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:
Ezra stretched as he emerged onto the back of the compartment car, then tugged his ruffled cuffs out from under his jacket sleeves neatly, resplendent in a dark green suit and waistcoat, clean-shaven and well-rested and looking as satisfied as a sultan in a seraglio. Looks could be deceiving, but few men possessed more mastery of demeanor and expression than a card-shark.
It had taken him two days to pry Stephen open into drunken winks and conspiratorial whispers; the first night he'd found himself oddly reluctant to expose the Monroe's seamy doings in front of their young niece. It was an instinct he didn't understand, but he'd consequently delayed serious business until the girl had fallen asleep and revealed herself by snoring. The reactions of the two brothers had been very revealing - a flare of rage from Stephen that allowed a sharp-eyed man a glimpse of true viciousness under his arrogant meanness, and something fearfully ashamed from James. Ezra had waved a falsely bleary hand and said the sleepy child had wandered over only a moment or two previous, and both had relaxed at once, although Stephen's distaste for his niece remained sour on his face.
James had carried her back to the compartment she shared with her Aunt and Mary, and had also insistently convinced Stephen to call it a night with not a few suspicious glances at the charming gambler.
James, Ezra had been surprised to find, had quite the quicker mind of the two, though he deferred habitually to Stephen and likely to Gerald as well. Their eldest brother seemed to loom large in their lives and was clearly the keystone in their little troika. Ezra had been patient, and last night, with Julianna secure in her compartment and James over-imbibed into a stupor, Ezra had learned things that that knocked him seriously off his axis.
He knew Orrin was going to follow him outside, his dark eye had latched onto him and followed him all the way through the car. The Judge had already made his suspicions known when Ezra had nothing to report after the first night, which still annoyed Ezra no end. Orrin Travis had never made a secret of his distrust, and Ezra, contrary a son as his mother had ever raised, had responded by exaggerating his own nefarious self-interest defiantly. The Judge's strict code of justice, his unyielding straight-backed uprightness, seemed designed specifically to irritate Ezra, particularly because Travis still looked at him like every attempt he made at decency was a disguise. It certainly didn't stop him from taking every advantage of Ezra's despised skills!
But beyond that insult, Ezra had come to no conclusion about what he should do with the information he'd come into possession of, and his own indecision combined with the significance of that knowledge rendered him profoundly uneasy.
Of course Travis had to know what Stephen had spun out in wickedly convoluted detail last night, Ezra couldn't imagine the Judge didn't have this information already, nor that he'd obviously thought it prudent to withhold it from them all - certainly from Vin. The tracker had made no bones about his feelings on the subject of the Black Hills, and Josiah could prove difficult as well with Custer involved so deeply. God knew what those two would do with what he'd learned from Stephen, but he doubted politely escorting the Monroes would be among the possibilities!
Travis probably thought himself justified in holding back, Ezra could wee that he needed Vin's skills and experience just to survive where they were going. What he hadn't seen until last night was that the Judge needed all of them - and their guns - more than he'd let on. But no matter the justification, if what Ezra suspected was true, the Judge had slipped them all a con as callous as anything Ezra himself had ever perpetrated. For his noble cause, he'd tricked seven men into risking their lives without them even being aware of. That it was also uncharacteristic of the Judge presently escaped his notice.
What he did notice - which only increased his confusion, was that he was almost disappointed to think he and Travis were not so different after all. Get you want and damn everything - and everyone - else.
The door opened and closed behind him; Orrin Travis stepped up to the rail beside him and looked out at the morning as they passed. Mountains rose on both sides now and the tracks proceeded in an uprising slant, the wind cold so Orrin wished he'd worn his overcoat.
After a carefully casual moment, he said in a wry murmur, "I am assuming you've finally eaten the canary, Mr. Standish."
Ezra smiled, turmoil masked under silken smoothness, and replied, "And a sumptuous repast it was, Mr. Travis, with more courses than I'd expected - I declare I could be accused of gluttony."
Orrin turned around and leaned on the opposite rail facing him, faintly disapproving of the gambler's smugness, but this morning his stern look got him only a glint of a gold tooth. Why would the gambler be in an adversarial mood? Travis' suspicions rose immediately; the risk inherent in employing of an opportunistic con-man was that he could find the opportunities better on the other side of the justice equation, and Standish had a contentious glint in his eye this morning that hinted at some advantage he thought he had. Travis crossed his arms across his broad chest, looking at Ezra expectantly.
Ezra decided to be obliging. After all, there were still holes in his information, things the brothers had declined to explain - usually at James' insistence. If Ezra was right and Travis was far more informed than he'd let on from the start, he might be led into making sense of it for him. Ezra wasn't sure of his hand, so he didn't intend to lay it out too soon. Information was leverage, and what Ezra now found himself in possession of was so explosive that he might even be able to force the Judge into being forthcoming. Why that prospect should make him uncomfortable he hadn't a clue. It was as important to know what Travis knew - and why he had not told them - as it was for Travis to be made party to Ezra's newfound wealth of insight. Ezra smiled, hoping to put Travis off guard.
"According to Stephen Monroe, who is, admittedly, enough of a blowhard to render his braggadocio suspect, the Secretary of the Interior is a good friend of the Monroes." First call, the stakes set, and deep furrows carved from th corners of Travis' mouth. "And - as you may know - " Stakes raised, subtle but slicing, "That august gentleman is inclined to think the current native occupation of the Black Hills is not necessary to their well-being. Evidently he deems it important to have it ... 'freed', shall we say, with all haste."
Travis' dark eyes narrowed, sparking with a fury Ezra was disconcerted to see was sincere.
"Delano." Orrin spat bitterly. The very man responsible for the integrity of the Sioux territorial rights, directly contradicting the terms of the Laramie Treaty. Politically, it wasn't surprising, but if he had actually taken substantive steps to abrogate the treaty ... Delano could not have made such moves without benefit of higher authority, would not have dared ... Orrin's short-hairs rose ominously.
He realized Ezra was cat-eyed on him, and understood with a swiftly concealed surge of anger that the gambler was trying to work him. He shook his head. "No, Mr. Standish, I didn't know, but I'm not surprised. Disappointed, perhaps."
More than disappointed, Ezra sensed - acutely worried. With good cause, it appeared, though how good Ezra was not supposed to know. At the very least, the complexities and dangers of this sojourn had been grossly underrepresented, and Ezra keyed himself to watch and listen. "There was some talk of discovery land grants being registered in the Black Hills." He offered, keen to Orrin's face - again, the Judge was not surprised and Ezra crossed his own arms now with a stubborn tilt to his head, prepared to be openly defiant.
"You raised this possibility yourself, Judge Travis, at the inception of this journey. And I distinctly recall Mr. Tanner asking you directly whether the Monroes were suspects - you said no. Now, answer me truly, sir - are our Trojan horses indeed part of the herd you're investigating?"
Orrin recognized the stubbornness and knew he'd get nothing from the gambler if he refused to answer his questions. The accusatory tone set him back with a sudden insight - Standish had learned something that was making him doubt Travis and this entire venture. Was he tempted to align himself with the brothers? Gold was a powerful incentive and the gambler was as keen to his own neck as he was to profit, obviously he'd sensed - or gathered enough information to suspect - that the Monroes were more definitively involved than Travis had yet let on.
The two men faced each other across the little platform as from opposite ends of a spectrum that could never be reconciled, suspicions thick between them. Travis needed to know what had sparked the defiance in those emerald eyes across from him, because it might prove what he had only suspected until now. Was Standish wavering in his loyalties, waiting to see if the Judge could perhaps match another offer?
"They may be involved - " Ezra straightened and put a hand to the door-knob in insult of this equivocation, and Travis, surprised, reached out to stop him:
"Hold on, Mr. Standish - yes, to be frank, the evidence seems to increasingly point in that direction, but I have no solid proof - and I had none at that meeting, no cause to cast suspicion."
He met Ezra's scrutiny head on and challenged him to question his veracity outright. Ezra considered it, but he had to rely on what he knew, and Travis had always been a fair man, one who wouldn't judge or prejudice others without irrefutable evidence. It was reason enough to have held his tongue. So Ezra swallowed his anger and let his body assume a casual stance, returning to the laconic lean on the railing.
"Perhaps I can accommodate you in that regard, and you can return the favor; let us share our ... suspicions." Ezra finally said, wanting as frank a discussion as possible between two men who were both hiding things from the other. Ezra was not the least averse to risk if the rewards were suitable, and where there was gold, there was opportunity for a man as clever as he. But a man as clever as he was also careful to know all potential pitfalls in advance - especially mortal ones. Travis might be an honest man, but he also served a larger entity that might consider the sacrifice of seven men a necessary evil.
Ezra's hand floated across the front of his body in gracious invitation, though his eyes remained cool and wary. "After you, your honor."
After a laden moment, Travis acquiesced. "Yes, I suspect that Gerald Monroe, at least, is involved in a plot to illegally claim land in the Black Hills before the treaty is invalidated. Obviously, from Delano's involvement, that it will be is a fait accompli in the backrooms of Washington." He looked out at the scenery without seeing it, worried in earnest now, and not for himself, moving in secret as he was. Delano's patronage cast a far larger shadow than he'd expected, a far more dangerous one.
Those friends in Washington who had sent him here, who objected publicly to the immorality and illegality of taking the Black Hills and fomenting war with the Indians if necessary, were apparently in a far less tenable position than even they realized. A rich and ageless sorrow rose in him at the unexpected magnitude of the machinations taking place against which he felt suddenly very small. Orrin Travis did not like being made to feel small, and that glint of anger grew in his eyes when he picked up his head and looked at Ezra.
"What else have you discovered, Ezra?" Warning the gambler with that dark hard look not to dance around this now, not where they might be overheard or interrupted. Not when the deceit he'd suspected had taken on proportions that rendered the danger commensurately more profound for all of them.
"Well, it seems our dear Miz Monroe is the title-holder for those discovery land grants - " Travis' eyebrows shot upward - Ezra, fortunately, had been quick enough to forestall that same reaction last night, but he hadn't expected it of Travis. Good Lord - how could he not know that?! "By their admonitions, the lady hasn't been appraised of this ownership. Stephen evidently passed them by her for signature among regular quarterly re-investments of dividends from her farm and other holdings. I gather it was the only prudent strategy James could implement owing to Stephen's propensity to incur rather sizeable debts, though clearly James disliked the plan intensely. One dares to imagine he knows his brothers better than we ..."
Intimating the further plot to see if Travis gave anything away proved futile. The Judge's expression did not change but for a faint hint of impatience. Standish spread his hands, wary of the Judge's attitude. As he waited, Travis stared behind them down the rocking line of cars, turning this thing over in his mind, fitting it to things he already knew and very disturbed by the direction the pattern was taking.
Ezra saw it as avoidance and prodded: "He said something about the grants representing an inheritance of some sort from his father."
Judge Travis seemed too absorbed to put any significance to that, though it was of great import to Ezra.
"This may complicate matters considerably on several fronts." He said thoughtfully, as if Ezra hadn't said anything. "Vin Tanner being the most immediate."
Ezra was nonplussed at this expression of concern for the tracker and began to wonder, incredulously, if the Judge actually had no idea how profound that problem actually was. He searched every nuance of the old man's stance, of his face, searching out some tell, some way inside to what Travis was hiding. The old bird was as tough a read as he'd ever crossed. Ezra had known at once that Vin would be deadly the instant he understood what was truly going on. Certainly Travis would know as well. Was the judge trying to distract him, to act like he didn't grasp Ezra's intimations? Was that the game? Did Travis think he could play him?
Ezra rested his trim hip on the rail and crossed his ankles elegantly, moving from careful hedging to sword-point. His curled hatbrim tipped and straightened again, and he smiled without warmth, determined to satisfy his own interests here. "This game is being played very close to the respective vests, to be certain, I had to be very circumspect in my prying. Now I have a question of my own, your honor - what, exactly, are discovery land grants?"
That the Judge wondered why he wanted to know didn't surprise Ezra, the old man obviously assumed he wanted those details to avail himself of that illicit opportunity, and Ezra merely shrugged philosophically, waiting for an answer.
But Travis parried with a question of his own; "Did they indicate how, exactly, these grants were registered?" Orrin inquired with purpose, "By whom?"
Standish shook his head. "No, and I'm not sure they know themselves, that seems to have been Gerald's bailiwick. All I was able to determine for certain was that the registrations were sub tabla."
"Under the table," Travis acknowledged with a deepening frown, "Yes, they would have to be."
"I repeat the question: What are discovery land grants?"
Travis knew the gambler would find out anyway, and if he intended to ally himself with the Monroes for a chance at a fortune, no one would be able to stop him. The fact remained that Ezra had managed to uncover more in forty-eight hours than a network of spies had in months, and if Travis had to give him the means to ill-gotten gains in payment for that information, he would.
He sighed, an exasperated sound that stung Ezra's ears, a judgment being made that found him wanting. Would he be so superior if Ezra caught him out in a lie? Would that stern expression waver when Ezra finally laid his hand down?
Sternly, Travis said, "If what I've heard is true - and it hasn't been broached outside of private backrooms that I know of - it's a plan whereby investors are given first claim to anticipated land acquisitions in exchange for the infusion of capital for exploration and mining surveys. The grants are registered in a blind-draw manner to ensure random lots. Likely it'll be sold as a noble investment in the future of the country." Sourly said, and with a meaningful eye at Ezra, who took the barb with all apparent equanimity. "It's one way to accomplish what the government has no resources to do itself, the war has left a serious debt burden ... which is precisely what fuels this rush to gold."
"Given what you've shared of the 'rumors' making their way around the halls of power in Washington, these land grants are no more on the up and up than anything else. One could assume the grants were given sans blindfold, as it were - that the investors were assigned lots far more by design than by chance, knowing full well what awaits them - gold deposits, for instance ..."
Travis had already considered that and knew how likely it was. "Gerald Monroe is in a perfect position to do so - " And, by the narrowing of his eyes, he thought Ezra might be as well.
Ignoring Travis' distaste, Ezra's fine lips had parted admiringly as he listened, his head cocked to one side and now nodding slightly, eyes full of appreciation. God, it was diabolical, so rife with opportunities it nearly made his mouth water! Much that had seemed insignificant suddenly assembled itself in his mind's eye like a picture he'd been viewing from far too near. This had been years in the planning, years of building powerful alliances and moving enormous forces in the desired directions. Who was this Gerald Monroe who had laid this intricate web and now manipulated it like a fat contented spider? There was a mind Ezra thought twice about challenging.
More importantly, he now understood why the Judge had folded and answered his question, offering the potential of illegal and certainly immoral gain in exchange for whatever Ezra knew. For the first time, the gambler did not resent that open disdain. If Travis, indeed, had known everything Ezra was now aware of, he wouldn't be risking their lives trying to investigate it out here. He would need nothing from Ezra - he would already know. Armed with the same information Stephen had unwittingly let spill in a foul flood last night, the Judge would have put it together just as quickly as Ezra had. Thus, he could not know how truly widespread this calumny was; that one fact astounded him.
