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:
Mary had out-done herself, the air was redolent with fresh frying chicken and potatos and winter squash, rounds of sour-dough bread and even a small crock of butter, enough for one meal. Elizabeth put her nervous energies into a tangy cobbler using a few jars of summer peaches and cloves; like the butter, they were not meant to travel more than a day.
When Mary looked up from her work, she was startled to find all the men, even Stephen and Travis, waiting expectantly around the cook-fire, and by their faces all but drooling.
She glanced over to Elizabeth with a wry but very real smile, whisking flour into the drippings for gravy, and said softly, "Like being surrounded by a pack of wolves, isn't it?" Her bright blue eyes sparkled and Elizabeth took in the fiercely happy focus of those hungry male faces with a self-conscious laugh.
"At least they're smiling." Elizabeth said nervously, glad they hadn't noticed in her face the thoughts that had drawn her so far within herself. She made that cobbler for Vin, the cadence of his heart under her cheek unforgotten, the sensation of his hands on her back as he'd held her, his solidity. Warmed now in the somber regard of his wide eyes. She was very nearly dizzy trying to think logically about matters that were dangerous on so many fronts.
She had always known her brothers were corrupt, though they were too clever and too well-insulated to be caught at it, but here was a sinister design far beyond what she thought them capable of. Could they, truly, have moved even the government itself to the theft of lands apparently ceded in perpetuity to the Indians? It frightened her to imagine them so deep in the halls of power, she'd thought their crimes petty and unimaginative, she'd thought she could trust James, at the very least! Perhaps George Custer was more of an influence than she had imagined. Perhaps Gerald and Stephen had tricked James, they so loved to keep him off guard, as if his decent heart was a threat no matter how loyal he'd always been to them, even at the price of his own conscience and honor.
She could help Vin, and she must, for as surely as Duley had drawn him here, so she had drawn her sister. It could not be an accident, none of this was coincidence.
"They do look friendly, don't they?" Mary laughed, oblivious to Elizabeth's distraction, and paused in her work, considering the waiting men with a speculative gleam in her eye. "You know," She said in a voice loud enough to carry and with a sardonic eyebrow cocked at Ezra, "I imagine we could get volunteers for dishes later just about now - it'd be an egregious waste of opportunity not to take advantage of them."
"Touche', Madam!" Ezra laughed and winked at her, but it was Buck who spoke up, saying, "Why, Ma'am, I'd be pleased to volunteer that very thing." By now, Buck was days beyond denying himself female company; Vin or no Vin, he needed the sounds and sights and smells of females like Ezra needed his brandy. Plus he figured it'd get him a big corner piece of that cobbler.
"I'll help," Vin said, turning the bloodied knuckles of his left hand toward them in explanation; his fingers ached, and he wanted that hot soapy water almost as much as he wanted the fine supper that had his stomach growling. And he wanted to stick close to Elizabeth, because she was upset under her smiles and busy motion and he wasn't sure what she'd do, she seemed fragile to him just now. He'd had to guard Duley that way, never could put anything past her if she saw a wrong needing addressing, and he figured Elizabeth was chasing down some mighty unpleasant memories that were assuming an entirely new fit.
"Me, too." Julianna's voice too close to him startled Vin; the girl was just over his shoulder sitting on a high point of the fallen tree he'd roosted on himself, and she grinned down at him with the firelight dancing in her eyes.
The sight of her hit him like a suckerpunch and Elizabeth saw the terrible recognition in his eyes, knowing immediately what it was. Vin saw Duley's gleeful face as it'd looked every time she'd managed to creep up close on him without him noticing, it had been a game between them. Elizabeth knew that game, too, and knew her niece looked exactly like Duley in that moment, her sister was so eerily vivid that the skin of her arms rose in goosebumps.
"Julianna!" Her voice sounded sharp in her own ears, accusatory. "Come down from there and help serve, I declare, you're acting more like a monkey every day!" More sharply than she meant, but she couldn't stand that look on his face. Unfortunately, the scowl that erased Julianna's grin upset him even more and he tore his haunted eyes away, his hands going into his pockets and his shoulders hunching as if against a sudden cold wind. Elizabeth's heart ached for him, and for Duley. How her sister would grieve - as Elizabeth grieved herself, suffering an irrational guilt that her brothers had read her letters and were using them in a genocidal grab for wealth and power that they were very close to achieving - Elizabeth did not fool herself, they would not be inconveniencing or endangering themselves out here otherwise. Good Lord ... her hands stopped, she looked up at nothing taking in a soft gasp - had Gerald been laying foundations toward this from his decision to enter military service?! That many years ago?
How could she have missed it? Connections were taking place in her mind with numbing rapidity, bit by bit building a plot so enormous she could barely imagine where it must reach. No wonder Vin had been so angry that night at the restaurant when she'd so glibly extolled Gerald's virtues on the frontier - Vin Tanner knew far better than she the infamy it might truly be, and when she looked at him now, his unguarded eyes confirmed her worst fears.
The rain had stopped, and the warmth of the fire gathered under the tarp they'd strung over the cooking area once the coal-bed was deep and glowing. Bordered by the fallen tree and the women's tent blocking the wind from down-mountain, it was a cozy supper, but the safety she felt was an illusion, Elizabeth knew it. And Vin knew it, too.
All through that meal, in the conversation and joking and clatter of tin plates and utensils, she felt the tracker keeping an eye on her, her pride pricked to know what he was worried about. If she tipped their hand, if her brothers, indeed, wielded as much power as she was beginning to suspect, there was no telling what a threat against whatever they planned might provoke. She smiled at him, she hoped reassuringly, as she gave him a plate of cobbler, and he smiled back, but his eyes were rough.
Vin was thinking of the possibility of soldiers under Gerald's command in these woods expecting to meet them somewhere, and how Elizabeth's suspicions being high made it even more dangerous to them all. Would she prove to have some of her sister's cunning courage? Vin was not a man who trusted easily, and it wasn't Elizabeth herself he trusted now, but Duley - she wouldn't have moved her sister into this if she hadn't known Elizabeth's true mettle.
While Vin and Buck, with J.D. tidying up around them, washed the evening's dishes, and the men dispersed to their watches and to tending the animals, Elizabeth looked for her best chance.
James was on his way back to the fire from the shrubbery that served as privy to join Stephen, Travis and Ezra, gathered playing cards and sipping brandy with the smoke of good cigars curling and wisping away above their heads by the light of a staunch fire. Unexpectedly, he was intercepted by his sister, who smiled at him warmly and said,
"Take a walk with me, James. I'm restless."
It'd been a long time since he'd heard those once-familiar words, and he was deeply surprised by how welcome the invitation was. They'd walked the farm from hill to hollow over the years, in daylight and in darkness, and she reached her hand back like she always had, with that same fond smile he hadn't seen for a very long time. Her smile faltered when he first took a look around to be sure no one was watching before he accepted her hand, but then, together, they strolled along the outer perimeter of the last faint glow of the campfires. Submitting himself to the will of his mother, then of his brothers, had consumed him, boy to man. She was praying it was still an instinct that could be overcome.
Julianna's laughter rose out of the smoky glow of the cookfire where the other six had remained over coffee, and as Elizabeth looked over, one of Buck's big graceful hands rose into the air with laconic eloquence as he no doubt spun a tale that had was entirely inappropriate for her. But it was nice to hear the girl laugh like that, this wasn't easy on Julianna even if she was enjoying it.
"She's spending too much time with those desperados, Elizabeth, Stephen is really becoming annoyed." James said, but Elizabeth only made a scoffing sound with her lips that surprised him, then made him laugh.
"Someone breathing his air annoys him, James, I can't put her on a leash, and I don't see any harm in her learning to be a little self-sufficient." Her look abruptly had more depth and meaning; "A woman must be able to take care of herself in this world, without a man saying yay or nay."
He dropped his eyes, hating this old argument and agreeing with her more than he ever dared let on. In his heart, he'd always been proud of her, even if the unceasing struggle she so cannily and stubbornly waged was a sad reality he was powerless to change. Stephen meant to have the farm, he meant to have , he meant to have whatever she had like it was his due - theirs, being men, owed by their father as the price of his desertion. If Elizabeth were a man ... hell, if she were a man, she'd be rich as Croesus or President, he had no doubt. She had honor like iron in her core and was clever enough to have sidestepped her brothers' every attempt to assume control of her holdings, always behind a rank of lawyers and answered with such grace that they couldn't even be openly angry with her about forestalling them time and again.
It was his secret pleasure to help her, sometimes in ways so simple as not revealing a method or a fact to his brothers that could serve them. But he hadn't been able to keep them from bringing her out here, and his niece as incentive, and he didn't really understand why Gerald thought it necessary. Nor did he understand why he felt a danger looming over her, some purpose Stephen and Gerald had for her that they, once again, hadn't seen fit to let him in on. He hadn't the courage or the strength to stand against them, he never had, they'd beaten him bloody as a boy and had no compunctions about striking him even now - or threatening to have their thugs do so - added to the threat of impoverishment and exile he had no doubt they could arrange.
Elizabeth looked at him with a disconcerting frankness, and spoke to him as if she knew he'd always been her champion despite being terrified of his brother's revenge should they discover it. She was strong and dependable and warm as nothing else in his life had ever been, the steady hand, the stalwart heart of the Monroe family no matter what airs Gerald and Stephen assumed. It was her quiet words that could sway when all his brother's bombast and rhetoric could not, it was Elizabeth who stood for Monroe honor over Monroe wealth, and in her presence no harsh word of her father would be uttered - even their mother had acquiesced to that request after Elizabeth, still a girl, had taken her to task publicly about it - 'If he was such an ass, mother', he remembered her declaring, 'what does it say about you that you married him and tried so hard to hold him?' He had laughed out loud that time and not minded the thrashing he took for it later.
"James," she said, her brown eyes warm on him, pleased by him as no one else had ever been, "You're a better man than you show, perhaps a better man than you even dare to be. But you will risk it one day, you'll have to. They'll force you into a position of having to choose, and I pray you will make the right choice - some decisions, once made, determine all that a man's life will thereafter be, and I want your life to be something you can be proud to look back on at the end of your days. The time will come to stand, James, and stand you must."
His dark eyes were round and wondering on her, like he was a boy again and she'd caught him out in something he'd thought no one knew, put her finger right on his most private fear like it was written on his forehead. Like every defense he'd ever built just wasn't there for her.
Even as a boy, he'd never been able to resent her for the insight she had into him, because her faith in him, even so often exasperated and disappointed, had always underlay every scolding she gave. Elizabeth had nearly raised him herself, mother being too busy trying to increase her fortune past the point where anyone dared scorn her for her husband's desertion. Although James was active in his brother's businesses as legal counsel, although he struggled constantly to be as hard and expedient as they required, he was still her little brother, and the small humble kernel of compassionate heart she had so painstakingly nurtured against the constant bitter influence of the rest of her family had taken root and endured.
