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:
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Buck felt Vin shift behind him as they came off the steep slope onto flatter ground at the base of the escarpment, saw the tracker's bloodied hand pushing forward with the Winchester and knew what he wanted without needing more than that. Buck took the tracker's empty rifle and opened his grip off the churning barrel of the gray so Vin could reach the rifle scabbarded on his saddle, thrusting Vin's into it as soon as his own was in the tracker's hand. The gray never lost a stride even under the weight of two men moving on his back and the loss of Buck's gripping knees.
They dodged through gunfire toward the wide spread of the river as the morning brightened all around them, fingers and threads of water gleaming like liquid gold spilled on the rocky earth. The hills seemed too far away to reach before those soldiers got themselves mounted and in hot pursuit. Josiah and the rest were a good piece ahead of them and driving hard on the open ground, but with a desperate alarm Buck saw four riders coming fast at them from the west, the columns of dust near bisecting already.
"It's Two Badgers!" Vin yelled from behind him, having glanced around Buck to see what had made him lean up so hard that the gray bolted across the dangerous rough ground they traversed. Buck eased up at once, saw the warriors fall in beside the Judge and their course changed. Buck's heart lifted even more when another group of four joined came in from a westerly dip in the land. Protection, but it didn't ease the cold grip in his bones that had started the second he saw Chris fall. Maybe Gerald Monroe was dead so they'd have the margin of time losing a commander might give them, but he couldn't regret grabbing Vin up when he had - another second and they'd've been overrun, Chris wouldn't thank him for letting Vin get killed.
Behind him Vin shifted again, his bony knee jamming hard against the back of Buck's right thigh in an uneven pressure, twisting around almost sideways behind him to protect their backs with rifle-fire. It was a precarious position on the bouncing haunches of a horse moving over uneven ground, and if Vin fell off it'd probably break him in two, shape he was in. Again the thought went through Buck's mind that Chris didn't want Vin dead, and maybe if he could keep him alive despite every invitation to kill him the tracker kept sending out ... Buck swore and his left hand shot back and fumbled against Vin's tight-strained body until he could hook his fingers into the tracker's wide gunbelt and hold on to steady him; Vin let him take some of his weight and emptied the rifle up at the top of the escarpment, dropping the two riflemen closest to getting the right range on them and discouraging anyone else from trying just then. The rifle emtied, and Buck was startled to hear the defensive fire continue - when he looked to their left, he found J.D. picking up the slack, snapping pistol-shots up the slope retreating behind them. As the kid turned in the saddle Buck sucked in a breath to see blood on his shirt, but J.D. was hot on what had to be done and was showing no weakness at all.
Vin's Winchester traded places with Buck's again, and by the rapid thump of Vin's elbow against his back, the tracker was re-loading, still in that awkwardly twisted position. Buck expected him to lose half his shells trying to reload on a running horse, but in less time than Buck believed possible Vin was firing again.
They reached the broad shallow ford of the river and shattered water into the air, wet crashing interspersed with dully thumping hoof-falls as they raced through the intermittent weave of streams and then into the deeper current that slowed the horses and wet Buck's pants up to the knees. They churned up the bank on the far side on the same path of darkened earth that marked where the rest had already crossed.
Buck could see Josiah and the others a good distance ahead, Ezra's bright green jacket like a distant irrisdescent hummingbird, and he fixed on them.
The treeline was many miles away, but the terrain not so far ahead of them began to break along the east into ravines and gorges providing some cover. As they went out of range of gunfire from the fort, Buck felt Vin's free arm wrap hard around his waist, signaling his readiness - and the need - for an all-out dash. The tracker was sure there'd be hot pursuit, and that was good enough for Buck. With a sweet wooing word he encouraged his tired gray into a desperate run.
By the time they'd come within a quarter mile of Josiah and Nathan, the rest had scattered out ahead and around them in defense of the Preacher and Chris. The gunslinger's narrow body lay across Josiah's thighs where he could gentle the jarring stride of the horse as much as possible, but Buck could see Nathan's urgency in how close he rode to Josiah and the posture of his body almost shouting for the safety to stop, to get Chris down and help him.
Vin's eyes tracked along the ground, hypnotized by crimson drops and spatters in the dust.
Two Badgers, riding point with one of his warriors, disappeared around a long finger of land with sparse treetops above the rim.
As they neared, the warrior flagged them into a ravine that snaked back behind that outcropping, and as they slewed hard around the bend, Buck was surprised to see four warriors in white men's hats and coats - one of them in Ezra's prized green jacket - burst out of the ravine pell mell along the path they would have followed had they gone straight past it. Decoys, and far enough away to be convincing if anyone was following, riding tall American horses liberated from the fort so even a tracker would follow the shod hoof-prints. Two other warriors ran in behind them on foot, dragging heavy pieces of buffalo hide across the sandy ground, obliterating all but the tracks heading out. Buck's heart lifted again at this well-coordinated defense, not a matter of planning, but instinct born of experience with both the land and their pursuers.
From there he followed the haunches of Josiah's horse in a narrowing and deepening series of switchbacked gulleys that ran gradually northeast by the rise of the sun over the rim to his right, back toward the fort, and not a direction pursuit would naturally go. They burst one after the other into a small uneven half-moon of rising ground bisected by a thin stream that supported half a dozen spindly trees. In a back-wash of dust the little group came to a halt, horses plunging and jostling in the tight space and everyone in immediate motion. The small space seemed full to overflowing with their silence, no one said anything, there was no sound beyond the quick shifts of hooves and the harsh exerted sounds of men and beasts trying to catch their breath.
Buck swung his long leg over his horse's head before it was even still to get out of the saddle without having to wait for Vin. He hit the ground running and made a bee-line for Josiah's horse, reaching for Chris' shoulders to get him down and then hesitating, pulling back in grim dismay at the amount of his friend's blood painting the sweat-dark shoulder of Josiah's horse.
"God ... Nathan, hurry!" Softly, but with a world of urgent emotion as he attempted it again and got his hands under the front of Chris' shoulders. J.D. was suddenly there beside him supporting Chris' lanky weight as they pulled him across Josiah's body, the Preacher passing him along like a rolled jointed carpet and gently untangling his boots as they turned him face-up. He was nowhere near conscious, Buck knew it at first glance. It took a lot to take Chris out that hard, he was usually too damned stubborn to pass out no matter what injury he'd taken.
Two Badgers and three Lakota warriors with him dismounted and scrambled up both sides of the gulley to keep watch, Mary came running from the bunched horses tripping on her skirt in her haste so Orrin had to lunge to catch her. Chris' boot-heels dragged around the broad pommel of Josiah's Mexican saddle and the Preacher was dismounting himself as soon as they had Chris free of him. The left leg of Josiah's buff canvas pants was soaked with blood.
Everything was happening at once, everyone moving, trying to get to Chris and the space too small for such anxious chaos. Josiah pushed his way through the jostling horses to Nathan's to fetch the healer's saddlebags, big hands shoving against hot sweaty hides and parting them around him like they were fish in an overcrowded pond.
"Move outta my way ..." Nathan's impatient command was obeyed at once.
Orrin held Mary in the restraining circle of his arms, but she wasn't struggling to get to Chris, she could only lean forward in horror, gasping and distraught. "Oh my God ... oh my God ..." She breathed over and over, wanting to be helping but held back by the shameful and cowardly terror of seeing Chris die before her eyes. A man she'd thought couldn't, and wouldn't, she'd counted on that so much more than she'd ever realized. Travis felt her trembling in her extremity and could almost read the thoughts racing across her face as she watched, her eyes riveted to Chris even when she only had glimpses of him among the shifting legs and backs and bodies of his friends, a black narrow length of stillness centering their frantic activity. Things she'd never said nor encouraged him to say, things undone, unexplored, cowardice and a reluctance to want ... now maybe too late.
"Put 'im down right there, put 'im down, Buck ..." They jostled against the side of Josiah's horse, faces and voices and eyes tautly urgent.
"Jesus, Nathan, oh Jesus, this is bad ..." The sound of a terrible fear barely restrained, a viciously vengeful brutality they all knew Buck possessed that was normally invisible under his merry demeanor, but Nathan had no time to comfort or reassure, he had fast work to do, they weren't safe here and Two Badgers' worried glances back toward Fetterman said he was seeing some sign of pursuit.
"I can see that, Buck, get the hell out of my way 'fore I have to go through you!"
Nathan pushed roughly at Buck until he gave enough ground to let him get by him and drop to one knee beside Chris, taking hold of him before Buck even had him laid down flat. Dark powerful fingers clawed into Chris' clothes, tearing through every layer at once with one powerful jerk that tore sodden cloth and sent buttons scattering. Buck was not the only one to make an inarticulate sound of heartsick distress as Chris' long torso was suddenly laid bare in all its bloodied white vulnerability. So much blood, Buck thought, trying hard to breathe around the tightening constriction in his throat, Lord, so damned much blood. Shirt soaked with it, pants streaked in black rivulets, Chris' body hard and efficient as a racing hound, precise musculature, enduring bones, indestructible ... white as carved marble and streaked and flooded and smeared with blood.
Nathan never stopped moving, yanking Chris' shirt from his pants, laying cloth as open as he could, trying not to let his heart show on his face because he knew they were all watching him and it wouldn't help them to know the damage was worse than he'd feared. Grimly he refused the rush of despair, unwilling to even entertain the notion that Chris Larabee could die out here, that he couldn't save him. A ragged hole flowered in the middle of Chris' left chest, a big hole from which blood continued to flow in a dark stream, the only thing moving on him. A ragged hole almost vulgar on the smooth white plane of his pectoral, a visitation of ruin ... blood trailed up his throat and jaw and the side of his face into his hairline from being head-down on Josiah's horse. Blood streaked up the inside of his arm from armpit to fingertips on the left side. If he'd been anyone else, Nathan would have known it was hopeless.
Grimly Nathan examined the wound, determined to find some reason to deny the despair that grew by the second. Caged within the architecture of ribs and sinew and shoulderblade and spine were lungs, heart, major blood vessels ... there was nothing he could do to repair them, Lord God, nothing even a fully-equipped and staffed hospital could likely do ...
He stripped Chris out of the left sleeve of coat, shirt, vest and union suit without the luxury of time for gentleness, Chris' body lolled bonelessly vulnerable in his hands. His skin was cold as Nathan's fingers slid through the slippery stickiness of blood under Chris's arm, under his body, feeling for the exit wound even while he continued to examine the chest wound for tell-tale bubbles. Finding them, to his horror, finding them, the only sign Chris breathed at all in those tiny bubbles.
His heart plummeted when his searching hand encountered only the smooth unbroken skin of Chris' back ... he felt from spine to shoulder-blade to ribs without finding the exit wound. If the bullet was still in him - rifle, by the size - he'd never get it out without killing the gunslinger. There might be bone splinters from the upper ribs scattered all over the chest cavity, it was bleeding too fast, had been for too long ... If the bullet was still in him, he was working on a man who was already dead, but too stubborn to yet admit it. Even Chris Larabee could be killed ...
"It's here ..."
Nathan didn't know what Buck's shaken comment meant and ignored him until Buck half-lifted Chris' left shoulder off the ground, the flat of his hand pressing hard on the exit wound at a point that made Nathan's eyes widen with impossible hope.
"Buck, did you see him get hit?"
Buck nodded with terrible certainty, "Blew 'im right out of the saddle."
Nathan's hands stilled, his head snapped up, face to face and not six inches away from Buck's eyes, blue almost black with worry; "He was mounted?" Nathan asked urgently, and when Buck nodded quizzically, "What about the man who shot him, was he mounted, too?"
"No, on foot ... Nathan ..." Confused and hardly daring to believe the wild light in Nathan's eyes was any kind of hope.
"Josiah, I need you - " The Preacher was already beside him, grim and solid and a presence Nathan had come to rely on in crisis. Moving with rough but efficient haste, Nathan straddled Chris' long body and reached around his lower back, gesturing Josiah to Chris' head and telling him what he wanted with a quick flick of fingers toward his own chest. Josiah displaced Buck gently but inexorably.
