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!!

IMPORTANT!!! To fully understand what is going on in this posting, please read the last scene of Act Five, as this is a continuation of that scene without preamble or set up. If you are very familiar with the last scene of Act Five, go ahead.

Mongoose: A Sensible Man

by
Eleanor Tremayne, Ezquire

ACT SIX
PART ONE

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


The moment the door clicked shut, Chris was moving, twisting like an enraged wildcat. He slammed into Mary, then into J.D., battering them unmercifully and knocking them over as he tried to turn inside out to get free.

“Christ,” Buck muttered, his scrubbing hand spreading the blood from his cut cheek across his face. “Hold your God-damn horses, Chris!”

Sucking in a fortifying breath, he rolled himself off his bed, landing on his hands. Pushing up, he flopped over on his butt.

“Where the hell did them trousers go?” he fretted, tossing aside the sheets and quilts draping over the bed onto the floor until he found them. It was hell’s own trick to get into them, but he did it, clutching the waist with one hand to keep them up as he stood.

“Ggghhhh,” he sputtered, falling forward and grabbing the top of the headboard with his free hand.  The jar of it made his vision waver and his stomach roll, but he held himself together. Clutching the headboard, he thought better of taking a deep breath and sent up a prayer for a miracle he felt was no more than his due by now, because a miracle was the only thing that was going to get him from where he was to where he needed to be.

Vorsichtig mein Freund!”[i]

Buck heard Georg Heidegger before he saw him, and he didn’t see him until the shorter man grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back into balance.

“Sit, bitte,”[ii] Heidegger ordered, trying to steer Buck toward the disordered bed that Ezra had left in his wake, “before you fall.”

“No time,” Wilmington gasped, pushing feebly against the directions of Heidegger’s assistance. Chris was spitting sparks on dry powder, and if Buck didn’t get a bucket of water over his head Larabee was likely to blow the whole damn town sky-high.

Sorgfältig!”[iii] Heidegger chided, barely managing to keep his own balance. Trusting Wilmington to know best where Mr. Chris was concerned, he readjusted his grasp around the taller man and steered an erratic, stumbling course toward Larabee and the others. He managed to ease Buck’s collapse onto the floor between Mary Travis and the seething Larabee into something that resembled the deliberate action of sitting down.

The world wobbled around Buck, spots of fuzzy brightness obscuring his vision and dulling his brain and, for a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was, or why. Then Chris’s strong shoulder pressed into his side, holding his slumping body up. Buck leaned into the support, pushing the wrist- and ankle-bound Larabee’s chin down between his knees.

“Buck!” Mary cried, her voice failing into ragged coughing as her gag-dried mouth refused to obey her. Despite the cough, Buck heard her through the roaring in his ears and he tried to raise his head to answer her. He felt her arms come around his chest, pulling him away from Chris. Her hand was cool against the side of his face where Ezra’s handprint still burned brightly, and her bosom was softly, wonderfully, firmly yielding where his head came to rest against it. He turned into it, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, finding his salvation where he always had, in the beauty of a woman’s strength. If he could just rest here a moment the darkness would fade, the world would settle down on its proper horizon, and then he would be able to think….

A hand grabbed his chin like a vice, pulling his face away from heaven. Opening his eyes, he saw Chris wobbling in front of him, Larabee’s face pulled flat and ugly behind the gag Heidegger was just cutting though. Reaching out a wavering hand, Buck tugged feebly at the handkerchief clenched between Larabee’s teeth.

“Let go…” Buck told him, and Chris obligingly spit the blood and saliva soaked rag into Wilmington’s hand. Buck’s fingers closed around the soggy trophy as Chris gently turned his face to one side and then the other, examining the damage left by Ezra’s beating.

“’m all right,” Buck muttered, trying to pull away from Larabee’s insistent grip.

“You with me?!” Chris demanded, trying to get a good look at Wilmington’s eyes. “Stop blinking, damn it!”

“Give me a minute,” Buck ground out, meeting Larabee’s angry, worried gaze.

Reassured by the evenness of Wilmington’s pupils, Chris let go of Buck’s chin, taking the other man’s biceps in hand instead.

