For Faith

Disclaimer: The characters and concept of The Magnificent Seven are not mine (I'd treat 'em better) and no copyright infringement is intended; no money-making in it nor intent thereof. Story takes place about 2-3 months after the Seven agree to serve as regulators for Four Corners. Endless thanks to Jo for insightful beta reading and posting this for the author.

WARNINGS: This story contains harsh language and is rated PG13.

Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1

CHAPTER ONE

Peso was fractious in the early-morning gloom, sidestepping around in a tight circle when the tracker tried to mount and going wall-eyed on him when he caught stirrup and horn anyway. A hollow click of long yellow teeth at his leg as he swung over with irritated force into the saddle; "Settle down."

"Vin, I'd shoot that nag between the eyes for waking my bones that way every mornin'." Buck drawled from atop his tall placidly chewing grey, long limbs easy as he leaned up on his forearms across the pommel with a slow wide smile, "Hell, I'll shoot ‘im it for ya if y’ like, bein’s you’re a friend of mine and all." Vin didn't have time to reply because Peso went stiff-legged and took a short series of jolting cat-backed hops sideways across the corral.

"Ride 'em, cowboy!" J.D. whooped and they all looked on grinning as Tanner did battle with his horse again, some mounted, some finishing their saddling and outfitting in the still grey dawn.

"Y'all seem to be in some disfavor with your equine companion, Mr. Tannah." Ezra called with a disgustedly sleepy look at the lowering clouds. "Of course, he has a valid grievance at being so unceremoniously rousted from his slumbers at an hour disgracefully outside the vicinity of decent. And threatening inclemency to add insult to dire injury."

"Need some help?" Nathan joined in amiably from the fence watching Peso buck and slew around with Josiah grinning beside him.

"Divine intervention, or perhaps, indeed, your tender mercies, Mr. Jackson, would be more within the realm of the requisite. I'm sure, Mr. Tannah, entertainin' as this is for us all, we could arrange the hire of a more tractable steed."

His voice trailed away and he was not the only one to wince as all four of Peso's hooves left the ground and came down again with a rattle that Tanner had to feel in every compressing inch of his spine from tailbone to skull. Finally made Vin mad enough to saw the right rein and drag Peso's big anviled head around into his knee, where he grabbed ahold of the cheekstrap with the all the force of his sinewy arms and shoulders, shifted his weight left and yanked Peso's head sharply the same way, kicked out that stirrup and took the big horse down with a dust-raising thump onto his shoulder, back feet lashing out. Those of them who'd lived around Plains Indians, Buck, Josiah and Chris, recognized it as a method for breaking and training mounts to serve as cover or to conceal them in the tall grasses. J.D., however, assumed the horse had fallen on Tanner and was halfway over the top rail to help before Buck leaned down to grab the back of his coat and haul him back.

"Let the man work, J.D., I swear, you keep jumpin' into the middle of things without seein' what's goin' on, you ain't never gonna learn a thing, lucky if y'aint buzzard-bait inside a month. Pay attention, boy." Buck gave him a shake that rolled J.D.'s bowler hat around on his head and stilled his protests.

"First lesson, remember?" One long expressive finger did a lazy tick tock under the kids' fine turned-up nose, "'Stay alive' - second lesson, stayin' outta our way is a sure sign of masterin' th'first lesson."

"But ... " A half-step toward the corral and a half-step back, almost comically torn, "Jeez, Buck, it's on his leg ..."

"Ain't movin' though, is he boy?" Buck drawled with that slow lazy grin that said J.D. was being stupid and indeed the horse was not moving, big head twisted awkwardly up and back in what was apparently an iron grip, and except for twitching and blowing hard he didn't seem to be struggling. Nobody else was concerned, in fact their smiles got bigger as Vin's soft cursing reached them.

"Son of a bitchin' horse I've had all I'm gonna have of you this mornin'."

"Settle down, Tanner's alright. Take hold of your horse n' be still, don't want t'spook 'im."

Despite his foot being trapped under Peso's heaving side Tanner's spare body was curved up tight over the horse's barrel, his hatbrim was down low to the rolling eye.

"Git up now and get t'business b'fore I buy myself a mule."

A moment more he impressed on the animal eye to eye how finished he was with this struggle, then he laid back and gave him his head. Peso came to his feet in two jerking rolls, managing to rock back on him hard enough to make him yelp, but he hung grimly onto the horn and came up with him. Once up, Peso stood as quietly as Peso ever did, fidgety contrary creature, the left side of both rider and ridden coated with dust.

Everybody else was mounted by then, Chris walked his horse past him with a wry nod and leaned down for the gate. "Damn, Tanner, that's the ornierest horse I ever seen, Buck's right."

Unperturbed, Vin just dusted himself off and squinted sidelong at him from under his hatbrim. "Yeah, well, we'll see at the end of the day when yours are draggin' n' this one's still got sass enough t'be tryin' t'bite me." Chris laughed out loud and shook his head at the tracker's capacity for discomfort.

"If those are qualities you admire in a horse, Mr. Tanner, I quail before the image of the woman you find appealin'!" Ezra pressed a gloved hand to his satin-vested heart and Vin looked over at him, a hard spark in his wide blue eyes.

"Leave off yer manly perfumes on the trail from now on, Mister Standish, might's well go beatin' a drum out there as be downwind of you." With that he touched his fingertips to his hatbrim, set short heels to Peso and let him bolt out the gate.

"Guess he's takin' point?" Buck came alongside with an amiable smile as Chris looked thoughtfully after their tracker, surprise still reverberating. Tanner had had the black's ear in his teeth in the first moment after he'd put him down. That was a Comanche practice, and hinted at a more ruthless temperment than he’d shown so far.

"Yeah Buck, I guess he's takin' point."

Before Buck could ask after the odd look on his face J.D.’s excited horse struck close between them, dancing to go and him a burr on it, clumsy as a pup on the ground but pure natural poetry on horseback.

"Josiah says that's an Indian trick, Buck, I never seen a man lay a horse down that way n' I been takin' care of horses just about all my life. Big old nag like that, you wouldn't think it could be done so easy - think he'd teach me? Buck, wait up!"

By late afternoon Peso was still moving at a tireless trot, the tracker standing in the stirrups over his withers with his knees taking the motion so he could scan the ground, steady and smooth as an eagle hunting in the wind. Chris had been watching him do that for two hours now, the first in a miserable drizzling rain, like nothing up to a direct lightening strike would bother him.

