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:
By the time the Monroes arrived to saddle their mounts, a little train of men carrying valises and bundles in their wake, the pack mules were nearly loaded and Vin was putting the last knot on his packs. A row of saddled horses stood fidgeting as the other six finished their outfitting, lashing buffalo robes and saddle bags down and rolling their eyes at Ezra as he slapped leather and yanked knots with unconcealed ill temper, hair still wet and a constant insulted stream of twenty-dollar words entertaining them.
The line of shifting haunches and tossing heads included Mary's bay, a tall roan for Elizabeth, and Casey Wells' own sure-footed paint, the very horse Julianna had ridden that day at the Wells' farm, and the girl slithered out from under her Aunt's restraining hand to dash towards it with unabashed delight.
The Monroe brothers exchanged a sour glance at the three horses that remained unsaddled, and Judge Travis lowered a dark droll look at Chris that was answered with a shrug and a slanted grin. Couldn't very well be doing him any courtesies when they weren't supposed to know him. Travis snorted and shook his head, knowing he'd been had, and Buck, leaning long and lanky against his horse, tossed the old man a devilish grin that said it wouldn't be the last time, either.
Orrin hefted the saddle off the fence knowing Buck was watching for wobbles, maybe expecting him to drop it entirely, and this sly opinion that he was too old for it stirred something in Orrin that hadn't stirred in a very long time. He set his jaw and swung that saddle in a perfect arch of stirrup and fenders and belly-band and settled it neat as you please on the bay's back. One dark gnarled eyebrow raised at Buck as he went for the belly band, which Buck acknowledged with a tip of fingers to his hat-brim. Buck sort of intended to see just what Travis was made of out there, but he was distracted now by the prospect of more immediate fun in the line of baggage carriers trundling after the Monroes. He stepped right into it with a wide congenial smile and that sweet tone that made all his friends look around to see who was getting it this time.
"Why, let us give you a hand there, boys!" He called cheerfully, waving Nathan and J.D. on over to help, and the Monroes were too used to service to follow the direction of their valises as they were passed clean over the mule's backs and directly into the barn.
Judge Travis hid his smiles in the work of saddling, satisfied to have swung the heavy thing up competently and not daring even glance at Mary, who was had a clear vantage of the barn and was on the barest edge of hilarity as she watched J.D. and Buck scurrying in and out of the barn wheezing with hushed hilarity. There would undoubtedly be hell to pay later from the arrogant brothers Monroe, but even Elizabeth turned away with a smile bursting onto her face upon seeing what was going on under her brother's noses.
Travis liked Elizabeth, one of those soft-mannered women with iron underneath, and he was glad she and Mary had seemed to strike up a tentative friendship over planning meals and stores. Just now they stood together assessing the loaded mules suspiciously, and Travis snorted again - it had already occurred to the women that they might be missing some things themselves out on the trail.
"J.D.!" Vin turned to the call as well, not surprised to see Nettie on Casey's arm. He'd intended to go see her before they left, to say good-bye, but he'd been putting it off and he didn't want to look at why. As soon as Casey saw him coming, she abdicated responsibility for Nettie and ran past him to fling herself into J.D., who caught her with an audible grunt and a bright-eyed grin.
Today J.D. didn't mind her enthusiasm, didn't get flustered or clumsy. Today he was a man bidding farewell to his girl and he did so with a resounding kiss that stunned Casey, scandalized the Monroes, and set the boys to hootin' and teasing. Casey's face was flushed and wondering as he let her go, and the light in J.D.'s amber eyes made her warm down to her bones. Very warm.
Flustered and dreamy-eyed, she hardly noticed Jules tugging her across the paddock to thank her for the loan of her spare horse.
Nettie reached for Vin's hand as he neared, waiting in the street for him and smiling in his direction. The tracker's throat closed up unexpectedly the instant he touched her, he couldn't speak and his fingers were too tight, but only Chris saw what would have chased Nettie's smile off if she'd had her sight. Naked love in Vin's angled face, eyes wide with it, aching and plain like it was the last time he would ever see her. Chris felt a chill tickle up his own spine and denied it in knotting the latigo so tight he'd have trouble with it tonight.
Nettie's arm crept around Vin's waist under the warmth under his coat and hugged gently, mistaking his hard flinch for surprise at the overt expression of affection. But Vin hadn't felt such a touch since he'd been very small, and it was worth any hurt that came with it. The spread of her hand on his back in the privacy of his coat moved with motherly comfort, and he closed his eyes a second and just felt that, reining in what would alarm her to hear in his voice or feel in his body.
"You feelin' any better, Nettie?" He said when he gathered enough breath to speak, and his voice was steady. She removed her hand from the beat of his heart with a reassuring pat and answered the question he hadn't asked.
"It's better t'day than yesterday, Vin, and that better than the day before, don't concern yourself. Nathan says my eyes should be good as new inside a week or so."
A tremble ran through his arm under her hand and she encouraged it to be relief.
"Don't you scandalize Miz Potter overmuch." He said, and she squeezed his arm with a wicked chuckle and replied,
"Don't fret yourself, she can take it. It's me you should worry about anyway, all that fussin' and tryin' t'slip castor oil into me any way she can, the woman's plumb religious about that nasty stuff. Now, come on, you take me on over there so I can see the boys off - " A twinkle in her voice; "In a manner of speakin' ..."
With a twitch of a smile, Vin covered the hand she had tucked into his elbow with his as he walked her through the open paddock gate. He wished he could tell her, give it all into her sage old hands and be sure he was doing right. But some roads a body had to walk unspoken of, and this was one.
Jules, J.D. and Casey walked the line of pack mules as he checked the chain of tack a little self-importantly, tugging on the loads to be sure they were balanced. Manly as he was trying to be, however, excitement bounced among them like children on Christmas morning. Casey's face was eloquent with longing, and Buck noticed with a small private smile that the kid made a point of teasing and touching her, generous with a depth of feeling he usually tried to conceal.
J.D. would take a lead of twelve mules, and the other three were packed with a little bit of everything in case the train was lost somehow, Josiah would lead them today. It meant J.D. would be eating dust off a lot of horses, but it was a responsibility he was proud as a peacock of. Wait'll they found out he'd taken the initiative and wired ahead to the whistle-stop to have provisions for the horses waiting, everything taken care of smooth as silk.
When the brothers had finished saddling and everyone had their leads in hand, Chris took a long assessing look around the corral, unsettled to find himself looking down the street as well at the town whose walls and rooms and folks he'd come to know. Some of those folks had stopped in their sweeping, paused in the opening their businesses for the day to watch the party taking leave. Some even raised hands and faint good wishes, and he didn't know what to make of that.
"Well?" He said, his quiet voice calling to order and setting authority that he dared the Monroe brothers to challenge.
Josiah took off his hat and looked into the arched rim of the sun rising over the distant mountains.
"Lord," He said, with that reaching resonance in his voice his friends knew, taking their hats off one by one. Vin bowed his head, the breeze taking tendrils of his hair, giving thanks that his gloves kept the chill in him from Nettie's knowing.
"We're settin' off into this glorious day n' ask your blessing on our enterprise, Lord." The younger Monroe brother doffed his hat with hesitant reverence, but Stephen only glared, refusing to give this crude barbarian the respect due a true man of God. Josiah smiled, unoffended, and delivered the verse directly.
"'Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil."
He turned toward the brothers with a telling look that made the hairs on the back of Stephen's neck stand straight up. "'For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.' Amen." (Ephesians 6:10-13).
When he was finished, the brothers turned to mount, exchanging an uneasy glance at the coincidence of that verse ... at least they both profoundly hoped it was coincidence, surely these uncouth outlaws could have no inkling about their private business. Both were also surprised to find themselves the focus of the tracker's fierce attention, blue eyes blazing with a fury they knew no cause for, and Stephen's eyes narrowed in cold thought.
Josiah could not have chosen a verse that resounded more truly in Vin's soul, and that saw the devil in front of him in two auburn-haired brothers was apparent in his expression. Though he was still holding her hand on his arm, Nettie's voice at his shoulder startled him.
"Vin, I'd like t'say good-bye to Mary, then you get on about your business." Almost dismissing him, but her hand searching lightly up his chest as she spoke to lay a moment, cool and tender, on his cheek. "Keep your wits about you, boy." She said, just as she had that day on the porch and with the same iron will.
"I'll try t'do just that, Nettie." Trying to put everything else into those few words, into the treasuring grasp of his hands. "Here's Mary ..." Nettie felt her hand being passed into those of Mary Travis and the unexpected brush of Vin's whiskered jaw as the tracker kissed her cheek gently.
"Be seein' ya, Nettie."
"I'm countin' on that, son."
Buck swept Julianna up onto her horse with a gleeful whoop, his eyes sparkling to hear the bright run of her laughter and friendly hands tickling to hear it again. She liked him, and she swatted at him to show it.
When Chris stepped up into the saddle, all six went up after him like a great flock of leathered birds taking wing. Vin looked easy, but Peso danced under the momentary imbalance of his weight; it was the first time he'd been mounted since he'd been hurt and right away he could tell riding was going be trying. With a nod at Chris, his face blank, he wheeled the big black and let him go out onto the road to ride trail ahead.
Elizabeth startled to feel Nettie's hand on her wrist as she took her turn after Mary on the block to mount, held in place by that grip as the old woman shooed her niece back of earshot.
