Disclaimer: All the characters from the "Magnificent Seven" T.V. series are property of Trilogy Entertainment, The Mirisch Group, MGM Worldwide.
After the day before, Chris Larabee was more than happy to join his friends within the confines of the Standish Tavern where most of the seven with the exception of JD and Nathan was present at their usual table. Vin had been the last to arrive having just returned from Coventry to which he had accompanied Alex when her services as a physician was required at the convent situated outside the town. The day was meandering towards midday with patrons starting to fill the establishment for the popular lunchtime menu to which Inez was presently in the kitchen preparing, while Rain patrolled the fortifications of the bar, serving drinks to thirsty customers in the meantime.
"I'm telling you," Buck grumbled as he continued to relate the nightmare he had been forced to endure the evening before. "It was the worst night of my life. I thought the time that I got sick on rotgut and chilli in Purgatorio where I spent the whole night puking my guts out could never be topped but last night..." he merely shook his head in disbelief at the ordeal of the night before.
"Thank you Mr Wilmington," Ezra Standish winced as he pictured that image in his mind. "I think you have cured me for the need to have an afternoon repast." The gambler replied before taking a sip from his glass of whisky as if to wash the taste from his mouth.
"What are you complaining about?" Chris retorted remembering the incident all too well. "You weren't the one who had to hold his head down so he wouldn't drown in vomit."
"Oh please!" Ezra protested as he was bombarded with that disgusting picture as well. "What are you two trying to do, make me similarly nauseated?"
"So you had Inez and Millie under the same roof all evening?" Vin asked, changing the subject much to the gratitude of the gambler.
"Yeah," Buck nodded. "Millie told Inez how I had been running around all day trying to avoid her."
"That was indeed a sight to behold." Ezra commented, taking great relish in imparting his account of events in gratitude of Buck's charming visual description earlier of his night in Purgatory. "Lawman Buck Wilmington, running for dear life with a gun in one hand and an infant's bassinette in the other."
"Very funny!" Buck muttered as the three men around him started to laugh out loud, making no attempt to hide their amusement at the sight that must have been. "What was worse, they spent the rest of night talking about personal stuff."
"Personal stuff?" Vin looked at the big man in question.
"Yeah," Buck nodded. "Personal stuff about how I did certain things around the house..."
"And around the bedroom right?" Chris did not need to hear the rest and continued to chuckle. "Think of this way, if they all got together they could write a book about you."
"I'm glad you're finding this so amusing," Buck glared at his old friend through narrowed eyes. "You're not the one who had two women discussing which dimple about they liked best and I'm not talking about the one on my face!"
All that statement managed to do was produce another round of riotous laughter around the table as Buck's cheeks reddened in embarrassment at the lack of sympathy from his so called friends. "Can we please change the subject?"
"Hey we ain't the one who brought it up." Vin said swallowing a mouthful of beer. "So you get what you needed doing at Sweet Water all right pard?" The tracker looked at the gunslinger.
"Yeah," Chris nodded, issuing a patented Larabee glare at Vin to not bring up the details of what that shopping venture in Sweet Water was about lest the man wanted to wake up and find himself shaved bald. "I ran into some old friends who needed a little mediation."
"Mediation?" Ezra inquired, hardly seeing Chris Larabee as some one who could play negotiator unless it was with the gun and that infamous sneer that promised threat to life and limb to all parties concerned.
"Yeah," Chris shrugged, having no desire to discuss Gunderson and the rest of his inept gang. "I sorted it out. The ones who ain't dead are sitting in the jailhouse."
"Trust you to turn a shopping trip into a gunfight." Buck remarked. "Is Mary okay?" He asked.
"She didn't notice a thing." Chris said with a smile. "She was more interested in shopping then what I was doing. What about you Vin?" He looked at the tracker. "Everything go down okay in Coventry?"
"Yeah," the tracker nodded with something of an enigmatic expression on his face that only Chris was adept enough to catch. "Weather got a bit much though." Vin confessed.
"Yes I would imagine," Ezra nodded in agreement. "We got a mere smattering of it in town but judging by those clouds it must have been quite violent in the vicinity to Coventry."
"Pretty much," Vin did not try to hide that fact remembering what he and Alex had gone through trying to reach Coventry. "The ferry across the river decided to break up when we were on it so both of us took a swim."
"Shit." Buck declared. "I guess you weren't hurt right?"
"No but Alex got the hell scared out of her," Vin admitted. "Didn't help much that we got caught in a land slide after but it worked out fine when we got to the convent and got cleaned up and married, not to mention a warm bed."
The three men with him were in various stages of drinking when they paused and looked at the tracker.