"Seems like we'd be running up 'is ass by now, Tanner."

"Still goin' full-out by the spacin'. That's a damn good horse he's killin' ... " A jerk of his angled chin at the ground as if Chris might see something there to make sense of while they were rushing by it, "Stumbled a bit, dragged a hoof. Like t'catch 'im before that horse breaks down."

"I'd like you t'catch him before I break down." Chris groused, getting a quick slant of grin and the pace picked up. Man was enjoying this and he thought the damned horse was, too, moving briskly, ears flicking and nose flared to the wind. Chris shook his head again, brushed his spurs against his mount's damp lathered sides and resigned himself to running this horsethief down and likely sleeping on the ground instead of the bed he'd grown surprisingly fond of. Sourly he thought the tracker probably planned it that way, he liked it better out under the sky on his own.

Vin Tanner was not a man who trusted much, quietly self-possessed but harboring a wariness that put him at a remove even from them, he was guarded in the way of solitary wild things and Chris read it as long habit. Never talked much, was as like to answer with an eyebrow or a tip of his head, which meant most of what he knew of him came of observation and instinct. Gunslingers needed both keenly. Their tracker was both knowledgeable and unashamedly predatory on the hunt, deeply comfortable in the wilderness, but nowhere else; dangerous when pushed to it with a feral sort of thoughtfulness that weighed the lives he took but was not always burdened by their taking. He'd been around enough frontiersmen not to mind Tanner's taciturn ways, but a gunman's habit was to watch who was in his pocket as well as who was in his face.

The Preacher was a powerfully solid presence for all his private demons and literary melancholy, and Chris purely marveled at Nathan's selfless desire to heal no matter that he'd been enslaved, and his hunger for any learning that would further that goal, quick-minded and intuitive. That fancy riverboat gambler he hadn't got a fix on yet, but he was a wicked clever scoundrel and handy when guile and deceit were needed, dead-on quick with his guns. J.D. - well, the kid defined callow to Chris and was so troublesome in his enthusiastic blunderings that he was surprised to feel protective of him. Little shit could make him laugh like nothing had in a long time and Buck had taken a real shine to him.

Fact was Chris had no history with any of them but Buck, who was reliable as a tumbleweed and could provoke him to violence just being his rambunctious self. He hadn't really figured out what in hell he was doing here in the first place, man like him who didn't have patience enough to cover a nailhead and as likely to kill as argue. A peace-keeper? Made him laugh every time he thought about it, using a pack of ne'er-do-well drifters and desperados to chase off their own kind.

He looked over at Tanner patiently absorbed in his task. They’d never been strangers, at the first meeting of their eyes across the turmoil in the street there’d been a clarity between men recognizing dark facets of themselves, fearless understandings that only came of mortal bloody violence and loss. No fear of death in either of them, like an immunity to poison from being poisoned every day, though peace with whatever had taught Tanner that cruel lesson so young Chris did not understand. He wondered about it, though, as was his habit, what had happened to him that he'd already learned so thoroughly the easy courage in not caring so much if you lived or not. They shared the same ghosts, but they were muted in Tanner, like something long lived with no matter his youth. Never a need to explain himself even in that first look, nor feel chaffed by guilty memory as he sometimes was with Buck, true a friend as he was. This was a restful man who understood silence and Chris found a kind of balance rising in Tanner’s company he hadn't had for a very long time. To discover he'd lived among Comanche skewed his observations in considerably interesting ways.

Chris shook his head with a crooked smile at his own curiosity. These men and this town had gotten under his skin and he wasn't sure what to do about it yet or even if he liked it. As Buck said, it was a lot of work being other than the bad element and not nearly so much fun.

Chris was surprised when Tanner pulled up a few minutes later, racked out his spyglass to look across a shallow valley below. Chris could barely see their quarry, yet Tanner dismounted.

"Hey pardner, we could catch him in under an hour ..."

Vin’s wide mouth flexed, moving with that deceptively thoughtless speed he had, eye constant to the target below as he slid his long-bore Winchester 44.40 out of the sheath, walked to the ridge and laid down on his belly on the damp ground. He had a light voice that didn't carry far, but Chris heard him.

"You wanna run 'im down, go ahead. Me, don't wanna bust my horse or my ass."

Vin flicked up the tang-sight, settled his elbow onto the ground and the barrel into his left palm, laid his angular cheek down along the butt and snapped off a shot before Chris was halfway off his horse. Chris’ sandy eyebrows rose.

"Think you can kill 'im from a mile away, Tanner?"

Mildly admiring, walking up behind him to see the tiny figure of horse and rider below cut away to the left from the bullet that kicked up dust too far away for Chris to see , the trailing stallion protesting behind them.

"You missed."

A blue eye slanted briefly up at him, distantly disapproving so the gunslinger let his grin go wide and toothy. Now and then the devil him liked to tempt the one he'd always suspected Tanner hid - and maybe had proof of today.

"Don't aim t'kill anyone I don't have to. Gonna have t'go down there n' fetch that horse either way, won't save me nothin' t'kill him n' have it run off. Easier t'convince him t'wait for us."

Vin didn't mind killing in a fight, though, could and did with a directness bordering on ferocity. Chris could swear he'd heard him growling a time or two in nasty situations and he cocked his head consideringly.

"Dead's dead whether you aim to or he gets hung.” Chris commented dryly; “Wouldn't want to get hung, myself. Rather get shot." Because he didn't himself usually shoot any other way but mortal.

Another crack and the horse cut away again, this time to the right, and away again to the left before the animal could even put it's front hooves down.

"Ain't my call."

Chris realized Tanner was boxing them and couldn't hardly believe it; another shot and the stallion being towed behind went vertical, nearly pulling over the other horse and rider and more than proving to Chris and quarry alike that did this sharpshooter want to kill him, he could.

"Damn, Tanner ..." Chris said, sincerely this time; he’d known Vin was good, but this was beyond good. Far below the figures stopped and Tanner twisted over half onto his back nimbly plucking shells out of his wide gunbelt and reloading.

"Wanna go fetch him?" The tracker glanced up at Chris quizzically as if he should've been moving already, checked over his shoulder that the prey was still to ground, "Reckon I can persuade 'im t'wait there for you if you hurry."