"Woman," Nettie said, like a steel blade was in her blinded hand, "You want t'stay alive, you obey any one of those seven men like they was the voice of God Himself, you hear me? Don't ask what or why, don't stop t'argue, just do as they tell you, if you got a lick of common sense."
Touched by this apparent concern, Elizabeth hastened to assure her; "Why, I intend to trust them implicitly, I'm sure ..."
Nettie Wells' chin dimpled deeply and the pale palm of her hand flashed near enough to Elizabeth's face to make her think she could see. Immediately she realized her welfare was not Nettie's concern at all.
"Any of them come t'harm on account of foolhardiness or treachery, n' I'll not rest 'til I know the reason why, and have whatever justice is due. Mark my words."
That she meant every one and would find a way to carry them out if need be Elizabeth never doubted for an instant, dumbfounded by the vehemence of her voice. Such deep distrust could only mean deep affection, and Elizabeth reached out to touch the woman's shawled shoulder before she realized she might startle her with her sudden touch.
But Nettie was beyond startlement, fixed and focused on this woman Vin had looked at like he was dying, this woman who might have true feelings for him that would only bring ruin. Life on this frontier made a body trust instinct and intuition, and she was keen to the danger in the silence and unease of him who was always easy and guileless at her side as if she'd brought him up at her knee.
"Hurt him at your peril." Without having to say who.
The terrain turned out to be far more unpredictable than it seemed at their outset, the gentle undulations of winter-dry brush and crusted soil surprised Elizabeth with unexpected valleys and rough terrain. She realized with a little foreboding that this ride would not be a pleasant ramble, but would require true exercise of her horsemanship.
The horizon they rode toward described a flat dun margin behind which rose a rising series of mountain ranges in progressively fading shades of blue. The sky was pale and cloudless and crisp, and they moved at a brisk walk, the pack mules trailing out behind J.D. There was no snow on the ground, though everything seemed to have had the life sucked out of it by the winter just passing.
Mary and Elizabeth rode together in companionable quiet a few yards behind the brothers, Judge Travis and Julianna, and they exchanged a scornful glance when Stephen offered the opinion that westerners did not know how to sit a horse, their form was atrocious. Indeed, Elizabeth had noticed that all the seven laid deep into their saddles, and at a walk would sometimes bend one leg up around the outside of the horn or lean their forearms there. Buck spent an hour leaning back on one hand splayed on his gray's croup in a lazy lounge, but Elizabeth had never seen seven men more suited to horseback. Casual as they looked, recklessly loose, Elizabeth noted that no move their mounts made - and some were not particularly tractable animals - off-balanced them, and they rode without stopping except for a few minutes for a quick lunch from a basket she and Mary had prepared. She wished Vin, who was ranging ahead and evidently not expected back before nightfall, was there, or had taken something with him, he seemed a shade pale and drawn to her, though no one else seemed to notice.
Periodically throughout the day, Chris, Buck, Nathan and Ezra peeled off to one side or the other, ranging even a few miles behind for no reason the Monroe brothers could discern, and no attempt was made to enlighten them. Vin had made a vague suggestion about the provisions maybe tempting outlaws on their backtrail, and it was possible enough for Chris to set them in rotating guards.
By the time the shadows were stretching off in thin ripples to their right, both of her brothers had lost their erect postures and spent more time standing in their stirrups than was necessary. She didn't laugh, it'd been years since either had spent all day horsed - but Lord, she wanted to, and Mary, it seemed, did too. She smiled at the fair-haired woman and it was a bright smile, her face flushed and dusty, but Mary realized Elizabeth was actually having a very good time, and relishing the challenge and the wide open space. It was good to spend time in another woman's company again, an intelligent and admirable woman.
Jules, forced to remain at a sedate walk beside her Uncles and Mary's father, the Indian Bureau man, was by that time too bored to be anything but sullen. She'd had been an extremely disappointing day! Nobody had talked to her except to order her around, her Uncles wouldn't let her ride where she wanted to in the line and kept a haughty space between their family and 'those ruffians' she desperately wanted to be among. They were talking, laughing together even as they worked, they went when they wanted and got some wind in their hair while she plodded along like she was on a donkey instead of this goer of a mare who wanted to be let loose. Mr. Wilmington had even asked if she wanted to ride along with him and that nice black man when they'd gone off a few hours ago, but her Uncle Stephen - probably seeing how much she wanted to do that - had refused with an icy look, like they'd asked if they could leave her body the buzzards somewhere. She'd dared to stick her tongue out at him, knowing he wouldn't try to strike her with her Aunt near and figuring it was worth keeping out of his reach for a few days.
When they rode off, at least enough to let her know they wished she could've come along, Uncle Stephen had insisted to Uncle James quietly that he was certain there were outlaws and murderers among them, his hand touching the pistol he wore at his hip meaningfully. Jules rolled her eyes - as if he'd dare try to draw against any of them!
On an impulse, because the boredom was too much and she wanted to remind her pompous Uncles just how little they knew compared to the seven, she asked, "Uncle Stephen, when are we going to see the Indians?"
Her Uncle turned to her with that authoritarian attitude that made her want to kick his shins black and blue, and remonstrated her;
"Julianna, you should pray you do not see them at all unless you don't like your hair where it is. I imagine a scalp of that color would be as appealing as a bit of bright glass to a crow ..." That scornful voice he only used with children, as if they should be silent and invisible until they were grown, she scowled openly at him and didn't care what he thought.
"Stephen, that isn't necessary." Elizabeth objected, but her brother only turned an indulgent and paternalistic smile over his shoulder as if she, too, were a child needing his protection and correction. Mary's sympathies were roused at once - Lord, she hated men like that! Like women were cows put on earth for his use!
J.D., trailing last in line and just about as bored as Jules was, legged up closer to Josiah for some conversation. "Josiah, are those Indians up where we're goin' the same as down here?"
Josiah looked over at him soberly to gauge his purpose, since J.D. had never been anything but leery of the local tribes and made no secret of being put off by their diet and habits and the way they lived. Then again, Vin had been talking to him some, and the kid was showing a sense of responsibility that maybe meant he was growing up some.
J.D. started to drop back when the preacher didn't answer right away, but when he saw no impatience in Josiah's pale blue eyes, he realized he was thinking how to answer the question and not that the question was stupid. Josiah tipped his head back thoughtfully and said,
"Well, J.D. ... the only Indians you know are Seminole, and they're a long way from home in a mighty strange place. They got driven halfway across the continent from Florida, and that's a place different as night and day from the west. They're rivermen without a river, bayou hunters without the crops or prey they know. Take any man out of what he knows and he has to start from stratch, find out what's edible, what can be grown and how. Folks suffer ... eat skunks and such." A sideways grin, not needing to look at the kid to know he got red.
Mary, who had been listening, dropped back, her curiosity aroused. The seven seldom spoke of the nations, though she was sure several of them had experience with tribes beyond the pitiful remnants trapped on the dusty reservation near Four Corners. It was information she needed to write a balanced editorial, and maybe now that they were going into the lions' den, as it were, some of them would share what they knew of the lions. Josiah touched his fingers to the wide flat brim of his hat.
"Please, go on, Josiah." She said, "I'd like to know what to expect as well."
"Then expect that the savages who impede our progress across the continent will be removed within five years!" Stephen Monroe interrupted flippantly over his shoulder, surveying the vast landscape like a disapproving monarch seeing only emptiness and waste.
"Mr. Monroe, that is hardly an attitude that speaks well of us. We have a responsibility to advance the progress of the natives, not plow them under." Mary retorted, stung by his smugness.
Jules perked up - not many women barked back at her Uncle, but Mrs. Travis didn't seem to back down to much of anything. The gunslinger in the black pants and duster coat was mad that Mrs. Travis was coming along, but the lady just smiled at him and did what she wanted like he wasn't the scariest man she'd ever met. Uncle Stephen smiled at the Travis woman now and Jules knew what that smarmy sort of smile meant - she was beautiful, but she was being allowed too much freedom and needed a strong man to occupy her away from her hobby. That was Uncle Stephen's opinion of any woman who dared breathe without a man's permission.
When Mary returned her attention to Josiah, she found him regarding her as though she had disappointed him somehow, and she flushed under that steady regard, embarrassed and confused.
"Miz Travis, and Misters Monroe, with respect - " Josiah said, taking on a subtle air of authority himself in raising his voice to include them, "J.D.'s got the right of it to wonder. The Seminoles are the only experience he has with the tribes, Mary too ... and you, Misters Monroe, have not even that." He nodded at Mary with enough of a smile to ease the sting of his criticism, and said, "Your defense of them is good-hearted, Ma'am, but none of you have ever seen the people of the nations in their own kingdom."
This smile was more difficult to read, but no less genuine as he said, "And I am looking forward to your meeting. In answer to you, Mister Dunne, the camps I expect we'll encounter are quite a bit different than the one you know, and I'd advise you to try not to let your mouth run away with your brain up there, where they haven't been forced to learn patience with callow youths. These are not a conquered people, and they have walked this continent for thousands of years without changing any of it. Built no cities, except them that dwelt in the cliffs, carved no roads, fenced nothing. And they are the most civilized people I have ever met, kind and humble and fierce and loyal to death."
Stephen, twisted around and listening with an increasingly appalled sneer, finally burst out, "Are you serious, Mister Sanchez? Surely you're only playing Devil's Advocate to amuse us, yes?"
