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:
Home | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | Epilogue | Top
J.D. was shaping a hoof that had split and regrown badly. The brown and white Indian pony's head craned around curiously to watch him work, but no more curiously than the clutch of young warriors marveling at his farrier's tools and the maturity of his skill with them - and with their horses. Not even the most spirited protested anything he did, touching him with foreheads and careful bumps of haunches and shoulders, quiet whickers of blown breath as if greeting one of their own.
Buck was lounging innocently on the riverbank not far from where the women had come down to bathe, screened by brush but not hiding his presence or his attention as they came. Some giggled and moved further down for privacy, others flashed boldly appraising looks at the lazy stretch of his big-boned body and the sweet wickedness of his lazier smile. One old woman scornfully offered him a full view of her naked body, wizened and loose, shrieking with laughter when he grinned and winked at her like she was as desirable as any maiden.
The Judge and Josiah sat with a group of elders around a cook-fire dipping fry-bread into a rabbit and dried turnip stew that couldn't tempt the children away from the flash and whir of Ezra's cards. There were times a child's laughter was powerful to hear, and the men around the fire allowed it to lay soothingly over the raw subjects they'd been so grimly discussing.
At Two Badgers' lodge, Mary looked with wonder at the beautifully beaded leather case the Two Badgers' wife, Poor Rain, had just handed her, braided ties to fasten it onto her belt and places inside for journal and pencils and pen-knife.
The Lakota woman's eyes were warm on the appreciation evident in Mary's hands and the awareness of its significance in her expression. The people had seen her writing and writing, sometimes drawing, they had talked to her because her curiosity was tempered with earnest respect and the knowledge she offered about her own people was intelligent and incisive. They watched her write their words on her paper and asked her why she did so. She'd told them it was because there were many things she hadn't known about them, and that she'd made mistakes from that not knowing. She said that many whites were making the same mistakes, and maybe her writings could help them. So they were glad to show her things and talk to her and invest some hope in that small leather-bound book, which Poor Rain had just made sacred with her gift.
Nathan stepped out of Little Eagle's lodge, Elizabeth right behind him because she couldn't be alone in a small space with Chris Larabee when he was awake, his eyes too direct and her hopes too fragile. She looked around for Vin knowing it was futile, she hadn't seen him except on the briefest shadows of their evening meals. He haunted their edges, frustrating her desire to be near him, yet his friends only noted him with a nod or a word and seemed not to notice the distance he kept. They made no attempt to draw him closer ... was there a lesson there for her? A sharp whistle in her ear startled her into ducking, but it was Nathan calling for the rest.
Dispersed as they were, all their heads lifted and turned as if on one body, and they laid down what they were doing or rose up out of comfort or company and came.
There was a faint repeat of sound as Buck passed the whistle on downriver to J.D. with the horse-herd. She scrutinized Nathan's face anxiously; Nathan's wide dark eyes were disturbed, his broad brow crimped, and Elizabeth wondered what Larabee could have told him. Vin had been there in the night, she'd heard him say so to the healer, though he'd fallen silent when he'd seen her. She wondered if her envious hurt showed, that he'd chosen Chris to talk to ... With the face she'd worn with pearls and diamonds in high society, she'd helped Nathan with fresh poultices and bandages, and when she'd gone to take the basin away the gunslinger had said something else that had brought Nathan down onto one knee beside him, the wide expanse of his shoulders bowing. What more could go wrong? She couldn't imagine what else could have happened to set Larabee, and now Nathan, on such an edge, and she looked for James with a deep dread she didn't understand.
Mary came through the trees at a rapid pace, alarm clear on her face and something in her hand that Elizabeth thought might've been her journal. Her hair was unbound and bright as a silk flag behind her.
"He's alright." Nathan raised his voice to say as they converged, waving them in, "Wants t'talk to us." His expression telling them all it would not be a talk anyone would like.
"What in hell is it this time?" Buck demanded softly as he approached, his mustache twitching over a crooked half-grin that wasn't happy, "How come every time I'm startin' t'have some fun somebody comes up with another emergency?"
But Nathan wasn't saying, he just turned and led the way back into the lodge, which got crowded quick as they came in and arranged themselves around the fire, blinking in the soft glow of the coals and the sudden hush of still close air. Day penetrated only faintly through the hide walls, but it was warm, and Buck wasn't the only one to sigh gratefully; it'd been getting grayer and windier outside by the hour.
Chris was propped up on the pallet with his left arm wrapped around his bare chest, his fingers curled around his ribs under the armpit for warmth. His left hand was always cold, and that was a concern that held on like a fever he couldn't shake. He had to drop that shoulder to draw his gun, and it wouldn't let him now. He could lower his holster on his hip to compensate, but it'd throw him, he knew it. Infirmity was mighty discomfiting to a man who lived by split-second instincts, and if it was permanent ...
Buck eyed him sideways as he stood inside the low doorway letting his eyes adjust. Chris' face was drawn and pale, his eyes muddied by some dark private distraction that he visibly set aside as the last of them came in, barely allowing the door-flap to close before saying,
"Gerald Monroe is alive."
That pronouncement fell into their suddenly frozen midst, shock and a quick-kindling fury to know they were not out of danger, and the man who had harmed them so much was still a threat. Buck swore softly and smacked his thigh.
"Dammit, that's my fault, I grabbed 'im just as he fired."
"You hadn't, he'd be dead in Fetterman right now, Buck." J.D. said, and it wasn't kindness that prompted it but simple fact, "I was there, Buck, he'd be dead."
"Maybe. Still, I wish he'd've killed the son of a bitch, my life would be a whole lot more fun right now." Buck's face as he folded himself down onto the floor was grimly unhappy.
"Where's Vin now?" Ezra asked, quickest to follow that inevitable logic, and Chris' face went cold with alarm.
"You haven't seen him?" Pushing himself up and not easily, the same thought in his mind that was in all of theirs at the same time: If Gerald Monroe was alive, Vin was likely already gone after him ... Buck was on his feet again in the same moment and J.D. with him.
"He's in a sweat with Two Badgers and a couple other warriors." Josiah's voice low and quiet and not the least worried, even a bit pleased. Most had no idea what a sweat was and looked at each other for explanation, but Chris eased back again, knowing at least that Vin hadn't gone off on his own and was still in camp.
Josiah lowered himself to the hide-covered floor and leaned against a corner of the pallet Chris was lying on, making himself comfortable with a great gusting sigh.
But Nathan also knew what the sweat was and he was shaking his head, his generous mouth thinning with concern; "I don't know as that's a good idea, shape he's in." He said to Josiah, "He don't need dehydration on top of everything else, his knees ain't been steady since he got here and he ain't eatin' enough to keep a damned cat alive."
Josiah's smile remained contented, though, so the mood eased; Vin was safe and still among them, they'd have time to plan rather than just react this time. "Nathan," Josiah said, "He's never needed anything more. A man who's sick inside can't be doctored back to health - I believe Vin's been provin' that for awhile, he's been collecting new injuries faster than you can heal the old ones. That boy hasn't had a bruise-free day since before we started this trip."
Nathan opened his mouth to ask for the knowledge in Josiah's eyes, but Ezra interjected:
"It is utterly incomprehensible why a gentleman would want to sweat," He said, thick as molasses but an edge on him as he appropriated Little Eagle's backrest, still talking, "Much less sweat in company," he eased down with some brave wincing from his own wounds and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles neatly. "Nor why such an uselessly odiferous pursuit can possibly be beneficial to Mr. Tanner. But however fascinatin' your spiritual treatise on the subject is certain to be, Josiah, I submit that Gerald Monroe being alive renders us too vulnerable to waste time bein' enlightened."
Josiah's big jaw rose pugnaciously, but his smile remained, and Ezra's gold tooth glinted as he returned it. As the rest settled shoulder to shoulder adjacent to the pallet, Mary perched beside Orrin on Little Eagle's bed opposite Chris and tried Mary not to let her eyes be drawn to the width of pale ivory shoulders or the sinewy musculature of what she could see of Chris' slouched upper body. It was a measure of their distraction that no one had thought to give him a shirt, and it made it difficult not to let her eyes stray, particularly when she could feel his on the side of her face. She caught the hand that rose toward her hair; there was nothing she could do at the moment, Poor Rain had been combing it out for her and she'd had no time to put it up when Nathan's summons came. Josiah hitched up the blanket on Chris' body with a comforting pat, studiously not looking at either of them. Then he took out his pipe and tobacco and fixed a smoke, calming them all in the homey chore, and she took a deep slow breath. At least they were all together to consider what must be done, a wealth of instinct and wit and skill among them to draw upon. They'd never failed to defeat any enemy they'd set themselves against, and she relied on that now shamelessly.
Across the meadow, James Monroe went at a strict walk toward the lodge, answering Nathan's whistle himself, his face as carefully set as he would be upon entering a courtroom or a boardroom. He could see his sister's slim shape hovering outside that lodge; so, she hadn't followed the rest inside, as if she had no place among them, no say in whatever was finally being said out loud that had been kept first between Tanner and the Lakota, and now the gunslinger. Well, James Monroe was damned tired of being left out of things so likely to impact his family's survival, and he'd finally summoned the courage to to remind them he was naïve only in frontier survival, not in the business of politics and intrigue. A shiver ran down his back as he stalked up the slight incline anticipating the reaction of those men, but he just couldn't back down this time, not with his niece running wild as an Indian herself and his sister surely entertaining foolish dreams that might tempt her to remain on the frontier. James loved her, admired and respected her, but he also knew she would never be truly happy here even had Tanner any intention of trying to make it so. He wanted to go home, and he needed her there, and he had to rescue his niece from the same early grave that had befallen Duley.
The Lakota walked wide around him and he should have been grateful for that, uneasy of them as he was, but they did it with laughing eyes that felt more threatening to him than weapons. James was not accustomed to being seen as harmless and ineffectual, and a fortunate byproduct was the hard prick to his pride, which had suffered too much in the last few months to surrender what little he had left easily. He had watched and listened, overheard and even spied for anything that would tell him what the Indians intended, and what these dangerous and duplicitous men had in mind. They'd gone from enemy to ally too quickly for his liking, and he was still extremely hesitant to trust Tanner given his plain intent to keep the Monroes from owning any part of the Black Hills claimed by the land grants - which he hadn't so much as gotten a whiff of since they'd come to this camp. He assumed the Judge had them. And that was another thing - why a Judge? What was his interest out here? More important, who in Washington was this Judge serving just as the Monroe brothers had served their allies? And was their intent, indeed, any different? Could he be sure the Judge even knew the answer to that? It certainly wouldn't be the first time the law had been a useful cudgel to keep one party off a prize another intended to claim, someone could be using Travis, who was a daunting foe in his dedication, without his knowledge of their true purpose.
Tanner, at least, was keeping his distance, but James was confounded to realize it wasn't lessening his sister's attraction to the man as he'd hoped it would. That could complicate matter significantly if the opportunity presented itself for he and Elizabeth and Julianna to escape on their own, to say nothing of the hurt Elizabeth would endure when her silly hopes were dashed. Where was her sense, for heaven's sake? She was intelligent, sophisticated and insightful enough to have staved off a villain as astute and ruthless as her own eldest brother all these years and managed to keep her holdings despite his determination to have them - and she had done so while remaining on good terms with him, which was more than just about anyone Gerald chose to move against could say! Had those virtues abandoned her completely? Had she no inkling how tenuous their lives were out here? How could she trust them, trust Tanner, so blindly? It was all he could do sometimes not to shake her, she refused to listen to his warnings, insisted he was wrong ...
It was because of Elizabeth that he'd never quite accepted the common masculine notion that women were fundamentally flawed, their very biology a weakness that rendered them overly-emotional and thus unreliable. Now he had to reconsider that as well as everything else!