Travis was a man keen to what would be hidden, ruthless to the truth as only a man of conscience who held lives in the balance of his wisdom and will could be ... but he had also dedicated his life to the formation of this nation and the service of justice, and any man could be blinded by love of his cause to the fact of darker forces at work within it.
Something settled in Ezra he hadn't realized was unsettled once he understood that. As impossible as it was to believe, Travis' every word and expression had been sincere - he was only now becoming fully aware of the forces that had set all of this in motion. Ezra felt his face redden and turned away - he'd been hoping the man had feet of clay so his own would not seem so fatal a flaw, and damned if he hadn't been wrong. It puzzled him to feel relief in losing the upper hand over this man, someone who'd lorded it over him on innumerable occasions.
He found himself laughing, his head down and shaking slowly back and forth - merciful Lord - since when had it been a good thing to discover a righteous man?
It was the first natural thing Orrin had heard from either of them since he'd stepped out on this platform.
"How splendidly clever - " Ezra said with a mocking chuckle, "I declare, it spurs a man to consider a career in politics - obviously I am perfectly suited!"
Travis' mouth pursed in quick insult, but he could make no argument.
Ezra took no pleasure in his discomfort, far more concerned with finding himself in the unenviable position of knowing something only the principles of this enormous plot knew. His first instinct was to assess the value and threat in that possession: Did he tell Travis what he knew and create a larger problem in tilting at a veritable windmill? Vin would do so, undoubtedly, and likely Josiah as well, and how many of the others who would feel honor-bound to stand with them in a noble cause even against impossible odds? Surely his own life wouldn't be worth a tinker's damn if Stephen chanced to remember what he'd revealed, and not even a Judge or a newspaper reporter would be allowed to foul what was clearly a vast and insidiously clever conspiracy. Since Stephen had passed out a few moments after spilling the beans, he felt relatively secure - but relatively was an uneasy term when it was his life at stake.
Would it be a betrayal to let well enough alone? To accept that nothing could be done, keep his mouth shut and let what was about to roll through these mountains sucking up gold and everything else of value just roll on by? He laughed again at his own ridiculous turmoil - he knew, of course, what he should do, there was no question but that his own interest should move him directly toward self-preservation without the slightest deviation of course. But oh, he thought, he already knew he wouldn't.
Being a realist was not easy - a man could know what was right, but a realist also knew what was inevitable. A smart man didn't fling himself in front of trains even if they were going to evil places. Yet there he was, standing at the proverbial tracks ready to do just that because he knew the other six would, Travis and Mary would.
Orrin waited with growing impatience for him to complete the exchange of information, but Standish remained head down, his fingers pattering a quick tattoo on the metal to either side of him. Was he trying to think of what to give Travis in return and what to conceal?
When Ezra finally looked up, however, Travis was taken aback by the unexpected openness of his face, even his eyes level and sincere. Suddenly he looked so ... young, lost ... desperately uncertain. Of what? What decision had he made that so distressed him?
"Judge Travis - it appears we have both been laboring under our separate illusions - mine that you withheld crucial information to manipulate the seven of us - Vin most particularly because we wouldn't have signed on without him ..." Travis' mouth opened, but Ezra went on, "And you that I am so set on enriching myself with the Monroes that I've taken leave of all sense of honor and loyalty."
"Ezra - "
"Just let me finish, Judge." Insisting in a tight voice, everything about him suddenly tense as a horse about to take a jump over something high that he couldn't see the other side of.
"I do not believe Miz Monroe is involved except to provide a cover of legitimacy, which makes her position extremely vulnerable - as it very likely does mine if either brother remembers what he told me and relays that to Gerald."
Travis' eyes slowly rounded as the implication Ezra was making sank in; worried about his own skin, to be sure, and probably planning how to preserve it, but he was also right. The gambler, clearly reading both lines of thought, and said,
"In all likelihood, a man as astute as Gerald undoubtedly is - and just how astute he is will become apparent directly - would name himself and his brothers beneficiaries on those land grants in case of their sister's untimely demise."
Travis nodded a grim understanding of the direction of Ezra's theory; he said darkly, "Which would mean the land could come to them as a bequest, above suspicion and reproach - they would never have touched it themselves."
Ezra nodded, his face deadly serious. "Indeed, they would be insulated from any blame in their unfortunate sister, and should she perish in these savage lands where it is so easy to do so, she would serve admirably to assume all guilt posthumously."
"Would they do that? Murder their own sister? Do you know that they intend to?"
Ezra shrugged, "Not James - but he would not be the first partner in business to suddenly find himself a partner in crime. There's a thought I'm sure has crossed your mind more than once in the last few minutes. Please remember that if I am murdered, it will have been in your cause."
That surprised a bark of rueful laughter out of Orrin, and as small and wry as the smile was, Ezra felt warmed by it. They were talking together now, on the same side.
"That is the first reason this course of action should be abandoned, we might save her life by removing her from potential harm, hire the brothers guides and hie us all hence."
Travis looked up from his folded hands in attentive surprise. Standish believed that was the wisest course, it was clear, as was the wry fatalism of his certainty that they would do no such thing.
"Mr. Tanner has made no bones about his contempt for the brothers Monroe, and given his current ... intemperate mood - well, I'm not certain I'd like to witness his reaction to learning about their intentions as far as hastening the gold-rush into these Black Hills - which seem to be of some significant importance to him."
Travis' gaze was searching. It was true, the situation was a great deal worse for the Indians than he'd told Tanner, worse than he could prove at the time and worse than he'd even suspected. Should he, indeed, tell the tracker of the true scope of the Monroes' involvement when he had little hope of predicting what the man would do?
If he kept it to himself, however, he might have a chance to influence honest officers in Ft. Laramie to investigate the charges, he might be able to send a telegram to his associates in Washington and instigate some action there. Unlike Ezra, Orrin Travis never even considered doing nothing, pragmatic or not.
Finally, though it galled him to think he'd been manipulated into safeguarding Ezra's life and interests, Travis took a risk he'd never taken with any of the seven. The bonds of loyalty forged among them were a force he had never tested, but he believed Ezra to be the weakest link in that chain.
"Mr. Standish, it may be prudent not to share some of what we have discussed here today with the others."
"More than you perhaps realize, sir." Ezra said, his voice heavy with regret. It wounded him dully that Travis believed he was moved purely by concern for himself, perhaps astonished in a deep numb part of himself just how wrong Travis was. "If you do, however, decide to keep the others uninformed after I've told you what I'm about to, you must swear never to reveal that I was aware of it at any time before it becomes common knowledge." As they both knew it would eventually, Vin could be doggedly cunning when he had to be.
Travis didn't doubt Ezra's seriousness, and that the opinion of the other six were that important to Standish surprised him. But it also worried him that Ezra so plainly thought that what he knew would jeopardize his standing among the seven to so fatal an extent.
Ezra smiled with a sour sadness at the Judge's intense regard and said in a burst of frustrated honesty, "Judge Travis, what is it out here? The air? The water?" A quick hard laugh punctuated his sudden animation, "I declare, it's as if good sense perishes west of the Mississippi and every man jack of you turn into the damned Knights of the Round Table!"
He was raising his voice and caught himself, but the passions were unabated. "This is going to grind us all up and spit us out without changing a blessed thing, and yet I am certain - Lord, I would bet every dollar of Stephen's folding money now in my boot that you will all pay that absolutely no mind! You will want justice, and Vin will want it more than either of us wants to imagine, but will any of you be prudent? Ha! No! The code of the west must be upheld, you're all insane that way out here, and I can't conceive for the life of me why I find it so damnably admirable!""
Travis was astonished by the height of the gambler's distress, he had no idea what to make of it, what the man was talking about ...
"I know you can't let this happen just as well as you know I'd be satisfied to let it." Something fierce entered his green eyes, something furious he seemed not to want to take time to express; "You might be surprised to know why that wouldn't bother me. You know you can't stop it, but you'll try, and you'll be as single-minded as you accuse me of being, to the exclusion of everything else." He struck himself on his brocaded chest with the flat of his hand with a significant thump and he leaned forward toward Travis, eyes blazing and his voice low and vibrant with the intensity of his feelings.
"I don't want to die in a useless struggle, and I don't want anyone else to, either. But I also don't have the right to choose that for them, and I would never want them to know I gave you what you needed to do so."
He stopped, as if speaking had suddenly become too much for him, and Orrin studied him with a sudden insight that turned everything he'd assumed about Ezra Standish on its head. Not just caring about his own hide nor his standing among them, but about them. Against his better judgment, Orrin thought, against every instinct - or perhaps obeying instincts far more decent than Travis had ever realized he had.
Ezra's smile felt weak, looked wan, but it was sincere. "It is a burden to practice deceit among one's compatriots ..." Pressing one hand against his chest and holding Travis' guardedly confused gaze, "So let me ease the burden I'm about to pass to you by telling you precisely why it is a wise decision to deceive our friends - because I doubt anything could restrain Mr. Tanner from outright murder should he be appraised of this. I urge you to abandon this course of action for all our sakes, because it will cost lives. It may well cost Mr. Tanner his. He will be as big a fool as you are contemplating being in standing against this great machine."
Convinced of a certainty, and Travis' eyebrows beetled. If he'd been wrong about Ezra, had underestimated his character so egregiously - his chin firmed suddenly, understanding perhaps for the first time the true value of this man he had considered a weak link, an unstable ally.
"I have always thought, Mr. Standish, that we were on opposite sides of every philosophical, moral and legal coin." Ezra's eyes were wary, but they harbored a faint hope that made Travis regret the way he had treated the man to now. "I may have been very wrong."
For a long moment Ezra wavered and Travis waited, feeling the definition of the moment so strongly that he reached half toward the gambler, the urge to provide some reassurance feeling almost fatherly. Whatever this final piece of information was - and Orrin knew it was the sum of Ezra's information - it was distressing Standish to a point he would never have thought possible.
Finally Ezra laid his hand open, gave it all, took the gamble his mother had always said was the only one he should never take, and trusted Orrin Travis. "It is apparent that the Monroes enjoy powerful influences to have accomplished all of this, to move in the very corridors of power without detection - indeed, perhaps without any means of substantiating it in a court of law."
He paused, and the weight of his silence was so great that Travis' spine tightened with a deep forboding. Their eyes met and held, their concerns and their motives perfectly matched whether the decisions they might make were or not. Both saw the dawn of a trust neither had ever expected to see.
Ezra's shoulders let down, and Orrin's did as well, and both men felt in the presence of friends.
"Stephen said, and James did not disagree, that the Monroes enjoy this extensive political favor because it was Gerald who provided the information that prompted Colonel Custer's expedition - that is the Monroe inheritance."
The train crested the pass at Red Wing a half hour later and began the widening descent toward Pueblo, where they would stop to take on additional cars and probably passengers.
Orrin and Ezra had remained on the back platform for most of that time in somber head to head discussion, surprising each other time and again with unexpected insights and discovery of common ground. They agreed that their information would have to be withheld if Travis was to effect any action against the plot, and Ezra was relieved to have that decision left in wiser hands than his. Orrin thought he could do something, and he was not without political and legal influence of his own; Ezra trusted that. In Pueblo, the Judge would be able to send coded telegrams east warning of the collusion, his allies there might be able to substantiate it in time to forestall whatever part of the plot this journey represented.
They agreed that Elizabeth had to be protected - so long as she lived, her brothers could not avail themselves of the land grants that legally belonged to her - effectively hoisting them on their own pitard; both thought that a fine irony. If no attempt had been made to harm her before they were scheduled to leave the Monroes, a way had to be found to take her, and probably her niece, with them. Their impressions of the lady were the same - she was not likely to go along with any illegality once she discovered the land grants were in her name, and she would stand against her brothers if necessary; she had seven men with her who would stand right alongside her, and that comforted both Orrin and Ezra.
If it came to a fight, though - and on this Ezra was adamant - if it came to the point where the lives of any of the rest were endangered by their ignorance, Travis would tell them every blessed thing and let the chips fall where they may. Travis agreed, grimly accepting the fact that if Vin knew all of what he and Ezra now held between them, nothing could save the Monroe brothers or anyone else he could lay hands to who had any part in this. Both understood that the shortest path to bloody mayhem would be telling Vin Tanner that the Pa Sapa had already been divided up and the eggs all but counted, the very family he protected in the vanguard of that infamy. The guilt of their silence, shared, rested more lightly than either had expected.
Chris saw Vin slip down out of the open door of the box-car in a move so sinuous it drew no more attention that a bit of straw falling to the ground. No one else noticed, certainly not the Monroe brothers, who stood importantly near the front of the train setting their fine hats and handing down Elizabeth and their niece, intending to walk into town on errands. Travis and Ezra had detrained almost before the brakes were set, striding purposefully side by side down the platform and disappearing. Buck had raised his eyebrows at that strange oil and water pairing and began to offer bets which one of them would make it back alive.
Julianna heard them laughing about that, saw them in the loose easy tangle they seemed to be together, and flushed sullenly. She'd been forced into a bonnet and a dress and patent-leather shoes, her face as stormy as the clouds riding the snow-capped mountains beyond. It would rain soon, and she hoped it would because the first puddle she saw was going to drown these shoes!
Vin, a block behind the Monroes, breathed a sigh of relief when Elizabeth and the girl parted company with the brothers for a cafÈ, close enough to hear Stephen tell her to order for them, since the layover was short, and that they would join them as soon as they had sent the telegram to Gerald. That was what Vin had been waiting for. They never saw him, though he was close enough to touch them more than once, close enough to hear snatches of conversation.
" ... expect to have heard from him here?" James asked, and Stephen replied with a shrug,
"Perhaps, he's had to change some plans with the different route, and at least we can inform him as to our progress on this pilgrimage, he needs to be able to get ... "
They turned into a doorway and the rest was lost. For the moment, at least.
Chris stood at the corner and looked for the tracker, didn't see him until he moved. He'd been standing against the wall across the way in plain view, but so still, the colors of him so like the wood around him and the edges of his silhouette broken in fringes and tatters, that he faded into the scenery until he decided to step out of it. Even then he was the merest quiet motion, non-threatening and invisible, Chris lost sight of him more than once in the crowd, and Chris was not a man to lose a target at any time.
On the boardwalk down from Vin he saw the Monroe brothers emerge from a doorway, and as they did, Vin disappeared into the alleyway beside the building, soft and quick as a shadow. If he followed him there, Vin would know it, so he took up a position across the street and waited, focused on the window with the gilded letters proclaiming it to be the telegraph office.
Vin wouldn't be sending telegrams to anyone he knew of, so what he was up to was glaringly obvious. Shadows moved inside, sudden quick movement and a flash he couldn't identify, but there was no disturbance he could see. After a few minutes, he spotted Vin crossing the intersecting alley behind the building. Even if he got down there, he'd never catch him.
It didn't matter, Chris knew where he was going.