He turned an incredulous look at his brother for his agreement, but found him looking back with that warning tip of his head that was becoming extremely annoying. It seemed that his baby brother was trying to grow himself a pair out here in the west, and might need a good knockdown before too long. He dismissed James and went on; "Can you honestly believe these ... these barbarians represent any sort of superiority over us? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! I will never understand the propensity of weak-minded men to romanticize these savages! They live like irresponsible and bloodthirsty children, they're shiftless and aimless, they kill and steal from each other, they torture and murder helpless white women and enslave our young!"
James' horse jumped under him nervously, J.D.'s expression built hope in Jules that the big man would light into her Uncle and take him down a peg, maybe even shoot at him if he made him mad enough. It'd been a damned boring day and the preacher's burly shoulders had risen as her Uncle had spouted off, anger striking deep in his eyes. But instead he smiled. He had the biggest, whitest teeth.
Mary thought she knew him, however, and had no such expectations. Josiah was slow to anger as only men possessing great physical strength needed to be, and she suspected that power had slipped his leash in the past to regretfully disastrous result. He would try to persuade by logical discussion rather than violence. Not that he wasn't perfectly capable of astonishing brutality, but she didn't think he would use it where persuasion might work.
Stephen saw only disrespectful defiance, and for an instant his hands fisted with the urge to wheel his horse around. But there were seven of them; still, it was not his nature to let a challenge go unanswered.
"How can you purport to be a man of God and yet harbor sympathies for savages who have committed appalling atrocities against us? We've only tried to bring them a better life, educate them, civilize them, bring them out of the darkness!"
To Jules disappointment, the preacher only leaned back in his saddle and laid his wrists across the broad horn. J.D. thought he looked about as peaceable as a cougar.
"Pardon me for saying so, Mister Monroe, but you never seen an Indian in your life, and it shows. All you know about the nations is what you've read in your eastern papers."
"And I assume you question their veracity?" Mary had no qualms about inserting herself into the conversation despite the edges both men were showing - this was her profession and not one she enjoyed having scorned.
"Question it? I know what lies have been told, and the majority of eastern publications, the majority of military reports, are instruments of a government that wants to exterminate, not educate."
Mary's mouth opened, her eyebrows swooped downward, but before she could protest the efforts of responsible journalists, Stephen declared stoutly,
"I don't believe it for one moment! My brother represents that government, Mister Sanchez, and he is a man of stature therein, deserving respect for his position and sacrifices for his country! I refuse to be subjected to the scorn of a man hardly more civilized than the brutes he defends!"
Even J.D. halfway expected Josiah to reach over and knock Stephen's head off, but he only rocked in a deep quiet rhythm with the walk of his horse and watched Stephen wait for the outburst that never came. Finally Stephen peeled away in a huff. The younger Monroe brother, who had said nothing but had observed the exchange with careful neutrality, did not move away, since it seemed Elizabeth and Julianna would not. He had no wish to be alone in Stephen's company just now.
Mary's brow creased as she thought about how to say what she wanted to say without sounding patronizing and superior. "Josiah, is something that never changes necessarily better? Does the quality of their lives improve, do the things that plague them find cure? Or do they only remain forever as they are, like insects in amber, while the rest of the world sweeps over them? Progress is coming, it won't be stopped, they have to find a place among us."
"Like I said, Mary, your intentions are good, but you're talking about a way of doing and they're talking about a way of being, and you're assuming your way to be right simply because you're in the majority. What if they're as far ahead of us in their communion with this world as a frog to a tadpole?"
Ezra, who had come up behind them and was listening with a sardonic smile, shook his head but said nothing. Virginia folks would never accept equality of any kind with the native peoples and Josiah was a fool if he thought otherwise. It was all the good brothers Monroe could do to tolerate Nathan's presence. He frowned, wondering why on God's green earth that should bother him as it did.
Elizabeth, however, was astonished at how similar Josiah's ideas were to those Duley had so often expressed, but she understood it now no better than she had then. A way of being, Duley had said, not simply living upon the world, but living with it in a fundamental partnership. A world with a life of its own.
Josiah said reasonably, "Isn't enlightenment what we all seek, perfect understanding of the world and our own place upon it? Of God? Who's to say that means cities and roads and everything that makes us comfortable without considering the cost to our mother earth? To say nothing of what we might have lost of our humanity in assuming possession of the natural world? It doesn't belong to us, Mary, we are its stewards and caretakers, but it doesn't belong to us."
It was an elegant philosophy Mary understood all the seven to hold in some degree, comfortable in risk and breathtakingly free to act on their impulses - but it was a way that had to change. The people who were coming from cities and towns all over the east would fear the threat of such fearless men just as they did the wildness of the land they coveted. It often made her sad that she couldn't imagine any of them settling down, being content with placid routines. Tigers in small dull cages spending the end of their days as curiosities to people who could never understand the life that had required them to remain untamed. She imagined Josiah viewed his Indian friends the same way, and that bit of understanding softened a place in her she hadn't realized was so rigid.
"But it will come, Josiah." For the first time, Judge Travis made himself heard, and the words fell on Josiah's heart like stones. He knew that as well as Vin did. He looked at his hands a moment, knowing it even without having spent near the time Vin had among the tribes. And he thought about his own feelings magnified in that greater familiarity; he had always, himself, been a white man among them, welcomed and respected and having good friends, but a white man. Vin, on the other hand ... he had the feeling that Vin had been one of them, and what acts might such loyalties provoke?
"Auntie, look ..." Jules reined up sharply, pointing and focused across the plain about an acre away where an eagle stooped sharply, striking at prey on the ground and rising with powerful strokes holding the long body of a desert hare in strong talons. They all turned to watch, but Josiah, moved by the unexpected object lesson, was most interested in Mary's reactions. On the elegantly beautiful planes of her face, in the deep-feeling blue of her expressive eyes, admiration for the wild fierce beauty of the hunter, and yet sympathy and grief for the rabbit it took. She loved what was untamed about the west, recognized and celebrated the unfettered spirit that had met the demands and paid the price of conquering it, but she needed it to be safe for her child and for the families would inevitably, inexorably, come.
He thought she grasped the lesson in the example of cycles of life as she turned to him with those wide, straightforwardly earnest eyes. An honest and passionate writer no matter how naÔve, intelligent enough to seek the truth and courageous enough to do so without thought of the powerful forces she so often contradicted. And she had, in her newspaper and in her growing reputation in the east, a voice that could reach a wider audience ...
Judge Travis watched the preacher examine Mary's face, looking for what he, himself, believed she had in her that he suspected might be of more lasting value in the long run than even his own works. She had the same dedication to justice that had burned in his son - but whether it was devotion to the cause or to Stephen's memory remained to be proven. Deep in thought, he spurred ahead to engage the younger Monroe brother in conversation, and he was received with a relieved smile. This one had been uncomfortable at every hint of confrontation, and the Judge intended to find out whether it was a weakness of character or a cunning concealment.
Vin topped the rise with a grunt of discomfort as Peso yanked his head free, knowing by now his rider was infirm, and impatient with the slow pace. Tightening his legs made Vin's left hip go hot with pain, and hauling back on the reins woke a twinge that made him jerk his head down from the view into his own chest, biting off hard breaths.
What had been an ache had long since begun to hurt like blue blazes, and when he'd finally stood in the stirrups to ease his back and hip, Peso had taken it for a signal to run. Since he wasn't a horse who tolerated confusing signals, he'd consequently fallen into a jarring trot that made Vin stop entirely, bent low over the horn with the reins fisted tight and hissing threats that would have made a large and well-armed man run for cover. He still didn't quite have his breath back from that, and now the damned horse was fighting him for the bit.
Cursing softly, he finally managed to keep him in, anxious at how long it'd taken him to scout this far past the camp-site he'd chosen. Not likely he'd make it back before dark, which could work for him in the shape he was in. It wasn't a camp a man on his own would use, but a party this size with this many good guns among them made it right comfortable, set as it was among a loose stand of cottonwoods with a creek nearby for washing and cooking - and for cover and escape, did they end up needing that, too. He felt Wittinger at his back like something cold and slimy, it was a nagging worry that presently had him in a mood to remove it by the simple expedience of hunting the bastard down and shooting him between his beady eyes.
Troubled him to hurt like this, with watches to stand and another day to ride before they got onto the relative comfort of the train, far too much at stake to let anyone see the vulnerability. With a deep sigh, he turned Peso back down the flank of the ridge, thoughts dark as a moonless night. He had to find a way to prove his suspicions and he had no idea how by himself, whatever papers he might steal would be all but useless to a man who took a day to figure out a single paragraph. Galled him something fierce, that did, smart as he knew he was and yet without something even stupid men had.
He took a mule deer halfway back to the camp, a clean shot and Peso holding still under threat of the spurs he'd finally resorted to, and he took a numb kind of comfort in being able to at least provide for the rest. But for the first time in his life the hot tang of blood as he bled it out, the look and feel of entrails and the wet crack of bones made him nauseous. He wasted half his canteen in a thorough soaping of his hands when he was through.
Chris, Buck and Nathan had gone ahead to set the camp, and the glimmer of a campfire from a mile away guided Josiah and the mule-train toward it. With the setting sun pacing the tired end of their day's trail, Josiah began educating Mary, and J.D. and Jules came up close as well to hear. He might have tried to ease into it, but Stephen Monroe chose that moment to rejoin them, his handsome face set in rigidly refusing angles.