Chris laughed incredulously, shook his head again and mounted.

"Yeah, you rest there, pard, I'll go fetch."

He thought he heard a dry laugh as he spurred his dusty horse down the rocky track.

Later that day, heading into evening

"My dear boy, you are a veritable flame for the moths as regards my prospective clientele ..."

"Ain't yer dear boy, Ezra. And what the hell you talkin' about?" Ezra's superior smile made him regret asking.

"Why, my young friend, they observe you lookin' delightedly prosperous and presume my skills are so abysmal that a mere child can prevail in a game of chance against me - no no, dear boy, I mean no insult, I beseech you to remain where you are, maintain that victorious visage whilst I attempt to look appropriately chagrined ..." Ezra arranged the cards by suit in his hand for the benefit of the interested glances nearby as only an amateur ever did and smiled warmly at J.D. around the fine cigar between his equally fine white teeth. The golden incisor glinted in the lamplight almost as sharply as his quick green eyes, handsome as a fox and elegant in snow white ruffles at throat and wrist and a jade satin vest with matching coat. Buck shook his head from the next table over, half his mind on Bets across the room throwing him mischievous glances from the lap of her current customer.

"Come on, Ezra, what're you fussin' so much for, he's won, what, six bits off you?"

"By the elation he so vociferously expresses, a fortune, sir! One day you will grasp the elemental fact that perception is the basis of all belief."

"Oh, I'm perceivin' all right, Ezra and hopin' to be graspin', too ..." Giving Bets a full-power grin that would make a nun blush and J.D. rolled his eyes as Bets did just that.

"I don't get it, Buck, she knows you've spent the night with every girl in here at least once, what's she thinkin'?"

"Oh, probably the same thing I am, J.D.." Dark blue eyes warm with that memory; "That gal's thinkin' of the last time we entertained one another!"

"Jeez, Buck ..." J.D. muttered, disgusted with them both.

Ezra looked up with feigned surprise as several cowhands approached, "Good evenin’ gentlemen, care to partake of an amusement?"

Now that the pump was primed Ezra nodded graciously at J.D., who yielded his seat with minimal befuddlement. Sometimes he remembered to hide the fact that he mostly had no idea what he was doing.

"I do hope you will grant me the opportunity to recoup my losses at another time, my good man." J.D. flushed but managed to give back only a curt nod. Having known Ezra for a couple of months now, it was pretty safe to assume he was running some sort of con or another, and that fancy mouth of his could cut to the quick when somebody cost him money.

"C'mon, Buck, we got work t'do, stage should be nearing the pass in about an hour and they've hit 'em twice there."

"You don't need me holdin' your hand, do you J.D.? Bein’ Sheriff n. all …" With a crookedly inattentive grin, intent on winning Bets from her paying customer with just his flirtatious good looks and nearly there by her distraction.

J.D. shifted his feet and glared, color rising again onto the elfin bones of his face and his hazel eyes bright. His mouth opened, then shut as he felt Ezra's curious glance. No way he'd get Buck out of there without a fuss and he wasn't about to leave himself open. Dark glossy eyebrows danced uncertainly for a moment.

"Hell, I can't never depend on you past sundown, Buck."

"Maybe, J.D., but the ladies sure can, and here comes Bets to prove it; sides, you got two hours daylight left."

"I'll go with you, J.D." Josiah polished off his beer and rose from the table stretching his long back like a bear coming out of a sleeping hollow, "Since we made Chris and Vin chase down the horse thief by themselves, it seems only fair that we be the guardians that meet the night."

J.D. gave him a curious look, but Josiah mystified him as much as Ezra sometimes and the explanations could make him dizzy.

Tanner gave them a nod in passing as he came in, quick quiet eyes doing a watchful circuit of the room from under the shadow of his hatbrim as he wove unnoticed through the slowly thickening crowd. Chris came behind him in his own style, straight through keen as a shark and cold-eyed with suppressed violence; most got out of his way. Ezra thought it interesting that men of such opposite comportments had paired up, one nearly invisible and the other a constant incipient threat; he had yet to decipher which was truly more deadly.

"You find that last horse thief?" Buck asked with a grin as Bets sauntered behind him trailing a hand across his wide-boned shoulders, he caught her fingertips in his and brought them to his lips like fragrant delicacies, coal-dark mustache smoothing against them. Bet’s giggle was girlish considering her profession and it was a sound Buck loved to hear.

Chris went for the table behind Ezra’s for the clear view and the wall at their backs and it emptied as soon as it became clear that’s where he was headed; a reputation for volatility could be useful.

"Yep." Accepting a glass from the tracker and pouring for them both, Tanner stretched his legs out back from the table as was his habit to have room to get at his mare’s leg and settled on the base of his spine with a tired sigh. Ezra marked where everyone had gone to roost and went back to the play, listening with half an ear.

"He's in a cell at the jail." He and Vin shared a wry toast with the relish of men wanting to wash the dust out of their teeth.

"Tanner had him some fun doin' it, too." A smile twitched at the tracker's mouth.

"Bettern' sweepin'."

"Yer a mite better at it, too." Chris laughed and Buck smiled to hear it. Something about this quiet bounty hunter sat well with his old friend, and though a different man might've been a lttle hurt, Buck was glad to see some lighter spirit in him. Four Corners gave him a hope for Chris he’d nearly given up on.

"Hell, at least he didn't make you sleep on the dirt this time."

"Considerate feller, ain't he?" Buck laughed; "You boys see Mrs. Travis on the way here? Had a letter from the Judge 'bout Congress finally backin' the railroad expansions through the territory, says we'll be seein' land speculators and surveyors anyday..."

Chris's smile faded, "Shit."

Tanner agreed with a look, shoulders tightening with a distaste for all things too civilized; "Greenhorns with money's gonna attract coyotes."

"Just what we need, we've already had, what, four stagecoaches attacked in the last month?"

"Gonna get right crowded around here." Already drawing in, uneasy about it.