"Vin." Vin nearly ran into Chris as he stepped out from between two cars where he'd been waiting, something in his eyes Vin didn't like and wasn't ready for.
"You send a telegram somewhere?" Larabee drawled laconically, though there was nothing casual about the sharpness in his eyes. He saw temper rise instantly in Tanner and wasn't surprised when he answered with a question of his own.
"You taken t'followin' me around? Got some reason t'think you're my Pa or somethin'?"
Chris didn't rise to the bait, knowing it for what it was. He shrugged, moving easily to block Vin as he tried to walk on and turning so the tracker was trapped against the train. A quiet growl of warning made Chris smile to hear, but it wasn't a pleasant smile in the least and Vin tried and failed to take a step back from him. He didn't like the look on Chris right now, calm and still and deadly as he'd never had face him before. Larabee wanted answers, and it was not going to be an easy thing to get around them. Even if he did, Larabee would know he'd sidestepped him and come on even stronger.
"Alright." Vin snapped, reeling out the part of the truth he could,"I followed the Monroe boys and persuaded the telegraph operator to tell me what they'd sent on, alright?"
"Depends. What'd they send on, and to who?"
"Nothin' important, a telegram to their brother where they were n' when they expected to arrive in Ft. Laramie, that's all." Nothing about his own suspicions, nothing about the 'arrangements' Stephen had mentioned, plans being changed that could be innocuous or more sinister, depending on how a man looked at it. He wasn't ready to voice that, though he had already re-worked the route they would take in his mind as much to gauge their reactions to the change as to thwart possible traps. He didn't need no contingent of soldiers snooping around his packs and plans, didn't want 'em anywhere near him nor announcing their presence with their noise and bluster, so he'd slip them and had already worked out how. "Ain't we supposed t'be checkin' around on 'em? Ain't that what Judge Travis wants?"
"Then why'd you keep it to yourself?"
"Didn't intend to, Larabee, but I don't hold none with bein' questioned like this."
"Ask me if I give a shit what you don't or do hold with, Tanner."
Silence crackled between them, nearly nose to nose and neither giving an inch, Chris because Vin was acting stranger and stranger by the day, and Vin because he didn't want Chris knowing why.
"Get out of my way, Chris."
"Not 'til you tell me what's goin' on."
An anger more fundamental than he'd felt for a very long while came up in Vin, an aversion to being trapped, held in one place when he wanted to walk, an instinctive, almost primal, response in resisting someone controlling him physically no matter why.
"I just did. You accusin' me of somethin'?" Voice low and ripe with challenge, which brought Chris leaning in even further, tempting what wanted to break loose, wanting to know if it would, if Vin was willing to come to blows over whatever it was he was hiding that must imperil them all.
"You want me to?"
"What I want is for you t'git the hell outta my way before I have t'knock you down, Larabee."
Chris ignored that as he seldom ignored any threat, usually a fine excuse to let his temper loose. Instead, he bluntly asked the one question he really cared about, avid for Vin's reaction;
"Why're you worried about us, Vin?" Not missing the shade of alarm in the widening blue eyes, leaning in closer, bracing Vin around with a hand on either side of his head against the car; "What's comin' that we ought t'know about, and why ain't you tellin' us?"
But Vin wasn't a man to be cornered in thought or in deed, hated being pinned like someone who'd suffered it too often, and he reminded Chris of it right then with a panicked punch to get loose. Too quick to avoid, Chris just managed to rock his head back so Vin's fist connected with the tip of his chin rather than the side of his head, which would've put him down - one thing he knew about Vin Tanner, wiry and unprepossessing as he was - he could punch like a man twice his size.
Quick-handed, Chris snatched ahold of the front of Vin's coat with his left hand to keep himself from staggering back as well as to keep Vin there, and because Vin's hands automatically went for Chris' to untangle himself, the tracker fell prey to a return punch that snapped his head back into the car behind him with a thump. The second punch, because Chris always returned harm with interest, took him in the stomach at the same moment the gunslinger remembered Vin's injuries. Though he managed to pull it, wanted to stop it entirely, it connected hard enough to double Vin over and he would've gone down on his face if Chris hadn't clenched his fist into Vin's coat and held him up.
"Goddamnit, Vin!" He hissed, furious now at himself as well as the tracker, "What in the hell is goin' on with you?" Vin couldn't answer; Chris rocked back on his heels with a heavenward roll of his head, regretful and frustrated and full of guilt at how near retching the tracker was. Vin's hands were clamped on Chris' forearm to keep himself on his feet, knuckles pale and so obviously unsteady that Chris held his peace. Held Vin, then, shifting his grip to take him by the shoulders trying not to hurt him further and doing that anyway by the protesting grunt. He felt like four kinds of fool for punching him where it was guaranteed to do the most harm, and he was about as mad as he could be at Vin for it.
"Here, sit down ..." He pulled Vin off the car and backed him to the steps at the end, and the minute Vin felt the security of the step under him he sank down onto it and threw off Chris' hands furiously, crossing both arms over his ribs and leaning forward hard, head low and breath coming in soft grunting gulps. He couldn't believe Chris had hit him like that, he didn't blame him, but he couldn't believe it even so, it felt like fire too deep to reach and no matter how hard he pressed, it still hurt. The division between them was becoming a wound, now, cracks becoming gulfs that might never be bridged again, it was coming to this. He didn't know how to stop it and it filled him with despair.
"Hey, Chris! Travis wants to talk to us before we pull out, we been lookin' for you two!" Vin ignored J.D., but Chris didn't, swinging around half in front of the tracker sitting on the step without knowing whether he did it so J.D. wouldn't know he'd hit him, or so the kid wouldn't wonder why.
"Alright, J.D., we'll be along, go tell 'im we'll be along."
Vin was folded down tight and rocking gently forward and back when Chris looked back to him, and for a moment the gunslinger just stood there over him, tall and slim and dangerous, looking down at the crown of Vin's hat, looking down at this friend he'd just hurt. His friend who he wasn't sure was his friend anymore, and he'd never doubted it more than right that moment. God, it was a nasty feeling, sour and cutting inside. He liked this man, he'd had a faith in him he couldn't remember ever having even in Buck, who was reliable as a falling leaf most times but loyal to the bone. It felt like he was losing what was just more than he wanted to lose at this point in his life, and that confused him, twisted him up inside and woke a terrible rage he'd worked very hard to box in.
Vin had an old-world sense of honor, an unshakeable, to-the-death set of ethics Chris knew he'd rubbed wrong many times, often on purpose just to get a rise out of him. So he couldn't imagine what would be enough to compromise those values now, what could prompt a betrayal of principles he knew Vin hewed hard and constant to. It had to be more than that woman, Vin wasn't the sort to lose his sense over a female, it just didn't ring true.
"Vin ..." Regret coloring his quiet voice, but Vin's hand rose in a choppy motion, his head shaking.
"Leave ... me be a minute. Go on, I'll ... be there." Breathless and pained so Chris felt about an inch high, but he didn't lose sight of things in that guilt, and he said as much.
"We ain't done, Vin, this ain't done. I'm real sorry I got you there, I wasn't thinkin', but you damned well started it. And you better believe I aim t'finish it sooner or later."
Vin listened to his boots on the cinders of the track as Chris left, about as miserable as a man could be, aching body and soul and heart and mind so he just wanted to stand up and walk away with nothing but what he had on him right this second. Just stop everything, disappear, go.
When he could, he straightened up, forearms resting on his knees. Damned gunslinger had fists like rocks. His tongue gingerly explored a cut inside his cheek, all but unnoticed in the more urgent damage to his side. He tried to breathe deeply, tried to think how he could set this right, and couldn't manage either for a good long time.
Vin was a solitary creature, not used to considering others in his decisions or directions or how he did things. It wasn't natural for him to have folks who marked his moods and wanted to stick their shoulders under his burdens for him, who could see those burdens even when he didn't want them to. But they noticed, those six men, and the inner retreat that was his way when things were hard on him instead just gave them cause to notice. To be offended by the withdrawal as Chris was ,and he shook his head again as he had many times in the last few days at the enormity of what he risked losing. Maybe once in a man's life he made a friend like that, and Duley was probably the only thing he'd risk it for.
He couldn't do this so outside of the rest. He would have to put them at ease, couldn't risk them getting in his way trying to find out why he was acting so peculiar. Because he was brutally honest with himself, at least, he acknowledged the tiny bit of relief it would be to pretend awhile that everything was as it'd always been between them.
He knew with a painful certainty that they were the only ones since Duley who'd taken him as he was and gave him all the wide open he needed without judgment. Even among the people, there'd always been those who kept him in the corner of their eyes, as Indian a white man as they'd ever seen but still a white man, and a skittish one at that. Before Duley, he'd needed and wanted no one. She still filled a place in him no one else could touch. But he was easier with these six men, with Nettie Wells and some of the folks of Four Corners, than he'd ever been in his life around people or ever expected to be again.
The last few months he'd been thinking it'd be a good place to call home, as much as a fiddle-footed stray with eyes to the next horizon could call anywhere home.
He found himself staring down at his own hands, rough and calloused and scarred, but still vulnerable to bleeding, to breaking. Just like he was inside no matter how aloof he tried to keep himself. He brought those hands up to his face and scrubbed hard with a frustrated growl, fingers sliding into his hairline and gripping tight for a second, then letting go with a hitching sigh. He had to make peace among them, set himself back into their midst, the Monroes included. And to do that, he had to hold Duley at a hard arm's distance, because she could haunt him right now until he was close to crazy and there was no way in hell he'd be able to hide it caught close among them like he had to be.
That it would be a deceit he knew as well, and they'd learn he was capable of it, but with such a pile of guilt already it hardly seemed to matter. Never in his life could he remember being trapped in such a spider's web as this, sensing bigger things he couldn't find the edges of, deeper things he couldn't yet see. He picked up his head and looked north, yearned north toward those cruelly beautiful crags still sheathed and dusted in snow. Thunderheads swarmed around the peaks, tumbled and flowed down the mountain and off it toward them like a heavy bird launching into flight. They'd be in rain at the very least by the time they reached Denver.
For a moment he closed his eyes and called her, couldn't help wanting the balm of her on the rawness of his soul, needing to fortify himself for the weeks to come when he would have to hold her off. She had always come when he was sick at heart, when he was lost and had lost faith in living this life, in the wisdom of waiting so long ... Sweet memories of the only soul but his Ma who would've done anything for him, given life as gladly for his sake as he would for hers.
In a sudden flash of unwelcome insight he realized, or she told him, that there were others now who would do the same. It was far from being a joy to know. Was that where she was moving him? Pushing him in the direction of these living souls as if they could replace hers?
He wouldn't accept them, then, he just wouldn't! As stupid a thought as he'd ever had but he damned well meant it. He'd rather be alone with her than have the whole living world without her (don't let go, I'm not safe yet, don't pass the care of me to them ... don't leave me). It was a prayer he'd never prayed before and it shook him inside like something long held giving way, walls shuddering, floods coming ... world ending. These men might or might not be his friends when this was done, she was all that was constant in his heart, all that would never abandon him.
He let her go, then, released her from the call of his memories, but before he did he made himself clear like he always did with her, he'd never feared saying anything because she never misunderstood. Stay at a distance so I can face going into those mountains without screaming your name - but by God, stay.
NOTE: Yakoke to my friend Adrian, who is the voice of Wicase Hinhan and who knows the land and told me.
Ezra was halfway through a rather respectable lunch, the Monroes' having had the meal sent in from the cafe, when he noticed Vin leaning against the side of the car. He had no idea how long he'd been there, but the gambler's eyes narrowed on him as theracker started to move, passing the window without even glancing up. He looked vaguely unwell and had a bruise reddening on the outside corner of his left cheekbone. Larabee, who had stalked by a little while ago like he was looking for something to kill, had sporting a similar abrasion on his chin, which Ezra had noticed because he was a man who noticed things, but he just hadn't found it significant until now. Ezra smiled at something Stephen said and nodded over the narrow table at him, but he watched the tracker with a prickle in the palms of his hands that had never been wrong. Trouble.
Had Vin and Chris had come to blows, something he was sure had never happened before? He knew with a certainty what he would get if he asked either of them about it, and Ezra didn't play losing hands, but in a situation as delicately balanced as this he was keen to anything that might complicate things further.
"Josiah." Josiah squinted up at the sound of his name, Vin's hand descending onto one of his broad shoulders and using that solidity to lower himself down onto the platform beside him.
"Vin." Josiah accepted his presence as easily as he did his slight weight, though the tracker was moving with gingerly care and had the beginnings of a bruise on his cheekbone. God only knew where he'd come by that, maybe wrangling with Peso again. For awhile they just sat side by side with their legs dangling like kids on a dock watching the day pass.
"Gonna have rain before we get to Denver." The tracker finally said, his chin indicating the dark spill of stormclouds to the north.
Josiah nodded without turning from his vantage of the mountains ahead of them, rubbing the fingers of his left hand, once broken, that ached whenever wet was on the way.
"No doubt." Another quiet while passed, companionably. Josiah was attentive to Vin's mood without appearing to be and found him unreadable despite the false feel of his ease.
"Thinkin' about tarpin' the sides of them slatted cars so the horses n' mules don't get soaked."
"I find myself in an obliging mood, brother Tanner," the preacher said, and his eyes were so welcoming when Vin finally looked directly at him that the tracker's throat got tight. He brought up a quiet face and held it there, but Josiah didn't miss the instant of vulnerability Vin so rarely let slip. He got to his feet and extended an arm to help Vin up.
They walked together to the car that held their packs and baggage and gathered as many groundcloths as they could, and Josiah kept a curious eye on Vin. He seemed as he always was, contemplative and interior but with eyes and instincts quick to everything around them. Still, there was something underlying the surface ease of his mood that Josiah couldn't quite put his finger on. He shrugged; Vin was never totally easy unless it was out on the frontier, towns and cities and the trappings of a modern world were never things he would be wholly comfortable with. Josiah figured he understood that better than the rest of the boys, the pull he felt in his own heart toward the mountains that must be so much more an elemental force in Vin. It would only grow stronger the deeper they went into it. He wondered increasingly whether Vin would return with them after being back in the wildernesses that were so much a part of him.
"J.D.'s gone to find us provisions for the rest of the trip." Josiah said as they walked toward the slatted cars. "You planning to join us in the baggage car to denver?" he asked, extending an invitation that meant more to all of them than the casual words let on. "We got the whole thing, our packs n' such don't take up but a quarter of it. Man can stretch out, it's right comfortable."
Vin's nod was more a side-ways tip of his head and he agreed, "Well, I am getting kinda sick of smellin' Peso's leavin's."
Josiah nodded emphatically. It would be good for them all to have Vin among them again, Chris was becoming almost unapproachable and everyone else was on pins and needles around the both of them without being sure why. But, he thought with a sidelong glance, the chances of questions were very good - Buck was never one to hold his peace and he was curious as a cat about Elizabeth Monroe, with whom Vin had apparently shared a moonlight stroll.
