This story won the Mistresses of Malarkey award for Best Gen Novella in 2004!
Disclaimer: The characters used herein, with the exception of original characters (please don't borrow) are the property of MGM and Trilogy. No profit sought or accepted.
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Language, violence
Notes: Yakoke, Adrian, for a heart deep and true; words cannot say how much you mean to me, and to my writing. And to my new friend, Lynne Smith for beta-reading and valuable suggestions.
Bibliography:
It was the blood-red hair that snagged his eye, that color rich and strange that he'd only known once in his life. This was a shade or two darker, he saw at second look, but it was near enough. The sun off it ... God, he'd loved that color like he loved the high morning air in his lungs, and he loved every one of the hundred bittersweet images that came in answer to the sight. Jeweled ruby in the wind, glowing wisps in forest breezes, in vivid motion and in dark-shaded stillness swept across fire-lit furs. Unconsciously his thumb rubbed against his fingers in remembrance of a cool satiny sensation. Though he dropped his head when he broke his eyes from that color, he did so with a small smile that had an ache in it and a love that belonged only to her.
Chris, pacing him down the boardwalk with an eye to the traffic in the muddy street, glanced over at him; "What you smiling at?" Sure it couldn't be the red-haired woman, Vin wouldn't have given an interest away that easily.
Vin didn't answer but for a shrug that could've meant anything, but then he usually didn't answer except maybe one out of a half-dozen times, two dozen if it was J.D. The gunslinger didn't care, listening to the muted chime of his own spurs on rain-sodden wood, the sounds of the town and the folks. Getting to be familiar, which was still an odd enough feeling after nearly a year.
"Man'd think you was hard of hearing 'cept for hearin' flys fart n' such."
The answering grin was quick and yet still dreaming; Chris smiled himself to see it and said nothing more. Strange bird, this tracker, he couldn't figure out why he liked him so much, taciturn and temperate and full of secrets. Tough as rawhide when he had to be, gone when he wanted to be. Every word and move measured. Strange bird, but steady and easy to be around.
"You get that wagon for Nettie's lumber?"
A nod, blue eyes far down the road outside of town like a wild thing caged and looking toward freedom, a wanderer uneasy at being kept in a town winter-long.
"Gotta go by the lumberyard and see t'loadin' it." Ezra, strolling to their left at a dallying distance, veered off toward the saloon.
"Gentlemen ... my labors lie in other venues ..." Tipping a manicured finger to his curl-brimmed black hat with a charming wink. The town was busier than usual and the visitors of better means, so Ezra was a happy man. Chris smirked at the back of his gleaming red jacket, but Vin said nothing, having expected no less. Men were what they were, and Ezra had an aversion to physical labor as constant as sunrise. Himself, he couldn't have kept his wits an hour in a stuffy smoke-filled saloon much less all night; everybody had their gifts.
Half a mind still in memory, Vin said, "We can maybe make it out tomorrow mornin'. It don't rain tonight, roads'll be passable ..."
"Ma'am! Here's that telegram from Captain Monroe y'been waitin' on!" The boy from the telegraph office ran past with a yellow piece of paper kited importantly aloft and Vin sort of glided to a stop and swung around after him like he'd been hooked on a fishing line. Chris caught a glimpse of something flaring bright as fever in his eye as he stepped off the boardwalk in one long stride, head high and hunting.
"See ya later." Drifted back over his shoulder, wanting no company and saying so as short as that so Chris shrugged and watched him go.
"Suit yourself." But looking after him curiously, wondering what the tracker was onto so intently.
"Do my eyes deceive me?" Buck's smiling drawl announced him behind Chris, who half turned without taking his eyes off Vin; "Tanner chasin' after that red-haired woman?" Glossy eyebrows tweaked as he bent forward to see where Vin was going, only to find he'd already disappeared in the bustle of the street.
A broad slant of white teeth appeared from under his glossy black mustache and Buck shook his head with a soft cackle of delighted surprise, long hands coming to rest on his hips.
"Can it be? Lord, I ain't never seen him take off huntin' a woman - "
"Let it be, Buck." And though Buck had little practice at restraining himself, especially with Chris, his old friend was touchy about Tanner and Buck was content to let it be. He liked this town, the six men he rode with, the folks - some better, or at least more often, than others. And he liked that Chris seemed to find a sort of rest in the tracker's company that Buck would never deny him, knowing what memories rode his own shoulders in Chris' sight. Sara and Adam, part of that tragic history and a reminder however much affection and history was between them. The friendship that had come up between Tanner and Chris had the tracker comfortable beside him no more than a day after they'd met, as deep as the bond between two wild and woolly rascals after a lifetime, and Buck respected that without jealousy.
He, J.D. and Ezra, however, had privately wagered, because Tanner never seemed inclined to seek female company in town, that he took his comfort among the Indian women at the village. After all, he was frequently gone all night and Buck thought he recognized the sly smiles some of those lovely creatures sent Vin's way when they were up there. If he was chasin' some town woman, though, bets might be reworked to his advantage before word got around ... Buck's grin went mercenary and he prodded carefully;
"Poor little filly ought t'just stand still n' wait for him, then, ain't likely she's getting' away!" Chris didn't disagree it was the woman Vin had gone after, didn't say anything at all, and Buck shook his head again and observed with a spark of merry delight, "Still waters ... but God almighty slow!"
Vin couldn't say how long he stood behind her as she sorted among the buttons, transfixed by the play of light off her gleaming hair. That color and gloss he remembered as a wild free flag in the wind confined in an intricate weave. He was hardly breathing and there was a strange wild excitement rooting his feet against a potent clamor to get hell out of here. Mrs. Potter had a curious eye to him and swept her quiet way nearer, and when he noticed it, a dark flush crept up his cheekbones and he found his voice,
"Pardon me, ma'am?"
The soft voice was so near that the woman spun around, startled anew to find her nose less than a foot from the leathers and fringe and quillwork of a wild frontiersman's chest. Sunlight through the door behind him struck light off golden whiskers as he raised his head, wide blue eyes capturing her from under the sloping brim of his hat and he stepped back at her discomfiture, hands rising, a voice quiet as air,
"I'm sorry, don't mean t'spook ya ... Mrs. Potter knows me ..." Nodding in the widow's direction. That good woman was all too happy to vouch for him, stepping in to the conversation boldly;
"That's right, Miss, this here's Vin Tanner. He's one of the town regulators and a gentleman to his bones, never you mind the wooly look to him." Beaming like a doting aunt so Vin blushed again and Miss Monroe cocked her head, fright disappearing and curiosity aroused by his peculiar intensity. Then she stiffened.
Vin Tanner.
It sank in on a little gasp and her eyes popped wide open in surprise, she leaned toward him so abruptly that this time he startled back.
"Oh my God ... " She breathed in wonder, searching his handsome angular face, the smell of forests and dust and horses ... her sister in his wide blue eyes. She heard her own voice strange and distant; "Oh, My God, how can this be? You're ... Duley's Vin Tanner!"
Paling with shock but with a gladness sparking in her eyes that ignited something long banked in him. God, to hear her name spoken ... her name from someone who had known her, who had loved her. Duley came vividly alive out of the quiet faded ghosts of memory. Wanting that pulled so powerfully he instinctively wanted to resist it, but he couldn't have stopped himself for his life. That minute seeing her memory in a living face, seeing love for her in another person's eyes, was worth any price and all he could do was look at her. Duley in her diminutive shape and vibrant coloring, her small oval face. God, it was so strange...
"Oh, what a world, I can't believe it ..." One delicate small-fingered hand fluttered to her throat and a sad sort of sound escaped her as she looked up into his shadowed face. Yes, Duley's Vin, handsome as a hawk, standing hip-shot to one side and a predatory ease in his posture, if not his fiercely troubled eyes. Duley said she never met a more civilized man, and Beth sensed that depth of character no matter how wild and intimidating he presently seemed, her fear dissipating. Everything was intimidating out here, she longed for her veranda in Virginia with ridiculous constancy. Elizabeth Monroe, mistress of her brother's house and a force in Virginia society, was a bird far beyond familiar fields here, and at the moment utterly dumbstruck.
He said nothing, still and quiet, the air seeming to crackle around him with a fey energy tightly contained. That, too was to be expected, that the man to win Duley's heart would be as complicated and mercurial and untamed as their father, the same dark mysteries shadowing his eyes. Like their father, like Duley herself, it was as if her golden-eyed sister looked out from this man and she was nearly speechless with a strange terrible pleasure.
Vin wasn't surprised that she knew his name, he'd taken Duley down-mountain more times than he could count so she could post her thick packets of letters and such to her sister. To have that sister here now had him dangerously off-balanced; he had no idea what to do or say, even why he was here. The bare smile she gave him then under her eloquently tumultuous eyes was warm and glad, and he hurt in the avalanche of memories even while embracing them.
