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:
Sometimes Buck thought teasing that certain girlish giggle out of a woman was as satisfying as bedding them, their delight was a thing that never failed to please him.
Long sensitive fingers drifted quietly behind her knees, a spot he particularly liked on Bets, dimpled and baby-fine. His mustache tickled a giggle from her as he placed sweet warm wet kisses there, and she stretched with abandoned satisfaction, glad of the rain that had kept the customers in, and glad of Buck's company. She ran her fingers through his dark glossy hair and was content in the flicker of the fire and the lazy turn of his smile as his head came to rest on her hip. Sometimes these moments after were better than even coupling with Buck, excellently uninhibited and generous as lover as he was. She treasured the times when he stayed with her in the warm friendly tangle of sated bodies, talking and teasing and content to sleep with her in his arms the night through.
Buck Wilmington, raised amid the perfumed mysteries of women's seductively subtle ways, had learned at many a pale dimpled knee to respect feminine intuitions and perceptions as much as he adored their bodies. It was like they saw the whole world cleared of some veil men looked through, maybe because men counted on blunt strength while a woman had to rely on guile and insight. He knew for certain that women could read a face or sense hidden dangers like no man ever born, it'd kept his own Ma whole and alive more than once, and he trusted that innate wisdom down to his bones even if he never had understood it.
"Bets ..." He mused, "Why would a woman fall in love with a man she knew she shouldn't? Some man it'd be impossible to have, or to keep even if she had him?" He was thinking of the widow Elizabeth's wistful eyes on Vin, but Bets laughed and smacked the top of his dark head teasingly.
"Buck," She said, "You could answer that yourself - women fall in love with you all the time and you're about as impossible to hold as a greased pig." He grinned up at her, the flat of his hand whispering lightly along her thigh.
A woman's skin was a marvelous softness, and they all had that feel to them, even thin women had that cool layer between skin and bone that men lacked. Eyes closed, he ran his hand slowly down her side and hip, never knowing how beautiful his unconscious smile of honest pleasure was.
"You thinkin' something about that red-haired woman with eyes for your tracker, Buck? Now that's an unlikely pair, I'd say ... who is she?"
That Bets had noticed it, combined with the fact that Nettie, too, was harboring some suspicions of her own, confirmed Buck's instincts and made up his mind.
"Dangerous is who, darlin'." And he knew it was so, knew Tanner was oddly fragile when it came to women and it didn't so much matter right now why as that he was. "There's somethin' goin' on there ain't gonna end well for either of them, they ain't careful." He took a long slow breath and his hands became more ... interesting.
"But just now, Bets my sweet prairie rose," he said, his sweet droll voice humming against her skin and that insatiable warmth that was so much Buck rising, "You're the only woman I'm thinkin' about ..."
At Nettie's farm, Vin spent the night outside and no one thought that strange even in the rain. Nathan didn't like it, but Vin didn't sleep well inside walls and the herb tea he dutifully drank every hour had him relieving himself that often at least. Nathan was not heartened to know the tracker was being obedient to his instructions out of a sincere fear of his own condition, and he kept as close an eye to him as he could without being obvious.
After awhile, Vin found, the blood was less and the pain got driven back to an ache he could bear. This night, he dozed fitfully against the wall under Nettie's window, sheltered by the porch roof in his buffalo robe. His dreams were clouded and twisted, but he found some rest in the wild thing's instinct to conserve itself when injured, heal in stillness to gain strength and avoid the attention incapacity invited.
Gloria Potter and her daughter arrived with Chris and J.D. an hour after sun-up to look after Nettie in a bustle of feminine authority that spared only Nathan. Everyone else got shooed out of Nettie's room and about their business;
"That stable don't look done t'me! Now you boys get to it, or there won't be a jot of breakfast for anyone, Nettie don't need you all standin' around like a pack of morbid boys at a tramplin'."
That made Chris laugh out loud, a rusty short sound that even he hadn't expected, and the four of them had gone to it. Vin moved stiffly and looked a little pinched, and the rest were real careful how they worked him around to taking it easy, none of them happy that he let them. He was relegated to tarring over the lower nail-heads, and then to whittling pegs to reinforce the beams and he never protested, not once. Chris looked hard at him as the tracker sat himself down on a bale outside the stable door to work right among them, as if he was feeling some safety, some comfort in them being near that he couldn't speak aloud. They were careful of him then, too, anxiously protective of what fragile thing he was showing without wanting to, perhaps without even being aware. Hesitations in the normal easy glide of his walk, in the motions and glances and few soft words, but he didn't offer anything and nobody asked. They finished just before noon.
Nathan and Gloria Potter had joined forces to try to persuade Nettie to come to town the following morning for a few days until, God willing, her sight returned. But she'd insisted that the shades were brighter this morning when Nathan had changed the bandages, and she preferred her own bed and her own house where she knew where everything was. The boys, having come in to take their leave, heard Nathan trying to change her mind and added their opinions to no avail, but when Vin saw the worry in Nathan's eyes, he went to her bed and reached down with an awkward wince, taking her hand between both his own.
"Nettie," He said very quietly, acres of earnest affection in the sound of her name, "We'd breathe a whole lot easier."
In the fine tremble of his hands, in the faint pleading tone, Nettie heard 'Don't make me worry for you out there, let me know you are safe.' It was so, she knew - he could not bear another worry that might imperil him where he would be roaming, needing all of his senses and thoughts focused on staying alive. His hand tightened involuntarily in her silence and she gripped him back with strength that surprised him so he understood she would do what he thought best, for his sake on the trail. There was nothing to fight that kind of care with, and she did not try, eyes hot under the bandages that soaked up her grateful tears; Vin's stung, but no one saw and he did not let them fall.
J.D. led Peso out of the corral where the tracker had left him, shooting glances at Vin's back up on the shotgun wagon seat for the ride back to town. Vin hadn't so much as looked at the horse since he'd kicked Nettie, but J.D. wouldn't leave him behind for the women to take care of, and he and intended to lead him off the back of the wagon.
Trouble was, Peso didn't like trailing anything, much less a wagon, and he got feisty as soon as he'd started to tie the reins off, yanking both rein and J.D. away from the wagon with a shoulder-popping jerk. Chris and Josiah were mounted and tightened rein and leg as their horses started, wary of Peso's temper - if he hurt J.D., neither of them doubted Vin would shoot the horse right there. Stubbornly, Peso pulled ever further backwards with hard short snorts, chopping his front hooves into the earth with little jumps that threatened to break into more.
Vin got down off the wagon as if he didn't hear Josiah and Chris both make warning sounds and laid his right hand on the reins past J.D.'s white-knuckles. Not to pull Peso down, he couldn't and it hurt like blazes just to do what he was doing, but to pull himself along until he was near the horse's muzzle. Pain and anger put a glint in his blue eyes that a smart horse would've heeded. No one had ever said Peso was a smart horse.
Just as the black shifted weight back to his haunches to rear, the steely fingers of Vin's left hand shot out and grabbed ahold of his sensitive upper lip, fingers hooked hard in each nostril so the animal squealed - but kept all four hooves on the ground.
Vin did nothing more than hold him there, an edge of pain in his bared white teeth as he showed them to Peso in the wordless language of animals. Velvety skin tweaked threateningly between his fingers and Peso's eyes rolled, his ears flickered to and fro like flames in shifting winds, twitches shivering down his forelegs in the desire to break away. Nobody breathed. If Peso broke, he'd probably hurt Vin so badly ...
J.D., leaning back on the end of the reins with a face anticipating bloody disaster, saw the instant the horse surrendered. Peso's weight shifted subtly over his front hooves and both eyes and ears flicked forward, held there uncertainly. Then he took a single step toward Vin that tucked his head back in a hard arch, and the flat front of his brow barely bumped Vin's chest. Vin was solid as a post, waiting, holding on without slackening his grip. Then the horse blew one soft long breath across the knuckles of the hand, that breakable human appendage that nonetheless utterly ruled the horse's every move, and Vin let him go. To everyone's surprise, the tracker cupped Peso's nose in his hand in a single gentle stroke.
"Damned horse."
They were set to meet with Travis and the Monroes that night in the hotel dining room after closing time, and once again Vin was invisible until they were walking through the doors. A dessert tray sat on one of the tables with a pot of coffee and a stack of cups, which all but J.D. ignored in favor of a round of whiskey from the sideboard - the kid went to sweets like an ant. They were quiet, tired from the worries and work of the day but for Buck and Ezra, who'd remained in town and had respective ladies of love and luck awaiting them as soon as this meeting was over.
Judge Travis and the Monroe brothers appeared in the broad doors leading into the dining room from the hotel lobby and found the seven waiting for them. Travis felt the two tall gentlemen hesitate at the indolent postures and challenging eyes that met their entrance, accustomed to being treated with respectful deference. They would not find that here, the men gathered at the far side of the room respected no one and nothing not proven worthy of it, and there was already a tension between Tanner and the Monroes that the rest of the boys had picked up on and, naturally enough, assumed for themselves. In a way, Travis was a little glad of that sign of cohesiveness, divided as they'd seemed a day ago.
It was going to require every diplomatic skill he possessed to keep the peace between these two groups of disparate folks and advance his own cause at the same time. Thus far, he'd managed to cajole each of them into this room, but he was reluctant to try to push it further for fear of tipping his hand, pretending fear of the wilderness to insist on the seven's hire would only go so far.
Travis steeled himself and directed the brothers into the room, closing the doors behind them and taking a deep breath to ready himself for whatever lay ahead.
"Ah, good evening ..." Stephen Monroe stepped up with a smile as if assuming the helm of a ship he owned down to the boards, rubbing his hands briskly together, "Very punctual of you, I have a chart here ..." Drawing a rolled map out of his inside breast pocket with an authoritative flourish as though they were mere employees gathered to receive their master's instructions to whom no civil courtesies were owed. James Monroe tucked his chin back anxiously.
The seven waited without expression, though glances flickered among them and one or two cocked their heads back as if some little harmless but noisy thing had rushed into the room. Stephen seemed a bit taken aback by their attitudes; no one came to attention or evinced the slightest bit of interest in his chart, no one but James came near the table where he laid it out, then he had to search for something to hold it down with as it kept re-rolling itself every time he let it go. He suspected this amused some of them, though he could find nothing overt in their bland faces.