Without preamble, then, Josiah began as they rode at a walk toward the camp. "Mary, let me tell you something of the people you will meet, of their lives and their dreams and their hopes. And let me start with the story of one chief of the Cheyenne, and how this wise and peaceable man came to die." The words seemed to spin up from some deep rich loom of history that gathered them all close in warm coils of tone and timbre.
Elizabeth and Mary, J.D. and Julianna rode close by, Ezra keeping watch behind where he, too, could hear, though he did not give away his interest in the slightest. It behooved a man to know what to expect in strange lands, and Ezra was all for preparedness when it was his scalp involved.
"About ten years ago in a place called Sand Creek, there was a massacre of Cheyenne Indians ..."
"I know about that, Josiah - " Mary interjected, hoping to improve her standing in Josiah's eyes and a bit ashamed of the impulse, but she had to let him know she was not so naÔve as he seemed to think - and she wanted to let Stephen Monroe know the same thing. "It is one of the reasons Colorado will not achieve statehood any time soon, and it is not something any person of conscience is proud of."
Stephen made a scoffing sound, which everyone ignored.
"Then I wish there were more persons of conscience, Mary, in a position to learn from such mistakes." With a very pointed look: "Unfortunately, such persons are few and far between, and not likely to be heard in the rush to steal what has been stewarded by the nations since the beginning of time. There were over one hundred women and children killed at Sand Creek - "
"Oh, please - as if we're utterly uninformed! There were four hundred warriors slain who had been attacking innocent settlers for months!" Stephen interjected, and the quick hostile dart of Josiah's pale blue eyes set him back.
"The eastern press has never tried to confirm what military sources report, Mister Monroe." Josiah's voice rose, anger flaring so the horses nearest him skittered away and back and again. "Did they say how many soldiers were killed by their own hung-over brethren in the cross-fire? Did they say that these civilized men, these protectors of the frontier, mutilated the fallen Cheyenne as no Indian ever would, down to babes in arms? My friend One Eye was killed there, and he was as fine and honest a man as I have ever met!" Warning him that this was a story in which he had a personal interest, but Stephen took that for a weakness.
Stephen's look was eloquent with doubt that an Indian could hold such a lofty title as friend, and Josiah rose in his stirrups, his horse picking up its pace obediently toward the man. But at Mary's sudden expression of alarm Josiah reined back - it was Mary he hoped to affect, and frightening her with temper wouldn't serve him no matter how sincerely he wished to feed that smug mouth its' own teeth.
Stephen paled subtly at the look Josiah sent his way despite how calmly the preacher seem to subside, saw the massive fists white-knuckled on the reins of his horse and the posture of both animal and man on the barest edge of restraint. Sanchez had seemed mild-mannered for all his physical power, and Stephen had assumed that, in the absence of his friends, he might himself reassume some authority over the rag-tag group. The blaze in those bright deepset eyes forced him to rethink that idea.
Josiah gave Mary a spare, but truly fond, smile and wondered if she realized how ironic it was that a woman should hold a power in her pen greater than bullets or political influence. She was the only one among them who could publish this truth, though he knew with a stab of futility that it would probably not be believed. A man did what he could. At least it would be entered into the record of this country whether it was looked at or not, and it would endure into a future when admitting such truths might not be so impossible.
"Chief Black Kettle ..." Josiah finally said, picking up the thread of his narrative as he tore his eyes away from Stephen Monroe, "Barely survived that attack, and reprisals were expected and planned for - some might even say hoped for. Yet he restrained his young men from retaliation, spoke in councils that I myself witnessed against the futility of waging all-out war against an invader numerous as grasshoppers in summer. He wanted peace, he wanted cooperation. Like every good leader, his people's survival was paramount. Even after Sand Creek, peace was all he wanted.
"But there are forces bigger than peace, and intentions not even surrender will avoid. The following summer, Black Kettle and his people encamped by the Washita River, south of the Arkansas, along with a band of Arapaho led by Chief Little Raven. They were where they had been instructed to go, they were in full compliance with agency instructions. They were trying to prove their peaceful intent by upholding a treaty made less than a year before that had cost them all their Colorado hunting grounds."
He shook his grizzled head as if he could not imagine the old Indian being so naïve - or so hopeful, knowing his own kind as Josiah undoubtedly did. "It didn't save them, that treaty, as none had saved them before. It was only another worthless scrap of paper ignored by settlers and prospectors and ranchers who counted on the army to protect them even when they were breaking their own law. The people should have just given it all from the first, or maybe laid down and died, because that was what our government wanted, and that is the progress they're making in those mountains, Mary."
"That can't be so!" She objected earnestly, "Yes, there is a certain level of corruption, but the intent of the treaties must be honorable or they wouldn't be supported by Washington!"
To her surprise, Josiah's face fell with a sorrow so plain, a hurt so openly expressed, that she almost took insult from it. He shook his head, left it lowered for a good long while as they rode on, his head bobbing in dispirited rhythm. For awhile there was no sound but hoof-fall and leather-creak and wind. When he spoke again, he was done with inviting or even allowing interruptions, he was done with gentling it to their understanding.
"In that time of peace, under the terms of that treaty, contrary to everything published and reported, Sheridan - for the government he served - had no other purpose but to kill every Indian he could. Rumors came to the camp along the Washita of soldiers coming, the women and children were afraid. So that autumn, when the camp should have been hunting and building their winter stores, Black Kettle and Little Raven led a delegation a hundred miles down the valley to their agency at Fort Cobb to ask permission to move their lodges there for safety. Asking for protection from the benevolent white Father who had promised it in return for their obedience. Asking the army for protection from the army, Lord God ..." Shaking his head.
Jules was rapt on Josiah's face, big primitive bones painted red-gold in the sunset, spellbound by his passionate eloquence, words weighted by a depth of certainty that could only be truth. Oh, he was indeed a preacher, whether he had a church or not -
"The Commander in Fort Cobb, name of Hazen, refused. He told them they would be safe where they were. He told them the lies Sheridan - and everyone above him up to the president, I have no doubt - wanted told. They would be safe if they kept their young men from roaming. They were given some wormy meat, a bit of sugar and tobacco, and were sent on their way back to the Washita despite a bitter snowstorm."
He stopped and dismounted, and only then did his small audience realize they had reached the camp-site.
"Sheridan offered them sanctuary!" Stephen protested stoutly, dismounting himself and unable to disguise the stiffness of being so long in the saddle. On the ground, Stephen was the taller of the two, and he braced his shoulders as wide as he could in facing the slouching preacher. "And they refused it, you have no right to mislead women and children with myths and fairy tales." Including J.D. in that number and getting a scowl for it that he ignored.
"Yes, I imagine Sheridan said so." The preacher said, disdain of his own ripe and rich, "But I've known all sorts of men, and the only ones I've ever met who did not lie, could not without betraying themselves - were men of the nations." He meant it, too, and Stephen seemed to swell with offense. Josiah gave him no opportunity to express it, angry enough as it was and unwilling to have this pompous ass provoke him past patience by saying anything more.
"Hazen knew what Sheridan wanted - death to every Indian within reach! And Hazen wanted to advance his own career and fortunes. The night Black Kettle and Little Robe returned to their camp on the Washita, they held a council and decided they couldn't risk being surprised as they had been at Sand Creek, they thought they could avoid any misunderstanding by setting out in the morning to meet the soldiers and make their peaceful intentions clear with straight talk."
Josiah's saddle thumped over a fallen tree, he swept the blanket off and shook it out with a forceful snap, rummaged in his bag for a brush to occupy his hands from beating sense into damned fools and set it to the sweat-plastered saddle-marks on his horse's back. J.D. helped the ladies down, having tied off the lead mule, the pack line standing patiently away into the gathering dusk. He kept Josiah in the corner of his eye, knowing how explosively quick the preacher could be and realizing, with a growing degree of scorn, that Stephen was just stupid enough to invite it.
Jules, still horsed and staying there for the vantage, certainly hoped so.
"What they didn't know," Josiah went on, "What Hazen never told them, was that Sheridan had already sent Custer to wipe them out, and he needed them to stay right where they were so his soldiers could find them."
"George Custer?" Stephen demanded, having not moved from the spot he'd stepped down onto, seething. How dare this uncouth Indian sympathizer malign men who were heroes of the new world? "George Custer happens to be a dear friend to our family, Mister Sanchez, how dare you libel a man who has sacrificed so much to further the cause of this great nation ..."
Josiah, refusing with great force of will to look at Stephen, not only did not heed the warning against speaking ill of an acquaintance of the Monroe's, but made it clear in the set of his shoulders that he thought such an acquaintance made the Monroe's smell bad.
"He ain't no friend to the nations, Mister Monroe, and his causes might be yours - indeed, I'm sure they are ..." There was a powerful accusation veiled in the cold words that startled Stephen and James both so much that they drew their sister's eye with unwelcome suspicion, "But they ain't mine, nor is that vainglorious bastard anything but my enemy."
And Vin's, Elizabeth realized, remembering the tracker's reaction to her mention of George and Libby Custer. But he and Gerald were fast friends, and Libby was as sweet a woman as she knew. Oh, George was puffed up and vain as a rooster, but also charming and well-spoken ... What was it these men of the west knew of the Colonel that her brothers did not - or perhaps that her brothers had not shared with her? Indeed - she knew very well George's thirst for glory, he had declared it his destiny to make the west safe for continued civilized development.