"You're Duley's Vin." Oh, to have in front of her the subject of so many letters, right in front of her the shy wild orphan who had been her sister's greatest joy. Those eyes Duley said had an old man's living and a child's hope in them. She stared, spellbound in memory and knowing he was, too, by the way his eyes kept lingering on her hair. Surely her own face wore the same expression of longing - oh, Duley had loved him so! It had leapt off the neat pages, that love, and it leapt off this living man in front of her like something precious belonging to Duley coming to her in a bequest from beyond the grave.
Duley'd said he couldn't read or write, and Elizabeth remembered the handwriting of that last letter seeming too fine for the stark words, she is gone, signed 'written for Vin Tanner', and the date. She'd never known whether it was the date the letter had been written or the date Duley had died. That dark memory moved in her, in him as he remembered the same thing and he met her eyes unwillingly, as if he felt guilty for Duley's dying but owed her the honor of facing her family.
The draw of that bleak past made him flush again and look away out the door, wondering what he would say now, what he was doing here tearing open those ancient and still mortal wounds. Not even the color of her hair was truly Duley's, that wild smear of color that always made his heart hum. This was not her, she was gone.
She sensed he was about to spook and run, knew if he did she would never see him again, and she reached out impulsively for his arm. Her touch stilled him like a wild animal immobilized by teeth, and in the captive moment she pleaded earnestly.
"Please ... " Desperate not lose him so quickly, "Obviously this is as discomfiting to you as it is to me, but please believe how truly grateful I am to finally meet you, Mr. Tanner. Duley wrote of you so often that I feel like I know you." Which did not make him any easier, indeed, that tone of familiarity seemed to raise his hackles visibly. The arm under her fingers trembled faintly, hard with tension. Lord, he was skittish as those alley-cats her niece insisted on feeding back home. She glanced toward the door and back to him, torn, loath to let him out of her sight because Duley was also there, in his eyes, clear as day. Duley was there.
"I have to fetch my niece from the baths just now, heaven knows what she'll get up to if I don't make haste, but we must ... Mr. Tanner, you must have so much ... so many ... I do, certainly ..." She laughed a little and shook her head at her own inability to frame her racing thoughts into logical language. "I'm sorry, but please, could we have dinner this evening?" Astonished to hear herself being so forward but unable to stop herself; "I would so love to talk with you about her, I need so much to ... she was so dear to me." Voice rich with that affection, sincerity plain in her face and her nose a little longer, the features subtly sharper than Duley's, eyes darker than that gingery gold ... but like her in a redrawn sort of way. And the heart in those eyes yearned as much as his was, greedy for any crumb. What she was like as a girl, a sister's memories to add to his and his to give the sister who, like him, held them precious.
He didn't say anything for a moment, feeling himself running breakneck toward a cliff, a man who'd learnt painfully and young to heed such forbodings yet still, this time, he knew he would not. Mrs. Potter's broom was the faintest brush on the planked floor as she listened intently, astonished that this fine lady seemed to know Vin when she'd never met him before, and she couldn't tell by their faces whether the acquaintance was good or bad.
"Yes, ma'am." He said finally, just as she was growing awkward, his tone quiet and somber with an odd surrendering formality. Then he smiled, and it was like sun running under clouds. "That'd suit me fine."
She had a smile like Duley's, quick and expressive and taking him in a place he'd forgotten was so vulnerable, he steeled himself consciously for that trade-off.
"Wonderful! Can you call for me at the hotel at seven, in the lobby? Yes?"
A quick set of fingertips to his hatbrim and he was gone before she could take another breath. She stood there for a good long minute, lost in amazement and excitement. Then she concluded her purchases, deflecting Mrs. Potter's curious insinuations absent-mindedly, and went to fetch her troublesome niece.
From Mrs. Potter's store, Vin went straight for the stable and was gone until an hour before dusk. Moving without knowing why, as he didn't seem to know why he was doing anything, moving only because he had to run and be in the emptiness where no one would ask any questions he couldn't answer. No one break the spell of her that had descended over him with a savored warmth he could not, and did not want to, lose.
When he came back, he rummaged around in his wagon and then went to the baths with his best shirt, red, as he couldn't much wear outside of town, and brown broadcloth pants with a high notched waist. As he sat in the steaming tub he put as much of a clean on his boots as they'd take, shaved, washed his hair. Sank back to soak in the heat of the water with that peculiar dreadful excitement still simmering in his bones. Dreaming, as he'd been dreaming all day. Wondering at how Duley's sister had come here, of all places. And how out of place she was, here, where Duley had never been.
Just this morning the earth had been solid underfoot and he'd been sure of his place and direction on it, and now things were all stirred up and seeming to rush him along in a numb tumble. Not a thing a long-thinking man liked to experience. There'd been no reason for him to follow her, find her and face her, he'd known it would hurt and it had, it did, like throwing himself on barbed wire to reach something he could never hope to reach this side of a shroud. Things he'd carefully whittled down had suddenly become huge again, things once blunted on the terrible empty battlefield in himself regaining their mortal edges. Grave danger, here, he could feel it like claws coming at him, yet he couldn't keep himself from it because that other feeling was back, too. In his blood, in his bones, in his skin every time she was near from the first time he'd laid eyes on her, and even faintly as her sister brought it, he couldn't help craving it past reason. Just to look at that hair and allow the yearning so long forced down ... Until the water cooled he wandered through memory, then had to hurry to make up lost time.
Ezra, leaning elegantly against the carved post of the saloon porch with his ankles crossed, lit his cheroot and tracked Vin above a palm-cupped flame. Didn't need to see him clearly in the twilit street to recognize the loose-limbed stride, and curiously he watched as Tanner crossed to the hotel. Something ... the gambler's fine eyebrows raised; Tanner looked almost civilized. A plain lapelled vest of soft sandy leather neatly buttoned, a red cavalry shirt buttoned to the band neck, brown pants that had surely never visited a saddle, clean-shaven and his hair brushed back off his face. No gun.
"Somebody getting married?" Buck broke away off the doorway behind Ezra following his line of sight and took a long lazy step out onto the porch, looking after Vin himself. A speculative smile cruised across his handsome face and he stroked his coal-dark mustache with the tip of one forefinger. Tanner didn't often present targets to his teasing, and Buck was curious as a cat to take his measure that way.
"Maybe we ought t'go on n' have us some dinner, too?" He said quietly, his head cocked around that wicked willing-to-make-mayhem grin.
"Capital idea, I'm famished." The gambler drawled, ready and willing to find something less than sterling about a man whose disapproval over Ezra's perceived shortcomings of character had begun to grate. But Josiah shook his head and caught the back of Buck's coat in a gentle but irrefusable hand.
"Boys, if Vin's got private business n' you butt in ... well, I reckon I'm gonna be prayin' over you a whole lot sooner than not, and I just ain't in the mood. C'mon inside for supper where I can keep an eye on you."
Vin didn't have a coat he felt he could wear in her company at dinner so he wore none, and didn't notice the chill in the evening air. He sat awkwardly on a delicate velvet settee to wait after calling for her at the desk, his hat in his hands and still as a stone but for his eyes, quick to anything that moved. He felt abuzz in his skin and strange.
Beth paused on the landing above to watch him unobserved as he stood up and moved closer to the door, uneasy, as if the walls were closing in on him. Her father had always looked like that, too, wanting the assurance of a way out nearby and prickly indoors, especially in crowds. Duley's Vin was very handsome, and very different from anyone she'd ever known; he made her nervous, and she was not a nervous woman. There were forms of civil conduct and there were manners and rules, but none of them mattered out here, she was utterly out of her element and disliked that sense of vulnerability.
The high-waisted pants fit him snugly so she saw how narrow he really was in hips and flanks, leaner and lankier than she'd thought out of his hide coat and leathers but long-boned across the shoulders, big hands. He stood warily in the growing shadows by the door as he had in the mercantile, hip cocked at a slight cant ... she was startled to realize she had a tintype of her sister fitted against that curve of hip and waist, the top of her head had come just up to his shoulder. Gerald called the picture indecent for the devotion so apparent in the pose, the indecorous wrap of their arms and the intimate tilt of Duley's head into his chest, his over her and his eyes hawk-bright.
She'd always loved it herself, always felt from it what her sister had meant her to; my mate, she'd called him with that bluntness Duley had that was so elegantly forthright, mine, and I his.
She had that picture and an older one Duley had forced her father to sit for after a few years in the wild, and had there ever been children, those images, too, would have come to her, though she seldom knew where to send mail to Duley on the wild frontier. She valued every bit of her sister's memory, and there was a good deal of Duley in this strange half-spooked man she was about to have dinner with. So quiet in mannerisms and voice and expression, yet an abiding strength, a durability of body and mind ... and heart, too, she guessed, knowing the scars in his eyes because she had them, too, for her husband so untimely taken. Tearing away the love of a lifetime could not help but leave scars, and despite many years as an independent woman of means, she missed the security of a husband acutely in this dusty wild place.
Elizabeth started at a murmur behind her and stepped quickly aside to allow a somberly dressed couple move past down the stairs, wondering how long she'd stood there lost in thought. When she looked up, she found him watching her, as if he was waiting to see if she would come down, and he waited without expression as she descended and let her cross the lobby alone to him. As though none of them had mothers to civilize them, manners like a country full of wild orphans.
