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:
There were some on the train who came down to help transfer the packs from the mules to a box-car, cowhands heading into Kansas territory for work, a few other working men glad of a good stretch and pull after being confined in the coach. There were a lot of animals, and Vin had been worried about that, but an empty gondola car that normally carried large crates easily accommodated all fifteen mules, the walls high enough to keep most of the wind off them.
Two empty cattle-cars housed most of the horses, and a third, slat-sided, received their tack, Buck's gray, Chris' black, Josiah's sweet-natured bay and Peso. Peso didn't like being crowded and it was easier to accommodate him with other horses that were familiar and even-tempered, which should calm him. Should.
The first time Vin tried to lead him up the ramp, though, the damn fool horse rolled his eyes and jumped off the side of it halfway up, nearly dislocating Vin's shoulder with the lead, which Vin wouldn't let go because he didn't intend to be chasing him half the night. The conductor was already antsy about his schedule, and Vin was mindful of Buck and Ezra exchanging bets as he tied Peso to the car to let him settle and get used to the smell of it. Nathan was giving him the eye, so he refrained from rubbing at his shoulder as he went to assist in loading the last of the supplies.
When they were just about done, Vin walked through the remaining crates and sacks and touched J.D.'s arm from behind as he passed, not looking at him, but saying in a casual voice,
"Give me a hand with Peso, J.D." Walking on, knowing J.D. would follow and not having to see the kid's face to know it was awash with hopeful pleasure. It made him feel a little better himself. Since he'd already removed and stowed Peso's saddle, Vin twisted his left hand into the coarse black mane above Peso's withers and swung up onto his bare back with far less grace than he was accustomed to.
Peso swung his head around as if he couldn't believe Vin was going to make it that easy to buck him off, but Vin just slipped out of his coat and swept it out over Peso's head, catching the sleeves and using them and the reins to tuck Peso's nose into his chest.
Being blinded held the big horse somewhat, but it was an explosive sort of holding that meant they'd better work quick.
A quick flip of Vin's fingers called J.D.; "You give 'im a shove if he balks goin' up the ramp, alright?"
"Well, alright!" J.D. beamed, whipping his bandana off and spinning it into a long rope, stooping for a small stone, which he then tied into the end of the cloth.
Vin knew J.D. had experience loading expensive and high-strung thorobreds, and he nodded approvingly as the kid snaked a quick hand up under the coat and caught Peso's cheek-strap, avoiding the teeth that tried for his wrist. J.D. turned him out toward the ramp and Vin let him stand there, quivering dangerously, while J.D. got behind him to one side, his arm outstretched across Peso's back legs, not touching, but ready for it.
Buck laughed out loud and said, "What're you gonna do, kid, tickle 'im t'get him up there?"
"Might just do that very thing, Bucklin." J.D. retorted with a bright-eyed look over his shoulder; "You wanna lay me a dollar?"
"You're on! Ez, you takin' that bet? Kid, you better have two dollars on you, n' they better be where I can find 'em on your corpse when that horse knocks your head off!"
When Vin tried to leg Peso up the ramp and the horse tried to back-step, J.D.'s sudden firm hand stinging his rump was all it took to startle him upwards, the kid following from the ground beside the ramp where he wouldn't get caught by any kicks, snapping the weighted end of the bandana at his backside every time he balked. With a pained grunt of objecting bruises, Vin bent double to get under the door-frame as Peso jolted onto the car with a thunder of hooves on wood, then curbed him hard to the left to keep him from going head-first into the opposite wall.
Before Peso knew what trickery had been done to get him in this close place he was in the car. For a moment he was more than ready to be troublesome and tensed under Vin with that urge, but the tracker just tightened his legs and held firm until he stood on all four hooves. Finally Peso noticed fresh hay underfoot and the scent of winter-grass grinding between the quiet teeth of the other three horses.
When he tossed his nose out in that direction, wanting his share, Vin threw his leg over his withers and slid down with a grin at J.D., dragging his coat off Peso's head and tying his lead to a ring in the side of the car that left him plenty of room to move, but not enough to get a leg over it and tangle himself up - give him any inch to make trouble with, and he'd take it a mile. He didn't have to say anything, didn't have to do more than that for J.D. to understand they were friends again and all hard feelings should be forgotten.
J.D.'s grin would've lit St. Louis, he went right at Buck with his hand palm-out demanding the dollars both he and Ezra were forced to pay out. Buck was glad to do it, though he groused and harrumphed. Ezra raised one arched eyebrow at him as if he'd pulled off some sleight-of-hand he hadn't figured out yet, and J.D.'s grin stretched impossibly.
Jules peered out the window anxiously, wanting to be out there having fun with them - they were laughing and carrying on even while they worked and she would've pitched right in and helped! But no, she was sitting here on this padded bench beside her Aunt and her Uncles waiting for the rest to finish, like they were too good for work and she wasn't good enough. How could hale and hearty men like her Uncles just sit there chatting and tidying up their suits while others did the work for them all? The Indian Agent she could understand, he was an old man, but Jules didn't like feeling useless, herself, and hated the thought that others believed she was useless.
Jules knew her Uncle Stephen was waiting for the seven to come to the passenger car, watching them work outside with that look of anticipation she so disliked. Like a spiteful overlord watching minions, and intending to have that same smug face on when they trooped in, sweaty and tired. He liked to do things like that, insult people, lord it over them just because his family was wealthy, like money excused rude cruelties and petty meanness. God, he was so small sometimes.
The train had come to rest in a long curve so she could see the freight and other cars behind them, and with growing dismay she watched the preacher and Buck spreading hay out in the part of the baggage car not taken up with their supplies, lighting a lantern and hanging it from a hook on the ceiling where it cast a warmly friendly glow. Uncle Stephen had paid fares for them to ride in the coach car on the hard benches in the back, another little dig he was looking forward to making ... a slow smile spread across her face. Of course the seven knew that.
Oh, she wanted to be sitting among them when they laughed about that one! She squirmed in frustration, glad of what they were doing but mad to be deprived of their company, and shook her Aunt's hand off when she tried to encourage stillness. Who could be still? Uncle Stephen's spitefulness would be utterly wasted, and she might have a chance to slip a verbal knife into him when he realized that, already thinking how to do it with seeming innocence. Maybe she'd just ask him, round-eyed, how come they weren't in the car when the train started moving. Glee bubbled up in her and she struggled to hide it so her Uncle wouldn't notice the seven had no intention of sharing his air.
"Josiah, what're you doin'?" J.D. asked, looking up at the preacher and Buck from the ground beside the baggage car as they arranged bedrolls on the straw, "Mister Monroe paid for us all to ride in the coach up there ..."
Buck just grinned, the picture of innocence. "Did he now? Why, wasn't that sweet of him. But I can't imagine why a man'd want t'sit up n' sleep in a stuffy car like that when he could stretch out right here on the hay - soft as a featherbed, ain't it, Josiah?" Josiah's teeth flashed in the lamplight, and Ezra came by to peer over J.D.'s shoulder, obviously approving the accommodations as well.
"How rustic." He commented drolly, trying not to recognize how comfortable it actually looked. "I, of course, intend to be a passenger rather than baggage." He flicked dust off his sleeve with upright precision. "A gentleman will abide discomfort for form." Smiling that self-satisfied smile that said the Monroes would be paying dearly for Ezra's sleepless night. Buck tapped his fingers to his hat-brim in a wry salute, the latigo dangling in front of his scruffy chin as he bent over to fluff up a bedroll invitingly.
"Well, Ezra, you just give 'em our thanks but no-thanks, eh?" Laughter in his voice as he reached down a long arm to give J.D. a hand up with a wink at the gambler, "You figure he'll get the drift when we just don't show up once the train gets movin'?"
Ezra laughed and shook his head, "I believe I feel an amnesia coming on, boys, that will provide immunity from challenge about it. A rational man can't be expected to explain that which is irrational, can he? I suffer so among you savages ..." He strolled away toward the front of the train shaking his head mockingly. At least he would enjoy a profitable evening of cards, good whiskey and good cigars - Stephen had some excellent cigars. Perhaps tonight, he and the Judge might ferret out something of the brother's business interests in the north, and he set his mind on that. It surprised him a little that Travis hadn't made any comment on the friendship he'd struck with the Monroe brothers, and it surprised him more to be warmly pleased by that mute expression of trust. Mother would be gnashing her teeth. Hmph. Wasn't like he'd be going home with empty pockets.