His boots crunched noisily through the leafy litter on the ground, even his footsteps sounding annoyed in his ears, and he held on to that annoyance for the strength of will it lent him. He still felt like Daniel heading for lodge, and he certainly wasn't going to get God's protection from this set of teeth and claws ...
How could emotion blind a smart woman so thoroughly that she would pursue a ridiculously unsuitable man who, by all appearances, had no such interest in her? Did she imagine he was going to marry her and live as a gentleman farmer in Virginia? He suspected the tracker might be allowing her delusion to keep her docile until he found a way to invalidate or otherwise remove the land grants from Monroe hands. How could she not see how determined he was in that regard, how devotedly he served their dead sister and father over any interests of the living? Where was her common sense?
He forced his shoulders down as he approached the lodge, Elizabeth hesitantly greeting him and not at all expecting him to take her upper arm in his hand as he came abreast of her and stuff her through the lodge-door. Her small cry of dismayed surprise broke into the lodge with the light as she was thrust inside so abruptly that it was her head rather than any hand that moved the flap aside.
Jules had never been so long in the same place as Uncle Vin without so much as a word between them, she was missing him with an increasingly worried sense of being set away. The questions in her head had become more and more strident as the days passed, and she was tired of counting on others to answer them for her - no one would! He'd been so strange since they'd come back, she'd expected him to become easier about having taken the lives of her father and Uncle given the understanding and forgiveness she and Aunt Elizabeth had offered, but nothing seemed to be finished and she didn't know why.
She was lonely as she'd never in her life been, orphaned in truth now and confused to be off-balanced in the absence of the force her father had been in her life. It wasn't that she loved him, she hadn't even cared enough to hate him for years, but ... Virginia would never be the same, a world she'd outgrown. How could she be expected to stuff herself back into that life now that she knew how much more there was?
It alarmed her that no one seemed sure, or would say to her anyway, whether Vin would stay with the Indians when it came time to go home. Buck would only say that as soon as Chris could travel, they'd be going. As if Jules would be able to stand being carried back to Virginia and that life that was pale and dull and distant knowing Uncle Vin was roaming the wilderness she'd come to love like she loved him, they were inseparable in her mind. Virginia hadn't been able to keep her Aunt Duley, and Jules did not intend to be kept, either. Just imagining it made her stomach hurt, and she resolutely focused instead on how she wanted it to be, figuring she had enough to work with if she was clever.
All she had of family now was her Uncle Vin and her Aunt Elizabeth, and her scheme wouldn't work if he stayed away from her. If she could just be with him a little while, she could make it so he wouldn't want to leave her. He had a heart she'd found the way into, and he wouldn't be able to keep her out now that she knew how to get in. First and foremost - Aunt Elizabeth loved him like she'd never seen her Aunt love anything or anyone in her life. She loved her home with a warm strength, she loved her niece with the protective determination of any mother, but Vin ... she loved Vin with a fierce longing that changed her in Jules' eyes. Aunt Elizabeth had always been a formidable woman, but Jules had never known she harbored such passionate depths. Uncle Vin was lonely man in the closed dark heart of him - just because he was alone didn't mean he wanted it that way - Aunt Elizabeth was beautiful and rich and wise and kind, and she loved him like any man would be glad of. They were both so wise, such deep-hearted and potent people, surely ...
The problem was that Jules wasn't sure Uncle Vin loved her Aunt that same way, although she knew he loved her - Jules didn't underestimate her own power. In fact, she suspected he was staying at a distance now precisely because he loved her, to spare his own feelings and hers when it came time to part. Those were feelings she could exploit, her Aunt's feelings ones she could encourage and even ally with. It had to be obvious they couldn't just go home, say good-bye and leave each others lives forever! She'd prayed so hard God had to have heard her.
Uncle Vin's affection for her Aunt might be enough coupled with his love for her, and Poor Rain said he had a man's eye to her Aunt, so he was physically attracted, he couldn't help but be. The Lakota woman had known her Aunt Duley and said it was his dead wife he saw, the resemblance strong and the call in his heart to his wife's blood relation, but she'd also said such had been the foundation of many rich long marriages. That was the moment Jules' nebulous hope had become a cause - she had to find a way to make them find a way.
Jules sucked absently on the end of one thick unkempt braid, fixed on that dream and her eyes narrowing at the little lodge as if she could will him out of it.
"Come away from here, girl."
The quiet voice in her ear nearly made Jules fall over, her heart leaping into her throat with a choked cry. When she saw who it was crouched behind her she hissed furiously, the beaded braids at Catch the Bird's temple and topknot clicking softly as he jerked out of range of her angry slap. Thick brush shielded them from the little clearing among the trees beyond where the funny dome-shaped lodge was that she'd been studying it for half an hour. Something big was going on in there, she could feel it, it was what kept her crouched in the bushes instead of going right on in. Her curiosity was at a fever pitch and she didn't understand why she hadn't crept closer already, what force was holding her back like a press of invisible hands on her.
"Come asay." Catch the Bird said again.
"What are they doing in there?" She demanded, "It's been hours!"
"I will tell you what I can." He said, immediately offering what would tempt her most without taking his eyes off the initi, "But we must not remain here, it is wakan - sacred."
She scowled at him over her shoulder skeptically - sometimes he and his friends called things sacred that they just didn't want to explain to her, but this time his face was sincerely uneasy, and she already knew for herself that this time, it was wakan. Still, she didn't move, part reluctance to get any further away from Uncle Vin and part stubborn refusal to appear obedient, looking back at the short round lodge and Little Eagle singing as she tended the fire. Rising winds lifting the old woman's silvered hair in dancing gusts and her faint voice as she sang had an undertone Jules didn't know what to make of.
Catch-the-Bird shifted unhappily behind her and tugged again at her sleeve, wanting to move away from the sacred ground and his discomfort palpable. He could feel the spirits there as this girl might not, and the clouds quickly gathering were no less stormy than Little Eagle's glance, the old woman knew right where they were despite them being hidden. Catch the Bird was young, but he had known a few skirmishes against Crow scouts and was wise enough to listen to the serious talk of the elders rather than the boastful plans of his friends. The people had never made war on such a scale, on so many fronts and against such a powerful enemy. Nor one so crucial to their survival. Now, more than ever, the powers of Creation must be respected.
The visions of the elders were of a struggle the likes of which no one had ever seen, and Tashunke Witco had said they must forgo coup-feathers and trophies and find honor fighting together rather than testing themselves against single enemies. His friends scoffed at that away from the camp, they couldn't imagine such a thing, but Catch-the-Bird felt the sprits moving in new directions and intended to serve the people however best he could. If that meant never having enough coup-feathers for a war-bonnet, well that was what it meant - what good was a war-bonnet if the people perished?
The meeting of warriors and Creation within that initi drew on his skin and warned him off from this sacred place, he in no way wanted to run afoul of that power. So he tightened his fingers sternly around the girl's arm and pulled. Though she gave him a sullen look, she didn't test his resolve or risk the disaster she sensed she would make if she did not go.
Their sudden entrance had obviously startled everyone inside the lodge, Elizabeth backed into James in a welter of embarrassed confusion as if she would leave as quickly as they'd come, but James' blocked her retreat from. The faces ranged around the lodge were focused on her for an explanation she couldn't provide.
Over her head, James saw Larabee's eyes glittering on him like hot glass, and the others were no more welcoming. Mary's uncertain friendliness applied only to his sister, he was sure. He wanted to take a deep breath, but it would be too obvious he was bracing against the force of them. Instead, he gently pushed Elizabeth further into the lodge, moving himself as though it were a meeting he had every right to be part of despite the quizzical hostility he faced. No one spoke. The youngest of them was tense with an open apprehension James suddenly realized was in the more impassive faces as well, and his eyes narrowed, keen to the undercurrents. What had been said here that made their appearance so disturbing? This wasn't just resenting his assumptive intrusion. He looked to Mary Travis and discovered a guilty confusion in her face that made the hair on the back of his neck rise.
He had never liked the way these men made him feel. Small and weak and faded, no threat to them in anything he could do. At least he could show them no fear, his brothers had always gone for the throat of anyone who showed fear to them and he'd long since learned to hide his. He cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind his back to conceal their shaking, lifted his chin and dared challenge them. "Unless you intend to remove me physically, gentlemen," He said, gratified that his voice was steady, at least, "I believe Elizabeth and I have a right to be in on any discussions salient to our current situation."
There was a pregnant moment in which James didn't know if one of those hands would reach for one of those guns, their eyes unyielding and never leaving his face.
"Oh, it's salient, alright ..." Erza said with a bitterly knowing smile and a glint in his eyes, but before James could demand the gambler say what he meant, Ezra spread his hands and turned to address his friends, "They do have a right to know." He said bluntly. They exchanged glances among one another, James and Elizabeth still standing awkwardly by the door.
"What's salient mean, Ezra?" Buck inquired blandly, cocking back on one elbow as if one problem had been resolved and the next was rolling in, eyeing James like he was a critter who'd run into his camp.
"It means pertinent to them ..." Ezra rolled his eyes when Buck's eyebrows only tilted more steeply, knowing by then Buck was easing the tension in his own way and wondering what prompted that mercy. "Oh for heaven's sake, Buck, it means it matters to him, I declare!"
Buck just grinned, his fine teeth white in the dim lodge and his eyes deceptively casual as he beckoned with one long loose arm. "Well then, that bein' the case, come on in, Mr. Monroe, sit yourself down! I do believe you're going to find this damned pertinent." It was like being invited into a spider web, the way the man looked at him.
James could feel his face get hot, because as cheerful as Wilmington appeared, James felt a sudden dread at what was in those dark blue eyes, in all of their eyes, as he looked around. Travis seemed faintly disapproving and even uncomfortable, as if he was looking at a man being punished in public. Mary was distressed enough that she flashed a scolding look at Buck and got up, extending her hand to Elizabeth with an encouraging and very brief smile and then drawing her down protectively beside her, leaving James the only one standing. Elizabeth's eyes were wide, disconcerted by both her brother's behavior and the attitude of these people she'd thought were her friends.
James didn't seem able to move further into the lodge, and under their expectant eyes all he could do was sink down where he stood, just inside the door, with as much dignity as he could muster, his apprehension so clear that even Buck, who had no use for the man, had a moment's regret.
"Elizabeth ..." Mary said, her quiet voice breaking the silence gently, taking Elizabeth's unresisting hands into hers, "Your brother Gerald isn't dead."
For a long terrible moment Elizabeth just stared uncomprehendingly at her, stunned. Surely she hadn't heard correctly ... her slender fingers went ice-cold in Mary's hand, her face so pale that Mary was afraid she was going to faint.
"He isn't ... dead?" Every eye turned to the rasping croak of James' disbelieving voice, his face even more stricken than his sisters. His mouth opened and then shut, opened again; "Alive?" Breathed out of him like smoke from a crypt.
"That's pretty much the opposite of dead." Chris said, and his voice rang into the shocked silence as hard and cold as iron. "We aim to fix that." Blunt as a hammer and almost wanting James to protest. But James couldn't have spoken another word if his life depended on it, the world gone topsy turvey. He sought his sister and found her looking at him, the same terrible conflict on her face. Their brother was alive. Their brother, who'd been a laughing child with them once, who would kill them if he had the chance.
Orrin spoke as much to move the matter along as allow James and Elizabeth the slight privacy of not being stared at in such a state of shock. "We have to assume that if Gerald is alive and capable of command, even if he's physically out of commission, he's already sent men after us." No one disagreed. Then Orrin looked a long moment at Elizabeth, frozen like a doe finding itself a target. He turned to James, his eyes still sympathetic, but stern.