"Mr. Tanner." She said quietly, extending her hand, dressed in a dark wine silk dress with white Irish lace cuffs and neck, pearls dangling from her ears and that crimson hair glowing in the lamplight. He smiled politely to see her and took the offered hand briefly, but she felt his deep disquiet as she neared, and when he looked at her, his eyes ... Lord, his eyes were a complication.
She smiled with what she hoped was friendly reassurance, feeling more daring than she ever had, sensing Duley surrounding them with a giddy sort of bewilderment.
"Ma'am." He said, and offered his arm, into the crook of which she slipped her hand. As they left, both felt eyes in their wake.
He was a murmur at her ear, opening the door for her from behind and the warmth of his body caged around her for a disconcerting moment, the scent of leather and soap and something indefinable. A gentle hand on her elbow guided her through the half-filled dining room, yet he left her standing at one side of the table while he went around to the other to sit down himself, oblivious to the manners of seating a lady. After an awkward moment, she slid into the chair, only a little flustered, and caught his wondering glance. Although he seemed very calm, he had an air of fidgeting and twitching underneath, his eyes seemed as drawn to the rest of the room and its occupants as to her. Not a place he normally took his meals, she could tell, although they knew him there and were welcoming and familiar.
"Menu ain't as fancy as I 'spect yer used to." He said with a little defiant pride, "Food is real good, though; Pru makes a great fried chicken."
She felt her stomach grow quarrelsome at the idea of another greasy over-salted meal, but instead she smiled at the maid who appeared beside their table to recite the day's fare after a long minute of wholly awkward silence. Duley was in every glance and breath and yet neither were ready to speak of her. Elizabeth took a shaky breath and made her smile bright.
"This is a lovely little town, so brave." No response. "And the weather has been better than expected, the sun was out most of the day ..." She felt herself flush, feeling over-dressed and over-civilized and somehow silly in his careful and neutral regard.
"I'm taking my niece to her father, Gerald, in Fort Laramie, do you know it?" A direct question required an answer, and her silent expectation forced one after a moment.
"Long way. Wrong time of year t'be along the Rockies." And that was it, he'd said all he was going to.
Lord, it was like pulling taffy to draw words from him! If they sat in stilted silence, however, she would begin to blush most unattractively, so she assumed the burden of civil conversation and went on, trying to conceal her nerves in perfectly modulated tones and precise hand placement on her lap.
"My younger brothers, Stephen and James, will be here in a few days, and will escort us the rest of the way. Gerald has been given command of Fort Fetterman." Of which she was obviously proud, her pause giving him opportunity to comment, which he did not take.
"He's determined to bring progress to the west, so much so that he sacrificed a profitable career - a cotton mill in addition to the farm - to carry out his country's service on the frontier. I admit to some surprise at this change in his life's direction, I was so certain he would never ... well, at the time it seemed rather illogical, but I've never discovered what caused such a change in his sensibilities. He was adamant, and has become a Captain in a remarkably short time, and now his own command. I never thought he had any interest in anything west of the Mississippi, but there you are!"
Did he have no idea about a gentleman's role in the forms of civil behavior? Had he no clue how rude he was being in his implacable silence? She guessed he did not, because he seemed not to notice her discomfort in the least, just looked at her like she was some strange sort of creature he was trying to figure out. She swallowed an exasperated sigh in a bright smile, drawing off her gloves to disguise her uncertainty in that familiar protocol.
"My brothers are inclined to assist, it seems - though it is not an entirely altruistic enterprise ..."
As though her elder brother's was, and he swallowed a smirk as she prattled on.
"All my brothers have a keen eye to profit, much to the comfort and security of our entire family, and Stephen and James captain an import business in Virginia between them, shipping and overland freight, local cartage and such. Gerald thought it would be a good idea to establish business interests there, an entirely new market, as it were, on the road leading to the new settlements on the frontier, and has purchased land in the region toward that end." What was that look on his face?
"I do understand the country is inclement at this season, as well as somewhat lawless." Back straight, stating as fact that she would travel there fully aware of the dangers, not such a weakling as he obviously thought she was, and his eyes narrowed a bit on her, his mouth pursed. After a moment he said dryly,
"Yes ma'am, I imagine you would call it lawless." Nothing more, no opinion offered, though she knew he was familiar with the territories. He fell silent again, eyes roaming and his unease profound. He knew where Fetterman was as well as he knew it to be Indian Territory by treaty.
They were saved by the arrival of their meal, fried chicken for her, a thick steak for him, which he tucked into using his own rather daunting knife and, to her relief, the fork provided. She'd been afraid he wouldn't know how to use it.
Obviously he was not easy with idle conversation; Duley'd written that he could go days without saying a word sometimes, and yet be so happy. How it had warmed her heart to know Duley had found contentment, someone to share the wildernesses she loved. She watched Vin Tanner from the corner of her eye. Strange that it had never made her warm to imagine that for her father. The wilds had taken him from her, and taken Duley, too. Left her behind, mattering less than the piney mountains and rocky rivers and sun-splashed alpine meadows he'd told them about as children with that light in his eyes he had for nothing else. Vin Tanner had that light, that cautious distance as if people were more dangerous than any beast he knew.
She swallowed a wistful sigh. Her father had known the habits and hearts of every animal and bird and fish, but people ... people confused and infuriated him, bothered him beyond patience. Obviously Vin Tanner's hackles were uneasy even here, in this town where he lived, among people whose faces and habits he knew. She took small bites off the golden chicken, surprisingly moist and flavorful, and ordered herself to relax.
"Gerald is charged with handling the Indian problem in Fort Fetterman, in that region, I mean."
"Problem?" One of his eyebrows lifted, a faint sarcasm in the question she chose to ignore.
"Oh yes ..." She went on blithely, missing the keenness of his attention on her. "The Fort is one of a series built to protect the wagon trails through that territory, it was named in honor of Captain William Fetterman who, with his entire command of eighty, was massacred by the Sioux - oh, the headlines were just dreadful, such a terrible tragedy!"
Vin frowned. The army called any loss a massacre, and Vin knew Fetterman to be a headstrong and arrogant bastard who'd bragged more than once that his 80 men were all he needed to 'ride through the Sioux Nation'. Well, Red Cloud and a young warrior called Crazy Horse on his fast white-footed bay as decoy, had taught him otherwise, and in that resounding victory against a far superior foe had convinced their friends the Cheyenne and Arapaho to become their allies thereafter. The Commander who had warned Fetterman not to engage, not to fall prey to the Lakota's 'chase me into ambush' tactics, had taken the public blame for the defeat, while the fool who had led those 80 doomed men was lauded a martyr and hero. Obviously Duley's sister thought so.
Vin had long since learned that white history was easily amended, their written words eclipsing truth and creating convenient justifications for the massacre of Indians who may or may not have had anything to do with anything. She would know none of that, and he didn't intend to enlighten her.
The Fetterman fight had taken place on the Powder five years ago, and since then, the tribes had pinched off and nearly closed the Bozeman trail, which bisected their traditional buffalo hunting grounds despite being declared Lakota territory by treaty. Now the Army - her vaunted brother included - was trying to enforce a right-of-way agreed to by northern tribes who had never ranged the Powder, but who had thought it funny to take the white man's goods and horses for a mark on paper promising something they did not even have. The Oglala had not been amused, and likely still were not: This silly soft easterner was blindly going into a dangerous and volatile battleground as if her whiteness was all the protection she needed. Did her brothers know?
"Gerald has been charged with upholding the treaties and prosecuting renegades, ensuring the safety of the surveyors ..."
"Surveyors?" Suddenly she had all his focus, mid-chew. A sharp edge flashed in his eyes while the rest of him fell quite still.
"Yes. Well, his colleague and friend Colonel Custer recently led an exploration of an area called the Black Hills - I understand he's claiming there is gold down to the very roots of the grass."
Tanner laid down his fork, but the knife remained in his white-knuckled hand and the lamplight glinted on the keen well-worked edge faintly stained with beef-blood. His spine was tightening, a low slow anger seeding.
"That's Lakota territory by treaty not three years ago." And deeply sacred, though this he didn't offer, doubting she had any more concept than any white person of what ageless duty and love that meant.
Glad enough to have finally engaged him in some sort of conversation, she missed the challenging blaze of his eyes and shrugged, "Yes, so Gerald says, but evidently the government is offering to buy it from them." At the coldness that crept into his face, she hastened to add, "At a very good price, I'm given to understand."
"No such thing." He snapped, and she chilled at the suddenness and force of his displeasure. Every word she said in this vein seemed to be received with less and less liking and she remembered then, indeed, who she was talking to. This reaction, also, was like her father, this angry disdain for civilized dealings with savages. It was not an opinion she could even dream of changing, so she decided to change the subject instead, sensing they were edging into hostile territory and loathe to have it so.
Elizabeth warmed her smile with the intention of peace between them, of things more important than Indian problems three hundred miles away. She allowed a brief silence while she sampled potatoes done with buttermilk, remarkably lump-free, letting the topic die until he went back to his dinner.