"Are you calling George Custer a liar and a murderer, sir?" Stephen Monroe drew himself up into a caricature of insulted aristocracy; "Do you expect me to stand here idly while you defame and threaten a man I am proud to call my friend? As if an Indian had more credibility?"
Elizabeth's face paled with alarm, the tone one her brother took when he intended to call a man out and Josiah wouldn't know it ... nor would he care, she realized, as he stopped what he was doing and seemed to fight some losing battle in himself. Then he turned on his heel, the brush dropping unnoticed from his hand, and stalked across the small distance between them in a few long quick strides, halting so close to Stephen that his broad flat hatbrim nearly knocked Stephen's askew.
"I'd consider it a signal honor to name Sheridan a liar to his face, sir, and I'd be even happier to slit George Custer's cursed neck from ear to ear without even sayin' a hello." His mighty fist clenched around the horn handle of his enormous Bowie knife, his pugnacious jaw thrust forward with that willingness.
Travis was becoming more than a little alarmed here. He'd expected trouble between the Monroe brothers and the seven, that they rubbed each other the wrong way was abundantly clear, but he had not anticipated it would be Josiah who would be first to engage them. He couldn't think how he could put a stop to it without revealing his true allegiance, but he did not want bloodshed between them, the cause was more important than such conflicts and he needed the brothers as much as he needed the seven.
James opened his mouth, then shut it again, nearly dropping his niece as he lifted her down at the fury that shook Stephen, a force of will and temper that he had never seen anyone stand so firmly in the face of. Buck and Chris drifted near, alerted by the sudden strident tones and the frozen posture of the women, as if some bloody battle were about to be joined right before their eyes.
"You have no proof of these outrageous accusations against honorable and well-respected men!"
"Respected by whom, Monroe? By you? What do you respect other than money, and what would you be without it?" Blunt and inviting the violence Stephen threatened, powerful body leaning forward so aggressively that Mary started toward the combatants, only to find her arm caught in a hard grip. Chris, standing behind her, watched Josiah and Stephen without emotion, quite content to see how this would shake out. She tugged at her arm, insulted to be restrained like a child, but he neither looked at her nor let her go.
Josiah went on, a dark raw bitterness coloring his voice; "Sheridan declared them hostiles - that's what he did when he wanted a good slaughter. He used the Osage to lead the Seventh in, he ordered the winter camp destroyed, all the warriors and horses killed, the capture of the women and children. It was a massacre, and it was planned!
"At dawn the next morning, your heroic friend Custer and the good civilized men of the Seventh ambushed the camp with a damned regimental band playing a merry tune! Drowned out, so I'm told by Cheyenne warriors I trust, by the screams of women and children and horses being slaughtered! The Washita ran red, Mister Monroe, with the blood of innocents, it was a charnel house, and Custer was the chief butcher! No matter what your official reports say, there were only a dozen Cheyenne warriors in that camp, which he'd have known if it hadn't been so inconvenient to identify them and spare the rest! It was easier to kill, just kill!"
Josiah's voice rolled like low thunder through the cottonwoods as Vin neared, and he saw the party standing among the straight half-lit trunks of the trees as if frozen in place by the incipient violence slipping loose. The pack train was curved around them, but no one was at tasks, they were gathered around Josiah and Stephen Monroe, and though Josiah was not shouting, there was a fire hotter than Satan's promised pit in his tone.
"Over a hundred Cheyenne and two hundred ponies butchered in their corrals, only eleven men among them were warriors! And your cursed hero and friend carried the bloody scalps of Black Kettle and his wife back to his camps, and the Osage danced as if there might be some honor in what they had done! There is some truth for you, you condescending fool! They burned the tepees and the winter stores and all the sacred things, they slaughtered the horses the people needed to survive, they killed and they killed and they killed like not even animals do! And all in obedience, all the way up the line from Custer to Hazen to Sheridan, to a carefully orchestrated campaign of total extermination ..."
Beyond the camp, Vin pulled Peso to a stop in the moment Stephen Monroe's pride got the better of his sense. He swung at Josiah, a short nasty punch that took the preacher on the temple and rocked him back a step, but did not put him down. Quick grins flitted among his friends in the split second of Josiah's truly glad smile, and before Stephen Monroe could take a breath, he was on his expensively wool-covered ass in the dirt half a yard back from where he'd been standing with blood streaming out of his nose. He wore a look of stupefied amazement, blinking and braced on his hands like a child in a sandbox. Had he been hit? Had this overgrown dolt hit him???
Chris shook his head and exchanged a little smile with Buck, whose shrug was eloquent. Shouldn't try to hit Josiah, that was usually a real big mistake, but at least it looked like the city-slicker was too stunned to try it again. Orrin hurried forward before Stephen gained his wits and tempted Josiah further, Elizabeth on his heels. Both of them came between Josiah and Stephen as if by accident, and both felt Josiah holding himself back with an effort that had his ham-size fists shaking.
"I want that man fired at once!" Stephen shouted as he was helped to his feet, unsteady and still reeling with as much surprise as pain. The sight of his own blood on his fingertips enraged him beyond coherent speech.
"Gentlemen, that is quite enough." Travis snapped, and he was the Judge in bearing if not title, his deep dark eyes snapping with authority.
"Our mission takes precedence over any personal opinions or feelings, and I will not tolerate another display of temper like this! You are both grown men - look at your niece, Mister Monroe, your sister!" Elizabeth was truly upset, dabbing at Stephen's upper lip with her handkerchief. His niece, on the other hand, despite having forced a somber look onto her face, was so nearly hopping with glee that he wanted to slap her until her ears rang.
Vin eased back down into the saddle as they sorted themselves out in the camp, Chris getting a black look from Mary as he let her go, Travis leading the elder Monroe brother down to the creek with a basin to repair his face. The girl's bright laugh skirled incongruously into the disturbed air, a short unwilling sound as if she couldn't keep it in. Contrary critter.
When Peso made to move forward, however, he held him back, knowing his face was too white, and the painful wash of Josiah's words too distressing to yet hide. Oh, the look on their faces to hear the truths Josiah spoke, and would they ever know how little it was out of so much that might never be told? He stayed where he was, aching inside and out and unready for human company.
Elizabeth felt the need to defend her brother, and as she watched him being led off by Travis, she said with timid determination, "Perhaps I do not know Colonel Custer as intimately as Gerald does, Mister Sanchez, but I know Libby. She's a kind good woman and I just can't believe she would ever marry such a monster as you describe!"
"Ma'am," Josiah said with a grimly weary eye, "Wives do not always know their husband's business. Do you imagine your good friend Mrs. Custer knows about the Cheyenne woman her husband captured and kept with him as an interpreter?"
"Well ..." She looked uncomfortable, and James stepped forward dutifully in her defense; "Surely that isn't unusual, I can certainly see the need for ..."
"A very comely woman who spoke not a word of English."
Dead silence fell. Elizabeth was shaking her head, all sorts of monstrous thoughts taking root, suspicions half-considered bursting huge and meaningful to the fore. Josiah looked at Mary over Elizabeth's bent head and said,
"Black Kettle was an honorable man who'd survived one massacre and still found faith in peace, Mary. Still believed that if the whites could learn not to fear them, the two peoples could live in harmony. Even after Sand Creek - even then he had faith, he believed them when they swore it had been a mistake. Not because he was a barbarian with no concept of wartime strategies, but because no Indian would have sacrificed his soul with such a lie. No man of honor would have attempted to win with deceit and treachery what he could not take by honorable combat. Because he and his people believe in the common decency of all humanity, they're being destroyed by a civilization that has none. They found no such humanity among the 'benevolant conquerers' who still call them savages."
Mary shuddered, horrified by the grisly images the preacher conjured in such grave and stately tones, mesmerized by the blazing conviction of his eyes - was it possible?
These thoughts were mirrored in Elizabeth's mind, but on a far more personal level: Could George Custer - Lord, maybe even Gerald - be part of this terrible plot Josiah seemed to think existed? She saw her niece in the middle of this day's violence and confrontation, and the child had the fiercest expression, her small hands fisted at her sides and her eyes filled with loathing as she watched her Uncle Stephen's retreating back.
Almost desperately, she pleaded, "Mister Sanchez ... how do we know this story is not just that? As much fiction as fact, as you presume the eastern publications are?" Defending her family as any loyal woman would, and he turned to her with his pale kind eyes as though she were a fool of dire proportions. His smile was as weary as if he'd lived a thousand years and had seen things she could never understand. Vin Tanner had the same look in his eyes, she realized, but Vin Tanner had not this preacher's years on him to know so much.
"Because I spoke to warriors who had been there, Miss Monroe, witnesses who do not know how to lie. Because it is as ugly a truth as any published lie you have ever read about the tribes. Because there is a purpose in those lies as insidious and wicked as anything ever perpetrated by humanity against itself." He turned purposefully to Mary, then, and said, "And I am telling you these truths now, Mary, relying on your knowing me as a man who is as honest as he knows how to be, because someone must speak who will be heard. When even credible men are vilified and ridiculed for speaking the truth in the halls of justice, by the very men who swear by truth and honor - "
His voice broke, and Mary glanced at their faces around her, at Chris, almost accusingly cold, at Buck and Nathan, who wore their hearts on their sleeves and Ezra, who did not. At J.D., who cared less for the truth she was being asked to write about than proof of her faith in Josiah.