He cleared his throat and assumed an almost military stance, making his voice deep and commanding as Gerald had taught him. Lay matters out as facts already accomplished, offer no choices but obedience.
"We will hire mounts and a wagon to convey us to Santa Fe, from whence we'll board the train to Cheyenne. We will, of course, have to go on horseback from there to Laramie, but it really is a rather easy and straightforward trip." A faintly bemused smile played at the corners of his mouth as he looked around at them, his expression innocent but blatantly condescending;
"To be perfectly frank, I hardly think we'll need all seven of you, and I have to question the economic logic of hiring you here rather than simply hiring bodyguards in Cheyenne along with mounts." Relegating them to the same level of importance and use as horses, which insulted J.D. openly. Buck's big hand on the kid's nape prompted him to close his mouth without spitting out a rude reply at this pompous ass, but the rest only smiled as if they'd heard a mildly amusing joke. Travis' neck crawled at that many teeth being shown and his eyes begged the seven for patience from behind the brother's backs.
"You ever been there, Mister Monroe?" Chris asked in a friendly tone, still smiling as he straightened up off his elbow on the sideboard like a snake uncoiling, and James, behind him, quickly touched his brother's back to forestall the retort he knew would answer even so mild a challenge as that.
James had already reconsidered the pleasant faces of the seven men, finding something sharp as shark-teeth underneath; dangerous men, for all their present mildness. Deadly dangerous men. Unlike Stephen, who chaffed under his sister's disapproval, James had taken Elizabeth's advice and heeded the comments and stories of the shopkeepers and bartenders and townsfolk regarding the journey they were embarking upon. It was not the simple matter Gerald had presented it to be, and in fact involved considerable risks. Gerald had not said so, and Stephen refused to believe it, but his sister was a very astute woman and James had learned long ago to seek her opinions.
"Do not allow Stephen to alienate them, James." Elizabeth had said to him this afternoon, "Rough and wild as they might look, these are very quick-witted and experienced men, and we will be utterly lost without them."
He dared to answer before Stephen did; "We have not been there, no, we haven't." James answered, stammering a little but not sure how to do what his sister insisted he must do - Stephen's arrogance could rub a saint the wrong way, and there was nothing even remotely saintly about the seven men watching them right now like well-fed cats at a mouse-hole.
Stephen's first instinct was to put them all in their places, but Gerald would not be pleased if their arrival at Fort Laramie was delayed because these ... scoundrels, at the least - refused to serve, and Elizabeth adamantly refused to be without them and had vowed that she and Julianna would not take another step unescorted. Outside of the military, this was not a place where position mattered, she had insisted, and wealth would have no influence but to make a target of you. Like them or not, they needed the seven men.
"We haven't been to the territories, of course." The younger Monroe spoke again, trying to diffuse the tension with a jovial smile; "Why don't we see what these gentlemen have to offer, Stephen, we can always negotiate the details."
James felt every eye on him and tried not to mind, but Stephen did not like having his authority defrayed in any way, and it would be James to bear his petty vengeances when it was done. This was a mistake, everything about this was a mistake and James knew it more with every passing hour. They should never have intercepted Elizabeth's mail, shouldn't have read it, shouldn't have started on this mad course all those years ago, it'd grown like a web far beyond what he'd expected and he did not like feeling like the spider in it's center. They damned well shouldn't be here now amid dangers they had no concept of. But no one listened to him, never had.
Travis dared not interfere, but he was holding his breath nonetheless.l It appeared that James had correctly inferred the potential for disaster if they pushed these men too far, so he smiled until his face ached, feeling far too helpless in the currents running between the seven and the Monroe brothers.
"We got a map of our own, you don't mind." Vin said, quiet, but with unmistakable authority. Travis was surprised, again, that Tanner was taking the lead uncontested, but a bit relieved to sense Larabee's support was more firmly behind him than it had been in their earlier meeting in Mary's kitchen.
"Do you, now. Mister ... Tanner, wasn't it?" Lightly, but ripe with condescension.
Vin smiled at him, and James saw not even a hint of the hapless and filthy fool they'd met yesterday.
J.D. had never seen Vin smile so much like Chris, with such a willingness to make mayhem and bring death.
But Vin tried one last time to change all of this, one last try to at least put the trip in gentler weather. It mattered that they wanted to go now despite the hardships, and he needed to know how much, and why.
"You know this ain't a time t'be comfortable in the wilds, 'specially with women and children along." Stephen scowled as Vin addressed his younger brother, as if appealing to some sense he presumed Stephen himself lacked, and when he puffed his chest up with affront, the tracker's head rocked to one side, waiting to see what would be seen. That was a deep concern to James, he adored his sister and his niece and was terrified at the risk to them that still seemed so unnecessary.
Stephen said sternly, as if addressing an imbecile who'd spoken out of turn; "My brother, Gerald, has set the time-table, Mr. Tanner, discomfort is not above us." Vin's eyes swung over to him bright as a fox, and James noted that more than one of the seven seemed very interested in the exchange.
"Any reason you can't 'bide here another 2, 3 weeks?"
Stephen answered briskly; "Gerald will be moving on to Fetterman and wants his family under his personal protection on that leg. The military waits on no one, and neither shall we. We will depart within the next few days with or without you."
Vin nodded once, determined now to discover the reason before they got there. He shrugged and said, "Well, awright, then, you being set on it." Wide eyes giving no quarter, a wolfish certainty of what dangers there were that they could only imagine.
Stephen was unimpressed, but James reckoned with that in silence.
The oiled square of paper that appeared between Vin's fingers out of his waist pocket got him a couple of considering glances that he ignored, he just opened it over the pristine white chart, leaning onto the tabletop to pin down the corners with glasses. The map was simple and obviously drawn by a man used to holding such things in his head. Rivers and mountain ranges and buttes and passes were set out in pictographic shorthand, phases of the sun and moon for directions, jagged ranges and zig-zagged forests, tufted grasslands and rolling lines, and through it a dotted trail. It drew the immediate attention of all seven men as Stephen's had not. Not a letter on it of explanation, but some of them clearly recognized places they had been themselves.
James wondered at that - they had been there, and they scorned a government map - which meant how much of his brother's sources must be considered inaccurate?
Chris wondered why Vin had taken the time to draw a map at all, he never had before. So they could get there, or back, without him?
"We head up to Sante Fe, yes, but box-car the horses - I ain't ridin' those mountains on any but my own." With a look at Stephen that was matched by the seven, as if he didn't have a lick of sense to have even suggested they risk the mountains on unknown animals. "We provision here for the whole trip and catch the train near White Rock, about twenty miles past Sante Fe." The seven gathered close around the table almost head to head examining the map and following his finger.
Some moments impressed themselves on a man's memory forever, and the tableau the seven created in that lamplit instant was indomitable and enduring in Judge Travis' perceptions. Like a painting of some savage congregation highlit in gold against the dark gleaming wood, all that predatory intellect and nobility of soul rising to this challenge just as they had risen to all those that had scarred them before. The Monroe brothers appeared too smooth beside them, too pale and pompous in their fine apparel and even their postures a rigid rejection of men, and a land, that could destroy them in a heartbeat, without a thought.
Two ages faced off across that room, one that had learned a ruthless harmony in the perils of this vast frontier, and the other arrogantly poised to swoop in and seize the spoils revealed at such cost, ignorant of how dire the peril still was. He knew the Monroes' confidence, like all those rushing westward after gold, was very premature. James, he thought, recognized that as he watched him consider the seven hard-eyed men arrayed on the far side of the table. Travis' dark eyes narrowed in consideration; he would bear watching - a man with a healthy fear would be vulnerable.
Stephen crossed his arms over his chest, his face eloquent with disdain, but the seven ignored him.
James noticed that they ignored everyone but each other, attentive to their tracker as if he had laid trail for them many times and had their full confidence. He seemed young to have earned that trust from men as capable as most of these appeared to be. No, he didn't look the same man at all as that hapless filthy oaf they'd met the day before, and he wondered what fit of odd humor had possessed him to present himself in that manner. Obviously, he and Stephen had been the butt of jokes neither of them had even realized.
"Train route runs pretty near due east of the Rio Grande from Valarde. Sangre De Cristo range due east n' the San Juan to the west through Taos into Colorado Territory west of Joroso, and then through the San Luis Valley. We'll leave the Rio at Alamosa and hook up with the Kansas & Pacific line there for the trip over the mountains at Red Wing pass to the foothills. Up to Pueblo n' over the Arkansas River there, then on up to Colorado Springs over the ridge. Elevation will be risin' steady onto the eastern flank of the Rockies, to Castle Rock, Sedalia and then Denver. We stay on board for the stop, we don't walk the horses. From there, it's a fairly direct rise to Fort Collins, where we'll get off and go on horseback through Laporte on the west bank of the Cache le Poudre River."
"That's only about three quarter's of the way to Cheyenne ..." Josiah commented, and Vin nodded without answering the implied question. Josiah was not dissuaded despite the increasing stiffness of Stephen's posture - he was getting ready to object and they all knew it, but that fun could wait. The preacher's tone remained quiet and mild.
"Nowhere near as direct as the train would go, Vin, on horseback we're gonna make a pretty broad westerly curve instead of straight north, n' that's gonna put us at elevation in the mountains."
Chris' eyes traced the map on the table, rose to flicker between Vin and Josiah, tugging absently at his bottom lip. Vin had his reasons, and he figured he knew what they were, but how Vin intended to handle the rest of the boys he wondered about.
Vin glanced over at Josiah and had his eyes caught there in common memories of piney vistas and rocky crags, golden plains stretching forever into the morning. Josiah was no stranger to the territories, and Vin allowed to himself that he was glad to have someone along who knew that wilderness as well. But Josiah also knew the route he was laying out wasn't one either of them would plan on their own in this season, especially with inexperienced - and maybe suspect - city folk and likely unrest between the army and the Lakota. Something shot bolt upright in his head - and the Cheyenne.
For the first time, Vin realized that Josiah might have some strong feelings for distant friends up in those mountains just as he did. Which meant the preacher might also have the same first instinct upon discovering those friends threatened with annihilation.