As if summoned by his thinking of her, that lady now approached up the platform struggling with several large paper-wrapped packages, and Vin had deposited the groundcloths and gone to help before Josiah could even mention it.
Now, Vin was always a gentleman, there wasn't a woman in need he wouldn't go to, but unless Josiah missed his guess entirely, Elizabeth Monroe's welcoming smile spoke of more than courtesy. Usually such blushing coyness would make Vin exceedingly nervous, but to Josiah's surprise, the tracker smiled in return as he relieved her of the larger packages, spoke to her too quietly for Josiah to hear. Every sign of friendliness. Of ... interest. That set Josiah's close-cropped grey head back on his neck to see - since these Monroes had come to town, it was almost like there was a different man emerging from Vin that none of them had ever met.
Vin and Elizabeth walked right past Buck and Nathan with a tip of fingers to hatbrim and a polite nod, respectively, oblivious to their curious disbelief. Vin handed her up the stairs and followed with the packages, emerging a few minutes later to find the three men lined up and waiting for him expectantly. He blinked at them owlishly, then frowned, but there was no threat in it.
"Looks like you boys all need somethin' t'occupy yourselves. Ccch, you put me in mind of a bunch of chickens on a fence waitin' for somethin' t'peck."
Obviously that wasn't going to be him, his glower said, but with a lack of fire that hinted he wasn't altogether serious. Josiah shook his head at Buck's bright laugh.
"Well, hell, Tanner, you made me give my word not t'bother the lady, and here you are doin' all the botherin' yourself!" Crowing at his own clever turn of speech, looking to Nathan and Josiah for admiration. They only shook their heads, smiling at Buck and Vin like indulgent older brothers. The closeness of the moment felt so familiar, and yet they all seemed to hold it like something fragile they didn't trust not to shatter into pieces. Vin stepped down, picked up a few groundcloths and thrust them into Buck's hands.
"Yeah, Buck. But you did give me your word, now, didn't you?" It was gently said, with a spark in his eye Buck didn't know what to make of. Was the tracker inviting teasing? Was he admitting to an attraction? And why would he now when he wouldn't two weeks ago? Buck's glossy black eyebrows swooped down in the middle like a raven taking flight, and he narrowed his indigo eyes with brightly comical suspicion.
"You gonna hold me t'that, Vin? Seein's you're breakin' the rules n' all?"
"What rules, Bucklin? I asked your word t'leave her be n' you give it, I don't recall there bein' any 'except's in there."
"But you were pretendin' not to have a personal interest then, Vin, n' Lord, she's a pretty woman." Like it was a sin and a trial beyond his capacity to bear to restrain himself from sweeping her off her feet.
"That she is, Buck, I've noticed that myself. But you did give your word. Anyways, seems t'me you're makin' a whole lot outta helpin' a lady with packages ..."
He went strolling on down the line of cars with Buck in his wake protesting and wheedling all the way. Josiah and Nathan exchanged a glance and started to laugh, and when Vin heard that, he knew he was on the right track. Relief though it was to have successfully diverted them, it wasn't a good feeling to know he'd done it with such cold purpose. Especially when they seemed so damned glad to have him acting like himself, never realizing it was false and cold at the heart of it.
By the time they'd gone through two of the six cars, the four men were working in the comfortable tandem they'd established long ago between them as if there'd never been a rift, never been a bit of argument, except for Chris, drawn to the car by the sound of their laughter and openly suspicious to hear Vin's light voice among them. Vin could feel those suspicions like acid, could feel the cool jade eyes peeling away at his back - wonders why I'm among them now, wonders who I think I'm foolin'. He was man enough to straighten up and turn around to the gunslinger's eyes. I know I can't fool him anymore, but I can fool the rest, and Chris still didn't know about the guns and wouldn't if he could help it. At the same time, angry or not, Chris was honor-bound to keep his secret, and the gunslinger's eyes narrowed to be warned of that, his temper flaring. But Vin just turned back to the job at hand.
"He said he'd be right along." J.D. said, worry undercut with hurt in his voice, but the train was moving at a fair clip by then and Vin hadn't shown up.
Chris was sitting in the far corner with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, arms crossed over his chest, and with a look on his face that scorned the rest for expecting Vin to show up. Tanner wasn't one for deception, and he must've figured he couldn't carry it on in close quarters, so Chris decided. Try as he might, Larabee couldn't find the distance he needed to look at this with a hard clear eye. Felt like a lowdown snake for hitting Vin like he had, but damned if the man hadn't stood right up and asked for it! A gunslinger could ill afford to see his world any way but calculating unless he was trying to get himself killed, and this time, Chris wasn't.
Vin had become important to him, and Vin was lying to him, had lied to him for a long time before any of this had come up. It was a kind of blue-ice fury knowing that, but it was only cold on the surface - underneath, it was volcanic, and he was halfway afraid of feeling unpredictable as a cocked gun.
He hadn't expected it would be one scrawny half-tamed mountain man to have taken him in like that; of them all, he'd never thought it'd be Vin. Vin was the silence he craved, his company sometimes as close and all-encompassing as the land itself, as the sky, humbling and reassuring in the same moment. Somewhere along the line in the last year he'd relaxed and let things come out that made him too vulnerable otherwise. He'd never worried about a thing in Vin's company, but now Vin's company was worrying him.
A soft chuff of harsh air mocked himself as much as them. Kid wanting him with them so bad it showed in every line of his body and it pissed him off anew for Vin to take a promise made to J.D. lightly.
His gun leapt to hand when gloved fingers curled unexpectedly around the top of the open doorway and Vin swung in from the roof, his leather duster fanning out behind him like bat-wings. He landed not too unsteadily on his feet, laughing at the shock on their faces and almost natural in the spark of having had some fun doing something totally insane.
"Vin, were you up there on that roof?" Nathan heard a motherly scold in his tone but it didn't stop him, he knew his eyebrows were all the way down and he couldn't bring them up for the life of him - the man had cracked ribs, a wrenched shoulder, God knew what all! And he's squirreling around on top of a damned moving train?!
Vin shrugged off both the question and the bedroll knotted around his shoulder, snapping it open with a casual flicking roll near the door. As he straightened it out, he said offhandedly,
"Peso wouldn't settle." And that was all the explanation he would offer for clambering around the outside of a moving train like it was just another way to get into the cars. Buck burst out laughing, Josiah's deep chuckle a basso harmony rising out of the dimness where he'd lain down, and Vin grinned like he meant it. Strangely enough, he did. That'd been fun; he hadn't wanted to let J.D. down, and by the kid's face he surely hadn't, J.D. was nearly twisting his head off his neck looking between the top of that door and the world rushing by outside it and Vin like something impossible had happened right before his eyes.
"You're nuts!" He finally exclaimed, which set Buck off anew because of how sincerely he meant it, but there was a huge admiration in it, too.
J.D.'s stomach seemed to settle for the first time in days, and he looked around at them all with a glad satisfaction that none of them had the heart to tromp on. Chris was a sliver of night inside that car, silent and cold and watching Vin so carefully that everyone noticed it even as far back in the shadows as he was.
It was a good night anyway. Vin ate with them, bread and goat-cheese, the last of the jerked venison, even a small keg of someone's fairly decent home-brewed beer. He was as he always was; saying very little and half-heartedly annoyed by Buck's teasing innuendos so that the others - except for Chris - got the impression there really was an interest between their taciturn tracker and the lovely eastern socialite.
Vin saw the speculation light their eyes and was satisfied to leave it at that. This was a dangerous cover and he didn't like involving Duley's sister this way, he couldn't afford to let it go too far. Certainly Stephen Monroe would not take kindly to the suggestion of anything going on between them, and he said just enough to get that point across so they would hold their tongues around the Monroe brothers. He allowed himself to smile and to laugh as much as he ever did, and though he could feel Chris' eyes on him when he laid down to sleep, he slept among their snores and rustlings better than he had in days.
The rain slackened and let off when they pulled into Denver early the next morning, high on the western slope of the great plains. The black cliffs of the Rockies rose hard in the distance to the west past a river-cut jumble of canyons and cottonwoods running down the mountain flanks to spread out on the flatland.
Wet wood and rock and paint glittered in shifting streams of sun that sent the shadows to dancing and sweeping in a wind-blown confusion of shadow and light, smoke and steam curling lazily into the air above the jumble of rooftops and avenues.
Vin had been thinking all morning, eyes filled with vistas he hadn't seen for what felt like a lifetime, but just as they had always been. Duley was staying away because she knew he couldn't hope to hide feeling her and the land both. That retreat, although stabilizing, still made him feel bereft. Not to think about her was almost as hard as thinking about her, his mind would drift to her in every inattentive moment as natural as the flow of a river.
Not for the first time he looked up there, toward the steep eastern flank of the Rockies, wanting to go into it by himself, find her on his own and live wild with her ghost until he died and could touch her again. Tantalizingly close there, places that would echo with their voices and the magic they'd made together, so intense and joyful it had to have poured into the very ground and trees and rocks to be remembered there still. It could be enough - he closed his eyes a second, longing hard after it.
Maybe when he was finished here and the boys knew what he'd done, the Judge ... this life would be over. Something occurred to him then with a sudden shocking chill; the life he lived now would be over, but there would be a holy war to fight for the Pa Sapa. His head lifted like a wolf after an unexpected blood scent and he let that thought slither through his mind with a macabre fascination.
When the train finally stopped in the pouring rain and he turned in swinging down to the ground, he met Chris' eye for a moment, and the gunslinger saw a bone-deep calm that made the hairs on his neck stand up.
Jules didn't have much trouble annoying all the adults into letting her off to walk around the platform - they prayed she'd burn some of the energy that kept her from sitting, or keeping her mouth, still.
She sucked in a big noisy breath as she came outside, and she wanted to suck up every washed-clean sight and drip and splash of sound, too. The distant ranks of mountains were so stately, the grasslands so vast, that even a town as big as Denver was nothing but a pimple on it all. Rivers and creeks spilled down in glistening threads lined with willow and cottonwoods, reaching ever outwards across the endless plains.
She could hear men's voices beside the car and peered around the side of the landing to keep the advantage of height; six of the seven were there stretching their legs, Buck was leaning against the wall right next to her, though he was turned the other way.
With a wicked smirk she leaned out and tapped Buck on the crown of his broad brown hat, laughing when he comically clapped his hands onto it and spun around. He'd known she was there, of course, might even have put himself there for her amusement, he loved to make females laugh.
"Well, a volunteer, I declare! Girl, you can walk a string of mules, can't you?"
Her smile would've put the sun to shame - she'd been kept away from them this whole darned trip, but they hadn't forgotten her, she was being invited to join them!
"Good as any of you, I'd bet."
"Won't take that one, little lady, but come on ..."
She walked among them, dwarfed by their height but feeling ten feet tall herself. Self-consciously she adopted the rolling stride, the easy swing of shoulders, unlearning a lifetime of posture and decorum in about a half a second.
At home, she'd be eye-level to luxurious fabrics in rich colors stretched over round bellies and hips and broad expanses of bosoms, everyone soft and cushioned looking. You couldn't track the veins of their hands like strong rivers under brown skin, or find scars and scrapes and tendons like a litany of all the mysterious dangers and experiences that had given them such uncanny grace. Certainly hands more capable than anything decorating the ends of her Uncle's arms!
Everything about the seven was more capable, not one carried any fat on them, even the preacher, bulky as he was, was solid muscle and bone. The very fabric of their clothes and harness was durably experienced, leather molded to the wearer, guns automatically accommodated in every way like they were more comfortable with them than they'd ever be without them. She squinted up, took in their faces, Buck wickedly handsome, Nathan fine-carved and elegant, Josiah a bear with a scholar's mind and a preacher's heart. All of them with eyes that noticed twice the world of everybody else, things far smaller and far further.
To her delight, Vin Tanner was already at work letting down the ramps with J.D., who waved at her as he spied her trotting along amid them like a pup among a pack of wolves. Looked happy as a pig in mud, as his mother used to say, and J.D. swept her up onto the ramp as it came down and sent her in after the first line of mules. She was so proud she couldn't keep from grinning, she wanted to be casual and all la-tee-da about being on her own with them, but she just couldn't! J.D. came up after her and untethered the lead from the ring on the wall, handing it over to her with every confidence she could get them out of the car and walking even small as she was. He'd seen her ride, and J.D. didn't mistake a person who understood and loved horses.
As she came down the ramp feeling it bow and vibrate under the weight of the mules behind her, she saw Tanner standing watching her, his hands on his hips and his long coat caught back behind him, weight cocked on one leg and smiling like she'd never seen him smile in her direction before. She managed to nod at him like she had work to do and wasn't glowing like an ember at the approval in his face.
At the distance he'd gained, he felt safe enough to let himself feel this; he did approve of that girl. The cock of her chin, the attitude that never quit, the fierce appetites in her eyes. That hunger for the world, and all of it, that Duley'd had in such abundance. His smile wasn't his, but full of Duley's fondness and it was easier that way, just to let Duley feel pride in this niece of hers who carried that force of character on into the future. It was hard to think along those lines, though, and look at the girl, those blue eyes his own child might have had, but he let Duley look her fill with his blue eyes before he had to turn for the next car. He could hear Peso being unhappy not to have been first.
The ground underfoot drew on his spirit, he could feel it opening up in him, asking for him and giving him itself like a life he'd forgotten to live. It came in his nose and his eyes and his soul. Home. A place he had not been born to, but home. It didn't care about this great sprawl of a city on it, it lived always, and that ageless immutable power lent him a fatalistic strength of his own. He was here, he was welcomed by the land and the sky and the forest he could hear on the wind through the noise that surrounded him. It surrounded more closely still, and the memories were too many and too fast to hurt.
Not far, the place he'd first set foot on this land, and something had happened in him that had taken all the breath out of his lungs and all the strength out of his legs, something that had burned thought to a dizzy white oblivion. The hunting party he was scouting for had found him sitting dumbly on the east side of ... his hand went of it's own mind, the glass went to his eye like it willed it, not he ... that ridge. The warriors had found him there bewildered and helpless as a child. They had looked down at him, one by one, and gone on, strange smiles coming to those he counted friends and disturbed looks from others who could not bring themselves to believe in a white man.
Owl Man, Wicase Hinhan in the Lakota tongue, had come last and stopped just off his left shoulder, then then he sat down beside him, knowing what had happened as Vin did not. The old Lakota had looked out at all that captured the white man's wide wondering eyes, and there was quiet to take it all in, and then he said in a dry quiet tone,
"This is a good place to sit down." In another while, Owl Man quietly took a bit of pemmican from his pouch, put it in his mouth and chewed contemplatively. Silence was important when things were moving in the heart.
Vin couldn't have talked just then any more than he could've danced, words were useless, he was useless and overwhelmed and lost. But he was glad Owl Man was there, because he was scared like he'd never been in all his life. He wasn't sure where he was anymore, or who, or even what.