"If no one will listen," Josiah said softly, eyes earnestly holding hers, "If the end is upheld as justifying these means - what glory is there in building a new nation on the graveyard of a race murdered to take it? Someone has to leave a true record, Mary."
He looked down at her without concealing his meaning or his hope, and she grasped his huge hand in both of hers as her eyes made promises her heart would struggle to keep. To her great surprise, he bent and bestowed a kiss on her cheek, and she would have said something but for the explosive uproar that suddenly went up across the camp as Buck told Stephen what had happened to their valises.
"Valises?" Buck said in sly bewilderment, "You mean them little trunks? Why, we figured you wanted 'em stored 'til you could send for 'em ... what on earth could a man need with that many trunks? Hell, I seen dance-hall girls travel lighter ..."
Vin got down, a slow motion balancing act through which he dared not breathe, and then he could do nothing else but breathe and hang on to the saddle leathers until his knees settled and the myriad pains eased into a general agony. The boys were unloading the mules, and he noted that Josiah was taking down and stacking the bundles Vin had named for trade goods and sealed without comment to their weight or contents. Maybe the distraction of the preacher's anger kept him from noticing, though being glad of someone else doing work he should be doing himself wasn't in his nature. A man should haul his own load - this load in particular - but there were trying times coming ahead and he had to conserve himself for them or risk not making it at all. He might hide his hurts from Nathan, but he would not from himself, and he was nowhere near as fine as he needed to be.
Peso wanted to tug, wanted that camp and the rope corral going up among the trees and the grain being poured to supplement what meager forage they could find, but Vin had to walk some of the stiffness out before he could pass Nathan's scrutiny, and for once the horse didn't tempt the ire too close in his master's eye. As Vin walked a wide circumference of the camp in the gathering dusk, his head down to keep from stumbling on the uneven ground, he let things run in his mind as they would.
Surprise at the depth of Josiah's experience with the people echoed in him still, things he'd never known about him that put him squarely at Vin's philosophical shoulder. It was a relief, in a way, to know where Josiah stood and that the people had another ally here in case he was unable to do what needed doing. A man good enough, caring about the people enough, to get the weapons to the Lakota if he could not. And perhaps information as well, did Vin give it to him.
There was the thing that he kept sticking on, not wanting to bring them any further into it than he had to, and yet coming to see he needed help to some degree. Didn't like the thought of using them to gain his own ends no matter how good they were, didn't like walking away from the camp now to avoid them knowing how little help he would be in setting it up, it felt cowardly and small. Seemed like he was doing a whole lot of things he didn't like lately. He kept trying to see his way to finding out for sure if the Monroes were conniving after the gold in that valley, if George Custer was part of it. If it truly was years in the making and born in one of Duley's letters to her sister.
He had begun to realize, however, that the bigger problem would be trying to do anything about it even if he managed to prove it. This tide from the east was rushing in, and maybe not even the truth would change it or even divert it. Revelations of murder and theft by white hands, of treacheries reaching into the halls of government, would be an unwelcome stone set in the path of a nation running after gold and land and mastery. It might not matter at all whatever he did and no matter how he ached to do Duley's will for her on the world she no longer walked.
He shivered and looked north at the stars set in his memory, at the mountains he knew so well. Things that did not change, constant and forever ...
In the instant he forgot to ignore it the grief opened up in him and stopped him dead, eyes closing, hands fisting on reins and empty air. Heart clutching around the other thing he'd have to do up in those mountains beyond gold or Lakota or Custer. The thing he could never imagine himself doing and yet knew in the very marrow of his bones he would have to do. It made him want to lie right down and die on the spot, go to her before he ever had to try to live through letting her go.
He was surprised to find himself on the far side of the camp a few minutes later, his face wet and just walking without knowing when he'd started to move again and Peso, for once, coming docile behind him. The same instinct that had always moved him when he fell into despair would not let him stay in it now. So he walked, and he thought, and his eyes strayed to the center of light that was the camp and the flickering color of blood-red hair.
Mary and Elizabeth sorted with growing dismay through what Josiah and Vin had left them: Several kinds of dried peppers, strips of dried summer and winter squash, dried onions and parched corn, beans both red and white, flour and half the sugar, twice the salt, sour-dough starter and blackstrap molasses in heavy corked canteens. That was it. Elizabeth, rummaging deep into a burlap bag, surfaced with a bag of dried apples and a triumphant smile; "They're men, Mary, they want cobbler and pies, I knew they had to have left the fruit - but they've unpacked all my spices except cinammon, the scoundrels!"
"That's probably all they recognized." Mary replied with a droll and still exasperated smile, and both women burst into laughter. Mary was a frontier woman for many years, not unaccustomed to long travel on horseback and the occasional rough camp, but Elizabeth seemed to be appreciating the experience far more than she'd thought the easterner's obvious discomfort would permit. It was oddly sweet to see.
"Have you seen Julianna?" That question had been heard so many times in the last two hours that it set them off laughing again; the girl buzzed around the seven men like a bee to a bunch of spring flowers and was likely picking up all sorts of bad habits.
Everyone was avoiding the far side of the camp where the brothers Monroe prowled among their belongings and the makings of what would nightly become their separate camp. There were fresh outbursts as they discovered that no tent, no tables, no chairs, not much of anything they'd packed had made it onto the mules. Stephen's outrage over the bloody nose dovetailed into this new cause no matter how James tried to mollify him.
J.D. and Buck, using hoof-picks on the mules in the rope corral among the cottonwoods, Nathan and Josiah cutting firewood with a two-man saw, and Chris hacking a level spot on a fallen tree to provide the women a cooking surface, just kept laughing at them while at the same time seeming not to notice them until Stephen came stalking, livid, across the camp directly to the one he believed to be their leader. Ezra, who had unapologetically sat himself down with his little silver flask and an aloof look, rose and shadowed the big southerner.
Stephen was not entirely stupid, however, and he approached on the far side of the tree Chris was working on. Chris brushed woodchips off with a blandly incurious look as the man drew near; mighty red around the edges, and that made Chris smile a little.
"Mister Larabee!" Stephen planted his feet, hands on hips, head thrust forward and completely ignorant of the instinctive response of a man like Chris to being confronted so aggressively.
"Mister Monroe." Chris replied mildly, placing the cutting board onto the spot he'd evened out for it and keeping Stephen in the careful corner of one eye as he cleared his coat from over his pistol-butt.
"Our personal possessions, my brother's and mine, are missing!"
"That so?" Chris replied, scanning the camp and finding five pair of hilarity-reddened eyes on him. He swallowed his smile.
"Yes!" Said Stephen, "What do you intend to do about it?"
"Do? About what?" As if Stephen were speaking a foreign language.
"About retrieving our belongings! Why, there are at least a dozen valises missing from the pack animals, all our personal toiletries, our tent and camp furnishings ..."
"Tent, camp furnishings? And what in hell is 'toiletries'?" Maddeningly offering questions as answers, a vague puzzlement on his face as he picked up a hammer and a long nail. He ignored Buck as best he could when the lanky scoundrel went over onto his side on the ground among the mules laughing so hard there was no sound whatever coming out of him.
Judge Travis was thoroughly nervous about Stephen Monroe's lack of common sense, first challenging Josiah, and now coming far too close to openly insulting the one man most likely to shoot him out of hand. Still - he had to hide his own smiles at the game Chris seemed willing, so far, to play.
"Yes!" Stephen insisted, "Stop answering questions with questions! My God, man, are you dim? They must have been stolen, and your men are the only ones who had access to them!" Voice rising so Elizabeth stopped and looked over worriedly, Mary beside her. Jules, who'd been skirting around the mules watching Buck and J.D. work, slipped nearer from tree to tree. The preacher might've punched him, but this one might very well shoot him if he pushed him too far!
With one smooth overhead stroke, Chris drove a nail clean through the cutting board and into the tree to stabilize it for use, and when he looked up at Stephen, he showed him a banked and tempered humor that could go either way.
"Mister Monroe," He said in what might have been a reasonable voice but for the threat slithering through it, "I'm real sure you ain't sayin' any of these boys did any kind of stealin' from you. Ain't a one of 'em has any use for satin underthings, nor tents nor furniture."
So Stephen understood, with a climbing flush of deep red, that the gunslinger knew - as they probably all did - exactly what had been left behind.
Chris cocked his head back, jade eyes glittering, and said, "Any man who sets out into the wild without carrying his necessaries horsed with him is a fool. Now, maybe I shouldn't've assumed you weren't, n' maybe we didn't figger you bein' so soft. But one tent's enough for two women and a little girl."
Stephen was absolutely, utterly incensed, but how did one answer such comments without seeming unmanly? To be spoken to in such a way by someone a dubious step above an outlaw was just too much! But in the moment when his temper almost slipped its leash, he noticed the certain calm in the man facing him, unperturbed and yet very keen. Almost eager. In that one clear instant he understood a great deal about the west that he'd never quite grasped until he was out upon it away from civilized recourse. It didn't matter one bit to the gunslinger who he was, how much money he had, what doors his name might open in the east - this was the west, and he could bleed and he could die and this gunslinger would look at him with exactly the same expression. Indeed, these ruffians could just as well kill them all, take all their goods, horses and mules, and no one would ever be the wiser!