He tasted none of it any more, thinking hard about what she'd told him, wondering what was going on up there in his old hunting grounds, among his old friends. The Powder was one thing, but the Pa Sapa, the sacred Black Hills, in white hands ... God Almighty, that was a horror to imagine, and he well knew what the People's reaction would be to the government's 'offer'. What treacheries might they suffer for the white man's rapacious appetite for gold? He no more understood why they valued it than any Indian did, but he knew what lengths they would go to in order to have it. He had to think about this when his head was clear, he would have to do something. He would have to.
Gradually the brittle air eased, and when she felt it safe to try again, she looked up at him and said in an intimate tone; "It feels fated, us meeting. Don't you think?"
He shifted, deepened the rightward lean as if his back might hurt, or just sitting so long in a chair was unnatural, and neither agreed nor disagreed, but he did meet her eyes. It was no wonder he so seldom did; she'd noticed most of his looks were glances, indirect, and understood now it was because his eyes gave him away, eloquent even when his face was inscrutable. Fated, perhaps, but whether for good or ill he had not decided. She wondered if he was so wary with everyone, if he had friends around whom his shoulders eased, where his quicksilver smiles were more than fleeting. He had such nice teeth.
She laughed nervously, shook her head and couldn't help saying, "You remind me so much of my father." This, at least, did not seem to insult him, and she seized the neutral topic with great relief, crossing her knife and fork on her barely touched plate. She leaned back with an indulgent expression watching him sop up gravy with a piece of bread which he then, curiously, did not eat.
"One day ..." Her voice was quietly reflective and he glanced up at her, thinking about the Pa Sapa and surveyors crawling that revered place, how whatever plot was hatching to have the Black Hills might be stopped, what fight offered to an enemy that had proven perniciously and murderously dishonest. He was willing to bet they'd already made the announcement of Custer's findings public, whipping up gold-fever, and he knew why. Fortune-hunters would descend in droves and the Black Hills would pass into white hands by virtue of sheer force of numbers. Such was how the government worked, what it could not buy - and he knew the Lakota could never sell - it would take by one tactic or the other, inexorable as the seasons. What could be done?
She saw his distraction with a flustered frown, so he set the problem in the back of his mind where it would turn and work on its own and gave her his attention.
"One day ... " She repeated, "Papa just couldn't stay anymore. We all knew he was going come summer even though nobody ever said a word about it. Started making pemmican, which only he and Duley would eat. Filling the spring house with meat, the cellars with preserves and squash and apples, laying in salt pork and flour and sugar and grain, like Noah before the flood. Like he was sorry and was showing us every day with the sweat of his brow and the callouses on his hands ... like telling us he loved us, but it wasn't enough." Her head dropped, an old deep-rooted hurt undisguised.
"It never was enough, not his love nor ours. By then he just couldn't do it anymore. We were old enough, Mother was financially secure, the farm, the dairy herds, all running well under men he'd brought in years ago, preparing even then to leave us. Gerald had the skills to take it over - Gerald wanted to, of us all he was the only one who really wanted Papa to go. Duley ran off the same morning after him, they couldn't be parted from each other, she never needed ... well, she was brave and didn't fear the life out there."
Oh, he knew that very well, fearsome and fearless as a cougar was Duley, and smart. But it was love for the wilderness that brought her to it, not a lack of fear.
Her sister's look turned upon him too sudden and frank to avoid, and she said with clear bitterness, "Sometimes I think he spent the prime of his life toiling ceaselessly just so he could finally leave with a clear conscience."
Vin knew Vance Monroe had done just that, and admired it still. Giving up all that was precious and alive and meaningful to him for so many years of familial duty, suffocating in civility. But Vin also knew how few folks saw it that way. To folks used to walls and towns and the noise and smells of other folks, the wilderness was a thing to be brought to heel, plundered in disharmonious misunderstanding, conquered and in that way rendered no longer terrifying in its freedom. Even wild as he was, though, he understood how hard it must have been for a girl to lose her father and sister that way; was a time he would've given much to be bound in duty to a family, he reckoned he understood the comfort of it even if, by now, only abstractly. Likely Vance wouldn't appreciate it, but he felt like he had had to speak for him anyway.
"Seems t'me if he went t'so much trouble t'make sure you were all took care of, shouldn't begrudge him his last few years livin' as he dreamed."
Knowing that dream and glad to have seen her father realize it, and his lack of sympathy for an abandoned family took her aback. Something surprisingly like jealousy rose a bitter thread in her; this stranger never knew what suffering her family had endured after her father's departure, the gossip, the subtle disdain and patronizing sympathy, how hard her brothers had worked to lift them all above it. Yet this stranger had also known the man her father was that he'd never shared with anyone but Duley, and she wanted to understand, if she could, how he could have left them and never looked back.
"You liked him." She stated, trying to keep accusation from her voice and expression.
Vin nodded once, decisively, "I did."
How odd to have a stranger defend her father to her, yet in those two words were volumes of affection and respect. Vin Tanner understood her father in a way she never had, and perhaps never could. Always the sense even right there with you of another life inside him, something only he could hear calling from the far-away places his eyes always turned to where no one else could come, not even if you loved them all you possibly could.
Vin watched her face intently, risking giving his feelings away to see what was true in her. Resentment, anguish. Finally, an aching want that made her look like a very young girl, an impression reinforced when she asked in a soft plaintive voice;
"Tell me about him."
For Duley's sake, for Vance's, he wanted to do that for her, maybe ease her anger at a good man who just couldn't help wanting to be free. There was a moment of pure frustration at not being able find words good enough, having no skill at speaking about his own feelings and impressions, no education ... but she was looking at him with such hopeful expectation that he had to try. His opinion of her kept changing, one moment he'd think her shallow as a vernal pool and suddenly there'd come a glimpse of depths beyond his knowing. She loved her Pa, even though it'd hurt her, and still did. Loved him yet.
So for awhile they sat together over apple pie and black coffee and he told her some things in an edgy awkwardness: What Vance Monroe was like on the hunt, how good a tracker he was, about running winter trap lines and him so big he'd looked like a bear dancing across the top of the snow in his snowshoes so sometimes Vin'd get to laughing too hard to keep up. She laughed then, too, in bright memory, and told him how her mother refused to dance with him for that very reason, and any woman who did took the life of her feet into dire peril.
"Maybe that's why he took t'the People," he said, with a twinkle in his eye and a friendliness at last that she coveted, "'Cause he was a man liked t'dance, and Indians usually dance without no partner; leastways, no partner with toes t'get stepped on." By that time she was so relaxed that she found it easy to laugh with him and didn't wonder what he meant by his qualification. He noticed that, unsurprised; the ways of the People were usually too subtle for whites to grasp, they never knew what questions to ask.
"I wish I could see him through your eyes, Mister Tanner. See the places he and Duley traveled, all those places they loved ..." More than they loved us, and though that went unsaid, it was still there in a faintly melancholy expression. When she looked up at him from her cup her eyes shimmered with a yearning that touched him. Lord, his heart was on a razor's edge tonight, teetering between extremes of emotions he'd long ago lost touch with. What would it mean to her to show her the ridges where the sun came up in a golden outreaching spread of glory? Walk her through the creekside glades where beavers worked, show her the deep woods in the hush of midnight with the stars like glistening drops of water on a raven's back. Could she see it as Duley had?
"Would you really want to?" The words were out of his mouth before he knew he had them in him to say, coming from somewhere near his heart that felt like Duley making herself heard.
A smile burst brilliantly over her face and she reached across the table and surprised him by laying her hand on his, suddenly livened and bright. "That would be splendid, positively splendid!"
He tensed, but didn't pull away, horrified by what he might have gotten himself into here without meaning to, shit, without wanting to!
"I had thought to ask you to accompany us, Mr. Tanner, but had not found the way - your offer is most generous, I know Duley would be pleased." And he knew it, too, cursed loving her for a moment in the feeling of having been manipulated into something he wasn't at all sure of. "After all, who would be more capable of getting us safely to Fort Fetterman than someone like you?"
And, in truth, there might also be something he could do for the Lakota. It took his breath away to imagine what greedy flood would crest over them in the sacred hills, threatening to obliterate the seven council fires that had burned on that living breast, that drew power from it as the world drew life from it, since before time was counted.
"I am so blessed to find family so far from home."
Blue eyes leapt to her at those grateful and sincere words, a shock in them that made her fingers close over his, moved by some instinct she didn't entirely recognize - self-preservation, perhaps, being terrified despite her brave show of the ferocious wilderness ahead. It truly was another world entirely, urgent with quick death, hard and unforgiving of mistakes - which she suspected her dear younger brothers would make by the bushel-full, so arrogant, so unsuspecting of the brutality of life out here that she'd begun to glimpse. Who better to get them safely there than a man who would hold it a matter of honor and duty? She did not want to die in this vicious place so far from home and there were undercurrents among her brothers she was being kept ignorant of, so she played her trump card unapologetically;
"You are family, Mr. Tanner. Duley gave you to us in marrying you, and gave us to you - though I'm afraid, once you meet the rest of us, that you might think the Monroe's are on the fat side of that bargain." Her light laugh fell into emptiness, he made no response whatever.
