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:
Josiah Sanchez had a glower that could've combusted wet wood. His pale eyes were molten in their deep-cragged hollows and every bone of his face had risen up in fury, pronounced as a primitive carving. He said not a word, but his anger was an open furnace stoked ever higher as Ezra and Orrin told them what had transpired the night before.
They rode in a loose formation alongside the mule-train listening without seeming to in case any of Monroe's men rode down the line. J.D. kept an eye on the animals, but mules would find the best path possible along the bottom of the rocky gulch on their own and a smart man would just follow on. Their unshod hooves, hard and durable as ivory, made a hollow rhythmic clatter on the stones, their ears bobbed a stoic rhythm as they followed one another, picking their way. A busy stream chuckled and tumbled in the middle of the gulch, but it had stopped raining. The day was growing long and everyone was wet and tired and in no mood to hear what they were hearing. It was one thing to steal gold or land, but quite another to start a war meant to wipe out an entire people like human strip-mining.
That was vile enough, but the fact that the Monroes would do so with government sanction, with the backing of a deluded and manipulated citizenry who had no idea what their support unwittingly exonerated, was what had Josiah in such a state. Murder bubbled like hot gripping tar deep in his soul, desires and capacities he had long fought to sublimate to God's will - not my will, Lord, but thine ... over and over he repeated this prayer to himself.
The Monroes were ahead of them at some distance, the Captain and his troops further still scouting for a camp, and as the moments went on, the five listening men could be seen to throw James thoughtful glances where he rode close by Elizabeth.
Julianna rode between her Aunt and Uncle James with many a backward and longing look at her Uncle Vin's friends, having chaffed to be with them all day but never more so than now - something important was happening back there, she sensed it like buzzing on her skin. They all rode along with the same lazy economy as always, they seemed hardly to be paying attention to one another, but Mr. Travis was talking and they were intent to him. Everything about them sharpened subtly, they closed up on one another unconsciously, like closing ranks against some threat Travis was revealing to them. What could it be?
Then she realized something she was surprised not to have noticed before - she hadn't had much opportunity to see the seven with Mr. Travis, since that august official kept company fairly exclusively with her Uncles, but it was obvious today that he was no stranger to the seven, nor they to him. How had she missed that when it seemed so obvious now? There were quiet but unmistakable signs of anger among them, the Preacher looked to have hellfire and damnation in mind - yet no one interrupted Travis nor disagreed with anything he was saying, only listened respectfully.
She recalled that Travis and Ezra had ignored the others completely until her father took his troops, and Uncle Stephen, ahead. Then they'd drifted back by degrees, and when she'd looked back the last time they'd all dropped back even further. Clandestine overtones she hadn't noticed, too busy trying to figure a way out from under her Aunt's eye, but her curiosity was well and truly engaged now.
Why wouldn't they want her father and Uncles to know they were friends? Auburn brows flexed in suspicious thought as the handsome gambler twisted in his saddle to answer a question from Chris Larabee. Standish had wormed his way into Uncle Stephen's pocket with charming ease, and her father liked him too, she could tell - he preened in front of him, showed off his authority. Then she looked at her Uncle James beside her, watchful and nervy as a spooked rabbit. He was often that way around her father and Uncle Stephen, but there was a strange kind of determination in his panic this time that was focused on her Aunt. Almost like he was guarding her. From what?
Jules had the dawning of an idea she was almost afraid to think. Could her father and her Uncles be involved in something illegal on the frontier? It would not surprise her, there had been lawsuits and accusations periodically at home, never proven, she knew the three of them had a reputation for ruthlessness and a willingness to go outside the law to gain their objectives that had driven off all but the most powerful adversaries. And she knew how they handled even them, having spied on a few meetings with unexpectedly rough characters, men they wouldn't allow in their offices in the city. All sorts of possibilities began tumbling over each other in her mind, too fast to grasp any one clearly. But one thing she knew - the men who rode with her Uncle Vin were noble and honorable men, men of the west, and that would set them against her father and her Uncles if they were up to no good.
As thrilling as it had been to see the seven in action the previous night, she knew her father. There were more soldiers right now than would make a fair fight, and he had a whole army at his whim, which he wouldn't hesitate to use, anything that served his purposes he would wield without thought or conscience. This was going to take some thinking about. She had no idea what she could do to help, but she bet neither her father or his soldiers would expect her to try.
A silence fell among the six regulators when Orrin stopped talking, and he waited patiently while they digested what they'd been told, noting the meeting of eyes among them of silent conversation. They were thinking just what he'd first thought - Vin. Their own outrage, their own urge to stop this terrible plot intensified a hundred-fold in a man with every means to make that reaction disastrous. Vin didn't kill when he could wound, didn't wound when he could lay hands on, and didn't lay hands on when he could walk away, but forcing him to defend his principles or those he cared for guaranteed blunt and brutally honest savagery.
"Vin's not going to take this well." Nathan finally said, because someone had to. They all looked to the Judge, knowing he had to know that as well as they did, but he'd had the luxury of a bit more time to think about it.
"We can't tell him." Travis said flatly, scanning the rocking line of mules and horses ahead because he couldn't look at them and ask them to do this to one of their own. It didn't feel good, he didn't like it, and he couldn't expect them to feel otherwise, but he hoped they would understand the greater objective. And he hoped the friendship between these seven men was strong enough to overcome the rifts meeting those objectives opened up.
"Oh, great!" J.D. objected, throwing a hand up, "First we can't tell him about Miss Elizabeth maybe being in danger, and now we can't tell him about the Indians - what kind of friends are we?"
"J.D." Buck's head rolled back toward the kid as Chris' shoulders stiffened, in no mood to be accused of betraying a friendship he already thought had been betrayed by Vin.
A lashing cold eye went at J.D., and Chris said in a bitter quiet voice; "We ain't the only ones keepin' secrets, kid."
But J.D. didn't like this and knew the rest didn't either whether they agreed with Chris or not, so he figured if he pushed them, somebody would come up with a way to do what had to be done without sacrificing their loyalty to Vin.
"All we're doing is making damn sure he can't protect the lady or the Indians, and both are important to him. This just ain't right. We don't know he couldn't understand why we have to go along with it right now, he's not crazy, y'know, he can think a thing through."
Insulted for Vin, a little, that everyone was so sure he'd fly off the handle when he really wasn't that sort of a man. Though he could get to the business of killing in the blink of an eye. And though that knowledge more than anything else was conveyed in the doubtful expressions he was getting. He hated it when they looked at him that way, like he was a kid and didn't grasp how experienced men handled things.
Still, they were thinking about it, so he subsided and let them do that. Sometimes if he pushed them too far he ended up regretting it.
"Well, I'm gonna find Vin's sign before these fools have us campin' on open ground." Josiah said, breaking out of the line and going without another word or even a look at any of them.
There was no stopping Jules when they finally spotted Vin approaching the camp from the north at a steady gallop, she was already mounted and blithely told her Aunt where she was going as she passed her, moving quickly enough so there was no time for any objection she couldn't pretend not to hear. Her father stood up from his camp-chair, watching her and wanting to command her to stop, she knew it just by the angry set of his body, and she waved brazenly and kicked the pony into a run across the rough ground. Her father had been leaving her alone, and he wasn't one to let punishments wait; she thought the seven had something to do with that and felt closer to them than ever.
Vin saw someone coming toward him at a fast run from the campsite he'd marked and he slowed Peso to a walk, wondering at first who it was and what could be wrong, then relaxing, smiling to recognize her. Lord, he could see that grin from a mile away, just like Duley's, like joy rushing toward you headlong. In that moment he loved Julianna Monroe so much his throat got tight, and he held stubbornly on to that feeling when the grief came swamping in like it did nowadays whenever his emotions got the better of him.
It wasn't so much sorrowing after Duley this time, though, as it was sorrow for this niece of hers who had such a hunger for the world he and Duley had known. The girl dreamed a life she could never have, a life she was suited for just as much as Duley had been. His sorrow was because it was too late.
Riding out alone today, he'd caught himself a few times stopped dead without knowing how or why, staring out at the vista with an enormous yearning after the buffalo herds and lodges that had once been there, the bright noise and solemn unity of the tribes. It felt like he was trying to memorize something that would soon be gone, trying to brand his mind and heart with the face of a dying loved one. His mind kept going to such places his heart couldn't bear, and it was getting harder all the time to rein it in.
It was too late for Julianna, too late for anyone, even him. The life he never would have left but for being too hurt to face it without Duley was ending all around him, passing into memory; he felt the age perishing in every empty meadow, in every cavalry soldier's uncomprehending face. He sighed, pulling himself back from that abyss with an effort. He didn't like being melancholy, and he knew it was only because he'd been living with different levels of pain for too long, sleepless too long, running on emptiness and anxiety until the strain was beginning to tell. But that logic didn't change the certainty of impending doom. The Lakota's dfoom, the white man's too, though they would not know it for a very long time. His own, and the Monroes, this girl's daddy who he might have to kill, and would she ever understand? Would she forgive him if her father ended up dead or in prison?
He shook his head; there was no way it would end well, no escaping the inexorable direction this bleak maze was winding toward. But if he put all his tomorrows at arm's length, he could still smile to see Jules coming to him with gladness like a beacon, and he could still hope of seeing that smile on Duley's beloved face when he passed the veil and went home to her.
"Wow, what have you got there?" Jules slapped his leg in greeting with an impish smile, having spun the pony neatly over its hocks to change direction and fall in beside him. She poked at the antelope slung behind him, touching the broad short black spikes of horn and the softness of its muzzle as if it were still alive. She knew it was dead, of course, but it was beautiful even so, and its spirit probably appreciated her admiration. She tried to convey gratitude with her touch like her Uncle did, thanking it for the sacrifice, praising it in silence so it went lightly on to wherever it was a dead antelope found heaven. Her Uncle's head was cocked down into his shoulder watching her, and though he didn't smile and, indeed, seemed achingly sad, she knew he was feeling warmly toward her.
"You want to help me skin 'im out before camp?" He said, a sandy eyebrow challenging her stomach for it, and she shrugged and said, "Sure."
"Good; yer Aunt n' Miz Travis are a mite squeamish."
A bark of laughter agreed, and she said, "Uncle James is even worse!"
They grinned at each other in a communal moment of considering taking the bloody chore to camp for that reason alone, but in the end Vin pulled up a quarter mile from the thin threads of smoke marking the soldier's fires. It was as good a camp as could be found in this time of year, far enough below the rim of the prairie to shield them and a thick copse of cedar to contain the glow of fires, the camp itself set on a broad granite shelf along the westerly side that kept it above the riverbed, at least until the floods came a month or so later.
Peso went jolting down the steep decline into the gorge in several large choppy strides that jarred Vin's teeth and several other sensitive places, and he cursed at the horse with what little breath he had. Jules' pony, which, since the rescue on the bridge, had seemingly adopted Peso, followed without a qualm, though it was much harder going for an animal with legs that much shorter. Vin didn't put it past Peso to have chosen that route for that very reason, the black didn't like being followed around and he showed some teeth to the pony, who seemed to think that was an invitation to cozy on up as Vin and Jules dismounted. Vin grinned at his horse and tied him to a heavy piece of dead wood to keep him from wandering off just for spite.
He could've skinned the pronghorn in the camp despite the sensibilities of some, but the truth was that he needed the time and the chore to get himself settled again. He also wanted some time with Jules for himself, he didn't deny it, she could make him feel almost normal.
"You look stiff as an old lady in corsets." Jules observed as he hung the carcass by its back hocks on a stout low branch, laughing at the mock threat in Vin's raised eyebrow.
"Feel like one, too - Josiah's got a grip like a bear." Grinning at the sound of her bright laugh, impressed that she could laugh in the midst of the bloody task of skinning. He handed her one of his knives after he'd made the initial cuts around hoofs and head and less delicate parts down the belly, and showed her how to pull the skin back and separate it from the pale connective tissue and scant yellowish areas of fat that overlayed dark red muscle so it would detach in one large piece.
"I'll show you how to tan it." He said as they worked, helping her now and then so he wouldn't have his half of the antelope skinned before she'd cleared the back leg of her half. She didn't mind, he'd done this a million times and this was her first time, but she paid close attention to the quick flicks of his blade, the long sliding moves as he ran it under the skin and the liquid crackle of hide parting from meat. It was a beautiful hide, the markings clear and the colors pale, she wondered what she could make from it. If he gave it to her, that is. Well, she guessed if she tanned it, it was hers, right?
"That Indian Agent, Mr. Travis, and your friends were talkin' today off on their own." She said conversationally, cocking an eye at him for his reaction and expecting suspicion of her father and Uncles that she intended to help him investigate. Alarm wasn't at all what she'd expected.
Vin had a roaring in his ears - had they found the guns? The boys were most likely to, being around those mules all day, maybe Jules had spied on them deciding what to do about it. They wouldn't turn him in - wait -
"Mr. Travis was with 'em?" His bloody hands had stilled and he'd taken an involuntary-looking step back, all of him still and concentrated on her with an intensity that was startling. If Travis knew and hadn't told Captain Monroe, then he wasn't necessarily intent on arresting him - he'd give him a chance to explain, then, more than Vin had hoped for in having considered this eventuality. But he wouldn't be able to lie if Travis asked him point-blank, he had too much respect for him, and even if the Judge understood, even if he agreed, Travis was still a federal officer and duty-bound to it.
Jules was confused by the worried look on his face, and her answer was hesitant.
"Yes, riding far behind and pretending not to be talking. But they were talking all right, and they weren't very happy."
Suddenly she didn't want to say anything more - she'd thought he'd assume it was about her father and Uncles, something he'd be curious to be told about when he got back to camp. Instead, her Uncle Vin was worried about his friends talking, which meant he thought it was about him, which meant he had a reason to worry about it. Jules was too logical to stop the next rational thought - maybe it was her Uncle Vin who was doing something wrong, and not her father and Uncles.
The thought was momentarily chilling, and even more the realization that he was more than just her Uncle - he was also a dangerous enough man to have earned the abiding respect of other dangerous men. But when it came down to it, no matter how short the time of their acquaintance, she knew her Uncle Vin down to his bones, and if he was keeping a secret that might be dangerous, he had to have a good reason. The possibility of a rift between him and the other six, though, put him in a more precarious position than she liked. Maybe the others wouldn't be at his back when he needed them - maybe they could even be dangerous to him themselves if Uncle Vin was keeping a secret from them. She'd thought they were as close as brothers, but maybe that wasn't entirely so.