The rest of the boys had all gotten settled in the baggage car except for Chris and Vin. The gunslinger was striding down the line as the railmen latched the last car, and he found Vin standing in the half-open doorway of the stock-car Peso was in looking at the dusk sweeping brilliant colors across the vastness of the sky.
Drifts and layers of orange and red and all the softer colors between, so wide it seemed endless. Indigo blooming above as he watched, and stars pricking through the dark up there like candles being lit.
Chris made out his silhouette leaning against the door-jamb, his arms crossed over his chest and his gloved right hand absently massaging his left shoulder.
"You comin', cowboy? Boys've got the baggage car fixed up nice as a hotel room on wheels." Chris said, trying for lightness, trying to be non-confrontational, but the look Vin turned down to him was inscrutable in the stark glowing shadows of sunset.
"Figger I'll rest right here n' keep Peso from kickin' the walls out just for the hell of it." A tip of his head back into the stock-car.
The flat brim of Chris' hat rose as he looked at the open horizontal slats of the car skeptically, but he made no effort to talk Vin out of it. He wasn't going to come to hand easily, Chris knew that now. He was going to keep whatever it was to himself. Chris didn't know for sure anymore what to do about it, but he was getting madder and madder about, it, too. He'd always been a man who'd go to the wall for a friend and Tanner had to know it, yet he was keeping a space between them all that was a ways wider than he ever had. By now they'd all noted it, and Buck was too sharp not to have read his own growing anger.
Uncomfortably, he realized the boys would probably be wanting to talk about Tanner in his absence, would be voicing suspicions they'd kept close until now and looking to him for tells, especially Buck. He wasn't sure how he was going to handle that. He'd given his word to keep Vin's confidence about his dead wife and he'd honor it, but what he might owe Vin beyond that was becoming more uncertain by the day.
He spotted Vin's buffalo robe and saddle-bags behind him and shrugged; "Suit yourself." For the first time not a man letting a friend he respected do as he saw fit, but a man coming not to care and even maybe prefer the absence of company he was no longer sure was friendly. It had a brittle flavor of accusation Vin had to look levelly back at despite it slipping like a knife into him. He watched Chris walk away in the increasing pace of huffs and belches from the locomotive as the stokers shoveled coal into the box to build a head of steam.
Vin shivered, aching in his body and in his soul as he looked back to the vista they were soon to leave far behind them. He loved the vast empty places as Duley had loved the forests and alpine meadows, the headwaters and woods that she'd called the womb of the world. He'd loved them too, but since she'd left him, he'd ranged only badlands and desert where he'd never been with her. Where the wordless power in the emptiness matched the barrens in his soul. It was comfortable in its starkness, unyielding and harshly honest.
For awhile Duley had made him believe otherwise, but he'd long since remembered that life was relative moments of joy, and the rest a thing a man simply endured.
Julianna Monroe's face pressed against the glass of the passenger car second down the line from the locomotive, she probably couldn't see him in the darkening doorway, but the coach was lit with kerosene lanterns and she was staring longingly at the baggage car where the boys had gone to ground. He knew why, knew some longing for that warm company himself. There'd be laughing and a bottle passed around, the tang of Chris' cigarillo and very likely some serious talk he was giving them all room for. By tomorrow he might not have a friend left and he shook his head at what yawned deep and forbidding in him to think about that. More like they'd decide to find out what he was up to, and while that was a far more gratifying consideration, he couldn't let them do that, either. When it was over they'd understand. He was counting on that so much it scared him.
Tonight he wouldn't have been able to hide anything from them nor would he have patience to slip past whatever questions they might've dared ask. He'd come too near ruining himself in going after J.D. like he had and he figured he'd just let them come to whatever conclusions they wanted on their own and hope for the best. Maybe they'd chalk it up to being hurt and tired. He could hope for that.
Tonight, he'd lay himself down and let his hurt body knit up some, do what thinking he could of everything that was coming and try not to let it loom. Not go down under the weight of it. But Lord, if it was this hard now, how would be up there in all those places? All the things he had to do, find the Lakota, get the weapons to them - but before then he had to discover as much about what was coming at the people as he could, and he couldn't do that from a distance. Oh, he didn't like thinking in that direction, felt like a steer in a chute, but it was the only way.
He lurched, and the horses did, too, with tossing startlement, as the wheel-arms of the locomotive suddenly jabbed backwards, then forward again, turning the heavy metal wheels with a slipping screech that slowly assumed a forward momentum and rhythm. He spoke to the animals softly, the tone low and easy telling them there was nothing to fear in the motion, and they settled except for Peso. The black was flat-ears and back-rolling eyes, haunches bobbing as he stepped his back hooves to and fro in an arch from the pivot of his fore hooves.
"Settle down, horse." Vin growled, daring to step back and put a hand on the bony top of the horse's tail to remind him of a certain move he could make with it that Peso wouldn't like. Peso settled and the threat became a single pat.
Vin slid the wide doorway only halfway closed despite the wind, kicking a pile of straw together and unfurling his ground-cloth on it so he'd be back of the opening a bit but have the night sky in his eyes when he laid down. The car moved under his feet, lurched now and then, and the uncertainty felt sadly familiar.
He didn't bother eating anything, but took a long drink from his canteen, wrapping himself in the buffalo robe against the chill of the arriving night and the forced wind of their momentum as the train reached the speed it would hold through the night. Slow and stiff as an old man, he laid back on his saddle without having to hide the slow moan of discomfort.
The buttes and mesas and rocky outcroppings slid by in the stark shadows of dusk, and then moonlight when full dark had descended, as he sat deep in troubled thought. Gradually the vast open sky began to be confined in pinon pine and juniper as they climbed the switchbacks up the eastern flank of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the grade steepening gradually. He tracked the route ahead of them in his mind ... they'd continue rising through Santa Cruz, skirting the huge Alcalde ranch through Velarde until they reached Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico. Then they'd drop down into Taos to pick up coal and water, maybe walk the horses some before they headed across into Colorado Territory at Joroso. One hundred and forty miles covered in eight hours, it was a wonder he didn't much care for despite it saving them many days of arduous travel.
Trains would bring soldiers to the territories in uncountable numbers, like locusts with the weight of a conquerer behind them. Maybe if those soldiers had to ride horseback the whole way, they'd think twice about taking the people on in their own mountains. Trains would also bring the buffalo hunters who would leave nothing but piles of rotting meat as those trains bore the hides back to the east like pillage. The noise of steam engines would bisect the breeding and calving and grazing grounds of the ancient herds, fragmenting them and interrupting the wandering hunts that sustained the life of the people. That, of course, was the goal.
Vin had hunted buff for the army when he was young until he realized they wanted more than what would feed them - the government's plan was to kill them all, and thus starve the people into dependent submission, destroying a harmony of man and animal that had existed from the beginning of time. He stopped that direction of pondering things, the anger just too hot to be useful. The war the people would face was a dark abyss he would not be able to stop, though he wished it with everything he was; but he would do whatever was necessary to ensure that the people survived, no matter what it cost him.
They'd arrive in Alamosa mid-day tomorrow and change trains to the Kansas and Pacific for the long climb into the Sangre de Cristo mountains and across at Red Wing pass. That leg was nearly 320 miles and would probably include stops of unknown duration at Pueblo and Colorado Springs before they reached Denver. Three major cities where the Monroes were expected to send word to their brother, where the chance of picking up outlaws again were high. But Wittinger wasn't the only one who could coerce a telegraph operator.
By the time they laid over in Denver for the further ride into Fort Collins, where they'd detrain and go overland, they'd be in country he couldn't even think of without having Duley right on him. By then, she'd be so near that he'd didn't know how he'd keep from going crazy remembering the force of his need for her. He didn't know why, but he knew with a certainty she was there in all the places they'd been, places as indelibly marked with her as he was himself.
He thought about Nettie, then, prayed she was doing well and tried not to wish he was back in Four Corners letting her feed him, drinking her good coffee and resting his tormented soul in the balm of her wisdom. There'd be no rest for him until this was done, and he didn't even know all of what 'this' was himself. Duley had loved the people, it was easy to believe she would move him for their sake now, but she had also loved him above all else, he'd always known that, and she wouldn't sacrifice him even for their sake, even to fix what had gone so terribly wrong on her account. He didn't want to wonder what cause she had in mind for him alone, knowing how much it would hurt him, and he was afraid of why she'd move him like this anyway.
He slept awhile, neither long nor restful, and woke in that still deep hour of the night in a startled and disturbed state that kept him wakeful until dawn.