Family. Kin. His heart, which had seemingly stopped dead, began to race so fast he was surprised she couldn't feel it. He'd never thought of it that way, and now it was a door that could not be closed again however much he might want to slam it and lock it and forget he'd ever heard ... Duley was the only one but his Ma who was ever kin, not even Wicase Hinhan, Owl Man, for all he'd loved him. But Duley would want him to see her sister safely across the wilds, she was the sole person of the family she'd left behind that she'd cared about, and now her life had now come into his hands - it could be no accident.
The feeling of being moved in directions mysterious to him had the feel of Duley in it, too, she'd always known how to get him moving on the right paths he couldn't himself see. Anything that had to do with tangling himself in other folk's doings he had never been able to see the right of until he'd come to this town, and tangled up with six other men. He looked away out the window, unable to see the stars and the night for the blinding reflections, but after a moment she felt his long fingers relax under her hands, and his shoulders shifted as if settling a weight. He stood up, his hat sweeping shadows over his face.
"It's late, Ma'am. I should be seein' you back t'the hotel."
They walked to the hotel in separate silences, and as they reached the hotel step he stopped at the hesitant tug on his elbow.
"There is one thing ..." Looking away from him, she took her hand from the crook of his arm and looked down at her fingers worrying the cord of her reticule, feeling his patient attention as he stood there so simply, waiting. Like he would still be there tomorrow if it took her that long.
"Mr. Tanner ... Vin - oh, how do I say this without villainizing my brothers?" Her glance was nervous, apologetic. "When my father and Duley left, my mother grieved terribly. Oh, I suppose it might be construed as wounded pride more than anything else, that she couldn't hold him to her even with five children. But my brothers loved her so much ... " Her eyes rose, a plea to understand the human shortcomings of people she nonetheless loved. "My brothers became pillars of the community, civilized, sophisticated, educated, devoted to all that was Papa's antithesis; their vengeance, you see, is hating all that he loved. What took him from us and made us ashamed. They did everything they could to erase the stain of his abandonment."
She had to be brave enough to look at him, and this was made easier by the sympathy in his eyes, though it was a sad thing to see and made her embarrassed. "They would hate you - I can't lie, Mr. Tanner, they will likely despise you anyway as they hate everything he represented, even knowing they must have your help to make this trip - and they will realize that, they are not fools. But should they also know you for Duley's husband ..."
He felt the threat implied in her fear and it rankled in a deeply primal place, not a man who accepted scorn from anyone, and she saw this and had to make him understand how necessary it was. "Please, they mustn't know, I'm so sorry to ask this, she was so proud of you and I ... " She wanted so badly to touch Duley through this man, to travel her sister's countries and hear her the thoughts and the deeds of her life from someone who'd loved her, part of her again past time and even death. He wanted it too, she knew it, though there was a bruised wariness to his wanting. It would be difficult to keep her brothers from driving him away as it was, and she knew from the overtly doubtful reactions of the townsfolk who knew their destination how badly, indeed, they would need his experience and skills.
Though he was frowning, he found himself privately relieved to let Duley be their secret, having been chewing on how he'd explain it to the others when he couldn't explain it to himself. It would avoid a great many questions he didn't want asked, trying to explain Duley ... well, it'd be impossible even to men he respected and admired. No law said a man had t'spill every privacy he had to anyone, friend or foe.
"Then so it'll be, Ma'am. I knew yer Pa, that's enough for anyone t'know."
Which she'd intended as well by her grateful smile, a nod agreed. He left her at the door with a tip of his hat and a murmured 'Ma'am', and kept on going right out of town unnoticed, wanting the whole breadth of land and stars tonight for the thinking he had to do. Things were changing and he seemed to have little control over it, unused to confusion and uncertainty. They ran far, he and Peso, who didn't care where as long as he could run unfettered.
He had a dream, when at last he slept, of the whispering moon-tipped heights of cedar and white-boned stands of striped birch, of the vast golden vista of the Powder Horn where buffalo flowed in a rivered undulation of dark humps and horns. The thunder of them like the heartbeat of the world in a hunter's bones, in a man's soul. And when the dream got closer and deeper, he dreamed of Duley's taste and scent and her small vibrant body in his arms.
Yarn fringe from the bed she was under hung down like leaves over the mouth of a cave, the bed high enough not to worry about the candle setting the ticking on fire - that had happened a time or two. Stretched out on her stomach in her nightgown without a care for the dust, Jules slicked the heavy drape of russet hair back behind her ear and sorted through the packet of letters she'd filched out her auntie's keepsake box. They were to be hers one day anyway.
Aunt Beth once said she'd tell her about the woman who'd written them, her Aunt Duley, whom she'd never met. She figured it didn't make it any less of a promise that her Papa wouldn't have it; he'd been furious when he'd found out and there was a terrible row after she'd been sent to bed. Her Papa had called Aunt Duley an immoral woman, deviant (she still wasn't sure what that meant), crazy, the worst possible example for any child - all guaranteed to perk the curiosity of the 6-year old girl evesdropping from the top of the darkened stairs. Consequently, she'd read them several times since that night six years ago, though no new ones had come for the last four.
Aunt Beth had shown herself to be of far sterner stuff than her young niece had ever imagined in that confrontation. Under her cool quiet propriety ran a deep inner current that reached beyond the carefully circumscribed world of a respected widow and mistress of her brother's fine grand house, more than the childless guardian of his only child. The letters, she'd said (and it was then Jules had decided to find them on the sly), were a treasure to her, and if she never spoke of Duley and Papa, it was only because it upset the rest of the family. They had mistaken her if they thought her silence meant she did not love her sister abidingly, and she would hear no ill spoken of her. That staunch she'd dared be against the formidable array of her three Uncles in accusatory tandem.
"If I must give up all reference to them to accommodate your sensibilities," she'd said with a steel in her voice Jules had never heard, "You will do the same for mine!"
Her aunt was not a woman who shouted, but that night she had; 'They are MY letters and I WILL receive them, and should I ever find that you've dared intercept them again, I shall leave this house within the hour and sell my share of the farm and the town holdings to the first scoundrel I meet!" This iron-clad vow even her domineering Uncles had not tempted again, and that was even before her Papa had given control of the dairy operation to Aunt Beth when he joined the military.
So her Aunt had received those letters until Duley died, and if she was ever shocked by the blunt writing and frank subjects Jules had discovered herself, she never showed it. Certainly that, too, made Jules look at her aunt in a new light. So vibrant the written world in that tattered collection, places and people she might now see for herself. The frontier her Aunt approached so timidly had ignited an excitement in Jules that burned brightly in the pit of her stomach.
The girl froze as she heard footsteps in the hallway, for a moment frantically tensed against the floor with the need to get them back into her Aunt's treasure box before she missed them. This was not something she usually worried about, but it was obvious by the order Aunt Beth had been re-reading them herself. The footsteps went on, and she breathed again. Jules had already decided that tomorrow she'd ferret out whatever had happened that afternoon to put such flushed distraction in her unflappable Auntie's demeanor. Dinner with a perfect stranger, too, they didn't know anyone in this town, though she'd met a girl named Casey who'd come striding down the boardwalk bold as you please in trousers and boots and vest without anyone saying a thing about it. Liked that right away, Jules had, and introduced herself boldly, wangled an invitation to her farmstead where she could ride their spare horse. She hadn't figured out a way to con her aunt into it yet, but it would come to her.
By some miracle, her father had evidently decided to stay in the frontier he so disdained, and he wanted his daughter with him. In that moment Jules stopped wondering why he'd taken up a life he hated, or why her Uncles were leaving their businesses to make this journey, she was just glad to be going too.
For a moment she savored the feel of the rough stained parchment as she savored the life her Aunt wrote about, nothing to do with what could be owned or worn or used to lord it over everybody else, nothing to do with public faces and stifling manners and 'what was expected'. She fished out the letters she wanted from the few she'd dared take and opened one.
'Oh, sister!' She read, the letter beginning without even a salutation, just jumped right in with the unconventional exuberance that marked all her Aunt's correspondence; 'I have met the man I will soon marry!' Oh yes, this was one of her favorites ... 'Rough and lean as a wolf in winter, ferocious blue eyes and skittish as a finch, but you should SEE how he stares at me!' Excitement clear in the bold dashes of the quill, an educated and well-bred girl who had still claimed her freedom.
'Papa likes him, too, says he's a cunning warrior and a fine hunter with big spirits, well thought of among the People. Haven't yet spoken a word to him yet, haven't even heard his voice, but he circles and circles and I see in his eyes that he knows me, too.'
Jules tried to imagine falling so in love at first sight, making that lifelong connection in an instant, in a heartbeat that changed everything thereafter. They'd be traveling through the very lands her Aunt had written about; her Grampa might even still be alive there, no one knew.
