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:
When the carriage finally pulled into the broad yard between the house and outbuildings, Elizabeth was met with the sight of several dirty, sweaty men cleaning up in a rough wooden trough near what appeared to be a stable under repair. A crystalline arch of water was flung back as one of them came up from dunking his head, and she thought she recognized them all from town - usually the saloon. Two were very tall and lanky, another a broad craggy bear of a man, and that spritely young sheriff, a boy on the edge of manhood, who settled for his hand cupping water onto his face.
Some unspoken signal passed between them as they marked and followed her with that disarmingly friendly and fierce wariness so common to the frontier. She didn't see Vin Tanner, though she'd heard Casey say he'd be among the men working out at their farm, as it was charitably termed.
Perhaps in spring it would look the part, but right now it was barren fruit orchards and hard damp ground set in a sere winter landscape of rolling fields, wide tree-filled folds and snow-spotted grassland beyond. Still, it was a generous-seeming house with a veranda under graciously sloping eaves set on the side of a gentle hill above stable and barn and corrals. What looked like a large sturdy chicken coop was under construction in a hollow to one side. A kitchen garden spread downslope with mounds and furrows neatly hayed over to warm the earth in decomposition for early crops. Her father had done that in their garden and had always harvested months before anyone else; perhaps he'd learned it on the frontier.
A trim white-haired woman in a faded blue dress and a wide brown leather belt stood on the porch, one hand on her hip and the other shading her eyes as Casey drew the team up even to the porch steps, neatly placing the step-down away from a large puddle. Of course, she then proceeded to heedlessly jump down into that very puddle herself, and Aunt Beth's flinch made Jules laugh out loud. The Regulators were here, four that she could see, slipping on their shirts and vests - they'd be here all day and at dinner, too! This was just too good!
Casey said she had pants Jules could wear for riding, and a shirt, and she already had her new boots on under the dress where her Aunt couldn't see. She resisted the urge to thump them against the panel under the carriage seat; they felt strong on her feet, like she could take big strides without a worry of doing them harm - these were not mere shoes - these were boots!
Jules had long ago learned that her Aunt never checked mercantile tally sheets, which provided opportunities to slip things in among the merchandise being purchased. Or in this case, onto her feet. "We'll take them, please add them to the bill." She'd said authoritatively to the proprietor, her Aunt across the store examining woolen undergarments for her brothers. It'd been hard to keep her feet tucked where her Aunt couldn't see them, but they were already bought and deliberately scuffed against being returned, so she'd take whatever punishment came and still have her boots. She intended to ask Casey to swap her whatever pants she loaned her today for a pretty satin chemise - which all girls Casey's age wanted, tom-boy or not, and her Aunt had scads of them. Jules was determined to acquire sturdy practical garb even if she had to outfit herself by trickery or outright theft, she was not going to waste a second worrying about her clothes out there.
This trip just kept getting more exciting, and Casey was grand fun, already being what Jules herself wanted to be. Casey had strong opinions about dresses and behavior and what was proper for women, and Jules agreed with every darned one. How could they call the west uncivilized at home? What was more civilized than letting people be what they wanted, do what they wanted, no matter if they were twelve or twenty or had breasts or ... the other!
Aunt Beth got flustered anew when Casey started chasing J.D. for laughing at her muddy boots, the smallest and youngest of the seven and Casey's particular beau. Jules admitted he was very striking with his long glossy black hair and bold black eyebrows, a spirited smile as he ducked away so they ended up in an impromptu game of tag. A country where women could drive teams and carry rifles and stride about in pants and boots, chase down a boy and thump him if he had it coming - she bet they even drank whiskey!
The men finished cleaning up and ambled toward the house with some rough shoving and laughter amongst themselves, Elizabeth uncertain whether to rise and get down unassisted, as her niece proceeded to do with an oddly heavy gracelessness before she could stop her. Suddenly Casey popped up beside the carriage, flushed and grinning, and swept a hand toward her Aunt on the porch, saying,
"Aunt Nettie Wells, this here's Miss Elizabeth, of the Virginia Monroes." The woman, who had pale piercing blue eyes, nodded with a welcoming smile as gracious and warm as any Elizabeth had ever seen. Since it was poor manners to remain seated when being introduced to her hostess, Elizabeth rose unsteadily just as the horses lurched in their traces, and only the reach and grasp of a long strong arm saved her from falling.
"Oh! Thank you ..." She looked down into a broad white-toothed smile under a long glossy mustache and wicked warm midnight blue eyes. He was very tall, long-boned and handsome, and though his grip on her upper arm was considerate, the slight testing caress of his fingertips was more than polite. Elizabeth knew she was not plain, but the appreciative consideration in those devilish eyes made her feel suddenly quite beautiful. She smiled and saw a satisfied spark rise in his eyes to see it was genuine - a rogue, but one of those who adored all womankind and she let him help her down. He swept off his broad-brimmed hat the moment her feet met the ground and touched his lips to the back of her glove, proving some manners.
"Buck Wilmington, Ma'am." An intimate low voice pitched close, "At your service." Any and all service, the grin implied, and she found herself amused, if a touch scandalized. She was accustomed to deflecting would-be suitors drawn by her wealth and position, some of whom assumed a widow of such long standing would be eager for ...
"You are too kind." She said with a wry inflection that made him laugh as he deftly guided her around the puddles and safely onto the porch steps, graceful and attentive as a dance partner.
Nettie Wells' handshake was as firm as a man's, her blue eyes keen and clear.
"I'm so pleased to meet you, Miz Wells." Elizabeth said, holding that weathered hand a friendly moment, "It's terribly kind of you to invite us - I do hope we're not imposing on you at an inconvenient time ..." With a graceful gesture after the work going on in the yard, and Nettie laughed and said,
"Not at all! There's plenty of supper to go around, and we don't get near enough civilized company out here." The men took her teasing with mock indignation, and Elizabeth sensed strong affections among them, by now all gathered at the foot of the steps.
"Julianna, dear, come here please." Extending her hand without looking back as if there was no question she'd be obeyed. Jules hated that, but she came, albeit at a stubborn stroll that quickened only when her Aunt's eyes widened in noticing her footwear. She knew she wouldn't make a scene here, and Jules avoided her flash of anger by not looking at her.
Nettie nodded; "That's Josiah Sanchez, Chris Larabee, J.D. Dunne, and of course Buck ..." With a warning tilt of her head at that one and an innocent look in return. Each nodded or tipped their hats, smiling politely. Nettie looked around for Vin and was surprised to see him crouched on the edge of the half-covered stable roof just watching the scene in the yard below. Damned edgy today, she thought, and she called him: "Boy, git down here n' meet our company!"
Elizabeth looked up quickly and saw him then herself. Something in her expression drew Nettie's inquiring look.
Jules stood on the bottom step looking with great interest at the regulators as they took cups and poured coffee from a tray on the porch table; in town she'd thought a few of them were outlaws! All of them bold-eyed and aggressive as territorial dogs, especially that tall narrow fellow standing off to the side, Chris Larabee, gunslinger of terrible reputation and leader of the seven, lean as a snake and dangerous looking. All of them were dangerous-looking, though, even J.D. had a presence different from other folks. She'd thought Casey's talk had been hero worship and now she realized differently - maybe they'd hear some bloody tales of adventure over dinner! Polite as they were being, she hardly thought her Aunt's glares would restrain them in the least.
Excitedly bouncing on the balls of her feet, she watched the fifth climb nimbly down the posts and beams of the stable and come toward them, a loose rocking gait that seemed very easy and casual. To her utter shock, her Aunt Elizabeth reached out her hand to him as he approached and had it taken in a momentary greeting that bespoke a previous acquaintance; Jules was not the only one surprised at that by the raised eyebrows and quick looks among his friends.
Chris studied the lady, wanting to pry out what was going on, a direct man held off by his respect for Vin. But he had a bad feeling about this.
Nettie marked that, and it set her to considering there was more to this elegantly-dressed than she'd realized - and it had something to do with Vin. He seemed at ease, but his eyes were guarded and there was a ready sort of tightness in the set of his body - was this woman the source of the trouble between he and Chris? A romantic entanglement?
Nettie had long prayed for a woman to come along who could work open Vin's reclusive heart, but this fine eastern woman was in no way a likely candidate, and it looked as though Larabee shared that opinion. Nettie's eyes narrowed, protective as the Ma Vin had lost far too young. If this turned out to be a rich woman's curious dalliance below her station, she'd hand the lady her own front teeth - men could be fools for women no matter how smart and cagey they were, and Vin had a heart more vulnerable than most for all his hiding it.
Elizabeth drew Jules forward to meet the man, and though he nodded politely, his eyes under the broad sweep of his slouched hat-brim were almost frighteningly intent.
Truth be told, Vin couldn't have spoken a word if his life depended on it, his throat was squeezed down into a thread and it'd taken every shred of will he had to keep walking when the girl turned to watch him come. Duley down to the fair streak on the leading edge of the drape of her hair, the same widow's peak, the same small cat-like nose and defiant chin. Inquisitive eyes, but blue where Duley's had been golden amber, blue maybe like hers might've been ... God, his heart was squeezing down into a knot in his chest and it took all he had to school his face into emptiness. He didn't want to look at her and couldn't see anything else. A child filled to the brim with avid curiosity, her stare bold and interested and utterly unafraid, eager dreams in her eyes. Oh, Lord, he was in trouble.