Buck was stretched out so comfortably long that he looked like he'd be seven feet tall when he stood up, contentedly sipping a tin cup of whiskey from a bottle Josiah had produced and shared around, setting it back on his chest with a sigh.
Even J.D. had some without comment, and he relaxed a little bit more. He'd been tentative around them until he could see what their opinions might be, and that they were still being regular made him want to embrace them all - which of course a man couldn't do - but he was grateful they were letting him slip right back in amongst them despite the terrible mistake he'd made. He vowed to himself that he would never be so foolish again.
Buck knew the kid would be foolish again, of course, it was a kid's nature to be impulsive and brash if he had a lick of spirit, and J.D. had so much of that it made him twitchy. But a man had to know he could make mistakes and have his friends forgive him. It pleased him that Vin had made a point of reaching peace with J.D., but that he'd blown up at the kid at all still stuck in his craw some and made him wonder about a few things. Just because Buck was a go-along sort didn't mean he'd go along stupidly.
Chris was sitting back out of the gently swinging ring of light cast from the lantern above them, his hat still on, so his face was obliterated in the shadows. Something about him was bristling and closed; Buck knew that feeling, like a rattler warning off the questions he had to see in their eyes and hear in their open-ended comments as they talked among themselves about the journey so far, their individual recountings of the battle becoming so ridiculously epic that it had them in stitches for quite a while.
Nathan yawned widely, stretched his long arms and flopped back onto the ground-cloth cushioned by straw, enjoying the comfort and the rocking of the train and even the cool thread of air from the barred but unglassed windows high on top of the baggage car walls.
"Vin say why he wasn't comin'?" The healer asked of Chris, not retreating from the distant expression on the gunslinger's face nor the non-committal coolness of his answer as he replied,
"Wanted t'keep an eye on Peso."
"Hmph. Wanted t'be out from my eye, more like it, stubborn son of a bitch. J.D., what'd he do to his shoulder today? It botherin' him?"
Tonight J.D. wouldn't have betrayed so much as a sneeze from Vin, so he only shrugged and laid back against the feed-sacks.
"Not that I saw." Though he'd winced at the quick pop of Vin's shoulder when Peso had gone over the side of the ramp and heard him swear about it, which Vin seldom did unless something hurt. Man had a right to keep his aches to himself.
It was Josiah, however, who surprised Chris by going into the subject of Vin's behavior with that forthright directness Chris had always found difficult to sidestep.
"I'm more interested in what's going on in Vin's head than his body. There's somethin' off about him, n' has been since these Monroes came to town. Leavin' Nettie like he did, keepin' so much to himself, flyin' off the handle ... '
"He always keeps to himself, Josiah, nothin' strange about that." J.D. objected, but Josiah just looked at him knowingly, reading the newly forgiven urge to defend Vin.
"And does he always fly off the handle like he did today, J.D.?" Josiah's tone was reasonable and patient, but forcing J.D. to swallow what was obviously a bitter bit of reality. "You ever seen that of him before?" Not happy to have to watch J.D. squirm, but feeling strongly enough by now that something was wrong to want to engage in frank discussion.
"You still think he's got feelin's for that Monroe woman, Josiah?" Nathan asked somberly, "'Cause I ain't seen him anywhere near her, nor any of them."
Josiah considered that, seeing speculation in Buck's eyes as well. Not seeing Chris' eyes at all.
"Well," He finally said, "A man might stay away from something he knew he shouldn't want." Spoken so gently and with such compassion that Chris' head lifted, eyes glittering points in the rusty gloom.
Was that it? Did Vin have feelings for his wife's sister? He knew his mouth opened a little with surprise and couldn't stop it, this idea had never even crossed his mind, and he couldn't really believe it now but for seeing agreement in Buck's face. His old friend was a perceptive man and he'd seldom known him to be wrong when it came to matters of men and women. No, it couldn't be ...
"Oh, please!" J.D. scoffed, looking around at them like they'd lost their minds.
The preacher's head tipped to one side thoughtfully, massive shoulders lifting and falling on a heavy shrug; "I admit I've wondered about that, but he's always nervy around females. What d'you think, Chris?"
And innocuous as the question was, as casually put, Chris felt every eye turn to him and temper sparked in his eye, not a man to be cornered into saying anything he didn't want to.
"Ain't none of my goddamned business." Making it clear in the snap of those words and the hard shine of his eyes that it was none of theirs, either, the language of his motions equally plain as he stood up, moved into the darkness along the wall and laid his bedroll there, then himself. He set his hat down decisively over his face and laced his fingers across his narrow stomach. He'd said all he intended to and nobody thought otherwise.
Buck made a face, raised eyebrows and a pursed mouth like a child mocking a grumpy adult, but privately he wondered what confidence Chris was keeping for Vin, and why it seemed like he was increasingly unhappy to be doing so.
"You know, Chris ..." He said, raising his voice a bit to chase Chris back into those shadows he'd intended to avoid them in, "If there's somethin' goin' on with Tanner we oughta know about, and you know about it now, we'd appreciate bein' let in on it is all. This ain't exactly a tea-party we're headin' into ... n' gold has a way of turnin' things in directions nobody expects."
Chris did not answer, didn't even move, though Buck felt his tension and knew he'd pushed him as far as he was going to go. He gave up with a rueful shake of his head, not noticing that J.D.'s eyes were incensed at the implication he thought Buck had made. Surely none of them thought Vin would put gold above any of them! He never would, Buck couldn't have meant that!
"Well," Buck drawled, "No law says we can't try t'figure it out on our own, right?"
"Buck, we shouldn't be talkin' about Vin behind his back this way." J.D. declared, "If he's got feelings for the widow, that's his business, ain't it? And it's got nothing to do with gold, Vin doesn't care about money, never has."
"Son, Vin's feelin's for the Monroe woman might be our business if her family is schemin' after gold." Buck said, sternly enough so J.D. realized he was a little pissed J.D. had assumed his suspicions were aimed at Vin that way. "He has feelin's for her and he might just keep secrets for her - or her brothers."
J.D. couldn't say he wouldn't, but the notion made them all very uncomfortable. Vin was one of them, a man they trusted who maybe didn't trust them quite as much as they'd thought.
"Well, it's fairly certain that the Monroe brothers intend more than just meeting their eldest in the frontier, this is a long and dangerous trip to make just for a visit." Josiah offered soberly. "I hope Ezra can ferret out some details ..."
Buck laughed out loud at the analogy and interrupted, "Ferret? Ain't that some kind of weasel?" Lightening the mood a bit off this touchy subject, knowing there was nothing they could find out that Vin didn't want them to.
But Nathan kept shaking his head, doubt furrowing his smooth dark forehead. "I don't think he's got that kind of interest in Miz Monroe, Buck." He glanced at Josiah, who shrugged,"I do think there's somethin' between them neither are talkin' about, but I don't think it's that kind of likin'."
"Maybe not on Vin's part," Buck tucked his angular chin down and looked at Nathan from under his raised eyebrows, "but Elizabeth Monroe has eyes for Vin that kinda wander, if you get my drift ..." A wicked waggle of those eyebrows and a fleeting gesture that managed to be lacivious.
Now, if Buck was saying a woman had such eyes for him, they could scoff and laugh it off as his enormously lustful ego, but if the man had ever been born who could read a woman's heart, it was Buck Wilmington.
He rolled his wide raw-boned shoulders with a meaningful wink and took another drink, looking at their contemplative faces and the various expressions of confusion and surprise and edgy discomfort. Feeling Chris' keen attention from the darkness and figuring that getting him thinking on it was enough for now.
What he didn't know was that the idea of a romance between Elizabeth Monroe and Vin was the lesser of many evils in Chris' mind and almost a relief to ponder. It'd be foolish and wrong, and Vin was too smart not to know that - which might explain him being so standoffish. A man didn't want to hear things he already knew when he was being a fool.
"Tell y'what, Buck ..." Josiah said with a gleam in his pale blue eyes and a crooked dare-you smile, "Why don't you just ask him about it?"
"Yeah, Buck!" J.D. chimed in, his cheery voice still touched with a defensiveness for Vin that Buck didn't have it in him to be annoyed about.
"Why, I'm bettin' Ezra would take odds on how that turns out, don't you?" The kid said, starting to grin, "Only you make sure your money is someplace we can get to it when Vin shoots your head off from a mile away. Matter of fact, why don't we just make bets on just how far away he can shoot you from?"
Their laughter eased the guilt over discussing Vin's business behind his back, the thought of their slippery tracker being pursued by a fine southern female just opened up too many hilarious possibilities to ignore.