'His name is Vin Tanner, and he's lived among the tribes for most of his life, though he spends a good deal of time off alone running trap lines up on the Arkansas and the Platte, hunting and such. Probably running around wild as a bear, men love to do that. He is every bit the wanderer Papa and I are - never met a man who'd sit still for it before, they always wanted to root me in some lonesome cabin to wait for them, like marrying me somehow burned away my will and my right to be free - not likely! I had begun to accept being an old maid, but Mamma was right - patience is a virtue! Being stubborn, too - you know Papa always encourages that.'
She shuffled through the packet to the next letter, paused over the tintype of her Grampa, stern and tall and stiff in strange fringed leathers and a rifle as tall as he was across his lap. Even more than Duley, Grampa was not a subject ever welcomed in her family, though he was legend behind their backs. At home, he was referred to only in bitter whispers late at night, her Daddy and her Uncles sharing a whiskey in the library and words of abandonment and betrayal. This Grampa she'd never met could sure stir high emotion in people he hadn't seen for years, she admired that with honest spite. And this man her Aunt Duley had married - maybe they'd even run into him up in the mountains somewhere! This journey was chock full of chance, she could feel it as clearly as she felt Aunt Beth's discomfort in it.
Until today, her Aunt had wanted nothing more than to turn around and go home, distressed by the dust, faint in the heat, appalled by the rudeness of everyday as they traveled further and further away from Virginia. Jules liked all of it, herself, wanted to get right into it and chaffing at her Aunt's insane determination to keep her pristine and proper - if she was made to wash up one more time, her skin would peel right off!
She returned her attention to the letters with a snort, feet crossed at the ankles, calloused toes rocking against the planked floor absently.
'Oh Beth, how can I explain what a joy this is? That I could have a husband who is my friend and doesn't want to have me anywhere but at his side wherever in the world the path takes us! Partners and allies.'
There was a change in writing style thereafter, as there often was in her letters, as if she'd been called to do something else and come back to writing days, even weeks, later. 'There's a gathering coming up for the summer hunt.' Jules read, 'All the seven camps come together from all around the territory, it's bright and noisy as a country fair. In the day, there are races and games of skill, and in the evenings they consume all the meat in the camp in faith that the hunt will be good. Thereafter come ceremonies of song and dance, recreations of illustrious battles and deeds. On the last night, the warriors dance in a circle with the unmarried women in their own circle within - many matches are made at such times, intentions offered by eyes and smiles, so small a thing as a tilt of the head, I've seen it. He knows I'm going to choose him, his friends are already teasing him about it, but his eyes burn with wanting. It feels like falling into some grand mystery, and I hardly know myself for thinking of nothing but him! I surrender so easily the independence I always scrapped so ferociously for, what a hypocrite! I guess we all must be at some time, when you find that person you need, the one who fits you like another half you never knew you had. In an instant all of life before that becomes only waiting for them, even now I mark time by the sight of him, think of him when he isn't there, moony as a cow, you'd be disgusted!'
And the letter that had followed a few months later: 'White Flower and her sister-wife are helping me make a deerskin dress - ' Sister-wife, Jules read again with a thrill of illicit delight, two wives, two sisters married to the same man!
'Can you imagine it? Me? In a dress? Willingly??' Underlined in a gleefully wiggly stroke that said this Monroe daughter had long since put off petticoats and chemises and stockings and so many layers a body had to about suffocate. 'Mother would despair, would she not? That lusting after a man got me to dress the way all her lectures could not! She'd be sure I'm bound for hell in a handbasket - but at least I'd be dressed appropriately!' Jules grinned; her Grandmama was the last word in propriety, scandalized by just about everything - even piano legs were so indecent they had to be skirted, she'd never heard of anything so ridiculous - were men really such ravening beasts? She'd wanted toa ask about that, but hadn't dared.
Jules knew her Grandmama considered her the result of bad breeding, though she was above speaking ill of Jules' mother, dead in child-birth. The girl had long since stopped trying to change her mind about that and by now took a spiteful pleasure in cultivating that reputation.
"Just like her!" She'd remonstrated her troublesome granddaughter so often, never speaking Duley's name, but making Jules wish she'd known the fearless girl who'd escaped all of this to follow her dreams when she was the same age Jules was now. Funny how it never occurred to Grandmama that if Jules was just like Duley, it called her own breeding into question. One day she'd ask her about that and watch her face get all red and those veins in her forehead pop out. A snort ruffled the page in front of her, and she read on:
'I suspect we'll be wed in the fall when the buffalo hunt is done and the meat processed for winter stores,' her Aunt had written, 'And I also suspect it will be a very long few months - we're both like tempted tinder that will catch fire the instant we touch.' Jules sighed as she chewed on her fingernails absently.
Not even their wedding night had been shy between them, nothing ever had been, nothing ever held back and that was strange to him as anything could be, a man who lived far inside himself and gave nothing of his heart or mind to anyone. He'd known at the first sight of her that he'd have her, wanting things he'd never wanted before, and he'd set about laying the hunt in his mind. For a time it was no more than bold looks as he figured out how to woo her, thought about how to keep her. He'd endured the brotherly teasing of his friends and had never felt more like he belonged anywhere. They were fierce for each other from the start even in their looking, and fiercer still the flesh and the souls and outpouring hearts of each other when the promises were made and the words spoken and the tent-flap closed behind them by giggling women. Closed out the autumn winds and the greater world and created another, the two of them, in becoming one.
No one had ever been his, not even his Ma in her slavery to others, but Duley was. His life was her concern as hers was his, taking care of each other, finding ways to delight each other, was all that mattered. Duley was in his every breath and look and move as much as he was hers, one heart in two bodies. She'd lain back on their wedding night with that smile on her face that made his blood rush to her in answer, offering all her richness in her tawny half-lidded eyes and parted mouth and the wanton nimbus of her gleaming hair. Spreading her arms, her heart, herself against the soft warmth of fox and ferret and ermine that made their wedding bed like a fine wild country promised only to him. His, where he would come to know every curve and dip and swell and hollow better than his own.
His own cry of release woke him, gasping and his hands spread hard against the ground as he tried to keep the feel of her skin against them, trembling and breathlessly blind. With a long shuddering moan he gradually he relaxed into his bedroll, and after a minute he flung the buffalo hide off and turned over. Sat up and rested his arms across his jacked-up knees and breathed deep and slow into the warm hollow his body made. Tasting her, God, even now tasting her. She echoed in his ragged breath and the shiver only she had ever brought from him. God he loved her, had and ever would.
"Duley ..." Because he had to hear it even whispered and fraught with dangerous longing. And he smiled, shook his head with a deep rueful affection; even so many years gone she could make him quiver and quake and spend himself like she was a living woman of flesh and heat and bright blood. Even now she was more alive to him than anything else.
"Well, boy-howdy, ain't this a dream come true!" Buck drawled with a happy smile, long arms spreading to embrace the welcome sight of the work already done, lumber loaded and Vin almost finished harnessing the team. >From the boardwalk the tracker looked like a ghost gliding footless in the early mists as he moved around the team threading the traces through the collars and side-rigs. He'd been there long enough to load the wagon and warm the horses, they were steaming slightly in the chill air and blowing wisping plumes of white. J.D. broke into a trot ahead of the rest and went to help, settling the collars and harness rigs, running quick fingers under the straps where it might lay the hair wrong.
"These boys'r ready to haul, ain't they, Vin?" J.D. grinned at him across a broad pair of backs, elfin face lively as a just-waked cougar cub. Vin gave him a quick fond curve of a smile as the lead horse stamped like he'd understood the kid, willing and impatient for a good pull after two weeks stabled. His off fellow jostled in answer until all four were shifting and setting their shoulders into the leather to test the weight. Vin noticed that they jostled J.D., too, carefully, but with that horsey sense of humor rarely shared with men. Kid was horse in his heart and every horse he ever met knew it, loved 'em like Buck loved women and just as well.
"Been mornin' fer nearly an hour, boys." Vin observed dryly as they approached. Ezra, bringing up the rear, turtled his head down into his coat-collar with unconcealed disgruntlement. "Morning would seem to intimate a nodding acquaintance with the risen sun, Mr. Tanner, and I daresay we have preceded it by an indecent interval. Why does everything always have to commence at this particularly odious stand of the clock? What is the crime in initiating our little sojourns in the full light of day, for heaven's sake, does reason abandon everyone west of the divide?"
It was almost a tradition by now that Ezra would be whining, he'd groan and roll his eyes and make snide comments for another half hour at least and nobody paid him much mind anymore. They set to saddling in the quiet, the slap of leather, coaxing words, creaking harness and the jangle of cold bits, all the horses restive from having been confined by the weather for so long. Ezra's horse, usually fairly docile and well-mannered, took a hard bump from Peso's swinging haunch in the line just as the gambler had set foot to stirrup, and it took him hopping across half the corral on the other before he could get mounted. Once he had the horse in hand, he turned an aggrieved glower at Vin.
"That ungainly brute did that on purpose, Mr. Tanner, I am not deceived! It's bad enough that graceless excuse for an equine consistently attempts to pulverize or otherwise maim you, now he's coming after us as well!" That made them all laugh, even Vin grinned and gave Peso an uncharacteristically friendly look as he swung up.