"This is a hard business we've got ahead of us, and we can't afford to mince words in figuring out how to accomplish it. I'm very sorry it's come to this." He studied James' face a moment, and then said a weary gentleness that made the others look anywhere else, "This can't be easy for you. You don't have to stay, we can keep you out of it as much as possible. He is your brother."
James looked back at Orrin searchingly, as if he were having to translate his words in his mind and shaking his head slowly, then more rapidly as he understood the faint mercy being offered. By the expressions on the rest of them they were in agreement, and their averted eyes were almost an apology for not giving proper weight to brotherly sensibilities. He didn't know whether to go and be relieved, or stay and give them the insights that would ensure their goal was achieved. An impossible choice, but he was under no illusions that it was his own life, Elizabeth's and Julianna's, at risk.
"My God ..." His head dropped forward, still shaking back and forth, breathing quick through his open lips and closing his eyes, feeling their attention like wolves momentarily distracted from a hunt. They would take Gerald on and they weren't the least afraid to do it, they would run right at him like the wrath of God if they had to in every expectation of victory. It was a brutal simplicity of thought in men James knew not to be simple at all. 'A hard business ahead,' Travis had said. My God ... they had no idea ...
"No, no." He said in a low breaking voice, not looking up, "No, we're here, we'll stay." When an uncertain silence gathered after he spoke he knew he had to say it. He lifted his head, he clasped his hands hard between his knees where he sat, and he looked at them all, each one. Then he said with that same brutal simplicity that they would understand, "He'll kill us if he can. Elizabeth and I endanger him, he'll never believe otherwise again, you all endanger him. If you don't kill him, he will kill us. No matter what."
Elizabeth began to cry, softly, more bereft than she had been when she'd thought him dead, because she knew James was right. Mary circled her hunched shoulders in her arm, a low murmur of gentle words and Elizabeth shook her head in definite refusal. Though she kept her face hidden a moment more in Mary's shoulder, she wouldn't be coward enough to leave.
"I don't intend to die so he can steal the holy places of these people." She said, her voice firming and her head rising as she spoke, a spark coming to her watery eyes. "I don't intend to let him kill me for gold." By that time she was erect, her head proud and her chin raised like the stubborn blue-blood she was, and she looked at her brother with a grim determination that encouraged and forgave them both. They, too, would do what they had to do.
They settled down to business again, and for the first time since they'd met them, James and Elizabeth felt a true measure of their respect. Ezra surreptitiously passed James his flask, and with a grateful nod, James braced himself to do what he already knew would haunt him the rest of his days. Elizabeth was innocent, Julianna ... but he was not. It had come to this with his help.
"We know how bad hurt Monroe was?" Buck said, curling his fingers at Ezra for the flask when he tried to slip it back into his pocket.
Chris shook his head, "We don't, Buck."
"Wouldn't it be prudent to err on the side of caution, then, and hie us hence away?" Ezra said lightly, though his eyes were dead serious.
Buck passed the flask to J.D. beside him and Chris knew his old trail partner was chewing on something, he could see it in his dropped head and thoughtful eyes. Something he was reluctant to say but thought he should.
"Spit it out, Buck." Chris said, and Buck's mustache twitched. The flask reached Elizabeth, who didn't hesitate to take a sip, though it left her a little breathless.
Buck said hesitantly, "I was just thinkin' ... Vin's usually loadin' cartridges an hour before any of us know trouble's comin' ... if he knew Monroe was alive, how'd he miss thinkin' he'd be hunting for us?" No accusation in it, but sincerely wanting to know what could be so much of a distraction that a danger as big and obvious as this one had gone unremarked. He shrugged at Chris' half-thoughtful glower; "Chris, we have t'know which way he's gonna jump. We've gotta watch his back as much as count on him to watch ours."
"Well, we could ask 'im." J.D. said as if any other way but direct had already been proven foolish, "I could go get him n' we could ask him. He should be in on this anyway." Wanting it that way fiercely, wanting them all here talking this out like they always did so they could finally handle it, get it done and get home.
But Josiah shook his head, "J.D., you can't just go get him out of a sweat ceremony, it's a holy thing, he'll be in there all day. And when he comes out ..." The preacher struggled a moment to find a way to explain the state of a man just out of the sweat, the near inability to form words or try to contain the wide deep sweep of senses and knowings that emptied a man of himself and filled him with the whole world. He gave up, knowing it wouldn't be simply understood and saying, "Vin'll likely need to be left alone awhile. We've got to let him come to us in his own time."
A sudden wave of rain startled them all as it washed, pattering, over the lodge, disappearing into a suspended silence that held them, too.
Josiah didn't usually have any trouble expressing himself, but he wasn't sure how to explain Vin, or the tracker's failure to look out for them in ignoring what Gerald Monroe being alive meant to the rest of them outside of his own feelings. He needed to respect Vin's privacy and the sacred duty he had ahead of him, but his friends also needed to know enough so they'd understand it wasn't just Vin going after his own vengeance without considering them.
"He won't make you wait, but Vin's having a hard time seeing the big picture right now. He's thinking of his wife ... your sister." His pale eyes touched James and Elizabeth, reminding them all of that other connection between them, that woman who'd been gone for four years and yet, it seemed, had been the cause of this entire journey.
Elizabeth smiled tremulously at him, a silent acknowledgement of the force of Duley's spirit that she understood these men to admire even having never met her. Because Vin loved her, and had risked so much for her, that was all they needed to know. Lord, Vin Tanner was blessed in his friends.
"Everything here reminds him of her." Josiah said softly, "It's ... he has a duty to her that he hasn't carried out yet."
Color raised red flags across the top of J.D.'s cheekbones, a confused guilt to have sounded insensitive about something he still didn't fully understand. Josiah offered a brief pensive smile. J.D. had no frame of reference to understand this. Chris, who had been uncharacteristically silent, was looking down at his hands, his face as blank as an icon, and Josiah wasn't surprised to see Mary glance at the gunslinger, her face eloquently sympathetic. Three people bearing that same grief in such different ways - Mary subsuming hers in the discipline of her work and the needs of her son, Chris content to grieve lifelong, however long his life was, and Vin ... Vin refusing to grieve at all. Vin drifting, disconnected from everyone and everything in the false peace of a life more solitary than anyone had realized.
The silence grew awkward and Travis' big hand settled on Mary's, not looking at her, but gripping lightly. He took a breath that set these concerns aside; they could do nothing for the process of Vin's grieving, nothing to get him through whatever duty Josiah had spoken of. All they could do was watch his back for him, and that they could do. "Well, then. Until we can talk with him, it only makes sense to address the things we can effect, alright?"
"I reckon Vin's picked up slack for all of us a time or two," Buck drawled, unapologetic that it was often his slack, "He'll just owe us is all, right boys?"
Orrin sent up a quick silent plea to God that Buck would have the chance to try to convince Vin of his right to collect on that, struck by a longing to be sitting in the Four Corners saloon with nothing more important than the company.
"First, we have to tell the Lakota elders Monroe is alive. We can't be responsible for bringing a rogue cavalry unit down on these people, Gerald is s hunting us, but he won't hesitate to kill them, nobody will think anything of it. In fact, the elders have already expressed some concern that the army will use our presence among them to conceal an outright attack as a rescue attempt ..."
"During which we would conveniently perish, if Mr. Monroe has his way." Ezra inserted caustically, and Travis nodded again. James and Elizabeth exchanged a guilty glance that didn't go unnoticed.
"Mr. Monroe ain't get'n his way, Ezra." Chris said, and James was amazed at how deadly a threat he could still seem lying wounded and pale.
"I'm sure Vin has told them already, they can be gone from here, goods and folks and horses, in two shakes and not need the second. Saw a scatter of young warriors going out to scout around. This is a small camp compared to some out there, and out of the way." Josiah said.
"Chris ain't up to it yet." Nathan objected, and Chris' voice came right over top of his.
"I'm up for it, Nathan, I can ... "
"What, sit a horse? For about ten minutes, maybe! Why don't you just kill yourself now and get it over with!" Eloquently frustrated, but none of them had ever been under Nathan's care without giving him cause to shout at them a few times, it was comfortingly normal.
"Why don't I just cuddle on up here n' wait for Monroe to show up and shoot me in my cozy little bed?" His sneer saying how likely that was.
"Gentlemen ..." Travis' voice cut through their rising tones with impatient authority.
"Getting Chris out of harm's way is a bridge we'll cross when we come to it, but right now we need to determine what Gerald Monroe is most likely to be doing - and what his co-conspirators may be doing as well." At that point he turned to James, regretting the need but not apologizing for it. James sighed and let his fingers loosen.
"This is a very delicate juncture in their plans, Mr. Travis. Obviously the possession of the Black Hills isn't the only goal." Which these men clearly knew. "We just ... hurried things along and covered up private interests in manifest destiny. It's advantageous to have pitched battles going on this far west of the Black Hills, they'll slip into ownership of those land grants and then the legitimate business community while Washington's attentions are elsewhere." There was no way to avoid his own culpability, they already knew he'd been the architect of his brother's war machine.
"Of course." the Preacher said heavily, "Militarily, they have to destroy the forces gathering out here before Crazy Horse unites all the remaining nations against them."
"Ccch." Ezra snorted softly, "I'd say so! They risk havin' their profits seriously eroded if this becomes a protracted conflict."
Josiah nodded. "Chased By Water says they're a thousand strong on the Rosebud already," He said, "And they know by now that if the Paha Sapa is a target, nothing is sacred, there isn't a treaty out there worth the paper it's written on."
"Josiah," J.D. said, his expression earnest, as if delivering an unwelcome rumor, "They don't think those treaties are worth anything now."
Josiah's soft laugh was warm sound in the close lodge, Chris grinned down at his own lap and Buck shouldered into the kid.
"You've been payin' attention!" Buck's proud grin only widened when J.D. shoved him back indignantly, exasperated to the bone to be right and still end up feeling foolish.
"Stopping Gerald won't stop the men behind him." James said dully, "And I don't know who they all are. Gerald isn't the only officer in this for the gold, nor the only businessman guiding government policy. The Commerce Department is pretty indistinguishable from the War Department these days."
Orrin's eyes got hard and black, "We can't stop the territories being taken and settled, Washington is doing the will of the people in that regard, but we can damn well stop these men who've schemed to get rich in the bargain. This nation can't afford to let wealth be the guiding force in government policy, we must have judicial oversight, and if we can prove bureaucratic corruption in the matter of these land grants, Congress will have to pass legislation to accomplish it, they'll have no choice."
James regarded him soberly, and Orrin knew James Monroe understood better than anyone how far and wide the reach of corporate interests was in the nation's seat of government. He had little faith in that ever changing, having been in the boardrooms and brokered deals with governmental agency directors and bureaus, but if anyone could force a showdown, it would be this old Judge from the frontier.
"That much wealth could elect a president," he said, as if speaking only to Orrin, his eyes shrewd and knowing, "Make international policy, appoint a sympathetic Supreme Court, set causes in motion years in advance ... "
"We can't let that happen!" Mary declared, and her father-in-law closed his eyes for a moment, knowing she grasped the enormity of what they confronted, and also knowing what she'd do the moment they got near a printing press that could do her more harm that gaining a reputation as a bleeding heart. If the men who had hatched this theft under cover of war escaped justice, Mary's would be an accusing voice that would not be silenced. That stubborn nobility left him no alternative but to do what he'd intended from the start - bring those men to account.
Ezra, however, not limited by the blindness of forthright men, laid out a concern he'd voiced more than once to Orrin. "A gamblin' man wouldn't take book on a bet that our information will be welcome even to your friends, Mr. Travis."