Finally Wicase Hinhan said, "You know, most white men I know turn around and run away when the land pokes its fingers into their hearts."
Vin's wide eyes tore slowly away from the unbearably rich captivity, surprise drawing him to Wicase Hinhan, and hope. The old man chewed, and the silence moved into Vin, the land breathed in him, he could feel the breadth and width of it like it was all there at once. He didn't know how, Lord, he had to have lose his mind, but he could feel the grass under him and the hawk wheeling a lazy circle around them up yonder like it could feel them, too, and he knew what it saw from its height without any idea how.
"It scares them." Wicase Hinhan said, and Vin knew for certain then that Owl Man understood what was happening in him. Desperately he touched the man's leather sleeve so he would look to him and let him see it, let him know what it was that was stirring and moving and shaking in him, owning him like no one and nothing could, ever.
"It scares me." He remembered how faint and coarse his own voice was, and he remembered the creases in that old brown face deepen, and the dark eyes glisten with a strange delight. Victory. Joy ... and in a sudden instant that joy was in him as well, and he reached for it like a foundation in the flood, with blind faith that it would anchor him.
"The land ..." Again that withered voice out of his mouth, his hands helpless to encompass what it felt like that was so far beyond just the ground and the sky and the trees. "It ... it's like it came in ..." His voice failed, but words failed first, they had never come easily to him and he couldn't hope to find ones that would say ...
"And you don't know how." Owl Man had said quietly and a little nod, ebony eyes far into the vast plains and river-cut canyons as though he looked upon a beloved family member.
Vin opened his mouth, closed it again, throat working around a way to express it and didn't touch how it felt ... opening inside like a sudden spread of wings, shoving his breath right up out of his throat and tears right out of his eyes so he'd dropped to the ground feeling like he'd been turned inside out.
Wicase Hinhan said, still in that quiet calm voice, "But it doesn't scare you so much - you're still here."
Vin astonished himself by laughing, and his fear broke apart in the sound; "I can't run, old man, my legs ain't mine right now ..."
Again they'd sat in silence together, and the old man's quiet embraced him amid the turmoil crashing and reshaping in him; he couldn't be crazy if Wicase Hinhan was sitting with him like he understood what he felt.
"How can I feel the canyon over there, Wicase Hinhan ..." Vin asked in a awed whisper the old man would not have heard had his head been two inches more away, "how can these things come into me as if they were alive?"
The old man's eyes glowed with an affection Vin remembered to this day, and he said, because Vin was white even if he was not like any white Wicase Hinhan had ever met; "Do you think it is not alive?" Like that would, indeed, be crazy.
It struck like a punch, a single mortal blow that killed what he'd been and birthed him again somewhere he'd never known existed. A reality so enormous he couldn't grasp it, though his hands opened and closed, and his face was such a comical amazement, and Wicase Hinhan was so filled with pleasure for him, that the old man had chuckled to see him.
"You look like something has happened to you. Ha - you look like what you know now is the Truth."
The land becoming him as he became it in one glorious moment, touched by something too powerful not to steal his breath and knock him down and take the dark secret quiet of his deepest mind and open it up with Itself. All the world in him and he in all the world. Awestruck, he whispered,
"How? Why?"
"It is strange that the world would choose to touch you, a white man who does not know It. Ha, perhaps it touches you because you do not know it shouldn't ~ You are a strange man, I have always said it."
They sat there until the sun had gone down, then they had stood up and walked on. Vin's body, his blood, hummed with the vibration of the land, he could feel the trees moving far away in the wind and the deep slow beat of the land in his heart, and he knew where everything was that was sacred as if he was the canyons and the mountains and the streams and all the wild places he loved to profoundly, and they were his. Filled like a vessel that had never known how empty it was. He had never been the same again.
Now, so many years later, that awareness he'd lost without knowing when came crashing back into being and nearly put him on his ass again, only a shaky hand on the bar that would release the ramp stayed him where he was.
It came to him as it had then, took him and conquered him and enfolded him as it had when he'd been raw and bloody and too close to crazy. It unfurled in a sudden winged rise and flowed full of promises, reaching for him from the far calm heart of the Rockies, and he answered it as he had that day so long ago.
"I am here." Quietly, but aloud, because the land lived as much as he did, and it was True as little else was. He was not alone, no man ever was who knew the breath and pulse of the world in his own flesh.
But beyond that comfort he couldn't allow himself to go. It wasn't easy for a long-thinking man to cut the run of his thoughts short, but he had to, and he did. One step in front of another, the direction Duley set him in was all he needed to know.
He let go of the rod, his attention and so much more drawn north past the ghostly ranks of mountains marching away into the horizon. There were the free people besieged, in the heart and womb of the world, and for it all he could do was bring these guns on the crest of a war he wouldn't be able to stop. But it was where Duley wanted him and where she was moving him and that had to be good enough.
Still, he shivered, knowing how futile it was to deny it with the rhythm and the spirit of the land beating again in his heart. To feel that life again meant also that he could feel its pain, and that pain was coming hard on his heels driving straight into this land he treasured. Already it insinuated itself into the perfect tapestry of the world, a black and disruptive thread warping patterns set from the beginning of time. Miners who cared for nothing but the soft gold metal they would gouge from its generous body, trappers who cared nothing for the continuance of the species they would hunt to extinction, a far away government plotting death for people who harbored the spirit of the earth inside them as naturally as the blood in their veins. Already it had that feel of despair, the bitter taste of sorrow in the sense of the living world that had returned to him. He had thought himself crazy when it had happened that first time, and he feared now he would truly end that way when this was done. The idea that Duley might also think to bequeath him to the living felt like an abandonment he couldn't bear to even consider. For her to leave him, even with men who would stand by him and a world that was part of him, would be, truly, too much to survive.
They left Denver in a deluge. Vin stayed with Peso, troubled and trying not to be, trying to find his balance to walk the razored edge they'd be on once they were off this train and into the wilderness in earnest. There were familiar trusts he had to hold onto and new ones to build if he was to pull this off without any of them being sucked into the dangers he was concealing. At least he felt like he was on the right road to do that, now. He was a small thing, so tiny a part of the conflict that would sweep across this sacred land, but the smallest stone in a river still forced its course around it, still changed the flow. The people must survive, at any cost - and so must these innocent people with him now.
La Porte lay in a high plains valley carved by the Cache le Poudre River, which began high in the peaks of the Rockies along the Continental Divide and tumbled down the slopes nearly 7,000 feet. The river corridor had long been a vital travel route for the people into the regions north of the South Platte River, and then to frontier trappers and hunters as well, some of whom had settled along its cottonwood-lined banks, and some in the higher elevations, widely scattered as mountain men were wont to need. Smoke hovered in a thin blanket over nearly 150 Arapaho lodges along the river's edge, frontiersmen and the people having long been able to peacefully co-exist.
Travelers were few this time of year, and it would be a month or so before traffic picked up again. Vin remembered the rendezvous convened here every summer when the woodsmen and trappers and hunters and more nefarious desperados came down out of the mountains eager for trade and whiskey and women and often deadly contests of wilderness skills. Those wild and wooly gatherings were as mortal as they were raucous, a great many scores got settled there amid the mayhem of too many too rough men in one place. Vin had not come down at that time of year again.
It was the end of the endless grasslands, the terrain still generous and open, but more deeply cut by cobbled streams and rivers thick with cottonwood and willow, the folds of the land much more pronounced. Not twenty miles beyond, the forested slopes of the mountains jutted into the heavens, creating a wall so high that the higher reaches beyond were blocked from view.
Once, it had been a fur-trading station known only to Indians and trappers, but now those few homely log buildings had been joined by a rather fanciful Overland Trail stage route station and a large hotel not yet spruced up for the spring. To Buck's delight, there were also four saloons and a brewery, Mary and Elizabeth were glad to see a butcher shop where they might get fresh meat for the night's meal and a general store to replenish their supplies of cornmeal and black-strap. Bare now, but LaPorte was a bustling supply center for emigrants going west, and in a short time the empty streets would be filled with wagons trains and stage coaches lining up to be ferried across the river. This early in the season, the river was still low enough to ford the mules and horses afoot, and Vin was already searching out the path on the other side as the boys jostled by him.
The Monroes came down onto the platform as well and headed into the little town, no doubt to send more telegrams to Gerald. James glanced at him over his shoulder, perhaps wondering at his scornful expression. It didn't matter, Vin had already reworked the route around anywhere the Monroes might have arranged to be met by soldiers, and it wasn't likely anyone would even notice that but Josiah.
He watched the boys go in a loose jostling knot, Chris drifting behind them, and he lifted a hand toward their turned heads grateful for the solitude and the chance to unload his cargo privately. He did so with typical quiet economy, moving them under the covered platform to be packed onto the mules. He could hear Peso being fractious in the car, but not overmuch, preferring to stand in a car rather than in a corral in the rain.
When he was done, he sat down on one of the crates for a rest, aching more than he wanted to admit even to himself. The hip bothered him pretty constantly, but he needed his gun, so that hurt was relegated to something he just had to endure. What was stacked around him now was all he could hope to deliver to the beleaguered Lakota, and he leaned back to rest a quiet hour there, filling his eyes with the mountains and forests. Quiet as he felt, however, in the thrall of that beckoning, it was a fragile state and he knew it. Let Duley come on him unaware now, with the land moving so profoundly in him, and he'd break into a hundred pieces he'd never be able to put together again.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, aching inside, now. It was the first time her absence had ever made him stronger, and though he didn't like it, he knew it had to be this way. He'd led the boys into thinking there was a flirtation, and Elizabeth was a quick-minded woman, she had to know it by the way they grinned at him whenever he was in her company. And she hadn't discouraged the notion. Vin might not be the most experienced man in the west, but he was a man. The shame he felt for even thinking this, the dangerous wickedness he knew it to be ... he didn't know if he could see it through, but he had to win her to his side. His sigh was heartsick.
He remembered the places they would travel, in his mind's eye he walked the trail, felt the wet earth underfoot, the grey kingdoms of the clouds overhead. The lower canyons had open slopes of mountain mahogany, sagebrush and bitterbrush, and as the miles fell away, they would rise from the tree-choked canyons into generous forests of ponderosa and lodgepole pine, cottonwood, pale slender aspens and blue-green junipers laced with meadows. At the higher elevations, it was primarily evergreens, and there would still be snow on the highest peaks.
He opened his eyes and looked into that far away place rather than notice how big the town had become, even moving the army camp six miles down river hadn't diminished the muddy sprawl. He shook his head and tried not to care with so many other things to focus on now. The dangers grew far more real in the wilderness where treacheries could be worked that he had to anticipate, because the Monroes were up to something. The unhallowed bones of many a man lay in those heights, their fates unknown, the wickedness that had felled them unpunished short of God's judgment, and he did not intend that any of his friends should fall prey to such as that.
Vin was passing by when Elizabeth came down the steps of the passenger car, and he reached an arm out of his slicker to help her on the rain-wet steps. Water sluiced off his slouched hatbrim to the left off his gun-hand, but the rain hit her in the face the moment she stepped away from the car. He laughed, and it was a warm sound, teeth flashing as he stepped up to her and reached for the crown of her hat. A quick edge of one hand and a flicking curl of his fingers dragging across the front had the crown dipped and the brim low enough to shield her eyes without blinding her; the rain started dripping to one side.
She knew she was wide-eyed when she looked up at him, surprised by his open friendliness and disconcerted by his nearness, especially when his fingers skimmed with startling intimacy against her neck as he pulled the muffler up where it would do some good. Lord, he had a beautiful smile, eyes glancing, but warm, so she knew he hadn't forgotten the moonlit night and the tentative steps toward friendship that had kept her in a quiet excitation.
She shivered, and passed it off as a chill, yet couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from his face.
Julianna bumped by her in a startlingly rude rush that ended with a wet thump of boots and an utterly uninhibited grin right beside Vin.
"Good morning!" She piped, eyes bright as a fire to be set free of train cars and dresses. Her hat was already shaped for the rain, and she was glad of the flicker of an approving smile that deepened the corners of his wide blue eyes. They were so expressive, so overflowing with feelings ... it was strange that eyes could be so full and yet tell her nothing. She thought he was as glad as she was, though, to be out of the train and anticipating traveling the mystery of those distant black forests and magnificent heights. She could hardly imagine being up there, but she was sure he looked forward to it and so, then, did she - scary as it was, he was of that wide wild world, and where he could pass safely and unnoticed, so could she. He could show her so much there if she could only worm her way into his company somehow! He didn't seem to dislike her, exactly, but he acted like a horse stepping around a yapping little dog or something, wanting it away from him. Maybe she'd have to be sneaky, then, shadow him until he gave in ...
Jules noticed her Aunt's attentiveness toward the tracker and suppressed a scandalized giggle at how flustered she looked, though probably no one else would have noticed. Ever the model of propriety, Aunt Elizabeth's back was straight as a rod as she took a step back from the tracker, but her niece was sharper than that and saw her eyes follow him with a warmth that was almost intimate. What astonished her was that Tanner, who hardly seemed inclined to dalliance of any sort, seemed to be allowing it ... some of his friends had noticed them together with grins and raised eyebrows, and she bet they teased him about it when no one else was around - though probably not too much!
Of course, they didn't know her aunt was the sister of the tracker's departed wife, she sensed they had no idea he'd ever had a wife, but among the Indians, two sisters could marry the same man, so maybe they wouldn't care at all. Even at home it wasn't unheard of for a widower to marry his dead wife's sister, though that second wife was usually the object of pitying gossip. Jules always wondered why a woman would want to do something so futile as to try and replace a man's first choice of a wife, doomed lifelong to be a pale imitation and a source of disappointment.
All she knew for sure was that if they had been at home and a woman of her Aunt's standing in the community had taken up with a wild and wandering man, there would be some serious gossip. And her Uncles! Lord, let them even get wind of a friendship between her Aunt and the tracker and they'd be like volcanoes going off - which might be pretty interesting.
Jules tipped her head back and let the rain fall onto her face and into her open mouth, trying to imagine Vin Tanner settling down contentedly in Virginia and succeeding only in making herself laugh. That would never happen, nor could she see her Aunt wandering around the west in buckskins living in a teepee or a log cabin - that mental image made her spew the mouthful of water like a geyser almost straight up into the air. She was being ridiculous anyway, her Aunt was no more likely to fall in love with a fiddle-footed frontiersman than a fish was to fly, it just wasn't in her character. But a friendship - Aunt Elizabeth was a loyal and stalwart friend where she bestowed such favors, and she would stand her ground even against the combined might of her three brothers if she decided Vin Tanner was a friend to her - which Jules agreed he was, definitely. This could get very interesting!
Tanner directed her Aunt with an extended arm down the line of cars to where Mary was already at work over some of the supply packs, adding what had been purchased in Denver.
The horses stood stoically in the lee of the train-cars, empty feed bags over the saddle-seats to keep them as dry as they could while the six men packed the mules, and Jules went right to work among them. The tall gunslinger in black scowled, but nobody else minded her, nobody told her to get away, that the animals were touchy and explosively restless after so many days of inactivity; no, they trusted she knew what she was doing and they let her do it with smiles and nods and instructions no more bossy than they gave to one another.