J.D. took the wagon, laughing, boyish joy in the morning and the company, even in the work ahead - maybe in the prospect of Casey's lively company, too. Neatly he turned the team and the heavily laden wagon toward the gate, thick reins working between his fingers with instinctive ease. Each horse turned an ear ahead to the road and another back to him, responding to his quiet commands as much as to the touch and tug of harness. Chris swept up from ground to saddle in a smooth launch like a bat taking flight, Buck a moment after, patting his grey affectionately on the neck once seated. Peso, never one to miss a chance to be contentious, ran a tight circling spin under Vin that the tracker managed to control by hauling rein and long blocky head in the counter direction. They heard him say, "Keep it up, horse, I'm gonna get me the damned sharpest set of rowels I kin find."
Josiah shook his head without a word as he mounted; Tanner and that horse were an entertaining pair. The preacher inhaled a great bracing lungful of the cold air and let it out on a deeply satisfied sigh. Mornings like this Josiah understood Vin's nature, beautiful and mysterious in its stillness, the promise of spring in the mountains beckoning like fond ghosts.
"Now, Ezra ..." Nathan said as he drew his tall bay alongside the gambler with a secret sparkle in his dark eyes, "Don't you go doublin' back on us and goin' on back t'bed, you hear? Them folks been winter-bound three weeks now ..."
A slow toothy smile spread across Josiah's face behind them and Buck hid a wicked grin as he reached down for the gate. Chris only shook his head with a wry wince in expectation of the undoubtedly florid - and probably shrill - objections certain to come. He had a hangover like t'make his knees disappear. Hadn't done that in a few months and he didn't know why he had last night, just had those feelings again. But they were receding in the warm company and the crisp morning, and he found he could smile, reckoned he might feel a whole lot better once they got to Nettie's.
"I resent that, suh!" Ezra huffed, hiding a private smugness to have conned his way out of undoubtedly dirty, sweaty work (three more detestable words he could not imagine) rebuilding Nettie's stable. Instead, he had offered to take on the onerous, but necessary, task of riding the outlying farms and ranches to 'check on folks' after the latest series of storms. That little bit of genius would put him back in his bed for a nap by three, as he didn't intend to linger. Hadn't said he provide any help, just check on them - ah, the power of words. Ezra took a real pride in having avoided any semblence of unsightly callouses in all his time on the frontier, and he bore his smooth and nimble hands like the honorable badge of his profession.
He called up an expression of suitable affront for Nathan, "I assure you I have no intention of shirking this charitable chore - which I volunteered for, if I may so bold as to remind you."
"I don't know, Ezra, it's God-awful early," Nathan said in that smooth dark voice of his, a note of brotherly concern Ezra was too pleased with himself to realize was unnatural. Before the gambler could bravely demur, the healer seemed to come to a decision, "You know, Ezra, I think I'll just go along with you and make sure you don't fall asleep on your horse and wander off, get pitched on your head or something, being unused to such indecent hours and all."
Ezra startled unhappily; "Very kind, Nathan, but I assure you that I am fully capable of remaining alert even at so unnatural an hour. Nor do I need a chaperone!" Theatrically aggrieved over real panic to have his plan modified this way, "I am cut to the quick to have you express such doubts as to my honest intentions under the flag of false brotherhood, why ..." Going for sputtering outrage because he could spur away as if in a fit of temper up the road ...
Unperturbed, Nathan said, "Well, I happen t'have my bag with me is all ..." Broad yoke-boned shoulders rose and fell, "Might's well see if anybody needs any help, maybe couldn't get t'town." The soul of innocent selflessness.
Ezra's green eyes widened with unconcealed alarm as he spotted Nathan's full medical pack across his mount's rocking back, Buck's wheezing snicker made him look back at the rest, and that one look confirmed his sudden awful suspicion - he had been had! The fairly short and easy day's riding, perhaps waving to the grateful farmers as he passed, was swallowed up in the spectre of endless squalid huts redolent with the concentrated miasmas of an unwashed winter's confinement. Images of runny-nosed children and chickens cooped under the beds and farmers coughing up substances seemingly capable of independent life found expression on his face as abject horror. He looked at them as if they had, each of them, just buried knives into his noble chest.
To everyone's surprise, it was Vin's rasping laughter as he finally figured out what they'd done that set them all off roaring, he'd been listening absently at an ambling walk near the tail of the wagon, and the look on Ezra's face was absolutely priceless. The gambler's increasingly syllabic insults only made them laugh harder and Vin got warm in the good-natured sound. Standish was a pecker-head, Vin thought, but he was true in the shifty-seeming heart of him, and a good laugh set the worries in his head to roost. He sat back in his saddle to enjoy the fireworks, and Ezra didn't disappoint.
"You pack of slippery miscreants!" Real anger now, nothing feigned, and their amusement adding fuel to the fire; "I never agreed to go peering into the phlegmy tonsils of every man, woman and child between here and the border! Nobody said anything last night about visiting with the rural denizens of the wastelands, the idea was to determine whether any buildings had fallen in, that sort of thing!"
"Looks real warm now, don't he?" Buck opined blandly with a nod at Ezra's red face and J.D. laughed so hard the horses' started prancing in the traces, ears flicked back to the sound.
"Is that steam I see comin' out his ears, Buck?" J.D. goaded, and Standish, indeed, looked like the fires of hell were lit under him.
"Never again shall I tolerate a word on the subject of dishonesty from any of you! This is just intolerable, it is ..."
"Ezra," Chris interrupted sharply enough to make Ezra turn and look back; the gunslinger looked like his own voice hurt his ears and Buck was the only one brave enough to laugh at that.
Chris said flatly, "We took a vote last night about tellin' you Nathan'd decided to go along t'look in on folks, n' we decided we'd druther concentrate all yer complainin' into one morning' rather than have t'listen to it all night, too. Can't say as I can stand it now, either, though."
"Oh, well, fine then! Far be it from me to make you suffer the pangs of conscience this blatant betrayal of an associate must evoke! Why, let me just remove myself ahead, wouldn't want to inflict any discomfort ..." More words, indistinct but sharp, trailed in his wake as he spurred ahead, Nathan keeping pace at his off heel.
"I swear, if they could just bottle that up and put it in a lamp, it'd burn for a month." Buck said, wiping his eyes and going off in short fits of laughter every time he brought Ezra's face to mind.
"You think Miss Nettie will have breakfast for us?" J.D. said to no one in particular, bracketed in a shifting pattern of riders as they moved onto the open road, and Buck's ears perked up. He reined back so the wagon could pull up even with him, still half listening to the imaginative tirade Nathan was accepting with faint agreeable politeness, his smile infuriating Ezra even further. Buck's leggy grey, accustomed to him sometimes being precarious in the saddle, automatically accommodated when his rider's long weight shifted to the right so he could lean down and give the kid a punch in the shoulder, smiling curiously.
"Now, J.D., weren't you supposed to persuade Casey to suggest that?"
By his guilty start, the kid had forgotten and Buck's smile got narrow. If he was going to miss breakfast, the kid owed him a morning's entertainment in return and he shook his head with a threatening grin and said in a soft silky voice, "Boy, don't even be tellin' me you couldn't do that much for yer compadres ..."
J.D. groaned; this was just the sort of mistake that'd set Buck on his heels all day, and he could tell by the tone Buck was just getting warmed up.
"I figgered it was a sure thing, a done deal, you havin' the inside track there n' all like you do. What d'you think, boys?" Drawing the rest of them into it like the devil dancing on a sinner's soul, "Maybe Casey's more of a distraction than J.D.'s been lettin' on?" Expecting and getting the hot-red blush any mention of romance between he and Casey always got, kid could get teased into a lookin' like his head was gonna explode. Buck's smile got happy.
"If I get to Nettie's n' don't find those big fluffy buttermilk biscuits ... well, J.D., I'm gonna be real disappointed." Leaving J.D. to wonder what that meant. "Yep, real disappointed."
Ezra's ire had actually goaded him into a nice quick pace, and Nathan stayed with him as they pulled ahead, waving as he followed the still-grumbling gambler off the right fork of the road while the rest kept going toward Nettie's. Chris and Vin had dropped back out of range of Buck's entertainment, which Josiah joined in on, alternatively defending J.D. and taking Buck's part against him until the kid was getting dizzy trying to keep up. All of it comfortably ordinary to Vin, but the difficulty he found himself encountering at the thought of leaving them was not. Chris wasn't going to like it.
Chris had glanced at him a few times, wondering what he was chewing on in his mind but knowing there'd be no answers until Tanner was ready to give them. He'd just as soon let the rest of his headache work it's way out in silence anyhow, and they rode that way 'til the road narrowed between a hill and a knotted stand of naked oaks and brought them knee to knee.
Finally Vin said, "Chris, I been meanin' t'have some words with you."
Chris looked over at him, profile hawk-keen and riding higher than usual. Nervous, which wasn't like Vin, Buck swore he didn't have any nerves and Chris was inclined to believe that. He gave him his attention and waited.