“Chris,” Mary choked. “You don’t have the time – you have to go now….”

Chris glared at Mary, and she matched it with one of her own, the clear green hardness of her eyes reminding him disconcertingly of Ezra.

“Those two fools will try to stop him… and then people will die….”

“Go,” Buck wheezed, giving Chris a weak push. “Let me get m’wind back….”

“J.D., ” Chris called out through grinding teeth.

“I ghot ‘em,” J.D. honked, crawling toward Larabee on numbed hands and knees.

“Stay here,” Larabee ordered, tapping a fingertip lightly against Buck’s forehead, even though he knew there was a snowball’s chance in hell that Wilmington would. “Help the kid ride herd.”

Settling for silence in the place of agreement, Chris knew he was on borrowed time as he staggered to his feet and headed toward the hallway. Mrs. Heidegger met him outside the door, her husband’s gun in her hands. She held it out to him and he took it, nearly dropping it when he recognized the weapon: It was a British made, Confederate issued five shot Kerr .44 revolver – and it showed signs of hard use and loving care.

‘Surrounded,’ Chris realized.

“Stay in the hotel – keep everyone indoors, out of sight, until this thing is settled.” More than likely it was useless advice – if he couldn’t stop Nathan and Josiah from doing something stupid, if Ezra got away from Vin, or Vin got hurt or killed in the crossfire, there wouldn’t be any safe place in town, not when Ezra had a pocketful of gunpowder and a war’s worth of scores to settle.

Mrs. Heidegger didn’t nod, or smile, or otherwise indicate that she intended to do as she was told, and Chris hurried his step toward the front door of the hotel. They were like moths to a Goddamned green-eyed flame, and just as likely to go up in a crisped spurt of their good intentions if things got out of hand.

Got out of hand?!’ he repeated to himself, shaking his head to clear it as he flattened out against the front door of the lobby to survey the street through the lace curtains of the picture windows on either side of it, without exposing himself to anyone who might be outside. Main Street was empty of people and horses; even the nags usually tied up in front of the saloon were missing. He was grudgingly impressed that Nathan and Josiah had managed to do such a thorough job, but then again, it was the least they could do.

Vin will take Ezra out the back – less chance of running into anyone in the alley…’ he reasoned. Taking a deep breath, he stuck Heidegger’s pistol into his Colt’s holster and grabbed the bell hanging on the doorframe in his fist, keeping it silent as he tore its brass clapper from its moorings. Carefully, quietly, he turned the doorknob and slipped out onto the boardwalk. He left the little brass ball behind him, its sharp, broken wire snagged securely in the net of the window lace.

It had been a long time since he’d had to sneak up on anyone, and he tensed with every jangling step he took. Of course Ezra didn’t wear spurs: No self-respecting cat would ever bell itself voluntarily. He settled into a sideways shuffle, constantly switching his gaze from ahead and behind him, and across the street into the back alleys between the saloon and Mary’s place, and the nooks and crannies that lay between him and success.

He stopped at the edge of the hotel, crouching down to scan the street and crane around the edges of the buildings.

“Damn it!” he muttered. His line of sight was too constrained – even on the roof he wouldn’t be able to see into all of the alleys. The odds were good that he’d find Nathan and Josiah already in the livery, and he had to stop them before Ezra and Vin did. It was time for what flag officers called “a calculated risk”. Taking a deep breath and a good grip on Heidegger’s gun, he ran like hell for the livery.

++++

Nathan had to stop when he reached the smithy attached to the side of the livery. Leaning on the heavy-timbered worktable next to the cool forge, he tried to catch his breath. He’d moved far too fast for his injury’s comfort, and he was too used to wearing boots to be running barefoot over rocky ground.

“Damn you, Ezra,” he wheezed. “When I get my hands on you, I’m gonna –”

The poke of cold steel against his neck and earlobe interrupted him.

“You’ve done everything you’re gonna do,” Chris informed him, pulling the hammer on Heidegger’s pistol down to punctuate his promise.

“Chris –”

The muzzle of the Kerr jabbed him into silence again. “You’re gonna shut up and stay where I put you.”