"Julianna, this is Mister Vin Tanner, who knew your Grampa Monroe."
Jules' knees locked with a jolt of recognition and she shied back almost violently in her surprise, bumping into her Aunt so hard her reticule fell out of her hand and under the porch rail onto the ground. She seized the excuse to go after it before anyone else could move.
"I'll get it, I'll get it, it's alright ..." Swinging under the rail like a monkey and ignoring her Aunt's disapproving sound at the flurry of petticoats - one had to do what one had to, and she needed a distraction long enough to get her mouth closed and her eyes down from dinner-plate size! How inconceivably impossible! She'd just been reading about him last night and now here he was right in front of her, here, right now! She didn't care how clumsy they thought she was as she dropped the reticule again so her Aunt's comb and some coins fell out, counting on her being too much of lady not to divert attention from her uncouth niece. It was comfortably normal to hear her ask the men a light-hearted question about the work they were doing and she tried to breathe regularly, struggling for an innocent look, her mind racing as quickly as her heart. She wasn't supposed to know him, not his name or his face, Aunt Beth would know she'd filched the letters, she'd be in so much trouble!
She swept her hand after the last coin only to find it already taken up - Vin Tanner was crouched right in front of her, and she looked up into eyes wide and grey-blue and ... hurt? Why should the sight of her face cause him ... her mouth rounded as something she'd once heard her father say with great displeasure suddenly made thrilling sense: She looked like her Aunt Duley. So much so that this fierce frontiersman was wounded by the sight of her. What a power she felt to know that! Was like her, Grandmother said, looked like her, this man's eyes said - maybe could be as free as her. Never had it seemed more possible.
But at the same time her heart flooded with sympathy for the sorrow so eloquently unspoken in his face, and she almost reached out to touch him until it sunk in that he would not know why, no one had mentioned Aunt Duley. 'He knew your Grampa', not 'he's your Aunt Duley's widower.'
"Thank you ... Very pleased to meet you, sir." She managed, taking the coin from his calloused fingers and stuffing it into the dainty reticule, pausing before she got up to smile tentatively at him, because he seemed in a confused turmoil and everyone would know something was going on if he didn't move. Her Aunt Duley went between them like a deeply precious secret, she had loved this man.
As soon as she'd clambered back onto the porch her Aunt took the reticule from her as if afraid it would end up in the dirt yet a third time, and Jules apologized, "I'm sorry, Auntie, I'll clean it for you tonight." Tanner stood up slowly, focused on her with a curious tilt of his head, and even though he moved back among his friends, she could still feel his attention.
The tall mustached man who seemed determined to charm the starch out of Aunt Beth's stays nudged Tanner in the side, but he just stepped away. Now she knew who her Aunt had dinner with last night, and the realization made her look up at her wonderingly. Her impeccable Auntie having dinner with her scandalous sister's wild and wooly husband.
"C'mon inside, now." Nettie said to Elizabeth, "Let's get you some coffee n' let Casey and your niece get to their ride, Casey wants to show her the pond and there's ..."
"You sly dog!" Buck didn't even wait for the door to close behind them to give Vin a shove that wouldn't have rocked the tracker if he'd been paying any attention.
"You old sly dog, you!" With a cackle and grin at Josiah and J.D.
Chris wasn't smiling, though; this was way more than 'knew her Pa', the tracker's face had gone a shade off and there was something fierce going on behind that blank face.
"That's a mighty beautiful lady ..." Buck drawled, peering at the tracker curiously as he hid his distress in the business of getting a drink of water from the bucket in front of the porch. He sat down on the trough edge where his hatbrim hid his face hoping Buck would leave it alone and knowing there wasn't a chance in hell. He'd done his share of ribbing and had half-way expected it, but his insides were still shaking and he had to hold onto it so hard. It crossed his mind to just get mounted and into the wind, but he knew he couldn't. Nothing to do now but work a path through it best he could. It felt bad not to be honest with them.
Buck sat down next to him, his long angular body slouching into a curve deep enough to see Vin's face. His smile was slow and lazy, dark blue eyes gleaming with mischief.
"Never expected you'd go for the satiny type, Vin, always figgered you for the prairie rose sort of gal. Now that one, well, she's like a hot-house flower ..."
"Buck." Vin said, one word and soft, but filled with unexpected teeth and Buck slanted a look at him, a little surprised.
"Well, hey pard ..." he said, cagey and sharp to the tracker's expression, which, from his angle, was all cheekbone and jaw hard as stone.
"You got an interest there? You just say so if you do, why, I'll jes' back right off - otherwise you won't have a chance in hell, n' us bein' friends and all, wouldn't want to spoil your play ..." Trying to force a declaration and feeling pretty clever about it, too.
Vin stood up in one smooth slide and his eyes came around at Buck with slow deliberation, wide and direct with warning. Buck's smile only got a little sharper, though he raised his hands placatingly. He'd never tangled with Vin over anything, never had the opportunity to test him this way before, but there was nothing like a woman to show a man another man's mettle, and for once Chris seemed inclined to let it play out.
Chris leaned, one boot up against the wall at the corner of the house, watching like a hawk watched a field being plowed for whatever might be stirred up out of cover. Nothing more likely than Buck just being Buck to stir up about anything that breathed, and there was temper in Vin's eyes.
Josiah was not inclined to enjoy Buck's teasing when it came to women, having come to blows with him over it himself. Buck never meant any harm, but Buck didn't bestow his heart all on one woman and didn't know how sensitive such hearts could be. The Preacher scowled at J.D. for providing the snickering audience that was all Buck needed to be egged on, and when the kid saw it he raised his hands and said, "What? What'd I do?"
Josiah just shook his head, disappointment on his craggy face. J.D. seldom knew what he'd done to earn that look, but it always made him feel bad. As he looked back to Vin and Buck faced off, he got the feeling maybe raggin' on Vin wasn't such a good idea. What would they do if Vin got really mad? He'd never tangled with any of them, though there'd been scuffles among them, proud and cranky as mustangs, but he'd seen Vin put down men twice his size with one punch, and he had a feeling he knew where Vin would put it today if Buck pushed him. Curious as he was about Vin and this city woman, the tracker was the only one who didn't always treat him like a stupid kid.
Vin just looked down into Buck's grinning face for a moment or two with the strangest expression on his face, anger, certainly, he didn't like to be pushed on anything and Buck knew it, but there was a deep urgent thoughtfulness as well.
Vin knew Buck, he didn't have a mean bone in his body and he teased everybody the same way, wasn't his fault Vin couldn't explain it or was feeling ... the way he was feeling. Vin's shoulders dropped, the curve of his lean deepened and he met Buck's eyes straight on.
"Buck," he said quietly, "I'm countin' on us bein' friends here. N' ifn' I was t'ask you to leave that woman alone, whether I had designs on her myself or not, you'd do it for me, wouldn't ya? Seein's I've saved yer pearly white ass a time or two so's the world don't drown in the tears of grievin' females?"
Buck burst out laughing, totally nonplussed - Vin couldn't have found a better way to get him off his back - and off trying to get Miss Elizabeth onto hers - than to invoke the dues of friendship. Vin hadn't ever asked for a thing from any of them, and loyalty to a man who'd kept him alive more than once was something Buck held as sacred as anything. He lounged back, defeated, but not unhappy about it, and squinted up at Vin with a curious and friendly eye.
"Yeah, Vin." J.D.'s spine untightened, Chris' foot went back up onto the wall, and Josiah smiled almost tenderly. "I reckon you can ask me that and have it comin'."
"Obliged." And Vin walked away, sweeping up his hammer off the ground as he went.
Chris hissed through his teeth, no further along than he'd been to start. Vin had wedged Buck neat as you please without ever showing a card of his own, he'd never seen this slippery side of him before.
"C'mon, J.D., that coop ain't gonna finish itself."
The girls had gone off an hour ago, and Nettie had seen the lady frown at her niece's appearance, trousers and a blue shirt too big for her under her long wool coat, boots the girl looked a bit ashamed to be wearing. Disapproved of her niece's spirit, her Aunt did, though her abiding love was also apparent. Nettie imagined the two of them knocked heads fairly regular, and Elizabeth's smile as the girls dashed across to the corral where J.D. had saddled horses for them was wryly exasperated.
"Spirited girl." Nettie observed.
"She is certainly that." Miss Monroe stated firmly with a shake of her head and a self-deprecating laugh, "And I'm in despair that by the time we get there, I shall deliver her to her very proper father attired and behavin' like a wild Indian."
"Well ..." Nettie said with a cool eye, and Elizabeth sensed she had said the wrong thing, "It's a place forgivin' of wildness, at least." And not much else.
Elizabeth insisted on helping prepare dinner, willingly and capably peeling and slicing a pot full of potatoes to which she added heavy cream and cheese, seasoning it and dropping pats of butter onto the top with a practiced hand. Nettie missed not a move. Looked like she enjoyed the prospect of feeding a table full of hungry men - or maybe one in particular - and had experience of it, which surprised Nettie some. This was a woman with a house-full of servants, yet she seemed genuine and hadn't hinted at superiority.