Mary put beans into one of the dutch ovens to soak for dinner, tying the lid down tight and setting it into one of the galvanized tubs in case it leaked, and Elizabeth set bread dough to rise in another. Both women looked unhappily at the way ahead, steep and inclement but unavoidable.
Finally the line stood, long and rambling in the rain, waiting for Vin to return from the Arapaho lodges on the riverbank below them, where he'd disappeared an hour ago with a heavily laden mule. He came up the incline like a rain-dark ghost, his slicker tented over pommel and cantle to keep as dry a seat as he could and without the mule, satisfied they would have safe passage for awhile, at least.
"Get them brothers n' Ezra outta their toasty train and horsed," he said as he met up with Josiah and Buck to one side of the line of mules where they'd been waiting, turning to point Peso at the trail ahead, "Let's get movin' before any more of the day burns." So saying, he set a brush of heels to Peso and let the black explode into a run up the winding road over the grasslands, toward that tree-choked gorge he knew that was one of the people's avenues into the bulwark of the mountains.
He'd been riding quite awhile when he came to himself and realized he'd lost all track of time, and for a few minutes until he got his bearings he had no idea how far he'd come. God, it felt strange to be in these woods, pale light stippling the wet ground, conifers laying streaks and darknesses hard to see into as they climbed. He felt so strange, like he was disappearing into the land, becoming invisible in it and wanting to.
Peso went at a comfortable canter, threading the open ground through the trees where there would be room for the mules to pass. Hooves drumming on the earth, that hollow resonance of layers of leaf mold and wood pulp laid in sheltering years over the earth.
He didn't feel like himself, and at the same time he was more comfortable in his own skin than he'd been in years. All this was known to him, all the voices and plays of shadow and light, all the scents. He sipped at the air through open lips, pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth to taste where water ran, where pines grew and meadows spread. Reverting to a more feral nature like slipping into old buckskins that knew his body and motion. He'd missed it so much, he'd never realized how much until it flowed in like a river long-dammed. All these years never daring even think overlong on it because it was so much of Duley, but now in it, with the land resonating in him again ... it was overwhelming.
It would be so easy to let it have him, to wander ceaselessly and vanish into the day to day existence of any animal in the wild world, become unknown and unknowable. Walk the far distance inside him where he'd once lived in safety and shown nothing, given nothing, to the wider world that had pushed him with bewildering cruelty to his last edge. Here, a man's enemies were plain, their intentions clear and their reasons easy to know. Everything was direct like that, no trickery or guile to trip a man up and make him do wrong when he thought he was doing right. These Monroes ... he would have to sit down with Elizabeth tonight and start the conversations he needed to have with her, he had to find a way to be with her away from her brothers, and find the words to ask what he suspected she didn't know herself.
Would he be able to keep Duley at arm's length hearing about her girlhood from a woman who looked so like her? Seeing firelight on that hair ... a breath jerked into his chest and he drew up in the saddle, drew back from thinking. That was a bridge he'd cross when he got to it.
Finding the way to that conversation proved easier, and more painful, than he could have anticipated.
The narrow bottom of the canyon through which they ascended the flank of the mountain made it hard to ride other than single-file, rendering conversation difficult at best even after the rain stopped. Elizabeth rode at the heel of Mary's horse, and the two women managed some talk of dinner and how they would set up camp on the muddy ground, but Elizabeth was distracted and did not mind when silence fell.
Stephen squeezed past her on the inside in a most ungentlemanly way, forcing her bay too close to the edge, and though his apology rang false, she let it go. But she watched his back as he moved further up the line, noticing that he didn't try to pass the two gunslingers, not even the black healer who rode at their heels and who turned to look at Stephen as he approached from behind with wide dark eyes that gave not an inch. He would be a fool to tempt that one, for all his peaceful ways, for all the abiding kindness and compassion so openly given. He'd tear Stephen's head off if he got the opportunity, and Elizabeth didn't doubt he had excellent reason to despise Stephen's sort.
Her private unease over her brother's possible intentions had been growing apace for days now, little things rising in her mind like black bubbles in a cauldron, so many little things that had never seemed important before.
Gerald's insistence that she come west on this journey with her brothers, which she had refused to do again and again until he'd demanded that his daughter be sent to him. A daughter in whom he had never evinced the slightest interest - was he using Julianna to coerce his sister to obedience to his will? And to what purpose - why did he want her here? Indeed, she'd understood neither his invitations nor his insult when she declined again and again, but Julianna's presence guaranteed hers, she couldn't let the child make such a trip without escort - and she did not consider Stephen a suitable escort. Julianna and her Uncle Stephen had long had an adversarial relationship, and Elizabeth knew better than anyone what an impossible and infuriating girl her niece could be, particularly when she did not like someone as she so did not like Stephen.
As if sensing her aunt's exasperated thoughts, Julianna's sudden laughter broke the quiet, J.D. laughing with her about something; he'd given her charge of three mules and she felt very important about it, and he talked to her about the Seminole Indians near Four Corners and what little else he knew of wood-lore that Vin had taught him. Jules was listening very carefully to anything that had to do with Vin, learning his ways from a distance if she had to, but learning.
Elizabeth smiled to hear her voice, bold and bright as a jay. Julianna reminded her so much of Duley, and it hadn't taken long for her to understand this was the reason why Vin maintained a wary distance from her. He got a wild trapped sort of light in his eyes when forced into her company that Elizabeth knew was too much memory for him, the poor man. He had loved her sister so; she shook her head in wondering admiration, and not for the first time, either. The trail rose underfoot as the gorge steepened and narrowed, the path climbing the right side of it now toward more level ground above.
She figured she knew what Tanner thought about his in-laws by now, and his opinion was not charitable in the least but for her, she was the only one he seemed able to be around with any degree of comfort. That idea made her feel a little smug, as if she could risk the company of a wild creature no one else could even approach. It was silly, of course. Far too much of what she'd been thinking, and feeling, was silly, and Elizabeth Monroe could in no wise be called a silly woman. Foolish. Just plain wrong.
But just when she would convince herself of that, she would catch sight of him on horseback like he lived there, thoughtlessly fluid and a rough grace that sometimes caught her unaware in bluntly lustful admiration. Predatory and dangerous and yet so kind of heart ... and that smile he seemed to reserve for her that made her heart jolt.
The trail veered to one side and then the other, widening so she had a false sense of security and the slope to her right gentling back as it lifted so the meadow above was visible now and then through the shrubs. Ahead, the treeline stitched a dark margin across the yellowed field. As if called by her thinking of him, she saw Vin emerge from the trees to her right, almost parallel with the train and nearly invisible but for his motion as he rode toward them, a goodly distance away but visible above the gradually lowering embrace of the gorge they were climbing out of. She watched him pull up, saw a flash of brass as he set his glass to his eye to check the surroundings.
A woman would never be afraid even in the wildest and most savage reaches of the frontier with him looking after her, she was sure Duley never had feared a thing at his side. The thought of Duley, as always, halted the dreamy run of her thoughts. Her sister's husband, and surely disappointed in all the Monroes. He was only being kind, being loyal to Duley in caring for her sister and even Monroes he didn't like at all.
Lost in thought, she hardly noticed the wide gaps opening in the line of horses and mules, nor the promontory they would have to navigate ahead, veering sharply out over the gorge around a tumble of broken granite and then back into the mountainside again in a tight series of switchbacks. The two gunslingers rode ahead to crest up out of the gorge first and scout around, though Tanner was heading at an easy lope down out of the trees to their right. The path seemed sufficiently broad to render the drop to the left inconsequential, and she thought nothing of it until her mount was startled by some small creature darting across the path. Ordinarily this would not have set the horse off, but his startlement combined with the inopportune breaking of the cheekstrap at the bit buckle were enough to do it.
Now, Elizabeth Monroe was a fine horsewoman and had handled runaways before, so she didn't jerk the reins nor try to force the frightened beast in, but tightened her legs and letting out the reins as soon as she realized the bit was sliding and in danger of being lost altogether. The horse was trying to throw the suddenly uneven bar of metal in its mouth off, so she gave the bay its head as it went pounding up the path but kept her knees firm.
Vin saw her and knew at once she wasn't in full control of the animal; then he saw where the horse was going, right at a series of deadly blind corners ... why was she alone there? Why wasn't anyone near enough to do anything? The mules were a good quarter mile behind her, and the rest of the riders too far ahead and on too narrow a bit of path to turn safely and come back for her. Ezra's horse rose on its hind legs as he apparently tried to do just that, but he was being hampered by Stephen's balking and clumsily handled mount behind him.
He never thought twice, he leaned up and tightened his heels and Peso went into a full-out run down the slope. Vin swiveled hard on his hips from a forward lean to laying nearly flat back on Peso's croup as the horse plunged down the last rim of the gorge onto the path, and they struck the road a hair behind the scampering bay. Peso had to dig hard to turn after him to keep from going straight off the drop opening up beyond the path, but Vin never doubted his agility, standing high and forward off the saddle and leaning away from the cliff side so his weight would help Peso balance, driving the black between Elizabeth and the brink; Peso fought him on that and with good reason - if the bay should go, he would take them with him.
Peso's churning black shoulder hit the back of the bay's belly so hard the horse grunted and stumbled, and in the same moment Vin dove out of his saddle into Elizabeth, yanking her into his chest and wrapping her in his arms, turning in mid-air as they both went off the far side of her saddle so he would take the impact on his shoulders. They hit hard, her knee landing solidly between his legs in a flash of agony that would've made him scream if the landing hadn't knocked the breath out of him in one hard whump. As they went in a hard roll into the rocks, Peso nearly sat himself down stopping, letting Elizabeth's mount go to its doom if it was that stupid. The bay's muddy hocks slipped for a frantic moment in the mud of the canyon rim before he got purchase and stopped himself, shuddering and eyes rolling, blowing hard gusts.
It all happened so fast she was breathless, bound against the security of his body within the iron brace of his arms, one hand cupping the back of her head to protect her skull. Pain flared in one of her knees and both elbows as they struck and rolled and she clung to him, her hands fisted in his shirt at chest and stomach under his coat, her cheek pressed against his neck. Too stunned to move even as they came to a stop, laying on top of him and loathe to let go the hard embrace that had tightened as if to stave off her sudden reactive terror.
The scent of him filled her nose, moss and sage and leather and man, the feel of being pressed so tight and intimate against him jangling in her like excited alarms, the throb of his heartbeat through the whisker-rough skin against her cheek, the unyielding bones and muscles, all in a wash of masculine sensations she hadn't felt for ... oh, a very long time ...
She heard Mary calling, felt the thrum of hooves and then Mary's gloved hands, heard words as she blinked into his shirt and took breath after breath and tried to make her fingers let go of his clothes, his hands on her upper arms now pushing her up off him.
"My God, Elizabeth, are you alright?"
He grunted painfully when stronger hands finally lifted Elizabeth up and set her shakily on her feet, Mary at one side and J.D. to the other. Josiah held firmly to her waist, touchingly concerned. She was soaked and muddy on her back and side, and just as she was trying to reassure them, and then her brothers as they rode up, that she was alright, she realized Vin was not getting up.
Nathan came off his horse like he had wings and went to his knees beside the tracker, Buck and Ezra at his heels, and only then did she remember the bruised body she'd helped dress. She paled so suddenly to imagine what damage she might have done to him that Josiah thought she might faint, but instead she pulled away from both his and Mary's solicitous support with real concern.
"Oh my God, Mr. Tanner - Mr. Tanner, has he been hurt?"
Relieved when he sat up, though he still did not get up, his back deeply curved over his upraised knees and his forehead resting on the arm he'd laid across them. Nathan saw where his off hand was pressed and flinched, Buck spun around, shoulders rising sympathetically - every man there knew what that tight rocking motion meant and every man there winced. They put themselves between him and the women with seemingly inadvertent clumsiness, Buck trying manfully not to laugh.
One of Vin's hands rose out of the knot of men around him in answer to her repeated call, knuckles bloody, the gesture one of impatience more than pain, but he was white-blind at the moment and his thoughts were nothing but the incomprehensible swearing men in such straits resorted to when there was nothing else to do but wait for the first shocking agony to subside. His side burned like hellfire as well, which provided some distraction, but sitting there was all he was capable of for a long few minutes. Nathan buzzed around asking quiet questions and getting irritated grunts in reply. The minute Vin thought he could, all he wanted to do was get up, and he made that clear by grabbing onto Buck's pant-leg and Nathan's shoulder to get his feet under him.
He felt Buck's big hand steadying against his back as he rose, leaning forward over his knees with his hands clenched there to keep himself up, unable to straighten just then but having enough in him to glance up at Buck and murmur with strangled fire,
"Buck, you laugh n' I'm gonna git you one way or the other, mark me."
Buck's grin didn't let off a bit, but he patted Vin's back solicitously, shaking his head. "Sorry Vin - it's a natural thing, bein' relieved it ain't me, you know? 'Sides, you look like a mud-man ..."
Indigo eyes sparkling and Vin just shook his head, nauseous and breathing steady and slow to keep from puking. God, this was the awfullest feeling!
"He's alright, Ma'am, just got the wind knocked out of him."
Vin was surprised to hear Nathan make light of it, but very grateful, nodding as he could to affirm the healer's opinion. The boys stood around him like a fence of muscle and bone, like they were guarding him from an enemy until he got his legs steady. Defending him automatically as he realized he would be doing himself it it'd been any one of them. Always the first instinct was to count who was standing and get to those who weren't.
"Oh, I feel utterly ridiculous!" Elizabeth cried, "I haven't had a horse run away with me since I was a child!"
"Ma'am, it wasn't your fault, look here, the cheekstrap is busted, you're lucky you didn't lose the bit altogether ..." J.D. had arrived with Julianna on his heels and taken the bay in hand, still horsed and looking quizzically at that broken and crucial band of leather. His elfin face was sharp with guilt - he was responsible for checking the tack, and he'd checked this one last night, he'd checked them all, there hadn't been anything wrong with it he could see - he said as much to Ezra and Judge Travis, who joined him as if mildly curious about the failure of the tack, and no one thought anything of it.
The leather had parted just under the buckle near the bit, as though some unseen sharp edge on that metal fitting might have worn through it over time. Ezra leaned down and ran his sensitive fingers over it, finding the strap, indeed, frayed and pulled apart ... but the surface that rubbed against the buckle was cut cleanly most of the way through, and the back of the buckle had a sharp edge, but one that was too shiny to have been there long. The look he gave Travis was significant.
Orrin deliberately refrained from looking at the brothers because he would not have been able to conceal the condemnation and fury he felt. Right that moment, he and Ezra knew they would have to stay near Elizabeth Monroe for the rest of this journey or risk losing her to an accident they could never hope to prove was not.