Chris looked at Vin with some unease himself - Tanner was skittish under the focused quiet, deeply uncomfortable in confined spaces or crowds – would he light out? He looked around at each of them, then, wondering which he could rely on and Ezra unwittingly made his loyalties known by smiling with real anticipation and saying, "Gentlemen, gentlemen - progress is but endless opportunities! That this humble hamlet might burgeon into a true metropolis is a dream I nurture faithfully, and should a railroad forge through here - oh upon my soul ..." He leaned out of the circle of players and said sotto voice, "Imagine the deep pockets comin' mah way!" He straightened again with a winning smile at the other players, "That is a potential I relish, to say nothing of being in civilized society once more ... " He sighed expansively, "I shall have to have a new suit tailored ..." As pleased by the prospect as only he among the seven turned out to be.

CHAPTER TWO

Two Weeks Later

The five who had remained in town lounged at various vantages, authoritatively indolent in the midst of the self-important bustle. Four Corners was hip-deep in businessmen, surveying teams, bankers and speculators in good suits, some with genteel families come out to dip a toe in the savage sea of grass and sand that was the wild west. The reality for most was obviously more dust, deprivation and discomfort than expected. A lively camptown had sprung up on the town's westerly side and Buck was going through visiting daughters and maids and wives like an amorous wolf through a flock of perfumed sheep. Ezra couldn't be lured from the saloon but for sleep, the baths, the barber or the tailor. The place was also crawling with carpetbaggers and swindlers and con men drawn like flies behind the well-heeled herd, in addition to the normal itinerant collection of thieves and desperados, the jail was full all the time.

J.D. and Buck were out guarding the stage road into Four Corners, Chris sat in front of the saloon with one ankle propped across his knee nursing a drink, Josiah and Nathan were on the porch of the jail playing checkers on a barrel, and Ezra stood with a self-satisfied smile in the doorway of the barber having his new sapphire blue jacket brushed. Tanner was up away from the press of the crowded streets prowling the rooftops at the edge of town, rifle cradled across his chest. Chris watched him off and on as his eyes went a circuit of the broad crossroad. Prosperous as it was, the sudden population explosion made even the townfolk edgy. Chris felt that way himself and Tanner, tight-shouldered and jumpy, was on the edge of skedaddlin’, Chris had been doing all he could to keep him from it. Kind of odd to be the one doing the settling down.

Chris watched Vin slide with nimble economy down the porch-roof of the hotel and light on the ground, quick in a spare long-boned way, loose jointed and fluid, and he came through the traffic with the rifle casually across his shoulders. His eyes were never still, though, and Chris read nervousness plainly.

"Have a drink, pard." Chris offered as Vin eased down onto the wide weathered windowsill behind him.

"Thanks. J.D. n' Buck are on their way in, movin' easy, stage is half a mile behind by the dust. One more safe in the corral, eh cowboy?"

"You didn't just call me a cowboy, I'm sure of that."

Both turned as J.D. and Buck rounded the corner at a lazy trot, J.D. sporting a torn shirt and a badly scraped forearm, their voices raised in lively argument.

"I told you, boy, you gotta stop tryin' t'fly, you ain't got a feather on you I ever seen!"

"Real funny, Buck, hope you were laughing your ass off while I went bouncing off them rocks, that must've been a real hoot - I coulda got killed, coulda broke my head open while you stood up there howlin!"

"You think I don't know that? When will you learn to watch where you put your feet? They ain't just dangling off the ends of your legs, y'know, they ain't just for fillin' up a stirrup," Long fingers drew loosely in the air, "you're supposed to know how they work by now, I swear, always gettin' 'em tangled up like you do."

"Boys, everything alright?"

"Sure Chris ..." Buck dismounted with a grin and reached across the table for the bottle, taking a healthy swallow with obvious relish.

"'Cept the kid here tried flyin' off a boulder out in the wash ..."

As soon as J.D. came near enough Buck snatched up the bloody arm, sloshed whiskey on it and let it go again, deaf to J.D.'s howl of pain.

"Nathan taught me that." Pleased with himself as he sat down on the step grinning good-naturedly at Chris and Vin while J.D. hopped around flailing and swearing. "Lookee there, still tryin' t'take wing - I tell ya, he can't fly for shit, but the boy can bounce. Yep, gotta give 'im that." He sprawled back on his elbows and watched like it was a fandango show, sipping this time and passing the bottle back to Chris.

"From up the mountain we spotted outriders with the stage, and what looks to be either a real coordinated dust-devil or a few more wagons a bit behind." He commented and two pair of sandy eyebrows rose behind him, calculating the whys automatically; "J.D. seemed to think they were bandits n' about killed himself tryin' t'be a hero. Course, that they was ridin' right alongside chattin' t'the passengers seemed to escape his noticin'."

"You didn't know any better than me, Buck, dammit, they were way too far away t'know if they were friendly or not n’ we ain’t got a close look yet! N' how many coaches come through with outriders, huh? None, that's how many!"

"Sounds like some careful folk." Vin observed, which meant, casual as it was said, that he was wondering about them too and Chris barked a mirthless laugh.

"Careful maybe, but not too smart. Might's well carry a sign sayin' 'rob me'."

Josiah approached at a slow walk, tipped his head in greeting. "Already got us some interestin' folk right here in town, I'd say."

Chris had already noted the number of seemingly casual observers, a trio on the hotel veranda keen on the approaching coach in the distance and a card game breaking up behind them, attention turned to the stage as it finally rumbled into the center of the crossroads bracketed by four riders well-horsed and outfitted. Chris’s posture loosened warily and Buck threw a surprised look over his shoulder at him. Not the line stage, but a coach, opulent and new under the dust, deeply sprung and upholstered and curtained.

"Those boys look like professionals t'you, Tanner?" Two wagons and another coach, large and sturdy, rolled in after them bearing what might be servants. A thin pale-faced boy leapt out of one of the rear wagons and took the heads of the fine team of six on the lead coach.

"Too fancy not t'be." Bounty-hunter and gunslinger blank and attentive as snakes, but Buck was not the sort to worry and he sat up, hands on his knees and his elbows wide.

"Well, well, maybe we got ourselves a real personage. Ezra'll be glad t'hear that ..."

"Cch ..." Enough to convey Vin's opinion, Ezra was positively giddy to be fleecing every greenhorn through the batwing doors, but he'd cleverly justified himself in the astonishing amount of information weaseled out of everyone who came near. "Like a damned spider in a web." Muttered darkly and Chris grinned where Tanner couldn't see it.