Oh, why couldn't it be her father and her Uncles scheming some awful scheme! Far better that! He looked at her with wary expectancy, but she went back to her task with a shrug, shaking her head with a breathy laugh, "Maybe they weren't talking."
He didn't say anything, and neither did she.
Vin knew he'd scared her for a moment there, and that he'd given himself away in some regards, depending on how much she could figure out from his reaction - which he assumed was more than enough, she was both intuitive and observant. But he realized it wasn't fear of him that was keeping her quiet - it was fear for him - she was protecting him. If he was doing something secret, she'd protect him from discovery even if he was keeping that secret from his friends, too. She was on his side no matter what side that was, trusting him to be doing right like she knew his heart as well as he did. Faith like a rock, and suddenly he had the same in her. Family - yours right or wrong.
"I could be wrong, you know, it isn't like I could hear anything." She said, struggling for a casual tone and posture because it hurt her to see the distress it caused him to think he was the topic of unhappy discussion among his friends. "I'm sure they'd tell you about it if they were." But he was silent, and she couldn't know it was because he couldn't have spoken if his life depended on it.
Jules knew she was red as a beet, she tugged ferociously on the skin and used the knife clumsily to free it feeling his eyes on her from behind all the while. She never should have said a thing, she should have kept her big mouth shut, but he needed to know if there was something going on, didn't he? When she finally turned around in exasperation to declare that, however, expecting to see either a stern Uncle or a total stranger, there was a whole and unhidden affection in his somber face that rendered her speechless. His mouth curved in a small slanted smile to see that, then he rasped a little laugh and shook his head with a rueful squint,
"Yer a pistol, Jules." He leaned down conspiratorily near and held her eyes with his. "They were talkin', and Travis was with them ..." He said, wanting her to go on, and she stared him down for a second or two before giving in.
"Yes. Actually, he was doing most of the talking."
"Alright." He said, wondering with a sudden hope if he hadn't assumed wrong - maybe they'd found out something about the Monroes and would, indeed, fill him in tonight. Maybe Jules' instinct was the right one and he was just too spooked not to think the worst. Something eased in him, if not completely. Whatever it was, all he could do was find his way through it. He could move fast if he had to, take those mules and disappear. But Lord, that wasn't the way he wanted to do it.
He felt Jules' worried glances as they worked and he tried to be calm and placid himself to ease her. They finished skinning the antelope with a final tug taken together, then he jointed the carcass, showing her where the muscles could be divided best, where the knife could part bones without damaging the knife-edge. He also spent some time explaining the myriad uses of even those parts of the antelope he would have to leave behind this time, of the teeth and certain bones and organs, sinews and hooves, everything useful to the tribes and nothing wasted in disrespect of the life given.
By the time he was done and set her to wrapping the jointed haunches and carved meat in the skin, he was no longer worried about whatever the boys and Travis had been talking about. Fatalistic, maybe, to figure he could work around anything that had happened, but he was pretty sure he could, too.
He squatted awkwardly on the bank of the quick-moving stream to wash his hands, then moved down a ways where he had some privacy to take off his gunbelt and press the wet cloth against the burning throb of his flank. He hissed at the first contact, then closed his eyes and appreciated the coolness, holding it there until it warmed and then doing it a few more times just because it felt so good. He used the last bandage Nathan had given him and was buckling his gunbelt back on when Jules came down to clean up.
He stood beside her as she crouched down to wash, evening softening the landscape and painting it in increasingly brilliant hues. Mists swirled up off the placid waters of small scattered snow-melt lakes as the day cooled into night, moving in stately tatters and curling waves like ghosts rising in a darkly beautiful dance. Vin saw a rapture in her face that made him smile and want to weep at the same time.
The cook was glad to have fresh meat, and Jules was too busy pegging out the skin and trying to scrape the fleshy bits off the underside to listen to her Aunt's scolding about riding out alone. She hadn't been alone, she'd retorted, so long as Vin could see her, she was safe even if it was miles away. Elizabeth looked down at the girl with the puzzled expression, wondering where that depth of friendship had come from. Wondering for the first time if Julianna knew Vin Tanner was her Aunt Duley's husband, and her Uncle. Certainly the girl had a proprietary attitude toward him, as if he belonged to her, bound by some unquestionable tie. She was afraid to ask.
Vin walked Peso to the picket line and unsaddled him, wiped him down with a damp cloth for the sweat-stained saddle marks on his back and then gave him a brisk currying that he lifted his big blocky head up in pleasure to feel. While he was doing that, he kept an eye on the small campfire where Chris and the boys were, except Ezra. Not a one of them met his eyes despite his greeting them in a friendly fashion, signaling his approachability. They returned his greetings, they talked and acted as if there was nothing amiss, but the sense of something being unsaid was like a shout in his ears. As casually as he could, he passed by the stacked supplies looking for his packs; they appeared intact, and a closer inspection confirmed that his knots, peculiar to him, were intact. He could hardly believe how relieved he was to discover that, he actually closed his eyes a second and breathed a thankful prayer, but it only made him wonder harder about what they were keeping from him, and why.
He thought about going to J.D., who could be tricked into revealing most anything, or to Josiah, who shared his sympathies and would be most likely to support what he was doing even if it was illegal. He thought about cornering Nathan and letting him tend those cat-claw wounds that were troubling him so much and maybe feeling him out while he was distracted in that task, the healer was too honest and direct a soul to dissemble well, maybe he could find out enough to figure out if he or his guns were in danger of being exposed.
But in the end, he couldn't be that cowardly. It was Chris he went to when supper was done and the gunslinger had assumed a watch between the two camps. There was no pretense of camaraderie between the soldiers and the gunmen tonight, the hostility was undiminished between them and Vin wasn't sorry he'd done that. Better that they kept their distance of soldiers, who were more likely than just about any living thing to be targeted by the Lakota.
Chris didn't turn as Vin angled over to him, stopping just behind his left shoulder - a good habit with right-handed gunmen. Chris kept his eyes to the dark outside the camp, sensing a coiled hesitance in Vin.
"There somethin' goin' on I should know about?" Vin asked, the soft tone, his glancing eyes, perfectly even.
Chris turned his head toward him at an insolent angle and peered at him, a mild confusion in his handsome face that was both mockingly innocent and seriously meaningful.
"Y'mean, y'think somebody's keepin' somethin' secret from you?" Chris' lips twitched in the slightest of sarcastic smiles to see a red flare of color rise on Vin's cheekbones, and he gave the tracker that hurt moment to end the animosity between them with honesty. For an instant he saw the urge in Vin's eyes to do just that, to tell whatever it was that riding him so hard, and he let his own expression gentle to reflect the hope that Vin would, inviting trust back between them.
But if it wasn't the guns the boys had been talking about, Vin knew it had to be something the Monroes were up to, and he found himself suddenly reluctant to know what it was, not being of a mind to be killing Jules' family right in front of her eyes. And if the boys were withholding it from Jules, knowing she'd tell him, it was something they thought would provoke him beyond caution. They, too, were protecting him, and the realization made him ashamed of how deep a comfort it was. He'd get no answers from Chris without giving over information in return, and he couldn't do that without drawing him in to the risk Vin wasn't willing to share.
Chris waited, but Vin only looked back at him with the strangest expression on his face, frustrated and burning and turgid with more emotion than Chris was accustomed to seeing from him. Those blue eyes wide and fierce like he wanted to will Chris to accept what he wouldn't explain. Chris' eyes hardened with an anger Vin saw as he dropped his head and turned away. But he did not see Chris's look following his retreating back with a worried disappointment.
"Julianna, I declare - you've even got it on your chemise, how on earth ..."
Jules didn't reply, it was useless to try to explain to her Aunt that skinning was a messy job sometimes. She leaned over the tin tub and let Elizabeth scrub away at her fingernails with a stiff brush, watching the water pinken with a sense of pride and accomplishment.
"He's going to show me how to tan the skin." She declared with great satisfaction.
Elizabeth straightened a little, passing the brush off to Julianna to finish the job with a nervous look at the back of her woefully tangled head. She and Vin had appeared together out of the twilit darkness leading their horses and walking close, talking quietly and with all evident trust and seriousness. Connected, each to the other, in that way they'd been since they'd spent those days alone together across the river. When Julianna had looked up in answer to her call, for a startled breath-stopped instant Elizabeth had seen Duley as she'd been that morning when she'd declared herself her father's daughter and bound to follow him onto the frontier. That same excited challenge in her eyes, that defiant gladness, as if such a life was as natural as breathing, and all anyone who loved her could wish for her. The sense of impending loss she had felt in that moment reverberated still, a loss now anticipated as well as remembered.
But Julianna was a child and could not choose for herself yet. Not yet. Elizabeth clucked her tongue and handed her a towel, crossing the tent to open Julianna's valise for clean clothes.
"Julianna, I think Mr. Tanner has a great deal more to do than teach you forest-lore, you need to stay out of the way."
"He wants to teach me, Aunt Elizabeth, I don't bother him, he likes me!"
"I'm sure he does, but skinning and tanning are hardly ladylike." Elizabeth smiled where Julianna couldn't see her, knowing the girl's eyes were rolling theatrically.
"A body has to know all sorts of things out here, Auntie, that might not be considered ladylike. I sure wouldn't want to end up without my scalp because I was too busy worrying about getting my chemise dirty!" Here was bolder mockery than Elizabeth was accustomed to - Julianna was a headstrong girl, but not usually so blunt. James might be right, those seven regulators, carefree as wild wolves, might be a less than constructive influence on her just now.
"No, not a dress, Auntie." Elizabeth looked over her shoulder to find Julianna shaking her head in disapproval at the gown she'd drawn out of the valise. "It's so ridiculous to go traipsing around in miles of cloth on the frontier, my pants are clean enough."
Elizabeth sighed with exasperation, trying to ignore the flutter of misgiving in her stomach and to reassert discipline over them both. Gerald was on too narrow an edge to risk having Julianna enrage him right now, the hostility between his men and the regulators was palpable, just looking for an excuse to flare into open violence. She did not want Julianna to be that excuse.
"Julianna, you really need to mind your appearance and behavior around your father. He is in command of all these men and it won't do to have his own daughter sassing him and doing what she pleases - it undermines his authority."
Julianna shrugged and said flatly, "It wouldn't be much fun otherwise. My father doesn't like me no matter what I'm wearing, and I don't like him, either! I know, I know, it's not the way its supposed to be between father and child, you've told me that a hundred times. But there you are."
She smiled at Elizabeth's dismay and said; "It's alright, Aunt Elizabeth, I'd rather live with you at the farm anyway, I'm glad he leaves me alone." Elizabeth looked at her with a mix of affection and sorrow in her heart, then sighed and turned back to the valise.
Jules had been thinking with unusual focus for a few hours now, wanting to help her Uncle Vin and figuring it was time to get serious about finding out what was going on. Her Aunt was the only adult she'd ever known who'd never lied to her, plus she'd fought the Monroe men to a standstill to keep her farm and businesses from them; Jules was counting on both of those things now. The trouble was that despite being their target now and then, her Aunt had still spent a lifetime defending her brothers, ignoring or forgiving their sins, and she'd hedge around anything that reflected badly on them, especially to Jules. The trick would be to force honesty by knowing enough beforehand to refute any careful generalizations. Consequently, Jules had been recalling every little thing she'd ignored so far trying to find the pattern of deceit she was sure was there - because Uncle Vin was sure enough to be worried about it. There was something skittish and spooked under his quiet that he tried to conceal from her as he concealed very little else. It had something to do with her family's reasons for being on the frontier, and she damned well intended to find out, and share with him, just what those reasons were.
Her father buying a military commission had been hugely out of character even given his political aspirations, he loved his comforts both for themselves and for the privilege such opulence announced to the world. Seeing him now made it clear he hated everything about the frontier, so why had he done it? He was acting like a dispossessed King exiled to some barbaric backwater, but he also had a satisfied gleam in his eye that told Jules he expected to resume his throne very soon. So, she could safely guess that the plot was years in the making, and had an enormous - and soon to be realized - reward to justify what her father obviously considered a sacrifice. That much she could be fairly sure was right. Now, she needed the details.
"Aunt Elizabeth - why did my father want you to come out here?"
Elizabeth looked up, startled that Julianna's question so mirrored her own to James - a question he'd sidestepped as well as she usually did Julianna's. She smiled, concealing all doubt and fear, and shook her head, saying,
"It isn't me he wanted with him, Julianna, he only asked me to accompany you. You mean more to him than he is capable of showing, I've told you how difficult it is for him to show his true emotions. He's your father, and he misses you."
"Oh, Auntie - I don't believe that for a second. He never even mentioned me until after you already refused to go yourself. I know he uses me to make you cooperate sometimes, and he's done it this time, too."
Elizabeth's eyes were wide and round, astonished by the maturity and perceptiveness of these surmisings and disturbed by Julianna's low opinion of her father despite all her attempts to present him in a more favorable light. Julianna had always gone along before, at least pretended to accept Elizabeth's explanations, but now something had changed ... this time the girl had no intention of allowing it, she stood there square on both feet, her eyes bluntly rejecting those smooth excuses. Apparently her niece knew full well she'd been used as a lever against her Aunt, knew her own father saw her as nothing more than a tool to coerce Elizabeth's cooperation - and it was painfully clear that she had long known this despite Elizabeth's merciful efforts. Elizabeth might have tried to convince her yet again of Gerald's affections except for the almost tender intent to refuse she could clearly see in her niece's eyes. It was an odd comfort to know that her niece also understood the depth of her Aunt's love even if it rendered her vulnerable to her brothers' manipulations.
How long had she known all this? How many times had she seemed to accept Elizabeth's explanations knowing full well they were false? Elizabeth's heart was breaking for that understanding, a child knowing her father thought of her as no more than an intermittent annoyance and a future potential bride to some higher business purpose ... she sank down onto a box beside the stacked valises, a pink dress drooping forgotten in her hands.
Julianna put the towel down and came to her, kneeling down in front of her with her hands covering the caps of her Aunt's knees, seeing a terrible fearful denial in her pale face that she only half understood.
"Aunt Elizabeth, I know you were being kind, I know you didn't want me to be hurt by the truth, but I know the truth, I always have, and it doesn't hurt me. It isn't my fault he doesn't love me - he doesn't love anyone, how can I be offended?"