"Would you care to repeat that last statement Mr Tanner?" Ezra said glancing at the others to ensure that they had heard the same thing as he had from the sharpshooter.
"Well we got caught in a landslide." Vin repeated innocently.
"After that!" Buck insisted.
"Oh, you mean getting to the convent?" The tracker knew he was being a little evasive but could not help enjoy taunting his friends a little. After all, considering all the good advice he had been given about weddings of late, he felt justified in torturing them just a little in return.
"About getting married." Chris growled.
"Oh that?" Vin allowed a little smile to cross his lips. "Yeah, well there was a priest and we didn't really want to sleep in separate rooms after the day we had so I thought what the hell. By the way Ez, Alex really liked that ring you help me pick out."
"You sly dog!" Buck slapped him on the back. "How long was it gonna take you to tell us!"
"Just a little while longer." Vin grinned as congratulations were made all around from his friends.
"Trust you to put a lady through an ordeal like that an expect her to just marry you at the end of the day, Mr Tanner." Ezra retorted and then decided it was just like Vin to take care of such a momentous day in his life in such a manner.
"Congratulations pard," Chris extended a hand towards Vin who shook it warmly. "You're a lucky man She's quite something."
"That she is." Buck agreed and raised his glass to make a toast. "To Mr and Mrs Tanner, God help them both."
"Hear, hear," Ezra raised his glass to join in when suddenly Josiah Sanchez burst through the door covered in flower petals and a stem protruding for his hat. The expression on his face was nothing less than stormy and he went to Rain and ordered himself a drink, drawing a wide-eyed response from everyone who saw him. Fortunately, no one was quite brave enough to ask him to explain his present dishevelled state. Grabbing his mug of beer, his friends saw him approaching the table looking like a bear with a thorn in its foot.
"Morning." Josiah sat down and let his eyes move over their astonished expressions, daring anyone to ask.
"Everything all right Josiah?" Buck finally broke the silence.
"I'm going to say this only once," Josiah looked at them with a deep rumble to his voice that sounded like the tremors of a particularly violent volcano preparing to erupt if offered the proper provocation. "I... do... not... want...to... talk... about... it."
"Fine." Chris answered.
"No problem." Buck replied automatically.
"None of my business." Vin shrugged.
"Absolutely Mr Sanchez." Ezra made the same safe response.
"Hey everybody." Nathan Jackson had managed to slip through the doors of the saloon while everyone had been focussed on Josiah's entry into the establishment, trailing destroyed flowers in his wake.
"Nathan!" Rain exclaimed as she saw him and immediately forgot that she was serving a customer and quickly emerged from behind the bar to meet the healer with a warm embrace and an even warmer kiss of greeting.
"The man of the hour!" Ezra exclaimed as the lovers exchanged affections openly and without a care in the world if the saloon was watching their display.
Earlier that morning, Chris Larabee had received a telegram from Sheriff Brooks, informing him that Nathan had been instrumental is solving the murders in Hadley's Hope. None of them was surprised that Nathan would miss the most important exams of his life in order to help George Brooks because it was just the person that Nathan was. There was no way he could turn his back on people who needed help and made those who considered him their friend, feel all the more privileged for having him in their lives. Josiah who had no idea what was going on was soon appraised of the situation from Vin and was soon joining the others in their appreciation of Nathan's efforts in the town of Hadley's Hope.
"I'm guessing you heard about what happened in Hadley's Hope huh?" Nathan asked, somewhat embarrassed by all the attention as he came to their table with his arm still around Rain.
"We are very proud of you Nathan." She said what the others would not express with as much feeling.
"Good work," Chris tipped his hat towards the healer as he pulled away from Rain to take a seat. The lady flashed him a radiant smile and returned to the bar, with every intention of bringing her love a drink.
"Thanks," Nathan smiled. "The exam people were pretty good about me not getting there. So I have to go back next week and do it again."
"Hopefully you won't get side tracked this time." Vin drawled.
"Well I think we ought to raise a glass to our very own sleuth." Ezra remarked and lifted his glass again, beckoning the others to do the same.
"Seems to be the day for it and all," Buck added. "What with you solving the case in Hadley's Hope and Vin getting married."
"Vin got married?" Both Nathan and Josiah said in unison as they stared at the tracker, who merely shrugged.
"It's been one of those days." Buck confessed. "I don't think it can get much stranger than this."
Buck spoke too soon.
"Where is that smooth talking, lying, low down card playing nitwit!"
"Oh Ezra," Buck said in a sing song voice following a series of loud expletives which had every man in the room ever so grateful that the source of that typhoon was not coming for them. "I think Mary has found out about your little card game with Billy."