"Ezra ..." Travis rose immediately to the defense of his colleagues who had set him on this course to begin with, but Ezra was past tip-toeing around the Judge's sensibilities. "My sainted mother taught me that sparkin' a little quarrel between poker players in a high-stakes table could leave the pot wide open for the taking. What assurance do we have that your friends aren't using us to eliminate their enemies? That they won't jeopardize us just as much as Gerald Monroe and his cronies are now once we've ... removed them. Assumin', of course, that we manage to get out of these mountains alive."
Judge Travis' elbows rested on his knees, his steepled fingertips tapping against his chin as he regarded Ezra somberly. He had faith in his friends, good men, all of them. Yet it had already been proven that even a friend's greedy wife could compromise their cause.
Travis glowered at Ezra for a long moment, unable to offer any assurance that the gambler was wrong. Finally he drew a long breath through his nose and set his hands on his knees with an old determination, the Judge on the bench with a job to do and a duty that was clear even when nothing else was. "My commitment is to the law," He said. "Blind justice. A crime is a crime no matter who perpetrates it, and no matter why. Not even the President can sanction criminality, and at the very least we have the evidence to ensure that those who plotted for the land won't profit from it."
"A noble and ambitious intent, sir." Ezra said with a dark sarcasm, "And completely useless if we're dead before you can even attempt to bring it to prosecution. I shall be most put out if your friends end up rich and I end up dead."
"Much as I hate to agree with Ezra, Judge," Buck said with a lazy smile and fox-sharp eyes, "I'm no more inclined to trust the government than he is."
"I'm not asking you to trust the government." Travis said almost gently, his chin thrust forward as if in challenge, "I'm asking you to trust me."
"Will you see them safely home for me if I don't come back?" Vin asked, seeing the instant dismay on Two Badger's face to consider missing the battles coming. But Vin knew what he was asking, and wasn't doing so lightly. They stood in the rain outside the lodge, sweat-hot skin steaming in the sudden cold, and Vin was calm to the heart of him. Now he knew where he must move, how, and why, what mattered more than his human wants and weaknesses. He was walking that path in his mind already and filled with relief to be able to do so again. This earth had fed and nurtured and instructed him, this world would breathe long after he was dust, however many years his life endured. Nothing a man wanted or could even dream was more potent than that.
"If the boys make it, they'll see to it, but in case ... " Not wishing to consider the deaths of any of his friends, but knowing they'd go with him into harm's way, and Jules and Elizabeth were a charge as sacred as Duley in his heart. "To the breaks at least, get 'em on a train."
There was silence as the steam escaped from the open doorway of the lodge and swallowed up Vin's words and the intensity of their faces into itself. Neither Chased By Water or Bear Tooth interrupted the serious talk passing between Two Badgers and the tracker. This was a very difficult favor, Two Badgers' spirit yearned toward war and his leadership and skills would be needed ... but it was also true that these whites - especially the women - had to be returned to their town so it could be seen that they had been treated well. So the words of the wasicun winyan with eyes like the sky in high summer could be printed on the sheets the whites read and the truth could be known.
Grudgingly, Two Badgers nodded.
Elizabeth never would know what had awakened her. Outside, the storm ruffled hard along the hide walls of the lodge. Firelight flickered in an errant eddy of wind coming though the smokehole, though it had drawn in and angled against the storm. Her heart was pounding and her breath short in her throat, and she had no idea why. It wasn't fear, though. She was almost surprised to recognize that.
Jules lay beside her, sound asleep with an unhappy crease between her eyebrows and her hands half-fisted under her chin. Little Eagle also slept, and the gunslinger. She watched Larabee for a moment, wondering if some sound of pain or need from him had roused her, but he was unmoving. She should have gone back to sleep, but she did not. Instead, she slipped out from under the warm cozy robe and stood there in confusion wondering why she'd done so. She checked Chris more closely, thinking to justify her inexplicable wakefuless, but the skin of his cheek was cool and he slept comfortably, if more deeply than she guessed was usual with him.
She straightened, looking around the darkened lodge as if she might catch a glimpse of what had waked her that now seemed to hide just on the edges of her senses. Turning after it, squinting her eyes in the gloom, rubbing her arms with a trepidation she had no cause for until a strike of lightening cold-silvered everything in the lodge and set off a resonance in her bones that was like an insistent voice, a hand at her back, a coercion quick and unrefusable. Her heart picked up the wild pace of the storm and she went out the door-flap without coat or shoes into the rain to find him, without knowing or wondering why the urge was so overpowering. Go now, was all she felt. Go find him now, compelled as if toward a gift long yearned after, a moment at hand.
Little Eagle tucked her head back under her sleeping robe with a shiver that wasn't all reaction to the cold wind gusting inside momentarily as the woman left the lodge. Little Eagle was very old, and had long known it was unwise to interfere with the spirits that moved people. That shadow she'd seen clinging to Tanner before he'd left for Fetterman was now wrapped fast about this unknowing sister, and she had little doubt where it was taking her. He was in harmony again, he had let go all his wrong thinking, and Little Eagle had no concern that this spirit would change that. Indeed, her romantic old heart swelled with a tender gladness. Only because he had finally accepted the rightness of his duty was Tanner's wastelakapi, his beloved, free to come bid him farewell. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep with a grateful smile on her thin lips.
Vin's small lodge was at distance from the camp, as was his custom, closer to wild than could be at ease even among them. They respected his wishes, knowing Creation had a quiet voice in white men's ears and approving his desire to hear it away from human noise. He stood in front of his lodge in the loincloth, unsteady and aching in his body, but feeling as if he'd been scraped clean from the inside. Everything was clear now, and the prayer he sang in gratitude, in supplication for strength and wisdom, was taken by the wind the moment it left his mouth.
Gerald Monroe's blood would be given into the earth he had so offended, Custer he left Tashunke Witco, having no doubt he would balance things with the yellow-hair; they'd met in Yellowstone some three or four years back and been kept apart by the great river. That would not happen again.
Then Vin would carry out the Keeping Ceremony that would set Duley free. Such was the way things were meant to be, and he'd been fighting more than four years against nature by keeping her, abandoning all he knew to be true of Creation to do it. Having it again within him told him better than anything else what a fool he'd been. What would come after these things were properly done didn't matter, he had neither desires nor thoughts for what lay past them. It would be as it should be, that was all a man ever needed to know.
The rain poured over him, flattening his hair to his head and into snaking tendrils over his shoulders. He felt like rain inside, too, like everything had gone liquid and flowed away and nothing could stop it. Nothing should. A sound he didn't know curled around in his mouth, in his throat, into the storm.
Lightening crackled and sizzled a horizontal rip of light in the black distant sky, a fractured weave through the boiling clouds electrifying the air as Elizabeth topped the ridge a little bit away from Vin's lodge. She was gasping from exertion and the suffocating flood of the rain, blind in it, graceless with the weight of her drenched night-dress, but it didn't stop her. Indeed, the vibrant violence of the storm felt like a goad to the force quickening inside her, driving her to him.
She saw him standing in the storm as if receiving a benediction. Rain filled the upturned wells of his eye sockets, streamed off his hair, overflowed his cupped palms and sheeted down his pale hard-cut body. Like he was giving himself to the wind and the thunder, lightening striking white and blue on the sharp hollowed planes of his face and that thunder rocking him like a huge heartbeat. The exhausted welcome of his lifted face, the supplication of his raised hands, caused a split second terror that he would vanish in the next flash of lightening.
"No!" Thin and frightened as a rabbit, too small to be heard in the crash of jagged white stepping down from the sky, but he heard. Impossibly, he heard.
Sensation ran under Elizabeth's skin, a gloving inside as if she were being gently taken and worn.
His hands dropped, his head tipped forward and the rain flowed out of his eyes, and they opened to hers and it was as if they were sleepwalkers both having the same dream. The lightening struck again, blinding bright and seeming to fence around them, to reveal a knot of light between them.
A glow in her heart quieted all resistance as her eyes beheld not the tracker she cared for and feared loving, but her own beloved husband. Her wild and dearest man.
And Vin saw her. She was all he saw. Duley in the storm, smiling like a summer day. Duley's golden eyes melting into him like honey running down his skin, like fireflies in his veins. He was moving before he could think to do it, hands reaching, half expecting her to vanish.
A small pattering of hail broke as they met, hard and complete, and neither felt anything but that beloved mouth and that beloved body in their arms, a long shuddering tremble like the fundaments of earth and sky and water and fire had all awakened at the same time, in the same place. Vin didn't care how it was, he didn't care, because it was her and he was sure of that, body and soul. Nothing told him differently, not touch or scent or taste, all were Duley. These were her fingers that clasped his face between them, her crooked flashing grin that sparked like wildfire in the dry tinder of his heart. Her eyes that peeled him like a treasure she relished unwrapping, and her hands that knew where he liked to be touched and how he liked to be touched and that touched him in those ways now. No one had ever touched him that way, the possessive slide of her hands around his waist and up his back, the demanding slip and tug of her mouth against his that roused a hunger only she had ever sated.
Her body fit to him, the softness of her hip turned inside the hard edge of his, the cushion of her breasts against his ribs, like puzzle pieces matched against each other in every facet. He'd never hoped to hold this warm living woman in his arms again, only in dreams, yet here she was and he knew every dip and swell and velvety run of skin to her, every sweet inch of her mouth. He made her quiver like he always could when he bit softly at her lower lip and stroked the sweet captive with his tongue-tip. That sound she made in her throat, that moaning purr that set him off like it had every time, every single time. He couldn't breathe, and didn't want a breath that didn't taste of her, a feeling under his hands that wasn't her, his heart beating so fast it was a hard hum in his chest.
Duley ... Duley ..."Duley!" Saying it out loud between hard searching kisses, saying it like it was the breath in his lungs and the blood rushing in his veins.
"Vin." The way she'd always said, the way no one else had ever said it, the breath of the living word caressing his face. Just his name, knowing everything he was that only she knew and loving everything she knew.
Neither ever knew how they came into the little lodge, how the fire was burning warm in the hearth Vin knew had been cold. The storm moved them, the wind carried them, the abyss between them vanquished by a magic or a madness neither questioned. Wide-eyed, spellbound, certain if they stopped for even a moment the dream would end, they laid each other down on the sleeping skins, her hair spread blood-red and gleaming on the furs. There were no words, there could be none with the universe spun down so fast on them, but none were needed. Her golden eyes drank his heart in, his wandered the peaceful homeland in hers. Hands and kisses lingered, celebrated, rediscovered. Neither cared about how, or even how long, knowing somehow there would be time enough.
"Say good-bye, love." A warm moist breath in his ear broke the timeless synchrony of laboring hearts just beginning to slow. They lay tangled, wrapped close as water on skin, cocooned together in a preternatural peace while the storm raged outside, buffeting the lodge. Duley's voice on living breath gentle as a mother sending her child from her arms into the wild world. His heart skipped, and hers matched that hesitation. Pride and sorrow and worry all together in a constancy of thought, this world or the next, that she promised would lay a lifeline between them all the while they were parted. He tightened against her, stubborn as ever the man she loved had been, pushing close, trying to tempt her with those hands that knew her and that mouth that knew how - and oh, he had always been such a temptation!
For a moment when there had been nothing but him, when everything had been him, the prospect of heaven had paled. Even now the thought of remaining with Vin ... if the flesh she'd borrowed had belonged to a stranger she might have been weak enough to challenge the mystery that had brought her here by refusing to depart. But Duley Tanner knew herself, and she knew her sweet persuasive man - she had chosen wisely. It was her sister's body and her sister's life, it was Elizabeth - who loved Vin, too. She regretted that her sister would be hurt more than she'd intended, but that additional pain would have come anyway in the natural course of such things. Loving them both, knowing them both, Duley understood what could be between them - and what could not.