"There's some folks traveling up into Lakota territory in a few days, n' I'm set on seein' they git there."
Set on, so he'd go no matter what anyone said. Wasn't asking or explaining, just saying 'I'm doin' this.'
Chris looked down the trail a way, a spark of anger straightening his long spine out of its hung-over slouch, and he thought about that awhile before going for the heart of in one cool question:
"Some folks including a red-haired woman?"
Peso startled subtly from Vin's knees, but the tracker's profile never gave a clue.
"Knew her Pa." Which wasn't the smallest part of it by Chris' reckoning and he chuffed skeptically.
A muscle in Tanner's jaw jumped, though he never took his eyes off the road. Tanner was not a short-tempered man, Chris had seen him walk away from as many fights as he'd jumped into, but in matters of his honor he was unpredictable as a rattle-snake. However, he also never did anything without thinking it through, even on the fly he took what split-seconds he needed to lay things out in his mind. Jade eyes narrowed; Vin had pondered the duty he owed in Four Corners, of course he had, anticipated trouble and wasn't going to be goaded into saying another thing but what he meant to. Hell, Chris had just stepped on his toes twice, and that he was still riding as placidly as he was beside him was a measure of respect he'd never voiced out loud. So it was of considerable importance to him and he didn't intend to argue it. Chris hated it when he did that, pulled up into himself after some demon or duty only he could see. Had a strange antiquated sense of honor and an iron will behind it even when it caused him grief.
Chris sighed and his shoulders slumped. Dammit. No way he'd talk him out of it, but no way he'd watch him set off without knowing where or why, either.
"It's a far piece through Indian territory, gonna be snow up above the timber-line." Carefully neutral; "You'll need help."
"Won't be askin' for it, Chris." Still not looking at Chris even when the gunslinger's eyes peeled away at him, he just didn't look at him.
What was there that Vin didn't want anybody getting close to? By now he had to know he could count on them, and Chris had set a good store of faith in believing there wasn't anything that couldn't be shared between the two of them, at least. Made him mad to have hurt feelings about that, and Vin had likely figured that might happen, too, and still he would go.
"Suit yerself, pard." Chris finally said, wishing it didn't sound so petulant, but pissed off wasn't something he'd ever been able to hide. Without a backward look he legged his mount on ahead trying to clear his sluggish brain enough to give this the thought it needed.
Vin watched after him a minute before his head bowed and a long sigh hissed out between his teeth. Didn't feel good, none of this, but he couldn't see another way. He had to get Duley's kin safe to their destination and if her brothers knew the truth he'd be held back from that. He couldn't explain it, either; Duley was the deepest and most private thing in him, and he'd been holding it so hard for so long that he couldn't find a way anymore to crack open the vault and share it with anyone.
Only Nettie noticed the uneasiness between the gunslinger and Vin amid the good-natured company of the breakfast she'd laid, dinner fixings on the sideboard in expectation of a hard day's work. Loved to see men eat, Nettie did, and she was in her glory feeding them. The house rang with masculine voices and seemed cozily smaller with their wide shoulders and motions and noise, made her smile like an old hen. Buck winked at her and told her Chris was hung over and nevermind his black mood, and Vin smiled and had an appetite. But there was a distressed sort of thoughtfulness in the tracker's eyes that told her he was working something mighty bothersome in his mind.
By the holes in the pattern of conversation and the eyes that did not meet around the table she finally saw it was, indeed, something private between Vin and Chris Larabee. Not a good thing by the subtle tension between them, men who'd been born to stand each other's backs. This would bear some watching: Nettie wasn't above meddling if it went too far. She laughed to herself at the urge, like they were her own, and indulgently tousled J.D.'s hair and gave him the last slice of bacon to get Buck's dander up, holding on to the homey feeling for all their sakes.
Josiah pushed back with a satisfied smack at his beefy torso, and the topic of the days work commenced around the table. They had spent a good twenty minutes upon arrival walking the ruined northwest side of the stable, pleased when Josiah's hard testing shoves at the bared corner post noted no give. Though the walls and roof that sheathed the log frame had given way under the weight of a lightening split oak, the substructure was sound. The consensus was that they could just trim back to solid planking and tie the replacement lumber to it in one big patch. Uncertain weather made them anxious to get the roof on first and it was decided to leave the tumble of the two partial walls until that was done.
"Good." Nettie nodded briskly, "Because I need my coop as much as that stable, had to take potshots at a pair of wolves the last couple of nights comin' round after the chickens in the yard, upsets my cows, I want them hens penned quick."
"We can use the beams we won't need for the stable, we halve 'em, n' they'll probably be enough to frame the whole thing, make it strong." Josiah said, answered by nods, then Chris spoke up; "I'll take J.D. and Josiah for that, Vin n' Buck can get started on the roof."
"I reckon it'll take two days, boys." She said, pacing around the table picking up plates and coffee cups; Josiah caught her free hand and bussed it soundly.
"Miss Nettie, you feed a man like that all the time and I reckon he'd built you the Taj Mahal."
"Well, start with the coop n' then we'll see."
"Vin? You wanna take the end, there?"
Straddled across the rafter with his feet on the log braces beneath, Vin took dreaming eyes from the view and saw Buck struggling to pass up a roof plank cut to size for the patch. It'd taken them most of the morning to clear the tree and square up the hole in the roof, and now they were laying new wood.
"Sorry Buck ... Right pretty vantage." The snow had retreated to the shadows of the woods but for what lay in shaded hollows and dips in the fields, and there was a cold snap in the air that made such hard work almost comfortable.
"Not from down here, boy, I'm dreamin' of whiskey n' it's hours to dinner-time."
They'd been at it for four hours and Vin could smell Nettie's roast chicken in the firesmoke as he leaned down for the plank, feeding it up past himself hand over hand until it cleared the next rafter then swinging it in a long smooth arch across them. He reached for the hammer in his holster, a bag of nails tied on the other side, and with no fuss leapt rafter to rafter driving nails, Buck transfixed below and wincing every time he did it.
"Damn, Vin, them things ain't but three inches wide, you slip the littlest bit n' ain't never gonna have to worry about women again!" Buck called up, imagining all the calamities that could befall a man up that high on that steep a slope, slippery shingles and the tracker going easy as a flying squirrel, a good six-foot jump each time.
"Don't worry 'bout ladies now, Buck." Vin said, a quiet patient voice light as air, "you do that well enough for us all."
Which Buck took to be a compliment of the highest order, spreading his saw-dusted arms and cocking his head up with a squint and a grin, "Well, Vin, we all got our God-given gifts ... I ever tell you about the three sisters in New Orleans, now there's a sultry place in summer, n' ..."
Vin tuned him out, quieted that thread in the weave of sounds his ears constantly sorted. He wanted to hear the hawks in the valley and the wind in the corn stubble, the pale sun felt good across his shoulders after a long cold winter and he just let his mind rest in that awhile. He'd find a way to tell the boys he was going, and that he planned on coming back - something he hadn't had a chance to tell Chris because he hadn't thought that far at the time. It'd been a nasty surprise to realize that. Wasn't like him not to've worked a thing through clear to the end in his mind, especially something as dicey as the territories in the tail end of winter and the smell of war between the Lakota and the army. This time all he had was vague intentions and powerful memories.
Buck had half an eye to him above as he trimmed planks with a hand-saw in the yard and saw Vin rise like a weathervane going up in a smooth but sudden movement off the bared spine of the roof. The hammer dangled from his hand and he cocked his head for the shadow of his hatbrim against the light, intent on the distant road through the apple grove. Though Vin never even glanced at his mare's leg laying close to hand on the wood slope, Buck's felt his hackles prickle without knowing why,
"Company?" He called up, casual and quiet but in a tone that told Vin he was sauntering over to his side arm.
"Seems like, a carriage, n' Casey's horse is alongside." Casey had left right after breakfast on some errand and concern was Buck's first reaction, but Vin said, "I can make out Casey drivin' the team." A young girl sat on the front seat beside Casey in a dark blue coat as long as the matching dress beneath it, and Elizabeth Monroe sat precisely in the center of the back seat. Girlish laughter drifted faintly to him and Vin blinked stupidly. He'd been calm in the work, in the sweat and tandem of men where the rules were simple and the ground was straight underfoot. He glanced down at Buck and experienced a vague unaccustomed vertigo, the wind rocked him slightly and tugged his shirt tight around his ribs so he felt the chill.
"Vin?" Buck called up, softly so as not to startle him on that dangerous high perch, he was just standing there looking out at the road like something was coming more than Casey and a carriage.
"Yeah, Buck." Nothing else, he watched a minute more and then, to Buck's surprise, squatted down as suddenly as he'd risen and went back to work.
Vin hadn't figured on her coming here, that was a blind curve, but there was nothing to do for it. The boys would make of it what they would and he'd just have to handle it as it came.
Buck stared up at him at minute more, perplexed, and finally just shrugged and walked down to the head of the road to see for himself. When he finally made out who was in that carriage, he turned back and took a long slow look at the tracker the roof.
To be continued...
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