"Wow, that's a fancy rig, ain't it?" J.D. was impressed, Buck was focused on the second carriage and the ladies in it, but Chris was eyeing the riders in front and Vin those behind with the wagons. Private coach, money enough and more, and the outriders, four more accompanying the wagons, assumed a loose formation around the entire party, half remaining mounted. The coach passengers alighted, two modestly but elegantly dressed women and two men, the last emerging like a king admiring some great metropolis rather than a dusty little pass-through to other places. He stood, legs braced, shoulders back, a fine figure of a man and confident in it, white teeth artfully displayed as he helped the ladies down.

"Now there's a self-satisfied feller." Buck drawled and Vin looked around with a wry half smile that vanished in a pallid instant; the sip he had taken froze in his mouth and he went stone-still. After a minute Chris noticed.

"See somebody you know, pard?" Sotto voice, and he got no response. The glass hovered chest-high.

"Tanner?"

A blink. A hard swallow. "No." Vin tossed back the rest of the drink, poured another and shot that, too and Chris's eyebrows tweaked; Tanner could tear it up with the best of them but he was usually a moderate man. In profile his face went shuttered and strange, the wide angle of his jaw tight. He set the glass down and levered himself up off the sill, walked away toward the livery without a further word or look at anyone.

Now, Tanner was taciturn by nature and had manners from a solitary life, so nobody was surprised by his quitting their company so abruptly, but J.D. caught a glimpse of a hard set to his shoulders and a peculiar ferocity in his face as he passed, and when he looked around Larabee's pale eyes were narrowed after him.

"What's goin' on?"

A sharp glance made him pull back a little and Chris's chin rode forward aggressively.

"Didn't hear nobody say nothin' was, J.D."

"But ..."

"You hard of hearin'?" A low snarl from Chris and his eyes hard with impatient warning, stilled J.D. like a bird before a coiled snake.

"You let that man alone, boy, you hear me?" J.D. dropped his head in a jerky nod, relieved to look away from those piercingly disapproving eyes. Probably wouldn't ever be a word he said or a thing he did that didn't end up making him look foolish and Chris Larabee scared him nearly as much as he impressed him.

Chris turned back to the little crowd scanning for what Tanner had seen that had bothered him but finding nothing.

Buck smacked at J.D.'s leg from the step below him as he stood up, hauled him along with him to distract his hurt feelings, damn kid's face showed every thought he had; "It's just all these folks, J.D., Tanner goes mountain man on us - and when you gonna learn Chris's got the patience of a puma in a trap on his best days, you got a death wish? C'mon now, take a look yonder at the pretty ankles coming down them lacquered steps."

He'd pretended it was a buck, a bear, an elk. Separated himself from tribes white or red and abandoned reason and was only a predator belonging nowhere and to no one but the memory of his mother. It had felt so much the truth of what his life was that he'd accepted it whole as his given path in this life and walked it without a moment's doubt. He’d sighted carefully down the long engraved barrel of that rifle he'd long ago buried deep in a dense dark gulley in Georgia, breathed quiet and slow as the breeze, as much part of the forest as tree or buck. Squeezed the trigger and let his eyes fall closed so as not to see the tiny dot diffuse into shards of bone and brain matter and blood. Didn't matter if he watched anyway, things seen could not be unseen. His prey never heard the report of the shot that had killed him, and the silence after that was always too long.

He saddled his horse with quick efficiency, looking only at the harness under his fingers and refusing with every shred of his considerable will to not see what could not be unseen.

CHAPTER THREE

J.D. and his badge were condescendingly ignored as he moved to greet the party, and the guards went so far as to create a shifting barrier with their horses and spare mounts, a dark dangerous amusement in their eyes.

One of the wagons proved to be staffed with a clutch of servants, maids and orderlies, the other conveyed trunks and tents and elegant camp furnishings. Buck had gone off the porch a bare breath behind the flutter of descending skirts from the wagons and was raising smiles with his helpful charm, already bracketed between two dainty maids.

When J.D. got summarily shoved aside for the second time Chris got up with a long sigh and ambled on across the street to stand at his shoulder, radiating a quiet defiance that told the newcomers this boy didn't stand alone for this town. Gunslinger said his hip-shot posture, the heel of his hand resting on the carefully-kept colt and pale eyes detached but for a faint and darkly eager challenge. Willing to make mayhem, maybe wanting the excuse and his point was taken without a word being spoken.

The guards noted Josiah across the street as well lounging like a great burly bear in his chair, ankles crossed, arms crossed and his head tilted attentively. Nathan stood beside him with no such pretense at politeness, there were colored servants among them and too much ostentatious wealth for his liking.

"Sort of reminds a man of two packs of hound dogs circlin' each other." Josiah commented dryly.

Nathan replied, "Yeah, 'cept we pissed here first." Straightening his shoulders at a particularly aggressive look from one of the guards, years past a slave's instinct to retreat from threat. Josiah smiled with unfriendly warmth, deepset eyes glittering like chips of blue glacier ice.

"Ah, the master's voice ..." The Preacher murmured, his smile smoothing as a few words from that authority set the guards to other tasks and the brief tension dissipated into the business of unloading and accomodating.

Then the master whose voice had ordered peace met J.D. smiling, and he smiled at each of them with friendly speculation; westerners, Colonel Vickers was discovering, were not put off by much, and he found such direct hostility quite refreshing.

Ezra appeared beside the party ostensibly to provide an escort to the hotel, looking quite the personage himself in his sapphire coat and fine hat. Something he said made the big man laugh and clap a hand on his shoulder and Chris felt a moment's coldness for how easily he slithered into the nest of snakes this bunch felt like to him.

The tracker came no closer than the porch of the general store, unobtrusively leaning against the post closest to the alley with his horse's lead in his hand, bedroll and saddlebags tied up behind his saddle. His eyes were keen as a hawk for all his laconic posture and Chris felt the lie of his disinterest without understanding it. By the time the party was ushered into the hotel and he glanced back, Vin was gone into the twilight.

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In the shocking fact of that man being alive everything changed. Unspeakable things he'd thought long put to rest suddenly vibrant as yesterday. In that man's living was the brutal truth of how he himself had come to be captured so quickly after he'd fired on the camp he'd once served, how the enemy soldiers had known where he kept his cache. All his painstaking peace was shattering into bloody chaos. He'd come to believe the price of his honor, his sanity for awhile and even almost his life, was a punishment he'd been meant to suffer, and he'd run from that war corrupted and ruined and wanting nothing but never to see another human face. For three years, in the wildest places he could find, he had not seen one. That man paying in the eternal torment of hell had been his only comfort, and in seeing Vickers' face today he knew it was a lie.