Oh ... he cursed himself for missing so much, important things passing unnoticed right under his nose. This was very dangerous; Josiah was an extraordinarily perceptive man and very hard to fool. For one panicked moment, trapped in those deep somber eyes, Vin considered using Duley to distract Josiah as he had Chris. But he discarded the thought immediately; mountain men thought different from gunslingers, and Josiah would look underneath and at the edges and directions of things for just such a cover being laid. Chris' own past and a gunman's split-second way of thinking had given Vin the opportunity to mislead that Josiah would not. He broke his eyes away and took a breath, looking at his own hands propping him up over the map.
"I'm lookin' t'avoid cities, Josiah, ain't nothing in the way of law out there but the army, n' they ain't around most times n' can't be trusted the rest."
Stephen sucked in an affronted breath, but Buck stepped up with a nod that agreed; "Where there's prospectors, there's gonna be outlaws, we'd be like dogs pickin' up fleas in any big city, party this size."
Vin watched them carefully, almost willing them to go agree.
"And this obviously wealthy ..." Ezra drawled, protective of the deep pockets he intended to make his own raid into by and by. By Vin's rendering, the trail didn't look too bad to the gambler; the Rockies were high bold strokes, while the westward curve of the Laramie range appeared rather more docile. He'd resigned himself to the discomfort and was halfway through a lengthy list of necessities in his mind, including a good sturdy back with which to transport his winnings. He'd been looking around the saloon with a decidedly proprietary air lately.
James found himself staring at Larabee, tall and hollow in the shadows, at the long hand laid onto the butt of his sidearm like that was its natural place and the cold pale eyes that were never still. Gunslinger as he'd never expected to see in real life, all of them predatory in their ease with a ready edge he suspected was never wholly blunted. Workmanlike pistols in holster rigs like casually slung as tools on a carpenter's belt, a grace with their weight that spoke of long experienced habit. As if they'd feel naked without them. To live with a gun close to hand all the time, and need it. He shivered. Men who'd been where they could only imagine going, at home in places that had him jumping at shadows to imagine.
They would certainly never need an escort, they were as deadly as anything they expected to encounter! His brothers might not give a thought to the fact that their sister and Julianna were along, they'd brushed aside his concerns about bringing them into whatever folly his brothers were up to before he and Stephen had a chance to evaluate the situation, but their welfare was as important to him as his own.
He listened intently as the seven men discussed it quietly for a moment, watched how they were together, each voicing opinions and being heard. The questions they asked, bits of information offered, so knowledgeable that they spoke only to each other. He winced when Stephen, who knew they had nothing to offer - perhaps because of that - nonetheless moved to try to breach their exclusive circle.
"Why are we being so circumspect? And who do you expect to pay for shipping horses by boxcar when we can certainly get serviceable mounts there? The direct route, the one I have indicated, is the one we'll use." As if that was that and Travis turtled his head down into his collar.
They all turned around and looked at Stephen at this stout proclamation, and he came toward them boldly, ignoring James' warning gesture. He could not, however, ignore the obstacle of the grinning mustached man who bumped him with an apologetic sound and stepped side to side in an accidental dance that managed to forestall every move he made to get around him. Infuriated, Stephen was forced to remain an arm's length from the table and could not attempt physical intimidation by towering over the tracker.
When he looked, scowling, into the dark-eyed gunslinger's face, the man smiled and tipped his head as if he were doing him a favor, and James suddenly realized that he was. Stephen seemed to know it, too, when he looked again across the table at Tanner, at least he stopped where he was.
The tracker might not be as substantial a man as Stephen was, but it was clear to James that the look in his eyes was in no way cowed, his hand resting on the hilt of an knife in a beaded sheath in his belt. This tracker did not like the Monroe brothers in the least, and James wondered why it seemed so much more personal than the simple disdain of hard-bitten and experienced frontiersmen for arrogant tender-foots. Or was it tender-feet? He caught a nearly hysterical laugh at this ridiculous thought, disloyally gleeful to see Stephen so effectively stymied. He didn't think he could ever remember seeing his brother kept so off-balanced before, he was in no way in control of this meeting and could not even summon the impression that he was.
The tracker straightened up and said, "Let me explain it to you, Mister Monroe." That Stephen should not try his patience too far was implicit in his hard-angled face, eyes bright and leaning forward aggressively.
"We probably shouldn't've assumed you'd know what the risks are. You've got two very handsome women along n' you like pavin' yer back-trail with gold eagles. We're gonna be attracting attention. And it's been a hard winter." Which obviously meant nothing to Stephen.
"We can get a military escort, then." Stephen declared, "Really, I must say I had no idea men of the west were so cautious!" Were cowards was what they were meant to hear and Chris' smile came closer over Vin's shoulder and got very cold. Somehow they all seemed focused on him with the tracker as their center and Stephen had to hesitate in the nearly physical force of their threat.
"You can say whatever you damned well please." Vin snapped, and it was like something bitter cold in him breaking loose. "Prospectors means outlaws all along the way t'get there, Monroe, who're gonna be real happy t'see you traipsin' right on through loud and helpless as a county fair with yer fancy goods and horses and pretty white women. We don't need that kinda attention; like I said, it's been a hard winter, and it's a wild lonesome place up there full of the bones of fools who thought they knew what they was doin'. Soldiers might put outlaws off - n' that's a big might - but it'll only attract t'Lakota and I don't want no cause for misunderstanding with the tribes."
It was more anger than he'd ever shown without fists or gunfire being involved and the effort to restrain that urge was plain. He took a breath without letting Stephen go from his look.
Trust me, Mr. Monroe, you don't want 'em noticin' you much less lookin' for you, and I got a feelin' they're lookin' fer soldiers."
James blanched at that implication of hostilities beyond what Gerald had said, growing increasingly nervous not only at the redness creeping up out of his brother's starched collar. These seven men, indeed, Mr. Travis as well in his silence, were confirming his sister Elizabeth's fears in every word. They did not think this journey would be the cakewalk Stephen insisted it would be, they saw dangers, and they were dangerous men themselves! There was a black mocking humor in their eyes as they regarded Stephen, a shared knowledge of dangers they hadn't spoken of, that even Gerald had not considered - and James believed them.
"Stephen, please, these gentlemen have a great deal of expertise we should avail ourselves of, and they've obviously gone to the trouble to prepare this map, so ... please do them that courtesy." There was a high note in his voice that he hated and that earned him a scornful look from his elder brother, but Stephen could never see beyond the end of his nose - or his ego, which was considerably larger. The Indian agent, Mister Travis, spoke up for the first time when James turned there for support, saying gravely,
"Your brother is correct, Mister Monroe, it behooves us to take advantage of experience where it is offered - you are paying for it, after all."
At this subtle reminder of his command, even if over nothing but the purse-strings, Stephen momentarily subsided. Seven smiles flitted in wolfish twitches that Stephen pretended not to see.
The tracker regarded Stephen with wide blue eyes, then turned them on James offering the chance to object, maybe seeing him praying for Stephen to keep his mouth shut. Something flickered in his measuring look. When neither brother spoke, he went on.
"I reckon we'll take the old Overland trail from La Porte up past Bonner Springs, it ain't been used much since the tracks come through, but it should still be the most passable way. Might save a few miles and some rocky territory by veering off on the Cherokee Trail north of Deadman's Butte and pick up the Overland again at Ten-mile."
Josiah nodded; "Then through the pass at Twin Mountains?"
Vin nodded, pointed, "Yep. Best t'get over that pass while the horses are still fairly fresh. Head down t'Granite Canyon for the Chugwater Creek valley."
"That's a lot of river crossings, Lodgepole, Horse Creek, Bear Creek ..."
Vin shrugged, "Melt'll just be started, ought t'be passable."
"For everyone?" Chris shot a smile at the brothers that might be interpreted as friendly teasing by those who did not know him. Stephen Monroe was shifting his feet, his hands clenching and releasing in rhythm with his jaw. Not a happy man, Travis knew, a knot tightening his shoulders.
"Should be. We'll pass by Iron Mountain northeast n' cross into Wyoming territory near Willow Springs. We strike northeast to about 40 miles from Wheatland, we can cross the Platte there after the Laramie joins it instead of havin' to cross the Laramie too."
"I think I've heard quite enough." Stephen finally said, "This isn't a sight-seeing tour ... " Waving his hand dismissively at Vin's map,"We need to get there as expeditiously as possible, and none of this wandering about in the frontier mountains will accomplish that goal."
"Thought the idea was to get there alive." Chris challenged, tired of being interrupted by this fool who presumed to be any sort of authority over them and deciding to make matters clear once and for all. He hadn't made any overt moves to this moment, and yet suddenly the very air of the room seemed to invert toward him.
James saw Travis straighten up out of the corner of his eye, saw a faint alarm on the man's face that was very alarming to him. He dared to grip Stephen's shoulder and tried to will him to notice that the challenge was not only the gunslinger or the tracker. Many things got noted then and he felt Stephen's surprise to realize the earnestness of the threat himself.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen ..." Travis finally stepped in, "That's enough, we are not in conflict and shall not be." Stephen's eyes widened at the authority in his voice and bearing, the man had been positively obsequious until now!
"As the only authorized governmental representative here, and of a rank superior to your brother, gentlemen, I will insist that we follow the recommendations of experienced men unless and until it is proven incorrect. Mister Monroe ..." Turning with respectful attention to deal with Stephen's umbrage; "This is a rude new land, sir, and the rules governing civilized conduct do not always apply - of necessity."
Travis lowered his shoulders with an effort and smiled with even more, leaning close to the man in confidence, "They are tempermental, Mister Monroe, but they are necessary at this juncture - which is not to say it will remain that way."
Stephen's eyebrows rose marginally as he saw Travis in a suddenly more devious light. That intimation of collusion down the trail, subtle as it was, could be very useful, Gerald would be proud of him if he could persuade a governmental official of such high standing into their camp. Travis allowed his smile to hint willingness.
"How many days 'til we go, n' how many on the train?" J.D. asked out of the blue, and the seven all looked up at him so he flushed and wanted to sink into the floor. But then he noticed they were waiting to see why he'd asked that, and they weren't telling him to be quiet. Frantically he gathered the idle thoughts that had let the question go before he'd meant to voice it.