"You aren't like Gerard and Stephen." She said, as she had said before when their mother's scorn drove him to hidey-holes where his tears could not be mocked. She always found him, and she always said that with a gentle light in her face that said it was something she was glad of. "You try to be, they want you to be. Mother did." Sad with the knowledge of how that fruitless struggle for his mother's approval drove him to form callouses over a heart derided for its tenderness and compassion. There was no place for kindness, for unselfish interest in the welfare of others, not and survive in the shark-pool of business and politics. All his life his elder brother's successes had been held before him as examples he had struggled manfully to emulate, always falling short.
"James, it never worked, did it." Elizabeth said, her head cocked and her eyes holding him with a deep purpose he could not fathom, but which raised alarms in him he had long ago learned to heed. "Mother never respected you, and neither do they; they respect me only because I force them to. You're afraid of something now, and it isn't this wilderness. I have Julianna to safeguard, and I will not allow harm to come to her because of some shady venture of Gerald's. Nor of George Custer's."
James went pale, his hands trembled and she saw that before he could hide them, chasing that involuntary sign of guilt with a determination he'd never had directed at him before.
"James, you will tell me what's going on. You will tell me, or I will turn around tomorrow and go right back down this trail."
"Stephen would never allow it!"
"There are seven men who will." She retorted, and that was when he realized how certain she was of the help of those seven men if she needed it. Those seven awesome men ... the road he would choose ... so much of his brother's fortunes invested here, too much for them to lose without utter ruin. Did he dare? The very idea of crossing his elder brothers made his knees turn to water, but there was his sister, and there were those seven men, and there might never be a time more appropriate ...
James knew he was staring at her, knew she could see the cowardly wheels turning in his mind, but he couldn't help it, he was not a man who leapt to anything without careful study. That trait was all that had kept him from being driven under or off by his brothers long ago, it was the crux of his value to them, and consequently to himself. He was a long-thinking man in a world of aggressive brinksmanship. If he admitted it to himself, he already suspected there was more to this venture than he was being told, more to their intentions out on this frontier than establishing a cartage business, though he had filed all appropriate permits and licenses to do so. There was something else. And George Custer had a hand in it somehow, Gerald and Stephen were too excited, too smug.
His brothers seldom let him in on everything, giving him just enough information to serve their purposes by his work, scorning his distressing tendency toward decency as much as their mother had. Now with George Custer in the mix ... arrogant schemer that he was ... yes, there was something going on that was more far-reaching than Gerald or Stephen would dare on their own.
Elizabeth wasn't sure what to make of the expression on his face until his uncertainty became plain. It was almost a relief.
"You don't know, do you." She said, hiding her dismay as best she could.
"Not all of it." He admitted with a tight flush, "I never know all of it, there are many things never committed to permanent records, Elizabeth."
"You don't find that strange?"
The twist of his mouth was wry and long past anger; "No, sister, I'm accustomed to being in the dark about some things with them. I arrange things without knowing why, and not asking is all that keeps them from trying to ruin me."
She snorted delicately; "Nonsense, you can think rings around them and I know it as well as you do. Nothing renders a man easier to manipulate than vanity, and our brothers have that in vast supply." Though his head was down, hiding, she could see his smile and knew he'd done so now and then, when it would be undetected, a private sort of vengeance.
In fact, James was watching the tracker in the firelit camp beyond as the man added an armful of cut logs to the fire, at first because he was the only thing moving, and then because his sister's eyes lingered there as well. The manr leaned against the fire-warmed log opposite, crossed his arms over his chest as he listened to the faint murmur of conversation among his friends.
If Elizabeth was suspicious, James thought, it was because that tracker was suspicious, he knew it with a sudden burst of insight only confirmed by her expression.
James might not have the bloodlessly predatory instincts requisite for politics, but insightful and careful prey could outlive the predators that hunted them, and he'd already seen a look or two between his sister and that tracker he was glad Stephen hadn't seen. What was the tracker's interest in this? Why did he care? Was there a ... romance budding here? That nearly dropped his jaw open, because his sister had politely rejected every suitor who'd come to her and made it infuriatingly plain that she intended to remain a widow, faithful to her husband's memory, despite the fact that she and Thomas had not had a marriage of enough passion to warrant such stalwart devotion.
No ... a friendship, perhaps, with the tracker ...
She had, to her brother's way of thinking, abysmally inappropriate taste in friends, being far more likely to choose her confidants from among the farm workers than the society matrons she conducted politely distant associations with. She was faultlessly charming and pleasant in the conduct of her charity work and in her attendance at the required social events, but though she was a sought-after guest, she invited very few.
That most of her true friends were of far humbler stations than she was apparently not a matter either side considered. He'd seen his proper and genteel sister laughing like a hostler at the ribald jokes of stablemen, he'd seen her lay a friendly arm over the shoulders of cooks and dairy-maids, and knew that any and all of them felt free to come to her with their troubles and be sure of a sympathetic, wise and helpful ear. His brothers despised her for it, but Stephen or Gerald had never been able to move any of them to speak or act against her, even at the risk of their lives. If the tracker was suspicious about something, and Elizabeth had befriended him ...
That Standish fellow, too, seemed to lead conversations toward the end of this journey, which should not have been of any interest to him since he was supposedly only an escort. James had assumed he was trying to wheedle into some sort of profit, which the gambler was surely sharp enough to realize was the only thing that would justify the travails the Monroes were exposing themselves to, but that was a natural inclination of opportunists. But the tracker being suspicious was another kettle of fish ... he found Elizabeth looking at him somberly, as if she could read his thoughts and was trusting him not to share them with his brothers. James knew about the land grants, of course, though he'd never been allowed to examine them. He'd assumed Gerald wanted Elizabeth and Julianna here as cover against any suspicion of criminality, to present the guise of a successful family enterprise simply expanding into a new and very favorable market. But if Gerald's plans went further than that - and obviously the involvement of George Custer was ominous in the tracker's consideration - and if they endangered his sister ... he couldn't allow it. He could not.
Now, as ever, Elizabeth was right. There came a time when a man had to stand for something, had to decide how he would live his life thereafter. Elizabeth would not let him fall into poverty, would not let them ruin him as they had so often threatened. Elizabeth would share all she had with him, and he was profoundly ashamed for not accepting that - for not being satisfied with it - before. What did he need more money for? How many houses could a man live in? How many suits could he wear, how many fine meals could he eat, how many good horses could he ride at one time? Where was he? Alone, unhappy, bitter and chipped and tarnished, all of hope for the future abraded off him by too many years and too many dashed hopes.
He loved Elizabeth abidingly, and more - he needed her faith in him to keep his own in himself alive. He always had. She was what remained of dignity and honor in him, she was what clung to his humanity and refused to let it die. How very odd that only here, removed from all that he'd convinced himself over the years mattered to him, did he realize what truly did matter. He was honest enough, too, to admit the bolster to his bravery those seven men were; instinctively he knew they would come to his defense as quickly as to Elizabeth's once his intentions were proven to be good. How strange that the good opinion of ruffians and mountain men had come, somehow, to mean more than that of his own brothers. How very strange.
"Elizabeth, I don't have the answers you're looking for." He had to admit that and he did so frankly and openly, afraid to disappoint her but bound to be honest.
She nodded shortly, her mouth setting into a thin determined line.
"But you will." Was all she said, a steely resolve in her eyes he vowed to take to his heart.
J.D. and Vin took the first watch, and J.D. stayed alert even when Vin settled back against a tree outside the firelight and fell so still the kid suspected the tracker had fallen asleep. It wouldn't surprise him, exhausted as Vin looked lately, but then a soft word from the tracker directed him around west where there'd been a quiet rustle. J.D. brought him a cup of coffee on the way back to his post, and Vin's eyes were so huge and dark they hardly seemed human in the faint glimmer of camplight. A burning deep in that silence like savagery banked, dark secrets his memory compared to the eyes of caged panthers and wolves when the circus had passed through. It had made him uneasy even as a boy and J.D. moved away then, chilled, to watch the night. He turned his coat collar up around his ears but kept his eyes off the fire, tucking one hand at a time - not both anymore - into his armpit for warmth.
Nothing had been settled despite things having settled down, and J.D. worried about what would happen when they'd delivered the Monroes to their destination. Chris and Vin were high-hackled around each othe and he knew nobody had yet figured out why, but he wasn't the only one nervous to have them at odds, normally congenial as fond brothers. There was a sense of some dark destiny on the tracker, Josiah had said that the other night, though he hadn't known why that should anger Chris, and Buck hadn't been able to answer him when he'd asked if Vin would come back to Four Corners with them. In fact, he'd gotten kind of quiet and troubled, a man sensitive to the hearts of others under all his careless appetites.
Vin had always been at their fringes, but he was nearly a ghost now, hardly said a thing to anyone. Even the glancing smiles that had once been full of warmth and humor were now just motions his face made when it was expected, J.D. knew the difference. And would Chris stay if Vin disappeared into the wild? Hell, would he stay if Vin stayed? The gunslinger wasn't talking much either, and his eyes had gone back to being flinty like they'd been when the seven first met up, like he didn't see anything worth sticking around for. Worse, he had a dark look for Vin Tanner that J.D. had never in a hundred years expected to see. That the rift was between Chris and Vin bothered J.D. more than anything else.
The two of them, and he didn't know how since they were opposite as the faces of a coin, had a balance between them that balanced everyone else, too. Chris confrontational and simmering with incipient violence, quick to deadliness, Vin slow to anger, willing to let things be but just as lethal when pushed to it. If Chris took off ... J.D. didn't like that any more than thinking of Vin lost to them in the frontier, but for different reasons. J.D. liked Chris Larabee alright, admired him enormously, but he still scared him sometimes, and without Vin to reason him out of his explosive tempers ... He blinked slowly, knowing it was more than that. Buck and Chris had a long, close history, ties of loyalty and grief and guilt that J.D. couldn't hope to overcome no matter how brotherly Buck was toward him. If Chris took off, Buck would go with him.
The thought of them breaking apart with hard feelings maybe keeping them that way ever after took the ground out from under him. Even if he'd gone off on his own and actually joined the Rangers, he'd've known those six men were out there for him if times got tough, if he got into trouble. But if they split up now with all this hostility, things going on he had no clue about - it didn't help that no one else did, either, sharp as they all were and intuitive to each other. Was he naïve to think bonds could be forged that were like family? Was he being stupid and needy to believe so certainly that such ties existed among the seven of them? How much he counted on that brotherly affection was brought home by how much it hurt to think it was transient. Maybe they didn't have the heart to tell him it wouldn't last, to explain that such ties were destined to break, were never meant to be permanent. But they cared about each other, he was sure of that, they risked life and limb for each other, rose to their defense against all odds without hesitating - wasn't that love? Brotherly, and real? Wasn't it? Did he know what that was anymore?