"Lift 'im toward me ..." Nathan said breathlessly, and then, to himself in a feverish hush, "God, can we be this lucky? The angle ... Oh please, oh please ... " Talking to no one but himself and his God, and Josiah prayed in silence along with him. Carefully the Preacher elevated Chris' shoulders and the gunman's upper body curled toward Nathan, his bloodied chin dropping onto his bloodier chest, steadied against Nathan by the healer's hand cupped at the back of his head. Nathan held him up against him like a mother cradling a child, the side of Chris' face pressed to his wide flat chest as he peered over the gunslinger's shoulder and saw, with a bolt of hope he hardly dared entertain, the gory red flower of the exit wound.
"Praise the Lord, praise God ..." He breathed, with such fervent gratitude that everyone's eyes held on him with mute hope. There was an exit wound, and it was very high; the slug that had entered his chest between the second and third ribs had angled very steeply upward, escaping at the first and second ribs in the back and tearing through the long muscle that ran between the neck and the top of the shoulder. The shooter had been very close to Chris, firing at a sharp upward trajectory, and although it certainly had to have cut through the top of the left upper lung and hit one of those big veins in there by the bleeding, it had also gone at a nearly vertical angle up under the collar bone and out a few inches below the top of the flat triangle of shoulderblade as it went. Probably took a gold eagle-sized hunk of bone along for the ride, but ... If he could stop the bleeding, if the lung closed up on its own as they sometimes did ... Chris' skin was cold, the white going faintly grey, so much blood lost and moving him any further was so damned dangerous, and the only choice they had.
Vin watched them like a ghost having no part in these human affairs, the only one not near enough to reach out and touch Chris, still astride the broad haunches of Buck's gray. Not yet able to move and intent on them as they gathered tight around Chris in hushed urgency, the rifle in his right hand and the left curled around the cantle of Buck's saddle. The gray was hot and sweaty under his legs and he could feel that, but everything else was a formless distant terror as he watched them in a tight knot around Chris, flooded with sensations and emotions that seemed not to belong to him. Glimpses between them of that narrow body pale and bloody that had him swallowing against urgent nausea.
Finally he pushed himself back off the horse, surprised when he ended up on his ass, his legs not even trying to hold him up. The palm of his free hand skinned itself raw against the ground and he just sat there, unable to rise, dumbfounded and unnoticed. Between the knobbed and mud-caked thicket of horse legs around him he could see Mary crouching beside the knot of men around Chris ... she looked up at his notice as if she'd felt his eyes, hers wide and stark in her pale face and her cupped hand held close to her breast. She was picking up bloody buttons. Coat and vest and shirt and union suit, her expression ghastly afraid and almost guilty as she stared at him as if waiting for him to voice an answer he must have. When he offered nothing, she went back to the task, searching out those buttons as if by finding every one she could save Chris' life. Her father-in-law stood behind her, a rifle ready in his hands and his head up, his jaw tight as stretched wire and Ezra at his back in his vest and shirtsleeves guarding their back-trail, a tandem defense no one could ever have expected would come so naturally to this mismatched pair.
"Jesus ..." Buck breathed, over and over, prayer as much as terror, his handsome face tight against the bone, his breath sawing in and out of his chest, trembling with the need to do something and tormented by his own helplessness. Best damned friend he'd ever had was lying pale as a ghost, his sinuous length lifelessly flat and morning breaking cold and grey above, too damned far from Nathan's clinic or anywhere else he could be helped.
Buck was an old hand on the range and he knew Chris was a damned sight too close to dying no matter how relieved Nathan was that the slug wasn't trapped or ricocheted around inside his chest. Too damned close to dead, Buck had seen that grey hue before, the hollowing out under ribs and cheekbones and the sharp vulnerable cradle of pelvis, Chris' bones seemed to press up too hard through the tight symmetrical weave of sinew and muscle. A hand descended on his shoulder and gripped, and he couldn't look up, though he knew who it was offering mute sympathy. J.D. standing behind him, a fine tremor in his fingers and in the leg that pressed against Buck's back, but right there with him. Not saying anything, as if he knew words spoken out loud would break Buck's grasp on his rioting emotions.
Vin remained sitting on the ground where he'd fallen behind Buck's horse, his arms around his wide-spread knees and his head dropped into the empty space there as his fingers gripped and released against each other, gripped and released. As his shoulder throbbed and his chest screamed and his hip flared and flashed pain no matter how still he was. Not looking, staying still to keep himself from bursting, from screaming, from using the very last of his strength to haul himself up onto the nearest horse and ride hell bent back to Fetterman to be sure Gerald Monroe was dead, wanting to see him die. Wanting not to notice how hollowed-out he was, empty and used up as an old feed bag flapping in the wind and ready to blow away. But it wasn't finished yet. He was beginning to wonder if it ever would be and he was getting desperate for it, to be over, all of it, over and done.
He could hear them talking over there, not the words but the somber urgent tones, every sound acute in his ears. The flap of Nathan's saddlebag being opened, the rip of cloth, the silvery splash of water. The healer's dark murmur answered by Josiah's grave deep voice, those comforting tones he remembered himself from a time or two needing their care. Everything was moving fast except him and nothing was moving in him at all, his heart and soul at a dead stop like the eye of their hurricane. Aching in a way so fundamental it was as if aching was part of living for him. It didn't matter. Not much did anymore but Chris living ... his mind veered off that so fast it almost made him dizzy.
"Ezra!" Orrin cried, having felt the gambler start to slide down to the ground behind him, turning quickly enough to catch him under the arms and ease him down, ignoring the impatient and weak protests of well-being. Mary straightened in alarm up off her knees, Chris' buttons spotting her protective hand with blood, seeing for the first time the dark discoloration on the black silk of the back of Ezra's vest.
"Ezra?" Nathan's voice, sharp, his head high over Chris' body, his hands for the moment stilled in the process of bandaging the gunslinger because there was nothing else he could do. It halfway surprised him that others might need him as well.
"I'll survive, Nathan, comparatively it's a minor inconvenience." Compared to Chris is what he meant, "Just got a bit light-headed is all."
Smiling wanly as Nathan's critically narrowed eyes examined his face and the set of his body.
"I'll take care of him." Mary said, and Ezra inclined his head toward her agreeably, grateful for her attention despite having no idea whether it was concern for him that moved her or the determination not to distract Nathan from Chris. Orrin was grateful as well because Ezra's unexpected need turned Mary's frighteningly strict attention from those buttons in her hand. As he watched, she put them into her skirt pocket, and he squatted down with a stifled old man's groan next to Ezra and his daughter-in-law with a wry smile.
"You know," He said, his hand on Ezra's uninjured shoulder, "I never expected suffering in stoic silence to be in your repertoire, Ezra."
Ezra laughed softly. "You're all a bad influence on me, I fear, instilling horribly altruistic habits that will likely cause my sainted mother apoplexy." His smile was genuine through his winces as Mary lifted his shirt up to look at the wound that bright green coat had drawn to him rather than to any of the others with him. So much better a man than anyone knew, she thought abstractedly, even Ezra didn't see his own goodness. Not one but two bullets had torn across the right side of his body under his arm, leaving deep back to front gouges that had soaked the waist of his pants in blood. Orrin stood up and reached across to where Josiah was handing up a length of bandage and a small bottle of carbolic, passing them to Mary.
"Which other of you mule-headed fools is hurt n' not sayin' so?" Nathan snapped, once again intent on stopping Chris' bleeding by binding him as tightly as he could, a new urgency in his hands as he realized there were other wounds among them that needed tending. An urgency that surged when Two Badgers caught his eye and pointed toward Fetterman, where he had spotted signs of mounted pursuit. How would he keep Chris alive running from it? Nathan knew he'd lost all the blood a man could and still have a heart-beat, however faint and slow.
"J.D.'s got 'imself bloodied." Buck pushed against the kid's leg next to him.
"It ain't bad, Buck, Vin bandaged it already, I'm alright."
Buck craned his head around to look up at J.D., chaos in his heart and mind with worry for Chris and a strange relief in admitting a new maturity in J.D. that made him proud. He couldn't speak, couldn't reconcile his desperation at the prospect of losing his oldest friend and his pride in this newest one, it overwhelmed his usually glib and ready tongue.
"What?" J.D. asked after a second or two in that unreadable regard, "It's alright, really! Vin said it wouldn't kill me, doesn't even hurt anymore. Much."
That was when Buck noticed Vin on the ground a few yards behind J.D., sitting hunched over on himself. His elbow prodded J.D.'s calf, a jerk of his head toward Vin directed the kid there.
"Make sure he's OK." He said, gauging that himself as the kid reached Vin and the tracker lifted his head, his face carved and ashen and almost devoid of expression. Awful barely began to describe how bad the tracker looked. Skeletal, bruised, tormented ... carefully Buck kept his anger at the Monroes from sloshing over onto Vin ... yes, they were here because of him, and a lot of what the tracker was doing and wanting to do was still unknown to them, but it was too obvious by his haunted blue eyes that Vin was struggling under a burden that was very near to crushing him. When it came down to it, Buck knew Vin Tanner had a noble heart and would move heaven and earth to keep them alive, but Chris was closer to dead right now and Buck didn't intend to lose any advantage.
"We need you, Vin." Buck said quietly, half-turned from Chris so he could see Vin's face as the tracker looked up at him. That was all he said, though the two of them looked at each other a long moment, Buck rejecting the weakness of guilt in Vin's eyes. There was no time for it now, and that reminder of lives in his care, lives risked for his sake - the one under the careful touch of Buck's hand as he lay a breath from death - gave Vin the buttress of necessity he had to have to go on. J.D. helped the tracker up and he couldn't hide needing help, his bones too near his skin for J.D.'s liking. But after a minute or two he seemed better able to stand on his own.
Twenty minutes later they were mounting to go on, one of the warriors heading deeper into the ravine, which Two Badgers said was the safest way to go with injured men among them. He'd squatted down amongst them and drawn the foothills in the dirt with his finger, the distant columns of Lakota traveling west, and though it was a long way out of their way, it was the only route that would keep them off dangerous open ground and still allow them to turn west at the end of the valley. Vin, who hadn't said a word, who stood unsteadily next to Peso maintaining a grip on a stirrup, couldn't look at them when they turned to him mutely, looking for agreement, reassurance, he didn't know what. J.D. stuck as close to him as Buck did to Chris, and the anxiety in the kid's eyes worried Buck mightily. Tanner was the kind of man who'd fall over dead before anyone knew he was at risk of it.
Josiah held Chris in front of him, his hips uncomfortably high on the cantle behind him, but he was the strongest among them, and his strength was needed now. He brushed his heels against his mount's sweat-crusted sides as the single-file line began to move at a careful walk.
Vin looked up at the sky swept by battalions and billows of iron-gray clouds, their edges scorched black with bad weather. Always when he'd been so ... lost ... she'd come for him. When death was near or his heart so low he wished it was so, she came. But he was empty and silent. Now there was a veil of blood between their worlds, her brother's blood on his soul. Chris' too. His throat clicked dry on a convulsive swallow and his breathing moved too high in his chest. For the first time since they'd set foot on this road he didn't know what to do even when the tasks were clear before him. Get them all safely away from this war they had no part in. Find out if Gerald Monroe was dead, or still alive and loose to plague the frontier. He had things to do, yet he didn't have the strength to even stand up on his own. He wondered bleakly whether he had the will to, either.
"Vin?" Mary had to say it twice before his head lifted, unable to change a thing about the expression on his face that made her wince to see or the cold hopelessness in his eyes that hurt her, like Chris was already dead. His eyes followed the movement of her hand toward him like it was a strange thing he didn't recognize, and when it settled on his forearm he saw Chris' blood smeared on her graciously tapered fingers. An angel's face, this woman had, beautiful in ways hinting at perfection, and her eyes so filled with concern for him that he couldn't stand to see it. Couldn't bear the kindness and faith in her touch.