"Oh, but ..."
"No, no ..." Jules gripped her Aunt's knees harder, pushed once or twice in her determination, "You can't protect me forever, and I don't want you to anymore, it isn't helping anyone. Something terrible is happening here, I can see it all around me, everyone thinking things they're not saying, doing things in secret, plotting and scheming and worrying ..."
Elizabeth had never seemed as young to Jules as she did just then, her face pale and lost and grief-struck as though Jules had suddenly turned all those kind fabrications, all the misdirection meant to spare her feelings, against her. Guilt shone bright and consuming, but that wasn't what Jules intended - she needed her Aunt as her ally, the only one other than Uncle Vin she could trust entirely, and the only one who'd ever stood against her father and prevailed. She couldn't blame her Aunt for loving her brothers even if they didn't deserve it.
"I'm sure it's nothing, Julianna - " Elizabeth said, struggling for calm, fighting to cap the strange tide of fear rising in her, to turn this back to something she felt capable of dealing with again; "You know how secretive they are about their businesses ..." But she could hear the desperate tone in her own voice, and she remembered the faint terror in James' eyes when he had sidestepped her questions that she had not asked him to explain. Turning away from unpleasantness as she always turned from knowing anything that would compromise her careful vision of brothers no more wicked than any other man, only misguided, only hurt and lashing out ...
"Vin wouldn't be so nervous if it was nothing, Aunt Elizabeth, he wouldn't care if it was just some scurrilous business deal - it's more than that, and you must tell me. You must tell him."
No longer a child, no longer naäve - if, indeed, she ever had been. She was cognizant of and confronting a danger her Aunt had steadfastly ignored except to keep her safe. Elizabeth realized that her niece understood her male relations every bit as well as she did, and far less sympathetically. If she lied to her in their defense now - Julianna would know it and never trust her again. Her niece gazed at her steadily.
"Yes, Julianna. They intend to stake claims on land that belongs to the Indians and mine it for gold." She finally answered, a distant chill in her own voice and in the marrow of her bones at the immediate outrage that sprang to Julianna's face. As if those Indians were her friends, though she had never met a single one, as if that land was dear to her, though she had never seen it. They were Vin's friends, and it was land Vin loved, and that was all it took to make it worthy in Julianna's opinion. What was it about this frontier that had drawn her niece out of herself this way? That built an entirely new person right in front of her, as if something in the air, in the water, in the land and the trees, seeped into her and created her anew?
For a moment a hate like nothing she'd ever felt surged in her unwilling heart, because this nameless thing, this spirit that inhabited the frontier, had taken her father, her beloved sister, and now perhaps her niece as well ... and it held a man she could so easily love but who could no more live in a city than a wolf could live in a kennel. Hated it because it defeated her own courage and made her small and lost and lonely, and she didn't know if it could ever be any other way. As if it lived, the wide endless land and daunting sky, as if it had a voice they heard and a touch they felt that superseded all they had known before it, as if it had a soul that could never be overcome by any other affiliation once it had been taken to heart. But Elizabeth was a rational woman and couldn't hate what she couldn't even see; she could only envy it and wish to find herself so beloved one day.
For a long moment Elizabeth and Julianna faced one another, coming to a new understanding between them. Then Elizabeth shuddered and lowered her face into her hands as the carefully constructed fabric she'd woven to patch over her brothers' barren and tattered characters unraveled in her niece's unflinching eyes. How did she make the child understand what drove her father and her Uncles? How did she explain what her brothers did not even recognize in themselves?
Elizabeth loved her family because they were family, even imperfect, because it was her duty and her joy to love them. She loved her own father despite his abandonment and understood his love for her as well, his helplessness to refuse the call of the frontier - a place he loved more than any human being. And she had tried to love her brothers all the more because she knew they could not. understand this about their father - their mother had made sure of it. Elizabeth had seen her stoke the hurt and self-doubt her brothers struggled against to this very day, convincing them that their father's going had been more than abandonment, but complete rejection of them and the life their mother had taught them to value. Power, position, wealth, all that mattered to her, had never had any meaning, much less value, to him.
Yes, God knew they could be venal and avaricious and even cruel, they had learned at their mother's knee, but none of them would have been so hurt if they hadn't loved him, too! This her mother had never understood even of herself, loving him so much that no other man ever replaced him in her heart or in her bed. Perhaps she had hated him for her loneliness, perhaps the envious moment Elizabeth had just experienced herself against the nameless, faceless, undefeatable foe of the frontier had never ended for her mother. Elizabeth didn't know, only that her mother had hated her absent husband and the wilderness that had taken him with a passion that still did not disguise its true nature. If she and her sons truly hadn't cared about their father, it simply would not have mattered that he'd left. They wouldn't have tried every day, in every deal and manipulation, to minimize his impact, they wouldn't have worked to chip away at his simple archaic principles and beliefs. The sons bore their mother's hurt, they suffered her unappeasable fury, and they all missed him more than they could ever admit.
Elizabeth had always steadfastly believed that one day her brothers would understand, that they would accept their father's finer character as their own - James was giving her new hope of that. But how did she explain so much to her niece, concepts and causes and effects ... she'd shielded Julianna from the gossip and the rumors about the personal and professional failings of the Monroe men despite her own disapproval, and she could not, now, be the bearer of anything that would mar their reputations to the child. It would be a betrayal of blood, a disloyalty to family ... her niece was looking up at her expectantly, and she struggled to find a way, as she had always done, to bridge what was and what she hoped might someday be.
"Sometimes ... sometimes, Julianna, the ones we love don't always behave as we would wish, nor in ways we understand. The world of business can be very cruel and demanding ... how you are raised, whether you are loved ... But we have a duty to stand behind them, right or wrong, even when they make ... mistakes. You've made mistakes, yes? And you learn from them, but your family doesn't hate you for making them, do they? That's what a family is - strengths and weaknesses balanced, accommodated ... forgiveness and faith."
Julianna's eyebrows twisted in bewildered disbelief and she leaned close, pressed against her Aunt's legs and her eyes sincerely searching her Aunt's face.
"Mistakes? Auntie, you've taught me the difference between mistakes and intentions - did you think I wasn't listening? That I don't have eyes to see for myself? I know you love them, Auntie, but they aren't children, and you can't excuse them forever! You've always hidden their wickedness from me, but how could I not see it when you've taught me about standing up for what's right? In everything else you do, Auntie, you're as good and principled and fair as anyone could ever hope to be, but for them ... you bend so far for them! You let them get away with everything! I see it, I know it, I just never said anything because it hurt you so much, because you feel so sorry for them ..."
Tears swelled into Elizabeth's eyes, her hand cupped the clean-scrubbed cheek of this child who was not a child in this moment, and who was revealing a heart stronger than her own. As strong as Duley's, and rising to that straight confident path Duley had taken so long ago. Julianna's hand covered hers there, holding it against her as if she might make her feel the urgency of the hour that was upon them both.
Elizabeth said softly, sorrowfully, "They aren't wicked men, Julianna, they just haven't been taught well, your grandmother's values were so at odds with Grampa's and they felt like they had to take sides ..."
"But they did take sides, Auntie, and they took the wrong side, and it's too late for them to do anything else. They aren't going to change now, I know you hope for it, I know you do, but it isn't going to happen! They're doing something dreadful out here and now they've dragged you into it using me as the hook - you've let them, and you haven't even wondered why or what might happen to us!"
"They won't let any harm come to us! No, they wouldn't - despite everything else, they're family, and family is all a body has in this world!" Desperate not to lose hers now and yet forced to admit that faith was a faÁade so flimsy that a child's honesty could rip it asunder like wet tissue paper. All her fanciful fabrications, all the comfort she'd created for them both, false faith, a false hope ...
"But what if they intend to harm someone else? What if Vin is harmed? I know you care about that, I know you do!"
Elizabeth flushed so deeply her face felt hot, but her niece appeared not to notice.
"You've said yourself that the most important thing a person has is their integrity, that you have to stand for what's right no matter the odds! What kind of people will we be if we let them do whatever they want to whoever they want just to get richer? Do they get away with their crimes because they're family? Doesn't that mean those crimes are ours, too, if we know about them and don't do anything to stop them? Auntie, people could die, and Indians are just as much people as we are no matter what my father says! I can't let that happen and I can't believe you would, either!"
"Oh, Julianna!" Elizabeth's sigh was richly grieving, helpless and trapped, and though Jules regretted it, she knew with a strange clarity that it was right. She pressed, feeling an urgency she knew came from her Uncle Vin and assuming it as her own.
"Tell me, Auntie, please tell me what they're up to."
Her Aunt's face was distressed and anxious, she shook her head and looked away from the entreaty, but Jules felt her giving way and made herself wait.
"I don't really know." Her Aunt finally said, shaking her head more in disappointment with her own inaction than Julianna's insistence. Her niece's expression flitted between disbelief, which hurt Elizabeth immensely, and a disappointment as profound as Elizabeth's own.
"It involves your Aunt Duley's letters, a place she wrote to me about years ago ..."
Julianna's mouth rounded, her eyes widened with a sudden understanding that caught Elizabeth's attention hard and fast. As if she knew ... in the moment before she demanded how that might be, Julianna said,
"I'm sorry Auntie, but I read those letters, too."
Elizabeth gasped and her heart rabbited in her breast, alarm sweeping through her at what else the girl might have learned from those promised letters, purloined prematurely. Julianna gazed back at her almost defiantly, knowing what alarmed her Aunt and not denying it at all. Proud of it. Then Elizabeth understood what was moving Julianna. She did not in the least feel she was betraying her family, because she was helping her Aunt Duley. And her Uncle Vin.
"My God ..." Elizabeth murmured, seeing disaster looming in this brave bold child who would not hesitate to claim her family in a man her father already hated, who would not think twice about putting herself in the middle of a situation more profoundly dangerous than she could realize, because she was defending the principle her Aunt had taught her was the most fundamental - family.
"Has Vin asked about your father's affairs? Did he set you to spying for him?" Misdirected anger soared like a bird breaking cover to think Vin had turned Julianna against her father, had thrust her into the middle of something she could not be expected to grasp in his need to protect his Indian friends. But Julianna shot that to the ground with nothing more than an annoyed peak of one russet eyebrow and Elizabeth's anger deflated into despair, ashamed of her own readiness once again to distract herself from the truth even at Vin's expense.
Of course he hadn't done anything of the sort, he would no sooner try to divide Julianna from her family than he would shoot off his own leg. No, he had as profound a respect for familial duty as Elizabeth herself, which she found mystifying considering he'd never had one of his own. Except Duley's. Admitting that also admitted the considerable danger he had knowingly put himself in for Duley's sake - that he was dealing with Duley's family rendered him mortally vulnerable, his honor would bear nothing less.
When had Julianna become so perceptive? Where was the headlong girl who noticed nothing beyond her own will and wants? She wasn't here, that was certain; this girl was looking at her as if nothing but everything would satisfy her, declaring herself for her Uncle Vin no matter who that put her up against. Elizabeth knew why - because Vin was worthy of that filial duty as her own brothers were not. Vin would never have suborned Julianna's affection to any personal cause, he had kept his distance of her - and seeing her sister's spirit in the girl now, Elizabeth no longer wondered why. Yet he'd still had earned her love and devotion simply by being the man he was. As he had earned hers every bit as much as her father had before he'd gone. Family, as much as Gerald and Stephen and James, and more deserving. It was her brothers who forced this choice on her, and she would make the choice based not on misguided loyalties and sympathies, but on the principles this stubborn beautiful girl was reminding her of with such blunt eloquence.
She took Julianna's surprisingly rough hand between her own and leaned close, yielding every vestige of denial. It was her duty to protect Julianna from her own headlong instincts, too young to understand the peril Elizabeth finally accepted herself. Gerald and Stephen would not consider family in their determined gluttony, such ties meant nothing to them. They were their mother's sons and she could not save them - oh, what a bitter defeat it was! Their souls had been irrevocably corrupted by the love of wealth and power, and they were in far too deep to let anyone - even family - get in their way. She had to protect Julianna, and she had to keep the man her sister had loved from coming to harm at the hand of any Monroe. It was all she knew for sure, and it was more than enough. Julianna's desire to protect Vin might be all Elizabeth had to keep the girl herself safe.
"So you know who Vin is, then." She said, and Julianna nodded, her face - so young, so impossibly young! - clear and determined.
"And you know what he cares about."
"The Lakota, Auntie. He cares about the Lakota. And he cares about Aunt Duley, and about us, about you and me."
Elizabeth nodded; "He's here because of Duley, Julianna, because of what your father and Uncles have done with what they learned from her letters. He's trying to set it right for her."
"And he needs our help, Auntie."
"Yes, but Julianna ..." How did she keep the child away from the factions that could turn violent at any moment? Wise as her niece might be in her understanding of her own family, wiser than Elizabeth had ever given her credit for, she was a twelve-year old girl and as certain of her immortality and invincibility as any other child that age.
"You can do nothing, you must not let them know you're aware of any of this. Promise me, Julianna."
Julianna started to get up, started to huffily defend her right to stand at Vin's side and fight Vin's fight, but her Aunt's hands, stronger than she'd ever known them to be, clamped down on her shoulders and held her on her knees, her face intent with an authority Julianna had always respected.
"We will help Vin, we will," She said, "But if you give it away too soon, you could ruin any chance he has to make this right. Do you understand?"
Jules glared up at her for a moment, but this time her Aunt did not back down - indeed, her eyes became fiercely determined, forcing Jules to remember who was child, and who was adult. She had experienced only Elizabeth's tenderness and kind discipline, but there were those who professed to fear no man who still respected this woman.
"Julianna - if you put yourself into the middle of this, you'll drag your Uncle Vin into it as well, because he'll have to defend you - you know it. Do you understand the position that puts him in? He won't harm your father or your Uncles if he can help it because they're Duley's family - do you understand what I mean? How dangerous it could be for him?"
Jules saw that fear in her Aunt's eyes and knew it was for her, and for a man her Aunt had come to care for far more than she believed was proper. In that moment, Jules loved her with an astonishing ferocity. Not just the relative who was all of mother she'd ever had, who was friend and defender and protector and teacher, but the woman who was so much more complex and yearning than anyone had ever really known. Why shouldn't she have him? Why should she, or he, be alone and sad all their lives?