When his mother died, it'd felt like all that tied him to the world had disappeared, like he'd lost the only heart that truly cared whether he lived or died, and he'd been so awfully lonely until he'd come to Four Corners and found a place among these men. It had felt like a family, like someone cared what happened to him and what sort of a man he became. He'd always thought being orphaned was one thing he had in common with Vin, that the tracker maybe understood how terrible that emptiness was and feared what might come to fill it in the absence of better influences just like J.D. did.
But Vin had been orphaned far younger than J.D. had, maybe too young to ever understand anything but being alone. Maybe Vin had already learned something, even that young, that J.D. was only seeing now. God, that made J.D. sad, he so much did not want that cold and heartlessly conscienceless feeling to open up again - how could Vin turn to it like it was something he wanted? It was unsettling, to say the least, to realize how tenuous Vin's connection to other folks was, even to the six of them, to the town that loved him, too. How truly solitary a man he was. And it was even worse to realize that maybe all men were, in the end. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be and he'd been fooling himself, they'd been waiting for him to outgrow the childish need for security and affection and realize there was nowhere truly safe, and no one who would always be there. No one, even if you loved them all you could. Last night J.D. had watched Vin roll up in his buffalo robe; on his side, he rocked forward once and then back, tucking the robe around him neat as a mother's hands. Did Vin even remember a mother's hands? And was it time for him to let go of those tender sentiments as well?
The young sheriff looked west into the unknowable darkness and tried not to be scared.
Morning found Vin walking the dawning woods around the camp, first looking for sign of any observers in the night, then just standing and watching the day break from a slight rise that offered a fine vantage of the valleys below, the mountains ahead and beside them. The valley lay shrouded in mist like a slow white ocean, the shadows of the trees around him were so black they almost had substance. Bit by bit morning slipped onto the tips of the mountains, slid down their flanks like a blanket being slowly pulled off the bright day.
A few hours' travel upslope would bring them to the west side of a gorge he needed to find a way across, and he spent a few minutes thinking how to explain why he hadn't gone that way to begin with. Of course, it was where anyone waiting would be, the logical route given their destination. Maybe no one else would know that, but he couldn't count on any of the other six not knowing a hell of a lot more than he'd been privy to thus far, they were always surprising him with history and skills he hadn't seen of them before.
"Beautiful morning." He'd heard Josiah coming as if his dreading him had called him, his tread remarkably quiet for a man of his size. Vin nodded without looking around from the view as Josiah stopped at his shoulder, extending a tin cup, which Vin took with another nod. For awhile they just stood side by side, steam from their cups, from their quiet exhalations, rising straight up in the cold still air. A ripple of wind shivered through the highest treetops like the sigh of the waking world that both men heard.
Vin had dreamt a long dark dream last night that the ache shadowing his heart made him glad he did not remember. Everything in him was uneasy, skittish as from some bad thing smelled on the wind that he couldn't yet see.
Josiah kept him in the corner of his eye. The tracker stood with typical loose-jointed ease, his spine casually curved off one hip, but his mouth was tight, his eyes focused keenly on something that was not the rosy dawn tipping the forested mountainsides.
"Any advice on the road ahead today?" Josiah's question was reasonable and practical, but still Vin tensed guardedly.
"We'll come up on the west side of a gorge we'll have to find a way across. Rest of the trail is pretty easy. Bit of a climbs."
One of Josiah's eyebrows tweaked thoughtfully and he studied the route they'd traversed yesterday. Finally he asked what Vin had already figured he would.
"Why didn't we come up on the far side of that gorge to begin with rather than having to find a way across it now?"
"Not with a train this big, women. Terrain was chancy that way."
Josiah nodded, his big jaw set placidly. "I guess you'd know." Was all he said, but he still managed to convey recognition of how many things "chancy terrain" might encompass beyond geography.
"There's a few crossovers, coupla miners laid a bridge of sorts up a ways, mine played out years ago so I don't know what kind of repair its in now, I'll be scoutin' it out, couple other likely fords, too."
"Take J.D. with you." Josiah said, and when Vin looked over to him, puzzled by the suggestion, Josiah's pale blue eyes were wide, plainly sensing the danger just like Vin sensed it himself. Vin surprised them both by accepting without argument.
Jules moved quiet as a mouse back from the pair, her eyes bright with the bold plan taking shape in her head - if she could find a bridge first, the tracker would ha no excuse to spook away from her all the time like the very sight of her gave him the willies. Obviously he'd never been around kids, though she hardly thought of herself that way, and maybe he just didn't know some could be clever and useful. She figured she was just the kid to teach him that. It wouldn't be that hard to get ahead of them once the tracker set the direction, she had her compass and he'd kept true to the same course every day so far.
"J.D., you'd be a starvin' man out here."
J.D.'s dark eyebrows flexed inward - he thought he'd been being pretty quiet, but Vin only snorted softly; "Breakin' trail like a damned buffalo, look b'hind you, kid." J.D. twisted around, not seeing what Vin meant right away, but then the broken branches made themselves known. Never would've seen that a month ago, and that took some of the sting out of the criticism, but still ...
"Come on, Vin, you can't walk a horse through a thicket without leaving sign ..."
"But your sign's too high, J.D., shows a man's been there, n' you're makin' enough noise t'wake the dead." Leaning sinuously to one side and back to avoid a shoulder-high branch with a pointed look. J.D. about broke his back trying to do the same thing, glancing up at Vin in front of him to see if he'd noticed the broken tip and almost running up Peso's rump.
Vin was stopped dead on the nearly invisible trail, standing in the stirrups focused like a dog on point toward the trees to the right of them where the snaking curve of the gorge's rim could be seen. Suddenly the tracker swore, and J.D. blanched at the vehement terror in it as Vin legged Peso forward. J.D. followed close on his heels, and then he saw her, too. Lord have mercy ...
Suspended over a gorge walled in sharp-cut granite was Julianna Monroe, sitting her horse near the middle of the rickety span and not moving - the pony's right rear hoof had gone through the rotted wood and appeared to be trapped. It was a sensible animal, J.D. knew, but it was trying to balance itself on the other three legs as it tugged shakily on the trapped hoof - which might bring the whole thing down. What was she doing there? She'd been behind them a good thirty minutes with the rest of the train, how had she come to be ahead of them, and out there?
"Girl, you hold that horse still." Words rough and harsh so she flinched at the anger in the tracker's voice behind her and sank a fraction lower in the saddle, but the tears of abject terror streaming down her face became tears of relief. She didn't know how long she'd been there, she'd just been holding her breath praying someone would come who knew what to do, because she couldn't for the life of her see a way out of this other than straight down. It had looked solid, if a little worn, she'd been so elated to have found it and she'd planned to hail them from the other side of the gorge, triumphant. Well, that wasn't going to happen, and she been fiercely refusing to imagine what might.
Vin stood Peso at the edge of the rim, his heart in his throat and his hands shaking with the need to get her to safety, but he was what he was and had presence of mind enough to take the measure of the state of that bridge ... maybe forty, forty-five yards across, braced against the sides of the gorge with rough timber, but sawn planks made the deck of it across the span. J.D. was frantically uncoiling his rope, but that wouldn't do any good. Even if they lassoed her off the horse, which was unlikely in the updraft from the rushing river a good fifty feet below, she'd be crushed against the wall before they could get her up and Casey's pony would be a bloody broken thing getting washed downstream.
Without taking his eyes off her, Vin snapped; "J.D., get Chris n' do it quick." Even as he said it he didn't know why, there was nothing the gunslinger could do, but it was his first instinct, and a more telling one than he'd ever expected ...
Before J.D. had even spun his horse around, Vin took Peso out on that uncertain span like it was solid ground. He kept his eyes locked on her and let Peso judge the security of the bridge, half the side-rails missing and the whole thing not more than five feet wide and pocked with rot-holes. Peso's eyes rolled and he balked at the increasingly uncertain give of wood underfoot, but by then there was no way to turn around and he had no choice but to go forward. He snorted softly, ears flat and furious, but forced to go on, setting his big feet with exaggerated care.
Jules felt the flex of the bridge behind her and closed her eyes - he was coming to get her, it would be alright, it would be alright ... if the added weight didn't break the bridge the rest of the way, if her horse stayed still, if she kept from screaming in terror ...
"Girl, you be real still, now." Murmured so quiet and calm, like it was just a little spot of trouble he could get her right out of. She didn't see how, but she believed him. She closed her eyes, refusing to look down at the rocks and the gnashing water, didn't breathe, only held in a frozen hump in the saddle clinging to the horn and willing the horse not to move. Every sense was turned to Vin behind her, that big crude horse seemingly moving without a twitch of nerves despite the wood creaking and bouncing. Not even the rasping feather of splintering on the wet bottoms of the beams seemed to disturb the rhythm. The pony shuddered under her as if it, too, felt safety approaching, as foolish as that was - they'd just as likely all four go down to a watery grave. The tracker was risking his life for her, and though she knew it was really for her Aunt Duley's sake, it didn't change how grateful she was.
Vin reached out after her as Peso came nigh to her standing horse, keeping the big black moving even when his leg ground against the back of hers on the narrow span, saddle-leather catching and brushing between them. His left arm encircled her, pinned her arms to her sides and slid her up and off the pony to a seat across his thighs like she didn't weigh a thing. Jules didn't remember the reins still tight in her fists until the pony's head got jerked up as they moved on, but that impetus and Peso's authoritative demeanor proved to be all the pony needed to wrench his foot free and follow. With his knees Vin kept Peso moving at a quiet walk, and of necessity the horse had to obey, ears high but apparently unperturbed by the dropping rock of the wood under his hooves. Trusting his rider, as Jules trusted him to get her to safety, as Duley undoubtedly trusted him to make everything right and damned if he was half as sure as any of them were that he could do that.
The tracker's arm was like an iron band pinning her own arms to her sides, the horn of the saddle dug hard into her hip, but she kept her eyes fixed on his face, and he kept his straight ahead.
The edge of the bank crumbled unnoticed under the toes of Chris' boots as they watched the scene play out, helpless, utterly helpless, not breathing, just watching Vin's back and Peso's casually shifting haunches on the moss-darkened death-trap of that old bridge. He felt Buck at his shoulder, J.D., all of them like statues, as if their stillness would keep the bridge from crumbling, as if the intensity of their attention was holding it up, because there wasn't a damned thing else they could do.