No animal killed with such ruthless and malicious self-interest, took such pleasure in twisting good men to evil purposes. Even the Comanche, appallingly cruel as they could be, honored the suffering and death of their enemies, did the deeds man to man without the trickery or guile that perverted the souls they dragged into their influence. He'd lost himself in the wilds until he was as whole as he would ever be, and now he was in pieces again.

Man and horse left Four Corners like the wild things they were, recklessly stretched out, running for the highest vantages to deal with what was lowest in him, the sins and failures that damned him.

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Vin was gone for two days, and Chris was on the verge of going after him come morning when he showed up late-night in the saloon, sat down with a nod looking rough and tired and had a drink without a word, and without the tranquility he usually brought back with him from his wilderness. Over the next few days, he was quiet as he always was and so naturally solitary that nobody found it remarkable except J.D., always sensitive as a colt keeping clear of trampling among fractious stallions. Chris kept an eye to him, much as he could as scarce as he made himself, curious to figure out what was going on because it soon became clear something was. Tanner wasn't much good at dissembling, and though he tried - which was an added strangeness - he was edgy and distracted and had a touch of deep trouble to his eye Chris hadn't seen before. Maybe something had happened out on the range, maybe it was the crowds making him feel hemmed in, but his calm and forthright manner had gone strangely closed and anxious.

Vin felt their following eyes without being able to do much about it, more concerned with staying out of sight and galled to his bones to be hiding like a cur dog, feeling like one chained and running frantic useless circles. Fortunately, they seemed agreed to leave him be about it and he let them think it was the possibility of bounty hunters amongst the crowds. Let them watch his back when he was around and felt safer for it than they knew. But their friendly trust, while a relief, also made him feel worse. These were good men he was proud to be among, some he thought would come to him in any trouble without a thought to risk, but for the the life of him he couldn't find an even place to think of this from, no way to get at the killing that needed doing without it costing him everything he hadn't even realized he wanted so much - this town that might be home, the folk and those six good men. He could not let it go by and did not know how to stop it.

Old bloody dreams of war flowed fresh 'til he avoided sleep, and then the images and smells and sounds came leaping out in broad daylight, quick and taking as pistol-shots to the heart. Edges of that old madness were on him so sharply that he was hanging by a thread, wanting nothing more than to take off from these doings into the furthest frontiers that were all of sense he'd ever found. He'd never wanted to again be the man who'd waked like a sick slumbering fever at the sight of this living enemy. It was why he'd taken to the solitary life, and maybe it was time to go back to that. Trouble was he couldn't figure out how to do it without breaking his word to the town and the other six, yet break it he must.

CHAPTER FOUR

Malcolm Vickers looked out the fly-speckled window of his corner 'suite' - a euphemism he found amusing in these rustic accommodations - with a nevertheless satisfied smile. Behind him, a breathtakingly fine Creole woman lay in a sultry architecture of smooth hip and tangled sheet, but Marie-Laure was but one of his satisfactions. He had worked long and hard to get here, although here for the next fortnight was this pitiful crossroads between alternative nowheres featuring dust as its most prolific crop. It didn't matter - he still smiled at the uncouth citizenry as though they were captains of industry and didn't mind doing it, because this tour was showing him unimagined opportunities. He'd had no idea how tenuous the government's authority was in these territories, but he certainly knew the uses a man could make of it before that civilization caught up. A simpler place with simpler rules offered an opportunity for expeditious ruthlessness he hadn't been able to exercise in many years.

At the outset, he'd thought to have the land he needed and a rustic adventure to occupy him whilst things cooled and were manipulated by his agents in the east, but Marie-Laure's endless readings and augurs and morbidly solemn castings foretold enough of significance to prod her off her feathery nest and bend her steely pride into masquerading as a servant - and what was that significant to Marie-Laure he'd learned to hold significant himself. He cast a possessive look back at her, those mysterious sloe eyes calm as a cat, his appetite rising as risk and abandon and power always stirred ...

The sentry on the roof across the street caught his eye, still as an icon against the purpling twilight, narrow body canted to one side, wide-boned shoulders tilted, head dipped - naggingly familiar. His face was obscured by the deep brim of a cavalry slouch hat and the lowering shadows, but he could feel the man's attention focused on the hotel and might have taken some alarm but for the easy cradle of the rifle in his arm. Still, Vickers took a step back out of the light, smiling at himself for doing it but habitually careful. The man couldn't be where he was at all unless he was one of the locals hired to protect the town. Gunfighters and scoundrels doing the peace-keeping, gambling and whoremongering accepted as necessary businesses. By God, there was a fortune to be made out here! That Standish fellow was positively brimming with ideas, a remarkably cunning and insightful young man.

Ella watched him through slitted eyes fingering the opulent sterling gris-gris on it's chain between her dusky breasts, recently opened and ceremonially anointed. She felt with exquisite awareness the brief flare of his unconscious terror when he stepped back and she smiled with more satisfaction than he had given her. The weapon her spirit-guide promised had apparently arrived, and because that loa had never led her astray she quickened to the design unfolding, she could miss no thread in this singularly significant weave.

Vickers didn't sleep well, nor did he think of the sentry again until he saw him from that same window very early the following morning leading his horse from the livery. Something about the loose-jointed walk, fringe and tendriled hair, buckskins that tattered his outline so in a wood he would not be seen at all stirred uneasy memory. Probably wouldn't have noticed him now but that no one else was about. Memory alerted ...

"Boy spooks me."

Had spooked many more than his sergeant and that had only added to his usefulness.

Vickers felt an icy dart up his spine that actually made him gasp out loud, followed hard by scoffing disbelief. It could not be.

He'd had a walk like that, though, in memory's eye, the slender form ghosting in buckskins and quills and feathers through the mists of his uniformed camps, a long engraved rifle sheathed on his back like the lance of death. Wide round blue eyes carrying an Indian's contemptuous remove, as if he were not white himself, nor indeed even human. Vickers had loved that about him.