Ezra's face went white as he heard the lady's angry footsteps approaching the bat wing doors of the saloon.
"Mr Larabee..." Ezra glanced at Chris in pure helplessness.
"Don't even think about it." Chris said firmly, not even looking up as he continued to drink his beer, seemingly unconcerned about Ezra's situation. "I have to live with that."
"Come on Mary," Julia Pemberton's voice followed swiftly behind the ominous advance of the Clarion News's editor in chief to the saloon doors. "He didn't mean to do it and it wasn't as if he was playing poker or teaching him how to play craps! It was go fish!"
"Julia do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds!" The unseen Mrs Larabee turned on the unseen Miss Pemberton before they reached the doors, much to the horror of Ezra whose face was turning beet red with mortification. "You expect me to believe my son challenged Ezra Standish to a card game and that Ezra being the adult that he was, not to mention southern gentlemen that he confesses to be, did not have the sense to turn it down?"
"It was point of honour!" Julia exclaimed as Ezra sunk lower and deeper into his chair and wished the floor would swallow him up. Around him, no one was keeping their sniggers from turning into peals of bawdy laughter.
"Oh please, how much honour can there be for a grown man to accept the challenge of an eight year old child for a woman!" Mary returned.
"Trust me," Julia said in a low voice, smouldering with chagrin at having to defend her lover. "I'm trying to understand that myself."
By now, everyone at the table, with the notable exception of Ezra was ready to split their sides with the growing absurdity of the situation. Even Chris was openly laughing and Inez had been drawn out of the kitchen to investigate the storm that was brewing outside the room. Ezra had started to get up, deciding this would be a fortuitous time to make an exit when he felt both Josiah and Buck's hand on either shoulder.
"I don't think so Ez," Chris said with a smug smile. "I think you need to sit this hand in."
"But Mr Larabee!" Ezra protested as Mary burst into the room and allowed her blue grey eyes to scan the room for her quarry with Julia following closely behind, trying to convince her that murder was a capital crime.
"There you are!" She hissed and stormed over to him with every man at the table moving their chairs a little bit of an inch or two away from Ezra, leaving him surrounded in an island of space. The gambler had never felt more alone or vulnerable as he stared at the face of Hurricane Mary.
"Now Mrs Larabee..." Ezra started to stammer, searching for the charm that was his only weapon of defence at the moment. "You must believe me that there was an extremely good explanation for what happened with young Master Travis."
"Really?" Mary folded her arms as Julia offered Ezra a look of utter sympathy as well as apology that it was now in the hands of God for she could do nothing more for him. "I for one should be very interested in hearing that explanation. No doubt it will be extremely illuminating and would go a lengthy way to convincing me why you should not be evissirated!"
Ezra looked around at the faces watching this exchange and saw no help forthcoming. Of course, he could hardly blame them for staying out of the firing line. Not even Chris Larabee was about to incur Mary's wrath. Only divine intervention could get him out of this predicament now.
JD Dunne burst through the doors at that precise moment.
He was wearing no shoes, no shirt; the upper portion of his long johns was exposed beneath pants that were buttoned up all wrong in the front. He swallowed hard as he paused a moment, covered with sweat and more terrified than any of the seven had ever seen him in all the time of their acquaintance. The youth's lingering was no more than a second before he was off and running again, clutching his hat to his head as he raced through the establishment and fairly leapt behind the bar counter like a jack rabbit.
"John Dunne, you get back here!" The roar of Nettie Wells filled the room, followed by a plaintive squeal by Casey.
"Don't shoot him Aunt Nettie!" The young girl cried out.
"This just gets better." Nathan remarked and sat up in his chair as they saw the lady and her niece burst into the room. Nettie was carrying a double barrel shot gun as she strode into the saloon as if hell riding with her. It was the angriest that anyone had seen Nettie, ever and the presence of a gun made Chris and Buck get to their feet immediately to investigate, especially when it appeared that her quarry was the terrified Mr Dunne.
A second after Nettie's dramatic entrance into the saloon, Alexandra Styles arrived at the Standish Tavern and upon seeing the doctor, Casey immediately turned to her. "Alex you gotta talk to her!" The young woman cried out frantically. "She's going to kill him!"
"Nettie, calm down." The doctor hurried after the older woman who was searching for JD, certain that she had seen him enter the establishment a few minutes ago. Nettie was beyond reason as she clutched the formidable looking weapon, seeing nothing else except JD.
"Calm down my ass!" Nettie snapped at the doctor as Chris and Buck met up with the armed woman.
"What's going on?" Chris demanded and cast a glance at Rain who was looking mystified as she saw JD cowering fear behind her bar counter and for that matter, behind her.