"I love you, Duley." Vin whispered softly, feeling the warmth of his own breath reflect back to him from Duley's throat where he'd pressed his last kiss, the taste of her on his lips and occupying a place suspended between the living and the dead. There was no time here, still he knew their time was fading. He knew what her smile looked like without wanting to see it, closing his eyes tight so he wouldn't see it but it was still there, in memory, from the blood-stained night when she'd first told him good-bye. And it was in her voice, low and vibrant under his cheek.
"Oh, I know you love me, my Vin, I'll know it 'til the end of all that is." Duley said, loving his instinct to hide from the truth as well as the man who would not, in the end. One hand wide on his back in a holding caress, the other stroking from the crown of his head down the side of his beloved face, thinner than she remembered him ever being, the bones too high. How had he never seen the price he was paying? It broke her heart to feel and touch the damage wrought by how much, how foolishly much, he loved her. Oh, it was hard to leave him, even natural and true and right as it was. Everything the soul learned when it was freed of the flesh became muted once housed in flesh again, and Duley struggled against wants not even death had ever eased. Her Vin, her man, hers ... and dying in slow cold degrees to believe that himself. A soul could feel pain and Duley's did. He was not her Vin. Not her man. Not hers. He lived, and must live.
One thing more she would ask of him, then it would be time for her feet to find the star road. Though she couldn't pierce the veil of that great mystery she'd been held back from so long, her soul rested content in the sure and certain faith that her husband would one day come to her.
"Don't ask me to say the words." He crooned softly, as if to a beast whose fangs he expected in his flesh any second, "Don't ask that ..." Such potent sorrow that Elizabeth closed her arms harder around him.
From a far high distance she was snapped down with dizzying speed, but the sudden jolting shock of being in possession of herself again was far less significant than the tangible presence of a sister she loved every bit as much as Vin had loved his wife. Her soul leapt, her body jerked, unnoticed.
Duley-girl! Calling as she'd called her sister home from across dusty fields and muddy creeks and clothes-tearing trees, a flash of that grimy grinning spark-eyed face ... She'd missed her sister so much, for so long, and the sense of her so real mattered more than the distant shock of how she'd come to be occupying a lover's place in Vin's arms.
In slow tingling degrees there came the revelations of his skin and the wild heart pulsing hard against her, the coarse tickle of the hair on his legs and chest and the damp heat they created between them. Not shocked ... no ... enraptured in the cherished echo of a husband's embrace. A love so strong it had found a way to cross the infinite chasm of death to be together one more time. Caught without substance between them in the raw vibrant torrent of their emotions, rich and true and so enormous it was like standing at the edge of the universe on the brink of flying.
Elizabeth was a good, moral, Christian woman with powerfully deep-rooted principles and more than a little uncertainty about her own true worth. She should have been violently shocked to find herself in such an intimate state, her bare body pressed against a man just as bare, shamelessly wrapped around him. She should have been horrified, mortified and violated in the worst possible way ... she shouldn't have felt safe, nor beloved. But she did, and more utterly than ever in her life. She knew what had happened from a blind distance, dreamily disoriented as if she watched other people in another world. How could there be any dishonor in being the instrument of such a great and beautiful force?
In this dream they inexplicably shared she could feel his pouring heart, wide-open and rushing like a mighty river. He loved Duley like he didn't know how to love anything else and never would, she was it for him, forever. How could she deny him what he loved so much? All her instinct in the urgent devotion of Vin's touch speaking itself on her skin bit by bit like fantasy given substance was to pray she would fade away so Duley could stay for him. Live out the life stolen too soon. Let Duley stay for him, be with him the term of her sister's years and happy! Tears burst in her eyes, in her heart, to feel Duley's tenderest gratitude for the thought even as she spurned it.
All she could do was hold onto him, weeping and having his answer in tucking her tight and hard into himself, surrounding her with the strength of his body and of his need as if anything that would harm or take her from him would have to kill him first. Elizabeth made no protest, unwilling to make him give Duley up until he must. Look what you've done She chided that sense of Duley that lingered, You pried open his heart and he gave it all to you!
And never knew how to get it back again when she'd passed; Elizabeth didn't know who that thought belonged to. All those years he'd lived without it, and now Duley wanted him to have it back again and had found the perfect accomplice in her sister. Elizabeth felt her gratitude like a smile in the warm fire-lit air that contained them, the living and the lingering spirit of the dead. Duley wanted her husband to be happy, and Elizabeth wanted that for him, too.
It astonished her how simply she accepted the fact that she could not give that happiness to him.
In a moment the thought chased itself to its end before she could draw it back, and her frail foolishly nurtured hope bled quietly away into the dream. A truth finally acknowledged, made painless in long knowing it was so. Vin was this wild and wooly frontier, the places empty of people where the natural world lived high and vibrant. She would never forget all she'd seen of it, magnificent and endlessly beautiful, but she could not survive it. His was the rambling life, his independence a defiance against her civilization, his pleasure in solitude. Vin might love the green valleys and forests and rivers of Virginia, and perhaps even stay as long as he could out of love for Jules and gratitude for ... this. But he could no more want to own those green too-placid hills than the mesas and gorges of the badlands or the grand rugged mountains he loved just as much. All the world's distances were beautiful to him, and he roamed them all like a lover, like Buck in his inability to settle on any one woman. The wilderness was like a soul in him that had given him his knowledge of his place on the world, and to take it from him was to destroy him. Her father had been the same way. Duley had. But Elizabeth Monroe was a woman of cities and businesses and order. She couldn't do that to him and still say she loved him.
It was a beautiful irony to know they would now have the loss of their one truest love in common. The future laid out in shadowed anticipation of quieter passion with someone who would never, quite ... holding him like this, skin to skin, heart to heart, his scents and textures and tastes immediate to all her senses. Once in her life choosing only of her own want with no ones judgment or opinion mattering.
Her hand moved soothingly over him, across that broad bruise marring him chest to flank that he'd carried since before they'd set out on this journey, delicately tracing the cat-claw wounds and others that were new among scars already marking the hard passages of his life and he shivered. Nothing had not taken his sweetness from him, though, how he had remained so sensitive and tender ... In a distant bliss she wondered if Duley was moving her, marking for her sister and her husband both the warning in all that he'd suffered for her. Free on his body as Elizabeth should not have been, but she was not wholly Elizabeth just now as that woman had known herself to be, and it was a night of impossibilities.
As if he could hold Duley's spirit by holding this body, feeling more slowly the growing distance between them that Elizabeth did - or maybe Duley lingering longer with him - Vin's hand closed tight on her hip and the sinewy arm under her rolled her closer, fully against him. Her eyes flew open on a soft involuntary gasp at the naked intimacy, but her body went to his as if was natural to do so, fit to him as if it always had and always would. He sighed, and Elizabeth closed her eyes at the rush of breath in his lungs, the rough curl of his fingers and the hard corrugation of his ribs and hips, knowing her softnesses imprinted on him just as acutely. His arms were a shelter strong and tender, a place a woman could abide in long and contentedly.
But the reach of the dead into the living world could not be sustained, her sister was a spirit and couldn't hold herself in the living world for long even when the living wished it, too.
Elizabeth felt the moment when he realized fully that it wasn't Duley he was holding anymore. He went still and tense, ridges of muscle and bone rising under her hand and against her body with a faint trembling shock. For her own comfort she delayed the moment by stroking her cheek across his chest and breathing in his scent, then she lifted her head to meet the astonished search of his wide staring eyes. As if he'd moved from one dream into another and found her in both, drifting in the same possessed unreality that had captured Elizabeth and still held her there.
He rocked onto his back and then, when he realized he'd carried her with him, lifted his hands off her as if he'd done her violent harm, blushing hot and red with a strangled expression that she couldn't bear. He could not regret this, she would not have his guilt mar whatever had swept them here, and she would not regret it herself! Firmly her hands cupped on his shoulders and kept him where he was, he made a raw sound that she didn't understand and his eyes overflowed with questions that burdened the very air around them. It took no more than her weight over him, her eyes fixing him without answers, but also without regrets. Instead, he saw a quiet and stubbornly prideful joy. Elizabeth Monroe, bare as the day she was born and laying across his equally bare body every bit as naturally as Duley ever had, though Duley was the only one who ever had before.
Her hair slithered down off her shoulders like water purling smooth off a fall, the ends brushed his face like frayed silk and cast hers, so like Duley, in amber shadows. She was not any Elizabeth he'd ever yet seen, he had no idea how she'd changed right under his hands into the sister of his wife, but she was a beautiful mystery in her own right and he couldn't take his eyes from her. For a moment they remained caught in the common dream, reading each other's eyes, finding wonder and acceptance and a quiet shared joy to have met Duley again in this strangest of nights.
If he'd been a different sort of man he could've loved her. A man who knew what such things were could settle down with so fine and deep-hearted a woman and raise children and be content lifelong. But Vin didn't know how, and Elizabeth knew it, it burned a low sorrow in her eyes. She loved him as fully as a woman could love a man, and he was humbled by it. She wasn't sure she needed to speak, it seemed they read each other's thoughts, but he had to be sure of this; "It's my choice as much as yours, Vin." She said, a sweet murmur so low it couldn't have been heard half a foot away. Her eyes were earnest and swam with tears, but the air of a smile accompanied it, a freedom found in doing what she knew was right for them both, though it hurt. Oh, it hurt, it was a wound that would never completely heal.
"I'm past the age of changing my ways, too. I'm choosing my home the same way you're choosing the wilderness, because I must, it's where I belong. I can use my influence there to be of some help to the Indians ..." Something bloomed inside her that would matter soon, but she set it aside now. His eyes, wide and blue and framing his soul in them, searched across her face with faint admiring wonder.
"Duley could live contentedly here with you, but I'm not that brave."
Vin knew her to be as brave as Duley ever had been, and there was a grace in her acceptance of what had been, and what must be, that was as pure and in harmony with Creation as any human could be no matter what name she called it in herself. Duley had more faith in her sister to do what must be done than she did in Vin, and she was right. Duley had known what he had not guessed - that her sister was, in her more peaceful ways, as remarkable a woman as Duley was herself. This woman loved him more selflessly than he'd loved Duley or even himself these last four years, and stronger than he could ever be to take the truth and obey it. Her lips touched the top of his cheek, her hands on his shoulders gentled into caressing, and he did not mistake her. He eased, his own hands also gentling. Obeying that truth did not mean their hearts could not also be obeyed, and he was willing, loving the fine noble heart of her.
Both knew it would only be this once. Her fingertips brushed across his parted mouth as they searched the open country of each other's eyes and found the place apart from Duley between them. A silent communion of impossibilities and truths. They could never hope to live their lives together, but that didn't change what was between them. White light stroked though the lodge, thunder rolled heavily under them, through them.
The second time was theirs alone, a calm and tender passion complex with joyful sorrow tangled in good-bye.
That time with Vin that might one distant day have pricked at her conscience proved too well-spent to ever doubt Duley's gift in it. Those hours saved her life, as Vin's had been saved by keeping him in camp instead of on the trail after Gerald, as he'd intended.
Curley squatted on the wet ground in his war-shirt, quilled bands of white and blue and black geometries running from cuff to cuff over his shoulders, sprouting bands front and back fringed with long thin tails of hair. Some were his, carefully collected, some were from his family, those he was responsible for. Some were war trophies. He lifted the glossy fall of his hair behind the elaborate braids wrapped in otter-fur that bound the sides for battle and tied on his hair-pipe necklaces, strands stepping down his chest with blue beads centering each one, a round curve of abalone shell snug in the hollow of his throat. All these things had their meanings to him, all set him in a sacred way to the task.