Peso side-stepped at the pressure of his knees so her hand fell away, his eyes as well, almost apologetically. He looked ahead at the snaking ravine before them and the wide tumble of stormy sky above.
"Storm comin'." He said as if to himself, and she shivered at the intimation of things far more deadly than weather in those two words. The tracker was blank-faced and wide-eyed, but Mary tapped her horse's sides and followed him when he began to move, choosing to see that his grip on the stock of his Winchester was as effortlessly efficient as ever, and the steady scan of his eyes as enduring.
After two hours, Vin reappeared from scouting ahead, his slicker draped over cantle and horn around him so they knew the rain was about to break. The first place he looked was to Josiah, Chris a loose length in front of him braced between the Preacher's arms. His head was laid back against Josiah's shoulder, and Vin couldn't look at his face.
With quiet rustlings and creaks of saddle leather punctuated by no few bit-back curses and moans from protesting injuries and tired bodies, they retrieved foul-weather gear from saddlebags or behind cantles without pausing.
Two Badgers rode up alongside Josiah and offered a buffalo robe, which Josiah took with a grateful nod, and together the two of them laid it over Chris without breaking stride. Nathan came to tuck it around the gunslinger's legs as much as he could, drawing it up over his head so all that could be seen was a tangle of blond hair marred by dried blood. Josiah's arms over the cover snugged it around Chris' narrow body, and he found it was actually easier to hold him that way; unconscious, it was a constant balancing act to work the reins and still keep him from slithering right out of his grasp. Chris' shoulderblades were sharp against his chest, and the front of his woolen shirt was soaked with Chris' blood.
The Preacher said softly, so only Nathan could hear, "He feels cold, Nate." Nathan's dark brows flexed worriedly and he remained near as they kept moving at a purposeful walk. After a few minutes under the robe, though, his skin was warmer as Nathan bumped along against Josiah's mount so he could stick his hand underneath to check. He did so regularly, despair sitting like a cold rock in the pit of his stomach. Chris had bled so much and the wounds were so severe, even strong and defiantly stubborn as he was. If he'd been lying flat that lung would've filled with blood by now, Nathan knew it, but kept it to himself. Chris' breathing was shallow and there was a tell-tale wheeze Nathan was years beyond mistaking ... he'd packed the wound as tightly as he could to get a seal against the outside air, but if the lung collapsed ...
When Nathan looked up he found Mary's eyes on him across the bobbing neck of Josiah's horse, Two Badgers having vanished, and he wished he'd disguised the fear he knew she saw. But she didn't ask. Her mouth set stubbornly against trembling, a heart determined against unimaginable loss, and though tears stood in her eyes, they did not fall. She met Nathan's regret bravely, her face a promise to fight heaven and hell. Briskly she drew on her gloves and reached out to touch the long still leg under the buffalo robe. Simply, briefly, yet as eloquent a prayer as anything Nathan had ever seen. There was a lot to be said for faith, Nathan knew that very well, and he took what comfort he could from that power among these folks.
Orrin was not so reassured other than all being together and, so far, still alive. He shook his head dismally, shifting in the saddle, as he'd been shifting for the last hour without finding a seat that didn't count every year on his old bones. He regarded the straight column of Mary's back ahead of him, knowing what she was doing. His daughter-in-law was far too aware that Chris might not survive the day, that knowledge lay heavy on them all, and he could imagine the litany of unacknowledged moments, unthought hopes and denied desires that were running through her mind. She might even be reaching desperate decisions that Chris might object to, but these were things a soul in extremis found comfort in, trying to take control of things utterly beyond them. Live, and I'll love you, damn the complications. Or live, and I'll give you up for the good of us both. Only live. He couldn't remember all the promises he'd made at his wife's sickbed, but he knew they were as contradictory as any Mary could make now.
The rain broke on the heels of a stroke of lightening that startled even exhausted horses.
It was pure misery. The rain drummed down, cascading off hatbrims and driving into every opportune opening, the wind caught their slickers so it was nearly impossible to keep their saddles dry, and lightening split the dark-roiling sky answered by rolling pulses of thunder. But they went on doggedly; there was nothing else to do. The three warriors, robed, but otherwise unbothered by the foul weather, appeared and disappeared at will through the watery gray curtain that enclosed them. The line they'd assumed through the bottom of the gorge never changed pace, though they were all head down and pulled up under ponchos and slickers, numbed by the assault on all their senses. They kept Josiah in their midst protectively, they looked in his direction time and again, and he tried to give them only a calm expression. The preacher kept Chris close, trying to will his own body heat into the cool length against him and humming old gospel tunes under his breath that no one could hear, but that Chris might feel.
James clung to the saddle in a sodden hump, his chin on his chest, looking at nothing but the rain-slicked withers of his own horse. These people had closed ranks around both the gunslinger and the tracker despite the trouble he knew there was between them. He'd never felt so supremely alone and useless and vulnerable. Stephen was dead, perhaps Gerald as well, as black-hearted a pair as had ever been born, but he was still a brother with a brother's helplessly loving memories. And he had no idea yet if Elizabeth or Julianna, left alone among the Indians all this time, were still alive ... this wild country could kill them as easily as any weapon, ignorant of it as they both were, headstrong ... A shudder worked up his back as a rivulet of rain worked down. All his sins had come down on him at once like a flock of roosting crows, and his thoughts were so dense a tumble that he couldn't focus on any one of them and had stopped trying. Seven men against the frightening enormity of this savage land with a war coming that he had helped start. None of them seemed to notice he was there, and considering the anger simmering like low grade fever among them, he was nearly glad of it. All of them hard and grim with anxious exhaustion, moving and acting in a tight unit without a word. He didn't want to be the convenient focus of their vengeance if Larabee died. Ezra rode behind him and Orrin Travis before, and he felt like a prisoner between them despite neither having given any indication he should. A wet snort escaped him, unnoticed.
It wasn't them ... it was himself he couldn't escape. His sins, his pettiness and cowardice and jealousies and all the damnably dark urges he'd let have free rein in his brothers' fertile company. He could blame no one but himself, not them or the father he'd barely known and yet used to excuse every wickedness. A man had to pick up his own mess eventually, Elizabeth had said that, but his was so hugely unwieldy that he could barely imagine ... If Elizabeth and Julianna were alright, he vowed he would take them safely home, he would make amends somehow. Somehow. A deep sigh, nearly a groan, bent the raindrops away from his face momentarily, but there was no relief even in the hope of a life spent balancing all the evil he had done. Was there a point at which forgiveness was attained, and would he have time, even in the rest of his life, to get there?
Another hour, the rain having lessened to a steady patter, they crossed their own outward-bound trail. It was deeply churned now by the tracks of the soldiers who had pursued them - and the warriors in white men's coats. If luck was with them, those soldiers would continue to think they'd gone south. The Lakota spread out behind them into a widely-spaced and watchful semi-circle, and Two Badgers insisted on a quicker pace until they were far enough past the trail to avoid any soldiers doubling back to the Fort to report or to get reinforcements. The trail, the three warriors ran their horses again and again along that southward road to obscure the tracks they left across the older ones in the muddy ground.
By mid-day, they reached the edge of high elevation badlands. From a distance, it was a nearly placid undulation of scoured-bare hills and buttes, grey and dun and looking as though it could be ridden across in short order. But as they went on, the great expanse of rock and desiccated hard-pan proved nowhere near as open as it appeared. Nor as solid, as the rain turned the dry clay and sand into a cloying paste that gummed up the horse's hooves and proved treacherously slick. The high ground was also broken by snaking fissures and sudden slopes into steep riverbeds gouged out by the run-off of countless violent winters, crossing it would be difficult at the best of time, and impossible now.
Two Badgers and Vin never even paused, heading for a pale-bottomed ravine between the ridges of land sloping down off the buttes. They dismounted before attempting the incline, and stood waiting for the rest to catch up. Vin worried Peso's reins in his fingers, studying the way ahead.
"We'll have to lead the horses awhile." He said, his voice a hoarse rasp. "It's steep, n' it'll be slippery in places where the sandstone peters out. Follow Two Badgers n' me right close, n' walk to the wall-side of your horse in case he slips. J.D., you lead Josiah's mount, he's gonna have to say up." J.D. got down at once, proud even wet and miserable that no one questioned he was best for that tricky job.
The rest got down into the mud, then, so thick and viscous underfoot that Ezra couldn't restrain a few bitterly inventive curses about the ruin of his boots. Mary's skirts were smeared and sodden almost at once, and she gathered them to the side over her arm, steadying herself by a light grip on the cheekstrap of her horse.
At first it seemed a wandering and random descent until they realized Vin and Two Badgers were following a trail of solid ground only someone familiar with the area could know. Broad flat layers of sandstone and islands of grass, and one dangerously uneven stretch of slick gray mud when Vin risked mounting Peso, as sure-footed as a mule, to bracket Josiah's horse against stumbling.
The smoky outline of the Big Horn Mountains disappeared over the rounded rim to the west, and the ravine widened as they descended off the prairie. The rain gathered in the lacework of cuts and creeks on the high ground above into a thick run down the ravines and gorges. Lightening struck white and trembling, thunder pulsed and rumbled in answer, and they finally reached the bottom and were able to mount again, following the twists and turns of the highest ground the horses could walk on as the center swamped in sucking mud. It seemed like they'd going forever and had an eternity to go. Gradually the gorge broadened and flattened into a shallow canyon braced by flat-crowned bluffs, and Nathan could no longer wait.
"We've got to stop." The healer's voice barely broke above the muddy slip of water that had been thick as pudding, but was now beginning to run in earnest, and never registered in Vin's ears. The others turned in their saddles toward Josiah in a sudden freshening of worry, slowing, Mary turning her horse back in a quick anxious spin that send the horse's back feet skittering on the slippery ground.
Peso, rain-streaked and muddy, kept on walking as if he would not stop short of falling down dead, his head low, but his ears flickering back and forth, stubbornly holding his lead even as the others looked for a spot to stop. A pale rocky outcropping of sandstone hollowed broadly by larger floods than this seemed the best spot. Not exactly dry, but not flooded, either, and sheltered from the wind by a stand of scrub pines, it would do.
Vin kept going, his eyes on a further distance than he could see. Duley couldn't leave him this way, could she? Like this, just ... disappear? Leave him alone with killing on his soul, doomed the rest of his life to question whose will he'd done in killing Stephen, and hopefully Gerald? He'd wanted to, he believed she'd wanted him to, but had she left him so he could do it unimpeded ... or had he forced her away for the same, more selfish, reason? Forced her away forever?
"I've got to have a better look, I need t'get some water into him, some broth if I can do that ..."
There was a quiet discussion that again Vin didn't notice. A shrug from Two Badgers said it was safe enough to stop, and a short yip dispersed his three warriors to the high ground to stand watch. Two Badgers looked toward Vin, man and walking stolidly on, and Nathan called after him, but he didn't hear. Peso kept plodding on and Buck dismounted with a grim shake of his head.
"I'll get 'im." Buck went at a stiff, but still quick, lope along the upper margins of the sandstone shelf, Peso moving so slowly in the miring mud that he didn't need to do more to catch him.
How it scared him to call her, to long for her and need her and want her and not have her come to him like she'd always come. Why wouldn't she come? He was as empty and used up as an old dry carcass except he was still breathing. Didn't know why he was still breathing, it didn't make sense. Nothing did anymore except getting these people to safety so he could get off by himself and fall apart and blow away in the wind ... something stopped Peso's forward motion, though Vin hardly noticed it, his eyes fixed on the next sloping corner ahead. In the rain the badlands looked melted, like gray-brown wax slumping down from the flats above. Had the rain let up? Where were they? Was someone calling him?
"Vin?" Buck reached up and gripped Vin's bony knee. Vin stared down at his hand dumbly and Buck gave his leg a shake.