"Um ... I used t'travel with the racing horses on the circuit, train-travel can be hard on them, 'specially when they're used to open space, can't just take 'em right out of the stall into a train, they'll get sick. Legs'll swell, all kinds of trouble unless you taper off the grain in their feed gradual-like for a few days so they don't get colicky. Can't be givin' 'em grain at all in a boxcar, they'd all be actin' like Peso on a bad day."
Vin actually smiled at him and J.D. grinned ear to ear, feeling Buck's prideful beam like a lamp burning beside him. He'd done something very right, at last. Chris regarded him, sharp-eyed, then nodded shortly.
"You take care of outfittin' the horses, then, J.D., since you know what t'do there." And they all went back to the map, leaving him gawping at their casual confidence. Not a one would give care of their mounts to unreliable hands, and train travel could be deadly on horses used to free spaces if it wasn't planned correctly. Hay and straw and water laid in, maybe canvas webbing for make-shift stalls against the lurch and incline of the track ... They were trusting him to take care of their most valuable possessions, and he realized with a strong surge of true pride that he could, and better than any of them! Every man had a gift, Vin had said more than once. He began studying the map and listening in earnest then.
"How long will it take?" Chris asked.
"On the train, maybe four days. Overland, maybe 2 to 3 weeks, with fair weather." Vin answered, "We can make maybe ten miles a day on horseback, less in some places, it's about 160, 170 miles after La Porte.
"We're gonna need t'outfit for cold weather, and wet."
"Oh, marvelous." Ezra drawled, and was ignored but for a general quick lightening of mood.
"There's a budget for that." Travis said, and in the easing of tensions James ventured, "If you'd tell us what we need."
By this time, James agreed entirely with Elizabeth that the seven were their best chance at surviving and he did not make the mistake Stephen was making - again - of depending on Gerald's recommendations. Gerald never roughed it any more than he had to, three valets set up his tents and cooked his meals and did his laundry for him. For once, Stephen didn't argue, but James knew, with the starting twinges of a headache, that they'd be at it the moment they were alone again.
"Alright, then." Chris said with a grin, as if everything had been settled, but Buck, raised a finger thoughtfully and said,
"There's just one thing ..." That sparkle in his eye that set a gleeful shine on his doubtful expression,
"Peso in a boxcar?"
They were still laughing about that as they walked out the door in a noisy masculine knot of leather and guns and spurs, and neither brother had any idea why.
The seven retired to the saloon after parting company with the Monroes and Judge Travis, and after a couple of shots of whiskey, the nuts and bolts of the journey got settled. Now that it was a definite go, their blood was rising to the challenge and they were almost jovial.
Josiah and Vin both advised buffalo robes, and Josiah and Nathan would go out to the village and barter for them, and for stores of herbs Nathan might need. Ezra insisted on a discreet cask of brandy to brace them against the cold, which no one disagreed much with. But he also wouldn't be budged off of taking a supply of cigars even when Vin told him he'd shove it up his ass burning end first before he'd let cigar smoke give them away when he wanted them unnoticed. Ezra understood the point and smiled at Vin very sweetly.
Tarps against the rain for the women and the Judge - Chris wasn't the only one to have some small concern, tough as the old bird was, that this would be hard on him. They figured the women would take care of stocking for meals, and there was some satisfaction in that despite the inconvenience in having women along. This led to some rude reminiscing about burned beans, biscuits a man could build a fort with and coffee the devil himself couldn't swallow. None of them could cook worth a damn and J.D. just refused to learn no matter how often they insisted it was his job as their youngest member.
Vin took ease among them and it was a good couple of hours just drifting in the river of their familiar noise and the sight of faces he knew he could trust. Men he cared about as he had never let himself care before, and maybe they didn't even know he did. A quiet voice asked if it would be the last such time and went unanswered but for a tightness in his throat. If it was, it would be a fine memory, though he regretted deeply the subtle distance in Chris. Now and then the gunslinger's eyes would scrape at him, looking for something Vin didn't have to give him, and he couldn't say, then, how much he'd always wished he did.
It was especially pleasant to see J.D. flushed and loud with whiskey and excitement, proud as ever a boy was to feel like a real man among men. In a way, he was glad J.D. would have the chance to meet the people, and it made him smile to think how they'd take to him, loving bold spirits as they did; J.D.'s was almost sparking tonight. Wouldn't be too long before it was no longer possible, the tribes would not long be the free and whole and glad people of their living world. Everything would change, like colors leaching out of a vibrant tapestry, patterns set in the beginning of time corrupted by reservations and forced white ways too out of harmony and contrary to ever make sense to them.
And yet no matter how he dreaded traveling back into those lands again, there was a joy burning in Josiah's eyes that he understood, an eagerness, now that it was set, to see certain places and faces not brought to mind for a long time. He wondered if Wicase Hinhan still ran his trap-lines, if Three Wolf had married High Feather and had a son of his own. It was easier tonight to let that sort of anticipation come rather than think of the sorrow shadowing so close behind it.
Three days they had to oil all the saddle leather and tack against the wet and the cracking cold, to buy and pack supplies for themselves and their horses, to acquire pack animals. Each man would have one, and Buck offered to arrange hire of mules from the hostler who maintained a small herd of team horses and mules for the stage-line. He didn't usually rent them out, but that hostler had a sweet eye to one of the girls who wouldn't give him the time of day, and Buck figured he could clean him up and put in a good word for him with her.
It occurred to Vin, then, listening to them plan and admiring the ease of their courage, that he was selfishly glad for their company. He would need to be that current they generated between them that didn't know quit or surrender, a man needed such men in those mountains, facing what they would face.
He hadn't seen Elizabeth since they'd come back to town and did not want to, or that Julianna girl who put him into powerful dreams about the daughter he'd never known. Never even had a name, that tiny little mite, he couldn't bear to name her with Duley's life's blood covering them all and he the only one in this world, breathing. Such rage in his heart he'd wanted to kill something, anything, to bathe in something else's blood and wash the horror of hers away.
Yet he'd never washed the stains off him no matter what predators the scent drew, accepting the battles with a ferocious gladness that never cared why they came or, indeed, ever really connected her blood and their interest. For months he'd haunted the wilds like a wild thing himself until one day he'd noticed every flake was gone. It'd scared him so bad that he'd stripped to the skin frantically looking for any spot or smear on him, squatting in the snow where he'd stopped mid-stride scraping under his nails, searching ... alone as he'd never felt alone before since the day his Ma had died.
A deep shudder tracked ice up his spine and he covered the sudden involuntary movement in a reach for the bottle, yanking himself away from the memory. His heart pounding without any reason he could see and a sense of fleeing on him. Escaping. Would he never have a grip on anything ever again?
He had that drink, and poured another to sip, the tingling in his lips telling him he was nearing his limit. A short time later the bat-wing doors parted for a trio of dusty cowboys, and the seven took their immediate measure with a boldly casual keenness that spoke for itself. The three moved slow and tired to the bar with a nod, not looking for any trouble. None of the seven looked at them again but one and they heard that warning as though it was a shout.
Since he couldn't ride nor lift, Vin volunteered to stand double watches and felt pretty bad about their appreciating it. Tricking them into thinking it was unselfish when his own purposes would be hidden in being the only eyes and ears in the night. Didn't like to do it this way, but he couldn't ride, and he couldn't buy enough guns and cartridges here in town without notice.
That afternoon he'd set the skinny drunk who sometimes mucked out the corrals for a few dollars to find the scurrilous character he was looking at right that moment, keeping his distance but with a smugness Vin truly hated. It wasn't nothing he was proud of, bein' beholdin' to such as that, who'd steal or sell whatever was counted as valuable and kill to get it. Felt like something nasty in his mouth, but he needed those guns more than he needed his conscience to be clean. He had a feeling that conscience would never be wholly clean again anyway.
He offered to mend tack, too, for his guilty soul, and not one turned down the chance to avail themselves of his skill in leather-work.
In the blackest and quietest hour of the night, he followed the three cowboys from the roof of the mercantile as they made their furtive way to the stable. He met them there, the darkness hiding how surprisingly much it had hurt getting down to the street, and told them what he wanted. He knew his eyes overflowed distaste, but they didn't care. In fact, Wittinger liked it, smiled and set his head back with a cocky sort of pose that said the tracker was no better than any other man doin' back-alley deals in the middle of the night, except none of them pretended to be peacekeepers. He'd have called Vin a hypocrite to his face if he'd had the stones for it or even knew the word, but Vin saw the sentiment just the same and had no moral high ground to deny it from. He became what he despised in a cause more important than his honor. Lord, he was treading a thin line here between sin and need, and every sin was a stone in the wall against heaven, and Duley.
The next morning found him sitting on a crate in front of the stable mending tack, his awl and bone needles and coils of sinew on an upturned barrel by the beaded bag he carried them in. Deftly he used the heel of his hand against the blunt end to drive the awl point through the back of J.D.'s saddle-bag, threading and tightening lengths of sinew in a sturdy weave like he could do it in the dark, in his sleep. His mind was half-a-hundred places at once and he had to give his hands something to occupy them as he tried to focus his tumbling thoughts.
He rose when Mrs. Potter's wagon came up the road, laying the bag down and his tools neatly upon it. Nettie sat ramrod straight in the front seat with her black slouch hat over the bandages that covered her eyes, chin forward and feisty as ever, and he knew a pride for her so deep it hurt. Strong as an angel of God, she was, and he prayed she would not have to live the rest of her life without seeing the world she so loved.
Nathan's door opened on the corner veranda above the smithy, his dark face appearing and then disappearing again, doubtless going for his bag; he'd want to check Nettie first thing.
But it was Vin's hand she reached down for, knowing his step well and having heard the quiet rocking chuff of his boots on the street, and she smiled down at him like she could see every worry he had and had come just for him.
"Let's get you down, Nettie." He said, but Buck interposed himself with a hard scoffing look at Vin before the tracker could kill himself and probably drop Nettie onto the muddy hardpan trying to lift her down himself.
"Now ain't you got a waist trim as a girl there!" She laughed at him with a wry shake of her head as he set her booted feet on the ground, "There y'go, light as a feather."