"Auntie, you're mud from top to toe!" Julianna cried, hugging her Aunt around the waist too hard because she had no other way to express how terrified she'd been that her Aunt would go over that embankment. She wanted to kiss Vin Tanner, he'd just gone right after her like he didn't care at all that he could've followed her right to doom.
James, too, was at her side, a terrible fear plain and tormented on his face as he examined her carefully for injury. It could have been an accident, the bridle might have just failed, such things happened all the time ... he looked at Stephen, sitting on his horse closest to the trail with an expression of concern and relief that James was too afraid to acknowledge for false. He could not have, would not have ...
"Alright, alright - let's get outta this gorge. Vin, you find a place to camp the night?" Chris took charge, still mounted himself and swallowing his relief that Vin was up and moving, the lady also apparently having suffered no lasting harm. Vin nodded, straightening up with excrutiating slowness, and said in a breathless wheeze,
"A few miles up, between them junipers there."
A vague crooked gesture directing Chris' eye to those trees, and the narrow path between them. The gunslinger wheeled his horse around impatiently and snapped, "Let's get movin', then." Chris could guess from Buck's stifled laughter and the way Vin was moving what had happened, and his instinct was to get right on down into Vin's face and tease him unmercifully about it until the hurt let go in being mad or in laughter. But that was what a friend would do, and he didn't feel like Vin's friend right now, which pissed him off, and doubly to care enough to be pissed off. Chris Larabee did not tolerate conflict well whether it was his own or something being brought to him. If he had a problem, he removed it and that was that. This one was a constant grating irritation that was making him madder and meaner by the day.
Josiah put Elizabeth into his own saddle and mounted himself on her bay with a hackamore J.D. provided. Nathan followed Vin closely as he approached Peso with true trepidation, dreading being in the saddle the way he felt right now but knowing Chris wasn't going to let him slow them down.
Buck walked beside him and held the black's head as Nathan moved to the horse's off side to keep him from swinging out from under Vin as he tried to mount - Peso loved to do that, circle his hind feet on the pivot of his forefeet while the tracker tried to mount. Usually Vin just lengthened his step and got his seat, but just now the very thought had all three men shuddering. Awkwardly, Vin swung up slow and careful, going pale a second when he swung his leg over and balancing for that bare moment on his hand on the horn, fingers white-knuckled around the reins, until he could take a breath and complete the move.
Then he stood in the stirrups and very slowly, very gingerly, lowered into the saddle, trying to rest back on his tailbone and find a position that didn't make him want to throw up. It was useless, which he knew as soon as Peso started moving. With a jerking flinch he stood up in the stirrups again, and resigned himself to riding that way until they reached the camp.
Elizabeth appeared beside him, her face filled with remorse and concern, and then realized, when a deep flush answered her puzzled look at his posture, what, indeed, she had done to him.
"Oh, dear ... " She murmured, her left hand reaching out toward him though there was absolutely nothing she could do. He looked so uncomfortable, so mortified, though he had certainly done nothing wrong and was in all ways a hapless victim of her unfortunate circumstances.
"Oh, dear ..." She said again, and then, to her great embarrassment, she began to giggle. When he turned to her at the sound, that giggle was freed by the wryly dented dignity of his rueful little smile.
"I'm so sorry ... oh, dear me, so sorry!" She exclaimed sotto voce, and he shrugged and started to chuckle himself, interrupted by a hiss as that part of his anatomy touched the saddle, shaking his head.
"Weren't your fault, ma'am. Sure got some hard knees, though."
The unexpected rise of their laughter made a few among them smile. Chris did not, by any means; his scowl could've peeled paint. The Judge and Ezra did not, eyes careful and determined. And Stephen Monroe most certainly did not.
By the time they reached the camp site, Vin was more than ready to get off that damned horse, lay down and die. Peso, maybe punishing him for risking his glossy black hide in rescuing Elizabeth, seemed to find every dip and reason to sidestep he possibly could, jarring the tracker over and over, big ears turned back to pick up the grunts and gasps of human discomfort. Vin dismounted very carefully, then grabbed the black's bridle and drew his big head down so they were looking eye to eye.
"You are the most vindictive cuss it's ever been my misfortune to ride - you don't watch it, I'll turn you out right here n' settle on one of them mules, roast you for supper."
Peso snorted and tossed his head up and down as if challenging Vin to do just that, and Vin stepped away with a shake of his head and a shove at Peso's before he let him go.
The campsite was more a roundabout series of little clearings too small for more than a single tent or a cook-fire, so they were scattered among them, the mules and horses picketed wherever there was space enough. This arrangement suited the Monroe brothers just fine, and they went about stringing up lines for their makeshift tent a goodly distance from everyone else in a little ravine. Ezra prodded through a jumble of trees and forest litter piled across the narrowing descent looking for reasonably dry wood.
Buck, who was watching them, hands planted indecisively on his narrow hips and his head cocked curiously, called out almost absently,
"Snakes, Ezra, don't be stickin' yer pretty hands in there." Laughing when the gambler snatched his hand back so hard he nearly put himself on his ass. Buck turned back to the brothers, a smile coming and going across his handsome face, and Josiah came up behind him and stood there, seeing at once what Buck was considering. The preacher shook his head with a toothy smile and clapped a brute hand over Buck's wide-boned shoulder, shaking him with that grip reprovingly.
"Wet is one thing, Bucklin," he said, "But dead is another ..."
Buck grimaced in unwilling agreement. "Aw hell, I know it, but man alive, it would've been right funny t'see 'em get washed down-mountain ..." Shaking his head with a cackle of laughter and reaching back to slap Josiah on the chest;
"Hell. You tell 'em, Josiah, a man shouldn't be forced t'ruin his own fun."
At one point when Josiah was explaining the significance of the flood-jam they were situating their camp below to James Monroe, who looked up at him with dawning dismay, Chris stalked through their operation and relieved them of all but two groundcloths. His scowl dared any of them to object; the cloths were needed to floor the women's tent, and the others would be doubled up as surfaces around the cookfire for the rest of the men to sleep on after dinner to keep the ground moisture from seeping through. He spread one in front of the cookfire now for Mary to prepare dinner on, and found a few suitable stumps to use as cutting surfaces and stools. Mary moved around him setting up her cooking things and he admired her unexpectedly comfortable efficiency. She was always surprising him, so civilized and yet as much at ease here as in her own kitchen. Lord, she was a beautiful woman, and in these rough places that beauty shone like fine art misplaced; the contrast tugged hard at him.
Mary felt his eyes, as she always did, so she wasn't surprised to find him looking at her with that ferocious mix of want and angry refusal she seemed to evoke in him. Tall and narrow and sinewy, hard as granite and unpredictable as a Texas wildfire, nothing about him of peace or safety or stability, all things very important to her. And still he attracted her like a bee to honey, and always she refused the inappropriate call that was purely flesh to flesh. Mary was far less prudish than she had once been, she'd learned on the frontier how little societal strictures applied in a place where death could come at any moment. For most, the ephemeral joys of life must be taken wherever they were found, and sometimes she wished she could do just that.
She'd dreamt more than once of Chris Larabee's burning eyes and calloused touch, she'd felt his embrace, whether merely protective or not, close and strong as a woman could want. His body was all long bones and lean muscle under pale thin skin, his heart a bruised and bitter organ that still hoped, helplessly and to his fury, when he looked at her. Both knew how impossible it was, but both were strongly tempted to satiate the hunger that lived between them, that colored every word and look and action with private meaning. He would be a fierce lover. He would likely be tender as well, even against his own nature. She suddenly realized they'd been staring at each other for several minutes and broke her eyes away, feeling the heat of a blush quick to her face. She went back to her work, and he to his, the moment only another on a long string of lost moments.
As soon as Buck and Nathan had finished raising the women's tent, Elizabeth went looking for Vin, finding him going through his saddlebags for a clean shirt. The buckskin pants had dried by then and could be brushed off, as could the muddy and sodden leather duster if he spread it by the fire, but his shirt and long-johns were soaked and he wanted some dry socks as well.
"You come with me, Mr. Tanner - Mr. Jackson? Would you join us? The least I can do after having you save my life is provide you some amenities and privacy, and I'd feel much better if your Mr. Jackson had a look at you to be sure your ... injuries are not severe." She said that last with a little twist to her mouth and a fetching blush, the two of them shared a smile.
Nathan, who had come at her call and realized what she wanted, said, "Ma'am ..." Shaking his head with a doubtful glance at Vin, expecting the tracker to do what he always did and dig in his heels, proclaim himself 'fine' and growl like a body could believe he'd bite if anyone insisted otherwise. But, to Nathan's astonishment, Vin only bobbed his head with a strange smile and let her take his elbow like he was an old invalid to walk him toward the tent. He followed in their wake, answering the variously amazed faces of their friends with a bewildered shrug.
The canvas roof was just enough to let them stand, though Nathan, with his greater height, had to keep to the center. Valises and supplies were stacked on the sides leaving just enough room in the center for the three women to sleep. Vin approved the extra defenses those supplies made and saw a pack set to drag across the doorway when they settled down. He caught Mary's eye as she entered with hot water in one of the big coffee pots, knowing it was her work and realizing by what she had packed and how she'd behaved that she was mighty comfortable on the frontier. Not a panicky woman, that one, and he admired that, as he admired the stubborn courage with which she lived her life. Her being as lovely a natural woman as he'd seen only once before in his life didn't hurt, either.
"Let's see ..." Elizabeth looked around for somewhere he could sit, but everything was too low.
Nathan, however, figured sitting down was the last thing Vin wanted to do. He simply stood him in the middle of the tent and took his hat, untied his faded brown bandana and slid it off, then took down his leather duster, seeming matter-of-fact about it but stepping easy as a mouse grooming an unpredictable feline. He marveled suspiciously at how easily Vin was giving his clothes up. The tracker unbuttoned his vest himself and let Nathan take that, too, while Mary poured hot water into a basin set on a folding tripod. Elizabeth hovered nearby, her hands fiddling for something to do, and Nathan said,
"Ma'am, I'd appreciate your help here. If you wouldn't mind, you could set my bag up over on them valises and find me a towel or so - you look like you could use a few yourself." With a sudden warm smile that made her remember what she must look like. Dried mud cracked off the side of her face and she saw the flash of Vin's smile in the corner of her eye. Relaxing, she laughed and raised her hands.
"I think I might need to wash up just a jot first."
She went to do that, shedding her own hat and muddy coat as she went. Mary handed her a block of soap and a few of her brother's fine towels and said,
"I'm going to see to dinner." Both men brightened, recognizing the determined look of a woman intending to feed men well.
"Mary ..." Vin's call stopped her and she turned back to him; "Don't let nobody go off huntin', tell 'em for me, alright?" Her eyes brightened speculatively, sensing a danger he was underplaying, but she only nodded and went out.
"I'm done here, Mr. Jackson," Elizabeth said, drying her hands. She'd tossed the muddy water and refilled the basin again from the pot, "Why don't you come wash up and I'll ... "
I'll what - finish undressing Vin Tanner? Her tongue froze as she realized what she'd said, but by then Nathan had nodded and come toward the basin. He took one of the towels from her hand and dropped it in the steaming water, wringing it out and handing it back to her with a glancing smile. Over his shoulder as he curled his big long hands into the bowl, he said to Vin,
"Try t'make it so's I can see what's bruised n' what's mud."
She approached the tracker with the most ridiculously shy reticence, but he just reached out and took the wet towel, running it hard over his face with a happy sound at the warmth of it. Without even a hint of the shyness he'd shown the last time they were in such proximity, he took off his shirt and peeled down the faded red top of his long-johns, glancing up quickly at her gasp of dismay. The bruises still looked livid, but when he looked down at himself, they seemed to be fading to him.
"It's alright, Ma'am, don't hurt near as much as it looks to." He reassured her, feeling strangely distant in himself but needing that to keep her near, wanting her either wholly at ease with him or ... distracted by him so she'd answer the questions he had yet to figure out how to ask. By her expression, she was plenty distracted, at least, and lousy as that felt, he'd use whatever he could. He had to have something to take to the Lakota council fire, he needed to know what more might be coming than what he'd already guessed thus far.
Nathan's touch across the top of his back startled him, but the healer only settled one big hand against the nape of his neck and examined the new abrasions across the tracker's shoulders. A glance down showed him commensurate bloodstains across the inside of Vin's long johns where he'd hit the ground. Nathan shook his head;
"I swear, Tanner, you got more bruises on you than a bag of last year's apples."
Vin grinned at Elizabeth, who was still standing in front of him, as if the two of them were children caught out in some mischief, and she flushed and smiled back, taking the towel out of his hand and boldly running it over his chest and down the narrowing musculature of his stomach. He had a fine pattern of sandy hair across the top of his chest that ran down the middle of his body, she could hear the soft rasp of it. The cloth came away muddy, leaving his skin clean, and he let her wipe across his shoulders, one of her hands resting on bare skin and, of necessity of course, so close the heat from their bodies intermingled.
Nathan gave them a curious look at he went to his bag for carbolic and liniment, noticing as he did that the rib bruise had a new redness to it. Not just the shoulders, then. The tracker would break those ribs clean through if he wasn't more careful, but he was more interested in the fleeting glances going back and forth between Vin and Miss Monroe. Smiles, warmth. Like they had a secret ... He shook his head, knowing instinctively that no earthly good could come of what they seemed to be considering. But Vin was smart enough to know that, and it wasn't Nathan's place to interfere if he'd decided to pursue her anyway. A man could make mistakes with his eyes wide open knowing it.
Vin let himself look at blood-red hair in the lamplight, golden flickers sliding along the glossy surfaces like melted gold with every turn of her head.
"Ma'am, you want to rub some of this into his shoulders? I'm gonna take this coat n' spread it out by the cookfire so's it'll dry." Nathan handed her the liniment bottle without seeming to notice her disconcerted hesitation and took Vin's coat out of the tent, leaving the flap pegged up and open so no one would have any cause to gossip. At least not any more than they already had. Buck and Josiah looked over from sawing thick lengths of wood for the night fire as the healer emerged, faces sharp with curiosity, but he only shook his head and went on his way. Unnoticed, Chris slipped through the deepening shadows behind the tent, just one more long bit of darkness.
Her touch was kind and firm, and he'd already decided he had to relax with it, so he did just that with a soft sigh as her fingers tenderly soothed the abraded skin across the top of his shoulderblades.
She was a very small woman, and though he wasn't all that tall, it was still a reach that made her arms ache after a moment. But she felt him ease under her hands and smiled to herself, proud as if she'd just coaxed a panther to purr. He shifted, and she watched the bunch and stretch of muscles in his back as he did, a symmetry of angles woven together with long reaches of sinew, the bones light, but long and surprisingly powerful looking.
Suddenly she was very aware that they were alone together, him half-undressed and her touching him with an intimacy she'd never offered even to her husband, with whom physicality had always been awkward and uncomfortable and ... unsatisfying.