"Get on down, Vin, you need a rest n' we all need t'get our bearings." To Buck's credit, the easy smile he'd turned up to Vin never faltered when the tracker's eyes shifted to his face. Like he'd be screaming if he had strength to spare, blatantly teetering on a razored edge and closer to crazy than Buck had ever thought Vin could stray. Vin hardly knew where he was, who Buck was, his hold on the world frayed and giving way thread by thread.
Not for a second did Buck let Vin see the bitterly familiar fear to see that expression, a good man dying from the inside out. It was a look he'd seen too many times on Chris, but he'd hoped ... Vin was supposed to save Chris from that fate, not fall to it himself. Buck had never imagined anything could take the solid ground out from under Vin Tanner, the steadiest and most enduring man he'd ever in his life met. Buck had sworn more than once that Vin could walk through a hurricane or get struck by lightening and not have it off-balance him ... but something had, and it was more than Chris being ...
"C'mon." Buck said with a quick beckoning gesture of fingers and head, staying near enough to have Vin's leg brush against him as Peso shifted his feet and ready to give him the support he'd need to dismount. Vin looked down at him like he was hearing a foreign language coming out of Buck's mouth and Buck tried to laugh at the dumb befuddlement of his face, to make it an indulgently big brother sort of sound, but he wanted Vin off that horse before he fell off.
Vin hardly seemed to be breathing. He blinked slowly as if Buck's face and words had to sink a long way into him before he recognized them. Then it dawned on him that they'd stopped and he turned with a fearful twist that made him grunt with hurt to look behind him where the Judge and Nathan were carefully taking Chris down from Josiah.
"He's still with us, Vin, Nathan wants a little time." Buck reassured him, but the tracker seemed fascinated by the pale hand that fell out of the buffalo robe, long fingers half-curled and loose. He watched them lay Chris, wrapped in that buffalo robe, against the rocky wall. Still as a rolled carpet.
"Git down, Vin." A little more forcefully, but careful, not knowing which way Vin might break and relieved when he squinted at him, knew who he was and nodded.
Clumsily Vin dallied Peso's reins around the horn and then took hold of it and pulled himself forward so he could get his off leg up and over the cantle and bedroll. But the other didn't bear his weight in the stirrup, his fingers tried to hold but just weren't able to get a hard enough grip.
Buck's big hands slid casually up the tracker's sides from behind, gripping under his arms and carrying him down without seeming to, then holding him steady while Vin's legs shook and his knuckles whitened on the saddle and tack as he struggled to anchor himself and find his balance. Solid ground felt strange, too hard and unmoving. He was sitting down under the overhang a few yards from Chris before he knew Buck had walked him to it, on a bedroll with no idea how it'd gotten there, and then it was too late. His muscles failed, his bones gave way, and he slumped down onto his back with a soft grunt, blinking without any comprehension up at the broad expanse of black-ribboned sky framed between the rocky walls. Wide and endless as empty eternity, the constant voice of the water, the earth cold and strangely unwelcoming under him. In the sudden stillness he felt his own heart pounding erratically and his breathing harsh and uneven. He felt cold and clammy and chilled under damp layers of clothes and he closed his eyes, nauseous ...
Buck, squatting anxiously beside him, pulled a blanket up over the tracker, knowing he hadn't so much fallen asleep as passed out. He glanced to his right where Nathan was bent over Chris and rubbed absently at an ache in his chest that wouldn't let go, wanting to be there and half afraid to. That ache got worse every time he looked at Chris' lifeless body or glimpsed Vin's haunted face. Men he cared about, fine good men going right about the business of dying, each in their way, without a by-your-leave. He rested his elbows on his knees and one big long hand scrubbed down his unshaven face with a sigh both weary and annoyed. Well, he damned well wouldn't allow it. He'd come through hell and high-water with Chris Larabee, they'd survived impossible odds before and it was gonna take more than a single soldier to kill Chris now. Bastard. Wished he could kill that damned soldier all over again. He smoothed his mustache down over the dropping curve of his own frown as he regarded Nathan's pursed mouth and determined motion - their healer damned well wouldn't allow it, either, and Mary - why, she looked ready to spit in the face of the Devil himself if he tried to take Chris. Buck wondered what might come of that when they were all back in Four Corners, if either would be changed enough by these trials to test out the deepest waters of love. He never even considered that time wouldn't come.
Creases of fatigue and grime fanned out from the corners of Buck's narrowed eyes as his look passed around the circle huddled close over Chris. His pale chest and the brightness of blood was too much color against the dark buffalo hide, Buck couldn't look there for long. Josiah solid as a mountain beside him, handing Nathan whatever he asked for, bearing away bloodied bandages with the tender composure of a ministering angel. Ezra right beside him, haggard and unkempt but resolute despite his fastidious revulsion at gore of any kind. The gambler was moving with the care of someone who hurt more than he wanted known, complaining instead about the loss of his green coat and the 'ruination' of his vest - Buck dipped his head with a swell of affection for that fancy con-man. Ezra was proving his mettle in these hard and dangerous times, showing everyone the heart and courage Buck had long suspected under his self-involved bluster.
Orrin had been set to building a small fire against the wall using buffalo chips one of the warriors had given him in a leather bag, Mary having taken on the task of feeding men run beyond their limits. She looked harried and pinched and her eyes strayed often with a dark worry toward Chris. It made Buck smile to see the impatient expression that came and went on her classic face as she set the coffee pot she'd managed to get into Ezra's carpet-bag - correctly figuring he'd be the last to drop his possessions as they made their escape - onto the meager fire. Probably mad at herself for finding comfort in such a predictably female role, and mad at them for acting like it was only natural. His smile loosened and became wearily real; if only she knew how much more than 'just a woman' a woman was, stronger and wiser and more enduring than most men by far. Wasn't fair they had to fight lifelong for respect, but Buck figured the struggle might be just what made them that way. He was heartened by the purposeful movements and firm voices and smacked his knees with his hands and took a deep bracing breath. Hell, if a man had to be in the badlands in foul weather, he couldn't think of better company for it. Chris and Vin both were about to find out just how stubborn all their friends could be.
"Is he alright?" J.D.'s voice would've startled Buck if he hadn't been too tired to react, and he cocked his head up at the kid with a slanted grin, half annoyed at himself for not hearing his approach; they were all too tired, which could be damned dangerous if it came to a fight ...
"He look alright t'you, kid?" Escaped before he could stop it, and he apologized for the too-quick words with a back-handed tap to J.D.'s calf. This kid had done a man's work in keeping Tanner alive and Buck didn't intend to let his own worries undercut that achievement.
"You alright, J.D.?" He asked then, his concern genuine upon closer scrutiny. J.D.'s Irish was becoming plain in his deprivation, elfin bones rising up hard so his hazel eyes seemed enormous, the glossy black of his thick hair and brows and womanish lashes making his fair and faintly freckled skin seem even more pallid. But he hadn't complained nor asked for any care - even when he might need it. Buck unfolded his long legs and stood up, using a grip on J.D.'s wrist as a lever and giving back a smile that was truly affectionate and prideful.
"Sit down here n' keep an eye on him while I fetch some things; I'm gonna have me a look at that 'nothin' you got under your shirt there." J.D. made a scoffing sound, but Buck saw the relief in his red-rimmed eyes, gratitude for the attention to something that really did hurt. It made Buck want to tousle his hair or something, but he didn't. Maybe it'd be better to teach him not to emulate the rest of them too much - the strong, silent type often ended up the dead type. "Maybe I can get us some grub, too ... coffee - God, I love that woman ..." Grinning as he walked off toward Mary, a spark in his eye he hoped looked more like confidence than desperation.
Nathan bent close over Chris, intent on peeling the bandage up off his chest without breaking the wound open. Two Badgers had laid a small parfleche beside him that Little Eagle had made him bring and Nathan was glad to see several herbs he knew were good for preventing infection, he wanted to get them onto the wounds before they went putrid. It was bad enough having to put Chris on a horse and keep moving him as they were, he longed for a bed and clean blankets and more hot water than the little pot Mary had given him could hold. But it was all they had, so he'd make do. When he felt the small vibration of a moan under his hands he nearly wept with relief, and the vertical line of pain that drew itself between Chris' fair eyebrows was also a welcome sight. He wasn't conscious, but he was moving even that little bit, as he hadn't been since he'd fallen. So small, those signs of stubborn life, but enough just then to a healer who ceaselessly praying for them.
Mary was close enough to see the flicker of a smile that crossed his dark face as he worked, and she took a deep shaky breath, the same smile touching her own face. She sat down next to her father-in-law against the wall and turtled down into the shawl wrapped against her cheeks, letting it wick away relieved tears. Orrin's arm curved warm around her shoulder, his thick knobby fingers patting gently on her arm, but he didn't look at her, giving her privacy with a joy he knew might be tragically short-lived. It was enough for now, that little bit of Nathan's hope rising, to buoy them all. They'd gathered around the small warmth of the fire and the promise of hot soup, water and jerky and a square of pemmican that smelled delicious. Vin lay stretched out on the far side of them and their eyes touched him with uneasy concern.
"Where you figure we're goin'?" Buck asked of no one in particular, his hands wrapped around a tin cup of coffee savoring the warmth. He tried for a normal tone, wanting to hear some normal talk. "Judge, you got any ideas?" None of them noticed James' startlement at the honorific. Travis shook his head, looking older than usual, his dark eyes red-laced and weary.
"I'm not sure, Buck." He glanced at Vin, they all did, knowing their answers were there but unwilling to rouse him to ask. Two Badgers and his warriors were gone into the gray day scouting ahead and behind, the only obvious thing the direction, northwest.
"Probably toward the Big Horns." Josiah mused from Nathan's side, even though they'd been heading west and the Big Horns were north. His big deep voice was muted and rough and his eyes almost too blue under the broad brim of his hat. "It's about the only safe place for the Lakota about now. Though I'm also thinking safety isn't what they're after just now."
Ezra's look was sharply unhappy. "I suppose it would be too much to ask that they take us to a civilized town? Not for myself, mind you, but for our wounded leader?" To his surprise, no one rebuked him for selfishness, though he would've given most of the considerable stash of cash in his boot right then for a hot bath and a soft bed.
"They aren't going to risk themselves that way, Ezra - " Josiah said, and Travis nodded agreement.
"I doubt we'd be safe in a town in this area anyway." Orrin said, "Certainly word has gotten out about us by now - and if Gerald Monroe is still alive ... well, we can't risk it."
If Gerald Monroe is alive ... if ... everyone chewed on that for awhile in silence, even James, with a fear that outstripped any concern the others might have. If his eldest brother was alive, his own life wasn't worth the dank suit he was wrapped in right this second; with all he knew, information garnered over years of intrigue, he was now Gerald's worst enemy. Much as it twisted in him to pray Gerald was dead already, he couldn't help wishing it was so. He was startled to find the Preacher looking at him sympathetically, then startled again when Tanner woke with a gasp that made everyone jump, jerking upright in a sudden flail of robe-tangled arms and legs and his eyes popping open as if he'd just been thrown into wakefulness.
"Jesus, Vin ..." Buck laughed softly, "My heart don't need no more excitement today ..." But nobody bothered Vin for a minute until he could get his breathing under control and the terrified look off his face.
He didn't know what he'd been dreaming about, or even if he had been dreaming ... if he had, he didn't want to know what it was by the rabbiting of his heart. J.D. pressed a cup of coffee into his uncertain hands and he closed his eyes as he drank the scalding brew down without even stopping to breathe, bitter and hot and bluntly real. They were staring at him when he brought the cup down and he stared back, mystified, but feeling some steadier than he had when he'd laid down. Although he didn't remember laying down ... hell, he didn't remember getting off Peso.
No one was surprised that his first instinct was to look for Chris, skipping over the disappointingly pale and still form to Nathan's face. The healer looked up at him soberly, shrugging at the unasked question. No one else had asked outright, but Vin would, and Nathan had no idea if Chris would survive. He'd gotten no further reaction out of him, and though that worried him, he'd tried to consider it a blessing that Chris would remain unaware of the continued motion of horseback to come. His shrug wasn't good enough by half for Vin, Nathan sensed that plainly and said,
"Bleeding stopped, that's good. We got some marrow broth into him - n' you refill that cup with it, not coffee. Not as much as I'd like, but that's good, too. I ain't gonna lie t'you, Vin. It's a damned bad wound and out here ... I just don't know."