"Makes a body wonder what sort of birds you're acquainted with, Buck." Nettie said with laughter under her scorn, peeling the warm measure of his hands off her and giving the wide flat chest she could feel in front of her a half-scolding thump. He was a strong man to lift her so easily, not a large woman but nowhere near light as down, either, and a sweet scoundrel to make her blush like he could! And where had Vin got to? Damned inconvenient it was, not being able to do so simple a thing as see.
"I got your bag here, Nettie, let's get you into Miz Potter's place." Her hand was threaded through the leathered loop of his elbow and he guided her with soft-spoken words up the steps into the store and on upstairs to Mrs. Potter's second-story dwelling. His free hand glided from the small of her back to her shoulder to the arm he held as they went, tender support and protection speaking an affection he could never put into words.
"You put her in my room, Vin, it's in the back there where she can get the breeze from the balcony." The townsfolk didn't much understand why Mrs. Potter had wanted a balcony on the back of her building, but it looked away into the countryside and the porch under shaded her kitchen, she'd always held it was a fine place for dreaming and praying.
"That be this'un on the left, ma'am?" Vin half turned at the sound of a step and the brush of skirts behind him and found himself staring at Elizabeth.
Would he always look so startled, so panicked at the sight of her? Elizabeth found it very nearly annoying this morning, but she was glad to see him and her smile reflected it.
"Yes, Mr. Tanner, that is the one, we've made it all ready for her."
"Miz Monroe?" Nettie queried the air, not entirely pleased to realize why Vin had gone so tight and still.
Elizabeth had been married so briefly that she was accustomed to people addressing her by her maiden name and no longer corrected them. In a way she was a spinster, she imagined with a familiar pang.
"Yes, Mrs. Wells. Mrs. Potter sent word with Mr. Wilmington to have Mr. Standish prepare the room for you."
"That's a peck of missus n' misters, ain't it?" Nettie chortled, making faint mock of her formality and feeling small for doing so, but Vin relaxed in the sound, and in the comforting rub of her fingers inside his arm.
Elizabeth proved herself gracious by laughing as well, "Indeed. Mister Standish seemed reluctant to leave the gaming tables, so I volunteered; I hope you don't mind."
Booted feet on the stairs drew their attention and Nathan appeared, his bag over his shoulder and a basin of warmed balanced in his hands with alderbark steeping in it to bathe Nettie's wound.
"Nettie, how ya feelin'?
She turned her head toward his voice with a wicked half-smile; "Why, Nathan, you wouldn't believe it, but it feels almost exactly like I've been kicked by a horse - what do you make of that?" She could almost feel the gleam of his white teeth and his pleasure to know she was feeling better. She was, but her head still ached something fierce and she was deeply anxious about her eyes ... what if her sight never returned? How would she and Casey get on? She didn't want the girl staying with her out of duty, caring for her in her old age - Lord, please let me fall into my grave hale and whole and takin' care of myself to the last minute!
Vin hovered near the papered walls, lighting skittishly on the window-sill near the glass-topped doors that let out onto the balcony as Elizabeth and Nathan got Nettie settled in the high brass bed. He didn't like it that Nettie let them do it without fuss, wasn't like her to be content to be agreeably abed in the middle of the day and it worried him mightily.
He tensed when Elizabeth settled on the ladder-back chair next to him when Gloria Potter took over assisting Nathan, but he was more interested in Nettie's reaction as the bandages were removed. Only Elizabeth heard the quick suck of air he took at the sight of her bruised and swollen face. Nettie blinked rapidly, squinting as if the light might hurt her, but her gradual smile was true as she scanned the room. Elizabeth noticed that as Nettie's shoulders eased down, so did Vin's.
"What are you seein', Nettie?" Nathan asked, watching the track of her pale blue eyes, noting the over-wide pupils.
"Well, no angels yet, Nathan, so I guess I'm still yer problem awhile longer! Light and dark, more than yesterday ..." Turning toward the brightness of the window, a diffused rectangle but still light in the near enough shape. Her smile was sweet, and they were all glad to see it.
"Yep, more than yesterday, Nathan, I'm thinkin' I'm makin' out the shapes of things better."
Nathan turned a hopeful smile over his shoulder at Vin before he went to checking the stitches and bathing the slightly diminished swelling around her eye socket. Livid red/blue bruises swept broad crescents under her eyes and across her brow, and Nathan couldn't resist teasing her a little;
"Sorta look like a patriotic raccoon here, Miss Nettie ..."
She surprised a yelp of laughter out of him when she reached out and unerringly smacked his mahogany cheek in mock insult, and Vin's soft rasping laugh among the rest was a beautifully affectionate sound. Elizabeth looked at him sidelong, still and strange as her father had ever been, smelling of wild places and with wild places in his eyes. A vividness even quiet that other people lacked. Safer people. Mild as a meadow but a deep force in him, like her sister had, too, always so much more in their eyes than was ever given, secrets and urges and instincts that had always made her feel small and weak. It was disturbing how like her father Vin Tanner was, brought up those conflicted feelings the thought of him always brought up, like an old knot she'd never been able to unravel and so seldom looked at anymore.
"I wonder if I might have a word with you, Mister Tanner." She finally said, tilting her bright head toward him and trying to keep her eyes bold despite the faint exasperating alarm in his; "Some advice on provisioning the journey."
He couldn't very well refuse her without seeming rude, and Nettie was attentive to their exchange even as Nathan's big fingers palpated across her skull, his thumbs gingerly tracing the bones around her eyes and nose. He ducked his head and nodded shortly, his relief at Nettie's improvement disappearing.
Might's well do some finding out of his own, now. There were things he had to know the truth of whether he wanted to or not, and he had to work things around to managing a way to question her without seeming to. If he was right, the Judge would be able to make more use of the information than he could himself. If he was right, the Monroes were into a wickedness so wide and deep and long that it made him nearly sick to imagine it. The prayer that went up asking to be proved wrong was as sincere as any hope he'd ever had.
A few minutes later, they were walking side by side down the boardwalk, though she noticed that he practically walked the edge to keep a distance between them, and never looked at her, as if deep in some unpleasant thought. She looked at him quizzically as he escorted her into the empty jail, crossing the dusty little room for the pot-bellied stove in the far corner and busying himself stirring the embers and adding kindling, though the place was already fairly warm. As he made coffee, she examined the two empty cells and the wanted posters neatly tacked on the walls, and by the time he was done and the pot was on the stove-top, she was sitting at J.D.'s desk just watching him with a mysterious smile that made nervousness surge anew.
"Come sit down now, Mister Tanner - unless you feel the need to sweep the floor or polish the bars or something? I do not, I assure you, bite."
He didn't smile at her gentle jesting, but he did come to the far side of the desk and ease down on the chair, stretching out his legs in front of him so he rested on the base of his spine, but not at all as relaxed as that posture implied. Her eyes narrowed momentarily - had he been hurt in some way? Was he, indeed, favoring his side, or his hip?
He forestalled any questions in that regard by saying briskly; "First off, you'll need t'line all yer boxes n' bags with oilcloth, couple layers for whatever goods y'need t'keep dry. There'll be river crossin's n' wet weather. Let J.D. n' Josiah and me outfit the pack-horses, we know where t'stow things on balance and such."
She nodded, watching the light scatter through his golden whiskers and pick out the blue of his eyes, faintly flattered by his nervousness and feeling a little nervous herself without knowing why. He had a scrape across the knuckles of his right hand and rubbed at it with the left in an absently anxious motion she found strangely endearing.
"I'll try to keep my brothers out of the way." She said with a meaningful tilt of her head, and he looked at her then with a flash of humor in his eyes.
"That'd be a help."
"I appreciate your forbearance with them, Mister Tanner."
"Ain't my forbearance you should worry for, Ma'am, I give you my word already on that score. The others, though ... well, you might expect some funnin' at yer brother's expense, men like that seem t'invite it - no offense."
"None taken!" Now she was laughing herself, and it relaxed him a little, an innocent sound that said she might enjoy seeing her brothers suffer a few indignities herself. More of the rascal there than he'd expected, and if there was any play-acting in her, he couldn't see it - and he would have. That didn't speak for her brothers, though.
"You know, Mister Tanner, I have to say that I am looking forward to this."
"That's 'cause you don't know what you're goin' into, Ma'am - you did, n' you'd likely be high-tailin' it back in Virginia in a heartbeat." The warning was given with a wry smile, but she understood she should not underestimate the rigors or dangers ahead.
"I'm not totally ignorant in that regard. Duley's letters have given me a bit of an idea of what to expect, although I'm sure some of what was matter of course to her will frighten the wits out of me! I haven't got her courage, I know that."
"I'd say you got your own kind of courage to be making this trip at all."
She looked up at him gratefully, knowing he was being kind but appreciating it very much. She shook her head and said,
"Well ... Duley wasn't afraid of much in the wilderness that I could tell by her writing, there was always such an excitement, such affection - I'll enjoy seeing those places she wrote to me about, it will make me feel close to her."
"I'd like t'hear those letters, what ain't personal, anyways ... " Wanting it like air, like water. Like life, a naked longing so intense that her heart contracted with sympathy. And wanting to 'hear' them, which meant he still did not know how to read.
"I'd be very pleased to read them to you, I used to read to my mother and I enjoyed it very much." Giving him what he asked for and more, giving him everything she could because she wanted to be generous to this man who had loved Duley so much.
The high angled tops of his cheekbones colored a little and he looked down at his hands, knowing the moment was at hand. The subject of those letters offered the opportunity he'd been looking for, and he took it up with dreadful care.
"I'll try to show you places we knew together as we go." He said; "There's a hollow at the base of a falls she liked a lot we'll probably pass close to, a meadow where the mornin' sun slides over it like a blanket bein' pulled. She ever write to you about a little creek valley in the Black Hills where we spent the winter once?"
Elizabeth, suspecting nothing, answered readily, "She did, I believe. Will we traverse it?"
He shrugged, not lying outright for his soul's sake but feeling bad about it just the same, since they'd be nowhere near that valley. She made nothing of it, not in her eyes or her face or her easy posture, it meant nothing to her but a letter she treasured.
"Maybe, depends on the weather. Your brothers read her letters, too?"
She could see that he might not be happy to think they knew intimate details of his life, whether they recognized him for Duley's husband or not, and she wished she could reassure him altogether, but she told him the truth;
"Not usually, although there was a time when they intercepted them ... thinking to protect me from being lonely for her." The former true and the latter a small lie to spare him their opinion of Duley. "They gave them back to me when I discovered it, but I believe they might have read them."