Nathan bristled, opening his mouth to argue. Chris put an end to the discussion before it began, reaching under the waistband of Jackson’s trousers to grab his drawers and pull up, back, and out, the way his sisters had done to him to make him mind, until he’d burned every last pair of underwear he owned in the parlor fire one particularly painful day. Nathan danced up on his toes, watery-eyed and incapable of speech.

“Don’t make me kill ya,” Larabee advised, guiding Nathan into the livery ahead of him with directional prods from the Kerr and yanks on Jackson’s flannels. He decided to hide in the shoeing stall, a three-quarter high wall that stretched nearly halfway across the livery about ten feet from the back wall of the smithy. Yosemite was currently using it as temporary storage for wood that would be split later in the day and sacks of feed waiting for their purchasers to pick them up.

“No matter what you think is happening, you stay out of it,” Chris whisper-growled, shoving Nathan into the farthest corner of the stall away from the livery and the open door that led into the smithy. “Me or Vin’ll handle Ezra.”

“Good luck,” Jackson wheezed, sitting down, because standing up was no longer an option.

“I ain’t kidding, Nathan – I’m damn tired of you trying to get the rest of us killed.”

Jackson’s reply, if any, was cut off by the muted sound of Vin helping Ezra drag himself into the smithy.

“Guards,” Ezra said tersely, his voice so low Chris wasn’t sure he’d actually heard it.

“What guards?” Vin replied. Larabee didn’t need to be in the same room with them to see the identical smug smirks on both of their faces. ‘God-damn greybacks,’ he thought, unable to suppress a grin of pride in his boys.

++++

Oh, hell no,’ Buck vowed to himself. ‘We are not doin’ this again!

Locking the hammer back on his Colt, Wilmington was pleased to see the sound startle Josiah into a painfully aborted hop of surprise. Jerking around to his left, Sanchez tried to straighten in righteous defiance. Unfortunately, his body was not in favor of the idea, and the best he could manage was a splay-legged hunch of indignation.

Plunking the half of his butt attached to his bad leg on the edge of a crate of scrap iron, waiting by the smithy door into the livery to be turned into horseshoes and hoes, Wilmington braced himself with his good leg against the dirt floor. Leaning his shoulder against the smithy side of the livery wall, Buck adjusted his grip on his Colt, making sure that Josiah could see his finger was on the trigger.

Lookin’ for somethin’?”

“I’ve come to help Ezra,” Josiah informed him.

Buck snorted. “Like hell you have.”

“Man’s soul is more important than his life.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with Ezra’s soul,” Buck said. “Come Judgment Day, I’d sure as hell rather be standing next to him than you, Preacher Man.”

“I am the instrument of the Lord,” Josiah reminded him, rather testily for a heavenly messenger.

Buck’s mustache turned his smile into a sneer. “They say the Devil knows how to quote scripture to his own ends.”

Josiah flexed, scowling himself into a dark, massive, ugly figure.

Just like a rooster, puffing himself up to scare the hens,’ Buck thought in disgust.

“You haven’t got strength enough to stand,” Josiah intoned, and Wilmington could almost smell the whiff of brimstone and see the rafters of the meetinghouse shake. “You can’t stop me – and you know bullets won’t.”

“Maybe not,” Buck conceded. “You maybe could get past me. But you are sure as hell not gonna get past him.”

Wilmington winked at someone standing behind Sanchez. Turning his head to the right, Josiah found J.D. flanking him, his hands resting on his empty holsters and an expression on his face that made the preacher take an involuntary step backward.

Can’t say he didn’t warn you,’ Buck thought with satisfaction, letting his aching head come to rest against the livery wall.

++++

Oh, Lord,’ Vin moaned to himself. He and Ezra were barely in the livery, and Chaucer was already kicking up a fuss fit to wake the dead. Worse, he was riling up the other horses.

“Damn horse!” Ezra muttered, raising J.D.’s pistol to the ready as he forced himself to limp faster toward the stalls at the other end of the livery. Vin tightened his grip around Standish, using this new urgency as his excuse. He would be damned if he had to explain to Ezra that he’d shot his own horse – and he sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one digging holes in boot hill when Standish found out why.