Vin's eyes scoured his face for any unspoken nuances, finding fear but also a grimly held faith that Chris could do what they'd all done a time or two - survive when they oughtn't. He wanted to stand up and walk over there and see Chris' face close up for himself, but he didn't trust himself quite yet. Panic still beat fast and high in him every time he looked there ... Chris couldn't die ... Lord, take me first, but Chris couldn't die out here for this cause he hadn't liked from the git-go. Surely Duley wouldn't take Chris, surely she'd know what it'd do to Vin to carry that responsibility ... but Duley ... well, it seemed he'd pushed her too far away to care any more, not for him or for his friends.
J.D. took his cup and brought it back filled with broth, and he drank that as well, the heat welcome going down and the flavor rich and salty. J.D.'s hazel eyes remained on him with gentle purpose, reminding Vin of a duty he just couldn't avoid any longer. The questions in their eyes and the way they didn't look at him so he wouldn't see them. He was tired, he could die in the next five minutes, any of them could. They suffered ... he looked around at their faces, sitting with his legs folded and still half-tangled in the buffalo robe. Mary and Orrin Travis and the boys, knowing they only had part of the story and yet following right on into these deadly circumstances, knowing the danger and not shrinking from it, and where the boys were concerned, for only one reason ... because Vin had gone, and a man's friends wouldn't let him face danger alone even if they didn't know what it was.
He'd killed Stephen, and he might have to go back to kill Gerald, he would need them just like he'd needed them all along whether he'd admitted it or not. He'd wanted them out of it, but he'd been counting on them all this time in the back of his mind, and here they were. He'd never have made it without them. They'd followed him to Fetterman and saved his life again, Chris shot down because of it, Ezra pale and pained, J.D. showing telltale spots of a fever beginning high on his cheekbones. Loyal and sacrificing all this time when he hadn't trusted them with the truth. It didn't matter now if he told them about Duley and it probably wouldn't have mattered before. Maybe she'd tricked them all into doing this for her so he'd finally have to put her aside, never thinking she wouldn't come back when it was done. He wasn't at all sure he wanted to live on when it was over, and these good folks deserved to know why.
He cleared his throat and opened his mouth, hesitated, and fell silent again, his head dropping so his hatbrim covered his face.
"I got somethin' t'tell you all. I'm powerful sorry I never told you before this, I should've ... but ... "
He could feel them looking at him, their curiosity aroused but waiting for him to find a way that might explain simply and shortly what was so complicated in him he couldn't even see the edges of it. He felt J.D. sink down beside him, the kid's knee bumping into his. An ally, that rough touch said, and the encouraging expression on his face when Vin glanced at him was full of faith that all the rest would be allies, too. Say it. Just say it.
"I was married to Elizabeth Monroe's sister." He said, without looking up until the words were out, his eyebrows contracting hard at the shock on their faces. Ezra and Buck were drop-jawed, Josiah somber and sorrowful with sudden understanding, Orrin and Mary sympathetic in their astonishment. Nathan shook his head as if Vin had just offered him irrefutable proof of the terrible prices exacted again and again from stubborn and prideful men. James stood up, unnoticed, gaping at the frontiersman who had been his sister's husband.
No one said anything, no one asked the questions Vin could see on their faces or expressed the natural anger at not having been trusted from the beginning. Men who'd believed themselves as close to Vin as to one another, and who discovered now that the tracker had held himself further away from them than they'd thought. Kept secrets they couldn't see a reason for. It was a betrayal, Vin knew that, and they had a right to be resentful, to feel like he'd tricked them into something far more dangerous than he'd let on for purely personal reasons. That guilt marked his face plainly, and he had to give it to them, he couldn't hide it, nor his regret. It was all the apology he was able to offer.
He let it settle in them and sipped at the cup, watching over its rim as they looked at each other with so much suddenly making sense to them. Quickly understanding it was this that Chris had known and kept from them because he'd given his word to Vin. It explained Chris' animosity toward Elizabeth Monroe, and woke the same feelings in some of them to think Vin had been taken advantage of more cruelly than just a city woman amusing herself with a plainsman. That she'd exploited a vulnerability so much profound than that for gold and land and white dominion over the Indians.
Buck knew better than to think Vin was so naïve a pretty woman wielding his dead wife's memory could make him jeopardize folks he was fond of. Just because a man avoided emotional entanglements didn't mean he had no experience of them - indeed, sometimes it meant just the opposite - and he had no question Vin would lay his life down for any of them, no matter what. But he could see that doubt in the faces of the others and knew Vin could, too, as a flush crept hot color across the tops of his cheekbones.
Vin explained himself further, annoyed that they thought him that much a fool and warmed at the same time that it got their ire up in his defense.
"My wife died years back, but she'd written to her sister mentionin' the gold in the Pa Sapa. Her brothers used the information to do ... " A single sharp gesture that was all-encompassing and condemning, disgusted with the Monroes, the world, with himself; "this."
James sat down again, ashen. All this time Gerald had been right to fear this man, he hadn't understood the instinct - Gerald had instincts like canine teeth. As if their father had reached out of his grave, as if his blood, through the daughter just like him and the man she'd tied to her heart, defended the people he loved. Not just a random frontiersman, not just a man angry to see his Indian friends lose their sacred lands, but a man with a deeply personal stake in it. It changed everything. Vin Tanner would never let the Monroes own what his grandfather said could not be. Any Monroe. Cold washed over him in a clammy tide as he suddenly realized what danger he - and his sister and niece - might still be in.
Buck combed through his mustache with his fingertips, his head down, seeing clearly where Chris had been wrong - Vin wasn't doing this for Elizabeth Monroe, though that woman's feelings were genuine and it was true any man might make the mistake of taking up with her just for the comfort of being reminded of the woman he'd lost. He was a man, after all, and this confession only made that clear. But he was doing this for his wife, a woman no one had ever suspected existed but who Vin loved as much today as when she'd been beside him. Buck had never thought he'd loved anyone but his Ma, but the devotion Vin still had to Elizabeth's sister blazed in his eyes, the grief of her loss fresh as new blood even so many years gone. So now Buck knew why he'd never spoken of her, no more than Chris spoke of Sara. He couldn't, no matter how long ago it had been, it was as immediate as this moment to him, all the time. All this was for her, trying to correct her mistake in judgment, to give her soul ease in the grave, maybe following a ghost, because Buck knew how real they could be ...
The simple fact that Vin loved a woman so much that he'd leave everything behind for her, die for her even years after her passing, changed the way his friends saw him. Not a loner, then, at least not always. Not just the way he was, but the way he'd become. A deeper and less distant heart than they'd suspected, living with a loss that only Chris would have recognized. Buck in particular understood that now, and in rapid succession he also grasped the source of Chris' fury. He'd told Vin about Sara and his boy, Buck had been there listening, a painful duty. He'd trusted Vin with more of his heart than he'd ever even told Buck, and Vin had never said a word. Chris grieved every day, every raging drunk and crazy chance he took, and Vin hadn't offered his understanding, which Chris would see as a betrayal. But Chris was wrong again - it wasn't because Vin didn't trust Chris. Vin never said anything because if he did, he'd have to accept the fact of his wife's death, and Buck knew, looking at Vin now, that he'd only just begun to do that.
Josiah's face was contemplative and kind as he understood that beautiful beaded length of leather in Chased-by-Water's hand the day Vin had burst from the lodge looking like the hounds of hell had teeth in him. Now he knew what it was, and what it meant to Vin. There was a hard duty ahead for the tracker that Josiah could see flickering terror in Vin's strained face. Vin was a deeply spiritual man, and it was no long leap to understand why he'd never taken his own life even when his grief was more than he could stand. Even when he had nothing even remotely hopeful to anticipate. The Bible was clear about suicide, and he was a man who looked to heaven for his final rest - and, Josiah suspected, for the woman who was still more alive to him than anything else in the world. Dying for someone you loved was easy. Living for them even when every day ached with yearning ...
Ezra, however, had no such insight as yet, his hands spread incredulously off his knees and he looked at Vin with his head cocked, his expression amazed and faintly offended, "Why on God's green earth didn't you tell us this before, Vin?" Ezra asked, and both Buck and Josiah wished he hadn't.
But Mary waited on his answer as well, and Orrin, J.D. and Nathan, not understanding about Chris, or a good-bye Vin wasn't sure he could, or wanted to, make. They fell still as Vin's eyes went to Ezra with a flare of something more than anger that faded when he saw in Ezra's expression only the desire to understand and a quick embarrassment at having asked a question he'd realized too late was impossible to answer. Only J.D. was close enough to see Vin's jaw jump as he dropped his head and dug his fingertips into his eyes. Buck touched Ezra's arm in gentle warning not to press it, but the gambler already understood he'd trespassed. Obviously Vin felt he had to offer them an answer, and Ezra hastened to relieve Vin of the burden of trying to think how by waving his hand dismissively.
"It doesn't matter." He said, a knot in his throat giving the words a harsher meaning than he'd intended. "You've told us now. And, if I might presume ... Vin ..." He waited until Vin looked up, dismayed by the emotions so high in the tracker's eyes, sorrow and guilt and responsibility for them all. "Knowing wouldn't have made a difference." His mouth flexed ruefully, the gold tooth glinting dully. "I don't imagine that bit of information would have stopped anyone from being here right now."
Vin stared at him, taken aback by the comradely warmth of Ezra's tone. His eyes skipped nervously around at their faces finding the same sentiment there. He wasn't surprised so much as grateful in a way he'd never be able to express, and he felt a moment of deep regret for not having trusted them from the beginning. Far from discouraging them, knowing about Duley would just have given them another reason to be at his back. A nod was all the answer Vin could give them, and it was enough.
Two Badgers came into the ravine and dismounted, and Vin stood up, the robe falling around his feet, desperate to be distracted before he shamed himself completely. The softened rain dripped off the escarpment above them in irregular runs and a sliver of blue showed to the northeast like a glimpse of hope. It yielded more sunlight than it seemed it could, glancing off the colors of layered rock intensified by the rain, sparkling on the muddy curls of the river.
Two Badgers came directly to Vin, squatting down easily at his side and speaking quietly in Lakota. Vin was too tired to translate for the rest and too tired to think in Lakota and speak English himself, so he didn't, knowing his friends weren't happy not to understand what was being said but helpless just then to fix it. They were his friends, anyway. All of them, and he held on to that, humbled by their faith in him.
They'd come about thirty miles since daybreak and would have to turn north soon, they still had a hundred to go to get to the Crazy Woman camp, which Two Badgers felt would be safe enough to remain in awhile. The Lakota didn't miss Vin's worried look toward his fallen friend, knowing he was wondering if the man would survive three days on the trail to reach that haven. Two Badgers thought he would, he was one of those with a core of iron in him, stubborn. He looked curiously at the map Vin pulled out of his coat, and shifted into a more ready position on his heels as the rest, regardless of not understanding the words, joined them and watched as the two traced their route. Josiah understood enough of what was being said to make sense of their fingers on the map for the rest, cobbling together a rough approximation that Vin appreciated more than he had time or energy to express.
They were nearly to Evansville, a dusty dot in the middle of nowhere that they'd avoid, but they'd ford the Platte near there and head north. There was a brief argument between Vin and Two Badgers about the Hole in the Wall, they'd be within ten miles east of it and Vin wanted to head there if Chris was failing. Two Badgers just kept shaking his head emphatically as Josiah translated sketchily. He was not the only one to be astonished that Vin knew about Hole in the Wall intimately enough to insist it'd be nearly deserted this time of year, with all the warlike activity between Indians and soldiers, except for the whores and drunks and broken-down gunfighters who made it home. Buck's eyebrows crawled up on his forehead, a wicked little smile twitching his mouth as Orrin's eyes got eagle-sharp and none too happy. Finally Travis shook his head and interrupted with a definite, "No, I won't have Mary there, Vin, and you know as well as I do that I won't be able to stop her going if you take Chris. No."