Elizabeth and Mary had gotten as comfortable as they could on the benches, the padding nowhere near enough, but the rough travel and recent battle exhausting them enough for sleep despite the discomfort. They huddled wrapped in blankets against the chill even the pot-bellied stove in the corner could not completely dissipate.
As soon as they were asleep, Jules had slipped off her bench and slithered like a wild Indian up onto the seat behind her Uncles, whose benches faced the one Mr. Travis and that fancy gambler were on. Cards tapped and slid across a narrow board that swung down from the wall to serve as a table between them, it was littered with gold coins and paper money and metal coffee cups for whatever it was Mr. Standish poured out of his silver flask.
A few cowboys watched the game in progress but made no move to join in at the sight of the size of the pot and how casually the players laid bets in amounts beyond what they'd earn in a month. The car was only half-full, but still too crowded to Stephen's way of thinking. He would gladly have paid extra for a car to themselves if it was to be had; of course it was not. Privacy was something utterly unknown on the frontier, he thought sourly, annoyed to have to share the space with these smelly inferiors.
Orrin and Ezra both saw Jules' face in the shadows between her Uncle's shoulders, but neither said anything about it, the girl was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and nowhere near sleepy and both knew she'd be trouble if they gave her away. Nothing was quite so troublesome as a bright bored child and Ezra performed a particularly fancy shuffle for her amusement. She grinned at him.
"Call ..." Ezra nudged a few dollars into the pot and smiled as the laid hands revealed him to be the winner, again. James was an abysmal poker player, for which he was quite grateful, and Stephen not much better when he had a good hand, too prone to that satisfied look that warned Ezra to call or fold. He'd let them win their share, though - well, perhaps not entirely their share, but he was being as generous as it was possible for him to be without hurting himself.
"I expect your brother will be mustering out in the near future?" He commented curiously as he gathered the cards for a snapping, sliding shuffle that Jules followed closely.
Stephen shrugged.
"I hope so. He has interests there, but I don't have any intention of giving up my home and businesses in Virginia to remain on the frontier."
"Interests?" Ezra queried blandly, polite conversation as he dealt the next hand, but he did not miss the glance Stephen sent Travis' way. He would be reluctant to be frank with the Indian Agent among them, and Ezra's eyes invited Travis to depart. By now the brothers were fairly well convinced that an ally experienced in the west was essential, particularly one as clever and devious as Ezra - and, naturally, as amenable to profit no matter what quarter it came from.
They played another few hands before Orrin yawned and pocketed his modest winnings, rising with a meaningful grip on Ezra's shoulder that said he was trusting him to keep him appraised of anything he might discover. Odd to feel like he was working with a man who'd nearly sent him to prison and still wasn't sure that was the right decision. But it was nevertheless a good feeling to have earned that much respect from someone Ezra secretly admired a great deal.
The gambler plied the brothers with another drink from the flask and watched Stephen's clumsy deal.
"Mister Monroe ... " He said when the hand was dealt, leaning forward conspiratorially with a glance over his shoulder to be sure they weren't overheard, "You've made allusions more than once now to some ... opportunities, shall we say - in this godforsaken backwater we're being dragged into. My curiosity has long since been aroused."
James' said nothing, but his eyes flickered back and forth between them, not liking the pleased ego on his brother's face.
Jules, staring round-eyed at Ezra, obeyed the quick warning look that flicked her way. He was trusting her! Then her eyes narrowed furiously - her Uncles were up to something, this wasn't at all what they'd said it was, she should have known! Well, if Mr. Standish was going to use some trickery to find out, she certainly wasn't going to tell on him!
"We're investing in a cartage business there, that's all." James said before Stephen could answer, "You know, wagons and repair facilities for the same to serve settlers going west, overland shipping of manufacturered goods west and raw materials such as furs and such east."
Ezra smiled around the stub of a smoldering cigar, gold tooth glimmering and emerald eyes friendly, but unconvinced.
"You'll pardon my saying so, gentlemen, but I have a great deal of difficulty understandin' why gentlemen of your obvious station and breeding would risk the travails of such a journey when an agent could certainly accomplish so modest a goal as a drayage business." Green eyes bright with admiring speculation hauled Stephen in like a trout. "You don't strike me as the sort of gentleman who bothers himself with ... minor affairs."
Stephen preened, his smile glowing with false modesty and appreciation of what he perceived as Ezra's acuity as to his status, which James knew immediately was the gambler's intent and he rolled his eyes - stroke Stephen's ego and he all but rolled over to have his belly scratched! He opened his mouth to voice that warning and then stopped. Reconsidered with a daring he'd never known himself to have. No. Not this time would he save Stephen from himself. Let him bring this fox-eyed riverboat con-man into it, let Gerald see who, indeed, had the better instincts. All his life James had been Stephen's curb, fixing things, arranging things for both his brothers, but somehow he knew that time had passed, and he accepted it with a sense of being on a brink that was frightening in its magnitude.
He settled back to watch the gambler work his brother and never knew his niece, behind him, was looking at him with wonderment.
They reached the San Luis Valley and Alamosa at 11:00 the next morning, the largest alpine valley in the world, fifty miles wide and 80 miles long. Vin had been transfixed for an hour, sitting in the open doorway leaning out over his wide-spread knees with his fingers laced between them. His body took the motion of the train, he didn't notice the ground rushing past under his dangling boots, and the moment the train finally ground to a near halt, he got down and walked out across the dusty lacing of tracks, memory coming so fast and hard he couldn't breathe.
On the west, the San Juan range of the Rockies, the continental divide; on the east, the spiny Sangre de Cristo mountains, mount Blanc peak towering over everything. Just north of the valley the Rio ran in a deep crack in the upsloping mesa, a faint reflecting ribbon walled in sheer dark layers, the mountains rising 14,000 feet in the distance. There were grassy dunes just east of here that Duley had loved, she'd led him a squirrel's scramble to the top of the largest one and they'd been shaped like stars from above. Winds ran high in the afternoon and the river, as it came into the valley, was set free into broad rambling wetlands. He'd seen a herd of buffalo grazing in thigh-high grass, a herd so huge it had seemed one immense blanketing being. The people's winter camp that year had tasted of this valley from that hunt.
Someone hailed him from the train, he heard the screech and sibilant huffs and grind of the train slowing to a stop, but it wasn't so easy to retrieve all that had just burst out of his control and scattered him. He lifted a hand without turning around, struggling, hoping it just looked like he was admiring the view. So soon as this she had come home in him. His eyes snapped closed to know it, a place they'd been together only once, and the mountains so full of so much more ... how would he ...
"Vin!" J.D.'s call, then the clatter and thump of ramps being extended, and he took a quick breath, then another, slower. He loved her like he never had and never would another living thing, but just now he wished she wasn't riding him so close. Instantly he regretted that traitorous and cowardly thought, but the sounds from behind him took on the weight of reality and he had to turn around and use the walk back to gather himself before J.D. came to get him.
It was easier when he saw the town, adobe and log buildings sprawled sparsely on the far side of the tracks nearly outnumbered by pens and chute-ramps for cattle and horses. It hadn't been here before. This had been the people's summer hunting ground, belonging to no one but itself, a ripe rich font of the earth that sustained them through the fall and winter.
While the Monroes arranged the change of trains, not expected until late afternoon, the seven let down the ramp on the gondola and stock cars and spilled the mules into a pen, the horses into another. Several of the animals immediately dropped into the dust for a good roll, and Buck was not alone in turning to scan the scrawny town hopefully for a saloon.
"Vin?" Nathan's quiet voice startled him, the healer appearing from between cars at his elbow, "We got a little while here before the arrangements get made, I'd like t'check them ribs one more time."
Vin wanted to refuse, Nathan saw that instinct immediately, but the rest of the boys were moving off toward the most likely adobe and it'd be an excuse for not going along.
So he just shrugged and followed the healer around between the cars where they had a little privacy. Vin half-leaned, half-sat on the broad iron coupling and slipped his coat off, unbuttoned his vest and shed that, unbuttoned his shirt and the long-johns and let Nathan take it from there. Large dark hands slid under the material on the left and moved it aside - all his tidy bandages were gone, and his dark glance up at Vin was disapproving. Vin just shrugged, and Nathan noticed it didn't hurt him to do so. The bruise had taken on a purple-brown color and Vin hardly flinched when he touched the ribs carefully, skimming along the hard curves looking for tender spots or heat that might warn of breakage or infection.