Vin Tanner's heart was hammering a quick tattoo against Jules' arm and the handsome angles of his face were tight and pale above her, but there was no give in his blue eyes, not the slightest bit of doubt, and she clung to that as much as to him.
Finally Peso stepped off the last plank, the pony after him with a little leap, and the black stopped at a hardly perceptible twitch of the tracker's fingers in front of her. She felt a long shuddering breath go into him and out again, a tremble that told her more than words how near death they'd been.
Vin knew he was holding her harder than he meant to, though she never complained and he couldn't quite find the wherewithal to let go yet. He was shaken to his bones and it all came at him at once now that safety had been achieved. He could not lose Duley's niece, not here in the country she loved so much, and not now with such a tragic wrong to right. If he failed to keep this girl safe, this girl ... it would push him over the last edge he had. Realizing that shook him even more deeply than the danger just past.
It didn't matter that he'd kept his distance, refused to know her, tried to spurn her - she was Duley's niece, and she possessed in her more of that beloved spirit than Vin had believed could still exist in the world.
It was a long moment before he realized the girl was crying, grubby fingers twisted in a death-grip into his shirt and shaking like a rabbit in a predator's teeth, warm wetness soaking through to the skin of his chest. He said something to her, he didn't know what, some comforting noise while he tried to breathe properly and thank God and erase the horrifying image in his brain of the girl falling, of Duley screaming as this child who had so much of her, this child to whom she seemingly had bequeathed her character and her bright brave soul ...
Abruptly he let the girl go, gruffly wiping her face with brusque sweeps of his thumbs and easing her down to the ground so he could dismount himself, knees bobbling but forcibly back in the moment. Jules went to her pony as soon as she'd found her own knees and Vin appreciated the instinct that could not be natural to an easterner. Back east, a horse went lame and a rider might just walk on to the next farm, the next town, and buy himself another. Out here ... a man was dead and all but buried without his mount. The girl bent over and took the hoof that had gone through the bridge up between her thighs to check it for injury, the pony looking back at her with huge liquid eyes. Casey would've been heartbroken if that damned horse had fallen. He looked across the gorge, then, when he was sure she was alright.
Elizabeth's hand was over her mouth and she was standing in her stirrups, her eyes so enormous he could see them even across the span separating them. Buck held the halter of her horse to keep her from the bridge, and Vin had no doubt that without that, she would've tried, she had a brave heart. The whole train was stacked up behind Chris and the others, the Monroes and the Judge and Mary, all lined up on the rim in frightened silence that only now began to break with relief.
As they faced one another across that divide, the section of bridge where Julianna's horse had stepped through broke further, sending bits of timber turning like leaves down into the gorge. No way they'd get back across there, and no way the rest could come on, either. He knew this area, and he knew he was trapped on his own with this girl who meant far too much to him whether he liked it or not. How would he hide that? How explain it to her, because she was as intuitive as Duley had ever been and already suspicious of his attitude toward her, he knew it. Vin set his hands to his hips and his breath escaped him with a deeply irritated hiss that Jules heard with some trepidation. He was angry, this hadn't turned out at all as she'd anticipated. She waved at her Aunt, knew she was crying over there and felt very badly about that.
"I'm sorry ..." She said to the tracker, "I'm really terribly sorry, I just thought I could find the way across and you'd be impressed and wouldn't find me quite so bothersome, maybe you'd let me come along with you now and then and teach me some things and all, I really didn't ..."
Blue eyes snapped at her, unwilling to hear her chatter just now and his expression so fierce that he almost frightened her, he could tell, by the way her mouth shut and her eyes widened. That didn't feel very good, but he had other things to think about just now and he couldn't think with her prattling on, people always had their reasons to justify causing other folks worry and harm. Jules hung her head and worried the reins between her fingers. She'd done just the opposite of what she'd intended and made him truly dislike her by her rashness.
The noise of the tumbling water below prevented any words across the gorge, so Vin held up his hand, two fingers rising followed by an arc, and a point that directed them to keep going the direction they had been. He was hoping one of them knew some sign, and was relieved when Josiah's big hand lifted and wagged understanding.
"Two nights before he can meet up with us again." Josiah commented, not being sure who else among them recognized the sign. "Says we should go on north and they'll be pacing us on the other side. Keep close to the rim so we can find a way across."
Chris said nothing, looking at Vin across that gulf and feeling the tracker looking back at him. Both of them knowing how much more than rock and water and air stood between them.
It was a difficult and very strange day. Sometimes Vin would fall so deep into troubled thought that he'd forget she was there until her noise startled him. He kept having to warn her to silence with terse words and stormy expressions, nerves high and raw - it was worse being with this girl than with the whole damned noisy irritating bunch.
He took them away from the gorge into the forest where he wouldn't have to worry about her chancing the edge, the slope was easier on this side and would've given him time to scout east in a wide arc before meeting up with them at the next ford. But instead of scouting out soldiers or far-flung war-parties, he was having to hide, and it irritated him mightily. He'd intended this very thing - but not in the company of a 12 year old eastern girl. His senses were too keen on her, she distracted him constantly and it just made him madder.
Consequently, by the time twilight was on the way, Jules was fairly well annoyed with him, the thrill of being on her own with the frontiersman abraded away by his bad-tempered disdain. He didn't like being stuck with her and he was making that pretty plain, and if she could've gone off on her own and found her way, she damned well would have. How could her Aunt Duley have loved someone so dour and distant as Vin Tanner? And what in hell attracted her Aunt Elizabeth to him? Sure, he was fine-looking, but what good was a man who never talked or hardly noticed you were there, or acted like you were a thorn in his side when he did?
Finally he dismounted by a pool formed by a beaver-dammed stream that would join the gorge a mile west, and after a long uncertain moment during which he scanned around them with complete attention, he proceeded to unburden his horse, saying to her as he worked, "Get down, girl. We'll camp here. You pick up firewood while I check around."
He seemed to get his horse unloaded and unsaddled in about a minute flat, and didn't make a lick of noise doing it, she sat fascinated by the quiet authority of his hands on the tack as it unraveled obediently and shifted into an orderly pile on the ground. He squatted down over his rifle-sheath and pulled out a flat leather packet stored behind it, then rummaged around in his saddle-bag for a small leather pouch. To her amazement, he quickly assembled a fishing rod, his head lifting every few seconds like a hound in new territory. He lay it against his saddle and rose to his feet, frowing to find her still horsed and staring at him, Vin didn't like being stared at. "Get down, girl. Might get some fish for supper when I get back. Don't go wanderin', child." With a pointed glare.
Contrite, she waited until he'd melted into the trees before she dared let her resentment go. Alright, she'd made a mistake, but for heaven's sake, everybody did and her intentions had been good, you didn't hold mistakes against people for the rest of their damned life like they'd never be able to do anything worthy ever again! Dutifully she unsaddled her pony and wiped him down before gathering wood, and when she returned he was standing on the bank curling a long lazy flick of line out into the purling water of the pond. She bet there wasn't anything a man could do out here that Vin Tanner hadn't mastered. She dropped her head with how much his disapproval hurt.
Vin caught two rainbow trout, tracking her as she meandered around the edges of the clearing, her face stormy and dark and worse - bored. A quiet whistle got her attention and he offered the pole, more from a desire to keep her out of trouble than to entertain her, but she seemed to take the gesture as something more. Her smile about blinded him, and she took it from him like it was a hard-earned prize.
She whipped the pole back and then forward with such energetic clumsiness that he had to duck to avoid the flying hook. Not five minutes later something big hit the hook and she squealed so loud he barely kept himself from clapping a hand over her mouth. Fortunately, she saw his alarm and swallowed the rest of it, too busy with the bowing rod in her hands anyway.
Then she leaned back into him to reel in the fish, using his body as a brace like he was a chair or something. He couldn't move or he'd off-balance her and maybe send her tumbling right into the pond, and he didn't think he wanted to deal with a wet little girl who was already set to let loose on him - he could read the warning signs the same as he once could in Duley, the pinched eyebrows and pursed mouth telling a temper hot as fire. He was as off-balanced himself as he could ever remember being made by another mortal soul, but it was a curious sort of confusion - he found he was as much intrigued by this spitfire of a troublesome child as he was bothered, and there was just too much of Duley in her for him not to like her no matter how stupid it might be to let liking start. Duley'd confused him like this, surprising him constantly so he'd always wanted to see what she'd do next.
"It's a big one, I can tell! Can you tell?" Excited, a snapping eagerness in her blue eyes that made him kind of giddy to see as she looked around at him. "You could help me, you know, a gentleman would help me ..." So put out as she wrestled and yanked with unladylike vigor that he obeyed her and laid his arm down over her shoulder, catching the hard bow of the fishing rod in the middle and lending his weight - it was a big fish, and her excitement was infectious. No squeals now, she learned fast, but fierce low laughter such as a hunter with prey in his reach understood.
"Keep his head up, he'll circle ... " He heard himself advising quietly; "Don't let him get head down or the line'll end up snagged on a root or a rock tryin' t'break it ..." Attentively, she followed his instructions and he helped just enough that she was still doing most of the work.
They were the first real words he'd spoken to her all afternoon, the first time he'd looked at her like she wasn't the biggest stupidest pain in the ass he'd ever met. She should've thought to say she was hungry sooner, she should've remembered his urge to protect and defend the helpless and played way more helpless than she was. She snorted, unable to imagine herself as helpless, being trapped on that bridge notwithstanding - that could've happened to anybody.
"Lift up slow and steady," he said, "Then take up the line on the downstroke so he never gets real slack, put your off hand under the reel, it's easier ..."
"Like this?"
"Just like that ..."
Duley's rod and reel in her niece's hand, he marveled at that, and he wondered if Duley was aware of it, if she was watching them and smiling. It had taken him all summer to make it, three slender pieces of yew he'd traded a French trapper for, each fitting tightly into brass-fitted sockets, and a cogged reel ordered all the way from the east, strong and willowy and very flexible. Just like Duley herself; God, that made him smile.
A very small and very beautiful smile, Jules thought with a bit of wonder as she glanced up at him. Like something warm shining out that he'd hidden deep and didn't let show very often. She said nothing, did nothing that might make that smile go away or change the warming mood of the tracker toward her. He annoyed her, but he couldn't annoy her if she didn't care what he thought of her, she knew it. She cared.
Vin touched the girl's dark head without knowing why, but utterly unable to stop himself, his fingers threading through the glossy hair to get it off her face for her. For second he couldn't breathe and had to close his eyes for how like Duley's it felt, hot from the sun but cool underneath, dark sable-red with flame running the shifting surfaces in gold and amber. An ache rose up that closed his throat and emptied him of anything else but missing her. She was the dream that had to last a lifetime and he couldn't help wanting, craving, these living reminders of her even if it hurt him to take them.