One more thing he needed to know, one more thing he almost could not find breath to ask, but he had to know. A man had to be able to stand in the face of truth no matter what.
"She told me yer brothers were important men, said yer family knew a lot of famous people." Pretending to be impressed as he never had been, and Duley hadn't been, either, but there were names he needed to hear for the terrible logic of his thoughts to be borne out.
Elizabeth noticed that he never spoke her sister's name, referring to her as 'she' or 'her'. It was sad and very sweet, revealing the damage her dying had done. One scar this enduring man had that would ever be too tender for touching; she doubted there was anything that could conquer him short of killing him, but Duley's name made him vulnerable. His next question seemed idle, though perhaps a bit more flattering than she expected from him;
"Said they'd been acquainted with some famous heroes of the west, men like Wild Bill Hickock n' Colonel George Custer, even President Grant and a whole slew of senators and such."
"Braggarts!" She laughed, and he held his breath, lowered eyes eagle-keen.
"But yes, they certainly did meet the president once, and more than a few senators; I don't know about Hickock, but we've known George Custer since long before he was a Colonel. Libby, his wife, is a girlhood friend, and it was he who helped Gerald with his commission to command in the west."
It was all he could do not to leap up from the chair, not to scream with rage and shake her for being a fool who couldn't see what ruin was being done right under her nose. To say that name, George Custer, easily, almost warmly ... Not to break into tears, then, to realize what this meant that took all the strength from him in one down-rushing wave.
What wrong Duley meant him to right, and how huge that wrong was that had to torment her even as far as heaven.
Duley, thinking of her sister's future, wanting to provide security for her should her brothers treat her badly or bring their father's businesses to ruin, that was all she'd thought to do in writing to her about the valley, and the gold. Out of trust and innocence, out of nothing more than love ... those letters, in the wrong hands - could something so wicked have come from such kind intent? Lord, strike me down dead, let it not be so!
Elizabeth had no idea why he was staring at her with such a horrified expression, not seeing her even, but something so disturbing in his mind that he'd actually seemed to forget she was even there. Some memory of Duley, perhaps? She'd seen those memories take him now and then, harder than he meant to show.
"Mr. Tanner? Vin?"
He started, eyes darting to her face quick and guilty and nearly afraid - of what? She leaned toward him, reaching, her mouth opened to ask, but he saw the question coming and stood up with a jolt, raking his fingers through his hair with such agitation that she stood up with him. What had she said? What could he be thinking?
"I'm sorry, Ma'am ..." Back to Ma'am, the friendly moment gone, and she felt an edge of anger over the hurt that she didn't have time to express.
"I need t'be somewhere, I forgot ... I'm sorry." Gone in the next breath, leaving her standing there staring out the open door with her mouth agape and her hand reaching out to empty air.
"Miz Nettie? Brought you some supper, thought I'd have mine with you, you don't mind ..."
Nettie turned from the sounds of the town settling down for the evening outside her window with a welcoming smile, glad for lively company. She could hear the quiet sounds of Buck setting a tray down on the bed-side table, the aroma making her hungry as she hadn't been the last few days.
"That smells mighty fine, Buck ..." Her voice lowered to a near whisper, "So I know Gloria didn't make it." His laugh was quick and free as a bird, a light heart for such a dangerous man, she'd seen him wade into trouble grinning more often than not.
"Bets made you a pork-pie." He said, and she knew her eyebrows leapt up above the bandage and that he'd seen it, because he chuckled that wicked little chuckle Buck had that was both charming and challenging.
"I knew it'd surprise you she could do something else." Else than what he didn't say, but the inference was there, and if she'd known for sure where he was she would've smacked him. Nettie was not a prude by a long shot, understanding how hard life was for women on their own in this world, especially out on the frontier where physical strength or shooting skill was pretty much all anyone, man or woman, had between enslavement or death. But she also knew that some women just ... liked it. Sometimes in a sad and needy way, seeking comfort or an temporary respite from lonliness, but some, like Bets - and like Buck's Ma, Nettie suspected - just loved men as much as Buck loved women. She could understand that, too, being a woman of appetites herself, once.
The morals of an alley-cat, Gloria had said more than once of the saloon girls, but Nettie knew it was the nature of wild things to take many mates, alley-cats included. Perhaps because she knew that so well, and had the luxury of independence for herself, she could see why some women might want only that from a man, and her freedom to herself the rest of the time. Men could be awful stifling, and most thought they ought to be. Grated hard on a woman's pride to be taken as property, particularly when half of the down-trodden women of the west might make a better go of things than whatever man thought himself in charge.
"Here, take a taste of this n' see if it don't just melt in your mouth ..." she felt Buck's fingertips under her chin and opened her mouth with independent reluctance, closing it around the fork as it slid back away. Tender pork and onions, mashed potatos and likely carrots as well, a hint of sage and a crust that was, indeed, meltingly light.
"She figured you were pretty sick of people feedin' you, so take it here ..."
Momentarily bewildered, she felt a warm heavy napkin being pressed into her hand and then realized, with a little grateful surprise, that the woman had baked the pie into a pasty surrounded in crust so she could eat it with her own hands.
"You thank her for me, Buck - better yet, have her come on up if she's got a while t'waste on an old feeble woman n' we'll have some tea together, maybe sit ourselves out on that balcony there and swap stories."
Buck's smile was slow and very sweet, she heard it in his voice.
"That'd be real nice, Nettie, real nice." He knew Bets would likely refuse in a panic, Nettie Wells being the dauntingly upright woman that she was, but it was a fine and generous thing for Nettie to do and Buck appreciated the sentiment as much as Bets would.
"Miz Potter'd be scandalized ..." He said, and Nettie laughed in agreement, not at all opposed to shocking her friend now and again. She loved Gloria Potter, it was true, but sometimes she was just a bit too sanctimonious for her own good. God never meant a human to pass judgment on another, that was His job and He didn't need no help at it.
For a few minutes they ate in companionable quiet, Buck catching gravy off her chin with his fingers like she was a favorite baby and making her laugh when he did, telling her about their meeting with the Monroe brothers so she had to stop eating altogether for laughing so hard.
"They're in trouble once you get on the trail!" She crowed, and Buck grinned at her uncharacteristic vengefulness toward men she didn't even know.
"I'd say." He said, two words enough of a promise to let her know he already had a plan or two stewing around that handsome head of his. In his company her heart felt lighter than it had for days.
When they were finished, he'd poured them each a cup of coffee and she waited until she heard him settle back in the chair before broaching the uneasy subject constantly on her mind.
"Buck, I'm gonna git nosy on you, n' you can tell me t'butt out if you're a mind, n' I ain't askin' just fer the sake of curiosity, but ..."
"Miss Nettie ..." Buck interrupted her softly, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his widespread knees, all bony angles and sinewy lengths and an affection in his face she could hear in his voice.
"I reckon I know what you're gonna ask, and I reckon I'd give a good deal for your advice in it, too. It's about Vin and that red-haired woman, ain't it?"
That red-haired woman - as friendly a cuss as Buck was, as easily swayed to a pretty woman's defense as a bee to honey, Nettie understood right there that this friend of Vin's was as wary as she was of that woman. Her mouth tightened grimly. Good as it was to know Buck would be looking out for him with an eye that knew every trick a woman could play on a man, it was worrisome that he, too, thought there was something going on there. And something likely to do Vin no good at all.
"Well, then." She said, squaring up to it. "I'd be powerful interested in what you've seen betwixt 'em, Buck, I haven't had much chance myself, 'n that lady is as smooth as cream."
She heard Buck's bootheels scrape slightly, heard the back of the chair creak as he sat back and likely stretched his long body out; Buck could look languid on top of a cactus, she thought.
Buck looked at the stern-faced old woman on the bed consideringly, taking a sip or two of the hot black brew in his cup and running his thumb along his mustache afterward as he thought how to say what he hadn't really confirmed in any way but his own intuitions.
"Nettie, I can read a woman sometimes ..."
"Oh, is that so?" She commented, dripping sarcasm and knowing he grinned by the lightening of the room. They weren't talking about Vin behind his back to do him any harm - far from it. They were his friends, even if a man sometimes didn't know who his friends were.
"But I can't read Vin worth beans, never could."
"He's anxious around her." Nettie said with a short certain nod; "She's got a meanin' to him more than he's showing, watches her all the time like he's half-scared of her, n' the only thing scares Vin is not bein' in control of himself."
One of Buck's eyebrows arched, his head cocked considering; Nettie had put her finger right close to what bothered Buck, too, but he'd never seen Vin around a woman he was interested in, and wasn't sure it was the situation or the woman or just what it was Vin was being kept so off-balanced by.
"They got feeling for one another, Buck? Is there a romance between them?" Blunt, as Nettie was always blunt, she wouldn't bother being embarrassed or ashamed of it, just go straight on hoping to be of good to someone she cared for. Buck's smile, which Nettie couldn't see, was very warm; here was a woman he was proud to know was in his corner, too, did he ever need her.
"I can't rightly say for sure, Nettie. There's somethin' goin' on, but when I asked him, he denied it. Just said I should let it be."
"And you did?" Incredulous, knowing the lengths Buck would go to in teasing any and all of the seven.
He laughed softly, shaking his head with a sort of wonder; "He out-manuvered me, can you believe it? Called in his markers t'leave him be about it, n' the markers was owed - what could I do?" Vin wasn't a man to ask for anything unless it was important to him, Nettie knew that as well as Buck did. His broad shoulders angled in a helpless shrug; "Like I said, Nettie, I can't read him. But I can read her ..." His tone went smoky, "n' she's got that look around him of a moth to a flame."
"Lord ..." Nettie murmured, not glad to have what she suspected so blatantly said.
"I don't know if it's gone nowhere yet, Vin's skittish as bacon-fat on a hot griddle. But she's got that longin' look to her."
Which in Nettie's mind might be worse than the dalliance she suspected Elizabeth might be playing at. If that had been the case, she would've expected an obvious flirtation that Buck would have known for what it was. That it was something more subtle meant it might be something deeper - the thought that the lady might be honest only made her affection more dangerous.