Two Badgers lifted his chin, defying Vin to quarrel with this white man who seemed to wear a chief's authority, and he said in painstaking English, "Those whites there will give you to soldiers as fast as they would give me. My warriors and I have other things to do ..." Vin scowled at him, half for disagreeing with him and half for doing so in English so the others would back him up. He didn't push it, though privately he swore he'd take Chris into that disreputably deadly hide-out alone if it was a choice between Hole in the Wall and death.
Past that disputed haven, they would enter the vast Powder River valley, a place Vin dreaded to see for how changed he knew it would be. Duley'd loved the Powder, called it the garden of Eden ripe in blessings of plenty. Now, Two Badgers said, the buffalo were gone from that place. Once they'd herded so thick a man could walk an acre across their backs and never touch the ground.
Another 30 miles would put them at the southernmost curve of Crazy Woman Creek south of Buffalo, and they'd follow the creek northeast toward the Lakota camp another sleep away. There, the bands of Lakota and Cheyenne and Arapaho were stopping to share news and then going on, except for the youngest and eldest, to the confluence of the Crazy Woman and Powder Rivers. Beyond that was Montana Territory and the Greasy Grass, Little Big Horn, where the converging bands would break into two branches, one west to Little Big Horn and the other east to the Rosebud, the arms of two great pincers encompassing twenty-five miles of grassland and river valleys and massing cavalry between them.
Two Badgers stood up at last, tugging at the shoulder of Vin's hide coat with a tip of his head indicating a desire for private conversation. Vin rose and left the rest to prepare to go on, and he and Two Badgers walked down the valley toward the horses. Despite his invitation, Two Badgers walked in silence until they had actually reached the horses, and Vin could see the three warriors waiting, mounted, around the bend.
"You will stay at the camp on Crazy Woman." Two Badgers said, which confused Vin, particularly since the expression on Two Badgers' face was nearly stern.
"You will not be allowed to fight with us against the army."
Vin sucked in a breath to protest, to insist, but Two Badgers was shaking his head, his eyes regretful, but unmoved.
"Tashunke Witco said this to me, and if he is still at the camp there, he will say it to you from his own mouth. You are a fine warrior, your friends ... ah, we would be glad, any other time, to have such warriors at our sides. You know this is true. But you are not Lakota." Gentling that rebuke - for rebuke it was in Vin's mind and heart, separating him for the first time from the only people he'd ever come close to feeling were his.
"If there are white men with us, who will speak of our courage? The victory must be Lakota, there can be no question." He leaned toward Vin, laying his hand on his shoulder as intimate friends were at liberty to do, his eyes intense with sincerity and affection. "And if a white man such as you dies on our battleground, what help can you be in the battles to come?" He shook the slender tracker who loved the Lakota so much that the thought of letting them go to war without him was enough to break his good heart. "Tashunke Witco said that your time to fight for the Lakota would come, but it is not now."
There was no argument Vin could offer, no help for how it felt to be set outside the circle of the people even for his own good, and theirs. And no way to deny the terrible suspicion that Duley was in this, too, somehow, taking the people from him as she'd taken herself and yet with the other hand giving him the six men behind him, and the town, and the life she couldn't share.
By the time they reached the Powder River Basin, they were bedraggled and haggard and used up, having never stopped for more than a few hours at a time. There was no safety with Crook and a thousand soldiers pushing toward the Tongue River twenty miles to their east, open ground they would have liked to travel themselves otherwise. Sleep had been scarce and too profound with exhaustion to be truly restful, meals had consisted of whatever Vin or the Lakota could provide, a few rabbits, grouse, an old elk they'd been overjoyed with even though it was tough and gamey without the time to bleed or cook it properly. Buck and Nathan had become sick after eating it, too much and too rich on bone-empty stomachs. Worst of all, their coffee was gone.
Alone, Vin scouted both the route ahead before dawn each morning and their back-trail each afternoon until long after dark, sleeping and eating only as he needed to be able to perform those vital functions, speaking only when he had to, a word here or there. As if telling them about his wife had exhausted a store of words never abundant to begin with.
Though Two Badgers could have taken over much of that burden, he did not insist - clearly Tanner had a spirit-given madness on him, which the Lakota respected. He would not interfere, though he sent his warriors ranging very far around the little party, gathering information about the many people now moving in this territory. The latest had just come to him, and Two Badgers' compressed his wide mobile mouth with disgust as he watched his friend Bear Tooth ride back into the valley, eagle feathers fluttering from long unbound hair. What Bear Tooth had said after roaming to the east all morning was not surprising - Crows scouted for the soldiers, always Crows! Licking the muzzles of the whites in hopes of having again the lands the Lakota had driven them from over and over. He hoped they would be brave enough to fight alongside their masters in the days to come so he could kill some of them.
Three Stars, as the Lakota called Crook, had left Fetterman the day after these people escaped, the white chiefs Terry and Gibbon hunted Sitting Bull on the Little Missouri without finding him. Yellow Hair was on the move as well, shadowed every step by hostile warriors restrained from attacking only with the promise of a greater vengeance to come. The great camp was preparing to move from the mouth of the Rosebud to the head of Ash Creek to convene the yearly sun dance, sacred ceremony of the summer solstice. Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho moving toward that with the same footsteps, the same breath, the same hope. More this year than ever before, Two Badgers' heart rose again and again to know all the seven campfires and so many brother nations would be together. Never before had so many been as one - Tashunke Witco's visions were of a new sort of war. He looked over the little column, still searching for the logic in protecting these whites with war against the rest coming fast. Why could not more of them be such reasonable men? Vin ghosted by the column's flank in the opposite direction, and Two Badgers watched him, disturbed and wishing there was some help he could offer his old friend.
Tashunke Witco had said his words would distress Tanner, and though that wasn't all of what tormented him now, it certainly had driven him deep into himself. He was as he'd been when first he came among the camps, wary eyes and high shoulders with a starving look to him, never coming near enough to touch. It had taken so long to earn his trust, and now ... Now, Tanner was fiercely focused on nothing but keeping these people safe, feeding them, getting between them and harm. Keeping the gun-man alive. Two Badgers shook his head with short sigh; Vin avoided that wounded man as if not looking would also keep death from seeing him. The gunman was refusing to die well enough on his own, he had a fire burning in him even wounded and helpless - Little Eagle had said so, and now Two Badgers saw for himself. Indeed, these whites were not ordinary, even the pale woman doing all that must be done, enduring without complaint. Except the fancy one, but his grumblings seemed a thing of habit that amused his friends and eased their tensions.
The Powder River Basin eviscerated Vin in its loneliness. He sat with his hands planted hard on the horn of his saddle, leaning forward toward that fertile sweep without knowing he did so, only that the world could mirror a man's soul.
He was familiar with the grand vista of gently rolling grasslands cradled between the eastern flank of the Big Horns, where they'd entered the Basin, and the distant western flank of the Pa Sapa. These lands had been given to the Crow in 1851 by treaty, but never given by the Lakota, and never yielded, either. The Powder was their traditional hunting ground, the buffalo there belonged to them and always had, and for eleven years they'd come against the Crow there until those interlopers who served the whites against their own brothers had fled north into Montana territory. Beautiful as anything he'd ever seen, gracious and wide and opulently fertile, carved by ageless winds and waters so every geological feature was gentled and welcoming. Muted hills and humps scattered in patches across the valley floor like sleeping giants under drifting green blankets, seamed and splashed here and there by earth red as blood, dark as rust. Pale sandstone bluffs layered in faded colors, softened into easy slopes and promontories, veins of cottonwoods following the waterways down from the mountains in the west. The sky was an endless blue-gray vault filled with the storm that had not died, only paused, and the sharp sweetness of sage filled his tired lungs without dulling the terrible loss before his eyes, or in his heart.
He'd lain on his back once on this very ridge while the Powder had sung and shouted and shook in him. Rumbled in his bones ... this time of year the vast grasslands should be reverberating with split black hooves and mighty humped backs and bobbing sweeps of horn. Now, even from horseback, that Powder's voice had faded to forlorn winds keen and low as a dirge. Where were the great beasts who were the Powder's children? Where the many industrious camps making meat for the year ahead and enriching the basin with their gratitude?
He couldn't bear to dismount and feel that longing translate from the earth to his body, already too acutely aware of missing a loved one to dare feel loss on so grand a scale.
Two Badgers and his warriors didn't stop at that vista as the whites did, attentive to the terrain but casual to the depredations they already knew too well. They were in a hurry to get across the open ground of the basin as well as the wide muddy sprawl of the Powder River where they were too easily spotted by Crow scouts. It wasn't fear that hurried the warriors, but the desire to be part of the battles to come - to die here protecting these whites would be a waste of their war-skills. The soldiers were not hunting them, of course; they hunted Tashunke Witco, Sitting Bull, the many warriors and chiefs they believed to be encamped at the Tongue River. Those warriors, those chiefs, would welcome the soldiers in their own way, and in their own time. It would be a summer of surprises for Three Stars and Yellow-Hair and all those who believed the sacred Pa Sapa, rising black with piney forests above the plains in the distant east, were already theirs just because they'd said so.
On the even ground the way was easier than it had yet been, the steady rocking walk of tired horses too much like a lullaby to equally tired men.
Mary kept casting anxious glances back at her father-in-law from beside Josiah, worried about him as well as Chris. He was not a young man, and despite his stubbornly stalwart demeanor, it was obvious that he was suffering from being so long in the saddle, his face pinched and gray. James shadowed him like a child seeking a safe haven he nonetheless considered uncertain, trying to be invisible and succeeding. She found that peculiar given that they'd rescued him from his brothers and protected him now, but there were too many more pressing concerns to worry about it now.
Josiah had confessed that he could feel Chris moaning at times, and she stayed as close to him as she could. Chris hadn't regained full consciousness in the last two days, and when he did rouse, his smoky green eyes were eloquently agonized and bewildered. She struggled against despair, holding to the hope that he was truly the hardest and most unbreakable man she'd ever met. She looked at Josiah, trying to read Chris' well-being in him. His face was hollowed over his big bones and grizzled with sandy-gray whiskers, but she saw only the same calm strength she'd been seeing for days. It couldn't have been easy, holding Chris in the saddle in front of him all this time, but he did so with an open tenderness that struck her to the heart.
A ghost of a reassuring smile flickered out of Josiah as he noticed her, terror old in her eyes and her heart plain as day. Mary could never hide her feelings, they played out in every expression. Plain as the love in her for a man as impossible as this one, plain as his for her. Stubborn creatures. Chris burned against him, restless just now and hard to hold onto, and he focused on that task again.
Ezra was at the edge of the column, snappish as a wounded badger and no longer letting anyone tend his wounds, preferring to just leave them alone and disgusted with how filthy he was. Clothes never wholly dry re-defined misery, chaffing a rash on his delicate skin as well as a quick edge to his temper. He felt benumbed by deprivation, unable to grasp just how primitive and tenuous his neatly ordered and comfortable life had become. He was supremely unhappy to be wandering around in this inhospitable land in the opposite direction from Four Corners, and Vin's guilty sacrifices were a palpable and annoying factor in it. The tracker had become a penitent haunt, and while Ezra appreciated dedication to his personal survival, it only reminded them all uncomfortably that Vin hadn't felt he could confide in them in the first place. Married ... Lord, of all the things Ezra could guess about Vin Tanner, a wife was so far outside the realm of possibilities ... that in itself wasn't really the issue, though - it was that no one could say anymore that they knew him as well as they'd thought, and though they tried to hide that from him, even from each other, it was there. When they'd left Four Corners, there'd been no question that they would return, together, when it was done. Now no one knew how this trail would end, which of them would still be there. Which they would never see again.