Before Vin could protest, Nathan unbuckled his gun-belt; "C'mon, Vin, that'un on your hip was bad, let me check it." Reluctantly Vin let the belt go and Nathan draped it on the bar behind him. "If I kin see everything's healing alright, I won't bother you again, OK?"
Grudgingly, Vin unbuttoned the top of his high-waisted bucksin pants and folded the left side down far enough for Nathan to get a good look at the abraded hipbone. He'd tucked a bandana there as padding, which told Nathan the weight of the mare's leg was still making itself known, and it was an angrier and deeper color than the ribs. Vin couldn't help stiffening when he ran his thumb across the crest of hipbone.
"Still pretty sore, ain't it?"
"Well, what's it look like, Nathan?" Vin scowled, "Can't be helped, ain't slowin' me down none."
Nathan bobbed his head in agreement and Vin relaxed. The heels of his hands came to easy rest beside his hips and his spine loosened into a comfortable curve that told Nathan more about the rate of his healing than anything else had.
"Alright, let's salve that hip for today - maybe some liniment for your shoulder - " The white flash of teeth at Vin's unhappy surprise that Nathan knew about that.
"Oh, my God!" Both men bolted to their feet at Elizabeth's exclamation and suddenly there she was, coming quickly toward them with a look of dismayed concern. She'd been walking past and glimpsed the men between the cars, caught sight of Vin Tanner's lean bare torso and immediately worried why he required the healer's services. Then she's seen the livid bruises marring his entire left side, and every bit of sense just quit her entirely - what sense she had left, that was, after seeing him, his body narrow and efficient as a greyhound.
Vin snatched his pants together and Nathan rose to stand in front of him protectively, which Elizabeth noted with some dismay and a moment's urge to laugh at their shocked faces. She'd seen that expression a time or two and it never failed to bring out a motherly impatience, men so shy of women seeing their bodies as if there was something shameful about it. Well, she'd taken care of three brothers and her share of wounded Confederate soldiers during the war, it wasn't like she was shocked by the sight whether it was proper or not. Proper seemed to matter so little out here, the civilized strictures of traditional eastern decorum shed without her really realizing it into an obedience to impulse where split-seconds could end or save a life. She wanted to help him, needed to know he was all right - they were counting on him, weren't they? Surely it was a pragmatic as that, though why her heart should be racing she had no idea.
"What on earth happened to you?" she said worriedly as she drew near, sidestepping Nathan neatly so she could reach Vin, her little hand unraveling his grip on his shirt with a firm determination that amazed him no more than it did her.
"Ma'am, if you'd just ..."
"You've been kicked by a horse, haven't you ..." A sympathetic sigh hissed through her lips as she examined the mottled bruise on his chest and side, acutely aware of him peering down at her as she did so, eyebrows tangled together in embarrassed discomfort and all but shrinking back from her touch.
"Ma'am ..."
"What are you doing for this, Mister Jackson?" she asked briskly, as if she were in charge and had always been so. In fact, the warmth of Vin's skin was an unexpected shock against her fingertips, the masculine scent and taut musculature frayed at her composure. What on earth did she think she was doing? Part of her was aghast at her audacity, but a stronger part wanted to touch him again. Was she mad? It was broad daylight, she was acting like a woman to whom propriety meant nothing!
Vin nearly slapped her hand away, so very nearly, mortified and swamped with the urge to escape, but he held himself still. She seemed business-like about it and he couldn't afford to offend her, she was the only one of the Monroes he could bear to be near and the most likely to speak honestly. Because he was convinced that whatever nefarious doings her brothers were involved in did not include her.
"Well, Ma'am," Nathan said tentatively, recognizing the assumption of authority that was pure white southern attitude, "I was about to put this salve on it, and some liniment on his shoulder where it got wrenched yesterday ..." Hoisting the small can of salve he'd just uncapped and nudging his medical pack where the liniment waited.
"Good," she replied, reaching back and plucking the can of salve out of his hand as though he expected her to. Nathan swallowed a smile at Vin's face; the man looked like he'd been hit in the head, eyes turbulent, but dumbly resuming his place against the metal coupling in obedience to her gentle shove. It was very unlike Vin, who was painfully, Nathan thought defensively, shy, to allow a anyone such liberties, and it forced the healer to revisit Josiah and Buck's opinions. The tracker made no objection when she dipped her fingers into the brownish salve and proceeded to lay it along his ribs with a delicate touch that nonetheless made him start almost violently.
Her free hand patted his where it was clenched around the edge of the coupling, as if he was a horse needing tending. Vin never took his eyes off her, and there was a rigid intensity to that regard that Nathan had never seen before. Miz Monroe, he thought admiringly, paid Vin's distress no more mind than a mother tending the flinches of a boy with a skinned knee. He hadn't expected such a bold sort of pragmatism from a southern woman of substance, and that she could suspend genteel instincts and upbringing to offer help where needed told him a great deal about the unexpected strength of her character.
"You look like you done this before, Ma'am," he observed wryly, meeting Vin's eyes over her head and seeing an almost frantic alarm, but also an odd determination to let her have her way.
Vin didn't understand Nathan's smile, but then he wasn't making sense of much just then, so disconcerted by Elizabeth's intimate presence that if he moved at all, he'd probably knock her down getting away from her. He wished he could breathe, dizzy with the need to do that. The healer's grin widened just a bit as he got the liniment out of his pack and moved around behind Vin to apply it to his shoulder while Elizabeth tended the ribs. Having two people touching him at the same time was almost more than Vin could take, but they both ignored him and talked to one another as if he were, indeed, a horse.
"I have, Mr. Jackson; three brothers and a war that needed the daughters as well as the sons of the south," she said almost primly, striving for the clinical distance she'd always managed to find tending soldiers during the war. She found a small breathless smile that she hoped disguised her deeper uncertainty.
"You nursed men during the war, Ma'am?" Nathan asked, and she affirmed that, seeing his skeptical surprise but grateful beyond expression to use that terrible war to excuse this ... impossible boldness.
"There are times when the rules make themselves," she said, the knowledge of how profound that statement truly was kept private but for the quaver in her voice and the poor excuse for a laugh; "Between the two of us we should be able to patch up this poor bruised cowboy ..." Trying to include Nathan, trying to render Vin's battered body impersonal in the cooperation of healers. If either one of her brothers came by right now ... Lord, she didn't want to imagine the trouble, feeling suddenly like Julianna doing something she knew she ought not. Guilty, but ... thrilling, daring.
Nathan laughed and shook his head, bent down to his bag to replace the liniment bottle.
When he glanced up, he found Elizabeth and Vin looking at each other as though neither were sure what the other was, and her hand had stilled on his ribs in what might have seemed the prelude to a caress.
Nathan's eyebrows lowered quizzically, and the lady saw that with a start, snatching her hand back and turning away from Tanner with a deeper flush eclipsing the one that had long since climbed her cheeks.
Good Lord! She thought frantically, nothing else but Good Lord, what am I doing? Who is this woman?? She hid her face in focusing on closing the tin in her hand, fumbling with the top and only the instinct to grace holding her from slapping hands over her mortified face and running away like a child caught out in wickedness.
"Well, then ..." Her voice constricted, then fading away entirely as her eyes were drawn fearfully back to Vin's face for his reaction to that bewildering moment, but he was buttoning his shirt with his head down to that, and the healer's eyes were far too curious for comfort. All she could do was nod briskly, dust her hands together nervously, then jolt into a hasty retreat with her face blazing. What must they think of her? If she'd had even the slightest hope of surviving it, Elizabeth would have taken the first horse she came across and headed straight back to Virginia.
The sensation of his body under her hands remained, and with it the quickened beat of her heart. Never in her life had she touched a man so intimately, despite having bathed wounded strangers from head to toe. Despite having been married even for so short a time. Never so ... intimately. Textures of muscles and bone so much more immediate than a woman, skin thin and tight-drawn without the cushion that underlay the feminine form.
She hurried on, nearly tripping because she had closed her eyes a moment savoring what she should not, oh, should not be savoring! She gulped for breath, wanted to erase the last few minutes from her mind, from theirs. Her sister's husband, she reminded herself forcefully, her sister's husband! In no way a man suitable for her, not a man she should even admire and definitely, oh, most definitely, not desire! She needed no man, wanted none! A sound mid-way between a sob and a laugh burst from her, a sound as ridiculous as she felt, floundering around like a child in a foreign country where even her own heart was beyond her comprehension. But she was not a girl, not given to such flights of fantasy, and not a woman to fall prey to the influence of this wild strange place as if she had no defenses whatever!