"I'd thought she might've been playin' with him, you know how some rich women will with a man they ain't supposed to."
Buck nodded knowingly; "My Ma always had a hard time with the girls over just such men, runnin' off after 'em n' likely half of 'em dyin' somewhere on the trail." He spoke of his mother's business without embarrassment, aware that Nettie had to know his history and trusting her with gratifying ease not to hold it against him or even, indeed, against the mother he'd loved deeply. Nettie he could be honest with, and it was a relief to be so.
"He's wild and wooly, n' women think that's excitin' even if it scares 'em - hell, maybe because it scares 'em! Contrary critters, women - present company excluded. Vin, he's so ... I don't know, sorta half-there a lot of the time, like nothin' can get to him. Some women would take that as a challenge, I reckon. You know what I mean?"
She did, and her somber face said so as much as the nod she answered him with. Men that couldn't be captured or tamed or held, the wild foot-loose ones who made women dream beyond the narrow confines of their lives. They sensed secrets they were driven to know, a reserve they needed to break through, it was an urge she understood and she thought Buck did, too. The lure of the forbidden, wanting what did not want to be wanted. Vin would run far and fast and wide, but he would be held by circumstance in this woman's company and was vulnerable to a woman's wiles as few men were, his instinct to protect them and the duty he felt he owed could work together to take him unaware of deeper motives.
"Strong as he is, separate as he keeps himself ..." She murmured to Buck, not saying what she meant out loud but the foreboding making it clear to him, and she knew he was nodding.
"Nettie, a man can't tell another man what to do where women are concerned - hell, lookit at Josiah! There's a man with more sense than any, n' yet a plump bosom n' a come-hither smile can chase 'im right into a whiskey bottle for days when it don't last."
The bright skirl of Nettie's laughter to remember that made Buck laugh, too, Josiah himself had a sense of humor about it by now, but it illustrated his point too well to be denied. He saw Nettie's worry plainly, knew the abiding respect and affection between her and Vin that had sprung up between them. Buck had always envied that until just this moment, when he realized that she was trusting him as she had not trusted any of the others, talking to him about something vitally important to her. To him, not to Chris or anyone else. It pleased him down to his bones.
"Nettie," He said quietly, serious so she turned her face toward him and made no attempt to hide her distress. "I'll do what I can. Sometimes all it takes is the truth said out loud to break such spells as love can put on a body. Truth is, she ain't gonna ever roam the wilderness n' bear him children n' be satisfied with the sky and the mountains and the wide plains."
And Nettie realized he was completely right. If it came to it, Buck would say these things to Vin, and Vin was an honest man heart and soul, too honest to deny what was that true. It eased her even if it was a hope being taken from Vin, something he might want that he couldn't see wasn't good for him, wasn't right. Buck wouldn't let him be blinded, nor would he let him blind himself, and he would be the truest sort of friend in risking Vin's temper by saying so.
"You know he's like t'black both yer eyes."
Buck grunted. "He'll try."
Nettie settled back with a soft scoffing sound, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. Vin was a stubborn man, this she knew quite well, but he was far too sure of the inescapable brutalities and realities of this life to fool himself for long.
"What sort of woman do you think she is, Buck?"
"Well, Miss Nettie - if Vin wasn't around, I'd be spendin' way too much time tryin' t'find out." He said mischieviously, proud as a peacock to have been able to offer her reassurance, and prouder still to have her eased by it.
"She's a fine-lookin' woman ..." Nettie agreed with a wry twist of her smile, and Buck knew her eyes would be snapping at him any other time, disapproving his skirt-chasing ways.
"And she's got a fine head on her shoulders, too, a quick wit n' braver than she likely knows she is. But she's lonesome in the heart of her, n' she's used to bein' so. It probably don't bother her none in Virginia where she's got that busy life of hers to cover over the empty places, but out here, ... well, it's a vulnerable feelin' t'be in a strange place. Wouldn't be strange for her t'feel like she needed ... something. To feel safe, to protect her. The frontier isn't a place that lets a body forget empty places."
Nettie cocked her head, less surprised by his intuitiveness than by his sympathy. Lord, what a gracious creature he was! Rascal and scoundrel and troublesome as a bored schoolyard bully, but the heart of him was far more sensitive than she'd guessed, far more insightful. He was a better man than she'd thought, and the irony of seeing it now, without her eyes, was forceful.
"Who knows, Nettie - maybe I kin make her fall in love with me - " She could see that grin in his voice, "Ain't that far-fetched, though I gave Vin my word I'd steer clear of her. Hell, probably be better for him t'be mad at me than in love with her, anyway!" He said it with a merry laugh that didn't shield the generous impulse to do just that.
About the time Buck was tickling Nettie's cheek in a good-night kiss, Vin was in a small smelly shack at the edge of town, his back against the wall and his sawed-off across his thighs quick to hand as he worked the bolts and chambers and hammers of three dozen pistols and twelve rifles by dim lamplight. He felt their eyes on him, waiting, speculating ... with a sinking heart he realized he would have to worry about that all along the trail. Lay down with dogs ... and the dogs might just follow you into the mountains to steal back what they'd been paid for.
In the end, he bought 24 pistols and 7 rifles along with enough cartridges to weigh his pack-horse pretty well.
He stood watching them slink out of town with most of his money in their pockets and a warning to make themselves mighty scarce, and pressed one of his last dollars into the drunk's hand to keep the cache in his shack until later that night. Then he walked to his watch with a slow heavy step that matched rhythm with his heart.
When J.D. came to relieve him two hours before dawn, he fetched the guns in several trips that made him ache, and by a short-trimmed lamp in Peso's stall carefully re-inspected each piece, wishing he had time to break them all down and clean them. The rifles he did break down to conceal their shapes, greasing each weapon and wrapping it in oil-cloth, then he packed them into leather traveling bags and laid them up in Peso's stall where no one would bother them. His hands were shaking when it was all done, like a criminal relieved to have a crime over and out of sight.
Dawn was still three hours away, but Josiah, thinking to get an early start, found Vin already at work. The preacher stood on the dark side of the open stable door awhile and watched him in the dim bronze light, moving quiet and unprepossessing as a ghost. The forces he'd sensed gathering around the tracker were almost palpable now, his imperturbable directness long since gone into a hard-forced calm. This would be a challenging journey on many levels, and by now Josiah both trusted that intuition and was far beyond being put off what threatened to test him. Not the dangers of the place or the questionable company or even the possibility of an Indian war, and if he knew nothing else about their taciturn tracker, he knew he was of the same mind.
Thoughtfully he watched Vin catch up his saddle, sympathetic to the pull and weight of it that wouldn't ordinarily trouble him at all. This morning, however, he had to rest it on his right knee halfway up and use his leg to keep the momentum going to get it across Peso's back. The horse did a quick-footed shift as the far fender scraped across his back, the weight jerking the saddle blanket out from under Vin's left hand on the horn and dragging it half off. A harsh swearword bit sharp into the quiet and Vin's hand got white on the pommel, the other dropping and pressing across his narrow body. He was in an awkward position and the saddle was a hair balance from sliding off the far side, but Vin just stood there, the crown of his hat grazing his black's shoulder.
"Mornin', Vin." Josiah stepped into the barn and Vin twisted around in startlement, a gasping grimace too quick to hide making Josiah wince as well. Quietly, the big preacher just stepped up beside him with a bland smile at nothing in particular, moving Vin's hand off the horn onto Peso's withers so he could swing the saddle off for him. He took his time with the blanket and ignored Vin until the tracker could let go and step out of the way, his face obscured by the long shadows cast down from the lamp hooked high on one of the main supports.
"Nice mornin', ain't it? Whyn't you sit down there a minute, Vin, get your breath, I'm enjoyin' the divine miracle of this horse giving me no trouble."
A chuff of laughter, soft and a little less breathless, made Josiah smile against Peso's warm barrel as he reached under for the cinch.
"Better give 'im a touch of knee in the belly, Josiah, hittin' the ground today will likely kill me."
Josiah's laugh echoed softly and got an answering stir of feathers from the barn swallows on the rafters. He looped the wide leather strap through the cinch rings and waited patiently until the horse had to exhale the great lungful he'd sucked in, then snapped the cinch taut with a casually powerful tug so Peso grunted and swung his big head around, ears threatening to lay back. Josiah raised one mighty fist toward that inquisitive nose and smiled with all his teeth, and the horse swung his head back like it was just too darned early for it.
Vin was smiling faintly at him over Peso's back when Josiah straightened, leaning against the far wall favoring his left side, his head tipped back apparently enjoying the show. That was enough to hearten Josiah, just that Vin was smiling and meaning it.
As he finished the saddling, Josiah tipped his head toward the enormous stack of crates and sacks and bundles inside the stable door and said,
"That the provisions?"
Vin nodded with a telling glance, "Yep."
It was an extremely large stack. Vin cocked his head at it as if puzzled. "Sure seems t'take a heap of goods t'get folks on their way nowadays."
"Need some help with it?"
A flash of wry blue eye eased Josiah considerably and he grinned widely. It seemed that having the hour at hand had settled the tracker off that razored edge he'd been treading, even if only in the pragmatic necessities. Vin wouldn't fight what couldn't be changed, but he would take hold of it with the single-minded stubbornness of every mountain man he'd ever met. 'Mountain's there', Josiah had heard many such a man say, eyes fixed beyond whatever it would take to get over it.
"Guess we'd better before our comp'ny get here." Vin said; "I reckon the Monroe brothers won't like comin' up missing their pillows n' such."
They had barely begun when Buck showed up in the doorway with J.D. at his shoulder, both of them bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Devoted libertine that he was, Buck wouldn't head off on into such an adventure with less than all his wits about him. It was about the only time he'd abstain from strong spirits and spirited women. "Oh, now - this looks like fun!" He stepped across the straw-strewn floor rubbing his hands together as his indigo eyes took in the stores with bratty anticipation. He snatched up a thick canvas bundle with an expression of innocent wonder and said,
"Now, you don't suppose them fellers was bringin' this spare tent t'sleep in themselves, do you? I'd say we need t'toughen those boys up some!"
Vin ducked his head on a truly nasty smile and Josiah's just spread contentedly.