Vin could hardly believe how fine it felt to be touched like this, a woman's hands - something he hadn't experienced since Duley except for Nettie a time or two nursing various scrapes and wounds. When Duley had gone, he'd come to consider his body hers in the world, her heart beating in his chest, and he'd never ... he shivered, and Elizabeth smoothed her palm soothingly down the furrow of his spine in a way that made his eyes fall closed in a upwelling of memory he had to struggle to contain. Not now, she couldn't come to him now, drawn perhaps by his body's response to her sister's touch and the ghost of familiarity in it. He flushed, grateful she couldn't see his face and the guilt that had to be plain as day there. He would not hurt her, he promised Duley, go away now, I won't hurt her, but I can't do this with you right here ...
As if under Duley's direction, Elizabeth reluctantly took her hands away from him, having tended all that required it and having no more excuse. She wiped her hands on a towel, brow furrowed in furiously bewildered thought, and jumped when Nathan ducked back into the tent, Vin's saddlebags in his hand.
Though the lady was behind Vin, both of them had a discomfited look of guilt followed quickly by defiance, like they'd been caught at something neither had actually done more than think about.
"Brought you a change, you're gonna want out of them long-johns."
Vin nodded gratefully.
"I'll ... I'll just step outside and see if Mary needs any help while you change, Mister Tanner." Hearing the brittle falsity of her own voice, feeling the climb of embarrassed color to her cheeks, and utterly unable to do a thing about either until Vin looked at her over his shoulder with grave warmth.
"Thank you, Ma'am, feels a lot better now, I appreciate it."
"Of course, of course - heaven's, it's the least I could do ..."
Nathan left the tent a few minutes later, and she was just about to go join Mary, indeed, at the cookfire, when Vin's soft voice called her back.
"Elizabeth? Can you give me a hand here?"
How had he known she was still there? It didn't matter, she took a quick look around to be sure her brothers weren't nearby and then went in, finding him half twisted around trying to hook the back of his suspenders onto the knots of leather at the waist of the back of his pants. He lifted them with a sheepish smile as she entered,
"Shoulda put 'em on before I put the pants on ..."
She dismissed him with an answering smile and came forward, taking the suspenders and fastening them for him ... such little hips he had ... she passed the leather suspenders m over his shoulders then, smoothing them up his back and over to the top of his chest, and though she was certain he was not a man accustomed to, or even welcoming, being touched, he did not seem to mind in the least. Her heart seized and skipped at those blue eyes turned to her over his shoulder, at what seemed to lay deep and longing in their secretive depths.
He wanted her at ease with him, he wanted her loyalty, brotherly or ... not.
"You know," He said to her, "We camped right near here once, there's a falls and a pool in the rocks. Too bad it's so cold, it's a fine place t'swim."
Coaxing her into conversation and having so little skill at it that her eagerness to do so was a relief. She came around in front of him, helping him with his vest and smoothing the suspenders down the front of his body in an unconsciously wifely gesture that made him smile down at the top of her head.
"She ever write you about it?"
Her laugh was nervous, her eyes brightly uncertain, as she shook her head, worrying a little that her brothers might notice her absence - and Vin's - but loathe to lose this friendly mood between them.
"I don't recall, she wrote to me about so many places."
"Can I ask you a personal question, Ma'am?"
"Only if you call me Elizabeth - after what we went through today, I think the days of 'Ma'am and Mister' are long gone."
He laughed softly, a gentle and friendly sound, wanting her comfortable and edging into territory that was far from it.
"D'you know where your brothers plan t'set up business?"
Her eyebrows flexed, she spread her hands as if the question was more than unexpected; "Why ... no, they never have said exactly." Which had never seemed odd until just this moment, and she could see Vin's eyes narrow a bit to have that answer.
"I'm sorry, but they didn't - " He made a move as if to brush the conversation off, but she reached a decision to trust him in that moment and said, "And it's unusual that they didn't. Vin - if I tell you something, something I have no proof of and am not sure of, will you promise me to do nothing? Not to let it influence your attitude toward my brothers? Because I really have no true idea ... " She turned away from his sharpening eyes, suddenly afraid to have brought this up, feeling like a traitor but unable to find a way to extricate herself now without whetting suspicions she was sure he already had.
Vin clearly saw her discomfort and had to refrain from asking her point-blank what she was hiding - she would tell him if he led her gently, she would trust him if he allowed her to without impatience, and somehow it would seem so much less a betrayal if she came to him on her own. He set one hip gingerly on top of a stack of valises, keeping his expression friendly and only curious, concerned for her, and she wrung her hands a moment, pacing uncertainly.
"Elizabeth, anything you tell me is 'tween you n' me, n' I won't betray your confidence in word or deed, you got my promise."
Reassured by the unquestioned virtue of his honor, she knew he would hold to his word to any extreme, it was the kind of man he was. She looked at him for a moment more, but the quiet posture and kindness of his eyes convinced her and she came to him, sitting down herself beside him. The luggage creaked, but it was good quality, it held.
"Vin, I have some serious reservations about what my brothers may be up to out here, they've always been a little secretive with me - probably because they know I won't approve their methods and such - but this time ... It has never seemed ... criminal, you know?"
He didn't, but he nodded. The law had long since ceased being black and white for him, with a price on his head and his life forfeit if he was caught for something he'd never done nor would ever do.
"It got anythin' t'do with George Custer?" He prodded, knowing by the flash of her eyes that it did and fighting back the anger that would not be of any help here.
"I'm not sure, it's so hard to believe Colonel Custer would be involved in anything nefarious." She didn't go on to say that she could believe that of her own brothers, in fact she knew it to be true in some instances at home, bribery, some smuggling. Harmless things she'd not fought against despite their immorality. She looked sidelong from under her eyelashes at Vin. Ready to move in any direction in an instant, that alertness that never quite totally rested. It was disturbing how like her long absent father Vin Tanner seemed, it brought up those conflicted feelings the thought of him always brought up, like an old knot she'd never been able to unravel and now seldom looked at anymore. A trustworthy man, someone to whom right and wrong was as clear as day from night, and she desperately needed such clarity now.
"Libby - the Colonel's wife - has helped establish orphanages for Indian children, schools, she heads charity drives for Christian missions - I despair to think what she will do if what Mister Sanchez says is true!"
As she would despair to discover her brothers were up to no good, but Vin couldn't have her remain that safely ignorant, these eastern illusions had to be torn away if he was to hope for any help from her.
When his eyes caught hers and held them, both knew what more he was condemning than George Custer.
"Them ain't orphanages, Miss Monroe. Indian children are bein' taken by force from their folks on the reservations n' brung up in the white way so that once the older folks pass, the nations will pass, too."
"Oh, but ..."
Vin went on as if she had not spoken, merciless in the people's defense and in his need for her to trust him even at the expense of her own family; "Not just the people, but their languages are bein' killed, their customs and ceremonies, everything. They been here since before we can even think, takin' care of this world n' it of them, n' now they're on the edge of destruction."
He despaired at the confusion on her face, at the eastern belief that the Indians were poor savages better off being absorbed into the white culture, that their destiny was to take that place in the civilized world. Her brow furrowed at the bleakness of his expression, like she was hopeless, though there was no blame for it.
"Surely you don't mean the missionary schools?" Elizabeth asked, worry knotting her pale face. "They're taking in orphans from the Indian wars, rescuing them from poverty on the reservations, giving them opportunities ..."
His eyes flashed blue fire and she knew he was prepared to be very blunt. Vin didn't know if it would do any good, but Duley'd had a fine brain in her head and he suspected her sister did as well, she could come to understand.
"Elizabeth," he said, and she heard a deep true anger held back in his voice, "There is no such thing as an orphan among the nations!" Said, perhaps, with more impatience than he'd meant to show, but how blind could folks be? This was an intelligent and well-read woman, how could an entire nation of progressive civilized people deceive themselves so thoroughly? Was it truly easier to pretend not to know than risk objecting against the tide of public opinion and government plans? She was no longer in the east, she was here, in the people's ancestral lands, beyond her education and experience, she had to learn! She had to understand how wrong that ignorance was!
Elizabeth felt ashamed at his dismay as he looked at her, his thoughts so clear in those expressive eyes, having experienced what she had only heard second-hand, having lived among Indians and knowing more than she'd ever had the opportunity to learn about them. He must be patient with her! He couldn't scorn her ignorance. Already she realized that Vin Tanner, rough-edged and woolly as he was, was also one of the most civilized men she'd ever met.
"Elizabeth, the people love their children just like we do - probably more since there's so few of them, most don't have more'n one, n' they die easy in the wild no matter how much the camps treasure 'em. Ain't no such thing as an orphan among the people, there's always a hearth to welcome them if their kin pass on." Even an orphan as old as he'd been when he'd first encountered the Lakota had been embraced as much as he could allow himself to be.
Elizabeth had never heard his tone so grave, filled to overflowing with a frustration that seemed almost near tears. She sighed deeply and dropped her head in thought.
She was surprised to see his hand enter her field of vision and lay over hers where it was cupped around her knee, it was almost more than she dared to look up at him, so close and so private. But he waited for her to, and when she did, his elegantly calloused fingers tightened.
"Elizabeth - if you know somethin' about what your brothers are about, if you have any idea what Custer is set on up in the Pa Sapa, you gotta tell me."
Her eyes searched his face, her own eloquent with guilt to doubt her own brothers as she did, but the tracker's gaze was steady and somber in the fluttering lamplight, and there was no mistaking how crucial it was to him that she was honest.
"Oh, Vin - I'm just not sure, I have suspicions, that's all! I have no proof, not even any clear idea what they're about, only that there are many things about this trip, about the businesses Gerald is planning, that are being withheld from me."
Now he searched her face, looking for denial or misdirection or falsity and finding none. He should've known it'd be that way, she was too forthright a woman, too deep-hearted, for them to risk her being aware of anything that might be immoral.
He had to ask, and as he set himself to do so, he prayed he could do it in a way that would not lead her to the inevitable conclusion - if she put two and two together as he suspected they fit, she'd be in it hip-deep against her own blood.
"Did your sister ever write to you about a place called Amber hollow?"
She thought about it, unsure, and again his fingers pressed.
"It's a little valley we used t'summer in, shaped like a U, there's a creek that runs along the far side n' a stand of quaking aspens ... "
He stopped, too suddenly near the imperceptible brink of that memory that it felt like his heart stopped in his chest. Lying with her on sun-warmed granite, the pale undersides of the leaves like flame flickering as they tossed in the breeze, naked as the day they were born and content to be so - oh, God - Duley, don't come now, don't come now ...
She was not looking at him and didn't see how white his face got, how frantic his eyes, she was thinking about the place he described knowing she'd heard it before. By the time she looked up, he'd managed to shove the storm of emotions down deep, though it surged again at the pleasure of her face.
"Yes, yes, she did write to me about that place." A place her sister gifted her with, protecting her even from so many miles, so many years, away. The little valley where the creek bottom sparkled with gold washed from a hidden vein as wide as a man's leg. The stricken look in his eyes was so unexpected - why should ... then it assembled itself into a terrible order. He'd looked just like that the afternoon they'd talked in the jail, and they'd been talking about Duley's letters then, too. Her hand turned under his and her fingers bit around his frantically.
"Oh ... " She breathed, horror rising in her dark eyes, "Surely you don't think ..." But he did, and with a sinking clenching in the deepest part of her stomach, she knew that letter could well have been sent during the time her brothers were intercepting her mail.
She couldn't bear to look at him, the grief and accusation, she clutched his hand so hard her fingers whitened, and then his did. He, on the other hand, could look nowhere else, desperate to know what she was thinking and, far more important, what she would do. She was breathing too quickly, her expression was distant, her eyes blindly staring at their joined hands but not seeing them, he knew. He was sorry, then, for forcing this terrible truth on her, sorry that she would be in the middle of something evidently neither of them knew enough about. He held her hand and tried to make it a promise that he would safeguard her no matter what.
He knew she wanted to weep and yet she did not, she was thinking, just like he'd done, she was casting back into the river of her own memories to bring up anything that might shed light on this ...
"Perfidy ..." she whispered, shaking her head slowly, "Duley would turn in her grave if she knew what they've done."
He didn't say what she wouldn't be able to understand - that Duley was already turning, was screaming and weeping and despondent with guilt that her kindness toward her sister had led to the ruination of an entire people. He didn't allow himself to feel that grief, he couldn't, not and hope to make it as right as he was able, it'd wash him away in it, it'd bury him past ever digging himself out.
Outside, Chris couldn't hear what they were saying, only the low murmur of their voices, and though the shadows cast by the lamp were so close they were one, even though their hands were obviously joined, the timbre of that murmur was anything but romantic. Dammit - he knew something important was going on in there, he could feel it prickling up his arms. There was a hollow sensation in his gut that he'd been carrying around for weeks now, equal parts anger and grief to be liked to by a friend he'd thought trusted him, and worry for the boys as well as Vin if the tracker was over his head into something and too damned proud to share the load or admit he needed help. A stubborn and prideful man certainly knew another. Larabee had them all as his charge, not just Vin, and he couldn't do his job without knowing what might be coming up their backs that was way more than a flirtation with this city-bred and raised woman.
Chris scanned the sky - it was full dark. He scanned the camp - no one near. Then he slipped into the trees, into the darkness and around in a wide arc until the long misshapen triangle of the tent-flap was before him and he could see inside. Vin and Elizabeth were close as lovers in the dim amber lamplight, but as he moved nearer in the darkness, he could see her face, appalled and frightened. Then he could hear her voice as she looked into Vin's face, her mouth set and her eyes bright with unshed tears - she looked furious, she looked inspired, and she gripped Tanner's hand between both of her own and said with gentle ferocity,
"All this ... for Duley." Which was a truth Vin couldn't hope to hide so near to her, that sad urgency he felt that she saw and understood, a fear she did not. "It's Duley moving you, isn't it." Not a question, nor did she need it to be. Impulsively her free hand laid on his face, touch and eyes so painfully loving, so pitying ... so knowing what he was feeling that he couldn't breathe quite right and got lost all at once.
"Vin, if she needs this of you, there is nothing I can do but honor that for her by helping you."
Oh, and she meant it, he knew that look, the set of that chin, her eyes fading to golden in the lamplight and his heart leaping in his chest. Almost stealthily his hand rose over hers, held her soft palm against his whisker-roughened cheek as if the touch would tell him as much as her words, as her eyes.
"Agin yer own blood, Elizabeth?" He said, so softly, but nothing held back between them, hearts laid bare by Duley in them both, and Elizabeth gave him the answer he needed in that touch and in those deep dark eyes. Though her mouth trembled on the verge of spilling the gathered tears, her nod was sure and certain. They were in this together, and both were aware of the dangerous comfort of their alliance.
"Duley would want me to help you, Vin, and I swear I shall, I'll find a way, I will."
Then she leaned into Vin and he took her into his arms and he held her, maybe harder than he should have, maybe telling too much of how fine it felt.
In the darkness outside Chris Larabee's eyes got narrow as slits.
To be continued...
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