Once sight of his master was added to his scent, Chaucer let out a screaming whinny fit to wake the dead and beat out a savage tattoo on the boards of his stable door with his hooves.

That horse must cost Ezra a fortune in lumber,’ Vin thought, tensing as Ezra’s muscles bunched under his hand. Standish took a quick, instinctive look around the stable and its shadows before turning to address the frantic bay. Tanner took the position of a lookout, as he knew the man Ezra considered him to be would do without need of any prompt or order.

“Shush!” Ezra commanded sternly and, wonder of wonders, he was obeyed. Chaucer came down on all four of his feet and stayed there, his ears as far forward on his head as they could get, every muscle twitching under his gleaming, sweaty hide. The other mounts quieted, too, but stayed as far away from the bay as they could get, ears cocked warily in his direction.

“That’s bettah,” Standish approved. The quivering bay stretched his neck out as far as it would go, resting his chin and jaw on Standish’s right shoulder, huffing his breath down Ezra’s back like a mare with a new foal.

“What’s all this fussin’?” Standish enquired softly. With a grunt of effort, he raised his left hand high enough to scratch behind Chaucer’s ears. Chaucer huffed louder, raising his head to blow his scent down on Ezra’s face, lipping at his master’s dirty hair.

Patting the bay’s strong neck, Standish let himself lean against Chaucer for a moment.  “I knew a horse like you once,” he told the gelding, closing his eyes against the memory.

Of course you did,’ Chris realized grimly, daring to hope that, unlike Jesse Mitchell, Chaucer’s predecessor had been an honorable casualty of war.

“One thing is for certain sure, you are too fine an animal for any damnyankee bastard,” Standish said, opening his eyes as he transferred his weight to the stall door. “You ready, Tanner?”

“For what – Sir?” Vin asked, his gut muscles tightening in anticipation.

“Gettin’ the hell out of here.”

“Sounds like a fine idea, Colonel.”

Chris’s knees went weak with relief. The town’s chances of still being standing tomorrow morning were starting to look up.

“Take this horse,” Ezra ordered, making room for Tanner to get the stall door open. “Head out for Canada – and whatever happens behind you, don’t look back.”

Or not,’ Chris silently amended.

Vin shifted his weight, bringing his gaze around to meet Ezra’s. He didn’t dare to even try and humor Ezra – as impossible as it was, he had a deep and abiding faith that as soon as he and Chaucer had cleared the livery, Ezra would somehow contrive to blow the stable and the rest of the town sky high.

“That’s an order, Sergeant.”

“Yes, Sir.” Tanner’s expression made it clear it was an order he had no intention of obeying.

Ezra shook his head, sighing in exasperation. “Look at me,” he urged. “We both know I won’t last an hour on a horse.”

Vin said nothing, but his bottom lip thinned, jutting his chin out in the kind of mule stubborn Standish knew all too well.

“There’s nothing left to fight for,” Ezra said. “The only thing you owe your country now is to stay alive.”

“Reckon that goes for both of us,” Tanner pointed out, in a maddeningly reasonable way.

Responding to the grinding of Ezra’s teeth, Chaucer tossed his head and nickered softly, his ears flicking forward and back.

“That’s enough!” Ezra snapped, and the bay froze. “From both of you. I have given you an order, Sergeant, and if you disobey it, I will exercise my prerogative of punishment. Now get on this horse, and get the hell out of here.”

Vin just tilted his head and kept his gaze steady with Ezra’s.

“Do you even know why you’re fightin’ this war?” Standish demanded.

Vin said nothing.

“Because we have been bendin’ over for a bunch of Cackalackee[iv] cocksuckers, takin’ it in the arse[v] since 1776 – and payin’ the God-damned Yankees for the privilege! We hung you from the glory of our bell towers, Tanner – you don’t owe us a blessed thing; not your loyalty, not your respect, and certainly not your life.”

Recognizing the royal FFV[vi] ‘we’ when he heard it, Vin raised an eyebrow in a remarkably good imitation of Ezra. “Nothin’ but my obedience – Sir?”