Patiently he ground soft lumps of white paint in the cup of his hand, blended it into a thick paste with carefully measured drops of water from his skin bag, then he spread it evenly across his hand and drew that hand down his face from brow to chin. His eyes in their untouched sockets looked skeletal and enormous in the pale mask. The clean fingers of the other hand hooked in a narrow spread and dragged across his face horizontally, striping cheekbones and the proud arch of his nose from ear to ear. He washed his hands, murmuring prayers, glad of the luxury of time to prepare. More than glad - Spirit things were happening in that camp, he had felt the power moving even from a distance and it had made him wary and suspicious. Such things could be unpredictably deadly if disturbed, and there were holy men among the warriors. Even as few as they were, those warriors were all seasoned and powerful; he had been surprised, hidden in the high crotch of an evergreen before dark to spy out the camp, prowling its distant edges in the night, to find such close friends of Tashunke Witco so far from where that man was with the big camp.
The tracker, too, he now realized, was such a friend - a white man! Curley already knew him to be a formidable warrior, quick and much stronger than he looked, and Curley had not forgotten the sense of spirits moving in and around him that had not faded since he'd seen him last.
Power, too, had clung around the white woman he'd been surprised to see washing at the cold edge of the river in the dark, a strange sad smile on her face he had seen when the thick clouds parted off the face of the moon to show it to him. Her hair was the color of blood in darkness, black and liquid, and he wondered still what warning he was to take from the sight of her. Curley was amazed by all these things, and not a little disconcerted.
Monroe thought to take this little camp easily and do his private businesses unnoticed, but Curley did not think so, nor did Yellowhair. Curley was spying on this Captain as much as this camp, and had chosen his own battle within the white men's workings. He was no fool - this campaign had nothing to do with soldier things. But if he could kill Lakota .... A smile worked thin and eager across his handsome face.
Everything that had once nourished and sheltered the Crow, all that went into them and upon them and around them, was of this mother, this land. This earth still held the consecrated dead of the Crow no matter how long ago the Lakota had driven them from it. They would have their ancestral lands back again, they would use the might of the white soldiers to defeat the Lakota and take it back, it would not be as the tracker had said. If Curley defeated him in personal combat, it would be proof. He had not liked the shadow that man's words had laid on his thoughts, or on his heart. Now he suspected it was a curse.
The Captain and a dozen men had already crossed the river east of the camp where it grew steep and rocky and by now were working their way north to come from behind, over the ridge there. The main force of thirty was set to attack before dawn across the river where Curley knew the ground was too steep and soft for the horses. Once they'd come a few yards past the embankment, the soldiers would find themselves too busy falling off their horses or struggling to stay in the saddles to fire their rifles with accuracy. He might have pointed out easier ways to overrun the camp, but Monroe was not a fool and obviously had chosen the route on purpose. It would be slow going for the soldiers up that slope against defending fire, many would die, but there was good cover from which they might make forward progress and they had the greater numbers if they were courageous enough to face the Lakota and the dangerous white men in that camp. He smirked; Monroe knew the yellow metal could make good soldiers out of cowardly men, and that was their promised reward. The frontal assault was a diversion and Curley understood how that worked, and how it could work for him as well.
The camp on the Crazy Woman occupied the steep north bank of its namesake river, a single narrow ford leading up between the rocks from the riverbed onto the layered slopes that formed the leading edge of the foothills. Groups of lodges were set among the open spaces between copses of cedar and pine, crossed lodgepoles tufted with feathers and the smoke of the campfires frayed through the treetops. A scatter of forest thickened as the terrain lifted toward the sparsely timbered ridges that ranged behind to the north and east, and in the muted distance soared the ranked heights of the Big Horn mountains, timeless and ragged-topped blue fading to purple. Grasslands swept graciously west of the camp providing grazing for the horses. It was a land that cried out to Curley, and it was a good camp for its purpose, hard to see from a distance and hard to attack through the irregular pattern of trees and brush. These things Curley had told Monroe, discharging his obligation.
Just now, there were about twenty lodges, several smaller ones set close together among a stand of pine adjacent to the ford where some of the young men and a few older warriors set guard. Several other lodges were situated a dozen yards uphill, warriors led by Bear Tooth and accompanied by his wife and a few others who cooked and did what was needed for the warriors. Another group of six lodges sat a little distance back from the trail-head leading up from the ford, and past them by a quarter acre stood five large lodges between a brace and scatter of cedar, beyond which the grasslands opened. One was Little Eagle's, and four others housed the white men, Two Badgers, Bear Tooth and their wives. Because of his duty to the spirit of Tanner's wife, Chased By Water's lodge was set a bit apart, the smaller Keeping lodge set ceremoniously beside it to house the long beaded case that held the lock of Duley's hair and an altar the old warrior had maintained for far too long. His wife was too merry a soul to keep it in their own lodge so long, custom required sobriety and quiet where a Keeping was being done, none could pass between the Kept and the fire, so they had made a special lodge for Tanner's woman and Kept all the traditions and honors there. The remainder of the young single men were camped in the grasslands beyond with the horses and were in this camp as often as their own.
As Curley went on foot up the bank a half mile east of the camp, he saw the ghostly outlines of the soldiers bunching up on the far bank preparing to cross the dark river. They were heading for a ford too narrow and rocky for white men to get up without alerting every living creature within a mile of their presence, planning to form a skirmish line east of the camp and sweep through it from the high ground, pushing the Lakota into the grasslands where they would be easy prey. Curley chuffed a distractedly amused breath, fine mouth curling. As if the Lakota slept without sentries, or with sentries who had no eyes or ears or noses. They thought they had the advantage of numbers, thirty-six soldiers against less than thirty warriors, but they had not noticed that the children had been sent toward the Rosebud yesterday with the latest little band through. These Lakota knew something was coming, if not when or what exactly, and Lakota women could fight like she-bears when the responsibility of their children was not an issue. They could tip the balance, Curley knew, but Monroe had laughed at him when he'd said it.
He shrugged, the motion setting the fringes and hair-tassles of his war-shirt swaying; they would dance in battle and their magic confuse the eye of his enemy. The dark valley he intended to make his way up was narrow and rose like a snake climbing a tree, but it would come up behind the tracker's lodge just below the ridgeline. The warrior's breath puffed in front of his face as he studied it, his song so low he could hardly hear it himself, but he felt it in his bones, a sense fate upon him he didn't question, having the will to prevail. The risk to white soldiers was no concern of his, though if they failed, the chance to kill many Lakota of fierce reputation would be lost. It didn't matter. They would die in the months to come anyway, the whites would not be stopped - the Crow were wise enough to know this and become allies. This land would be Crow again.
One brown hand smoothed the quilled bands and fringe at the thighs of his leggings, stroked across the hair-bone necklace of his breast. His song was full of determination to show the lie of the wasichu's words by spilling his blood, Curley did not care today if every soldier was killed. He disappeared into the pre-dawn darkness of the rocky valley like a ghost into shadow.
Catch the Bird could have slain the Crow scout who passed not an arm's length from him, the urge leapt hotly in his heart. Any other time it would have been the first act of any Lakota man in finding this enemy skulking about the camp. But these times were different, and so must be the way of war. Tashunke Witco was right and Catch the Bird was among the few young men who understood how right. Crow ran now like dogs beside white soldiers, so this Crow's presence meant white soldiers were near. Impatiently the young Lakota warrior waited until the Crow had passed, breathing slowly but his eyes gleaming keen on that warrior's back with the wish to kill. When he was gone, Catch the Bird slithered out of the crotch of the pine where he'd been watching and ran toward the camp.
"Hst." Quiet but right in his ear jerked Chris out of his sleep with a startled grunt. He froze when his opening eyes found the wrinkled brown face of Little Eagle so close to his that he could've stuck out his tongue and touched her. Before he could react to more than the sudden jolt of knowing trouble was right up their asses, she thrust the butt of his loaded pistol into his hand, seeing each finger slide automatically into place with a quick smile of approval before turning with a tap of cool hair across his brow to scurry back across the dim lodge. In a matter of a few accelerating seconds he tossed the sleeping robe back and sat up, gritting his teeth through the expected flare of pain. Mary's pale slender arms sliding into dress-sleeves, the Monroe girl hopping on one foot as she got her pants on and then her boots, Little Eagle tucking her sacred things into a fringed pouch slung at her side. She turned it to her back and picked up her rifle, handing another to Mary as soon as her hands were clear for it. It was quiet as a tomb but for the hushed urgency of their efficient motions, and he didn't need anything more.
"Buck!" He called sharply, startling them, but he ignored Little Eagle's irritated hiss at the noise and pushed himself off the pallet and onto the floor between it and the painted liner of the lodge wall. The jar hurt, but he twisted, pale and narrow in the dim light, and snatched his gunbelt from the end of the pallet. One harsh look of demand and worry brought Mary to his side as if he'd lassooed her. Elizabeth Monroe was gone, he realized that with a coldness of possibilities he didn't have time to consider.
Chris' urgent tone brought Buck up off his back reaching for his gun, J.D. flailing beside him against the sudden smothering weight of robes as Nathan and Josiah flung them off, from dead sleep to vibrating attention in a split second. Buck knew the feeling that shot hard up his spine, time jolting into that peculiar clarity of incipient violence and death that always made his bones hum. A query Buck couldn't make out came from the lodge beside them where Ezra, Travis and James were, but by then Buck had rolled to his stocking feet and was ducking through the doorflap, his pistol in one hand and his boots in the other, his head swiveling like an owl.
They were not the only ones to hear that call to arms; in the brush not twenty yards away from Little Eagle's lodge Gerald Monroe and his men dropped into surprised stillness at the sudden shadows moving among the lodges they'd targeted. Gerald growled, his face darkening furiously. The alarm was supposed to go up from the far side of this damned camp so he and his men could get into those tents James and Elizabeth, Travis and his men, occupied. He was supposed to have the element of surprise, the defenders of this scrubby little village were supposed to rush toward the ford, not the very lodges he'd intended to fill with smoke and blood before they could even get themselves out of their beds!
Buck saw Two Badgers was approaching at a fast loping run from his camp beyond - too far for Chris to have been heard, so that wasn't what had alerted them to whatever was happening. Several other warriors also came from the lodges set upslope, the elders on their heels, and the sense of a battle being joined accelerated. Buck left the Lakota to Josiah, crossing the open ground between his lodge and Little Eagle's in four long strides.
"Toka ho?" (What's wrong?) Josiah's voice carried low to meet Two Badgers, who was armed and in great haste, his hair loose down his back but fully dressed and ready for war. He gestured with the barrel of the rifle as he passed.
"Waziyata!" The river, he replied quietly as he passed, glad not to have to try to think of the English words and glad, indeed, that these white men were among them today. "Hanska sota mila!" This drifting over his shoulder as he went past Josiah - many long-knives.
Josiah looked after him, seeing the people slipping out of the scattered camps along the deep shadows of the coming day, some joining Two Badgers as he disappeared to the east, others heading further up the ridge slopes. No noise, no panic, moving with purposeful stealth so the preacher understood the element of surprise had passed from the soldiers to the Lakota. A sigh filled and emptied Josiah's burly chest as he wondered with resigned sorrow how many of these warriors he would never see alive again, how many soldiers would die far from family and home. Ezra came up beside him buttoning his vest and looking faintly annoyed to have been roused without a reason he could see, but Josiah turned away from him before the gambler his mouth open and caught J.D.'s arm as he finally dashed out of from the lodge, his shirt buttoned wrong but his eyes bright and ready.
"J.D., they could use you at the horse herd." Josiah said, but the kid resisted being sent in the opposite direction from everyone else and dug in his heels,
"Josiah, I can ..."
"Soldiers, J.D., you know what soldiers usually do?" Josiah leaned down into J.D.'s face with that voice that seemed to come from somewhere underground and fixed J.D. with pale deep-set eyes. "They kill as many horses as they can. How hard do you think it would be to drive that herd over the river-bank down there?"