He had never in his life been in so physically precarious a circumstance, and the realization made a cold sweat break under his coat as he looked around at them and found them all watching with grinning interest. Who would ever know what had befallen them? The Indian Agent, Mr. Travis, nodded at him as if confirming the wisdom of that realization, looking worried himself. Travis knew the west better than Stephen did, and he had a daughter along with him whose welfare mattered as much as Julianna's would to Gerald. As Elizabeth's did until he knew what disposition she'd made of her properties in the case of her demise; they expected Julianna to be named her heir, but if not, too much could be lost to them that they still needed. He'd been charged with delivering both safely, and if he did not ...
"Mister Monroe, if you'll permit me, sir ..." Ezra suddenly appeared at his elbow with a commiserating look, his emerald eyes shooting a warning at Chris and around the camp as if he scorned whatever dangers they might represent. One of the gambler's elegantly expressive eyebrows encouraged Stephen to take the opportunity being given him to back down gracefully, and as little as Stephen liked owing anyone, he accepted without hesitation. At least the man was a southerner, and what he'd heard from him thus far was more transient convenience than any real ties of loyalty to the other six men. He turned toward Mister Standish as if willing to be restrained by whatever logic he might offer and that dandy's gold tooth flashed in a charming smile.
"You must understand, Mister Monroe, that these are uncivilized lands, to say the least, and its denizens, I have discovered to my mortal dismay, lack a certain, well, appreciation of the amenities sophisticated men of breeding such as ourselves are accustomed to. However, Mister Larabee is, indeed, correct - none of these oafs would have the faintest idea of the value, much less the use, of those items they so thoughtlessly omitted. A misunderstandin', as it were, and your possessions await your sending for them. As it happens, I was aware of their rather hapless confusion and managed to secure the necessities for your civilized ablutions, at least ... "
Chris showed teeth, but said nothing. Ezra was a slippery fox of a fellow, a schemer and a scoundrel and a con, but by now Chris knew those nefarious skills were on their side, and he was quite content to let Ezra ingratiate himself without taking any offense at the southerner's unveiled insults. Likely he'd take advantage of that to let fly a few barbs he wouldn't ordinarily dare, but he'd figure he had that coming in recompense, Ezra always figured he was owed something ...
"It's a trial dwelling amongst savages, Mister Monroe, but I believe I can ameliorate your discomfort rather handily. Please, good sir, if you'll accompany me? A bracing brandy is obviously just the palliative required first, come along ..." Shepherding the elder Monroe away from Chris with a gleaming green eye and a consoling pat on the irate man's broad back.
Travis, standing with the younger Monroe brother, caught Chris' eye from across the camp and raised one eyebrow in grim admiration. He, too, realized what Ezra obviously had long since thought thoroughly through - if anyone was going to wiggle into the Monroe's confidence, it would be a fellow southerner with a similar disdain for roughing it - and perhaps a similarly devious nature.
For a moment Chris stared after him, eyes narrowed. How likely was Ezra to fall into step with the Monroes, into whatever machinations the Judge suspected, if he was offered part of the pie? He didn't like thinking that, but Chris' nature was to pay particular attention to unpleasant suspicions. Ezra's wink over Stephen's shoulder eased it only a little.
"Hey, Tanner, you get lost?" Elizabeth spun around at Buck's hail and saw Vin appearing like a dun-colored ghost out of the darkness leading his horse, his face pale and so nearly gaunt that her sympathy had to have shown.
Vin ignored Buck, passing the tent erected for the women directly and stopping the horse adjacent to the fallen tree where the gunslinger had fixed Mary's cutting board. Without a word he dragged down the gutted carcass of the deer and laid it across the tree.
One of Mary's eyebrows lofted as she crossed to him, floured fingers bracing her hips as she cocked her head and challenged, "Vin, we seem to be missing things here ..."
He only shrugged, his knife making a soft ringing sound as he drew it out of its scabbard and proceeded to extend the evisceration cut in the beheaded animal's hide up to the top of the neck, around the tail and out to the ends of the hoofless legs with gruesome efficiency.
"Too much, Mary, didn't need half of it n' woulda needed twice as many mules."
"Yes, well, that's your opinion ..." A flash of blue eye told her that in this, his opinion was the only one that mattered, and her Irish rose a bit as she retorted,
"Well, we haven't had any time to soak beans or anything for dinner, expecting to have those hams Nettie gave us ..."
"What d'you think this is for ..." A jerk of his chin toward the deer as he peeled back the skin from the hind hocks and then pierced them through above the joint, tying them off around a protruding stub of root near the end of the fallen tree. He wasn't in the mood to argue, nor even to talk at all, he felt scraped raw and all he wanted to do was sit down and rest, eat and sleep and be left alone. Consequently, the two-fisted yank he took on the skin that tore it in one piece with a liquid ripping sound up the carcass hurt his ribs something fierce, and was too crudely brutal not to make Mary and Elizabeth pale. Both women got his scornful glance. Hell, they were gonna eat it, why get squeamish about skinnin' it? Almost savagely he jointed out the haunches, ribs and back for the spit and wrapped the rest in the skin.
"Jerk the rest of that off the bones n' lay it on a rack by the coals t'dry." He said, wiping his knife, which he'd used to point at the remains of the deer, on his pantleg, Then he turned and led Peso into the remuda.
Chris just shrugged at Mary's incredulous look - Vin had never behaved like that toward her, impatient and disrespectful. She had the suspicion that Larabee knew more about Vin's mood of late than he was telling, but obviously no explanations were forthcoming.
She and Elizabeth set to carving steaks while J.D. set up the spit and tripod over the broad embers of the cook-fire. Josiah removed the deer with an apologetic smile and took it a bit away to finish skinning it and to strip the bones for meat for the drying rack.
The loose corral meant none of the animals was hobbled, but Vin tied Peso off on a long lead anyway. He was prone to roam, and Vin didn't want to be chasing him come morning. Wouldn't put it past him to take every other horse and mule with him, neither. The saddle more slid off than was taken, he barely kept it from hitting the ground and then wished he'd just let it. "Hell and damnation!" He hissed, dragging the saddle-tree over a stump on pure stubbornness. A man had to take care of his equipment in the wilderness or have it fail him to his dire peril.
"Vin?" He heard Nathan a few minutes later as he held one of Peso's big feet between his knees cleaning out impacted soil. He closed his eyes a second and gathered himself before he glanced up.
"I'm fine, Nathan."
Nathan wasn't surprised he kept working, knowing he didn't want to be examined too closely and sensing his mood on a sharp and very shaky edge.
"I made you some tea - will you force yourself t'drink it for me? Just so's I feel like I'm earnin' my keep?" Nathan asked, and there was a friendliness there Vin could hardly refuse, as he couldn't refuse anything that might help him heal more quickly. His hands paused, then he went on with what he was doing, a grudging tip of his head as near to a nod as he could manage.
Nathan set the cup down nearby, dark eyes careful on the tracker, seeing more than he knew Vin wanted him to. He did not look well, pinched lines around his mouth and eyes, a tiredness Vin wouldn't ordinarily ever reveal, so the healer knew it had been a hard day. Right then and there he determined that the second cup he would make Vin take would contain enough soporific to put him down for the night. He did that more frequently than any of them knew but very carefully, lest they suspect his remedies thereafter. Vin needed to sleep soundly and well the night through if he was going to make the day's ride tomorrow without doing those kidneys further damage or risking breaking one of those likely cracked ribs.
The healer nodded; "You let me have a look at you before turnin' in, Vin."
Vin knew Nathan had given him a graceful way out of asking for help, and he was grateful that the healer was also accepting that he just didn't want to be poked at just now. It was an easy truce, and the pat Nathan gave his shoulder as he moved off was comradely and unquestioning. For the first time in hours, his shoulders lowered.
While the work of the camp went on, the brothers Monroe, Judge Travis and Ezra created a blue haze of cigar smoke around them as they shared a cup of brandy a little distance away from the rest of the camp. Travis went along with the elitist facade because it would not have appeared natural for him to have done otherwise, but Stephen and Ezra's growing mutual admiration was enough to make a cast-iron stomach turn. They'd strung one ground cloth over a rope between two trees and laid another for a floor, creating a long narrow tent of sorts, and the pair of them sat examining it critically for awhile, finally deciding to string another rope set a few feet apart from the first to widen the peak of their makeshift tent, which would accommodate all four of them and Stephen's height comfortably.
The pair stood back like mismatched potentates directing James in this endeavor, one small and dapper, the other tall and dapper, and both congratulating each other with effusive good will at every suggestion and comment. Obviously, James habitually deferred to his brothers, but from Orrin's conversation with him on the trail, he had an incisive and independent mind despite that glaring lack of confidence, and a stubborn streak he suspected the elder Monroe's had not yet discovered - indeed, James might just be discovering it himself. That he adored his sister and was bewildered by his niece added a shy sort of charm to his character that Orrin appreciated. Perhaps there he would have the best opportunity to get inside whatever Monroe business interests were ongoing - the idea of leaving Stephen to Ezra's tender mercies was very appealing.