Ezra chuckled. “Touché.” Reaching up, he patted Chaucer’s neck. He almost fell, catching himself heavily against the stall door. “The war’s over, Tanner,” he said wearily. “You’ve done your duty – now let me do mine.”

Vin squared his stance. “No, Sir.”

Ezra raised J.D.’s pistol and took his aim on Tanner’s nose. “Ah insist,” he drawled.

Vin spat, and Chris took a deep breath, raising Heidegger’s unfamiliar pistol to take his sight on Ezra’s arm and the hand that held the kid’s Colt. ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope,’ he reminded himself grimly, wishing he could believe it. He’d never really had to before – he’d always had Buck there to do it for him.

“Do you have family, Sergeant?” Ezra asked quietly, the Navy Colt frighteningly steady in his hand.

Vin considered his answer, trying to find a truth that would pull Standish closer to the real here and now.  “Reckon I got me a pack of brothers.”

“If you love them, don’t make them bury you,” Ezra begged.

“What about your people?” Vin countered, feeling his neck get hot under his loose collar.

“Anyone who would have wept for me rests in the arms of the angels,” Ezra replied, with a smoothness of tone and blankness of expression that raised the hair on the back of Chris’s hands.

“Everybody’s got somebody,” Vin said firmly. ‘Even if it’s just a God-damned horse….

Ezra snorted, Chaucer echoing him.  “I am a lovin’ son, Sergeant! I would nevah deny mah darlin’ mother the satisfaction of makin’ my epitaph ‘I told you so’.”

If he’d meant to shock Vin, Standish failed miserably. Tanner had long ago taken the measure of Maude Standish, and nothing he’d learned in the past few days had changed the opinion he’d made of her.

“Time’s wastin’,” Ezra said. “It’s time to ride, Sergeant.”

Without seeming to move, Vin nonetheless came to attention, continuing to regard Ezra steadily. “No, Sir.”

Ezra smiled, a slow, cold sort of smile that was out of place on Beau Standish. “For the ‘good’ of my men, I have slept in a feather bed, and dined on beefsteak and burgundy, while they lay rotting in mud, pinin’ for maggots in hardtack. I assure you, I can muster the moral fortitude necessary to kill you for your own ‘good’.”

“Don’t see much difference between you killin’ me, or lettin’ the Yankees do it.”

“If I shoot you, you will be dead before you hit the ground,” Ezra promised. “The Colonel, now, he’ll kill you a piece at a time…. It could take you weeks to die – months, judgin’ by how high you can get your back up.”

Vin’s mouth worked, remembering all too well the kind of playing ground war gave a sadist.

“The cards are on the table.” Ezra’s finger squeezed down on the trigger. “Last chance, son. One way or the other, you are leavin’ here now.”

Vin laughed bitterly. “Hell, if I were you, I’d shoot me, too, Colonel.”

God-damn it, Vin!’ Chris mentally cursed, getting ready to shoot Ezra.

Tanner stretched his arms wide to clear his chest, despite the fact that he knew Ezra would take the faster and more assuredly deadly head shot.

Ezra’s eyes narrowed, his finger still slowly, slowly squeezing the Colt’s trigger.

“Pea Patch taught me just how low a man will go for his Pards,” Vin explained, not twitching an inch.

Chris twitched for him, suddenly understanding why Vin knew first hand that, while a man wasn’t likely to die from being hung by his thumbs, he could come to wish that he would. Fort Delaware was a place Larabee would never forget – its fat guards and starving prisoners, and the cover-up for a murderer by the same people who made their political careers by hanging Henry Wirz had been his ticket to the west, and life with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and six-shot Colt in the other.[vii]

Ezra’s hand began to shake, trembling the gun he held. He braced it with his other one, his finger frozen on the trigger.

“What’d your aunt give ya if you did what she wanted?” Vin asked him, relentless in his understanding.

Ezra’s lips compressed, pressing themselves white, his breathing coming faster, the muscles in his neck cording out from the strain of his hunched shoulders and clenched jaws.