J.D. eyed Josiah skeptically, horrified disgust rising when he realized the Preacher was serious.
"You're joking - why would they ..."
Buck came fast back out of the lodge, his eyes urgent on them all as he jammed his feet into his boots.
"Chris'll take care of things here." He said, not real happy about that decision by his tone but he'd seen right off how Chris would've reacted if he'd doubted his ability to keep the women and the little girl safe. Travis came then, his coat flapping as he got his arm into it, all their heads snapping around at the faint singing ululation of a war-cry rising in the distance.
"J.D." Buck shot a look up at the kid, moving easily but in a hurry, his blue eyes cheerful like he got sometimes before a fight, so J.D. was sure one was coming. "Go impress them young bucks with your shootin' - try not t'do any flyin' or swimmin' though, alright? They'll be needing another gun, you git going and show 'em how it's done."
J.D.'s mouth opened and then shut again, Josiah looking at him as if wondering why he was still there and Buck standing up and buckling his gun-belt around his hips like the kid was already gone. J.D. went, setting his bowler on his head with his eyebrows twisted down, trying to figure out if he'd just been tricked out of the action.
Gerald watched the lanky gunslinger emerge from the old woman's lodge searching out his comrades, the warriors passing at a silent run toward the river ford, and he knew what they would all do with a sudden sneering certainty. Nobility was so predictable, the Achille's heel of fools. Quick as a cat he righted himself, the deep rudder of hate an unswerving instinct into advantageous currents.
So the Lakota knew an attack was coming, it didn't matter, they were being diverted to the river anyway and taking the gunmen with them, leaving the lodges entirely undefended. A flick of his fingers sent two of the six men with him away to help their fellows with the horse-herd, and though they glanced at each other, mystified, they went.
Who died when wasn't as important as them all being dead when this was done, and the absence of those gunmen now would just make this part of the job easier. Gerald didn't worry that his brother would join the rush toward gunfire, he was still cowering in the lodge and would likely stay there. Of course, his soldiers down at the river would pay a heavy price facing roused rather than sleeping Lakota and with the deadly guns of Travis' men beside them, but he would have plenty of time to do what was needed here, and a massacre would serve him well as a victory. Part of his mind settled down to plan how he would tell that grisly tale, but his attention remained on the lodges nearest and the men converging among them.
As he'd expected, Travis' men, even Travis himself, headed after the warriors. He took his watch out of his pocket and it popped open with a coldly delicate snick. He glanced at the gleaming gold face. He looked across the camp toward the riverside, calculating how far his soldiers had gotten and the timing of the warrior's arrival on the scene, the gunmen on their heels. He waited four minutes before snapping the watch closed and tucking it into his pocket. It was time to make his move.
"Akins, you stay with me. The rest of you - wait for the first volley before firing." Gerald shoved the man nearest him out of cover toward the lodges now standing silent in the low mists. His brother, his sister, and the Travis woman would be dead before anyone could come back to their rescue, and likely they wouldn't hear the gunfire in the heat of their own battle. It would end here, today, no further distractions or complications.
He watched his men creep up the slope, satisfaction warming him where he'd been increasingly uneasy to feel cold. His confidence had been shaken by those men, but today he would see seven bloody carcasses laid out before him charged with treason and the murder of his family, the litany of criminality and personal suffering that would justify every murderous act of war he intended to carry out in the weeks to come.
It was all he could do to keep himself from laughing out loud, his hands fisted with something closer to joy than he'd known for a very long time. They'd almost made him doubt himself, almost made him afraid the prize would slip through his fingers just as it was within reach. But after today, the Indian nations that had welcomed his father would learn to hate him in his son's vengeance. Gerald Monroe would eclipse his father's memory, Gerald Monroe would finally prove his worth in the ruination of everything his father valued more than his own flesh and blood. Let the old bastard witness it from heaven!
A moment later the battle broke in earnest simultaneously on opposite sides of the camp, the attack on the lodges unnoticed in the blistering volley of rifle-fire from the half-formed skirmish line and the warriors interrupting their advance to the north and east.
The three soldiers who burst into the old woman's lodge expecting three women and a girl and what they might get away with in the heat of battle instead found a legendary gunslinger waiting like a rattler in its coils. In the instant before he died, the first man into the lodge saw only Larabee's pale glittering eyes and the fiery flash of the gun. Death in those eyes, soldiers or Indians didn't matter to the gunslinger now, he would kill whoever threatened him and that first soldier was dead before he hit the ground. The pistol barrel glided as smooth as if it were on tracks to the startled man behind him, and the third went down halfway through the lodge door as Little Eagle's rifle cracked, and Mary's, in the same moment.
Jules had frozen in terror at the sudden outburst of deafening, heart-stopping, sound, registering with horrified clarity the smaller thumps of bullets striking bodies that she would never forget. Overwhelming violence as she'd only experienced from a distance, the air stung her nose and burned in her lungs, her ears rang and her heart was hammering so hard it felt like it would burst her chest open. Then utter silence. Numb senseless silence.
When she opened her eyes, her cheek was inexplicably pressed to the hide floor of the lodge and her vantage was a thin ground-level slice under the pallet into the staring eyes of a man she'd seen at her father's back. Dead there, not three feet from her.
Dust drifted bright as stars in the column of silvery morning through the lodge door, held open by the body of a second man. Gunfire echoed in the distance and her head followed the sound, knowing they were not echoes and what was upon them. Who. Her thoughts raced, horrified.
Jules had known her father was alive from the day they'd all met in Little Eagle's lodge, hide walls easier than doors to a girl who understood the value of knowing what adults wanted secret. She'd been glad of it, too, because it was one less guilt her Uncle Vin would have on his already burdened heart. She should've known her father wouldn't let it go. Now she could have no illusions of what he intended.
Her father would be upon them hungry for blood and death. He would say it was only business, and he would smile that nasty dead smile that she knew was his true heart. Because her Aunt and Uncle might compromise his plans, because he'd never been able to bear being bested, and because he hated grandfather with a constant bitter passion. Uncle Vin was far too much like Vance Monroe, and this time one of them would die, she knew it with a prescience that stopped her breath. Why couldn't he just stop? Why was nothing ever enough?
For gold he would stoop to the murder of kin, for gold destroy these fine Lakota people as though they were bugs on his picnic table - her Uncle Vin's people, her Grandfather's, Duley's, and targets because of it! Lust for gold powered by the vicious spite of a bully with all the resources he needed to carry his hate forward, to flail around himself with it and ruin everything he touched and kill with it and be glad! She knew the course it would set him on - he would hurt Uncle Vin as badly as he could before he killed him. Worry leapt in her - where was Uncle Vin, anyway? His lodge was so far away from the camp, so vulnerable! And where was Aunt Elizabeth? Oh, she had chosen the worst possible morning to take one of her walks ...
"Anybody hit?" Jules had never thought she'd welcome that thin rasp of a voice, she popped up from behind the pallet with a sudden sweep of relief and looked directly into the gunslinger's burning eyes, every hope she had burning right back at him. His face was hewn sharp, his mouth a hard pursed line, and every muscle in his bare arms braced across the pallet high with tension as a cornered wolf, all teeth and bristling fury. Uncle Vin's fiercest friend. Mary Travis' hand was on his shoulder, calm and trusting him, even wounded and dressed in nothing but his long drawers. From that moment his hard looks and quick angry angles ceased to terrify her, and Jules felt the same sense of shelter in him that Mary Travis did. Nothing would hurt them that had not first fought its way through this indestructible man, and nothing out there would threaten her Uncle Vin with the others at his back, she hadn't a doubt that's where they would be, they'd been there all this time even when he didn't want them to! The gunslinger's pistol remained fixed on the lodge door, bright flags of color high on his cheekbones.
"We're sitting ducks in here." He said harshly, bitterly regretting having sent Buck off with the rest. Buck had tried to argue and his damn pride had just come up so fast ...
A quick gesture at Little Eagle instructed her to cover the door and he laid the pistol on the pallet, leaning with a grunt of pain to snatch his gunbelt off the floor, flicking shells out of the loops and reloading in a blur and snap of long pale fingers. Mary went to fetch his clothes and the pistol, loaded again, went back onto the pallet within quick reach, his other hand reaching for his pants as soon as she got near. He jammed his long legs into them, still sitting on the floor, yanking them over his narrow hips as he got his feet under him, Mary's hand tipping the balance once or twice under his elbow.
"We've got to get out of here, into the trees."
Neither Jules or Mary argued, and Little Eagle nodded once, shortly, pulling Jules, who'd been standing there like a block of stone staring at Chris, and directing her with an impatient gesture to retrieve her bow and quiver. Shaking, the thought of her father's vengeance looming heavy as a fist on her heart, Jules gathered up her coat and belt, then a water-skin and a parfleche, stuffing it in a dumb scrabble with a fistful of jerky and a knife and a coil of rope and anything close to hand. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Larabee risen and let herself be comforted by the power in his whip-thin body.
Chris, half-dressed by then, looked down at the top of Mary's pale head in bemused astonishment of the businesslike way she'd just tucked his shirt in, her palms skimming across his tailbone and flanks and the skin of his stomach tingling with the sensation of her fingers coming in to button the shirt even as he buttoned his pants. Funny that their hands didn't tangle, that it all took place with a seamless synchrony even as rushed as they were, her arms with the loop of his, his hands under hers so her forearms laid against him from belly to chest when she reached his collar. Her fingers smoothed the material over his wound as though she were laying an armoring spell there, and then she looked up, her eyes wide and that color blue that struck him to stillness no matter what else was happening. Hints of glory.
Unexpectedly, she smiled like she'd just read every corner of his heart he couldn't make a bit of sense of himself. Like he was a fool, and a dear one. Lord, in the middle of an Indian war, this impossibly beautiful and passionately headstrong woman smiled at him like he was escorting her to a quiet dinner. His fingers closed over hers and held them where they were, cool and strong against his chest, smooth as silk under his palm. How many times a fool would he be if she, or he, were killed today?
He didn't say anything, had never yet been able to say anything to her from his heart that didn't come out sharp-edged and all wrong, but his worry was as clear as his determination to safeguard her - and why. That set her back a speechless instant of her own, caught in the openness of his eyes, and then he was the one to smile, a crooked angle full of admiration that meant more to her in that moment, in the fierce promise of those eyes, than a kiss.
A distant sound threaded into Vin's exhausted sleep. He knew he was alone, and the crackling sound took awhile to resolve itself into gunfire. He sat up with a jerk, disoriented, the robes layering off his body onto his legs. Usually Vin was either asleep or awake, there was no middle ground, but this morning he was far more sluggish than was his nature ... echoes of a magnificence he didn't want to entirely let go of, wanted to dream on in them. The gunfire was distant ... maybe hunting ... early morning was a good time to take deer. A deep breath felt cold in his lungs. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, leaning forward as memories of the night burst vividly. But the sound nagged at him and he picked up his head, eyes closed, and listened. No, not hunting ... Rifles. A lot of them. The body remembered itself by jolting into alarmed motion.
Vin had time to get his pants on, his arms into his shirt, and reach for his boots when he heard the scream, thin and short, from below. Not where the fighting was going on, not there ... he forgot his boots, reaching instead for the mare's leg and holster, the other hand sweeping out after his scabbarded knife, which he jammed into the waist of his pants as he burst through the lodge door and right into a Crow warrior.
The impact knocked the Crow flat on his back with a resounding thump, Vin sprawled on top of him fighting to clear his knife from between their bodies. The warrior's broad blade flashed to his left and Vin let go of the mare's leg to grab the iron-hard wrist and keep the knife from hilting in his back. Curley, knowing the tracker was off-balanced and gripping him close with his free arm so he couldn't clear his hand from between them, shoved Vin back, his bare toes digging runnels in the earth as he kept from being wrestled backwards but he couldn't keep Curley from rising. They struggled hard against each other, face to face, and when they'd reached their knees Vin finally recognized him - the Crow scout, painted for war, Gerald's Crow scout ... everything in him ignited white-hot and he hadn't a second to spare.