Her skirts snapped around her ankles as she hastened toward the passenger coach, where her brothers had been pleased to arrange two compartments for themselves and the women. She needed desperately to sit down, to breathe slowly and remember who she was, and what she was, that seemed so damnably easy to forget on the frontier. Was that why people came here? To forget what they were in a land without rules? And was everyone bent away from themselves into this ... formlessness whether they wished it or not?
She prayed her face was a normal color when she entered the car, smiled at Mr. Standish and the Indian Agent, Mr. Travis, who had acquired their own compartment. That might've seemed odd had she presence enough to wonder about, since the two men hardly seemed to do more than tolerate each other.
Stephen, fortunately, was standing looking out the window grinding his teeth, his hands clasping and unclasping behind his back. Naturally, he'd hoped the remaining six would be offended not to have had equally commodious accommodations, but they had never even inquired about it and were outside now, relaxed and noisier than they'd been an hour ago, contentedly transferring their belongings from one baggage car to another. The sight of her brother did a good deal towards cooling her mood: One could never afford to reveal weakness to Stephen.
It caused her a sudden chill to realize just how intractable Stephen was, every bit as much as Gerald was, as their mother had been when she lived, dripping the slow poison of her disappointment day by day into their young ears until they hated their father and everything he loved more than he loved them as much as she did. What would her elder brothers do if they discovered who Vin Tanner really was? All her life she'd had to be on guard against them, first her mother, then Gerald, and when he had gone to the frontier, Stephen, all searching ceaselessly for a way to take from her what her father had unexpectedly left in his daughter's care. Her mother because her father had so neatly side-stepped her promise to burn every scrap to the ground and salt the earth if he left her, Gerald because he couldn't stand a woman possessing what he considered his by right of birth, and Stephen because he coveted the resources that might pay his gambling debts and cover bad investments. Only James had never resented her for the farm, only he seemed to love it as she did, as her father had - a traitorous affection to her elder brothers, as if they loved it purely to torment them.
James lounged in the far corner of the car watching his brother just as Elizabeth was, but with far more pleasure, twitches of smiles flirting with the corners of his mouth. It struck Elizabeth very pleasantly that she was not the only Monroe undergoing changes in this place where Virginia and the life there were faint and ineffectual. James was not unhappy with that - indeed, neither was she for his sake. He was too much younger than Gerald and Stephen not to fall prey to their cruelties, born in a failed last attempt to chain her father to her mother. Consequently, her mother had resented and ignored him, and he had spent his boyhood being thrashed and brow-beaten and bullied by his brothers, first secretly and then, when her father had finally gone, openly. Threatened with disinheritance by his mother, with poverty and ruin by his brothers, then with nefarious plots that would see him imprisoned when he'd learned to outmaneuver them legally, he had become nothing more but their obedient servant.
And now her youngest brother was taking open delight in watching seven rough frontiersmen side-step and tweak and infuriate Stephen, who was seldom kept so off-balanced much less by men he surely considered his inferiors in every way. She could almost read Stephen's mind as he stood there, hump-shouldered and glowering - the scion of a powerful family fortune, a master of industry, a man feared in the highest political circles! And yet she knew as well as James must that without the fortune accumulated by the father he and Gerald so hated, Stephen would have amounted to little more than a small-time criminal. He had all Gerald's soulless instincts to profit with none of the intellect that made their eldest so dangerous.
It was James who kept Stephen above water at Gerald's command, so shrewdly intuitive and quick-minded that he had never failed to turn a profit even where none seemed possible. But rather than nurture those talents for the good of the family or the economic vitality of the region, James was bribed and threatened into causes as ignoble as hiding Stephen's debts and correcting their political and business errors. One thing they had never been able to do was render their sister dependent and defenseless and silent, she had the farm and the protection of the wealth she shrewdly increased, she became a moral and economic force they could not afford to alienate and she did not, ever, provoke them or arm them against her.
But all it would take was the slightest inkling of interest between she and Vin Tanner to put her into their eager hands.
Elizabeth lay on the hard pallet formed by the backs of the opposing seats, which folded down to create a bed that occupied the entire compartment, rocking with the rhythm of the train, feeling the joinings of the track in the clatterings under her. Beside her, Julianna slept soundly, her young face almost innocent in repose, a child-like flush across her cheeks that drew the back of Elizabeth's fingers in a motherly caress, careful not to wake her. Bold as a magpie, this girl, Duley's spirit reborn, and she was afraid for her niece in that brave but capricious recklessness. Her sister had died too young from being so free, and she couldn't bear the thought of the same befalling Julianna - how did one curb such an adventuresome spirit without snuffing it?
Sighing heavily, she turned back to the window beside her, the moon-silvered landscape passing by in watchful silence. Seeing places in her she did not know at all.
"Can't sleep?" Mary's soft whisper startled her, the woman lay on the far side of Julianna - the only way they could be sure she wouldn't slip away while they slept - and Elizabeth turned her head on the pillow with a faint smile.
"It's a place that seems made for sleepless nights."
Mary chuckled softly, taking care not to wake Julianna, but moved by the motherly gesture of love she'd witnessed without Elizabeth being aware. The lady loved this exasperating girl quite completely, her devotion and affection as plain as her worry. But she was troubled and hesitant this evening, distracted by a worry that seemed to embarrass her.
"That is certainly the truth." Mary replied, thinking she knew what Elizabeth's sleeplessness meant - who she was thinking of. Elizabeth unwittingly answered the unasked question by saying,
"Did you know Mr. Tanner was injured? I saw Mr. Jackson examining him, and he's got a bruise the size of Rhode Island from a horse-kick, at least I think it was a horse-kick."
Mary snickered and said, "Probably was; he is in a state of constant undeclared war with that horse of his." Emboldened by the comfortable intimacy that had developed between them over the last weeks, and a sisterly impulse she welcomed, Mary pursued the opening Elizabeth had given her.
"I wouldn't worry overmuch about it, out here men are always getting bashed up by something or the other, if it slows them down at all they're either near death or real sissies."
Elizabeth burst into a sound that even muffled sounded like giggles, Mary shushing her as Jules stirred, but both of them taken like girls in stifled laughter. Sissies wasn't a word that could be applied to any of the seven.
"You're attracted to him, aren't you." Mary murmured, eyes shining in the gloom and unavoidable as Elizabeth shot her a nervously surprised glance.
"To whom?" She said, weak-voiced and striving for innocence, but knowing Mary was far more astute than that and seeing it clearly in the wry tip of her blond head. Elizabeth sighed, her eyes dropping away with embarrassment from that knowing look. It occurred to her that she might, indeed, talk to the other woman about it, maybe gain some rationale that would help her put these conflicted feelings in perspective. She believed she could trust Mary Travis.
"Alright, perhaps I am." She admitted finally, but with a shake of her head that mocked her own foolishness. "It's the most ridiculous thing and of course, utterly inappropriate."
"Inappropriate?" Mary echoed, realizing Elizabeth would deny her feelings just as she denied hers for Chris Larabee, and for the damnably same reason - it was inappropriate. Frighteningly so for the loss of control indulging such a dangerous passion would be. She could no more yearn after a gunslinger than this fine southern woman could long for a wild and woolly frontiersman, still Mary understood the power of the attraction very well.
Yet her first instinct was to encourage her for Vin's sake; he was such a lovely man, so kind under his taciturn aloofness, so deep-hearted. It wasn't strange for her to wish he might not be lonely anymore, which she knew he was despite how content he seemed in his solitude. That he might have the love of a good woman, children to enjoy his patient wisdoms - perhaps even that Elizabeth might have the experience of love that she sensed the woman had never known. She guessed that a woman Vin loved would never lack for knowing it.
But that is not what would happen. They were not girls, she and Elizabeth Monroe, and these were not callow youths about whom giggling fantasies of marriage and family could be spun with much hope of becoming real. Indeed, it was deadly dangerous to harbor such dreams about such men.
Elizabeth, alerted by Mary's silence, turned toward her and found her eyes wide and troubled. Her heart fell, and only then did she realize she had actually hoped Mary would tell her it was all right to have such feelings, even to act upon them. That she wasn't being a complete and utter fool. But of course she was, and she knew it the instant she understood the distress in Mary's sympathy - the bewildering attachment the woman felt for that gunslinger who so seldom smiled, so seldom seemed even approachable.