"How would you feel if your Uncle Vin got hurt or even killed because you couldn't hold your tongue? If Mr. Travis and his men know what's being planned and haven't done anything, it's because they know it isn't yet time to act, we're all too vulnerable right now - I remind you that your father commands these soldiers who outnumber us, and he is a very clever man with allies in Washington we can't even guess at. Vin will be reluctant to hurt my brothers no matter what they're doing, no matter how he might wish to punish them for it, because they're Duley's brothers, your father and Uncles, my brothers ... If you force the issue to the point of violence - which I have no doubt your father will resort to if his plans are threatened - Vin will hesitate because of who they are. But they will not."
Blunt as a sledge in judging her own brothers' capacities for treachery for the first time in her life, and Jules saw what it cost her to acknowledge it, forcing her to acknowledge herself how dangerous her father and uncles really were. If she pushed it, Uncle Vin would come to her defense hobbled by the need not to harm Duley's kin, and it could cost him his life.
Elizabeth held her with hands and eyes until she could see that the girl understood, then she was able to draw her into her arms and hug her fiercely.
"Let me talk to your Uncle James ..."
"No!"
But Elizabeth shook her head and cut her protestations short; "He is on our side, and he may know what Stephen and your father are planning. He's already committed to seeing us safely through this - he's chosen us, Julianna, over his brothers - he's a far different man than you know, but I hope ... I haven't had the courage to question him too closely yet, but he knows more than he's told me thus far."
Jules narrowed her eyes suspiciously, not trusting James any more than her father or her Uncle Stephen. He was too quiet, always hanging in the background like a shadow, listening and watching ...
"Be patient, Julianna! I know how difficult that is for you, but it is so necessary now! You can to nothing to call attention to your suspicions, and you absolutely must not let them know Vin is your Uncle. You know how they feel about Grampa ...
Julianna nodded, setting her heart on the hope of helping her Uncle Vin - maybe of helping her Aunt, too, knowing how she felt about him. Her thoughts drifted a moment as she laid her head down on her Aunt's bodice, taking the offered comfort knowing she was giving it as well, dreaming dreams of the three of them that she was too young to know were impossible.
Elizabeth held her a moment longer, rocking slightly, a smile soft and sad on her face as she released her illusions and faced her realities at last. Duley would be glad she was doing so no matter how much the death of her carefully nurtured hope for her brothers hurt. Duley had always faced things head - on.
"You are so like her, Julianna, so like her."
"Uncle Vin says so, too."
"Yes ... I imagine he does." Elizabeth said fondly, feeling a smile she hadn't expected to feel, and a bravery she would urgently need in a very short time.
Jules disobeyed her Aunt immediately after she left to find James, figuring it would be too much of an oddity if she didn't. She watched them talking in urgent murmurs, saw her Aunt's hands press against her own bosom in clear horror, though she was too far away to see her face clearly in the dark. With a terrible foreboding she watched as they sat together in the darkness on a downed tree-trunk together in utter silence for a very long time, holding one another's hands like children suddenly orphaned.
She waited until her Aunt left James in the shadowed cedars, and then she made the one move she felt she must make. Fortunately, James remained where he was, his shoulders bowed and his face in his hands like a despondent mourner by the casket of someone beloved. Not until she was almost upon him did he notice her approach, and his head shot up in terrified startlement, face pale and frightened until he saw who it was. She came to stand in front of him, examining him with scathing determination: Guilt in his amber eyes, shame colored by despair, but he said nothing, only waited on her. He had never been cruel to her and didn't seem to enjoy hurting folks like her father and Stephen did, but he hadn't been much help that she'd ever seen, either.
"Aunt Elizabeth says you're going to help us, Uncle James."
He studied the white knuckles of his clasped hands, cold and deserving of her scorn, his sister's horror beating in him like a vengeful heart and as frightened as a lost child.
"She believes you, but I'm not so sure. If you betray us, Uncle ..." He startled again with a violent flinch to feel his niece's fingers under his chin forcing his head up, her unflinching eyes boring into him like she was drilling right down into his soul, "I will take the nastiest lie you could ever imagine to those seven men, and it will be a lie so awful, and I will so convincing, that they will kill you."
He could feel the skin around his eyes stretch in astonishment, he looked into her face and saw a person he'd never seen before. He believed her completely and had no voice to defend himself. He deserved it, he knew he did, they were in terrible danger that he could have prevented if he'd had an ounce of courage. A breath of character.
She looked at him long and searchingly, feeling his chin quiver in her hand and seeing the glimmer of tears in his eyes, guilty and promising wordlessly to do better, to be better. It was the most sincere expression she had ever seen on his face and, satisfied, she let him go and walked away as quietly as an Indian.
James watched her go, and took the threat from his twelve year-old niece directly to heart.
"Elizabeth, are you alright?"
Elizabeth's faint despairing laugh as Mary came to her was sodden and bitter to her own ears, and she unbent from her lap where she'd been sitting with her face in her hands trying to smother the sound of her weeping. She didn't look up as Mary's weight settled next to her and the woman's arm slid warm and strong around her shoulders, sisterly and comforting. Ready to take up battle for her however she could - as true a friend as Elizabeth had ever had, and her left hand crossed her body to take Mary's right in hers with inexpressible gratitude.
The fact was that she had no idea what to do about the sordid story James had so painfully unraveled to her. She could not tell Julianna, not ever; a child should never be burdened with the knowledge of a parent's utter ruthless evil. She didn't know how to stop it, either, despaired to know she had no means whatever to prevent her brothers - indeed, it might be all she could accomplish to escape with her life and her niece's, their only hope to flee with whatever funds they could gather before the renewed force of Gerald's power swept over everything that bore the Monroe name - including her beloved farm.
"Oh, Mary ... " How did she say her brothers planned to kill her if she failed to sign over the grants? How could she tell this upright woman that her own brothers would use the murder of an innocent man to trigger the war they needed, as if it was just another step in an orderly progression? She could hope for no help from legal or federal agencies, since the government needed that gold as much as Gerald wanted it, they would take without conscience what had been promised to the Lakota for ... what had Vin said, 'as long as the grass grew'? Everyone here was at risk of death should they prove inconvenient to her brother's plans, and should Gerald and Stephen prevail, they would be nearly untouchable thereafter, wielding a power both financial and political that would be felt in a hundred ways. It was despicable, monstrous - and it would work. Helpless tears fell as she swayed toward Mary, feeling her grip tighten sympathetically as she did.
"Are you ill?" Mary's worry was so sincere that for a moment all Elizabeth could do was sob against her, taking the comfort with shameful need, but she couldn't indulge it for long without Mary becoming alarmed, and they were visible where they were, midpoint between the two camps with the firelight painting the undersides of the trees overhead.
"I'm ... not ill ... " She said at last to forestall Nathan being summoned, her voice wet and tight-throated. Mastering herself, she murmured her thanks as Mary pressed a handkerchief into her hand, using it to wipe her face and taking that moment to also compose her expression and voice.
"What is it?" Mary asked gently, and when Elizabeth shook her head with a gesture of self-dismissal, as though she were a foolish woman giving in to a woman's weakness, Mary pressed with characteristic impatience,
"Elizabeth, you are not some weepy female prone to vapors or emotional collapse, something of significance has upset you. I've learned the value of female friends on the frontier, and I'd be that for you, if you let me. Is it Vin?"
The question was so unexpected that Elizabeth couldn't help looking up, knowing at once what Mary was intimating by the hesitant sympathy in her brilliant eyes. Mary obviously thought Vin might have upset her by refusing her, perhaps told her the romantic feelings were not reciprocated, or perhaps ended a growing affection between them that he'd concluded to be impossible. Mary knew him, and thought he would be kind that way, and honorable, ending something he was convinced would only hurt her further. It was all Elizabeth could do not to laugh; she didn't even know if Vin suspected she had such feelings for him, but Mary assumed he did, and Elizabeth's heart leapt with helpless hope at that unwitting testament to his good character - and more.
Mary knew him, Elizabeth thought, and was an intuitive and insightful person, as writers had to be. Obviously she had faith that Vin would put a stop to any relationship he believed unsuitable long before it became serious. But he had not done so. He had not done so.
In the midst of the dark turmoil of what she'd learned from James, a small brightness burst into flame that she could not find the will to be ashamed of. He had shown no reluctance or shyness with her - indeed, she had stood between his knees and been clasped close to him, had rested her cheek on the crown of his head and threaded her fingers in his hair so deep she had felt the smooth warm skin of his nape.
It was a true effort to recall herself to Mary's attentive eyes, astonished to have gone back so utterly to that memory, and to take such comfort from it. Elizabeth dropped her head again, worrying at the handkerchief and marveling at her ability to feel joy in Mary's misled sympathies when so much wickedness was shaping so terrible an event all around her. But it seemed to give her solid ground again where she had been floundering, and it made it easy, at last, to tell Mary everything. Mary was a fiercely intelligent woman, more courageous than any woman she knew, and her advice could only be helpful.
The only thing she did not say was that Duley had been Vin's wife, which wasn't her place to reveal to Vin's friends. He would do that himself if, and when, he chose to.
As it turned out, there was a great deal Mary already knew, and she was forthright at last with Elizabeth about who Orrin Travis really was and who the seven men were. Not outlaws, but lawmen - Elizabeth took in a strangled suck of air when Mary told her that and would have laughed at the irony if she could've. Finally they sat together in the darkness, the light of the campfires barely reaching them, allowing themselves to be seen so they would not be interrupted by worried searchers.
Elizabeth sighed; "I'm afraid of what Julianna will do, she's so attached to Vin, you know how children are ... what he loves, she loves, his fight becomes hers - he has no idea how headstrong she can be."
"He's attached to her, too," Mary said. "To be honest, I've never seen him take to a child this way. He likes my son, Billy, well enough and is unfailingly kind to him, but it isn't the same."
Elizabeth's tremulous smile was sad, but still pleased, though Mary wasn't certain why. Indeed, Mary wasn't sure why Vin's closeness to Julianna bothered her as it did except that it seemed so out of character for him.
Vin didn't get close to people even casually, didn't seem to know how, or be willing to undertake the risk to a heart she suspected had already been battered and scarred past repair. All the seven bore some damage that way, even J.D., young as he was. Stoicism was a strength, indeed it was - but it was also a defense Vin had mastered, and it made her sad that he couldn't open himself enough to be vulnerable in the ways that love required. Not just him, either. She knew how contrary she was being to have encouraged Elizabeth's infatuation at first, but further acquaintance had made it clear they were far too different to ever suit even if they truly liked one another. Julianna worming her way into the tracker's reclusive heart could only compound the hurt ... and he had evidently not discouraged Elizabeth. Did he know how she felt? He was naturally shy of women, skittish, as if they mystified him even though some drew his attention like a flame drew moths - but was he truly so naÔve as to have missed the depth of the woman's interest? It was not impossible - he was remarkably sophisticated in many ways considering his lack of education, but of relationships and interactions with people and societies he knew nothing whatever. Nor did he seem to want to.
There was too much uncharacteristic behavior going on out here in the frontier for her to get a firm grasp on any of it, and it was beginning to really annoy her. One thing Mary Travis did not accept well was uncertainty, and she'd suffered about all of that she was going to. Divisions among the seven that had never been there, that she'd never suspected could be there, Chris as coldly distant as a stone not only from Vin, but from her and everyone else, too. Her father was as worried as she had ever known him to be, and aligned with Ezra Standish - now there were strange bedfellows! All of this suddenly became more crucial in light of the tale of greed and corruption and unmitigated evil that Elizabeth was telling her now, it was a story that made her heart burn with outrage and the will to set it right.
"You have to tell Vin." Mary said firmly, and Elizabeth surprised her with immediate alarm, twisting to catch both of Mary's hands in hers and shaking her head with wide-eyed vehemence,
"No, no! You mustn't! Mary, your father-in-law and Vin's friends already know, and even they don't think he should be told."
Mary drew back in unhappy surprise, elegantly arched eyebrows drawing down. "Whyever not? Why wouldn't he want to help bring down the men behind all this? I mean ..." She fell awkwardly silent as she realized Elizabeth's brothers were among them, her face crimson.
But Elizabeth was beyond embarrassment at this point and looked at her squarely, saying, "They think Vin would either kill them, my brothers, or ride off to warn the Indians and risk bringing the conflict about before they find out exactly who the rest of those men are. Your father-in-law thinks they'll disappear into the woodwork and let my brothers take all the blame."
Ashamed of them, Mary could see that, but composed and prepared to face whatever came like a woman who'd been ashamed of her family before. Mary's hands turned under Elizabeth's so their palms were clasped tightly together as she tried to find words for the feelings she felt so sure of. She wasn't certain she could make Elizabeth understand this, and part of her was astonished that Chris, who she would have expected to consider this first and foremost, had obviously not.
She said, "I appreciate their concerns, he can be impulsive, but I've never known him to be less than thoughtful when others are involved. What they aren't considering is that if anything happens to you or to Julianna that Vin could have prevented had he known all this - and if he then finds out his friends kept it from him ... " Elizabeth's brow furrowed, then cleared as she understood Mary's reasoning.
Mary nodded grimly. "Elizabeth, he trusts them, and Vin doesn't trust easily. It would ruin him, and more than him!" Because Chris wouldn't survive the acrimonious loss of this friend or the purpose the seven men had forged together in Four Corners. For all his diamond-hard durability, Chris Larabee was as fragile a man as she'd ever met; Vin, that dusty little town, the redemptive work of protecting the folk, was all that kept Chris' urge to self-destruction in check, and even then it was too often a tenuous restraint. By the same token, those same forces kept Vin from disappearing into the wilderness forever, he was never comfortable in town and she'd known him to panic and run for the open places just from having too many people around him at one time. All of them needed each other and the tasks of Four Corners, all of them needed the unique combination they made together. Accident, fate, she didn't know what it was that bound them together, but she knew the bonds were there, and powerful, and of a purpose beyond her comprehension that she sometimes dared think divine.
Both Chris and Vin would break if this friendship did, and neither would ever be whole again.
Which led her back to wondering why Chris, of them all, would agree to keep something so important to Vin from him. She knew he was angry at Vin for something and had halfway concluded, with what information she had, that Vin might have some plan to help the Lakota resist the rush of miners and land speculators that the gunslinger disapproved of. But they would have reached an understanding between them long before this if such was the case, they always did when it was something crucial to one or the other of them, they always found a way to back each other up even in foolish nobilities. Vin had his reasons for being here, she wasn't blind, he was both deeply troubled and utterly focused on something, already in motion toward some private goal she wasn't privy to.