Mary's grave beauty drew his attention, blue eyes huge and needful but bravely refusing to admit that need as a purely female weakness. Ezra was a little dismayed to know it wasn't, taking comfort himself in the fact that these men had never failed when their backs were to the wall. They were together, alive, and on the move, and he wasn't the only one trying not to think beyond that.
Two Badgers said soldiers were coming from every direction, but that didn't seem to disturb the warriors. Indeed, they seemed to anticipate the eventual meeting of the two opposing forces eagerly, which Ezra definitely did not - only Divine providence would prevent them from being ground up like meal between the two sides. Buck glanced over at Ezra's inarticulate growl of displeasure, but clearly the gambler had no intention of explaining himself. Buck let a gleeful grin slip across his face and tried to look comfortable in his own saddle - needling Ezra gave him something to do so he wouldn't fall asleep.
It took them most of the day to reach the Powder River, which looked more like a broad sea than a river, spreading out across the flat valley floor in meandering fingers of muddy currents and sluggish shallows. Those currents seemed swift here and there, and though the deepest would be no more than shoulder high on the horses, the footing was treacherous sucking mud that could take even the strongest animal down, leaving riders already weakened by injury and weariness and hunger to struggle alone.
"Oh, now, isn't this a delightful prospect!" Ezra complained with a bitter drawl at the breadth of the ford. It was a patchwork of moving currents and muddy shallows like a loose skein of gigantic mixed weight ropes thrown across the ground. The gambler's elbow was clamped close to his side, and his +face was sharp.
One by one the rest came up into an uneven and uneasy line along the nearly imperceptible bank, staring grimly at the glittering expanse.
They camped on the sandy silt of the southern bank that night, Vin riding, then walking, for miles in either direction looking for the best place to ford. Chris was awake, if not wholly coherent, and lay in the buffalo robes by a small fire alternately gritting his teeth and cursing crudely as Nathan tried to put fresh bandages on him. The wounds were red and tender, but didn't appear to be infecting, which relieved Nathan somewhat, but Chris was pallid and weak as a babe and couldn't seem to hold on to consciousness for more than a quarter hour at a time. J.D. worried him some - there, an infection had taken hold, even though his wound was also through and through. The kid took his concoctions and bore his ministrations far too patiently for Nathan's liking.
At dawn they lined up along the bank again, grimly focused on Vin twenty yards out in the river on Peso. The big horse jostled unhappily in the cold muddy water and both of them were bedraggled and covered in pale mud from testing the river all the way across and back.
J.D. went first, without any fuss, keeping his eye to the course Vin was showing them with his position out in the water, which was shoulder-high on Peso. Obviously he'd been across a time or two last night or this morning, because he led them on whatever solid ground and shallow water there was. Josiah shifted Chris across his body to keep his legs out of the water, and halfway across felt Chris' hand fist in the back of his coat, taking his weight off Josiah's arm on the reins. When he looked down, Chris was focused on the water, and then on Vin like a ragged apparition ahead. He went down again as soon as they'd gone up the bank, but for the first time in days, Josiah smiled.
The sentries saw their approach at dusk and sent one to warn the camp among the cottonwoods. Little Eagle hurried among the women setting skins on tripods over the fires to heat water and food, her urgent labors sparking a general scurrying in and out of lodges.
Elizabeth, grim and withdrawn but with an eye to her niece that hadn't dulled even in all the days of travel, tended the fire before the lodge she and Julianna shared with the old woman without asking what the warriors seemed so excited about as they rode among the several dozen lodges in the grove. They were always excited these days, parties of warriors at all hours and camps moving to Ash Creek constantly passing through the area requiring hospitality. The brightness of their eyes frightened her. Some had danced in the storm, drums in lodges with the fire-side skins rolled up throbbing in answer to the thunder, red-gold light from a big hot fire flickering up the towering spires of the trees. Voices raised in a sudden high-pitched cry that set her skin quivering when hail had made a moment's deafening roar. She was frightened and only just barely managing to keep her wits about her.
She had no idea when Vin and the others would return or where the Lakota were taking her when they struck this camp, whether Vin would know how to find them - or even if he was alive to do so. Refusing to think that was futile and she was unaccustomed to allowing anyone else to assume mastery over her existence. Yet she was in a constant low-grade terror that she could not afford to show with Julianna's safety depending on her. That they seemed to like her niece so much, that Julianna had begun to pick up their language and mannerisms, was reassuring, but it also made her feel more desperately isolated.
Jules stacked firewood beside her now, sullen as always to be leashed so tightly, but paying very close attention to the words and activities around her. Not another scouting party, not a passing band while they waited here, where Little Eagle had said they should. The instant her Aunt's back was turned, she took off running like a deer, ignoring the angry surprise of her Aunt's demand and going pell mell toward the slope overlooking the wide gold and green valley.
There was a ridge her Aunt would never be able to climb, and it was thick with tall grass that would hide her. The warriors on guard there didn't bother to try to send her back to camp - she was a stubborn girl, and obviously her instincts ran true if she'd broken free of the woman now, knowing who came without being told. That white woman daunted no few of the people, regal and straight-backed and quick-eyed, her tongue as sharp as Little Eagle's and not afraid to refuse or command that wise old woman. That Little Eagle allowed it made them wary of her.
Jules waited patiently until they went back their watch and then she tried to see where they looked most often until she, too, saw the black dots of horses in a brokenly-spaced line moving slowly toward them. She couldn't have recognized them from so far, but when she looked up into the warrior's face, remnants of red paint still clinging here and there to brow and cheeks, he grinned at her, and she knew.
Oh, she wished she had Uncle Vin's distance glass! Her heart leapt into her throat and began pounding there so hard she could hardly breathe. Trembling with concentration, she squinted out across the valley, squatting down with her fingertips on the ground to balance her, maybe even to feel them through it, as she tried to count how many horses came, strained to see who ...
The warrior touched her briefly on the shoulder and cocked his chin to direct her to the side of the distant column, not having to see faces or clothing to recognize familiar men. "Okuti (Shooter)." Which was how the younger warriors named him among themselves, grunting with surprise as she took his hand and squeezed it, looking out there, with more strength than he suspected she knew she was exerting. His companion looked over at him with a half-smirk at the girl's attentions, but he was not embarrassed by it. She was strange, and young, but she was a fine girl and would make a brave and resourceful wife for someone one day - he was not the only one to think so.
Below the ridge in a sudden vibrating sweep a group of warriors in paint and war-dress rode through toward the little column, hooves thudding dully on the damp earth and an excitement in their faces, and in their sounds, that made her take off running after them. Fleet and nimble and foolish, the warriors on guard had to move to cover her as she ran down the slope, one following, because if she was hurt or taken, Little Eagle would have their scalp-locks on her lodge-pole.
"Com'pny." Buck said softly, and around him rifles slid free of scabbards, Mary moving as quickly as the rest, moving her horse protectively ahead of Josiah as Buck rode up to do the same on the other side. The rest spread out with a racketing of rounds being chambered.
Ezra stood his horse on its back hooves to face hoofbeats coming quick from the west - if it was another war party, they were dead men ... but it was Vin, riding fast and his empty hand high. No rifle in it, open, fingers widespread.
"Buck .." Ezra called nervously, his attention urgently divided between Vin and the savagely-festooned and whooping party of Indians bearing down on them from ahead, "I speak three languages fluently, but sign language escapes me, what is our prodigal son attempting to communicate? Has he lost his gun?"
Josiah answered, "He isn't armed, so it's safe to say we don't need to be either, they must be Lakota." Suddenly struggling a little impatiently with Chris, who had managed somehow to get Josiah's side-arm out of the holster in half-lucid awareness of their alarm.
Buck laughed, a shadow of doubt keeping his rifle across his chest; "They're sure makin' a mighty lot of noise ... we sure it's welcome? Hate to die with a foolish look on my face ..."
"Vin's sure." The Preacher replied, a hint of challenge in his sparking blue eye. Vin being sure was enough for him same as it had ever been - how true was it for the rest of them?
J.D. immediately thrust his rifle back into the scabbard, earning a narrow look from Buck and giving one right back. Buck left his rifle where it was, and so did Ezra, turning in the saddle of his suddenly lively horse as the rest came to a wary stop. Without a by-your-leave, Buck kneed up his gray out to meet Vin, and only when the two had met and Buck stowed his rifle did Ezra follow suit. Not that he was the least comfortable doing so, but one never knew what arcane taboo he might incite by open suspicion. The troop of bare-legged young warriors in high good spirits pulled up to an exuberant stop in front of them, sleek ponies painted for war, and under this escort, the exhausted party went on to Crazy Woman Creek. Two Badgers and his warriors had been there long enough to have washed in the cold water and dressed in the finery of war, their faces and ponies freshly painted, care taken to hair and feathers and weapons, ready to enter their people's camp with appropriate ceremony.
These banks were steeper and lined with boulders, the creek a quick frothy run in sunset's deep-shadowed depths, and when Vin got down, they all did. Josiah looked at the ford doubtfully and Nathan was frowning when Two Badgers walked over with a blanket, a brightly painted warrior by his side. Hand gestures and two more warriors made it clear what they intended, and Josiah had no misgivings about wrestling Chris into the blanket, which the four Indians then proceeded to carry nimbly down the embankment, across the rocky bottom, and up the other side, adjusting as they went to keep the wounded man clear of rocks and water.
People began to appear among the trees just upslope from them, and once across, they began to walk at a pace quickened by the thought of a camp nearby, of hot food and a place to lie down that wasn't wet and cold.
"Look!" Mary pointed, the reins of her horse trailing out of her gloved hand, a smile lighting her face. There was Julianna Monroe running pell mell downward across the brush-dotted slope yelling an inarticulately boisterous greeting.
Vin saw her coming and Peso bumped against his suddenly stationary back. None of his thoughts had gotten it right, how it felt to see her, knotting joy and guilt together so tight he couldn't separate them. Grinning like to split her face in half and running right at him, her body hurtling into him so hard she knocked the breath out of him with a grunt and would've knocked him down, unsteady as he was, if not for the stubborn wall Peso provided at his back.
Breathless, wordless, her arms gripped around him as if her touch must tell him how glad she was, her bright head pressed hard into his chest. His hand hovered over her without touching, neither to draw her closer nor to put her back away from him. How did he lay hands on her that were dipped in the blood of her father?
"It's alright ..." She was whispering over and over, so softly he could barely hear, but he knew it was for him. "It's alright." Guessing what he'd done by his reluctance with her, and her forgiveness complete and whole-hearted. Warm and vital, and though his heart faltered on the razored edge of breaking, her arms, her head pressed tight against his chest, proved the stronger power. He felt the warm wet of her glad tears against his side and his eyes fell closed on a surrendering sigh, his right hand finally falling onto her back to gather her in, fighting for stillness and the will not to flinch.
Elizabeth tried not to run and still the heavy tweed skirt beat at her legs, fear and joy equal in her wildly beating heart, counting as she came near. Oh - they looked so ... such suffering! She faltered ... only one was so long and narrow, and though he'd never offered her anything but scorn and suspicion, her heart fell. Chris Larabee was being handed down off the Preacher's horse boneless as death but alive, by the low groan. All of them were alive - James! Her brother ran to her, enveloped in a strong embrace that felt needful and frightened. For once, her own desires won over the maternal instinct to comfort and protect, she gripped him and kissed his cheek, but then turned and broke free, looking ... James followed at a little remove, afraid of the seeking urgency of her eyes. Afraid of the tracker she searched for.
She found them on the far side of that bad-tempered horse, Julianna nearly invisible, having burrowed against his side under his open coat, her arms clasped tight around him and Vin curved over her, holding her in one hand, the other clasped on Peso's reins. Bowed with a weary despair she could feel from ten feet away. He looked up at her approach, the harsh bones of his face pooled in twilit shadows and softened by gold whiskers, the depths of his wide quiet eyes glowing like lit fuses. He might as well have said it aloud.
Stephen and Gerald were dead.
He would say it, feel bound to, and she stopped, rooted by a sudden and unexpected flood of terrible loss. Her brothers ...