"You cook for your family at home?"
The lady laughed, glancing over her shoulder ruefully, "Not as much as I'd like; Sunday dinners for my brother and perhaps holidays. I enjoy it, though."
"You have brothers?"
"Yes, three ..."
Their conversation remained on homey subjects, raising girl children alone, the common difficulties and loneliness of widow-hood. Elizabeth told her a bit about her family, something of her father and allusions to the rift his going had caused.
All the while the sounds of hammers and saws and male voices in the background was never commented upon. Nettie was a woman who noticed what wasn't' there as well as what was. By the time supper was on the simmer, the house was stuffy and they took their coffee out onto the porch.
Nettie groaned as she sat down, "These old knees just ain't what they once were." They sat a moment in a silence almost companionable, watching Vin and Buck finishing the roof.
"It's good to have the boys help out this way, and they're a good thing for this town, too - year ago, you would've set foot there at your peril."
Nettie watched Elizabeth watching Vin with an unconscious speculation in her mild brown eyes that any woman would recognize. Graciously mannered and appealing and warm, and still Nettie didn't wholly care for her without being able to pinpoint why, which was peculiar for someone experienced in reading the tells of folks and beasts alike. There was an undercurrent between Vin and this woman she couldn't put her finger on, but it set the hair on the nape of her neck to prickling.
Vin came down for more nails and then went back up, climbing from a crate to the top of the stable door to the roof with the careless lift and spring of a young tom-cat, thoughtlessly finding every toe and hand-hold. Elizabeth watched in quiet amazement, aware of the cant of his hips, the stretch of his arms, the economy and simple directness of his strength. She should not have re-read that particular letter last night, it was not in the least proper and it had been many years since she'd taken it from under the lining at the bottom of her box.
'Never in all my roamings have I ever felt more free than when Vin and I love each other - I do not mean to be crude, dear sister, not knowing what your experience of the marriage bed was with Thomas - marriage bed, Ha! Marriage rock and meadow and tree and pond!' She could see the laughing face behind these words, the savage joy; 'We are insatiable as minks in season, the dress handily lifted, the loincloth moved aside. It is the closest I have ever felt or indeed ever shall feel to another human being, it is a joy beyond the written word, but which I hope you and Thomas also shared." She and her husband had not known such passion, Thomas was not that kind of man. Nor, she had to admit, was she that kind of woman. What Duley leapt to in daring a life like that, a man like this, frightened her, risking death and a broken heart to have that potent force. She watched him, contained and mysterious and dangerous even in this domestic setting, and wondered against her will about such passion under that solitary and watchful quiet. Something only Duley had ever seen, she knew.
"Fearsome, ain't he?" Nettie observed quietly, watching him as well, but with a sharp glance to the woman beside her and not missing the small start to have her observations noticed. But Elizabeth had learned composure in Virginia society, no small feat given her father's scandalous behavior and desertion, and after so many years of subtle scorn and gossip, her control was as automatic as breathing. Elizabeth looked coolly at the old woman's thoughtful profile, having sensed her vague disapproval without being sure of it's origin until this moment, and realizing what misunderstanding was coming to pass - probably among Vin's friends, too. There was nothing she could do about it if her brothers were to be convinced of the necessity of Tanner's company on the trail, and she wanted him there for her life, for Julianna's, for her foolish civilized brothers. Some of the things Nettie had told her ... death seemed unimaginably easy out here.
"Capable, certainly." She replied at length, "They all seem to be so capable, these Regulators of yours." Deftly including the rest to render the observation general rather than specific.
Deft or not, Nettie was no one's fool, her tone was pensive, "Like a wildfire, such men are, capturin' the eye and the imagination both. Got a way of beguilin' women's hearts, such spirits in so comely a man."
"Yes." Elizabeth said finally, knowing she must be careful with this eagle-eyed woman who was a force enough look at Vin, at these hardened men who had likely been on both sides of the law in their time, as family. "I imagine that's so for women inclined to such dangerous fancy, though it would seem expedient on the frontier for a woman to gravitate toward a man who could protect her - ferocity seems to be the coin of the realm here." With a smile and tilt of her head, saying nothing that Nettie could grasp but also not dissuading her from her assumptions.
Nettie sipped her coffee. Fierce, yes, Vin was fierce as a winter wolf, and no one would expect how innocent and naÔve he was in matters of the heart, all the gentler things that he had so little knowledge of. Solitude and violence, ruthlessness and pain and the terrible risk in caring for anything, these things he knew with dreadful understanding, but of how foolish and blind a heart could be he was woefully ignorant. Even now he watched the lady, sidelong and in quick glances, but he watched her with a fascination Nettie worried over, like a raven over a piece of glass, drawn by the shine and the facets he didn't comprehend, only coveted. Any man would; the lady was a fine figure and no one's fool, her bearing aristocratic without conceit, proud without snobbery. She expected she would've liked her had she been mixed up with anyone but Vin, and had to wonder if it was maternal over-protectiveness or a true forboding.
Casey and Jules walked their mounts back to the farmhouse in the late afternoon, Jules happily dirty and aching from the unexpectedly rough and exciting ride. She patted the mud-flecked neck of the dun mare she was riding, stockier and shaggier than the thorobreds she was used to, but a goer, agile and game for anything.
They'd raced across meadows gray with dead grasses and shrugged up steep fells scattered with oak and evergreen and huge granite boulders. She'd seen bald eagles wheeling overhead and trout rising to bread-crumbs Casey tossed into a broad pond still rimmed with winter ice. They'd tromped through calf-high snow in the shaded wood getting soaked to the knees, but to her delight, her feet were still dry and her boots had a satisfying look of use.
She hadn't had to prod to get Casey to talk about the Regulators, and Jules was set to glean anything she could about Mr. Tanner from the tumble of tales Casey told - mostly about J.D., of course. The Preacher was not really a Preacher, not of any church but his Bible, anyway, and he was well-educated and liked poetry and philosophy and sometimes fell into a melancholy and drank too much. Buck was the delight of every whore and bored farm-wife in the territory, as quick to a good time as to trouble and like an older brother to J.D.
J.D., of course, could ride like the wind and shoot nearly as good as Bat Masterson, whom he admired - hence that bowler hat and his three-piece suits even out here. Mister Standish was a southern dandy as sly and handsome as a fox who could charm, gamble or con the gold off a corpse's teeth, clever and witty and full of twenty dollar words. The tall black man she'd seen around town, to Jules surprise, was one of them as well, a healer everyone liked and an equal among the seven, though Casey thought he and Ezra Standish had not yet come to a totally comfortable relationship. When Casey spoke of Chris Larabee, her voice went low and her eyes cautious; he was a tortured soul, she said meaningfully, a deadly dangerous man who did not ever shoot to wound and who also had bouts of drunkenness during which folks avoided him like a rabid dog, as he was liable to wreak bloody havoc on whatever was in reach.
Unfortunately, Casey had stories about all of them except Tanner! All she seemed to know about him was that he was very polite and seemed kind, very standoffish, could track a bug across a rock or shoot it from a mile away and endure terrain and circumstances that had killed lesser men. Casey liked him, that was obvious, but all her subtle prompting revealed only that he was usually around Chris Larabee, and otherwise off alone in the wild or patrolling the rooftops in Four Corners. Not very helpful at all, but the day's outing was so fine that she couldn't be too disappointed.
What was Tanner doing in a town, this man of the wide open places? How strange it was that of all the places in the world, he would meet her Aunt in this dusty little bit of nowhere.
Supper was such a bright and noisy affair that Jules nearly forgot everything else. They were very easy and friendly among each other, and even the gunslinger smiled and was pleasant. She and Casey scurried around bringing dishes from the oven, chickens and green beans from preserves mixed with a yellow squash, her Aunt's scalloped potatoes, which she loved. Three apple pies cooled on the sideboard and she knew Vin Tanner was watching her even when he wasn't looking at her.
Elizabeth enjoyed it tremendously herself, too much so to keep her niece's elbows off the table or her laughter from being too boisterous - when in Rome, after all, and table manners here seemed to be more getting to the food first than anything else. They were rough and disrespectful and openly insulting to each other, snatching things and tossing corn muffins rather than passing the plate, and their robust laughter resonated in her bones. She'd thought Nettie had prepared far too much until she watched it disappear, they had appetites and were not shy about it. Surprising, the level of education and intellect among them as well as the graciousness with which they made sure she was included in the conversation, which was far-ranging and lively, skipping around ribald in her honor, she was sure.
Tanner was quiet and said very little, but no one seemed to think that was unusual. For a while she thought that perhaps he was edgy like this all the time, but the faint concern in Nettie's fleeting glances said otherwise, and by now she knew Vin Tanner had a special place in the old woman's heart. It distressed her deeply to be the cause of the distance between him and his friends, knew that he was an honest soul and deeply uncomfortable misleading them, but they had no choice.
He was the first to leave the table, politely and with a kiss to Nettie's soft seamed cheek and a nod of thanks to her for the food, saying something about saddling the horses and getting the carriage ready for the ride home.