The women sat together, each lost in their disparate thoughts, facing away from each other but with their hands still linked. God, Mary thought with a tight little shake of her head, Chris Larabee was the most mule-headed, over-sensitive, hair-triggered man ... Vin trusted Chris with his life, she knew that, and Chris reciprocated that trust, or would have if he'd been thinking straight. The tracker took as much comfort in their friendship as Chris did, the two of them hardly had to speak to know what the other was thinking, and it had been that way from the day they'd met. The fact that Vin was so edgy about that, never nearer to bolting than when his friends loved him the most, was something Mary found enormously endearing.
Vin might not show it, but Mary had seen his face sometimes when he sat back from them all in the shadows of the saloon or lounging on the sunlit boardwalk, blank as an icon but his eyes scanning their faces with a deep private affection; she knew he loved them more than himself. More than enough to keep them out of something he figured could bring them trouble. So much that he might even sacrifice all they meant to him to keep them safe, condemning himself to being alone on the run before he'd risk them. She shook her head, mystified at the workings of men's minds, the convoluted patterns of their unknowable hearts.
Men didn't understand patience like a woman did, and none of Vin's friends understood how deep and profound his patience was, how constantly he called on it just to stay in Four Corners when every instinct wanted out into the wild and the wind. They saw it as a hunter's habit, a necessary detachment, but it was more than that, and held a hint of morbid darkness that had always made her vaguely anxious for him. Like he saw beyond the day he lived, waited for something no one else would see coming. Uneducated and rough and simple, but she'd seen him think his way around blind corners and size up a man or a situation no matter how clever a deception was being perpetrated. He had to know they were hiding something from him, his friends and Orrin, yet he wasn't asking.
In Elizabeth's recitation, Mary realized the first true fear she'd ever felt in the company of these seven capable men. They needed to set aside whatever it was that was grinding and irritating between them, they needed to be thinking and acting in that devastating concert that had protected the folks of Four Corners so many times. This had to stop.
"Tell Vin." She finally said again, her fingers tightening meaningfully as she turned to face Elizabeth once more. "You want to, I know you do, and you must. We can't perpetuate the errors these hard-headed men are making, and it isn't something that should be withheld from him whether it's easier on them or not."
"But your father ..."
"Is an excellent judge of men most times, Elizabeth, but Vin - he's never quite figured Vin out." An eloquent shrug and a small wry smile that Elizabeth had to return, because she knew better than anyone else that Vin would certainly not attack her brothers even if he should. She suspected that Chris Larabee knew that as well, and she resented him bitterly for letting the others justify leaving Vin out of the loop over thinking he was capable of bloody violence against them.
"If I do, Mary ... you must promise not to say anything to anyone. If Vin wants to take issue with them for it, it must be his decision, not ours."
"Chris?"
He half-turned, having heard Mary's approach, but didn't come off his tired slouch against the cedar. He took a sip of his coffee without looking at her as she came to his shoulder and stopped. She was not happy with him, he sensed that right away, as he always seemed to sense her moods. He bristled immediately in response - again, as he always seemed to do.
His eyes, when he finally acknowledged her, were as flat and expressionless as glass, but Mary felt the defiant challenge with a surge of impatience. Like a rebellious boy anticipating a scolding he did not intend to let touch him, and she knew her eyes got hot by the satisfied gleam in his. God, he was the most infuriating man!
So she uncrossed her arms and looked away into the night, breathed slowly and let her shoulders down. It was never easy off-balancing Chris enough to get an honest answer before he made her so mad she couldn't think straight, but this wasn't about her and Chris. His eyebrows lowered, a little perplexed by her silence, and she let that grow a moment before turning back to him and saying bluntly,
"What's going on between you and Vin?"
She'd asked him that once already, weeks ago, and he'd walked away from her like she wasn't even there, but tonight he was trapped between the cedar and the woman and couldn't escape that easily, though his face closed tight against her.
"Nothin', Mary. Not a damned thing." He said, never a man to swear in front of her, and she heard how much more true that was than he'd intended her to know, saw it in the pained flare of his eyes. There was nothing going on between them, and that was the problem.
Mary's heart softened unexpectedly to realize just how bothered he was by that fact, but she resisted the urge to touch him, as she so often had to do. The more vulnerable he felt, the more aggressive he would be, and she needed him to listen, now.
"I'd be a fool if I didn't know we were all in grave danger out here, Chris."
He sipped again, eyes glittering between the rim of the cup and the flat brim of his hat as if calculating her intentions and trying to guard against whatever she was working her way toward.
"And I can't, for the life of me, determine why now, of all times, you and Vin would be at odds when our lives depend on you."
A thinning of his mouth was all the clue she had that she'd gotten past his defenses, but it was enough. He regarded her coolly, crossing his ankles as he deepened his lean and set his free hand on his gun-butt almost sullenly, caught as well as he could be caught but trying not to show it. She just stood there looking into his eyes, using the impact of her beauty on him, using the force of the secret feelings both knew existed and neither ever admitted.
Finally he said with a tight smug smile, "You might ask Vin that, Mary."
Passing the buck that casually, and telling her everything she needed to know, he knew it as soon as he said it and cursed the intuitions this woman had about him that gave too much of his mind away when he didn't mean to.
Mary understood that Chris wasn't mad because Vin was doing something he disapproved of - he was mad because he didn't know what Vin was doing, and Vin wouldn't tell him. It was thinking his friend didn't trust him that had Chris so riled and, like a dangerous child, he was taking his revenge in keeping secrets of his own. She barely bit back an impatient huff of breath that would've given Chris the excuse to get mad and get away around her.
It didn't surprise her that Chris' hurt to think his friend was somehow betraying him overruled his good sense, his emotions were both mercurial and exceedingly volatile and he was accustomed to letting them lead him willy-nilly wherever they would without caring where he ended up ... it was what made him so truly dangerous, and what frightened her most about him.
For a long moment they regarded each other in a silence that progressed from mutual resentment to an admission of each other's troubled hearts. Always they reached their understandings in silence, she realized, it was when they started talking that the trouble started. That made her laugh and shake her head, freed her to curve her hand over the sleeve of his forearm tucked tight against his chest. She knew he didn't like her touching him, but it was not because he didn't like her touch. He did, far too much, and she saw that shifting in his eyes, the pupils dilating a bit at the intimacy.
"Must he explain himself to be your friend, Chris?" She asked, so near he could smell the light scent of her soap and admire the faint backlight on her hair.
"This ain't the time nor place t'be waging private wars, Mary." He said, wanting to kick himself when she smiled at him as if he'd just addressed his own actions.
"Indeed." She said with a ruefully affectionate smile, rubbing her hand on his arm as if she were soothing a fractious horse but allowing not even a hint of gloating, his anger wasn't her purpose.
"Do you doubt he'd be at your back if you needed him there?" She asked quietly, so close to him that their living warmth mingled in the fraction of space still open between them. He didn't answer her and his eyebrows were tweaked together.
"Do you think he would give his life for you?" This was a far more pointed question, and it slid past his frustrated anger like a cool thin dagger to his heart. "Do anything to protect you? Even keep something to himself that might endanger you? Even lose your friendship to keep you safe?" Again, and again she twisted that delicate dagger so gently, so kindly, as if healing rather than hurting him. His eyes got dark and deadly serious, angry hat having been taken so thoroughly and so tenderly, furious to have her understand so well places in his soul he didn't even venture to look. He had nowhere to put that fury, though, because she was right on the money.
There was a way a woman touched herself when she first knew she was with child that Vin remembered with cutting clarity. A tremulous spread of wondering fingers across her womb at the quickening, both hands cradling in a terrified exultation.
He'd been all the way across the meadow and had known at once what Duley had discovered, everything in him went stone-still as that knowledge had filled him up in a single surging rush so huge he couldn't find the edges of it. She'd looked for him, then, eyes rising bright as stars, searching ... and he was on fire inside, a great outreaching blaze of such joy that he couldn't feel anything else anywhere, couldn't see anything but her, like a candle burning him home from a lifelong night. A child ... great God. His child, alive in that very moment within a body more precious to him than his own. His, like only his Ma had ever been his, like even Duley wasn't, dear to him as the air he breathed. Tanner blood in a woman with the Tanner name.
He'd felt the grass and the earth of the meadow under his knees without knowing how, since he'd been standing. He remembered his hands reaching as if they had a life apart from him as she came, running, her hair sailing out behind her in a vibrant flag. How she'd curved over him, her hands running down his back, as he'd wrapped his arms around her hips and pressed his face into the softness of the vessel she'd become, and they had stayed that way a long while, pressed close, each searching out that third heartbeat between them.
She'd let him take her clothes from her, then, his hands trembling and humble on the buckskin ties of her dress, slipping it slowly from her ivory skin while she'd smiled down at him ... Lord, that tender smile he'd never seen on her face, and he thought he'd known them all. Like all the world's mysteries had been explained to her, luminous and loving and fixed on him like they made the world between them and needed no more. Looking at her as if every inch was a miracle, touching her like his hands were awestruck supplicants and she glory personified, kneeling before her, the goddess of his heart. She was. He was. And she'd been different to his eyes and to his hands than she'd been just the night before, informed with a new perfection.
He'd laid her down in that meadow and loved her feeling like every touch of lips and hands and skin was a prayer, overwhelmed and willingly lost in a feeling so enormous it hardly knew how he could be so gentle. Every move a prayer of thanksgiving, a wonderment and a miracle.
She'd held his head to her throat as they trembled together, he'd tasted her warm moist skin and inhaled her fragrance and never wanted to breathe any other air or ever let her go past the reach of his hands.
"Vin?"
He dropped the shells he'd been holding in a tiny ringing scatter between his feet, the task of loading them into the gunbelt across his knees long forgotten in the reel of that memory, yanked back to the night and across the years that had passed since then by Elizabeth's call. Angry at the interruption, mindlessly furious for a moment as if he'd been dragged up off her warm and living body by a stranger, and his face as he jerked around frightened Elizabeth into halting in her own footsteps, her face paling.
"I'm sorry ..." He said, his throat not allowing more than a rasp of voice to come, "You startled me's all ..." To hide his shaken anguish he bent over and began to pick the shells up again, his fingers trembling and his breathing too tight for civility. She hadn't moved out of the shadows by the time he looked around again, and actually retreated from the flare of impatience he couldn't completely keep hidden. Then he clearly saw her distress and felt an immediate guilt to have caused it, followed by the quick realization that he had not - she had brought it with her. She looked like a ghost in the soft darkness, her hair ...
He stood up quickly, laying the gunbelt aside and going to her, since she obviously was not going to move into the light, and her eyes were furtive and frightened.
"What is it, Elizabeth?"
She only looked up at him without knowing how to begin, suddenly voiceless, bloodless in the safety of his nearness. Griefstruck, but not for herself this time. What she would say to him would break his heart in so many ways, it would pit him against enemies he would want to kill and could not touch, it would show him the unavoidable destiny of his Indian friends and hold him back from serving Duley's need, which was everything to him.
Because she suddenly looked so frail and scared, because her face in the dark was so like Duley's and her hair glowed with that blood-red gleam, he offered himself, arms opening, and with a small choked sound she came gratefully against him. Her arms wrapped with surprising strength around his waist under his coat, and his encircled her in faint alarm, dreams tattering away, automatically providing shelter and taking them both back a few steps into the night away from the firelight with a fiercely protective urge he didn't question.
"What's happened?" Softly, one hand spread on her back, the other insinuating itself gently beneath her chin and lifting her head up from his chest so he could see her tear-streaked face. She shook her head, her eyes huge, too overwrought for the moment to speak, and he grazed her cheek with the back of his knuckles and took her back against him, letting her tuck her head in tight and holding her with a firm calm he didn't much feel himself. He hadn't held a woman since he'd lost Duley, and yet in the last few weeks he'd held this one time and again and had taken such comfort and strength from her embrace than he had no qualms about giving that in return now.
It was a while before he felt her take a deep shuddering breath that signaled her readiness. Though she began speaking within the circle of his arms, her voice half-muffled against him, he broke from her almost immediately to a remove of several feet, sinking down onto his heels as he listened. As he heard.
His head lowered a moment or two thereafter, his arms crossed over his upraised knees like he was suddenly very cold, and Elizabeth knew it was a mercy not to see his face as this awful truth spun out like a bad smell in the night air.
He listened because he could do nothing else, not move or speak or stop the grind of pain inside that grew ever more enormous. After a moment he closed his eyes, as if that would help, unable to bear the sight of the fine world Duley's brothers went so thoughtlessly about destroying. Duley hovered near him, but there was no comfort to be had.
When he opened his eyes again, looking out into the black night as she told him all she'd learned, Elizabeth was stunned to catch the silvery spark of a tear dropping off his chin in the dim light. His face was incongruous to that, his expression was not sorrowful, his unblinking eyes were wide with a deeply focused fury, his face almost void of emotion. It was as if someone else were weeping through his eyes while he thought of things deeper than sorrow.
In fact, Vin was distantly surprised himself to feel tears overrun his eyes down his face, but he knew they were Duley's tears and he let them come for her because she had no eyes of her own to cry them. He knew they were hers, because he himself was as cold and clear as deep ice, and wanting to kill had never made him weep and never would.
Four days later they breached the last pass through the Laramie mountains, having followed the river of the same name, and traveled down the gradually opening grade into the broad rolling delta formed from the confluence of that river and the North Platte. The plains rolled away like a time-trapped surge of sea into a grey-hazed infinity, veins of streams and rivers picked out by trees along their hidden courses. It was cold despite the weak sunshine through a thin layer of diffuse clouds, but it was a beautiful and humbling sight for those able to appreciate such things. Another day would put them in Ft. Laramie.
The wet earth gave off a rich loamy scent hinting at spring, fetlock-high grass still winter-brown, but greening close to the ground in swaths that marked where each day's sun lay longest. Sodden earth muffled the hoof-falls but for the occasional liquid squish at the bottom of slopes or hollows; restless winds laid the dry grass over in thin quick whispers. They went in a quiet unbroken except by the creaks of leather and the chime of bits and tack. Ponds of snow-melt mirrored the sky until broken by wind or waterfowl, hawks rode the uneasy thermals above in feathered dips and flares against the unpredictable gusts. Lark buntings popped up out of the grass before the leading edge of their travel, quick low flutters away and back into the grass beyond, disappearing as quickly as they'd appeared.