It didn't take long, but by the time they were done, they'd discarded the second tent, all the camp-chairs and little tables, and two valises packed with nothing but men's fine linen underthings and dress shoes. Several bags of apples and onions and potatoes that would freeze and rot too quickly to make worth packing went next, and they shared an incredulous laugh over a crate of jar fruit preserves packed in straw, and another crate of tinned meats.
"Guess they don't trust us t'feed 'em, huh?" Vin said almost merrily as J.D. and Buck carted the rejected goods up to hide in the loft. Buck was already expounding on the possible scenarios when these goods turned up missing and J.D., thrilled to be in on the joke this time, was laughing at him so hard he nearly fell down the ladder.
Methodically Vin and Josiah shifted through all the bundles, boxes and crates, discarding everything but four dutch ovens, a nested set of cast iron skillets and another set of pots with covers, a tripod and hooks for the cook-fire, cooking utensils and an assortment of knives suitable for dressing game packed with a white pine cutting board. These they secured into two galvanized tubs that could be used for bathing or washing and canvassed them over against anyone checking the contents prematurely. A set of basins suitable for washing up and shaving or bread-making, a couple of tin pails and a larger one to heat wash water, ground tarps and coils of ropes, two large enamel-ware coffee pots and half the washcloths and towels.
"These'll be nice, won't they?" Buck grinned, enjoying the luxuriant softness of expensive cotton toweling against his newly shaved cheek, "Nice of 'em t'bring enough for us all - while I'll have t'thank 'em personal after my first shave on the trail!" Cackling to imagine that. Ruthlessly they pared the stack down to half its former size, and still it had far more than Vin or Josiah alone would ever carry.
Chris and Nathan showed up while they were about it and the noise went up another notch, lamplight coming up in some windows in the nearby buildings as the town woke at last.
"Ezra out of his featherbed yet?" Chris asked, and was answered by Buck's scoffing guffaw, the five of them moving more quickly to hide the rest of the brother's goods and pack what remained outside to be loaded. The mules stood patiently in the silvery light, long ears flopping curiously.
J.D. went about gathering his farrier's tools with self-conscious confidence. A heavy leather bag for spare shoes, another with hasps and hoof files, nippers and nails and hammers, and small one for linement and ointments for strains or cuts or cold cracks, a tin-can full of coal tar. He'd spent yesterday tarring the outside and oiling the frogs of one-hundred and twelve horse and mule hooves against the dry cold, and just when he thought nobody would ever notice, Chris said;
"Damn lot of hooves, J.D." A tersely approving nod; "Less trouble doin' it here than on the trail, though."
It was all J.D. could do to keep working and pretend it was no big thing, but a deep giveaway flush of pleasure climbed his cheeks and ears.
"I figured so." He said, his voice low and firm, focused on his work and missing the grins flickering among the men. Vin had been teaching him how to put a thing to long thought, and he was pleased with the results. So were they.
Fifteen mules gazed placidly at them as they emerged into corral and the chilly damp of grey dawn. Pack trees made a neat stack of 'X's against the wall, and Vin picked up one of many canvas straps draped over them and examined it curiously, conserving his strength in letting the rest haul the goods out except for those he would pack himself. Trying not to worry that his back hurt like blazes and his hip ached under the wide gunbelt and the weight of his mare's leg, he ran the canvas straps through his hands. Obviously meant to lay across the mules' backs, they had little pockets stitched into the ends to hold the ends of the cross-pieces, which would bear the weight up off their backs enough to prevent rubbing and move the center of gravity down, like a man standing in his stirrups. He looked up with admiration in the squint of his eyes and J.D. grinned ear to ear.
"Kid's got a lot in him nobody knows about, don't he." Buck opined with a benevolent and brotherly air, proud affection generous on his face. Vin didn't answer but for a glance that shared pride the kid learning and earning his place. They watched him loading one of the mules as the last of the grain bags was brought out, wondering when he'd notice the rest were going for breakfast, and Buck said, "Beautiful diamond hitches he's tyin'. I taught 'im knots."
"Few too many, though, ain't there?" Chris asked as he passed behind them silent as a wraith, and Buck protested as he turned to follow on Chris's heels, one long hand dismissing the rat's nest of perfect knots J.D. was presently fighting with,
"Well, what else is he gonna do with all that extra rope?"
Chris was still making suggestions on that subject as they trooped into the boarding house dining room, their boots reverberating against the wooden planks and spurs ringing. Vin half-clogged the doorway as he saw the Monroe brothers, Judge and Mary Travis, Elizabeth that that Julianna girl, already at the far end of the laden table.
"Well, lookee who's up with the chickens!" Buck shouldered by and one by one they all did, Chris grabbed Vin's elbow on his way past and propelled him into the room, seeing where his eyes locked and pretty sure he knew why. Sarah, too, had a sister nearly as beautiful as she was, and it made his thoughts run in forbidden ways to be in her company. Sometimes the temptation was strong to be lost in what was so like the thing that killed a man to miss.
The sight of that girl was a hard thing, yet Vin's eyes returned there in the instant of his inattention. Ruthlessly he pulled them away from her, focusing on planning the loading he was going to have to do himself - and show no trouble with it, so they didn't try to help him and maybe wonder what sort of trade goods he had that were so heavy. He wanted to smack the smugness off Stephen Monroe's face, wanted to lay out his treacheries in the light of day and have Duley's vengeance done. But it was deeper than that, he knew, reached further, and sure as his suspenders buttoned they'd wiggle away if he wasn't patient. Travis would need proof, and he had none beyond his own suspicions and the pressing need to make things right for Duley.
Elizabeth smiled warmly as they came to the table, heartened in their bold ready noise, in the sheer size and breadth and boldness of motion they transformed the quiet room like an arriving force of nature. Tanner moved behind them like a shadow, unsmiling, without looking at any of them though his eyes were bright.
They were wearing chaps and long duster coats that swirled around them in heavy sweeps, buckskin gloves and bandanas and belts lined with gleaming cartridges. They looked capable and rough and able in ways perfectly suited to the wild country ahead, and there was an energy between them that Elizabeth felt like a fortress she could feel safe within.
Stephen had railed and sulked for hours last night, but it had been an unexpected and gratifying surprise to have James prove her ally in insisting on the need for the seven. She was also surprised by James' seeming good opinion of the seven, and for the first time she heard him voice serious misgivings about this trip with uncharacteristic force. Eventually Stephen had to concede that Gerald would not be forgiving if they endangered his daughter against the advice of an Official of Mr. Travis' rank. There was hope for James yet, she thought, her eyes warming on him.
Beside her, Julianna all but squirmed with glee, her heart beating a rapid tattoo inside her ribs that was more excitement than she'd ever in her life had to contain. That sly gunslinger with the amazing range of smiles plopped himself down beside her Uncle Stephen with a friendly slap on the back that made him slosh hot coffee across his knuckles, and while her Uncle fumbled with the cup awkwardly, the smiling man - grinning now - drove a fork into the biggest steak on the platter and winked at her as she held a giggle in. Oh, this was going to be fun!
Thanks to Josiah and Nathan, who insisted to her Aunt that her safety and health depended on properly protective clothing, she had on sturdy canvas pants and thermal underwear and thick wool socks with red heels and toes, she had a flannel shirt in forest green and a coat lined in sheepskin and her boots and a hat, a broad brimmed fawn colored hat with no decoration but a leather band. She felt like a reverse butterfly emerging from a chrysalis with all the fragile fancy colors morphed into sturdy and durable earth-tones. As she had packed away her dresses and petticoats and the hundred pieces of a proper lady's costume, she had packed away her old self as well and she was very ready to see what this new Jules would see.
The six men were there to eat, and they sat down and proceeded to do so with the forwardness of men having hours of work behind them before the other diners at this table had lifted their heads off their pillows. Noisily they helped themselves, tucking into steaks and potatoes and corn-meal mush, loaves of bread and stacks of flap-jacks disappearing off the serving dishes like magic. She'd thought the landlady foolish to set so much out, but the woman had laughed at her raised eyebrows when the platters and bowls and baskets filled the long table, and advised them to get to it before the seven arrived or go hungry themselves. Her Uncles had to scramble to get the two thinnest steaks and the bottom of the potato bowl.
"Gentlemen ..." Travis said in that voice that could command with one word. "What time do you think we'll be departing?"
"An hour." Chris said shortly, glancing up at him, "Soon as we finish loadin' the mules."
"Guess that means I better go wake Ezra ..." Nathan rose from the table with a long-suffering sigh, taking a water pitcher to hand as he went that caused a ripple of mirth among his fellows for which they offered no explanation.
"I haven't quite finished packing yet." Stephen declared, and that gunslinger's eyes flickered his way, what might have been a smile obscured by a little twirl of his fork.
"An hour, Mister Monroe. N' you've got your mounts t'saddle and outfit." He let Stephen take in the breath to protest and then fixed him with a cold still look that forcefully reminded them how much more he was than a bodyguard. "Out here, a man takes care of his own mount, Monroe." And that was that, he was a man or he wasn't and neither money nor name paid any freight here.
Stephen felt their expectant eyes on him, read the humor and the teeth in it, and forced the semblance of a reasonable smile, grudgingly convinced that confrontation would be seriously counterproductive. It didn't matter; his time would come.
"Of course, Mister Larabee, we will be ready."
Chris smiled, and it might have been thought friendly except that a couple of them seemed to have a hard time swallowing just then.
For once in her life Jules had no appetite whatever. Food seemed to get stuck in her throat and even milk seemed too thick to get around the excitement dancing in her stomach. The smell of coffee was the only thing that tempted her, and she wangled a cup by nodding at the landlady as she passed with the pot so her Aunt's empty cup was refilled. It wasn't too hard, in the reach of hands and passing of plates like barges going by at eye level, to slide the cup conveniently near for quick sips when no one was looking. She liked it bitter and black and hot because that's the way the hands in the quarters drank it.
She couldn't see Tanner without craning around her Uncle and she thought, a little hurt, that he'd done that on purpose, and that he left before the rest had even finished loading their plates, through the back with a cup of coffee and a piece of bread in his hand. He wouldn't be able to avoid her on the trail, and she intended to be right in the middle of their laughter and bluster.
The others left not fifteen minutes later, their going out as raucous as their coming in, and the room seemed to shrink and tame in their absence.
To be continued...
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