Jules glanced around at him again at the oddly familiar touch, almost a caress, grinning wider when he smiled hesitantly back, seemingly coming to some gradual ease with her. Her hand was over his on the reel and he didn't seem to mind it, letting her touch him and even touching her back. Under all his gruffly mysterious ways he was nice, and she liked him. More important, she wanted him to like her, too, even though it was like trying to tempt a feral cat near enough to pet. At least he hadn't bitten her yet, and she caught him looking at her now and again like he wasn't sure what she was, but interested just the same.
He stepped back from her as she brought the trout wriggling and flipping up onto the bank, grinning as she pounced on it like a cougar cub, gripping it behind the head without minding that her fingers went into the sharp gills.
"Wow! I mean, really, look at that! Can we eat him? Can we?"
"Be a right waste not to." He bent over and replaced her hand with his, killing the fish with a short sharp blow to the head from the hilt of his knife. She never flinched, understanding that things died to sustain the lives of others. He let her grab it around the tail to hold up for his admiration, which he dutifully gave - it was a very big trout, and with the two smaller ones he'd caught before, dinner was assured.
"Auntie wouldn't approve, you know, game and all that, diseases and stuff, she thinks everything that lives outside of Virginia has germs and diseases."
"You don't think so?" He tilted his head at her curiously and she rolled her eyes dramatically.
"Well come on," Came the sarcastic retort, "You're still alive, aren't you? And I bet you've eaten every creature that flies or swims or walks the earth!"
"Well there's some don't taste very good, cougars and worms and such. Bear is fine, though ..." With a wicked toothy glint so she knew he was teasing her. It was the first sign of real friendliness she'd had from him, and it was all she could do not to throw her arms around him for it. That would just spook him off again, so she settled for a grin.
His big knife flipped over in his hand and she gave him the fish when he gestured for it, hunkering down with him over a flat rock as he slit that fish and the two others open, long fingers sliding inside and gripping all sorts of interesting guts and just pulling them out into a little slimy pile neat as you please, just like cook with a chicken at home. His glance, she thought, was approving, and she liked that even though it bothered her he'd thought she'd puke or something just seeing fish-guts. She rolled her eyes behind his back with a flutter of her fingers - oooohhh, fish guts! To prove herself, she scooped them up and flung them into the pond, coming back to him without so much as rinsing her hands off.
"Alright, then, get t'scalin' it." Handing her his knife, huge thing in her small hands, but she only turned it over a couple of times, looking at the fine leather-work on the hilt and the shine of the blade under the bloody gunk, scored in neat concentric rings from the whetstone she'd seen him using last night. Neat as a pin - he was a tidy and orderly creature, she was discovering, which was very unexpected and sort of endearing. Boys were so seldom tidy, and this one was wild as the wind to boot.
"So, how do I do that?" No fussiness about her, willing to get right into it, and he showed her and left her industriously - and fairly skillfully after a minute or two - scaling the fish without ruining the skin, which he said was the best part. Scales flew in rasping arcs around her like rainbowed gemstones in the sunlight, landing willy-nilly in her hair, on her face, speckling her clothes. He found himself chuckling at her energetic messiness. Duley'd been messy, too, but she got the job done.
Once she'd taken the heads off the fish with a satisfyingly gruesome crunch of bones, Jules sat down beside the tracker as he tossed some pine cones into the fire he'd started, leaving them there for a few minutes and then pulling them out again, tossing them hand to hand and mock-frowning at her when she laughed at him. He noticed that she didn't ask many questions, but watched very carefully everything he did. He broke the pine-cones apart when they'd cooled enough for it and ferreted out the pale little pine-nuts, which he then laid inside the fish. Then he laid a thick layer of wet river-moss on top of the coals with a burst of steam and set the fish there, covering it with another layer of moss. He sat back with an anticipatory smile.
"Bout quarter of an hour n' that's gonna be the best thing you ever tasted."
By the sparkle in her eyes, she was certain it would be so, and she wasn't disappointed.
Side by side they hunkered down and picked pieces of moist white fish off the bones with their fingers, the nuts clinging to it and lending a fine crunch. It was as delicious as anything she'd had from any kitchen or dining room in all her twelve years, and she said so stoutly. She neither asked for a plate or a fork nor missed them, a sleeve working just fine to wipe her mouth with gleeful crudity. This girl relished the simplicity, didn't miss her comforts at all, and Vin thought that was an odd, but pretty likeable, trait in an eastern girl.
Together they gathered firewood to last the night and settled down as the sun set, watching in contented quiet as brilliant reds and purples striped the darkening sky above the treetops. When she fell perfectly quiet, he expected she'd become melancholy in missing her family, she instead sighed with great satisfaction and lay back on the leaf-littered ground, stacking her hands behind her head to watch as the stars appeared in the indigo sky. He was grateful that she did, indeed, seem to know how to be quiet, because he needed his ears as the land changed to night.
He made a pot of coffee and wasn't surprised when she drank a cup as well, black and hot. He laid her bedroll on one side of the fire and his buffalo robe on the other, quiet and slow in his movements and looks and words to her, but things moving very quickly inside him.
He had a cache hereabouts he intended to find tomorrow, one of many he and Duley had scattered about where they roamed, and he hoped she'd be quiet on the trail, too, because he was nervous about being on this side without knowing who might be looking for the Monroes. Maybe having expected them along that original trail and wondering why they hadn't come along yet.
Jules lay in her bedroll for a long time after dark fell, watching him, the quick circuit his eyes made into the dark, the way he positioned himself so he wasn't facing the fire and how he could lay new wood on it without disturbing the amazingly warm coal-bed or raising too much in the way of flame. He never did lay down all the way, just reclined, but he looked very comfortable nonetheless. He was also very careful, and she knew by now that he was nervous about more than just her company. So she was quiet herself and didn't distract him, she just studied him, as he'd been studying her the last few hours. This had worked out better than she could ever have planned, which made the death-defying time on that bridge more than worth it to her.
Just after midnight, Vin set his cup down, tired to his bones but far too uneasy to sleep. He was reclining on his saddle, his buffalo robe under and over him from the left to keep his mare's leg clear and attentive to the night. Then he noticed the girl's eyes were open and she was watching him. As if his notice gave her permission, she said in a soft plaintive tone, "I'm cold."
He didn't doubt it, there was frost on the ground and the sky was clear, no cloud cover to keep the temperatures at a more comfortable level. She had both her blanket and the ground-cloth clutched hard around her, and just as he thought to offer her the buffalo robe and take the thin blanket for himself, she got up with an impatient huff and came around the fire to him, motioning for him to share his buffalo robe with her so imperiously that he didn't think to stop her.
As if she belonged there, as if it were her spot and he was her personal human heater, she pried up the left side of the robe, stepped across him and tucked herself into the warm pocket against his left side so firmly that he grunted in surprise at her boldness as well as his own discomfort when his bruised ribs protested. She paid neither any mind, groaning happily in the warmth and working her head into a comfortable position on his stomach, since he was half sitting up. Her hands tucked up under her chin for warmth and her elbows pressed against his bruised hip, but he didn't stop her from taking liberties he never allowed anyone to take with him, and he didn't complain as she sighed with sleepy gusto and closed her eyes. Rather, he drew the robe in around her, enclosing her in its warmth, his left arm settling along her back within the robe since there was nowhere else to put it. She was asleep within minutes, leaving him both colder and warmer than he'd been a few minutes ago.
God, the feeling that welled up in him ... huge, wordless. Utter trust in her abandoned comfort, prickly as he knew himself to be and not kind to her in needing his distance all this time. Yet here she was, her bright head heavy on him and her arm flung across him like he was a pillow she'd had all her life. Tucked up tight like she was in her Papa's arms and safe as safe could be. Like his own little girl might've had she lived and even though it hurt to think that, he couldn't deny himself how fine it felt. All he could do was ponder her face with formless wonder, once fingering back the drape of her glossy hair from her face, the same as Duley's. There was a time, while he was looking at her so, when he knew Duley had come and was there just behind him, if he turned ... he didn't, because she wasn't there for him, but drawn to this girl just as he found himself drawn. Funny how it didn't hurt to know that this moment was one of those he should've shared with her, with his own child. Funny how he felt free to take the formless joy of being this close to something he'd never know any other way, feeling only that joy. There could be no regret in the fact of this girl's existence even if it wasn't his child and Duley wasn't there for him to kiss and smile at over the russet head. He could almost see Duley's face, that expression he'd only glimpsed now and then when she'd rested with her hands cradling her swelling belly. That mysterious smile.
"Duley-girl ..." He murmured, as he sometimes was able to talk out loud to her when she was gentle on him like this; "I won't let no harm come to her, on my life." Mercifully she believed him and retreated before the tightening knot in his chest became too bad, and he sighed to feel her go. The promise settled in him, and though his side ached under her, he never moved that whole night through, guarding her like the treasure he had only just realized she was.
There was a certain way of moving that escaped the eye, that camoflaged a clever body in regularity and normalcy so as to go unremarked. Vin Tanner was uncannily expert at such deceptions, could appear and disappear seemingly at will in both empty and crowded venues, but Ezra Standish was no slouch at it, either. Smooth and quiet as a placid tabby, the gambler strolled a circuit of the camp enjoying a cigar and a solitary constitutional, but his attention was on the tent he and Travis shared with the Monroe brothers. A grimace of distaste crossed his fine handsome features - tent, ha! A hovel was more like it, sagging and damp, and the hard cold ground was not somewhere Ezra Standish ever intended to sleep again when this foolhardy journey was finished!
He saw Judge Travis on the far side of the campfire where they had just finished supping - a disappointing affair, since Elizabeth Monroe was so distraught by her niece being separated from them that she'd burned the fry-bread and undercooked the beans. Buck and Josiah both had reassured her time and again that Julianna was quite safe with Vin Tanner, likely safer in these woods than they were, and though she agreed, she was still upset.
As Ezra walked, Travis looked his way, though the gambler knew he could barely be seen in the faintest rim of firelight. The Judge bent the very faintest of nods his way and, as previously discussed, did his part and engaged Stephen Monroe in conversation. Ezra didn't see James, but he'd been comforting his sister earlier and it was likely a safe bet that he still was.
Ezra marked it as peculiar that James would be so solicitous - and if he was feigning affection and concern for his sister, he was as fine a thespian as ever trod the boards - and yet apparently be planning her probable demise to assume control of the land grants. Peculiar, yes it was. As was Stephen's protectiveness of a certain valise that Ezra intended to have at this evening. He fingered the lockpicks in his vest pocket, believing he had what he needed to breach the case he'd spent a good part of the afternoon studying.