Everything was on the edge of spring, but winter still rimmed the wind with icy edges, and the sky still threatened rain or snow.
Buck paused at the top of a rounded ridge and arched his long back wearily, appreciating the view as he appreciated everything beautiful, but by now wishing it had breasts and hips. It'd been a damned long time, wasn't good for a man.
Nathan pulled up even with him on the right, dark eyes focused ahead on Chris as he rode straight on through the formation of soldiers, driving them into momentary disarray as if daring them to do anything about it. Josiah shadowed him off to one side, just there in case any of them decided to pick up the gauntlet Chris kept laying down. The healer's sensitive face was burdened with misgivings, and the long slow look he took of the terrain was more uneasy than admiring. From the corner of his eye he saw Buck glance at him, and he wasn't surprised to find J.D. on the gunslinger's heels, he'd been sticking close as a duckling the last few days. Nathan didn't blame him a bit considering how strange things were.
In this placid-seeming plain Nathan had an incongruous feeling of walls closing in, a descending threat in the exposed vulnerability that had him remembering similar placid meadows of the south right before they filled with smoking carnage. He wasn't the only one to feel ominous premonitions in the divisions among them. They'd had their differences, all strong-willed and stubborn, but this was something different and more dangerous, he knew. Josiah had become increasingly introspective, but he wasn't sharing whatever understanding he'd reached with Nathan, as he usually did.
"You seen Vin any time in the last couple of days, Buck?" Nathan asked quietly, worried on that score, too.
"Y'mean, actually seen 'im, or just caught a glimpse from a half-mile off?" Buck's hat-brim dipped as his grey stepped down into a shallow tributary streambed and across with a rocking jerk the lanky gunslinger rolled bonelessly through. He flicked J.D. a ruefully reassuring smile on the other side of him, one shoulder angled casually, and answered Nathan, "He's been around, heard Peso makin' trouble with the mules last night."
Nathan snorted, shook his head and moved on. He wasn't reassured, though, Buck would lay money on it. Nathan likely thought Vin was avoiding him like most of them did when they had injuries not quite troublesome enough to be incapacitating. None of them took inactivity well, Vin particularly, and none of them had figured out how to convince Nathan it was no disrespect to his skill or devotion.
Buck saw the worry in J.D.'s fine-boned face, too, but he had nothing more of reassurance to give but his presence. Patient with J.D. as he wasn't with anything else but persuading a woman out of her clothes, he leaned over and slapped the kid's knee with a quick grin.
"Don't worry about it, J.D., yer givin' yerself wrinkles! Things have a way of workin' out like they're supposed to."
"Oh, that's just great - what if we're all supposed to end up dead?" The kid grinned when he said it, but he was close enough on Buck's heels to hear the laugh that drifted back over his shoulder.
They'd been keeping in close proximity to one another in case any of Monroe's soldiers wanted to even up the score from the first night - by the ugly looks some weren't forgiving. Tired as they were, it didn't help to have double duty guarding from enemies within as well as without; it put Buck in mind of a painting he'd once seen of a painter painting a picture. Trouble inside of trouble.
Buck knew the rest weren't real happy that he was avoiding Chris, looking to him as they did for clues to Larabee's unpredictable moods, but Buck was smart enough to know he could be irritating to Chris when he was walking the edge like he was now, and he didn't want to be the one who set off the explosion ticking away in his old friend. He'd long ago learned to be wary of familiar warning signs; that white look to Chris' eyes before he either went on a bender or killed someone, the crazy hunger for the distraction of violence that wouldn't help anybody but Chris if it broke loose. Buck figured the responsibility for Mary and the Judge kept Chris from that bender with Ezra's cask, but those hostile soldiers were all too tempting and Buck didn't intend to get caught in any crossfire.
Fortunately, Monroe's troops were experienced enough to recognize the devil tempting them to two-step with him, none had yet come up to his baiting. He had to be bothered deep and true to be looking for trouble so single-mindedly, Chris was never more dangerous than when he had a problem he couldn't solve stuck in his craw.
J.D.'s hazel eyes were sharp to the laconic slouch of Buck's spine in the saddle and the loose set of his long fingers on the reins, looking for something - anything - to give him some clue where it was all heading and really getting sick of everybody just saying nothing and nobody asking. He didn't get that, didn't think he'd ever learn not to say what was on his mind - and hell if he wanted to if all it gained was an acceptance of confusion. J.D. couldn't do that, he wanted answers to his questions, always.
Four Corners' young sheriff knew he could miss signals big as a barn sometimes, but he didn't miss them among the seven much anymore, and he was keenly aware that things were going wrong with a capital W. Not that they'd been right from the git-go, but the tension level had racheted up significantly in the last few days. Even Mary now had a grim look to her, Buck had complained about how long it'd taken him to coax a smile out of her earlier in the day. Miz Monroe was putting on a cheerful face, but J.D. didn't believe it, and Julianna was spending every evening with them at their campfire, leaving only when her Aunt called her to sleep. Like her own kin were her enemies, J.D. couldn't quite figure that out. And Buck was just being too quiet for comfort, watching and listening with a keen and subdued attention J.D. could hardly believe he was capable of.
Careful and Buck Wilmington were barely acquainted, and him being that way now was making J.D. positively twitchy. They all seemed to be off in one way or another, not acting like themselves, edges and corners appearing between them where it'd always been a right comfortable fit. He might be a total greenhorn on the frontier, but he didn't think it was a good idea to be at odds with hostile Indians and hostile soldiers around. He'd always counted on the force they created together, he'd never been scared of dying.
Vin had truly become a ghost at the farthest edges of their days, disappearing into the pre-dawn mist each morning and slipping back among them with the darkest shadows of the night; most were tucked up in their bedrolls by the time Peso turned up in the remuda. Whether or what he ate no one knew, he seemed to be living on coffee alone unless he was foraging out on the trail, and he hadn't exchanged a word with anyone that J.D. knew of for the last four days.
Buck straightened up ahead of him and J.D. saw Jules racing back down the column's backtrail toward them, a brace of prairie hens fluttering wildly in her hands.
"That boy sure can provender, can't he, kid? We're eatin' good on this trail." Buck planted his big hand on the gray's croup as he twisted around with a grin, looking forward to a good dinner and feminine company both. "J.D., is she ridin' with just her knees?"
J.D. flushed proudly as he watched her, exuberantly confident and doing just what he'd told her, a smart kid who had a real feel for horses. Last night she'd found a string of trout and smallmouth bass, the night before a small mule deer doe taken with the bow, which impressed Jules mightily. As much as J.D. appreciated Vin hunting for them, it worried him some that the tracker seemed so anxious to avoid gunfire.
Buck turned back around, his wide-boned shoulders squaring happily, but J.D. wasn't buying it. Buck was nervous as a cat in a kennel.
Actually, J.D. had seen Vin as recently as last night. He'd waked to see him sitting on his heels curved over the embers of their campfire like he'd just come in and was bone-cold, a coffee cup between both hands held near his face for the warmth of the steam rising off it. He seemed steady, though the faint red light made the hollows and angles of his face look hard and haunted. J.D. had turned the motion towards getting up to join him into a simple shift of position when Vin's head cocked around toward the sound, realizing immediately that Vin in no way wanted company. He'd seen friendlier looking wolves, and the red from the embers had cast his eyes in a frighteningly hellish glow. Something awful and deep was happening in him, J.D. had known it at first glance. He'd seen that smoldering will to do bloody mayhem on Chris' face often enough, but it scared him to find it on Vin's.
Of them all, J.D. had always felt most at ease around Vin. The tracker wasn't judgmental or impatient, didn't try to school him, just let him learn what he wanted by watching, and he'd answer even a stupid question so J.D. didn't feel stupid for having asked it. He just made J.D. feel ... quiet inside so he could notice for himself the small things about how the world fit together, glimpse the unnoticed logic of the wild that most folks struggled against. Vin knew there was a way to fit into that as natural as breathing. Like slipping into a current, he said, surrendering to it. J.D. wasn't sure what that meant entirely, but he knew Vin was right.
Some folks thought Vin just didn't care much about anything, didn't laugh too loud or lose his temper, kept his thoughts private and took whatever trouble came like it was no trouble at all. But J.D. knew Vin cared, he knew he did, because he wouldn't have stayed in Four Corners otherwise. He'd learned some about Vin while he was learning from him, he'd seen the peace in his eyes in the wild and knew what a struggle it sometimes was for Vin to be held back from it by the needs of that town. But he stayed, against his own nature.
Since he counted Vin his friend as much as any of the other six, he hadn't been shy about objecting to excluding Vin from their information no matter who gave him hard looks for it. So he didn't say anything about having seen him because it was obvious Vin was dealing with some painful private matter that a friend would protect for him.
Before dawn the next morning, however, they all saw Vin and might've wished they hadn't. A commotion among the stacked goods and pack-frames off their mules jerked them prematurely from sleep, and there was Vin, one knee centered solidly in the chest of Monroe's sergeant and the mare's leg in both hands cocked under his chin so hard he was seeing Josiah's affably smiling face upside down. The sergeant was a very large man and Vin looked like a tomcat on a bull, but that bull was belly up and not moving, arms wide and hands open in mute surrender.
"Was there something you needed?" Josiah leaned over and peered with insincere curiosity, his right arm extended and maintaining a bead on the sergeant's associate, who was frozen behind Vin in the act of drawing his sidearm. That one's hands held open in the air and he blanched as the rest appeared around them, guns in hand and clearly disgruntled to be yanked out of their bedrolls before they were ready.
"Ain't no call for trouble, mister, we wasn't doin' nothing wrong!" He explained quickly, eyes darting toward the rest of his troop in the just-waking camp too many yards beyond. "Two of our pack horses came up lame is all ... we just wanted to see if we could shift some to your mules, they ain't bearin' so much by now ..."
"And for that you needed to ... what - pick up our packs and maybe weigh them?" Josiah asked with a curious and scornful smile.
"We were just checkin' is all, that's all!"
"Checkin', were you?" Buck smiled with all his teeth and holstered his pistol with a menacing step forward, "Maybe we just better check inside your heads for brains, eh?" Nathan's arm across his chest stalled Buck, though the healer's eyes were no more friendly. Nobody was sure whether the men had been stealing or snooping, but Vin and Josiah clearly held both to be equal sins.
Vin reluctantly unfolded up off the downed man with enough fire remaining in his eyes to keep that man very careful as he got up. Though there was movement over at the soldier's fire, these two made a great show of avoiding their own weapons. Both startled badly when Chris Larabee broke off the shadows and came in close, black and narrow as a sapling in the barest breaking of day, and his face as cold and silent as that empty hour.
"They had hands on our goods?" He asked Josiah, who nodded, but Chris was looking hard at Vin. Mighty territorial for a man who didn't care about anything material but his guns, his horse and his coat. His look wandered down, noticing which packs were pulled out of place, and he felt Vin's attention to him as he did so without wholly understanding it. Nor did he understand the long measuring look Vin exchanged with Josiah before he mounted Peso, already saddled, and left the camp again. But he intended to.
Through the work of breakfasting and outfitting for the day's ride, Chris watched Josiah and let his mind run in an unconsidered direction, a little annoyed not to have thought of what would be as natural to Vin as breathing. Maybe to Josiah as well, both of them with history among the tribes. Vin cared about the Lakota and these lands with a passion he'd never seen in him for anything else. He watched Josiah put those packs up on mule-back and cover them as if he expected weather, though the sky wasn't too inclement. And he noticed that Josiah took the string of those three mules he'd packed and dallied their string around his own saddle-horn.
Raw wind cut at his face and dragged water from his eyes, but he was too raw inside to notice, breathing high and tight and his fingers white with cold flexing in a panicked nonsense on the reins. He'd been on that soldier before he knew he'd moved, had spotted the furtive movement and been on it with a rage so immediate and full that he'd almost killed that soldier before he'd forced his finger still. Wanted to so badly he couldn't seem to see or hear anything else, actually anticipated watching the top of the bastard's head open up and empty itself onto the ground next to those packs he'd been poking at too curiously.
Vin rode off from the camp feeling Chris' eyes on his back like burning coals and struggling to quiet the thunderous hammer of his heartbeat so it didn't drown out his thoughts completely. He wanted to run flat-out and Peso knew it, jostling against his control with a willingness to do that and confused at being held in. He wanted to scream until his throat was too raw to make another sound ever again, to kill until there wasn't a soldier left in the world to threaten the land and the people. It was nearly impossible to conceive of something so enormous, something with all the power of the enduring ages written in the mountains and rivers and forests and these gorgeous breathless plains, being brought low by a force as puny and undeserving as human greed. They didn't even know what they were trying to kill, they only knew it made them feel how small and blind they really were.
Duley wasn't dreams now, nor comfort, and he wished for the will to push her away. He lacked it entirely, she was too strong in her grief. Now Duley was tragic bloody nightmares of memory and prescience that tore him up from exhausted sleep until he no longer tried. He didn't want to feel so much, it interfered with the work he had to do, and no matter how the getting there and getting through it changed, it remained to be done. He couldn't hold to a straight line in his mind with the storm of her regret shaking his foundations, and he couldn't help the fury that was way too close to blaming her.
So he did what any driven animal would; set his eye on what it took to get free and clawed his way to it. Getting the guns and word to Tashunke Witco, stopping the murder of that innocent man, one and then the other and he didn't care that any white man might think his priorities perverse. He had no idea how he was going to accomplish either except to get ahead of the soldiers with the guns, then come back and stop Gerald and Stephen Monroe from profiting off an innocent man's death - an innocent people's.
They came up a long slope to a table-top thick with grass, Peso trotting on purposefully as Vin twisted in the saddle to train his distance glass along the rims of the many hills and soft gulleys to the west; armies could hide in this seemingly flat land and be on you before you registered the sound of hooves. He was standing in the stirrups, taking Peso's motion with his knees, as he turned back and the edge of the mesa gave way to the shallow river valley below. The big horse rumbled startlement and stopped under the sudden grip of legs and reins. Ft. Laramie. He'd been smelling it for two hours without realizing it, noticing the complete absence of game.