"The best revenge is living well, I always say - don't you agree, Mister Monroe? Why, the loss of that tent will not inconvenience us in the slightest!" Ezra declared in an accent broad and slow as the Mississippi in summer, "The fact that we shall enjoy civilized comforts despite the best efforts of those ruffians is nearly reward enough. I must say, Mr. Monroe, how gratifyin' it is to find myself once more in the company of a true gentlemen of the south!"
They then proceeded to build their own fire, helping themselves to the wood Nathan and Josiah had cut as though it was their due, determined to maintain a level of civility that Ezra assured Stephen the other six regulators had never even approached. Ezra did not like sleeping in the open air and waking with dew in his hair, to say nothing of less innocuous insects and vermin, and Stephen brightened bit by bit under the concerted - and very delicately wielded - flattery and charm Ezra was plying him with.
"Y'know ..." Buck murmured to J.D. as they passed by, "If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was tryin' t'persuade that big feller into a tryst ..." J.D. tripped and nearly went down with a caw of incredulously disgusted laughter, and Buck grinned with a tip of his hat at the haughty glare they got in answer.
At last Ezra and Stephen stood back admiring their work - well, James' work, but the idea being theirs was sufficient to assume all the credit. The top of their tent was now squared between two ropes at a height sufficient to accommodate Stephen's frame, and had been widened to comfortably sleep all four of them. Two dropcloths rather than one now made their roof - by now they had appropriated four of the six that had been packed, overlapping across the ropes to achieve the length required to reach the ground on both sides.
"Better even than the tent was!" Stephen declared as James weighted the canvas with round stones and finally strung blankets over the end openings.
"Capital!" Ezra crowed, "We shall domicile as befits our station and sensibilities! Here's an idea! Why don't we christen our new accommodations with a little game of chance whilst we await the evening repast?" With that toothy smile that Travis knew meant he was ready to get down to business. Surely the Monroes weren't fools and had inferred Ezra's occupation, but his gentlemanly comportment and disdainful airs seemed to hint at hidden resources and his presence in the west more a lark than a necessity. Indeed, he presented himself to be precisely what Stephen needed in order to corroborate and reinforce his own lofty behavior, playing upon that over-weening ego like a virtuoso. That it was ostensibly for a good cause, Orrin thought wryly, also provided the opportunity for Ezra to indulge his appetite for luxury at the brother's expense, and he assumed their hospitality as his due.
Orrin smiled back at Ezra and settled back to watch their clever cardshark begin the fleecing of the Monroes.
Vin delayed mingling among the rest as long as he could, brushing Peso down until the horse's eyes rolled and his hide shuddered suspiciously at the unexpected attention. That Julianna girl was creepin' around watching him, he could feel her studying on him, and though it made the hair on his neck prickle, he gave no indication that he was aware of her stalking him.
Finally, Mary called them for supper. He dawdled putting away brushes and rags until the brothers had filled their plates and moved off with the Judge and Ezra to what would nightly become their own private camp. No way he could be in their company and not let show what was in his heart, he could school his face, but his eyes would give him away.
Biscuits crowded against each other in the bottom of the dutch oven, chunks of lightly salted meat from the spits sat on a tin plate on the warm stones around the cook-fire, and a cobbler was bubbling in the big fry-pan on the coals and filling the air with the homey fragrance of apples and cinnamon. Vin was surprised to find his mouth watering, and he filled his plate and shouldered between Buck and J.D. on the groundcloth, setting his back against the fire-warmed wood of the fallen tree tucking into it with an appetite that made Elizabeth smile. Though he was only of average height and very lean, he could eat with the appetite of a much larger man. For some reason seeing him enjoy food she'd helped prepare pleased her.
Buck noticed that womanly consideration as he chewed, and so did Chris. So, too, did Mary, but she was the only one to smile over the shy interest Elizabeth unknowingly revealed.
Jules sat cross-legged across the camp-fire watching the tracker and reveling in being able to sit so improperly without her Aunt bothering her about being lady-like. More than any of the others, this man intimidated Jules and she didn't know why. He wasn't big nor loud nor mean-seeming, but quiet and deliberate. Walked like he was connected to the earth somehow, and she'd heard her Aunt Elizabeth say that about her Grampa, too. Eyes like she'd never seen, so clear and piercing that she imagined he could read all the minds around him, know all their secrets and never give a one of his away. But he had given his deepest secret away to her already, she hadn't forgotten the look in his eyes close over that coin in the dust of Nettie's yard. He'd loved her Aunt Duley and it hurt him still, which evoked a sympathy that should have faded any sort of fear of him, but ... it was like she couldn't tell what he was thinking, what he might do from moment to moment, like there was something deep and dangerous and mysterious going on in him that nobody, not his friends or anybody else, knew what to make of.
Her Aunt was also giving away a secret, and it was far more shocking and titillating than the tracker's lost love. Jules noticed how Aunt Elizabeth had brightened when the tracker came to the fire to eat, and she noticed now every time - and how often - her Aunt's eyes strayed his way, though he never looked at her even once. Her uncles would be apoplectic, and Jules herself found it extremely intriguing; her aunt had never shown the slightest interest in any of the many suitors she'd turned away at home, yet here she was making cow eyes at her own sister's widower! And a frontiersman! Rough and wild as a lion with savage secrets and bloody knowings in his wide blue eyes that her Aunt could never hope to grasp.
Utterly and completely unsuitable ... Folks could be fools for love, she'd heard, and now she knew it for true, because as admirable and strong a woman as her Aunt was, she would never be able to tame or hold this frontiersman for even a day, and she shouldn't try. Jules didn't know why she felt that so strongly, but she just knew her auntie shouldn't, it would not be right for either of them and might even harm both. The girl glanced around the fire to see if anyone else had noticed ... both the gunslingers had, she was sure of it, Larabee narrow-eyed and small-mouthed with displeasure, but Buck almost sad. She thought she understood why.
"Fellers too good t'eat with us?" Nathan inclined his head toward the fire on the far side of the camp and the well-dressed men around it seated on crates or casks. He handed a cup down to Vin and poured coffee for the rest so no one noticed Vin's was medicinal tea instead, offering his protection of the tracker's physical weaknesses, as he seemed to feel necessary. Given the events of this day and the recurrent edge of violence, he almost agreed with him. If one of those Monroes insulted Vin tonight, that look in his eye said he'd probably have to shoot them, since he wasn't capable of fighting them physically just now.
Fascinated, Jules watched the tracker fray the end of a twig between his teeth and use it to clean them, chewing it subtly back and forth in his mouth. With a twig he kept those teeth that white? She looked around her for a twig and tried it herself, but only got pieces of bark stuck between her teeth and ended up spitting bits onto the dirt before she saw her Aunt glowering at her for so uncouth a display.
From across the camp, Travis sighed and wished to be among the seven rather than where he was, in the casual camaraderie of that company of friends. Buck stealing biscuits off J.D.'s plate, the boy threatening to shoot him right in his animal magnetism, since he figured he knew where it resided by now, the swell of their laughter and the casual banter going between them was very inviting. Mary obviously felt the same way, pointedly ignoring Stephen's invitation in taking her own plate to sit down on an upended stump Chris had placed for her.
Elizabeth, feeling quite daring but having the excuse of needing to be near enough to check the cobbler, sat down near Mary on the downsloping arch of the tree they'd used to cook upon, feeling shy about it, but also feeling the welcome in their smiles. Mary teased Chris that if he persisted in hammering her cutting board into trees every night, it would look like a wood-pecker had taken to it by the end of the journey and they'd be picking up splinters in their food. Not a man there failed to declare it would be worth it, appreciating with eyes and noses and appetites and words the meal the two women had prepared as if it were a seven course feast. Elizabeth could feel herself glowing with pleasure even when Mary laughingly said they were only doing it so they'd do all the cooking on the trail. Elizabeth had already assumed they would, and was a little surprised that such domesticity was not automatically assumed in the wilderness as it was in civilization.
"Let's choose up watches." Chris said when they'd pretty well consumed everything but the cobbler, "I'll take first - " Vin started to raise a hand to take the second, but Chris said, "You'll sleep, Tanner, we need you out early to scout the trail ahead." Vin subsided a little resentfully, but without argument, hiding a relief he was ashamed to feel but tired past pride, weary down to his bones and a full belly making him sleepy already.
"What, the Monroe brothers don't have to stand watches?" J.D. asked scornfully, and Buck laughed as if he was crazy and said,
"I'd like t'wake up alive, boy!"
"I'm gonna take my bedroll over there outside the firelight, n' watch should be set outside it, too." Vin said with a tip of his head toward the deepening darkness, wanting to be in a position to protect the camp if Wittinger and his crew of vultures made a run at it. Wanting to be alone as well with Duley feeling so close in him, needing to find the strange grief-struck peace she could still bring him in his dreams.
J.D., who'd been chosen to stand the last watch, eyed the dark dubiously. As the sun had set, it had begun to get cold in earnest, and though it was warm by the cookfire, by the time he'd be roused for his watch it'd be frosty. The mules were bunched up in the corral for warmth, half of them already lying down.
"Probably catch us some rain before mornin'." Vin said as he stood up from among them, a smile flitting across his face as all of them looked up at the clear starry night. Clear as it was, however, not a one doubted him, they'd lean-to a ground-cloth by the warm coals to sleep under. Buck stretched with a broadly conspiratorial grin, glancing at the squared-off top of the Monroe's makeshift tent.
"Let's just keep the weather to ourselves, what say?"
To be continued...
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