Though it hurt him in a way she hated to imagine, she was helpless to stop the tears. One hand leapt her mouth, trying to smother the sound, the other her throat to hold down the upwelling of her unguarded grief. He bore it without looking away, though women's tears had always made him run and she seemed to know that, dropping her head and extending one hand in mute supplication to wait until she could compose herself. Her brothers, the boys they'd been, a constant force in her life ... gone. She'd loved them no matter their failings, understanding them better than they did and all hope of their changing gone now, too. She'd never known how dear that hope was to her.
It was Julianna who warmed the frozen moment, peeping from behind the edge of his coat with tears wet on her face and a smile uncomplicated by anything but joy, reaching an inviting hand to her Aunt. Elizabeth's feet carried her to them, Julianna's hand catching hers as she drew near and pulling her into him, into herself, so she was suddenly pressed between them. Uncle Vin's heartbeat was wild under her cheek, her Auntie trembled beside her, and Jules loosed one arm from Vin's waist to encircle Elizabeth's, binding her Aunt against Vin's other side, binding the three of them close together as a child's impossible wish.
Elizabeth's first thought was how thin he was, and then all she cared about was having him in her arms. With a sigh that released her sorrow and stirred the loose tendrils of hair on his neck warmly, she laid her head on the cold damp hide of his coat. "Thank God ..." Her arm went around his neck and she moved close, conveying welcome with her embrace, the trust of her body so intimately against him. He made a small, helpless sound, yielding to the press of her against his side, then he let go Peso's reins, held all this time in his left hand, and took her against him with such desperate strength that Julianna squeaked a muffled protest between them and laughed.
Vin walked into the camp with Elizabeth and Jules beside him, hesitant in their smiles, startled and uneasy in the welcoming noise. Not sure how he should be feeling. Light ... but not in a good way, not relieved ... not wholly there. Part of it exhaustion, he knew that bone-deep tremble in himself. Part of it ... every time he looked into Jules' glowing face he missed Duley more, the ache under his breastbone growing ever more acute. What would he do if she was gone forever? What could he do?
Little Eagle ushered them like a small sharp-toothed dog herding weary cattle toward her fire and laughed to see their joy at the coffee-pot bubbling there. Buck, towering raw-boned over her, kissed her brown wrinkled hand and earned himself a bright-eyed speculation that made all the warrior's laugh out loud. For awhile it was a firelit dream of plenty and warmth. Chris was taken inside her lodge to the pallet Vin had once used, Nathan and Mary taking the task of washing as much of the blood off him as they could so Nathan could dress the wounds in new poultices and clean bandages. He seemed to relax, his eyes opening on them now and then, confused but feeling the safety of their calm attention, a blissful hum vibrating his sinewy chest at the warm water, the feeling of firm unmoving softness under him. Turning his head into Mary's hands as they stroked the cloth down his face. Knotting his hand in the skirt over her thigh as Nathan did what he had to in cleaning the wounds before covering them again.
Nathan wanted Mary to lie down, to eat, to do anything that would alleviate the bruised-looking circles around her eyes and the unhealthy sharpness of her bones, but she just shook her head, settling down on the floor beside the pallet on a buffalo robe. The healer stood for a long frustrated moment looking down at them, Chris a long stretch under the blankets with Mary folded over on edge of it, exhaustion admitted when she lowered her head onto the bump that was Chris' hand beneath the blanket. It moved, Chris' head turned, the hand under Mary's cheek turned to make a gentle cup, and she was just too tired to hide the tears that slid silently into the blanket. Nathan's hand settled on the nape of her bowed neck, delicate strands of hair so fair they looked white in the dim light of the lodge wisping across his dark knuckles, and her hand slipped up to cover it and hold it there with a gratitude straight from her heart.
"I'll bring you something to eat." He said quietly, "Before Buck and Josiah and J.D. eat everything in sight." He could only see the side of her face, but her mouth stretched in a wan smile and Nathan let his constant worry down at last, welcoming that centered glow he got when he knew everything would be alright.
The men slept close in a single lodge that night, not even Josiah's sonorous snores disturbing the first warm, dry and full-bellied rest they'd had in longer than they could remember. They woke aching and stiff, but restored to good humor despite Vin's absence - he'd gone out to the remuda to tend saddle-sores raised by damp saddles and blankets, Julianna on his heels even though he'd risen long before dawn. Buck's laughter rang out when Little Eagle spied the dried blood on J.D.'s shirt and burst into a tirade of scolding words, laying her hand on his face to feel the heat of a mild fever there. The old woman hauled J.D., protesting that he was fine, just fine, up and into her lodge, where she made him bathe and brought Nathan to tend the gunshot wound in his side.
Every time Buck heard the kid's voice rise in that lodge he started laughing again, and it was a fine sound to hear. Nathan said Chris would likely sleep the day through, watching the anxious light in their eyes fade as he told them Larabee's fever had broken and Mary had managed to get two cups of rich broth into him during the night. Ezra then rose and searched out the largest container he could find for hot water, disappearing into the lodge where they'd slept warning of dire consequences to anyone who interrupted his ablutions - no one knew for sure what that meant and their speculations were rude and ribald. Things needed doing, homey chores that were as much comfort as each other's company. Though things weren't wholly right, and there was still the lingering issue of Vin and Chris coming to an understanding, it seemed less impossible now that they'd all get home in one piece.
Just when Vin had begun to think all he had left to do was get them back to Four Corners, six warriors rode in from the south, and everything changed again. Two Badgers came for him as soon as he had taken council with the new arrivals, his face dark with the unhappy task of telling Vin that Gerald Monroe was still alive.
Sparkling indigo eyes tracked a comely Lakota woman as she passed, the fringe on her deerskin dress swaying gracefully. These women had a walk Buck would never forget, his head cocked in admiring study of that stately fluidity of hips and shoulders. When she glanced back, Buck nodded at her with a sweet smile and a wicked wink; dark eyes flashed as she turned away and kept going, but she wasn't offended. He was never disrespectful in his appreciations and he was very handsome, a man simply being a man. Surprising, perhaps, that he could be so much a man so barely rested from what had obviously been a terrible ordeal getting here. The women had rewarded that reckless resilience by naming him White Elk, the elk-people also being hard to distract from sensual purpose, and their gifts of fertility always welcome.
Chased By Water, sitting across from Buck at the fire among a circle of men gathered for a midday meal that had evolved into a lively discussion of the coming war and the years that had led to it, drew Buck's lingering attention back from the woman by asking; "Did the soldiers think coming at us in winter would break us?"
He was not the only one curious about the answer, there was so much about how the whites thought and the way they made war that Tashunke Witco said the people must know, but they accepted Buck's unknowing shrug. Bear Tooth shook his head with a bitter sigh and looked around at the amiable faces.
"Foolish to fight where winter can kill you as well as your enemies." He said, "But if we must, well ..." A wave of his hand and self-deprecating lift of his shoulders for the land that even in winter was home and mother.
"It did annoy us, though." Chased By Water admitted, and Buck's grin broke into a boistrous laugh. Buck swept one long arm out after a small band heading out along the well-worn trail north after the night's rest and hospitality, "And where these folks, n' all that've gone before 'em ... " Referring to the great gathering of the people at the Rosebud, "Callin' a little town meetin' t'consider it?"
Chased By Water choked on a mouthful of fry-bread and his friends all laughed and pounded him on the back good-naturedly.
Mary and Elizabeth turned at the sound of that masculine laughter, Mary with a laugh of her own at the large contingent of warriors who gathered wherever Buck or Josiah lit.
"Not even here a day and they're like old friends." Elizabeth said with a wry shake of her head, as much a stranger herself among the Lakota as she'd been the first day. "Men."
Mary laughed again and patted Elizabeth's pale hand where it was clenched on her knee, glancing at James on the far side of his sister wrapped in a buffalo robe so little but his wary darting eyes appeared. He was in a constant state of terror Mary had begun to wonder at; no one had offered him so much as a hard look, but he shadowed his sister as if he expected murder at every turn from either Indians or the white men who had saved him.
Faintly from across the camp came the sound of clamoring children, who were following Ezra for more of his fancy card tricks. He'd given them a few with exasperated pretense to get them off his heels, only to have it whet their fascination and draw even more. J.D., now known to have ridden the crazy black horse of the shooter without saddle or bridle, was visible in the meadow being taught the bow and knife by some young warriors. Nathan and Little Eagle were off somewhere following a bear 'to find his medicines', Little Eagle had said, which made no sense to Mary at all. Many things didn't. Her father-in-law and Josiah had been in conversation with the tribal elders since morning; no laughter came from that lodge, and no disturbance was offered. They were all a curiosity among the people, especially in this time of war, white men who smiled and laughed and seemed to wish friendship.
Mary wondered why the Lakota seemed so able to understand that there was good and bad in every people, and why her own race was not - Indians were Indians, and all were bad. Or worthy only of pity as a conquered people ... she had held that paternalistic viewpoint herself and had believed it to be compassion. Now she was ashamed of the insult that viewpoint was. They were proud, and with good reason. These people needed no one's pity, this wilderness was as comfortable to them as her own little sitting room was to her. They anticipated war against insurmountable odds with utter fearlessness. Daunting, indeed - she had never felt so insecure and clumsy. Elizabeth seemed able to sustain a sense of command even with Little Eagle, who frightened Mary sometimes with her knowing eyes and sudden bursts of cackling laughter when she looked at her, as if Mary was wearing a mask that no one believed. She knew very well how out of place she was, even her writing stiff and shallow, but she was gamely trying.
Mary glanced back through the open doorway of the lodge, watching the slow rise and fall of Chris' chest under the robe, then tracing the sharp curve of his cheekbone with a longing she didn't know she was showing. Last night she'd sat silent witness to his fever, his grief for his wife and son coming in ebbs and tides, raw frantic words and murmurs so tender they broke her heart to hear. Sorrow raging and cresting, rage, love for the family he'd lost that was never more than a breath away. Gone, but not forgotten. Maybe never forgotten. Her look diffused on him with a sorrow she no more wanted to acknowledge than the dim hope she couldn't deny. Ghosts standing between them, a woman gone who owned Chris Larabee's heart and might never let it go to another. She looked away with a sigh. Nathan said he would be alright, but nothing would seem alright until he was on his feet, walking, riding, even cursing again. Smiling. As if it would make anything right.
She glanced at Elizabeth, disheartened for them both. The woman was in love with Vin Tanner, there was no hiding it anymore and Elizabeth didn't even try. She expected Mary to be glad for her, and Mary pretended she was because there was so little point in anything else. It wasn't like anything would happen between them, Mary knew how wrong it was by now. Beyond the glaring disparities of background and experience and expectation between Vin and Elizabeth, Vin could never live easy with a woman whose brothers he'd killed. No, he was too sensitive, it would ruin any hope of love. But Elizabeth had declared herself in word and deed, no one mistook her affection except possibly Vin, who was too distracted to see it, or perhaps too haunted by his dead wife ... that still astonished Mary. Vin Tanner had once been married, had once been a happy man easy in himself and the life he'd chosen to share. She could hardly believe it, though she knew him to be passionate and deep-hearted. That little remove he lived within, that slight unease of a solitary man trapped in close quarters ... if she hadn't seen that picture Elizabeth had of Vin and his wife, she would never have believed it possible.
"Do you love him because your sister did?" She asked Elizabeth suddenly, surprising herself with such intrusive curiosity but driven to understand. Elizabeth was always happy to talk of Vin, her face brightened and her smile was tender with a happy befuddlement.
"Oh, Mary - I think I love him because he loved her so much! How utterly ridiculous is that?" She shook her head with a bitterly exasperated bark of laughter, brave enough by nature to find it funny.
Mary did not, however, unexpectedly shocked speechless to realize that was, indeed, one of the reasons she was so drawn to Chris. Dangerous and indestructible, wildly unpredictable, volatile and astonishingly, brutally violent sometimes ... yet he loved his wife and son so much that their loss could rule him in ruin for the rest of his life. Having the capacity for such love was impressive and attractive ... she'd