There was a sound, for a minute he couldn't tell if it was in his head resonating his own feelings. A tolling, high and flat with a sharp dissonance, rhythmic. Stopping, then starting again. He sat, knees clamped tight and his hands lost on the unfolded length of distance glass, and stared. Horrified.
A sound that had never been heard on these plains, and as he saw what it was his heart sank like a stone. An iron bridge was being built across the loop of river behind the Fort, already half-triumphant across that wild water in a reaching jar of black beams. Something broke inside that could ever be made right again.
In a terrible dreaming state of mind he walked Peso down the gentle incline toward the trees along that river, and the lodges he'd seen raised on the near side. He crossed out of sight of the bridge and came out wet to the thighs without noting it, Peso walking with a casual rock and sway. He stopped among a small copse of cottonwoods and looked in, fading in his own mind into the air and the earth with wanting not to be seen. And wanting not to see.
Seven dilapidated lodges huddled over-close, and his nostrils flared at the quarrelsome smells, his skin prickled with the obvious apathy. One horse. Only one horse, and not a good one. Most of the once fine buffalo-hide lodges were patched with deer-hides, knotted and misshapen here and there from spliced lodge-poles, the proud colorful murals flaked and smeared into near obscurity. He didn't know how they could stand to look at them. A woman sat listlessly in front of one of the lodges picking insects out of a bowl of flour, a dusky half-blood child at her knee. Her own hair was dull and tangled, unadorned.
He saw only two warriors, old men in shabby cotton shirts asleep in the sun near a drying rack hung with four or five strips of something. He heard the sound of women's voices arguing shrilly, and also the sound of a man's final pleasure, watching a soldier emerge from the hide door of one of the lodges fastening his suspenders with an expression of scornful triumph on his face. Perhaps the young men were on good horses and hunting to fill those racks, he reached after that faint hope, then let it go. There was no such anticipation in the dark lifeless faces there, as there were no buffalo left to hunt.
Duley had gone silent, forced to give way before the greater sweep of Vin's own feelings. Never in his life would he be able to put to words how that afternoon gutted his hope, nor would he ever want to. Oh, how the mighty hath fallen . like the breath of God in his ears using the memory of Vance Monroe's voice.
He sat there for a very long time as the sight seeped into his soul like an indelible stain, then he lowered his head and looked at his hands a good while longer, studying the tools that were all a man had against evil. His were impossibly puny against what was coming, but he would wield them with every ounce of will and breath and blood and life in him.
When they crested the last hill with twilight beginning to lay purple layers in the east, they saw the white narrow-windowed boxes of Fort Laramie below, and Peso in a strict horizontal canter back and forth across the slope. Vin was standing high in the stirrups with the reins caught up close to his chest, focused on that incongruous mill of civilization in the middle of the wilderness like it was all he could see. Back and forth the pair of them went at a quick disturbed pace, like there was a fence there Peso wanted to jump that Vin was holding him back from.
The mules passed him, and then, further to his right, the Monroes and the troops in orderly pairs, Julianna craning around and trying to stop and turn back when she saw them hesitating behind them. Vin didn't let Peso set a foot beyond that line, and Peso didn't like it, that stubborn black smelled stables and comfort and fought for it to no avail.
One by one the rest caught on that slope, too, watching him, as if he was a rock in a creek catching sticks as they floated by. They ignored the curious looks turning back their way from the soldiers, the Monroes, Mary and Travis. Ezra, who'd been riding near Stephen, spoke to him briefly and then dropped back, turning to trot upslope toward them.
Finally Vin came back down the invisible line to where they were waiting in a loose scatter, looking at him with wary curiosity. None of them liked the way he faced them off, the way it felt like they were opposite sides of something crucial to him. They hadn't been given that choice, and Buck's grey took a step under him, uneasy.
"Ain't goin' in there." He declared flatly, a little flushed and his face hard angled and too pale. No one said anything, his eyes ticked by each of their faces, bright and burning and strange. "Don't like the look nor the smell nor the company in there." Set like iron, implacable as the moon in the sky. Peso fidgeted and tossed under the hard clamp of his legs and the drop of his bootheels in the stirrups, reins so short the gelding's chin kept tapping his own chest. They knew Vin was that skittish, too.
Still nobody said anything, not really too surprised that Vin was so repulsed by the promise of chairs and beds, beer and women that had them all longing toward it with patient optimism. Ezra rolled his eyes with a soft snort.
"Figger I'll go scout out wide and slow ahead to Fetterman, take that mule n' trade goods to smooth the way."
'Figger', meaning 'this is what I'm doing and to hell with what anyone says', and Chris' eyes got wide and interested. This was where Vin slipped away from them, cut them loose from whatever he was doing that made him afraid for them, and maybe they'd see him alive again, maybe not. Here was where the secret floated up to the surface, and Chris had every intention of understanding exactly what that was.
He regarded Vin stolidly, so apart from them already like it was a choice he'd made and meant to make for them all. Well, Chris was not a man who let others tell him what he'd be doing or thinking. He'd thought Vin knew that. In fact, he'd thought Vin understood him a whole lot better than it appeared he did if Chris' ruminations were correct. Chris didn't intend to be on the opposite side of whatever Vin was planning to do unless he set himself there, that was a choice he'd damned well make for himself.
So Chris nodded pleasantly and legged up right next to Vin so their mounts were nose to tail. A jerk of reins brought his unwilling horse right into Peso, his calf pressed against Vin's and the tracker's jaw jumped warily. Then Chris smiled and said mildly; "Sounds like more fun than Laramie. Why, I figure I'll just go along n' keep you company."
Vin's eyes widened with a dismay too great to conceal, and Chris' eyebrows rose in sardonic innocence. As the tracker opened his mouth to argue, Chris leaned over and set his hand on the horn of Peso's saddle, his cocked face so close to Vin's that if Peso had lurched forward they would've knocked skulls. His voice was soft and meaningful as silk slicing open on a razor.
"Cowboy, I'm done havin' you think for me, and if I'm not going with you, then I'm gonna be right damned behind you lookin' t'find out why."
Threat and promise both, and Chris didn't much care which Vin believed just now. The tracker's eyes searched over his face, panic Chris could plainly see that brought a bristle of warning up his spine. But he knew Vin Tanner was ruthlessly quick-minded, he'd abandon even the most carefully thought-out plan the instant it was compromised and automatically begin reworking around a new - and in this case unavoidable - obstacle. He'd be thinking he could get away a few hours if need be, lose Chris in the mountains and come back for him when he'd done what he intended to do, he could lie and say the mules had been stolen from him ... Chris saw every one of those thoughts and anger flared hot as coals in his eyes. A meaningful tip of his head was all he needed to tell Vin he knew the run the tracker's mind had just gone down, and how unlikely it was to happen.
"I reckon I'll go along, too, you don't mind." The low rumble of Josiah's voice snapped Vin's head around and the Preacher met his hard look head-on with nothing but determined kindness in his expression. Vin's breath went out of him in a choppy rush and he shook his head disconsolately, taking Peso a step away from Chris, bright desperation flowering too fast to know what to do. He couldn't look at Chris, knowing he was giving himself away to that eagle-eyed man who already seemed to have guessed too much - who could get himself killed guessing too much now. And Josiah . he didn't want to guess what Josiah already knew, not acknowledge the reassurance he'd been taking in him for it.
He blew out a furiously frustrated breath, numbed by how quickly everything had changed. He was trying to keep them safe, why couldn't they just let him?
But he couldn't stop them, he understood that in their eyes and also understood with a sinking heart that it was Duley's will to have them with him. Every step he'd taken since he'd seen Elizabeth Monroe on the street of Four Corners was Duley's doing, every thing that had happened, she had by the hand still even so many years gone, and more than him, it seemed. That Duley loved him was the core of all of his strength, and now he knew she wanted no harm to come to him in righting this wrong for her. With a soft surrendering sigh, he figured she couldn't have chosen better men to do that for her.
Chris was startled to see the sliver of a shaken smile cross Vin's down-turned face as Stephen Monroe and Travis approached up the slope behind him, Gerald and six soldiers further back talking among themselves as everyone else continued down toward the river.
When Vin looked up, his face was calm and quiet. "Suit yerselves." He said to Josiah and Chris, and though his face was tired body and soul, there was a hint of a dark humor; "But I ain't goin' into that damned Fort."
Josiah smiled, the broad pale brim of his hat dipping with the first true hope he'd yet had.
Vin straightened up and let Peso go enough so the frustrated animal tried to break, and when he took the black back in hand, he was in line with the other six and facing Stephen Monroe.
"Is there a problem, gentlemen?" Stephen said, and Chris cocked his head back with a lazy smile and said,
"No, no problem, we're were just decidin' who'll be scouting the road ahead. Me n' Vin, Josiah here, will go on ahead and meet you near Fetterman in a few days."
"My brother will have something to say about that!" Stephen said, though he didn't really have any reason for objecting other than that it seemed dangerous to let any of these men get off on their own away from Gerald's eye. Still . that would leave only four - well, three, Ezra was firmly in the Monroe pocket.
"I reckon he will." Chris grinned, "And I'm bettin' it's 'good-bye', what'd'you think, Buck?"
"Oh, I dunno - maybe 'good riddance'?"
"Travis?" Gerald and his men came up at Orrin's back in a thunder of hooves, spreading out on the slope as if to flank them until Buck and J.D. moved to prevent it. Travis made no reply, obviously not one to make decisions for these bodyguards of his. None of the regulators had appeared to make any particular move, but all their coats were swept back from their guns.
A ripple of black amusement went among them and Orrin Travis' dark eye flickered across their faces in unnoticed and hopeful consideration. Give them a common enemy and they were as tight in an instant as they'd ever been, as they'd always been.
There was some argument, of course, Gerald Monroe wasn't left out of any decision easily. But once the notion settled, Chris noticed a thoughtful half-heartedness about Monroe's objections that took him less than a minute to figure out. He'd grinned at him then, a broad back-tilted gleeful grin that made it plain the men he was leaving behind were enough to handle anything Gerald Monroe could throw at them. Travis, too, set his jaw in pugnacious warning so Gerald had to re-think the advisability of letting these three out of his sight. If he couldn't take the four who were left, there might be no advantage and more disadvantage than he liked to allow. Stephen might count Standish their secret ally, but that one had shark teeth under his fancy gold-fish prettiness and Gerald wasn't convinced. Even the stripling in the foolish hat had the temerity to smile at him then, a line of lazy shoulders and snapping eyes like a gang of street-toughs mocking him.
Gerald's measure of the seven men was becoming more - he wouldn't say nervous, because Gerald Monroe didn't get nervous. But cautious, yes, because they'd answered each testing escalation of hostilities with off-handed combativeness and had able to back it up every time. He'd hired many dangerous men in his life, had them on his payroll right now, in this very company, men to whom dirty dealing and death was a craft practiced for calculated profit. But the gunslingers of the west, he was finding out, lived every moment on that mortal edge without expectation of anything other than survival. Violence and death out here was not a practice, not a tool taken out when the occasion arose, but everyday instinct. They were far more dangerous in that constant mind-set than any hired assassin, and far more independent of Travis' control than any bodyguards would be.
He halfway suspected they might be mercenaries; they had that hard-eyed contempt for authority, that ruthlessly independent and rootless air he'd found common to such hired men. If they were, all it would take was more money to loosen their tongues, even sway them to his own employ. But he was too far from certain to risk the offer, and unwilling to risk offending whoever they worked for and profit beyond what he'd originally conceived. The idea of being an international power was enormously appealing.
But though the seven followed Larabee's instructions like men who owed obedience to no one, mercenaries were too transient to function so efficiently as a team; these men had a rhythm and cooperation of action among them that was too experienced and cohesive. They and their purpose were confusing and Gerald Monroe couldn't allow confusion right now with so many political and business interests involved, particularly when they wore their animosity so plainly despite the number of Gerald's men and the unlimited potential for more. That they were more than just dangerous, but dangerous to him was becoming more and more apparent, and he'd hoped to take advantage of the group splitting to deal with them in two smaller groups. Obviously that wasn't something any of them were worried about.
He smiled back at Larabee because he could do nothing else right now, seeming unruffled, but his eyes caught Stephen a glancing blow that said he could expect raised voices tonight. Stephen's failure to find out exactly who these seven men were, which he should've done the moment they joined up, was becoming unexpectedly crucial. Stephen had been played like a fiddle.
James, behind both brothers so none but the seven saw, met Ezra's eyes as the gambler tipped the curled brim of his fine black hat with a significant look. The fear that had risen immediately to discover three of the regulators departing rose again at the realization that he was being drawn in among the four who remained. Not only Standish, but each of the other three took his measure, and he struggled to conceal an abiding sense of inadequacy.
It was agreed, because Vin wouldn't be budged an inch closer to the fort than he was, that he'd set camp up here while Josiah and Chris went on into Ft. Laramie to outfit what mules they'd need, then get back up for the night. Vin remained on the ridge watching after the six in a loose knot with James at their edge, talking quietly. Shaking it out among them, he knew, deciding how this should play out. Today he didn't have a part in that and it was an unsteady feeling. He wondered if they'd felt the same being left out of his plans all this time. Having Chris and Josiah along now would complicate things a whole lot, yet it was hard not to feel a small relief at the prospect of having them at his back.
When the six and the Monroes caught up with the rest of the train halfway to the Fort, Vin saw Elizabeth and Jules mingle in among the six. After a moment's conversation in which Jules was continually being drawn back from riding up the hill, he saw the pale oval of Elizabeth's face turn toward him, and she and Jules started back up the slope, Jules racing ahead.
He took several long deep breaths against the constriction in his chest from how unwilling he was to say good-bye to either of them, having hoped to slip away, cowardly as that was. Too raw, his emotions running so hot ... he stopped himself, ground the cupped palm of his hand back and forth over the smooth butt of the mare's leg for the distraction of fresh pain in the tender cat-clawed flank. He would get those guns to Tashunke Witco's warriors, he would stop the death of that innocent man. These things, at least, he could do.
He dismounted, his heart beating too hard and his knees unsure, composing himself. Jules reached him first and he reached up to help her down, but she ended up smack against him with her arms wrapped so tight around his neck that he couldn't let her down without strangling himself. At first he was startled, didn't know how to accept the child's blunt affection, but then his arms tightened and his head tilted down onto hers where she'd tucked it hard into his shoulder.