"That boy..." Nettie sputtered in rage as her eyes burned with fury. "He...he..." She could not even say it for being so angry. The image of what she had seen prior to this explosion of rage was burned into memory and she was far from thinking clearly.
"It wasn't his fault!" Casey cried out trying to convince Nettie that it had all been her idea. "I wanted to!"
"You mean JD and you were..." Buck's eyes widened in astonishment as he began to understand the reason for JD's appearance and Nettie's fury. As the realisation dawned on everyone else, all seven men looked at the direction of the bar where JD was hiding himself and decided the young man had a very good reason for concealment.
"Our boy's all grown up." Buck started to grin.
"This is not helping Buck!" Alex hissed. "The woman has a gun!"
"Of course." Buck's expression became serious again for about a second before that damnable grin crossed his features that was more incendiary to Nettie's state of mind than her unexpectedly coming home early to catching her niece and her beau letting nature take its course in the girl's bedroom.
"Now JD, you got to get out here." Buck called out, deciding that it was best to sort this thing out.
"Like hell I will!" JD cried out from behind the bar.
"JD." Chris tried instead and spoke in that voice which no one; not even Vin had the courage to defy. "Come out now."
Slowly, JD emerged from behind the bar, looking like a rabbit that was caught in a hunter's sights, ever mindful of the gun that Nettie was holding. The youth looked extremely nervous, not to mention terribly embarrassed that his tryst with Casey could become so public. Fortunately, he was put at a little more at ease when he saw Alex sneak up behind Nettie and retrieve the shotgun before she handed it to Vin, who held onto it for safe keeping and for JD's continued existence.
"Without going into the details," Chris measured his words carefully. "What happened?"
"You have to ask?" Buck looked at him.
Chris glared at his old friend with a stare that could have ignited him on the spot before taking a deep breath and realising that he really did not have to ask since it was quite obvious what had taken place. "Nettie, they're just kids and you know how they are." It was not much of an excuse but Chris had no idea how to proceed with something like this.
"It ain't proper!" Nettie swore angrily, not about to put anything down to youthful discretion. "I will deal with Casey later but JD needs to account for himself."
"How?" Buck demanded, putting a protective arm around JD who was humiliated enough by this entire situation. "It ain't something that can be changed. It's a done deed."
"Except the usual way." Mary remarked reluctantly, more aware than anyone what needed to be done.
"The usual way?" Everyone looked at her.
Nettie caught on first. "They're too young!"
"Well not that young." Buck started to say when he caught on. Inez who had come up next to him during the exchanged promptly elbowed her husband in the side and cut off any glib remark he had to say.
"Too young for what?" JD finally found his voice.
"Marriage." Ezra responded. "Mr Dunne, I do believe it is time you made some honourable recompense for last evenings occupations."
"Last evening?" JD looked at him confused. "We've been at it since lunch..."
Nettie's face became darker, Mary smacked her forehead, Alex rolled her eyes and Chris decided he was going home. Buck just grinned wider.
"JD," Vin said helpfully. "Shut up."
"Well that's seems the proper thing to do..." Nettie frowned staring at her guilty niece and her soon to be nephew in law. She was not happy about the situation but Mary was right. There was not much else that could be done. "But it's going to be a long engagement." She insisted.
"But Aunt Nettie..." Casey started to protest, uncertain whether she wanted to marry JD. She knew she loved him but marriage...well that was really big. JD was giving her the same look of uncertainty.
"Now would be a good time to be quiet." Alex offered her new husband's warning to the young lady.
"Well this is just shaping up to be a very strange day." Buck let out a deep sigh. "First Vin gets married and now looks like our little boy's gonna be a husband." He ruffled JD's hair and engendered a deep frown from the youth.
"Married?" Inez turned to Alex sharply. "You two are married?"
"When did you two get married?" The second demand came from Mary.
"Well..." Alex started to explain. "We thought..."
"And you didn't even tell us? Your best friends?" Julia accused just as hotly.
"How could you do that to us Alexandra Styles..sorry Mrs Tanner," Rain said sarcastically. "You did not even give us the chance for a bridal shower, or even let us to throw you a celebration..."
"And cake!" Mary declared.
"Why am I not surprised that would come from you." Chris remarked, giving his wife a look.
Eventually, they came to the decision that JD and Casey would announce their engagement, even though it would be a rather lengthy one as that was the only way Nettie would accept the situation save filling JD full of lead. In the meantime, Alex spent the next week listening to jibes and sarcastic remarks about keeping her wedding a secret from her close friends and Josiah after much pleading and grovelling, managed to convince Audrey that he was not afraid of commitment.
And Ezra sneaked out during the confusion and was not seen for the rest of the week.
THE END