Josiah accepted a last bit of coffee from the pretty red-haired girl, smiling at her bright-eyed curiosity and thanking her politely, and the men helped clear the table with a lot of good-natured jostling and teasing that kept Elizabeth smiling and shaking her head. What a pleasure it was to be among such open-hearted people, to see the unashamed affection they had for Nettie, the protectiveness she wouldn't have expected from men who were not kin, though they acted like it.
Vin rode ahead to scout the road, he said, and the youngest, J.D., took the reins of the carriage for the trip home. Elizabeth embraced Nettie on the porch and thanked her for her hospitality, holding her hands a long considering moment in which she fervently wished she could reassure her that she was as much a friend to Vin Tanner as Nettie could wish. But she could not, and regretfully accepted the reserve of Nettie's farewell. She tugged her niece away from taking a seat in the front with J.D., wondering if the child would completely forget what was seemly and what was not out here, and settled into the back of the carriage with her coat wrapped close around her in the cold. It would be dark in a few hours, and homesickness came hard on her.
Twilight shadows laid the coming night in long angled blocks across the main street as they arrived back in Four Corners, wanting nothing more than a drink and a bathtub, preferably at the same time. Mary came out of the Clarion Office at their approach and Chris pulled off toward her, his mind half on other things so he almost missed the furtiveness of her eyes.
"Mary?"
Her smile was strained and false as she waved at Elizabeth and Jules, coming down the stairs to stand by his stirrup, looking up at him with those eyes of hers and saying very quietly;
"Judge Travis arrived in town this afternoon and wants to see you all at the Clarion in about an hour."
He blinked at her, already tense, twitched when she touched his calf right above his boot, "His visit is not general knowledge, and he'd like to keep it that way."
Cornflower blue, those eyes, and he felt an unwilling tightening in his stomach, whether at her or the secretiveness of her news he couldn't tell. Never could really tell what he was feeling around her, his instincts went to shit - except the one that warned she was the biggest mistake he'd ever make. He took a short sharp breath, straightening up with a terse nod, almost dismissively, and watched her go back up the boardwalk with that proper straight-backed walk of hers that did nothing to conceal the sway of her slim hips. Knowing she'd be a mistake didn't lessen the temptation of her a bit.
"Ezra n' Nathan back?" He called before she got out of earshot and she turned with a wry smile as he dismounted in the street, waving J.D. toward the hotel.
"I'm sure you'll find them in the saloon - Mister Standish seemed to have had a very trying day." The smile she gave him over her shoulder broadened when Buck and J.D. burst into laughter to hear it, Chris even grinned momentarily himself; the seven of them took to aggravating each other like a bunch of adolescent boys sometimes.
"Vin?"
"Haven't seen him."
But Peso was in the corral as they led their mounts in, brushed and trying to bite whoever walked close enough.
"Well ... " Buck cracked, "Just how far ahead of us was he ridin'?"
Tanner hadn't appeared by the time they met up in the dark outside the back door of the newspaper, and no one had seen him to tell him about the meeting. Chris's irritation was immediate, he stepped off the porch intending to go find him when the door opened and Mary stood aside to let them in.
Chris shook his head; "Vin ain't ..."
A narrow shadow split off from the darkness of the alleyway two buildings down; Vin. Chris cocked his head. How he'd heard about it no one could guess, and he offered no explanations, just went on in with the rest. He had that look to Chris' eye that said he'd decided something and was working the details in his mind, wasn't likely anything the Judge had to say would make him veer from whatever path he was laying. Judge Travis was seated at the kitchen table as at a bench of law, and raised his coffee cup in greeting as they entered, his craggy face somber and his jaw set forward like he was about to deal harshly with something.
The kitchen was lit only by a lantern on the table, as it usually was nights when Mary was home alone, nothing to suggest from the outside that there was anything going on out of the ordinary in here. Chris wondered about the secrecy and looked hard at her - not a difficult task except for the distraction - and her expression suggested that she knew what this was about but was wary of their reactions to it. That made Chris nervous. The Judge waited for them as they took seats around or near the table, Mary offered the coffee pot and poured for those who nodded, all in an attentively wordless hush.
"Gentlemen," Travis said at last, with a very direct look at each, "I'm about to ask you to do something covert for a U.S. Senator who is also a very good friend of mine, and a very good man." As he'd expected, several got flinty-eyed at the idea of doing anything for the government, but it was an important cause he was about to recruit them into.
"There is a family, some of whom I understand have already arrived in town, who will be traveling north to Fort Laramie in a very short time. We need to join them."
The world slipped under Vin, already off-balance and unprepared. His brain ground to a sudden halt; no one else in Four Corners was going to Laramie. Travis' face was grim and he got a sick sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach - what was building around him?
As Chris looked over at him, Vin's foot came down off his opposite knee, and the tilt of his head got deeper. A fleeting blue glance, feeling eyes on him as he felt every shift in the air, but a gunslinger didn't need more than that to take a man's measure. Alarm - Vin had no idea what the Judge was talking about, but he didn't believe in coincidence any more than Chris did.
Buck laughed disbelievingly and shook his head - soft warm arms and feather beds versus the Rockies was no contest in his mind, he nudged J.D. and the kid was taking it so seriously he like to overset himself in startlement, which made him laugh again.
"In light of the hostilities between the Indians and the government outposts along the Bozeman trail - raiding parties, skirmishes against the forts themselves, their supply trains and scouts - it would be reasonable to offer an additional escort, and I propose that we be that force of arms." We, not you.
"You're comin' along for the ride, Judge?" Buck lounged back with a slow smile that might have been sweet but for the little edge of sarcasm in his concern.
"I am." The Judge answered, like he'd done it a hundred times before and wasn't so old he couldn't do it a few times more; Buck's smile got broader.
J.D.'s head did a quick swivel after their reactions - Indian territory, and a covert mission! But he was no longer stupid enough to just blurt that out, and he was glad he hadn't when he found them mostly looking like it wasn't an idea any of them cared for. The Rockies ... he'd never seen them leery of going anywhere any season except for inconvenience or being drunk. So it was a place that made careless men careful, then.
Vin could feel Chris' eye on him still and knew the gunslinger was reading every tell, so he looked over at him from the straight-backed chair he'd taken at the edge of the lamplight and let him have what he wanted.
Vin didn't like it, didn't want what he'd told Chris spoken of, and wanted to find out what this was about, Chris saw it plain as writing and knew he had the right of it. Natural for a man like Vin to back off in the face of unexpected complications, take careful measure of what was happening. Maybe where he was supposed to be in it. Chris held his peace, knowing it would get interesting before it was done.
Ezra, however, was more prone to make it interesting sooner rather than later.
"Fort Laramie?" The word sounded like caramel in his slow and incredulous drawl, the dapper gambler leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs elegantly, folded his fine-boned hands across a red on black jacquard vest with a look of supremely reasonable skepticism on his sly and handsome face.
"Unless my geography is in egregious error, Laramie is situated somewhat inconveniently past the formidable heights of the Rocky Mountains, isn't that right?"
Travis nodded shortly, his chin in a stubborn tuck and his eyes determined. Ezra continued;
"And unless my understandin' of the rather predictable patterns of weather are also mistaken, what may appear to be the start of a rather intemperate spring here in Four Corners could still be hard winter at those elevations."
"You'd be correct, Ezra." Josiah's deep voice rumbled with quiet authority. In the dim light, his eyes were pale twins staring out from deep caverns, brow ridges and heavy jaw accentuated into almost primeval forcefulness. "Judge Travis, I've spent some time with the Cheyenne in those mountains, and this isn't the season for traveling it."
Startled, Vin looked over at him; he hadn't known that, and the Cheyenne were allies to the Lakota in those territories. Half a hope rose that they'd all refuse with Josiah testifying to the hardships, but at the same time he had to know the Judge's whys, what was going on that Duley's family might be mixed up in, innocently or not ... the sense of things closing a pattern around him was unpleasantly claustrophobic and he was being forced to rethink everything he'd just about gotten settled in his mind.
"I'm aware of the unseasonable timing of this journey." Travis said with a frown that confirmed that knowledge, "But later in the spring the ... complications may be more significant."
Vin had to get in on this, prod the facts out into the open; "Now, we ain't discussin' the weather, are we Judge." There was a hint of steel in his quiet voice, and that was when Travis noticed there was something high and tense about the normally laconic tracker. Vin wasn't one to take the lead of a conversation, but Chris wasn't objecting, eyes hooded and face blank. Something was going on among the seven that the Judge hadn't noticed before.
The Judge had all Vin's attention, a vertical line between his eyebrows as he leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him and his forearms resting across his thighs. He cocked his head at a hard angle to look Travis in the eyes; he had to know what was going on, what the state of things were in the camps and in the forts - it was a mortal territory to inexperience even in peace, and the lives of Duley's family would be in his hands. More than theirs, apparently, if the government was involved - the Lakota as well. He felt like he had a corkscrew in his belly that kept getting deeper.
"Indeed we are not." Travis said; "The subject is the threat of a gold rush the likes of which this country has never seen."
"Shit!" Vin pushed back on his heels and glances were exchanged among his friends, but the Judge just went on, raising his voice nominally with a curious eye to the tracker.
"The government has a keen interest in exploration ..." This time Travis wasn't surprised to be interrupted and Vin wouldn't have cared if he was, shaken past caution.