"Take me with you!" Jules breathed into his hair and the leather of his collar, trying not to cry because she knew he wouldn't do it, couldn't. Holding on too tight, she knew it by the harsh sound of his breathing, and too heavy by the sudden tremble in his arms, but she couldn't make herself let go. He rocked slightly, making no move to free himself, accepting her and wanting her so she had to swallow and swallow again.
It took a long time before the press of her hands on his chest told him she was ready to be put down, and he bent down with her, the back of his hand stroking across her cheek as if by accident; Jules knew better. It was so hard for him to show love, but it was in him in such abundance. Jules leaned forlornly into him with her head tucked down, her fingers wrapped in the open edge of his coat, and his arm kept her close, hand moving in slow kind comfort on her back as he looked up to mark Elizabeth's progress.
He found a true smile when Jules looked up at him, round blue eyes in a demanding squint and her chin dimpled with something between tears and anger.
"I'll be back, Jules." He said in a soft voice, and he seemed so sure of it that Jules tried not to make him feel any worse than he already did. But she couldn't help being glad of the power to influence his feelings so much, and she hugged him around the narrow bony box of his hips like she was staking a claim.
"You'll meet us at Fort Fetterman, right?" She said to him, "And you better not make me wait!"
"You Monroe women ..." He said with a shake of his head, knowing she had so little idea of where he was going and what he had to find a way to do. He was glad of that naivety; a child shouldn't know such wickedness ran in her own, but it made him feel like the worst sort of liar to smile into her trusting face right now. She'd know so much before this was done, she would have to, smart girl like her. And her feelings for him might change irrevocably, which grieved him deeply. Her father's infamy would be laid out by his hand for the world to see - and worse, if it came to that ... things that he might have to do to end this righteously. Things he didn't dare even think about - things Duley was silent about when he did.
His fingers gripped involuntarily on her shoulder with that thought and he knew she saw the shadow of that fate he couldn't escape when she looked up, her smile faltering. "You're not just going to scout, are you." She said suddenly, her knuckles whitening on his coat, dragging down on it.
"Uncle Vin," She said in a low full voice, "I know you have to stop them, my father and Uncle Stephen and whoever else is trying to steal the Lakota's land."
Vin couldn't avoid the frank intensity of her eyes, couldn't be that much of a coward, though he didn't confirm it with words. It might've been funny if he'd been able to laugh, a man who'd never had a family being torn so viciously by one that was his only in the most tenuous terms. He hated Gerald and Stephen Monroe with a pure clear hate, and yet the Monroes had chains around his heart in this girl, and in Duley's sister.
She reached up suddenly for his lapels and used them to haul him down to her, too surprised to resist and a bright flash of pain down the front of his body at the sudden unexpected movement. She was savagely determined and shamelessly used his vulnerability to draw him close to her face, to make him understand how utterly she meant what she would say.
"I want you to stop them." She breathed fiercely, staring hard into his troubled eyes, holding hard and meaning him to understand how little she herself considered the bonds of blood with a father she despised, an Uncle who had never been anything but petty and cruel to her. "I want you do to anything you must to stop them!"
His eyebrows tweaked together in the middle and he jerked away from the implications she couldn't possibly understand, but she wouldn't let him go.
"Someone has to say no to them, Uncle Vin! The time has to come when someone says no, they can't just keep getting away with the rotten things they do, the nasty and cruel and selfish way they are, like nobody else counts, like other people's lives mean nothing at all!" Her expression was hot with a fury he realized she'd long harbored, a resentment thick and strong and bitter. "This time it means more than it ever has! This time they've turned against their own family - my Aunt Duley might be dead, but she's still my family!" Noticing curiously how he flinched to hear 'dead' and 'Duley' in the same breath, as if it surprised him. As if he'd never acknowledged it and never would.
"You can't let them do this to her, you just can't."
Precisely what he felt himself, but he still didn't know how to accomplish it in a way that would leave his hands free of Monroe blood. Or his heart unbroken from the guilt of doing something he wanted to do using Duley's vengeance to justify it. That had always been the most direct solution, yet it had always been the one he avoided considering.
But Jules' wide blue eyes, a darker color than his own, a roundness of shape that was Duley's, already forgave anything he would do, and her young heart already understood the conflict in him over doing it. She was giving him permission - but was Duley? An open hand to do what he'd agonized over all along? To kill Gerald Monroe, or Stephen ... to kill the brothers of the woman he loved as he'd never loved anything, even his own life. To kill the brothers of a sister who trusted him, the father of this child ... God! He couldn't! Jules could say it was alright now, when she was angry with that father, but in the years to come? How could he ever hope to be remembered well with that sin on him?
Jules shook him by her grip on his coat, fiercely and intentionally, wanting to overcome the guilt she could see in him, the terrible profound confused reluctance to do what she knew he understood he had to. If there was no other way but shedding of Monroe blood to save the people the Monroes meant to destroy ... so be it. "So damned well be it." She said in a low-timbered voice that was not young, not a child's, but old and certain as the stones of the mountains.
He sucked in a strangled breath, not wanting permission to do what his vengeful heart wanted so much to do - how would he ever know if he'd served Duley or himself? How could this bright devoted girl ever know for sure? Could anyone trust another person that much? Yet the force of her young eyes was devoid of confusion or doubt - or patience for either in him. Unshakeable as Duley's stubborn heart. The people must survive, and Jules understood it as well as he did.
Vin dropped to one knee impulsively and took Jules up against him for a fierce moment, unsure of everything but this girl's faith in him to do the right thing for the right reason. Nothing he could say could thank her for that, but she seemed to know his heart in his gestures and his eyes and the touch of him just like Duley always had, knew the truth of what words had never come easily enough to him to say. It wasn't a relief in any way, though, to have been granted this mortal permission, it was a burden that lay heavier now than it had when it was just a forcibly unacknowledged thought. But Duley had always thought in absolutes, and so did this niece of hers. Do what was necessary - but they had never had cause to doubt their humanity as Vin had, they'd always been part of the human society as he had never been. There were things Vin would never understand about being human, things at odds with his far more fundamental and rudimentary instincts.
His jaw set hard against the indescribably tender thing finding its place amid all the bloody work he had ahead of him, and he turned his face in a moment of weakness into the color and gloss and scent of that hair, breathed it in. Embraced the loving trust of the girl he vowed he would not betray - if he could help it. If he could even hope to know the difference between doing what was right and doing what he felt was right, because Vin's motives were sometimes as much a mystery to him as to anyone else.
Jules pulled back and patted his cheek almost maternally so that quick true smile she loved so much answered. Then she pointed her grubby finger right at his nose and said,
"Don't make me wait."
"No." He said, "I won't." Then he wiped Jules' face with his warm rough hand and smiled at her impatient grimace, feeling no closer to understanding anything, but steadier than he had in quite awhile.
James sat horsed just down slope, having taken it on himself to protect them even in the little distance between here and the Fort. He'd seen his niece leap into the tracker's arms without hesitation, saw the fervent clasp of her embrace and the intimate absent-mindedness of her touch as they'd talked, close to each other and eye to eye, like the tracker was far more the beloved uncle than he himself could ever hope to be. James knew a pang of regret so profound that he had to look away, having never known anything of the sort. If he'd been a man worth more than he was ... even as far away as he was he could feel the intensity of feeling as the tracker crouched in front of his niece, their bros almost touching and their expressions so serious - like old friends talking about something painful to them both, but talking about it frankly. He'd missed so much, missed the love of his sister and never earned that of his niece ... he found himself praying with a sudden true honesty of heart that it wasn't too late.
Vin unfolded to his feet as Elizabeth approached, his hands nearly spanning her waist as he lifted her down and stepped back from her, Jules returning immediately to the close place by his side where she had evidently decided she belonged.
Elizabeth twined her hands in front of her with a smile as she looked at them, Vin leaning protectively toward Jules, and she said with an unconcealed fondness for them both,
"A body would have to be blind not to know you're her Uncle."
His immediate startled flush made both Jules and Elizabeth laugh, and when Elizabeth stepped closer, Jules reached for her hand, linking the three at last.
Vin's eyes were half-alarmed over his niece's head, but Elizabeth's smile was wry as she explained with a fond glance; "Julianna and I have discovered it best to be on the same side. We had a long talk."
The tenderness in Elizabeth's eyes was almost more than Vin could bear, enfolded between them and his heart aching with a strange sad joy to be there. But he knew Elizabeth hadn't told Jules everything, though she probably didn't know herself how much the girl had guessed, nor how far her thoughts had followed that logic and what dire conclusions she'd reached. He met Elizabeth's eyes over the girl's head, knowing there were things they had to say to each other that needed privacy.
"You think you can make sure we get some good grub in our packs?" He said to Jules with a little push toward her horse. She went, sensing the two adults wanted to talk without her. For once it didn't matter and she didn't even think of finding out later what had been said. This time she knew better than her Aunt what would happen. What had to happen. And she was proud of having been the one to reassure him it would be no sin of his if it came to that. She figured she'd done her Aunt Duley a good turn in comforting this man she'd loved so well.
"I imagine I could do that alright." She grinned at him, her face shining with affection, and he swung her up into the saddle and took the kiss she bent down to bestow on his scruffy cheek like a knight accepting his lady's favor. She gathered the reins, her knees firm and already directing the animal around.
"And don't make me wait!" She declared; the last sight he had of her was that vivacious grin, and he saved that image a moment before turning back to Elizabeth, almost automatically answering the reach of her hand with his own as they drew close together.
"I expect I don't have to tell you to keep close to the boys." He said, his eyes worried and shining too bright. Their safety weighed on him heavily, she could see that, so she made her smile confident and nodded.
"Yes. Don't worry about us, Vin." Don't die from the distraction of worry, she thought almost frantically, take care of yourself because you mean more to me than you'd let me tell you right now.
"I need you to find out for me when Gerald plans t'kick off this war of his." He said, and it was all she could do to hide her enormous relief - he intended to come back, then, which meant more to her for the moment than the fact that her own brother intended to murder an innocent man to incite an Indian war.
"I will, or James will, he's closer to them than I am by far and they don't suspect him. Are your friends going to make things difficult? Getting a warning to the Indians?"
He chuffed a wry breath and a smile slanted briefly across his face that was not eager for whatever complications those friends might create.
"I figger I'll take it as it comes, Elizabeth. Might not've been the smartest thing I've ever done not to tell 'em everything in the first place, take my chances heading out alone to warn the people."
But he hadn't, and Elizabeth believed it was because of her niece and her. He was a direct man, she knew that, yet he'd denied himself the satisfaction of direct action as well as the counsel of friends she'd long since realized were fonder of him than he probably knew - he had a blind spot to affection from others. It had already cost him so dearly to have compromised the trust of those friends for the sake of Duley's family, and though he'd never say so to her, she knew he was afraid the life he'd built for himself in that little town was over forever. She was so sorry for that, she wished it could've been otherwise for him and her hand tightened on his as she looked up earnestly into his face.
"These friends of yours, Vin ... they'll stick by you, won't they? They'll understand, when it's all done?" Not wanting to think of what 'all' was, nor how it might be 'done', flushing with a shame this man had taken up for them all in Duley's name.
He nodded, but it was a regretful admission. They'd stick by him right into the throat of death if he wasn't careful. Duley wanted him safe, but Duley didn't understand how far Chris and Josiah and the rest would go to do that, and he cursed the instinct to his preservation that blinded her to the value of men she didn't know. She had no idea what unhealing wounds he'd suffer if any of them fell because of him, he did not want any of them dying for him - didn't she know he'd never want to stay alive that way? But she loved him, and he was forced to realize that her knowing of him might've stopped the day she left him. She might not know these men meant more to him than their usefulness as a shield against his own mortality.
In his mind, this was between him and Duley, and he'd wanted it to stay that way, do what he needed to do without entangling anyone else in it. Without having to admit that his own wife's tender-hearted failing had brought all this about. Even gone, he wanted to protect her, just as she wanted to protect him, their love an unbreakable and eternal promise. But now that undying love might cost the lives, reputations or freedom of as fine a bunch of folks as he'd ever met. There was no hiding from it - he was endangering the living on behalf of the dead. For the first time he let that word come and thud into the hollow of his heart, because it wasn't right of him to pussy-foot around it when it was their lives on the line.
He felt hot and disoriented for a moment, almost queasy.
"Vin ..." Elizabeth's quiet saying of his name brought his unfocused eyes back to her, and for a flashing instant he could've sworn he'd seen Duley's soul shining back at him. Was that beloved ghost overtaking her sister so he could see her, and be fortified? "Vin." She said again, and he was sure of it, then, the timbre and tone set off a vital tremor and he stared with desperately startled intensity, frozen and wanting it again, wanting her back for just another instant ...
Elizabeth leaned up into his strange wild longing and kissed him gently on the lips.
Vin couldn't help letting her, nor could his arms keep from encircling the beloved height and form. And there was no way he could stop the urgent search after every hint of his wife in the taste and texture under his mouth, every curve under his hands.
Elizabeth had acted impulsively, driven to him by her own need and some other, more fundamental, urge she neither recognized nor thought to deny. But she had not intended what swept over them both and had them hard against each other, this sudden rush of heat drawing up under her skin to be pressed to a man's body ... no, to this man's body. Not something she should have recognized as she did these hard bones and the unyielding muscle of his back under her hands, the soft rasp of whiskers on her chin ... all impossibly familiar - oh, how could he feel so intimately familiar to her? She forgot James was there, as lost as she knew Vin was in this flooding moment kissing his warm mouth and being kissed back so thoroughly her head was spinning.
They stepped back from each other in the same stunned instant, both breathing fast and eyes wide. His hands dropped and opened like he was letting go of some sinful temptation he never should have touched, while hers rose in strange wonder to the lips he'd answered and asked. He could see her shaking and feel dangerous tremors in himself, so torn by the beauty in that face that was Duley's, and was not, so precious to him.
Their eyes broke apart at last as pale faces suddenly flushed with bright color, and they couldn't look at each other again even as he helped her into the saddle. But she caught his hand against her leg when she was seated and pressed it there, not looking at him, but down the slope toward Fort Laramie. He stood by the horse facing the opposite direction with his head down-turned, but his hand there willingly, fingers trailing off the cloth of her skirt as she touched heels to her horse and rode away from him.
To be continued...
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