Both he and Judge Travis had also noticed that the brothers were not in lockstep about very much, which, considering their partnership in business and, if his and Travis' suspicions were borne out, in crime, was also very interesting. Here was the crack into which they could potentially drive a wedge, and both men recognized that advantage immediately. Where there was filial ill will, perhaps jealousy or a power struggle or old resentments, there was opportunity to divide and conquer.
Stephen had proven willing to confide in Ezra when properly lubricated by brandy, and the gambler utilized that propensity to whatever advantage he could, but James seemed to exert a sobering effect that was puzzling given his deferential behavior. Certainly James was submissive to the point, at times, of open cowardice, which intimated that Stephen had been as much of a bully as a boy as he was now. Yet James could quell Stephen with a word or a look, as if he had long ago been set by some higher authority the task of keeping Stephen in check - an authority even Stephen would not buck.
The Judge presumed that to be Gerald, and Ezra was inclined to agree, he was spoken of with reverential awe and no little fear despite their obvious pride in his accomplishments. It also suggested that James wielded more influence than he likely realized himself if that exalted person trusted him to ride herd on Stephen, the hand that signed the checks, so to speak. Consequently, Orrin had been keeping company with James on the trail, and had found him to be both engaging and extremely bright, conversant and insightful on the practice and philosophy of law as well as politics. Far too bright to be relegated to keeper of the gate, Ezra thought suspiciously.
In fact, Ezra believed that the Judge rather liked the young attorney, which could be a complication when it came to taking the Monroe brothers down - Ezra was blessed with an eternally cynical and suspicious mind, and he in no way believed James innocent in any of this. Even Travis had to agree that Stephen could not have formulated and carried out the legal requirements of those land grants without James. Ezra had argued the point forcefully that James had to be involved, whether he had a conscience about it or not, and the Judge had nothing that convinced him otherwise. They had determined to find out.
Now, as he moved closer to the tent, Ezra mused idly about intelligent and well-placed men and the mistaken assumption among those of a certain class that position somehow lent superior character. Even the Judge, Ezra believed, inevitably defaulted to such paths of thought, a man who, by the company he kept recently, at least, should know better. Ezra had encountered more well-educated and well-placed scoundrels, thieves and murderers than he cared to recall, the south was filled to bursting with disenfranchised sons of wealthy slave-owners and the seemingly endless herd of ne'er-do-well carpetbaggers from the north who had flooded the post-war south. It was contrary, he knew, to disdain the class he aspired to, but his sainted mother declared a healthy scorn for the marks was a prerequisite to profit.
Silent as a mouse, he slipped into the darker shadows and angled toward what served as the back of the tent. Just as his hand outstretched to lift the canvas and steal inside, however, a light was unexpectedly struck within so near the wall that Ezra snatched his hand away. A quick glance told him Stephen was still with the Judge ... then who ... the light was very small, a candle only ... Curious now, Ezra squatted down right next to the canvas and listened to the rustlings within, green eyes glinting in the darkness. Nothing he could make sense of, small noises, furtive rummagings, then -
"Oh ..." Soft as a breath and pregnant with horror, "Oh, my Lord ..." A whisper of terrible discovery. James? What could have caused such a reaction? For a moment Ezra was uncertain what to do, and consequently he did nothing until his course was clearer. James, surprised by something. James, surreptitiously going through the contents of his own tent, obviously not wishing to be observed. Wanting to keep something secret, then - even from his brother? Perhaps discovering something had been kept secret from him? Now there, thought Ezra with a feral grin, was an interesting possibility, and one that might rearrange the entire picture to great advantage.
Gambling on a hunch, Ezra rose to his feet silently and went around the tent; the overlap of canvas that served as a door was pulled closed and no light shone through. He was in full view of the camp and Travis' head rose to see him there. Fortunately he wasted no time wondering why Ezra was in plain sight rather than sneaking in the rear of the tent, but diverted Stephen in such a way as to put the unsuspecting man's back to the scene.
Ezra barely paused as he slid between the overlaps and startled James Monroe so much he thought the man would have a seizure and die before his very eyes. James fell back from a crouch over the very valise Ezra had intended to get into, his eyes huge and his face white, his terrified expression expecting death and nothing else. Keen green eyes narrowed - there was no one here except Stephen who would find James' current actions untoward, and James certainly knew that - which meant it was his own brother he feared to the point of expecting violence - even fratricide. This was, indeed, a wholly new and promising kettle of fish. The crack he and Travis had hoped to exploit in the foundation of the brother's relationship might well turn out to be a fissure.
James' heart raced in terror, but he managed to sputter, "What are you doing? Why ..." But it was a false affront for which even he immediately realized he had no cause. Standish shared the tent and had a perfect right ... and was obviously wondering why he was acting as though the grim reaper had come through the door. The dandy gambler was far too clever and intuitive to even hope to fool, even now his handsome face was fox-sharp, unsmiling, with a determination that made James' heart sink. What did it matter? If Ezra Standish found out everything Gerald planned, James presumed he would likely only use it to blackmail his way to a share of the profits. Why would he care to know that Gerald and Stephen had concealed ... this ... from their own brother? The other infamies paled before the specter of the danger to his sister, drawn into the wilderness away from her home - and her lawyers - God, he must be wrong! They would not actually harm her! They could not! They must have some plan to convince her to do their bidding, taking Julianna from her, something other than the terrible suspicion that had poisoned his heart like a snake-bite the instant he had seen the signature on the land grants.
He stood up awkwardly, his face a blunt confusion of terror and outraged uncertainty, and Ezra, never lacking initiative, stepped across the small space and put one well-manicured hand firmly on his arm. It was no use trying to hide the papers from him, James knew it, the gambler's quick eyes were already on them, had already glimpsed the signators. When he reached for them, James let him take them with a numb helplessness. He didn't know what to do, even breathing seemed confusing, the world gone mad - for gold, all for gold. Now he knew with grim certainty all that it represented to his brothers: The salvation of secretly ruined businesses for Stephen, knowledge of which was James' advantage over him, but for Gerald - for Gerald, it was the engine of his ambition. Their eldest had never made any secret of his intention to parlay his military career into the highest national office he could win, ever since childhood what Gerald wanted, Gerald got, grinding over the bones of anyone between him and his goal. Oh, he'd known his brothers were venal, knew they were selfish and deceitful and even vile at times, but he'd never suspected they were so without conscience or morals or human affection. It was appalling beyond his understanding. What could he do? More importantly, what would Standish do now that he'd seen? If he told Stephen ...
The gambler rocked slowly as he read the papers and James' could look nowhere else, as if mesmerized by the sinuous motion. A fine crease appeared between the dapper arched eyebrows and Ezra reached into the valise for other documents without seeking permission.
Ezra knew he was watching him and didn't offer any reassurance; indeed, when he looked up he found open fear, the man was a hair from bolting from the tent and obviously certain his life was in danger either right this moment or as soon as Ezra spoke to Stephen. Ezra reflected on his own talent; he'd done a fine job of convincing James of his low intentions. Truthfully, these papers were not much more than he already knew, but that James had not known was truly unexpected. Could he so have mistaken the younger Monroe's character?
"You didn't know about this, did you," he said.
James shook his head, pale as a ghost and suddenly confused; "Y ... y-you did?" he stammered in an incredulous whisper, and Ezra waved the papers dismissively, intent on other matters.
"To some extent. Your brother has a propensity for bragaddocio when intoxicated."
James never took his eyes off him, and his voice sounded petulant and small even to himself as he said, "They never tell me much of anything, just enough to do their dirty work, just enough to keep me in line ... just ..." Breath failed him in the scrutiny of the gambler's keen attention, his thoughts private but the process clear. Thinking he knew those thoughts, James stiffened and his head rose, and though the uncertainty of his chin might have compromised the brave stance, he said,
"I'm sure he'll reward you well for telling him what I was doing, but I can pay you just as much, more even, to say nothing. I won't do anything about it, I was just curious, you know ..." All the while feverishly thinking what to do to safeguard his sister and niece, playing for time with this sharp-eyed gambler until he could get to the other five men and enlist their help. They weren't like Standish, they would help, the tracker had feelings for Elizabeth and he wouldn't let anyone hurt her - if he could just get out of this tent, get to them ...
"Sir," Ezra drawled in scornful insult, "If reward was my raison d'ete, I would even now be in my feather bed in Four Corners rather than this barbaric exercise in treachery and deceit. I may be a gambler, but I am also a gentleman, and I do not gamble the lives of women and children. In any case, this is a losin' hand." He'd intended that as reassurance, but James only looked more bewildered than ever. Ezra considered telling him who Travis really was but discarded the notion at once - James might not be in the thick of the plot, but his brothers obviously judged him to be the weak link and would know how to exploit him and any information he had. Travis was the ace in the hole, the legal authority that might be their salvation if they found the military arrayed against them. No, that card he decided to keep close to his vest.
Ezra allowed the barest smile, cynical and yet sincere, as he carefully replaced the papers in the valise.
"I trust you will return these to their original order." He said, holding James' befuddled stare. The man had no idea what was happening, and Ezra had to find a way to enlist him to their cause without revealing Travis' part in it or, indeed, the fact that anyone else knew there was a plot afoot at all. This went higher and farther than the Monroes, and he found he shared the Judge's determination to expose as much of it as they could. For a moment Ezra almost despaired at that thought - James looked like a deer caught in torchlight, and if he gave them away before they'd gathered enough damning evidence - which the land grants alone were not ... He rose to his feet and approached James closely, examining his face.
"Mr. Monroe, your concern for your dear sister is clear, as is your dismay to discover your brothers may be involved in some nefarious designs that endanger her. I am not averse to profit where it suits, but ..." One elegant finger rose like a sentinel in the darkness and a note of fierce conviction entered Ezra's quiet voice, burned in his bright eyes, "Not in circumstances such as this. Your sister is significant to my friend Mr. Tanner, your niece has won the affection of several of my comrades, and the native inhabitants of these regions are important to both Mr. Tanner and Mr. Sanchez. Mr. Larabee - well, let's just say he can be rather significantly unpleasant."
His smile was cold as an iceberg. "I have no intention of crossing any of these rather formidable souls, and I advise you adopt the same attitude - make no mistake, these are dangerous men, Mr. Monroe, and possessed of archaic and inflexible codes of honor. They've been contracted by Ms. Monroe for safe-passage and don't particularly care for either you or your brother, eh? I'll have no part in intrigue such as this, and I suggest that you align yourself with me for your own sake as well as that of your sister and niece, against whatever your brothers are plotting in the Lakota territory that will certainly offend these men."
