a busted nose. "Chan dyou imagine how tiredh he must be?"

Chris didn't need to imagine it; he'd been tired enough to want to lie down and die once or twice himself.

"Bmy bma was tiredh like that the night she died.... She'd fought so hardh to stay alive, so we could have one last Christmas together... bhut when it was over, she just dhidn't have anything left to fight for, an' Ih just couldn't ask her to hang on anymore...."

'Shut up,' Larabee thought at J.D. 'I don't want to hear this...."

"Ih know Ezhra ain't ready to die, but righth now he's too tirehd an' he's hurtin' too bad to care about livin'. He just ain't got anythin' left to fight for...."

"You're wrong," Chris insisted. "I know his type - they never give up and they never give in. He'll make it."

"Bmaybe," J.D answered. "Bhut Ih ain't willing to take the chance you're whrong." Throwing the saddle to the ground, he turned toward Ezra.

"Kid..." Chris said, reaching out and grabbing J.D.'s arm. "You ain't learned to duck fast enough yet."

J.D. started to protest, then shut his mouth and followed Chris back into the camp. They came to a stop at Ezra's blanket-covered feet. Standish twitched, and J.D. bit his lower lip. Ezra was aware of them, aware of everything going on around him - and it was that alertness that was draining him dry. He just didn't trust them enough to let go, to believe that they would take care of him. They were killing him just by being there....

"How's he doin'?" Chris asked.

Vin shook his head, and after a moment Nathan said, "He ain't good."

"Well, hell..." Chris sighed. "If he dies, I'm shooting that God-damned horse."

"What?!" Vin snapped.

"That ain't funny, Chris," Buck warned, pulled out of his drifting almost-sleep by the threat to Chaucer.

"I ain't kiddin'."

"Chris ids right," J.D. agreed, his words loud in his own ears. "Hain't one of us that can handle Chaucer without Ezra. We'll have to put him down."

"Can't say I'll mind pullin' the trigger," Chris said, watching Ezra in vain for any sign that would tell him Standish was listening. "But I'm killin' Chaucer here and now. I ain't takin' it back to town so it can hide behind Mary - that horse is as much of a damn skirter as Ezra is."

Chris found out Ezra was indeed listening as a knife stolen from Nathan's kit sliced a searing line of pain across Larabee's thigh, missing a crippling cut by a scant inch.

'How the hell did the little weasel get out of them blankets?' Chris thought, clutching his gloved hand over the wound in his leg.

"Ya missed, Ezra!" he jeered aloud,

Vin caught Ezra as he tried to fly through the fire to get his hands around Chris's throat. Standish passed out in his arms, still reaching for Larabee.

"You ain't killin' that horse," Buck said flatly, staring at his oldest friend like he was a stranger.

"If Ezra dies, I will," Chris replied, not trusting Ezra to actually be unconscious.

"Guess y' are just another damn Yankee," Vin growled, putting a protective hand on the back of Ezra's lolling head and glaring at Chris. When Nathan tried to check on Standish, Tanner blocked his approach with his shoulder.

Chris couldn't hold Vin's gaze, turning away to scowl at J.D. "What're you lookin' at?" he demanded of the stunned kid. Glaring at Buck for good measure, Chris limped off into the night with an uneven jangle of spurs.

"Oh, Lord," Wilmington moaned.

"Bhuck...?" J.D. begged. "What's a - skirder?"

Buck shot an uncomfortable look at Vin. "A skirter's someone who'd hide behind a woman, kid."

"When bullets are flyin'," Vin added. "They're the kinda men who put their womenfolk between them and their enemies." He caught Buck's gaze. "Federals liked to call us that," he continued softly, "'specially Sherman's bummers. See, Uncle Billy's heroes couldn't lick us on the field, so they decided to declare war on our women and our babies. Guess what, J.D.? They won - ain't that right, Mr. Wilmington?"

"Couldn't tell ya, Vin - me 'n Chris was too busy dancin' a Virginia Reel."

His headache pounding harder between his eyes, for one wild moment J.D. considered running away and finding a place to hide, where he could pretend the last two weeks had never happened. Fighting to even out his breathing, he trudged after Chris instead.

Nathan tried again to get a look at the shifting poultices along Ezra's back, only to be warned off by a growl and a glare from Vin. He met Tanner's gaze squarely, looking away only when his fingers told him the binding under them needed adjustment.

"I was born in Georgia," he stated flatly. "I had a right to be there - it was my fight."

"Reckon I could say the same thing," Vin answered, his voice low and very, very dangerous.

"Maybe you could," Nathan grudgingly admitted, his fingers nonetheless gentle as they tucked and tightened Ezra's loosened bandages.

Vin shook his head in bitter amusement, pulling Ezra away from Jackson. "Must be nice to know everythin' there is to know 'bout a man just by lookin'at him.... He was right, y'know - you'd've made a hell of an overseer."

Too exhausted to rise to the challenge of Tanner's contempt, Nathan finished repairing the damage Ezra had done to his bandages.

"Keep him warm," Jackson wheezed. "Try and get some water down 'im if he wakes up again. And keep him away from your gun."

++++

J.D. found Chris scraping down one of Chaucer's sides. He stood and watched the two of them for a long time.

"You're the one who wanted to give him something to fight for," Chris finally snapped, keeping his back firmly to the kid.

"Ih dknow," J.D. said, walking closer. He was grateful for the rough nudge of affection Chaucer's head gave him. "Can Ih help?"

"Get the curry brush," Chris said, after a long moment.

J.D. endured Vin's furious glare to fetch Ezra's silver mounted brush and comb from the gambler's saddlebags. After a few minutes of working together in silence, Chris stopped scraping to watch J.D. brush Chaucer more by touch and memory than sight. Even in the feeble light of the young moon, the kid looked like a mole with the mumps.

"I want you to keep away from Ezra," Chris ordered.

"Ih'll stayh as far away from him as you do," J.D. promised.

'Dumb kid,' Chris sighed to himself.


End of Act Three

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


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[i] Prior to the Civil War, shoes were not cut to the curve of the foot, having a square toe with the result that shoes were interchangeable. 'Crooked shoes' were an innovation taken up quickly by the much better supplied Union forces.