No more than Mary, who lived her life in this savage land, could she indulge such a fancy. She looked up at the ceiling to give Mary back her privacy with feelings she wasn't sure she'd meant to betray, and to hide the bitterness of her own disappointment. She looked up at the neat tongue-and-groove craftsmanship. Pieces that fit together to form a harmonious whole, meant for one another, not a force of destruction.
After a moment she felt Mary's warm hand settle on her own where she'd crossed them at her waist, and she looked over at her across her sleeping niece finding a confused richness of understanding she had never expected, but had no heart to refuse.
Mary had seen a lost hope in Elizabeth's eyes, seen it fade with sudden sorrow, and regretted assuming her own difficulties of the heart must apply to everyone else as well. She had no right to say what was wrong or right for Elizabeth Monroe, or for Vin Tanner.
"Elizabeth, we have to make our own decisions, take our own risks ... " She was being frank and intimately honest with Elizabeth; "Vin Tanner is not Chris Larabee, they're very different men of very different potentials." Admitting her own attraction and her own fears but refusing to overlay them on Elizabeth or Vin. "Chris is afraid to have himself vulnerable again after losing his wife and child, he fights it so hard, he can't surrender ..." As did she; Mary knew that, honest with herself at least, and knowing they fought the same thing for the same reasons; "But Vin ... Vin is just used to being alone, thinking of himself that way. It doesn't mean he can't learn to be otherwise, or that he doesn't ... want to."
Elizabeth's eyebrows swept downward in the middle as she realized what Mary was doing, and how generous she was being in allowing the possibility of love for Elizabeth that she could not allow for herself. Certainly she was not like most women of Elizabeth's acquaintance, there was no jealousy or petty conceit despite how beautiful and accomplished she was. Elizabeth appreciated the attempt she was making to let her dream even if for only a little while, it was a sweetness of heart she'd never really had extended to her from another woman.
But Elizabeth could no more afford to entertain the notion of a match between herself and Vin Tanner than Mary could with Chris Larabee. He could never be content away from the wilderness, and if she somehow attracted him enough to try, he would only end up suffering just as her father had suffered. And he would have to leave her just as her father had had to leave, the same sort of regrets burdening him ever after. She couldn't imagine herself being that cruel to a man she cared for, nor coming to hate him for something he couldn't change as her mother had come to hate her father.
Astonishingly, tears burst hot into her eyes and she hoped Mary could not see them, but knew by the sympathetic tightening of her fingers that she could.
After a moment in which those tears trembled on the verge of escape, Elizabeth said in a low murmur intense with feeling; "How do you bear it, Mary? Being so lonesome all the time, looking into the future and seeing nothing but continued loneliness the rest of your life? Are we cowards not to risk having what our hearts demand just to protect them from disappointment?"
It was so fervently expressed, the emotions so raw and so evocative of her own feelings that Mary couldn't answer right away, her throat tightening. Her eventual sigh was eloquent with the confusion of her own heart and understanding of Elizabeth's.
"I don't know." She admitted helplessly, "I've asked myself that so many times - could he love me as I need to be loved, would I be fulfilled - would he? Could he be content to bide with me?" Her sigh hinted at many restless nights considering these things without reaching any conclusions. "These are hard questions, and hard men who don't change easily, nor trust, nor admit to love. I'm afraid, because I might be destroyed to lose another man I loved so much ..." Admitting feelings for Chris that she'd never spoken out loud to anyone before, her expression nakedly earnest with them as well as her warring belief in the disaster they might tempt.
So Mary Travis had loved her husband whole-heartedly, had known passion and friendship and devotion with him, a sense of unity Elizabeth had never felt with any man, not even her husband. Thomas was ... Thomas was a good man, but she had never savored the sensation of his skin after a year of marriage as she did Vin Tanner's from a moment's experience. There had been no fire between them, no grace of passion such as flirted with her dreams, no such thoughts of hands and eyes and smiles and the motion of hips on a running horse - no, that had never been anything she'd known about until now. Too late.
That was where she and Mary differed, and she realized it with a resentment that faded almost immediately as she also realized that Mary couldn't truly understand what she felt. Mary had experience of a full and fruitful love with her husband to warn her off loving a man who might not be able to give the same to her, she had intimate knowledge of what she was risking, knew the powerful force Elizabeth had no experience of whatever. She was familiar with what was all new to Elizabeth, terrifying and exhilarating feelings she had no idea how to make sense of much less control.
For Elizabeth, there was, in one silent lanky tracker, in one pair of wide eyes of a blue that reflected his feelings like words, a force that rattled and reached her as nothing ever had before. Mary could resist what she had known once before, her fear was understandable, but how could Elizabeth resist what every woman who ever lived craved experiencing at least once in her lifetime? Easy for Mary to deny herself, she knew what Elizabeth had long since lost hope of ever experiencing herself.
That dead hope was resurrecting itself within her against her will, there was nothing she could do to stop it. With a flash of defiance that railed against all that would say it nay, she realized she did not want to.
Mary wondered what she was thinking, why her eyes became vaguely fierce, as if Mary had said something nearly offensive. But then the woman smiled softly and patted Mary's hand even as she encouraged it to remove itself from her, the smile strangely at odds with the look in her eyes.
"It's a harmless infatuation, I'm sure, Mary, probably quite natural - helpless woman out of her element, strong heroic men surrounding her ..." Her laugh was brittle, but genuine; "I am not immune, I see, to the charms of the west!"
Mary smiled back at her, sensing she wished the subject closed and content to let it be so. Between them, Jules snuffled and snorted as she turned somnolently, flinging her arms over her head so both women had to move quickly to keep from being smacked. They retreated into light laughter and sincerely warm wishes for mutual good sleep - if Julianna would allow it.
Elizabeth woke when the train stopped, only darkness outside, no town, just a water tower and coal bins for refueling. When she heard the ramps going down, knowing she would not sleep again, Elizabeth managed to get out of their pallet without waking Mary or the lump she believed to be Julianna under the covers. She dressed in the tiny space and donned her long coat and gloves.
The iron railing on the stairs at the back of the car was so cold she could feel it through her gloves, her breath condensing into a cloud, and she inhaled deeply the scent of forest and damp earth that was different, but no less lovely, than the night air at the farm. For a moment she stood quietly in the darkness, hearing hoof-falls on wood and then on earth littered with clumps of ice and loamy leaf-matter, the sleepy murmur of men's voices. Certainly not her brothers; the uncharitable thought made her smile and shake her head. Monroe men slept like dead men and never woke once they were abed until the sun was long up.
Hours such as these were always hers alone at the farm; while they slept, she could walk her lands and even ride the secret heart of the night without worrying about them or anyone else. It was no less sweet here, and it would surely be safe to walk with the men nearby.
When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she descended to the ground, looking ahead where the rails shone silvery in the moonlight and grey when the clouds moving overhead passed across its face. So quiet and peaceful.
A few cars back, Vin handed off the horses to J.D. at the bottom of the ramp. Ezra's mare and Julianna's sable-brown quarterhorse now shared Peso's jealously held space, and though the black made it clear he resented every lost inch and mouthful of hay they ate, there was no helping it. He could see the others further down, strings of mules and horses walking like somnolently bobbing dreams in the darkness under fraying streams of breath.
Peso was increasingly making his impatience with the dark moving box known and Vin truly didn't dare leave him untended anymore, he was as glad as Peso was to get out and stretch some. He turned back up the ramp to get him just as Elizabeth drew near in the deep shadows beside the car.
As Elizabeth lifted her head at the sound of Peso's hooves, Vin emerged from the utter black square of the doorway as if stepping out from nothing into this world. Man and horse both were stark apparitions of black shadows and cold silvery gild in the moonlight. Though she was still and quiet, Vin's head turned toward her.
"Ma'am, you stay there just now, this ain't a pleasant horse n' he's in a mood t'be a mite troublesome just now."
Indeed, the beast surged past him onto the ground and into an arc as wide as his lead was long, huge black head cast high, nostrils flaring and ears standing hard, moving with powerful impatience.
Elizabeth stayed where she was and leaned against the car, watching Vin run the horse in a circle around him, first one way, then the other, until he'd vented what seemed to be explosively nervous energy.
"He's a spirited animal, Mr. Tanner," she commented quietly, keeping her voice low and easy, and she saw a flash of white teeth as he turned with the horse. The sound of his soft raspy laugh brought a shiver of pleasure, it seemed a cozy sound, friendly.
"I guess that's one way to put it," he said, as Peso finally settled enough to walk quietly. "You don't want t'be alone out here, Ma'am; you want to walk, I'd feel better if you'd walk with me."