"In the Pa Sapa?" He snapped, raising his own voice, which didn't raise very well; Josiah noted he'd said it in the Lakota way, Pa'a Sapa, "The Black Hills? Like they got that right?" Eyes smoldering at an enemy not present, and if the Judge was surprised by his vehemence he didn't show it, nor any surprise that Vin already knew about the government's interest in the Black Hills. These seven had often proved to possess resources beyond him in many ways, and every time it reminded him how tenuous his hold on them was. He'd expected argument, but not from this quarter - Tanner had history among the Lakota he hadn't been aware of, and that could change a great deal - not necessarily to the benefit of Travis' cause. For all his quiet ways, Tanner was a deeply principled and passionate man, and this was a time, and these were events, that roused passions on both sides.
"In the Black Hills." He confirmed solemnly, his own brows down and heavy as Vin shook his head with a growl of anger; he had to remove this complication, find out what the army was up to and make the Judge reconsider ... he wasn't about to let the other six get drawn into a war with the Lakota nor let the Monroes be used by the government, and he damned well knew how Crazy Horse would react. The young bucks would flock to his remote Crazy Woman camp where he had taken his people away from the corruption of white ways. There would be councils of war, and Crazy Horse might tempt Spotted Tail away from the White River, Hump was probably already with him and Sitting Bull would come. This civilized man before him had no idea what it would mean to have the War Chiefs back in the sacred land determined to protect the Pa Sapa, which was mother and father and living heart of all the people.
The others sat back watching them both warily.
"You talk t'us like the government's just gonna go on in there on a sight-seein' tour, Judge, n' we damned well know that ain't it. They know all they care about already." Looking like he would've spit had he been anywhere but Mary's spotless kitchen, "Crooked as a dog's hind leg - n' gold'll just make it crookeder. Explorin' ... cchhh. They're trumpetin' it back east, ain't they! Custer's makin' the rounds of tea-parties n' such like a fuckin' hero, ain't he!" Not questions, just grim statements finding corroboration in Travis' eyes. Mary stiffened, as did Josiah, but Vin never even seemed to notice the profanity, and he was a man of formally antiquated manners around all women. No one but Travis knew what he was talking about.
Vin nailed his feet to the floor, clenched his teeth so hard they creaked to keep from telling Judge Orin Travis, upstanding servant of a government that massacred old men and women and children for a yellow metal too soft to cook in, that he was a complete fool. Did the man have any idea what they could be walking into? What danger he wanted to put Duley's family in? To say nothing of the Lakota in the path of a wave of greedy white men that could sweep the people away in a tide of blood. More reason than just her kin for Duley to want him where he had sworn never to go again. A small sound escaped him, rough and desperate as an animal in a toothed trap.
"We both know what it means, Judge, don't be pussy-footin' around. It means miners r' already comin', ain't they!" Again no question, and the same answer. Vin rocked hard into the back of the chair, one hand sliding over his face in a frustrated rasp of callouses and whiskers. God, this was a right mess, his friends looking at him like he was someone they weren't sure they knew and Travis trying to dance around something that might pull everybody he cared about into an epic disaster. Vin respected Travis, but he was only one man, and for the authority behind him he had nothing but mistrust.
Somewhat stiffly, Travis said in a somber voice; "More than just coming, Vin. They're already there."
Already digging, already wounding and taking what had been promised into the Lakota's reverent care forever not five years ago. That hurt somewhere impossibly deep, like watching a criminal savage someone you loved before your eyes and be helpless to stop it.
Travis knew then, by the flare of vivid pain in those wide blue eyes, that Vin Tanner was exactly the man he needed. More than anything, and if it was all he could do, Judge Travis wanted to avoid another bloodbath between the Army and the Indians. Not over gold, he just couldn't stomach the idea, yet the great engines in the east were grinding in precisely that direction. Vin Tanner understood even better than he did what that meant, and could be the liaison with the Lakota he so desperately needed. Vin nipped that budding hope with blunt immediacy.
"I won't have no hand in helpin' that along, n' I won't count the man my friend who does. The Lakota were good t'me." Declared with all his formidable will and a truly hard look at each face at the table.
J.D. was flabbergasted, but the rest only waited quietly, heads down and thoughts held private. Vin had never set himself against them, but J.D. didn't doubt for an instant he'd walk away without a backward look figuring he was doing the only honorable thing he could. By their eyes they were thinking the same thing - they all respected the force of Vin's principles, and in matters of honor he'd never wavered. That it was a duty owed to the most ferocious and cunning warrior tribes in the west gave them all pause, but the Judge could feel the polarities; Vin was their first loyalty. Suddenly the entire investigation was in jeopardy.
Travis sat back into the gathering silence, considering Tanner, the lines of his face deepening as he clenched his jaw once or twice. The rest of them obviously had no idea of the situation developing in the Indian territories northeast beyond connecting what they were hearing here, now, with varying degrees of experience. They were as taken aback by Tanner's aggressiveness as the Judge was, but he was the only one truly surprised - they knew Vin to be a very private man with capacities and facets never yet revealed. They all had their secrets. Still, he'd admitted a familiarity of the territory, and Tanner in a blunt mood might be more forthcoming than usual. Travis needed that, too.
The tracker swore again, softly but viciously, and looked out into the night beyond the window, but the set of his body was expressive. Travis grieved with him for the enormity of the coming loss to the Indians, but he had lived too long in politics not to have accepted the inevitability. What he could do was take whatever steps that might lessen the negative impact - and that was what he intended here, if he could only convince Tanner.
It would obviously not be easy. Tanner was the one most likely to disappear if pushed too far or too hard, and the others would refuse if Vin did, such ties as had been forged between men of this caliber were not easily set aside. Tanner was their steadfast heart, a necessary binding force, and Travis was under no illusions about how near the brink of being outlaws several of them still were, could still be, in the absence of the tracker's influence. The west required such wildness of heart, but that very force of character made reining them in for the government's service a delicate balancing act. Never had that been more true than right now, he'd been arrogant enough to make promises counting on their cooperation and now had no idea whether he could gain it or not.
"Mister Tanner," Travis said quietly, trying to address Vin's concerns and so draw on the loyalties he was expressing, "The cause I'm trying to recruit you for may make things considerably easier for the Sioux in that territory."
"Then talk plain. And it's Lakota, Judge, only their enemies call 'em Sioux." Rejecting the Judge's pretense at understanding anything about what would be easy for the tribes, defiant as any warrior Travis had ever faced. The same faint contempt in the eyes and the set of the mouth that was a litany of dishonors perpetrated by the government Judge Travis served.
Travis had the grace to nod, accepting that he was no authority and his mind in furious consideration of this unexpected obstacle. It was like trying to harness a herd of wild mustangs! Tanner could be pivotal; he needed him, and so did the Sioux.
"Gold makes fools of even good men, Vin, and through them, their nation. There must a way to see this inevitable change through with some degree of honor, the history we write here sets the course for years to come - I want to be proud of that history, not ashamed of it, there are many who feel the same way. We know very little of what's going on in those territories, and this paucity of information is precisely why we intend ..."
"What's that about your Paw's city?" Buck queried with a bewildered little smile, having decided to diffuse the tension in the dark little room and right tired of guessing what was going on. Time to remind everyone there were more than three men in this room, he didn't like being left out of things where it was his neck on the line. There was something with that red-haired woman, and there was something unsettled between Chris and Vin, whom he'd never known to be at odds over anything. Now there was something only Vin and the Judge seemed to have a handle on, and Buck didn't like being unsure of either of them, not where a trip through the territories was concerned. "Now Judge, you're getting' bad as Ezra there."
"A paucity is a dearth of information - " Ezra supplied and then, with a long-suffering sigh, "They don't know enough, you barbarian."
J.D. knew what Buck was doing, even Ezra in playing it on, and he croaked a laugh and went along because Chris and Vin weren't acting at all like themselves, Chris not saying a word, Vin being argumentative and hostile with the Judge, to whom he'd never shown anything but the deepest respect. And swearing in front of Mary! He'd likely feel pretty bad about that when he realized it later. He didn't know anything about what was going on here, so he just watched, tried to study this as Vin said a man must study things until he had the lay of them. Patience wasn't easy for him, nor was stillness, but he practiced both now, confused by the fact that Vin, who had taught it to him, wasn't.
The Judge let the joking mood go a moment, unsure how to handle them. The authority he depended on was meaningless among men who balked at the very suggestion, each of them contrary and unpredictable as Mary, and just as hard-headed. That thought made his smile almost genuine as he interrupted Ezra and Buck's sniping.
"Thank you Mister Standish." He said, "I'll restrain my rhetoric henceforth." With a tight but meaningful smile at Buck. He would find the way through this thicket, "What I meant to say is that what's being presented as fact in the Senate and Congress, in all the newspapers, has come solely from military sources, and it has incited a growing clamor for an all-out rush toward the Black Hills whether they are Indian Territory or not. That will not change no matter whether you help me now or refuse to get involved. It will happen, it is happening, and there is no way to stop it." Vin glowered, but knew honesty when he heard it.