Nerves shimmered through his legs as he leaned closer to the glass to see a glimpse of a hard-angled jaw and high-striking bones as he disappeared around the corner. Of course it could not be. That one was dust in the ruins of Andersonville.

*****Vin remembered the coldness of tears tracking down his face sometimes after a kill and he'd never brushed them away, just as he'd never wondered why they came. In that time the plains had been a windy dream in the dreamless nights, and he had walked apart from the world, weeks without a word passing from his mouth, without an eye meeting his. It was war and he a warrior, he was Death, and lives passed through him, sent on from his anonymous hand.******

Peso nudged him ungently from behind, and he realized the sun had nearly risen while he stood lost in nightmarish memory. His head dropped, and he knew the echo would make him uneasy the rest of the day. One hand rubbed the back of his neck, feeling ...

"Vin!" He started, looked back at the waking town to see J.D. trotting toward him with his horse behind him, plainly intending to come along, and his stomach tightened. Damnation. Wasn't in the mood, not at all, so instead of answering he just set his foot in the strirup and started to mount.

"Hey, Vin!"

Needin' to be alone to master the constant queasy chaos that had him hobbled body and mind, needin' quiet to pull together the fractured pieces of his sense so he could think, needin' it like nobody could understand, and J.D. didn't know the first thing about quiet.

"Vin!"

"What?!" Axe-sharp as he dropped back to the ground and spun around so J.D. nearly plowed into him and then backpedaled into his horse away from the wash of the tracker's irritation. The animal shied and tugged him offbalance so he got flustered.

"I thought ... m-maybe ... " He fell silent, felt his face get hot at the hostile impatience clear in every angle of posture and expression. Tanner's looks were usually fleeting, but J.D. found out in that moment that he could fix you in that wide regard and hold you like a hand to your throat just like Chris could, but Tanner had never done it to him and J.D.'d thought they were friends. He was so flummoxed he couldn't say a word, color climbing his face along with a hurt expression that made Vin feel ashamed. He looked away, his shoulders dropped and he let his breath out on a long hissing sigh, hackles still high.

"Ain't good company, J.D., got no inclination t'be teacher t'day, alright? Follerin' me around all the time . a man needs his peace now n' again n' you ain't even acquainted with it." As much explanation as he could muster and sharp, as he'd meant to be, because he couldn't risk the boy being hurt by being in his company. Without looking back, he mounted and went from Four Corners at a run.

CHAPTER FIVE

Long before dawn, two days later

Charlie had already been told to stay away from the big black, which had turned out to be every bit as mean as the hostler had said. Everybody went wide by his stall except the tracker, and he moved so quiet, that one did, he didn't even know he was in the barn until he heard the soft slap of a saddle being laid. Daylight wasn't due for two hours, and the black had been out when Charlie went to sleep last night, came and went like a ghost. He scooted sleepily to the edge of the loft to see if he could get a closer look at him, and the boy's darkl eyes went breathlessly wide.

A Plainsman real as could be, soft-footed and long-haired and wild in buckskins and fringed buffalo-hide coat, a roughness about everything that was his and the horse suited that, too. Fringed Indian-quilled parfleches, a soft tanned buffalo hide bedroll, leather wrapped canteens and a fine braided lariat went up behind the saddle.

Vickers was nervous about something, and it was the first time he'd ever seen such a weakness, and Orson was more nervous than usual too, came stiff out of their private meetings looking scared and harried. There was alot of hidden movement under the day's business, and Charlie'd finally figured out it centered on this man. By how seldom he was seen, the tracker sensed it, too, like smoke around town. Charlie wanted to know about anyone who could make Vickers nervous, wanted to know how to be smoke when somebody like Vickers was trying to catch you.

The horse didn't so much relax under his gruff handling as grudgingly hold still and it was a constant contest between them, the man shoved with sharp knuckles in sensitive spots to make him move where he wanted him, and the damn beast actually tried to bite him twice, getting a sharp knee in the belly for the first and a snake-quick snap of fingertips on the nose the second. He didn't speak to it, no soft talk and no sense of affection between them, only a mutually wary respect.

On his stomach in the hay, Charlie watched, taking in the simple elegant workmanship of the leather tack and how little metal there was on it to make noise, noticing how well all his gear was cared for. It was easy for a boy who was a secret dreamer to imagine distant frontiers and darkling forests, wild rushing rivers and grey-cragged mountains with no master nor need of it. He tried to imagine that part of it - being utterly self-reliant, needing no one, asking nor answering to anyone.

"Plumb bothersome bein' spied on."

It took a heart-stopped moment for him to realize the tracker had spoken and to him - how? The plainsman hadn't looked up once, and Charlie'd been careful not to move, but when the plainsman looked over his shoulder his eyes found him unerringly, as did the barrel of the cut-off rifle somehow unholstered and slanted up at him across his arm, coldly impatient. To be caught in the full force of that piercing gaze froze Charlie to his toes. To his mortification, the first instinct to defense came out as a cracking squeak that made him blush furiously. He knotted his eyebrows in as fierce a frown as he could fake, "Wasn't spyin', mister, I was sleepin' if you gotta know, you woke me up is what, it is still nearly the middle of the night. Y'could learn some consideratin', is what."

The look narrowed, but he holstered the mare's leg and went back to outfitting his animal. Charlie couldn't help it; once acknowledged, his curiosity rushed to be indulged.

"That's a pretty mean horse, ain't he?"

The tracker didn't answer, but he didn't tell him to shut-up, either, so the boy was emboldened to climb down the ladder to the stable floor, arms wrapped around himself in the cold.

"Too bad y'got no money t'buy you a gentler mount."

Charlie dared to be purposely rude but still got no reply, the man moved quiet as a shadow around the stall meticulously checking his harness. Charlie shifted foot to foot, maybe starting to get a little mad at being ignored, no matter it was always safer than being noticed. Then he did as Marie-Laure kept telling him to do when confronted with a mystery - find it's logic. The only good thing a mean horse would be good for was keeping everyone else away, and keeping everyone away was good because... Charlie spoke before he meant to; "You like that horse mean so nobody can get rig 'im or take 'im from you, right? Like a yard dog, right?"

This earned him a glance, fathomless blue eyes gentler up close, and he felt pretty proud for having made that connection; nobody could steal or use what they couldn't get near. Marie-Laure was teaching him to how to figure out things he didn't understand, how to see what was being hidden and work it his way. Since she worked everybody around her like they were her own besotted playthings, he figured she was worth listening to.