He rose up with a sudden fierce jerk and one viciously short blow with his elbow and forearm into Curley's face put him back down like a bird swatted out of the sky, insensible, blood bursting bright from his nose and mouth. Vin's fingertips scraped with a faint clatter across the tangled hair-pipe necklace on Curley's chest back as he retrieved his gunbelt and vaulted over him, head rising high and searching, launching himself down the ridge with his heart in his throat. Smoke rose from the river in several places, at the ford and further east, as far from Little Eagle's lodge as could be.
Who would want to draw the warriors off from the camp but Gerald Monroe? Who did Gerald want to kill even more than Vin himself? James, and Elizabeth, Jules if she got in his way ... God, God ... a prayer without words in every step, every beat of his blood.
Gerald waited in the brush, his hackles rising higher with every moment that passed. Where were his men? He moved along the incline, his man shadowing him with casual curiosity, until he could see the front of the lodge and the booted feet protruding from the crumpled hide door. Before his astonishment could take hold, however, the feet disappeared inside and Chris Larabee's narrow form stooped through the doorway, his head swiveling and a pistol in his hand at an angle too ready not to be deadly.
What in hell was he doing there? As Gerald watched, boiling with impotent fury, Larabee reached back, a curl of his fingers bringing Mary Travis, his daughter, and an old Indian woman out after him. No Elizabeth ... as that registered, the little party slipped around the far side of the lodge heading for the trees. There was no shot at them through the lodge nor could he and his man get around it quickly enough to take them before they made it to shelter, but Larabee didn't know they were there at all and might not be looking for pursuit. He gripped the arm of the remaining soldier in taloned fingers, pulling the swarthy face close, his voice the barest hiss.
"Get your horse and get after them, kill that son-of-a-bitch and the women." The man's breath was rank as he grinned, unphased by Gerald's temper - the gunman was already injured, and seriously by the way he moved, could be a hurt just taken that'd kill him before he got far anyway. Taking that one down would only add to his own reputation, Akins liked being feared.
Gerald's fingers tightened even further so the man winced, his eyes warning against underestimating Larabee again. "Do it, I don't care how, and you'll be rich. Don't, and you'll be dead." Akins' smirk would've infuriated Gerald any other time, but he shoved the man away, satisfied enough that he was moving fast. But now, he had a job that needed neither help nor witnesses. He rose up out of concealment and sprinted with the grace of a hunting bear toward the lodge where his brother was finally emerging.
The robe was clumsy and cumbersome but Elizabeth didn't dare let it go, knowing her white nightgown, even mud-spattered as it was, would shine like a flag. She wasn't sure where she was going, she thought it was toward the lodges, but terror and struggling to move swiftly under the robe dulled her attention. Where was the shooting coming from? It had sounded all far to the east at first, then near, and now to the west in the grasslands - what was happening?
She heard the ring of metal-work before she saw the mounted soldier, turning as she ran to find him bearing down on her, grinning. Instinctively she turned away from the rise of his gun-barrel toward her, knowing with a fatalistic sinking of her heart that the robe would make her look like an Indian, a target to that soldier. She screamed once, helplessly.
But when the report came, it was not from behind her, but ahead. Her eyes flew up, wide and shocked, and saw Chris Larabee stand straight up out of the brush a few yards to her left so he could aim over her head, his left arm tucked hard into his body but the right extended out and firing. She didn't look back and didn't have to when his eyes dismissed his target and came for her, she was up and running for the safety of that ferocious man, her heart leaping with painful relief to see Jules and Mary Travis behind him.
Two Badgers had engaged the soldiers before they'd gotten more than several hundred yards into their skirmish line, but some had managed to remain mounted and were running for the nearest groups of lodges, fighting was breaking out there now, horses churning around in the small spaces and the smoke of gunfire feathering through the trees. But many were afoot and were being held where they were, having lost their horses either on the way up the incline or thereafter and not making much headway against the Lakota. There was at least one Sargeant trying to rally the men into defensive groups, and Two Badgers took him down with a careful shot.
Buck, pressed close against a nice broad cedar trading shots with a few lucky soldiers ducked behind a tumble of stones, started when he saw Vin break out of the thick brush of the slope far to his left, a flash of buckskin pants and bare torso leaping like a deer through the low fork of two close-set trees, his unbuttoned shirt snapping behind him, moving with a frantic fluidity to get ... where? He was behind the soldiers and yet ran right through a pair of them, knocking them both down like they were chairs in his way as he went past.
"Shit ..." Buck's breath clotted in his throat and he prayed no one would shoot Vin accidentally. An instant later, the tracker was flattening out like a crab under a sweeping branch, bounding up again and running like Buck had never seen him run, flat out fast as he could.
"Buck ..." Nathan's breathless voice at his shoulder didn't turn him from tracking Vin's mad race, "What in hell is he doing?" The healer was tense, alarmed, his rifle ranging to the side and back.
"I don't know, Nathan, but he's doin' it in a big damned hurry." Just before a bullet tapped through the branch above his head and made both men duck, Buck saw with a chill of true fear that Vin was barefoot as well as hatless, but armed to the teeth, his big Bowie in one hand and the mare's leg in the other, the belt whipping around his hand as he ran. Where was he going? The soldiers were attacking here, and he knew Vin wouldn't ever run from a fight, and the only thing in the direction he was going, straight as the crow flew over obstacles and combatants alike, were the lodges where he'd left Chris and the women.
"James!" All it took was that tone to stop James in his tracks, every drop of blood in his body dropping to the soles of the boots it had taken him ten agonizing minutes to find. His shoulders seized near his ears, and though he had a rifle in one hand, both hands fisted helplessly at the end of his arms as his flesh jittered on his bones. There was a gunbarrel pointed right at his head, he could hear it in Gerald's voice. Death was upon him, and it would bear that inhumanly smug and satisfied face he knew too well and had never imagined would turn his way. He'd known Gerald was capable of it, James wasn't stupid, but he just hadn't ... believed it.
Gerald would kill him here in this wilderness a lifetime from home in the next moment, and tears burst up to swim in his eyes, clogging his throat. But in the next instant James was astonished to realize that it was not grief for this lost life, but for being denied the chance to make it up to his sister and niece. He didn't deserve them, certainly, but they could've been a family, it was all he'd ever wanted and never had. He'd been a baby when Vance Monroe and his sister Duley had fractured the family by leaving, he'd grown up with the legends and the stories in town and the whisperings in the corners of his own house, and with Elizabeth's constant love for them both. In that moment James regretted more than anything else the thought of meeting them now with his soul in wicked tatters, no time to mend the raiment of his acts.
Gerald was taken aback to see anger in James' face when he finally turned around and faced him - he would've shot him in the back if he hadn't, it didn't matter, but ... The trace of a smile flickered across his younger brother's grim face when he saw how unexpected his composure was, and Gerald glanced around for some hidden help coming that he hadn't noticed. But they were alone.
"You know why I don't mind this so much?" James said, and Gerald realized James was not going to ask for his life, not bargain nor beg nor try to reason, it astounded him. "Because I know there are seven really dangerous men fighting over who has the pleasure of killing you." Each word clipped and clear and certain as the sun rose that one of those seven would see it done before the day was over.
Gerald's face paled, handsome angles tightening with a fury that told James he had scored a direct hit, and then James, still talking, was suddenly in motion, moving faster than Gerald had known he could,
"Maybe eight."
Vin ran through the gunfire as if unaware of it, jolting to a wildly searching stop among the lodges he already knew were empty. His own impetus seemed to slam up against his back, his toes unconsciously curled into the packed earth to hold him there, force him to think. His breath labored hard in his chest, he was shaking and refused to acknowledge the scant reserves of strength he was running through so quickly. Where would Chris have taken them? The boys wouldn't be fighting down by the river unless they were sure Chris could take care of things here, so Larabee was mobile, which meant he was healthy enough to kill six ways from sundown. If he could only find them before Gerald or his men did!
A gunshot from the west beckoned and he took off toward it without questioning the sign.
Chris pushed them hard, kept them at as quick a run as the terrain would allow, unwilling to stop because he didn't know if he'd ever get moving again if he did. His shirt was clammy against his skin in the cold grey morning, the colt felt like lead in his hand but he stubbornly refused to holster it. Nothing would touch those under his protection that he'd still be alive to see ...
"J.D.!" Jules excited voice came at his left like an impossible hope given voice, and Little Eagle's thin arm crossed in front of his body, stopping him in his tracks as she, too, pointed toward the grasslands, his eyes following. Damned if it wasn't, and damned if Chris wasn't as happy to see that kid as he'd've been to see Buck or any of the others. Bowler hat and three-piece suit and his face painted yellow, riding bareback like he was part of the fast-moving horse and leading a string of four more ponies. Several other young warriors rode on across the grassland, taking different routes toward the gunbattle reverberating in a constant throb upriver, the rest of the herd running west in the distance. Several tiny figures engaged a small cohort of riders trying to retreat, soldiers after the herd who now found themselves the target of Lakota warriors young enough to make their dying very painful. Little Eagle grinned proudly as those soldiers fell, dark eyes bright as stars in her weathered brown face.
Mary felt the deep tremble in Chris as they stopped and he stumbled against her, the hand that reached after her far too late as she took action herself, dashing into the nearest clear spot in the trees and tearing her hat off, swinging her rifle back and forth over her head. She wanted to shout, desperate to gain J.D.'s attention, but he was hot out of a fight and still looking for anything out of the ordinary, he saw her motion at once and veered sharply toward them.
Jules dropped the parfleche and plopped down on her behind, exhausted, but thinking with attentive purpose. Her Uncle Vin would be alone in that lodge he kept, and her father would know right where he was, he never made a move without a plan.
Chris went down onto his heels, controlling it, but not by much, his knees jack-knifing into a sharp high angle and his free hand touching the ground beside him for balance. Breathless, he still had it in him to return a ghost of Mary's hopeful smile as she came back to them, and didn't object when she stood protectively behind him watching J.D. come, bracing his back against her legs. She reached her hand out to Elizabeth and Jules so they gathered close together waiting for their unexpected rescuer, knowing Chris' relief was even more profound than theirs. Mary didn't think he could have gone on much further, he was warm and breathing too quick with not enough depth. It was hard not to let her worry show.
Jules examined the gunslinger critically, catching her breath with one eye on Little Eagle as she moved off to the left to watch their backs. Larabee was ready to keel over, she'd been amazed how he kept going, like he was a perpetual motion machine fueled by stubbornness alone. But still ready to drop, so she'd been halfway expecting one of the others to appear like they always seemed to do in just the nick of time, drawn one to the other in time of need.
She wished it was Uncle Vin coming, though, and glad as she was to see J.D., it was the ponies he was bringing and the gunslinger's condition she was judging now. She wished she could get her fingers to unwind from around the curve of her bow as she watched J.D. slip into the treeline, flashing through the sparse stands toward them. She wanted him to be able to brag to Casey about this, she wanted to sit against her Uncle Vin's side among them all and filch cups of coffee and hear them laughing and ribbing one another ... please, please, please, every breath please. Her Aunt trembled beside her, the buffalo-robe nearly vibrating, and Jules wondered again how she'd come to be out in her nightgown.
Chris wondered that too, his narrow glance suspicious, cataloguing the moccasins Jules had dug out of the overstuffed parfleche, the mud-soaked hem of the woman's night-dress. The ghostly pallor of her face, and over it an abraded flush and ripeness he only had to be a man to recognize. He hadn't heard the mar