“A bottle of laudanum and a sharp hatchet?” Vin guessed, knowing he’d hit his mark by the way Ezra’s eyes took on a wide, wild look.  “She must love you somethin’ awful, Sir.”

Ezra blinked, and then blinked again, and again, and Vin knew he’d won. Stepping forward, he pushed the Navy Colt aside. His touch was enough to overwhelm Ezra’s strength, and finally the Colt was pointing harmlessly toward the ground. Chris wondered how much noise he’d make passing out, and opted for rubbing the edge of his mouth with his knuckle instead.

Ezra tried to speak, failed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “He’ll make me bury you,” he said, his voice falling out from under the words. “I have not got another grave in me, Tanner….”

“I know,” Vin soothed him. “I know…. One way or the other, we leave here together, Sir. See, I got me this feelin’ you weren’t exactly plannin’ on surrenderin’.”

Ezra’s knees buckled and Vin caught him, praying that this was finally over. Standish was silent for a long, long time, his breathing barely perceptible.

“You are a God-damned nincompoop, do you know that, Sergeant?” Ezra asked at last, his voice muffled against Tanner’s shoulder.

“Yes, Sir,” Vin replied, assisting Ezra in his effort to pull away from Tanner’s support and return to his reliance on Chaucer’s stable door.

“You’ll have to get a saddle,” Ezra wheezed. “And some rope to tie me into it.” He touched Chaucer’s neck once again, this time just with his fingertips. “You take the bay,” he added nonchalantly.

Ten years and a lifetime or two ago, Vin might have believed Ezra really intended to go with him. Of course, ten years ago he never would have been able to con Standish, either. Nodding, he backed up a couple of steps before he turned away from Ezra.

In his mind’s eye, he followed the actions Standish would take – the flip of his right hand, turning the thumb that rested on the hammer of J.D.’s pistol toward the ground. It was the signature of an expert marksman – the angle of the upside-down shot would go levelly through Ezra’s brain, killing him cleanly and instantly, with no risk of a mere debilitating injury and a slow, painful death.

Ezra would wait until the muzzle of the barrel rested against his temple before he would cock the hammer; Vin was too close to him to risk the sound alerting Tanner to the commission of the last duty compelled by the tattered honor of an officer and a gentleman of Virginia.

Vin scanned the livery in an exaggerated show of alertness, not allowing Standish to be outside of his peripheral vision for even a moment.

Prompted by the knowledge that he had to use the Navy Colt or be forced by its weight and his weakness to drop it, Ezra took the chance that Vin would be too preoccupied to notice him and raised the pistol toward his head.

NOW!’ Chris almost shouted, his body moving in synch with Vin as Tanner spun counterclockwise on the ball of his bare right foot, not feeling the pain in his knee in the need of the moment.

Don’t make him hit you!’ Chris silently pleaded with Ezra. ‘God, don’t have to hurt him any more, Vin….

J.D.’s gun was in the space between Ezra’s shoulder and chin when Vin caught it with his right hand, reaching across his body to clamp down on top of Ezra’s fingers and the pearl handle of the Colt pistol, Vin’s thumb jamming into the space between the cocked hammer and the firing pin. Still pivoting, Tanner used his momentum to tug Ezra off balance, pulling Standish around in the same counterclockwise spin he had followed. Another tug brought Ezra stumbling backward, and Vin stripped the Navy Colt from his grasp, hissing as the hammer pinched his thumb against the firing pin. It was awkward and painful, but he got his thumb loose and the hammer safely at rest before he went against every instinct of a lifetime of gunplay and dropped the pistol to the ground. Throwing his arms around Ezra’s shoulders, he braced Standish against his chest as he went down on his good knee, absorbing as much of the impact of their landing as he could.

Despite Vin’s best efforts, the takedown still hurt Standish. The moaning groan Ezra failed to choke off when they hit the ground twisted Vin’s stomach, and he found himself muttering, “Sorry, Sir,” into the closest ear of the hot, heavy head that had fallen against his shoulder.