James' mouth opened slightly, then closed again, auburn brows twisted together above his darting eyes - gambler or not, Ezra Standish was one of the seven. And he was making it clear that his loyalties lay with them above any hope to enrichment he'd been nurturing with Stephen. Any other time, any other man, James would have had to doubt, given everything the gambler had shown thus far. But at this moment, having seen for himself the depth of character of those other six by now, James believed him. Standish couldn't be among them and be ignoble - though his skills at the con suddenly became glaringly apparent, as did the cunning of them all to have set the gambler among the Monroes. Still, it was all he could do not to embrace the gambler with the sudden surge of relief he felt - he really didn't care if he looked the fool as long as they got out of this alive.
"Then you'll protect Elizabeth - we must get her away from here at once, and Julianna as well, we have to return home, let Gerald and Stephen do whatever they like ... " The words tumbled in a breathless rush out of his mouth, but Standish was shaking his head, one palm rising to forestall him.
"No, Mister Monroe, that is not the way and I believe you know it yourself." Running, he meant, and James flushed darkly.
"Your sister is no safer in her own bed than she is here among these men. Your brothers' reach is undoubtedly every bit as long as the situation requires, and if the sums Stephen has hinted at are indeed the goal, running will not forestall them. Indeed, you make your sister, as well as yourself, a target by revealing your awareness of matters they obviously intended to keep from you."
James looked stricken, but he was listening intently and Ezra pressed, hoping the man understood what would be required of him; "They enjoy a rather daunting array of political support, and I am certain the same can be said of underworld connections. No. No, Mr. Monroe. Much as I understand your desire to protect your sister, the only way to do that with any certainty is to discover precisely what your brothers are about, and then stop them."
"Stop them?" James parroted in a rough whisper, as if Ezra had spoken nonsense, but Ezra nodded grimly.
"Stop them, Mr. Monroe."
"But ... it isn't just them, Mr. Standish, you must know that if you know anything about Stephen at all, he's a braggart, yes, but there are political offices, private investors, banks ..."
Ezra nodded sagely. "Indeed, I expect that to be true. But powers and plots such as this thrive only in secret. If the venture can be ... encouraged to fail by some action of ours behind the scenes, those supporters will evaporate rather than risk their involvement being made public - or their investments lost. Exposure is the one thing criminals of the highest caliber fear, Mr. Monroe, the light of day is ruinous because they operate in public arenas. But without a certainty of what they're up to, without yet having proof in hand, any premature accusations will be worse than fruitless and will only tip our hand. We need irrefutable proof if you want your sister to be able to live openly and not in fear for the rest of her life. Or you, yours."
For a very long while the two men regarded each other in the darkness of the tent, illuminated only by the single guttering candle. James was afraid both of what he suspected and of the futility of standing against his brothers, against the enormous powers arrayed behind them. He had tried so many times, and he had failed again and again and borne punishments both physical and financial for his efforts. He was afraid to hope this time it might be different. This was likely the most far-reaching intrigue he'd ever found himself in the middle of, there were forces moving with the full weight of legitimate government interests and the rush toward gold that fed them.
Ezra barely kept himself from rolling his eyes at the man's indecision. There was no choice to be made, and if James could not cover his distress, Stephen would grow suspicious and they might all end up in the bottom of some nameless ravine while soldiers and miners and scofflaws of every ilk ran over their unnoticed corpses. In that case, the brothers would succeed. Idly he wondered about an accident that might remove the threat of untoward revelations, and he didn't mind that James knew he was doing it.
"Think about it, Mr. Monroe, with great care." Ezra warned sternly, taking his elbow and guiding him out of the tent before their absence was noted. James was trying to do that, struggling to do that, but his fear seemed insurmountable, both for himself and for his sister and niece. Ezra stopped him just outside, nodding at the camp with grim wisdom.
James saw Buck and J.D. hobbling mules, Josiah covering the stacked supplies, Nathan laying wood for the night. Chris Larabee standing watch like a tall shadowed owl. Men who moved with authority and confidence anywhere they found themselves, rough and dangerous men who had undoubtedly walked on both sides of the law in their time. Men who cared about the Indians his brothers intended to dispossess, who could kill and destroy without compunction whatever threatened them - they would do the job they were hired to do and Ezra's nod agreed. Honor that would stand even against Stephen and Gerald Monroe. James realized then that he'd never met men more likely to do just that than these seven. For the first time in his life, James could almost hope - he had never before had allies such as these men might be.
Ezra watched him examining the camp, a wry smile on his face, knowing he was hooked and how it had been done. They were a daunting bunch, he knew that himself, and James Monroe didn't even know half of the impossible odds they'd prevailed against in the past. Well then, he guessed it was time to do a little reminiscing.
James felt Ezra's hand on his shoulder, and when he turned to look at him, the gambler was smiling broadly. "Let me tell you about some long odds, Mister Monroe ..."
When Jules woke the following day, she knew something had changed in him by the shy smile he turned down at her button-impressed cheek. She was watchful and careful not to upset this unexpected balance he seemed to have found, amazed at her own capacity for patience and quiet. They breakfasted on jerky and coffee and hoe-cakes she made from his stores with surprising competence, and with her breakfast she swallowed the thousands of questions and averted her curious looks until he got comfortable with whatever new and seemingly friendly feelings he seemed to have grown for her in the night. He didn't say much, but his eyes were gentle and probing, and he smiled sometimes in quick flashes of teeth. Again she watched him clean his teeth on a frayed twig, and again she tried it herself. And again, she got bits of stick stuck between her teeth, one very painfully. He used a piece of string to dislodge it and pretended to be wary of her biting his fingers.
For a moment, once the offending splinter was gone and he was still hunkered down eye to eye with her, they'd stared into each other's faces, both curious as the dickens about each other. Jules was astonished to feel his hand cup her cheek momentarily as he stood up and moved off again.
They moved quickly that morning, by her compass heading too far west, though she said nothing - if he didn't know his directions, no one did. He turned back often to make sure she was with him, and because her safety seemed to be worrisome to him, she stayed just off the big black's right haunch, keeping that position whenever possible and moving back into it as soon as she could when the terrain made her fall back single-file. He was on edge, and she was wise enough now to know it wasn't because of her, but the place. They saw no one and nothing, but if he was anxious, she believed he had cause and it made her very watchful herself. She copied his constant scanning in a pattern of glances that seemed too quick to really see anything until she realized he was seeing what changed from moment to moment, not what remained the same. That was a revelation that explained a great deal about a woodsman's skills - what was constant was no threat, but what changed held potential for danger. She concentrated on picking up only what was different in the scenery as they moved through it, astonished by how easy it was.
Vin had stored a cache here many years ago and he had half-a-hope it would still be there since there were no foodstuffs to rot or tempt feral appetites. It was his habit to leave caches in the territories he ranged in case he found himself in need, but it had been a very long time since he'd been here and it proved harder to find than he'd hoped. He had to sit a long few minutes studying an overgrown tumble of granite rocks bound together in the roots of a gnarled oak that formed one side of a steep declivity, and it looked steeper now than it had long ago. He looked for the stones he'd positioned as sign and finally found them with a little grimace of dismay. Pretty high, and a steep climb that would be both awkward and dangerous if he took a fall in the shape he was in. Duley had placed this one, nimble as a squirrel and she'd been showing off that day, knowing he'd been focused on her bottom as she ascended. The memory made him redden and drop his head. That had been their first winter, and it had been a game finding new ways to keep each other ... warm.
He glanced back at Jules, who was examining the rocks curiously wondering what he found so interesting about them, her eyes turning to him as he dismounted and said,
"Stay here, n' be quiet."
"Famous last words," she cracked softly, knowing he smiled even if she didn't see it. He went to the edge of the rockslide and started up it, and everything went along just fine until the smaller stones started to slide. He reached for a hand-hold just as the surface under his left foot gave way, and the sudden jerking stretch seemed to hurt him something fierce, because he stopped right where he was, hanging on with one hand and his legs set awkwardly. The harsh sound of his breathing seemed loud even to him.
"You're too heavy." Jules said matter-of-factly, catching the hot spear of his blue eye without reaction; "You're never going to make it up there without bringing half the slide down with you, I can see that from here. Whatcha doin' up there, anyway?"
She heard a gruff snort, and he shook his head without moving out of the awkward position; "Oh, just takin' a little stroll."
"Funny place for it. Men don't got the sense God gave an ant." She replied with deadpan scorn, playing along.
After a moment he craned his head around and looked down at her consideringly.
"Girl." He said, "You think you can scamper up to about there ..." She followed the tip of his chin nearly to the top of the ravine.
"Easier than you can, that's for sure, you're liable to bring the whole thing down on both our heads."
"That so?"
She shrugged, eloquently smug, and nodded. "I bet you I could be up that slope before you even got all the way down here."
He laughed, it seemed to surprise him almost as much as the downward slip of rocks that accompanied the sound. He let go of the root he'd caught and let the slide carry him as far as it would, then made his way down with a gingerly grace she admired without seeming to. She dismounted and went to meet him, and he looked up the incline and then down at her with a doubtful squint.
"I don't know about this ... it's pretty high, n' there's a big rock t'move outta the way. You bein' a girl n' all ..."
She shoved his hip so hard he had to take two steps sideways to keep from falling, hands going palm up against her mock outrage and laughing, as easy a sound as she'd ever heard. Her smile was a crooked and squinted thing that just about shut his heart down for being Duley's, even to the dimple in the corner of her mouth, and he could smile back at her because for some reason he didn't comprehend it no longer hurt to see his love in this child's face.
"Got me a cache in there," he said, tipping his head toward the unseen cache, "Some things I put up years back. Be sure you find you a stick n' poke around real good before you stick your hand in the hollow, alright? You move that flat rock with the big chip out of the side there, see it?"
She did, serious now with the prospect of a job before her he could not do for himself - he needed her, and her defiant eyes stated as much, glad of it. It touched him that she was so glad to be of help to him, that she wanted to please him and have his approval.
"Go on now, git." He waved her on and she took off up the loose jumble of stone with a light-footed agility that he laughed to see.
"Damn, child, you're as much squirrel as ..." He didn't finish the analogy, astonished to so naturally want to compare her to her Aunt, but an Aunt she had no idea he'd once loved more than life itself. Still did, and ever would. He wondered what her reaction would be to that knowledge, though he would never tell her himself.
She would've laughed, wanted to tell him she wasn't a child, but she was too intent on getting up to that cache without sliding backwards at all, too determined to make it look as easy as she could. A fingernail tore low on the quick and she'd already stubbed the toes of both feet, but she reached the rock without backsliding and turned a triumphant face down to him.