The offer surprised her, and though she knew she should decline, should return to her safe bed away from the dangerous freedom of the darkness, she was smiling and moving toward him before she even thought to do so.
They walked side by side without speaking for a few minutes, quiet with their own thoughts and the awareness of each other putting a prickle in the air that Elizabeth felt acutely.
"Were you ever in this part of the country with Duley?" she asked when the silence became too personal, cocking her head up curiously toward him and catching a slip of alarm on his face, quickly turned away. Everything about him suddenly got tight and her face quirked in an odd combination of annoyance and fear. Like her very name hurt him. But Duley had been her sister, and she had a right to speak of her.
"I'm sorry," she said, brittle and thin, and she looked that way when he turned back to her, arms crossed over her chest for warmth and her head high and proud. His heart skipped and didn't settle until he looked away. In the darkness, just the gloss of her hair and that brave stubborn posture ...
"I miss her, too," Elizabeth went on, "And you're the only one I can talk to about her." She stopped in the midst of that sudden rush of determined words and he came to a halt an inch away from where her hand would've held him back; Peso stopped as well.
"You know what her life was like here, Vin." Refusing to take that backward step into formality as they had already done several times, she faced him head-on, standing close enough to get under the brim of his hat so she could hold his eyes as she spoke.
To look away from the honesty in her face would be cowardly, and Vin wasn't a coward yet, captured anyway by what thrummed in her voice. She was so quiet no one could have heard her who wasn't this close.
"I loved her, and I want what you know about her, just as you should want my memories. I'm here, and I'm sorry it hurts you to remember, but is it truly easier to forget?"
His brain went blank as she slipped straight into the raw heart of a wound that never healed. If she hadn't had a face that much like Duley, if her eyes hadn't shone with that fierce tenderness, he would've gotten away from her as fast as he could.
Her eyes gentled on him and she knew right then that he'd never said good-bye to Duley, as she had herself many years ago. She wasn't just memory to Vin Tanner, she was right now. She was tomorrow. The hand that had been hovered in front of him came down soft as a breath onto the middle of his chest, her touch and her eyes speaking an understanding too eloquent for him to take.
He stepped back from her and his hatbrim sliced down, but she wasn't offended; indeed, the strength of his feelings made her heart ache for him. How lucky her sister was to find a man like this, whose heart was so completely hers that even years after her death he had not been able to let her go. Worthy of her, the same fierce deep-feeling heart as Duley's.
She gave him privacy to collect himself, turning away at a slow stroll in the direction they'd been going. She could hear him following and glanced over at him as he came even with her. Though his eyes were somber, they were also earnestly searching her face, not hiding what he was doing or how important it was to him. Would he trust her? She held her breath, feeling his hesitancy and knowing as she did from her sister's letters how difficult it was for him to trust anyone, much less trust a stranger with things he had probably never spoken of to another living soul.
Finally, he said, "Yes, Duley and I were here." With a vague gesture that encompassed the northern track behind them; "All this, from just before Alamosa ... we came this way after a summer hunt."
Horses and mules moved quietly up and down the narrow bit of forest-edge clear enough for it; the occasional blow of breath from enormous lungs, even the earthier sounds - and smells - of functions the men were just as happy to see relieved outdoors.
Dark clots of straw were being pitched out of two cars as they went by: J.D. by the bowler that bobbed out of the shadows and into them back again, and Josiah.
Buck tipped his hat to them both as he passed going the opposite direction, curious as a cat to see Elizabeth beside Vin and feel an air of something happening between them suspended for his sake. Would've been too obvious to turn the whole line of mules around to follow, though Buck walked backwards a good distance watching them, his angled face sharp with speculation. Close enough that the tails of their coats tangled between them, angled toward each other intently and Peso calm as a summer afternoon behind them.
"Watch where you're goin', cowboy." Chris' voice presaged a halting shove in the middle of his back as Buck nearly went into the line of mules Chris was walking, and they stopped together. Chris was looking ahead at the pair and Buck's eyes narrowed, wondering if he'd been following them.
"Looks like one of the Monroes is a night-owl, don't it?" he commented almost gleefully, keen to Chris' expression but getting nothing from the shadow under that flat-brimmed hat but stony stillness. The eyes that finally turned his way were cold as the moon, and without a word Chris tugged the lead and set the flop-eared line in motion, leaving Buck behind.
Chris could barely see them in the darkness ahead much less hear what they were talking about, but Buck's smirk had been too near victorious for his comfort, there was a wealth of intimation in the single remark he'd made.
Vin and Elizabeth went off to the side where the woods dropped away down a steep incline and offered a view of the valley below. Vin's arm rose out of the single shadow they made standing together at the rim and she followed the gesture, so close he couldn't be sure she wasn't leaning back on Vin's chest, their heads very close. Chris wanted to stop, to know if this was it, if Buck was right and this was it and the bad feeling he had in Vin's mistrust was as simple as a man not wanting his friends to know he was being an idiot over a woman.
He walked on. That conclusion would've been easy to make with any other man, and it would've been a relief right now in Vin's case, but Chris was long past easing himself in the simplest solution when it didn't make his short hairs lay down any. Something just didn't fit. Vin was deeply private, taciturn to the point of rudeness sometimes and rarely showed strong emotion outright. It'd taken long observation for Chris to identify his tells; little signals, small warnings, subtle changes in the color of his eyes. Chris thought back on all that happened in the last few weeks, Vin's reactions and actions, and by the time he'd followed that thread to the end, he was unhappily convinced that Elizabeth Monroe was not all of it. If, indeed, she was any part of it at all ... Chris stopped, rocked slightly as the mule behind him bumped his side.
He turned and looked back at the pair on the rim. Sure, it was the dead of night and only the six of them - Ezra was going whole-hog into the gentleman's prerogative of staying abed - were awake. Vin was letting himself be seen with her. If the tracker didn't want to be observed, he wouldn't be, and that snagged Chris' thoughts: If Tanner didn't want something about him known, including feelings for a woman he was far too pragmatic not to know were wrong-headed, he wouldn't be where he was right now. But he was letting the five of them see him with her, walking with her in private conversation and easy about it as he'd never been with any woman but Nettie in their experience.
Pale eyes narrowed and that anger that had started simmering in the orchard that night when Vin had told him about Duley flared anew, and what had been formless resentment gained a sudden unpleasant shape. There wasn't a single thing in this world Chris hated more than being manipulated, and he knew with a hateful certainty that Vin Tanner was manipulating him. And with so much unsuspected skill that Chris couldn't put a finger on a single thing that would prove it. He looked down at the ground, deep in thought, not seeing the rich earth but Vin's face in that orchard where this had all begun, and the shadow in his eyes that had been pure worry.
Vin's wife was beyond worry, and he wouldn't have bothered for himself ...
Startled, Chris looked up so fast the lead mule startd too.
Why would Vin be worried about them?
Elizabeth stood near enough to feel the warmth of his body along her back and side. His arm passed close to her shoulder to lead her eye down to the distant thread of the Rio in the valley below, his left hand with Peso's lead brushing the small of her back occasionally as the horse moved behind them. The fringe of his coat-sleeve pattered against her arm in the quiet breeze.
He and Duley hadn't been married yet when they'd come through here, he was telling her, and she listened to his soft close voice, enraptured by the dark landscape as he told her about that long-ago buffalo hunt in Alamosa and the travel back to the summer camps among the Indians.
He spoke slowly, as if finding words to say what had never had words in him until now, spoke a life she'd never been able to imagine before tonight with a reverence and affection that moved her deeply. As he told her of one night when he and Duley had stared at each other across the fire during a time of story-telling and brave deeds danced to life, she could see the grin her sister would have had and smiled broadly herself to picture it. She closed her eyes to hold the image close, almost seeing the firelight on her beloved face, fierce and full of appetites, not afraid of anything. Not afraid of this man whose eyes glowed with memory, not afraid of loving what was wary and wild as any predator. Such longing in him that she felt it clearly and knew it was why he'd been reluctant to talk about her.
She wondered how long he'd been silent before she noticed, the conductor's call drawing her out of herself with a long shaken sigh.
He'd been content to let her stand and look and feel what had her trembling now and then until he heard the faint call to re-train and turned to see the wheel-man's lantern swinging.
"I imagine we ought to get back." She said, surprised when he looked down at her without replying for a long moment, studying her face in a way that she knew made her blush. Then he smiled at her, warm and friendly, as if a bridge had been crossed and put behind them that he had decided not to regret.
To be continued...
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