"The government is attempting to arrange fair purchase of those lands, but I understand that likelihood is quite remote given their spiritual importance." Seeing this confirmed in no uncertain terms in Vin's face, and the depth of his experience gratified Travis. Here was a man who understood what the Indian responses would be to government actions, what strategies of negotiation would be best.
Vin, however, was growing more distressed by the moment, in no way wanting to see one set of friends arrayed against another, either or both of whom could utterly destroy the other with Duley's family smack in the middle. It made him sick to imagine it and furious to think someone he respected and admired as much as Travis would bring it about.
"It isn't unanimous, Vin - there are many factions in the government who are leery of the military's assessment, and who have some suspicions about the men putting forth the appropriation bills as well as some of the commanders out here who may have private interests for which they're coercing government authority."
Vin held in the startled suspicions that immediately sprang to mind and slapped yet another possibility upside his head. Dammit, but he was tired of feeling like a leaf in a stream!
Travis went on; "We need an unbiased view, which is where I - and you - come into the picture. We need facts, we have to be in a position to snoop around unsuspected and uncover any hidden agendas."
He stopped and turned to face Vin squarely, opening his blunt capable hands in a gesture of frankness; "If I can't recruit you, I'm afraid I'll have to go with a military escort, but I will go. I need you. I need you all, gentlemen." Sanchez had some experience there as well, and perhaps if Tanner refused, the others might still be willing if he made his case strongly enough. He glanced at Tanner and saw this possibility occurring to him as well, very unpleasantly.
Vin knew he was lost. He could not refuse and leave the Monroes to whatever fate might come. This would happen, whatever it was the Judge wanted, the Monroes, Duley, it would all happen and he couldn't do a thing to stop it any more than he could stop the sun from rising. Each of them wanted him in it for reasons he had no good grasp of, pulling him back there against his will, against every instinct to survival. This morning he'd been set like a rock against getting the other six involved, and now he saw no way out of needing them. If Crazy Horse was carrying out a skirmish war with his renegade warriors - and certainly he had to be by now, that misbegotten bastard Custer sniffing around would be all the call to arms they needed - he would need the six to protect the Monroes. That he himself might have to protect them against Travis was a barbed discomfort.
"Why join these particular folks?" He asked, and only Chris knew why it mattered to him, though in no way how much. Vin was almost afraid to hear the answer and the Judge's hesitation dried his mouth in dread.
Travis was unwilling to sully reputations on rumor and speculation and measured his reply. Though they suspected there were land grants in corrupt agency hands waiting only the date of the treaty that would appropriate the Black Hills, they could not yet prove it nor identify the men who would thus legally seize the gold-rich land before anyone else could raise a hand. Once the treaty was signed, it would be too late to stop them, and with that stolen wealth, the suspected cabal of corrupt businessmen and politicians could take the leadership the wise mistrust of the voters had long denied them. Not while Orrin Travis drew a breath.
Vin knew he wasn't going to get all the truth out of Judge Travis. Any other time he'd be walking away based on the instincts clamoring alarms in him now and count himself a wise man. But he could not, not from this, he was as wrapped up in it as a steer in barbed wire.
"Partly convenience," Travis answered finally, "They're going the same way. Partly as cover - traveling with the family of a Captain who will be taking command of Fort Fetterman will give us access to the command staff." He could see that Vin didn't trust the answer but could do nothing to reassure him just yet. What was it that burned so fierce in the tracker's eyes? And did he see an echo of that fire in Josiah's quiet face?
"It is my intent to represent myself as an official of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, if we move quickly, combining our two parties as an issue of safety should not be difficult."
"The Lakota ain't gonna trust you whether you're Indian Affairs or a Judge." Vin said flatly, and Judge agreed with a nod, glad he was at least listening, if grudgingly.
"That much I certainly know, and it has been a point that troubled me. I need the army to trust me, Mr. Tanner. Perhaps the Lakota will trust you."
No one missed that and Vin went tomb-still, eyes darkening as a storm threatening to break. Travis couldn't have counted on that coming into this meeting, because he hadn't known about Vin's history among the Lakota; the old man thought on the fly as well as any of them and would be a thorny thicket to have to think his way past those eagle eyes every day on the trail.
Chris started shaking his head, knowing how easily affiliations and loyalties shifted among politicians and unwilling to have himself or his men chewed up in the teeth of that faithless machinery.
Judge Travis, however, declared himself unequivocally, a little offended that he had to: "The law is the law, gentlemen, no matter what fortunes stand to be made by anyone, government or individual. I serve the law equally applied to all, including the legality of the Laramie treaty." Like an immovable foundation being laid and no one disbelieved him. If ever a man could enforce the law despite the avaricious loopholes of politics and wealth, it would be Judge Orrin Travis, and he was satisfied with that respectful assessment. His strong cleft chin thrust forward aggressively.
"I know what I'm asking you, gentlemen, and perhaps it's more than I realized in your case, Mr. Tanner. Your experience in particular would be invaluable." Vin's face plainly conveyed the warning, but he said it out loud as well; "I won't be used agin the Lakota."
An ember of anger kindled in the Judge's eyes to have his motives misunderstood; "I have no intention of compromising your principles, Mr. Tanner. I know you have no cause to trust anyone, but I'm hoping you trust me, and I know I need you - and so do the Lakota, Vin. I expect you to know I would never use you as a stalking horse."
Chris opened his mouth, but it was Vin who spoke, hawk-keen to the Judge's face for any giveaways as he laid it out plain and simple.
"Judge, you reckon things got any chance at all of goin' the Lakota way even if we find out there's something shady goin' on? Your friends gonna stand with you if it's some white man's business that'd benefit them, or the army, agin the Lakota?"
It was a frank question, and Tanner was a man who could read a lie like a trail all the way home. "My friends will stand." Travis said stern as a death sentence, but then he looked down at his cup and Vin's heart sank at the darkness that deepened the creases of the Judge's noble face. When he looked up to answer the former part of Vin's question, there was an old sorrow in him at what that answer must be that Vin was sorry to share.
"I imagine, Vin, that if Colonel Custer's reports are borne out, the Lakota are doomed to lose the Black Hills sooner rather than later."
Unsurprising, but still that truth spoken aloud struck Vin like a fist and his voice was rough and a little breathless.
"They'll fight." He said quietly, the soft fierce certainty of Crazy Horse's warnings vivid in his mind, his visions now proven to be accurate. They could not sell the living fulcrum of the world, sacred and having its own life to lead, holding in balance the seasons and the winds and the waters, sacred ground for the people's communion with it. This the whites could not see, that it lived and could not be possessed and must be loved and revered ... Even whites with faith in a God they could not see were blind to the pulse and breath of the Pa Sapa. He had never understood that, because it had seized him and flooded into his emptiness the first time he'd laid eyes on it, surged into him from the ridge beneath his feet, poured into his eyes and his lungs and every sense as no other thing or place ever had. Vast magnificence like the eye could barely hold, a power that humbled the heart. And he could no more explain it to them than he could his devotion to the privacy of Duley's memory. "They'll have to fight."
Travis trusted the grieving certainty of that opinion and nodded grimly; "It's already happening to some degree." But he also offered what hope he had, knowing he couldn't fool these men with platitudes and respecting them too much to try. "But maybe," he went on, "we can minimize the bloodshed, be sure the wrong people don't get rich off it, maybe force an honorable disposition of affairs."
Vin looked at him with a naked but tenuous hope. An old man, still iron-hard and true in his heart, but only one man. And even a smart man could be used to nefarious purpose without knowing it, it had happened to Vin more than once and he'd been looking for the worm in every apple since he was six years old.
The Judge saw the trouble in the tracker's angled face, and in his eloquent eyes the lies upon theft and murder and massacres, calumny beyond what the white government sitting so far away would feel any responsibility for. Might Travis have friends in a position to help, would it help the Lakota to have such allies? Travis did not mistake that faint hope and yet he couldn't promise it would, no matter how profoundly he wished it or how diligently he fought for it.
He considered Vin Tanner, all these men gathered before him. Remnants of a dying breed, of a noble age passing that he'd helped shape. He mourned that inevitable ending even as he stood in awe of the relentless determination of this nation to establish itself from sea to sea. This fledgling country could ill afford to lose such men, to forget the wild mad courage it took to go where most could not, live as few could, survive and endure the killing grounds of the American frontier like warriors of almost divine endurance. On the unhallowed and scattered bones of men such as these would this great shaping nation rest, unnamed and uncounted, yet the first to love what they had set out to conquer. And now the most eloquent in her defense.
Vin saw the Judge's sympathy, the expressive flow of memories and regret and pragmatic philosophy. Vin had always known the nations would one day be humbled and bereft in every corner of the land, and it filled him with a huge impotent fury to realize it would happen in his lifetime. Maybe the Judge was right and all that could be done was try to keep as many alive as possible, but he had to keep Duley's kin alive, too, kin who might or might not be enemies of the camps ... things Elizabeth had said were coming back to him in ominous pieces, her brother's uncharacteristic career, the family coming now, and in a hurry to get there that disregarded dangerous hardships. Things Duley might've written could have started all this in motion years ago. Maybe there was something she needed him to right for the peace of her soul, and he would do anything for her, alive or gone. Anything.