"You might want to move," she said, imperiously waving him off to one side, and he obeyed her with a gallant little bow that made her giggle in spite of herself. The rock, about the size of her head, came loose after a couple of shoves and bounced so energetically down the incline that she held her breath, afraid she had undermined herself and seeing that same fear in the tracker by the way he moved right under her. That he'd be squashed by the rocks that would surely go with her if she fell didn't diminish the point of his being concerned, and she thought that was very sweet.
She rattled a stick around in the little hollow the stone revealed, then reached her hand in tentatively, her fingers closing around a leather bundle, narrow at that end, which she pulled on. It was very long and far smaller than she'd expected, she looked doubtfully down the uncertain slope - if she tried to carry it down, she'd go ass over teakettle.
"Toss it." He called, and she did, in a long arc that he intercepted neatly.
"C'mon down now." He laid the bundle at his feet and watched her every step of the way in case she should slip, but as soon as her feet met the level earth, he squatted down and started picking apart the knots on the bundle, pleased that no vermin had chewed on it, nor had it rotted perceptibly, though the outer sinew wraps were fragile enough to come apart fairly easily. He sensed her squat down beside him curiously, and from the corner of his eye saw her head go up and heard the little gasp as he laid back the leather. An unstrung recurve bow, sinew-backed and about 4 feet long, with a leather quiver of slender shafts. He'd left the shafts unfletched, knowing the feathers would attract vermin and insects, but he could fletch them tonight. He slid one of the shafts out, the metal head firmly secured by well-oiled sinew wraps, and her wondering eyes traveled from his hands to his face and back again as he examined the rest. An Indian bow, even she knew that, and he'd known where it was, had put it there himself. It was the first hint she'd had of his life before now, and that life was far more complex than she'd thought.
"Safer to hunt these woods with a bow than a gun, don't call attention to yourself." He explained, then turned his head a fraction so he could meet her astonished eyes, a smile ticking the corner of his mouth to see them. "There's a rule t'live by, girl - go unnoticed, become the scenery."
She nodded, fascinated by this new facet of the tracker, wholly unexpected, and he approved her understanding. She was quick, this girl, learned a thing not just in its doing but the logic of it, making connections almost naturally to concepts that had to be utterly unnatural for an easterner raised in wealth and privilege.
Their shoulders touching over the packet on the ground, she examined him carefully, knowing something had opened between them and wanting it to stay that way. Wanting to honor the friendship she felt building with the truth that would surely bring them even closer. They were family, of a kind. In a way, he belonged to her, and she to him, kin even if not of blood. She had the feeling that sort of tie was one he would take very seriously, and she was willing to bet he wouldn't tattle on her.
Tanner knew things about her Aunt that no one else did, could show her the wilderness as only a man who loved it and felt its rhythms and causes could. She didn't want this journey to end, and when it inevitably did, she wanted to be able to preserve the tie to him, to write to him, come back and visit him, have nothing concealed between them. Friends didn't have secrets between them, not friends you wanted to bind to you for life. And there was no tie stronger than the ties of blood. As simply as that her decision was made, and she stepped across the divide boldly.
"You look sad sometimes when you look at me." She said, and he wondered at the determined frankness of her eyes when he turned to her, sandy eyebrows drawing together at the unexpected purpose in her expression. "Are you thinking about my Aunt Duley? Do I look like her?" Caught in her disingenuous eyes like a deer going down under a pack of wolves. He stared at her, breathless, his heart a sudden seized ice-fist in his chest. She had the nerve to smile at him while his foundation cracked, while his secrets were ripped out of cover, laid bare and exposed as bones ... she knew.
She knew.
"Auntie Beth says I do, says my hair is the color hers was." Knowing by the quick involuntary slide of his horrified eyes across the crown of her head in the sunlight that it was so. Her smile flashed, eyes merry again as she leaned toward him like she couldn't see the stricken terror naked in his face, like she didn't know he'd quit breathing, quit thinking, couldn't have moved if a cougar had teeth in him.
But she did see his distress and after a split second was no longer amused by it but moved to put her hand on his forearm, moved even more to find him trembling, truly trembling. It bewildered her; a man as brave as he was, as knowing and fearless - why should he fear her knowing? She confessed it all to him, then, in an anxious hurry to put him at ease again, to not feel all of a sudden like his enemy,
"I read the letters Aunt Duley sent to Aunt Elizabeth, I know I should've said something before, but I could get in a lot of trouble if anyone found out even though Auntie Beth said they'd be mine one day, she said she'd let me read them when I was old enough, and - well, that just made me want to read them more, you know?"
She was the one afraid to let it be known that she'd read those letters because of the punishment such pilfering would bring, she was the one who'd done wrong by reading them. Why, then, did Vin Tanner look so pale and fearful? Did he even hear her? He was staring like she'd sprouted horns and warts and she had the strongest impression that the only rational thought in his head was to get up and get away from her fast as he could.
Vin felt like he was choking - this girl, seemingly her whole family, knew things about him even he didn't know, because Duley had known things about him even he didn't know and Duley had told them! She was the only one he'd ever trusted with his darkest secrets, what was most private, what he alone enshrined in the most secret depths of him, hoarded close and dear - how many people knew? Had she given away so much of their life and never told him? His anger was primally possessive, blazingly jealous - she'd been his and no one else's, she lived in him, he kept her close in his silent memory, and now all these Monroes were upon him with their hair and their faces like strange echoes of her, knowing things about him he had no idea of, knowing things about her he hadn't known ... Weakening his hold on her with their familiarity, changing what should never change. Placed her among them instead of at his side where she belonged.
He didn't have words even in himself for how it felt to have this girl looking at him, knowing who he was and what Duley had been to him. Vin had learned young and hard to trust no one, when he met her, he no longer knew how and she'd had to be endlessly patient to teach him again what had become a foreign notion. Yet he'd opened the darkest doors in him to her at last, shown her all the ruination of his life, things he'd never told anyone, things he'd done, things that had been done to him, cruelties and wickednesses and sorrows ... had she shared all that, too? How could she? He'd trusted her! And she'd told her sister, and now every damned Monroe knew!
As quick as that the bitter rind of blame rose from his anger, holding fault to her who was faultless in his memory, her family rendering her fallible as his heart could not. She was a smart woman, how could she not have known how her letters would be used, with brothers like that? Offered in innocence, maybe, but things that were private and sacred had been exposed to enemies who now used them to ruin the Lakota's world, to ruin him, too. She had been wrong, she had been terribly wrong, and now here he was being moved hither and thither by her unseen will, suffering the freshening of memories that compounded the pain of her absence while he tried to fix accidental betrayals of the people and, it seemed, of himself as well!
He'd never been mad at Duley, never, he didn't know how to be mad at her and it scared him to feel it now, so hot and big he had to grab it with all his will to keep it from pouring out and incinerating this Monroe girl beside him in her knowing innocence. Here were these people, Duley's people, strangers to him, and disaster stalking at their heels that she'd set in motion and all his secrets naked before their eyes.
"Do your brothers know?" He nearly growled, low and more threatening than he could tame because the very thought was alarming in the extreme, if hard to believe. If the brothers knew him, then they'd been lying all along and they were all on a fool's journey to the grave. He wasn't surprised, though, when the girl immediately shook her head, her face sincere and very cautious. He could read a man's character pretty well, and the brothers Monroe hadn't seemed the kind who could carry off a deception that thorough. It was the most minor of reliefs.
Julianna held very still, tensed for any move she might have to make to get out of his way, her eyes wide and sharp on his face, which just now had a deep flush spreading across the tops of his cheekbones. There was a fire leaping behind his blue eyes that she did not want to tempt and didn't understand at all. She hadn't expected him to be mad about the letters, but he was seething, she knew it, no matter how still - how very still - he was. The bow, still on the ground, creaked in his hand, knuckles white as ice-chips on it like it was all that kept him from drawing his gun, like the earth against his fingers was somehow holding him down from some terrible explosive motion. Trembling still, but with affront - oh, he was so angry, she didn't know why he should be so angry, but his fury shimmered the very air around him, oddly desperate and unwilling.
"Mr. Tanner, I ..." The words were barely in the air before he shot to his feet and walked as directly away from her as the terrain allowed, the bow clenched in his hand but the quiver still on the ground. She retrieved it nervously, watching his back as he lashed the bow to his rifle-sheath with rough jerking knots of motion, and she mounted when he did, guessing he'd ride off without her if she didn't just follow on, because he obviously was not going to speak.
They went at a pace quicker than he'd intended, but he couldn't keep Peso from picking up on the racing turmoil in his rider and it made the horse nervy and skittish. So Vin let him go, as he could not let himself go. He'd never felt like this, he didn't know what to do with his feelings, wanting to scream with fury or weep like a lost child abandoned by the one person in all the world he'd been sure never would.
Duley, Duley - how could you? Didn't you know what it meant to me to share myself with you? How impossible it was, how hurtful? Are you cutting me loose up here in the forests and mountains we loved? I never wanted anything but to love you just like I always did, all the rest of my life ... why are you bringing these people to me? Why are you disappointing my memories? What am I going to do to fix all of this? Do you no longer love me? Has heaven seduced you so far from earth that you want to go on without waitin' on me no more? Are you moving on from me, Duley-girl?
Finally the despair got to be too much for him. He kept his head up rigidly, stayed ahead of the girl where she couldn't see his face and all he no longer had the heart to hide, and he let the hot tears of rage and hurt sting his eyes and trickle down one cheek unchallenged and untouched until the terrible painful pressure in his heart emptied out a little. God, he missed her, wanted so badly to talk to her and understand what was going on, what she wanted of him, even if he was afraid of part of her intentions where he was concerned. Don't leave me in this world alone, Duley, you're all I've got between me and hell ...
"When I'm stubborn and disobedient, my father tells me I'm like her."
He hadn't made a sound since they'd left the cache, Jules hadn't even had a glimpse of his face, and she didn't know why she'd felt so moved to say that into the threatening silence he'd pulled around himself. The urge to bridge the distance before it became a chasm was suddenly just too strong for her; she expected him to turn and fix her with one of those looks that made the marrow of her bones shiver.
His response was entirely unanticipated, and at first she didn't know what it was.
The sound seemingly surprised him as much as her, low at first and colored dark with regret and pain, then releasing some like a bird bursting skyward from a cage until he was laughing out loud. Shaking his head and not looking back at her, but laughing out loud.
"Somehow that don't surprise me a bit." He finally said, at last turning to look back at her with that smile slow to fade, and even then remaining in his eyes. His face was shadowed with a sorrowful irony of something ugly being made bearable in acceptance, he was still upset, but he'd found his peace with it for the moment. Such give-away eyes he had, but it was how she knew she could trust him. Nothing bad would happen to her in his company. Just like her Aunt Duley, she was in the wild Indian woods with a wild and woolly frontiersman, and maybe he'd just accepted the fact that he was her Uncle, too.
To be continued...
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