Ezra tried to arch his back to get away, but the effort left his head hanging over Vin’s restraining arms, his chest heaving. He couldn’t stifle the sound of his pain any more – every hard pant carried a yelp of agony with it, and ended in a growl of frustrated rage.

Damn it, Ezra!’ Chris silently cursed, so riveted by the scuffle in front of him that he didn’t see Nathan moving past him until it was already too late to do anything but try to get in front of Jackson to keep him on the inside of the stall and away from Ezra.

Taller and heavier than Larabee and just as determined, Jackson plowed into Chris. A punch to the solar plexus left Nathan on his back inside the stall, but the damage was done: Unable to catch his balance, Chris staggered backward to stay on his feet, his legs and arms windmilling, his spurs and jingle bobs madly chiming as they announced his presence in the livery.

Shit!” he snarled as he righted himself directly in front of and barely ten feet away from Ezra and Vin, as furious at himself as he was at Nathan. Ezra had seen him, and Beau Standish had recognized him. Vin had his hands full of a twisting, desperate Ezra, struggling to get free from Tanner’s embrace. Vin wobbled dangerously on his one-kneed perch, hampered by trying to make sure that Ezra didn’t hurt himself.

Ezra had no such feelings for Vin, trying to head butt him in the chin and bite him on the arms to get free, to somehow get his fingers around the colonel’s throat.

A gunshot cracked outside the livery and Ezra froze. It was the one thing Vin wasn’t prepared for, and it toppled him onto his butt.

Ezra heard the shot and felt Vin collapse underneath him. He cried out, his heart breaking as he realized that he would live to bury Sergeant Vin Tanner of the 17th Mississippi. That realization killed Brevet Colonel Beau Standish, as surely as if Ezra had been able to pull the trigger of the Navy Colt.

“Jesus…” Chris murmured, watching the fire die in Ezra’s eyes, watching him fade and shrink in Vin’s embrace until he was just a carcass, as burnt and broken, as beaten as Richmond in ’65.

“Colonel!” Vin barked, sitting and shaking Ezra. “Colonel!

It was too late – Tanner was as dead to Standish as ‘Jesse Mitchell’ had been. All that was left in his world was the man he hated enough to murder standing over him while the livery stable filled around him with the ghosts of Union soldiers.

“Damn it, Ezra!” Vin’s voice broke and he shook Standish again. His answer was a guttering, mocking sound that it took Tanner a moment to recognize: Ezra was laughing.

‘…When he cannot have what he wants, a Sensible Man will settle for what he can get….’ Unbidden and unwelcome, the words of Ezra’s letter came back to Chris, the folded wad of paper in his pocket suddenly hot against his hip. ‘…History has proven the futility of fighting a lost cause, so I choose to yield to the inevitability of my own character…’, ‘…I am now, as I have always been, my Mother’s son.

You poor, stupid bastard,’ Chris thought as Ezra finally, sensibly, passed out. ‘Your mother’s son hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell against the inevitability of your character.’

Chris heard the hammer of J.D.’s Colt lock into cock, and he shifted his gaze to Vin’s. There was no mistaking the cold, killing fury looking back at him, and for a moment he thought he was Tanner’s target, until he followed the angle of the shot to someone behind him.

Bringing Heidegger’s pistol up, he turned to look for Vin’s target – and found Buck stretched out across the door into the smithy, his bare arm flung out to support his bleeding head.

“Buck!” Chris bellowed.

For once, Wilmington didn’t answer.


End of Act Six
Part One

Note from Eleanor: Again, thank you all for your patience. Now that you have read this, perhaps you can understand the difficulty I had in trying to work on this September 12, 2001.

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


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[i] “Carefully, my friend!”
[ii] “Sit, please”
[iii] “Carefully!”
[iv] Slang for someone from South Carolina.
[v] Arse is the period correct usage. “Kiss my ass” would have been “suck my arse”.
[vi] First Families of Virginia, like the Lees, the Carters, and the Custises.
[vii] As my parents used to say, “look it up”. There are simply too many issues, points of view, and too much sorrow and pain to try to sum up Fort Delaware and the tragedy and atrocities of the POW camps of the American Civil War in an endnote.