God, but he felt like he was drowning in uncertainties. All he could hope to do for the Lakota was buy them some time to gather and arm, there were places still where they could hide, where they could live free for awhile longer, the Crazy Woman was yet unknown. But if he went there, the duty the Lakota would believe he owed to her could take her from him forever. He wouldn't think about that, he refused to think about that with childish but utter determination. The vision that had come to him that summer night, a Lakota vision in white man's mind that he'd never shared with anyone but Duley, came again to him now, on the brink of coming true.
The warriors arrayed in defense of the Pa Sapa, beautiful in their bravery and cunning. Warriors perishing like lions under packs of dogs in defense of the precious people who could so easily be extinguished, erased from the world. The pride and dignity of the chiefs would be broken on the final need to preserve the people, surrender would be the only way and they would lead the nations into a dark future in order to preserve them. At any cost, the people must survive, and the whites would never know the price of that ultimate sacrifice, nor the depth of honor it deserved. How would the fearless ones bear doing nothing as their only defense? A long soft sigh escaped him, his hands fell still.
Chris was certainly wondering already what Duley's family had to do with it and the rest were going to wonder too, and wonder how he knew what he knew, and why strangers mattered so much to him, and he wouldn't be able to answer any of them.
He looked at Chris and saw trust. Trust, despite knowing he wasn't being open-handed with him and even still mad about that. It was a proud feeling to have earned the faith of a man who seemingly had no faith in anything or anyone, and it made him ashamed at the same time. He nodded once, shortly, admitting it in a look without apology, and Chris accepted it that way. Then he looked at the rest of them, no longer as men to be kept out of it, but as allies the Monroes might need as much as he did, six white men who would stand for the Lakota beside him if he asked it, stand against any authority, any odds. They were leaving it up to him, even Chris.
He shifted his shoulders under the humbling weight of that burden and looked at the floor a minute, settling it and letting their trust buoy him. God wouldn't have such men trust him if He didn't mean him to do right. He wished ferociously that he could talk to Nettie, ease himself and find a way in her clear eye to such things.
If they knew about Duley, knew how deep a matter of the heart it was for him, they'd stand with him whether he wanted them to or not, they wouldn't go if he told them to, they'd risk their lives for him. The power of that connection moved slow and stately in his soul and he closed his eyes a moment - please don't let any of them come to harm on my account, Lord, help me find a way to get them all through this safe, every one.
"We walkin' into a war, then?" He asked, his voice hushed and bleak.
"Only skirmishes so far, a few surveying parties haven't come back on time, who knows how many trespassing panners. The Lakota don't yet realize what's coming."
Vin's breath huffed scornfully, he shook his head like the Judge was a silly child. "Can't hardly b'lieve that, th'smell of Custer is all the sign they need. N' if they don't, they will soon's I can get to 'em." Vin said this like a vow he meant to see done at any cost, and though he hadn't meant to give that away, it was too late to call the words back. He was in control of nothing, here.
Travis felt a shiver of forboding run down his spine at this chilling honesty - this loyalty Vin felt could complicate matters. How many soldiers might die because of what Vin Tanner intended to say in the Indian councils beyond the interests of Judge Orrin Travis or the U.S. Government? It was as close to treason as he'd heard in a long time and his judicial instincts were automatic, his broad shoulders squared and he seemed to enlarge somehow. Vin sat up straight with both feet flat on the floor, aware of his mistake but not giving way.
Travis had opened a can of worms and now they were wriggling whichever way they wanted to go. He had no choice but to trust Tanner to do the right thing, depend on the fact that he always had before.
"I'm asking you to stand with me, Vin, to help me settle this with as little bloodshed as possible on both sides." Warning given with a stern eye and Vin regarded him, every bit his own man, and replied,
"That's my hope, too." Neither heeding nor disregarding him - it wasn't up to him, nor Travis nor the Army - it was up to the Lakota. He'd say what was so, and they would do what they would, and he'd bear that responsibility, offering no assurance beyond that.
Ezra's expression had grown increasingly negative as the conversation went on, and now it seemed there was an agreement being reached that he was not in the least favorable to. Emerald eyes narrowed on the tracker, for the first time a wild card. Sometimes Tanner seemed the simplest among them in his needs and the directness of his instincts and thoughts, but he was a maze more intricate than anyone really knew inside. Disconnected, at a faint remove from everyone else as a hermit come down to live among folks, it showed in his skittishness even among them, in the peculiarly perceptive and yet naÔve sort of tilt to how he saw things. Like a precocious child who could kill you a hundred different ways. An irrationally medieval sense of honor that stood right up to the risk of death, but those risks could as easily kill men at his side. Chris would back him, and Buck would back Chris, and J.D. back Buck, Nathan would go along to take care of them and Josiah because he invited such penance as this trip would be. Like dominos, and Ezra Standish was not a domino.
` "Hold on, now." He said, standing up and attracting all eyes but for Vin, "Forgive me, Judge Travis, but this little sojourn into deprivation and probable unpleasant lingerin' death at the hands of savages inordinately skilled at dastardly tortures lies a great distance outside our purview as peacekeepers in Four Corners." Not even a little out of breath after the bright musical tumble of words, J.D. marveled at how he did that, his mouth open a little. Fortunately, there were usually more than enough of Ezra's words for J.D. to mostly figure out what he was talking about by the time he was done.
One of Judge Travis' hands came off his cup, he flattened it thoughtfully against the table-top and watched the seams and veins shifting across knuckles and long bones. An old hand, worn down and knowing aches they would never again be without. Not yet too old, though.
"It does, Mister Standish. I would consider your participation a personal favor."
That gave Ezra pause, the Judge having arranged his pardon for a certain misunderstanding that had occurred in the past and Travis' tipped head hinting that could be un-arranged. The glaring fact remained, however, that he didn't see any advantage for the risk or the protracted and certainly torturous discomfort. He patted himself on the chest comfortingly and went as straight as a man in a duel;
"Sir, personal debts aside - I am not a mountain man, and have no intention of leaving the relative prosperity and comfort of this little hamlet to strike out across inclement mountains populated by wild animals and Indians with no reason not to kill every white man they encounter. Slowly and painfully, I might add." He took a breath, fine-carved nostrils flaring with determination, and Josiah held his hand up with a pleasant smile and a wink at J.D. - the kid looked like he was afraid to breathe.
The preacher knew Vin was somehow bound to take on this journey despite trying to convince the Judge not to, and Chris wouldn't let him go alone. Josiah thought maybe the journey would be a worthy one, as he thought Vin to be a worthy man, and he was pretty sure he had a lure the gambler would strike.
"Judge - permit me."
The gambler crossed his arms over his chest and his trim body canted to one side skeptically, inviting Josiah to do his best, as he always did when the two of them sparred philosophically, but determined this time to remain unimpressed.
"Ezra, imagine how many regimental soldiers there must be in Fort Laramie."
Ezra's elegant eyebrows climbed quizzically, but he held his peace as Josiah continued; "A fort in the middle of Lakota territory with not a town - or a saloon - for a hundred miles." Ezra's face grew very wary.
"Now imagine, if you will, months upon months of payroll just collecting in all those pockets. Nothin' but amateurs." Smiling at the spark of interest this train of logic elicited, and smiling more broadly still as he leaned forward, spreading his big thick hands as if offering Ezra a priceless gift. "Virgin territory, Ezra, a gambling man's paradise."
Ezra opened his mouth, closed it again, and Josiah sat back with a victorious smile. Buck and J.D. started laughing, even Chris' teeth flashed in the shadows at the wheels they could all see turning in the gambler's mind. Hundreds of soldiers with nowhere to invest their pay vs. the privations and discomfort of a cold journey into hostile wilds. The dapper gambler sat down thoughtfully, ignoring the general amusement, to turn this over in his mind. Faint heart never won fair lady, and the fairest lady Ezra loved was money, the good life he appreciated with every sense and the independence he craved beyond all else. Ezra was not quick to risks with life and limb, and he did choose his risks wisely.
Judge Travis smiled as well, a finger to his lips, knowing he had Ezra in hand and acknowledging Josiah's help with a grateful tip of his head.
"Are you agreeable, gentlemen?" Travis asked, but he looked to Vin for his answer first. Entreaty and hope, regret that harsh words had passed between them, and the Judge's earnest belief that they might be able to do some good. Vin had no choice at all. Between Duley and Judge Travis, he had no escape, and even though he'd not wanted his friends in it, he couldn't do it now without them.
"Alright." To his surprise, Judge Travis stood up and extended his hand across the table, and after a moment's hesitation, Vin rose and took it, shadows still doubting in his eyes.
J.D. wasn't the only one to glance at Chris to see if he resented the suggestion of his leadership being usurped, but Chris was watching Vin and Travis with deep thoughtfulness. When Travis turned to him for his answer, the gunman simply nodded, assuming, and rightly so, that he still spoke for them all. Vin walked over to the door-side window and leaned there, let the shadows take him, having no more words and no desire to have his face read just now. Everything was changed again, the plans had to be scrapped and new ones made to encompass this and anticipate the things he didn't yet know for fact. It crowded his mind and he let it because he was feeling too much to make sense of.
The Judge sat down again and turned to face Chris with a glance at his daughter-in-law, chin set forward. He had one further hurdle, the only one he'd expected this evening, but no less insurmountable.
Judge Travis nodded his thanks to Mary as she refilled his coffee cup, and then nodded his thanks to the seven men gathered around him who had just agreed to go, at his behest, into a brewing Indian war he might or might not be able to stop.
"Thank you all, I know I'm asking a great deal of you - hopefully it'll be worth it to watch this old man negotiate those winter mountains, that's certain to be amusing. Mary will be accompanying us ..."
"Mary will be staying right here in town, Judge." Slither quiet, Chris straightened and their eyes clashed.
"I'll be doing no such thing, Chris Larabee!"
"As a reporter ..." The judge finished, as though neither had spoken, and though Mary was glaring at Chris, he ignored her completely, which infuriated her beyond coherent speech.
"Over my dead, cold body." Chris said, like he had a gun in his hand right that minute, jade green eyes cold as deep ice. Buck rolled his eyes as tension suddenly skittered again across all their napes. Judge Travis fixed the gunslinger in his dark implacable eyes.
Mary rose to her feet abruptly, ready to do battle, but a look from her father-in-law quelled that urge immediately. She would only make matters worse by arguing it herself, there was no such thing as a graceful victory with Chris Larabee and this was very important to her father-in-law - and to her. Chris could refuse, he could leave, Vin was already unexpectedly uncertain. So she subsided, her resentment apparent.
"Mr. Larabee ..." Travis said, then paused, dark keen eyes narrowing; "Chris. Step outside with me, please. Mary, if you'd offer the gentlemen a drink?" This, at least, he'd been prepared for, this man's visceral fear for a woman who was a presence in his life - whether he could admit it or not, whether he understood what it signified or was willing to accept it. Travis knew the wisdom of staying out of whatever was going on between Mary and Chris by the way his own opinions of the potential between his headstrong daughter-in-law and this volatile and damaged gunfighter vacillated. They struck sparks every time they were in eyesight of each other, but she feared it and he refused it - neither response made it not so. Mary fought for the west with her fiercely principled words and Chris with his deadly guns, both had lost loved ones to it and yet loved it still with an abiding passion. But Larabee wanted it free and his daughter-in-law wanted it safe, a poetic symmetry of the conflicted desires of the nation as a whole. The two viewpoints might never reconcile, and he could say nothing to influence either. Whether they ever moved on their feelings or not was a power beyond him and he could only hope that if they did, the separate forces of them would be salvation rather than destruction. He could feel Mary getting ready to take her own part behind him and he stood up.
J.D. remained very still, carefully attentive to the shifting tensions that one minute seemed to flow between Vin and Chris, then Vin and the Judge, now the Judge and Chris with Mary mixed up in it somewhere - they were makin' him dizzy! Wide-eyed, he watched as Chris rose to his feet, shoulders high and tight.
Chris followed the Judge out onto the porch without a word and the rest of them watched them all the way, a half-grin creeping onto Buck's face at the head-butting liable to be underway the instant the door was closed behind them. He reached back and slapped J.D. hard on the knee, "Finally learned t'keep your mouth shut, kid, I'm proud of you! Man's got t'know when to listen, never thought you'd learn that - course y'almost choked t'death doin' it!" Poking the kid hard in the chest so J.D. automatically ducked away, slapping his finger aside without knowing whether to be proud that he'd managed to please Buck somehow or insulted.
Lamplight from inside cast hatched ambered squares on the weathered planks, Chris stood still and silent as a shadow himself, a roiling darkness against the night. The light caught on the tops of his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose as he looked into the room; motion and light-hearted voices within like a grim spell had been broken. It hadn't been, though, it was an illusion and the something deadly dangerous he felt breathing down his neck wasn't eased.
Travis sighed deeply, looking out across the wilds beyond the town trying to find the way, the patience. "She will go, Chris, whether you or I forbid it. She will go, I don't rule her and neither do you. There are things happening out there that should not lay in obscurity, and she will be the passionate voice it will need. It's a cause that was dear to her husband."
Strange, the hot tickle Chris felt at the mention of her husband, fine upstanding God-fearing hero that he'd been. A man he probably would have respected, if not liked. Stephen Travis was an ideal repeatedly capable of swatting down every temptation he had to taste the sweet ripe heady thing between Mary and him, even if only once.
"More important ..." Travis went on, seeing that he'd erred in bringing Steven into it by the sudden mocking snap of Larabee's eyes and the crimp in his smile.
"If what the good Senator suspects is borne out, leaving her alone here would make her a target for anyone who wants to threaten me. She won't be safer anywhere else than among the seven of you, and if you can't see your way clear to keep your personal feelings out of it ..."
"Fuck you, Travis." Trapped neat as you please and digging in his heels anyway.
"Then you can opt out." Travis was at the end of his patience, but his restraint told Chris more about his concern for his daughter-in-law than any words might have. He was afraid for her, and that made Chris afraid, and furious to feel so easily boxed into accepting what raised every alarm in him. Oddly, in that moment Chris thought he understood how Vin felt even without knowing why - the same frustration, things happening you knew to be wrong and yet could not stop, just could not stop.
"I would rather you were with us, Mr. Larabee, precisely because you do have feelings for her." A dark laugh met the defiant fire that rose hot in Chris' face, and that reaction surprised the gunslinger so much that the Judge was able to speak first: "Both stubborn as mules, and I'm certainly not encouraging you to reconsider something with her when you've obviously already considered it and concluded it to be unwise."
Grimly agreeing with that assessment and quick to the heart of him, but regretful at the same time.
"I need you on this, Chris, I'll need all of you to do any good there and get her safely home again."
That truth and a genuine warmth stayed Chris from stalking away from him, this town, that woman, Vin's secrets and all their troubles. Those troubles, he had a terrible premonition, would get worse, and for a very long few minutes he considered the Judge in silence like a wolf evaluating a suspicious carcass.
Mary wisely stayed in the background when they re-entered the house. A glance all that was necessary to see that her father-in-law had prevailed, but Chris was still on an unpredictable edge and she allowed no triumph, no excitement, only a business-like will.
"Gentlemen, have the rest of you come to a decision?" Knowing it was forgone, but respecting them all too much to assume anything.
Ezra nodded with a glance at Buck, who was grinning at him. "I will accompany you, Judge Travis, out of courtesy and respect."
"And hopes of clearin' out impacted pockets." Nathan offered in a droll baritone so they all burst out laughing together but for Chris and Vin, glad to break the somber air and have Ezra's insult as a focus.
"Well then, all we have to accomplish is attaching ourselves to the party in question."
"Vin's already acquainted." Chris said, not avoiding the sharp look Vin gave him from across the room, every hackle he had already standing upright and the rest turning to look at him in surprise. Buck snapped his fingers as the connection was made in his mind, exclaiming, "That red-haired woman!"
"What red-haired woman?" Nathan asked, curious about how uncomfortable Vin looked. The Judge raised his eyebrows and Vin looked like a deer caught in torchlight. Grudgingly, Vin said, "I knew her Pa is all."
"I am assuming you're referring to the widow, sister to the Monroes?" Travis said, and got a blue flash of a look from Tanner that had far more anger in it than he could see reason for. Irritated him that Vin had withheld that information, and he didn't conceal that displeasure.
"Will you be able to use that acquaintance to arrange our joining her and her party?"
"Already had plans t'go myself." Vin said flatly, defiantly looking at Chris as he removed the secret from the table by exposing it; Chris' grin was shark-like, and Vin had never had it aimed his way before. Didn't feel good.
"You planned on goin' along with her? Since when?" Buck asked, his voice reflecting the confusion on all their faces, a hint of hurt feelings Vin could hardly stand. He'd meant to tell them, and now it looked like he'd intended to sneak out without a word, like Chris had forced his hand, and he had to take their suspicious looks because any explanation he could offer would sound like an excuse. Ah, hell, this was goin' t'shit in record time, and he just moved to get it over with so he could get hell out of here and try to think.
Vin blew out a breath and faced them head-on, addressing the Judge but speaking to all of them. "Judge, her kin had no use for her Pa, there's bad feelin's there, powerful strong. They won't cotton t'me should they know I was his friend, so ifn' yer plannin' t'wheedle yer way amongst 'em - somethin' I don't intend t'do, won't be spyin' on the Monroes for nobody - ye'd best keep that under yer hat. N' I don't plan on doin' any recitals of his'try for anyone here, neither. I trapped with her Pa on the Powder n' owe him a friend's due."
There was clearly more than that, but Vin was telling them to keep their distance of him in this, to forgo their curiosities and the more fundamental instincts of experienced men to know all of a matter before they went forward with it. To trust him, which no one would've thought twice about a minute ago before the shadow of unknown things and unnoticed rifts had been made plain.
Buck looked to Chris leaning narrow and straight-shouldered as a rake against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and eyes glittering in the shadows. That thin line of his mouth said he was uneasy with this, but because he knew what Vin wasn't saying, or because he didn't? The question became moot when the quiet rasp of Chris' voice broke the awkward silence.
"It gets t'be our hides, Vin, n' I'll expect more."
Vin nodded without looking at him, his face obscured by his hatbrim. Quiet as he left, they could all feel his wanting to bolt.
To be continued...
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