Vin had been a breath away from getting mean until he'd seen bruises and the skittish set to the skinny boy - things he recognized all too well. Sleeping in the stable, while better than being outside in the rain, was still cold and dark and drafty. Memory gave him a shiver as he kept the boy in the corner of his field of vision, recognizing the feral edge, the cagey eyes always with a look to opportunity or escape. Probably had a knife on him somewhere, had to have sharp and ready teeth or he'd be a meal himself 'til he had some growth.

"You got kin visitin' town?"

Charlie was surprised by the idle-seeming question, adult curiosity never boded well for him. Vin knew the kid would lie if he was on his own, young as this he knew better than to appear vulnerable and Vin knew that wisdom, too. In Kansas City he'd said he had a big crazy brother to keep the bullies off him, though he'd seldom had a soul after his Ma died give a damn where he slept or if he ate.

The boy puffed his shallow chest out, "I'm Mr. Vickers' hostler."

Misunderstanding the tracker's sudden sharp look, he insisted, "I am! I look after his coach horses n' all, now don't I? I oil all the tack n' harness 'em n' feed, n' I can fix some of their ailments n' such. I ain't afraid of any of 'em n' his matched six are a hand biggern' that ugly hammer-head of yours ..." The boy tensed to run but the plainsman only shook his head and bent down to take the black's hooves into his hands one by one, checking the frogs for bruises and looking for cracks in the horn.

But Vin was not thinking about bruises or cracks. Vickers' stableboy wearing marks from open hands, a boy who already knew to be invisible. For a second, he closed his eyes as the thought of using him added to the weight already pressing hard.

"How long you been his hostler?" Casually but giving it respect. As he moved around the horse checking the off-hooves, the boy's shoulders eased down.

"He hired me for this trip."

So there might not be ties of loyalty or of anything but fear. Vin had to take opportunity where it came. "How long's he gonna be here?" Testing his willingness and getting a wary shrug of one sharp shoulder; Charlie had learned painfully quick never to speak of Vickers' doings to anyone.

"I dunno. Why?"

"Curious. Don't like bein' crowded much."

Which was just what a frontiersman would say, Charlie thought. "Huh. I thought we'd be movin' on more directly than we have, but he's stayin' around for some reason. Maybe he likes it here. Can't figure why, though, this place is dusty n' dinky both."

Again that half-flinch in readiness to flee insult but Tanner just shook his head and agreed. "It is that, boy, but it has its moments."

"Ain't like a big city ..."

"Got less use for big cities than small towns."

"Oh yeah?" Stung by the dismissive tone, "You ever been to a city?"

Challenging, defensive, and the tracker looked up at him directly. Quiet-eyed but dangerous - Charlie knew dangerous.

"Spent a couple of years on my own in Kansas City younger n' you, pup, I know cities well enough t'never want to set foot in another."

"But ..." He didn't finish, unable to break his eyes away from what unexpected knowing was in the plainsman's eyes. He'd thought he was an illiterate mountain man who'd never seen a city and he could impress him with that, but that look understood things Charlie'd never told anyone, knew things he didn't think anybody else knew. He swallowed hard, backed away without taking his eyes off him, and stayed out of reach when the tracker emerged from the stall with the horse at his shoulder.

Tanner moved slowly and quietly as a man must with a skittish creature whose trust he needed.

"How d'you do that, mister?"

A tip of his head and the lamplight highlighted the hawkishly angled bones of his face; "What, boy?"

"Get around so nobody ever hears ya or sees ya?"

The tracker's head tipped further, weight cocked onto one hip as he thought how to answer, and Charlie's chest puffed at the respect of that consideration. He crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his head, too, leaning in unconscious imitation, and waited. Finally the man said, "Ever seen a cat layin' in the sun? Tail a'twitchin' n' grass flutterin' in the wind, bugs n' such. Never seems t'take notice of all them things movin - but let somethin' make the littlest move or sound outside the pattern n' he's on it quickern' a snake. Everything's got a pattern, everyplace. Y'fit yerself into wherever you are, watch' n' listen' n' take up the rhythms," A snaky gesture with the flat of his hand, "Slide' in and make' yourself part of it so you don't call no notice." Vin was surprised and a little pleased by the light of understanding in the boy's eyes.

"You keep my doin's t'yerself n' I'll show you some should we run 'cross each other agin." Half a threat and half a question that Charlie answered with a grin, and he had the reward of the plainsman's honest smile. "Alright, pard. Right now I best be goin'. You keep clear of this horse, mind me." He shook a finger in Charlie's face, "Don't aim t'be pickin' bits of boy outta his teeth agin."

Charlie looked out after him as he disappeared into the dawn mists with a sense of destiny he'd never felt before.

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"No one can get close enough to take him quietly, sir. Apparently he's one of seven regulators hired by Judge Travis to protect the town. Murdering him here would bring alot of unwanted attention and I'm given to understand the remaining six would not hesitate to investigate. They have an excellent track record, I'm afraid, and this pending congressional corruption probe ..." Vickers' eyes were hard despite the bland joviality of his expression; his disturbance edged the air. Too many eyes on him and his cronies was what Orson meant. Too many envious and fearful enemies with his political aspirations at a delicate juncture.

Orson stilled himself carefully at the false humor in his employer's quizzical smile, feeling day by day more horrified to find himself trapped in this alarmingly savage wasteland with a man in whom he was seeing unexpected proclivities. He was well and truly trapped.

"You relate this to me as if it were news, Orson. I hardly expect you to blow his head off in an alley unless it can be clearly blamed on someone else. It occurs to me though - as much time as this man is out of this town alone and there are no opportunities there? Hmmff. Don't like my men missing opportunities - can't find him in miles of open range, what sort of answer is that?"

"They've tried diligently, sir, but the simple fact is that our men don't have the frontier experience ... This man vanishes out there, doesn't leave any consistent track or follow any sort of routine, it's as if he knows he's being hunted ..." Orson wished for paved streets and civilized manners and a far less lethal employer, all his inheritance invested, his father's good will, everything ...

In fact Vickers wasn't all that surprised his men couldn't lay hands on Tanner. In the conflict, the boy had been known to traverse impossible distances and terrains at impossible speeds and could not be seen two feet away if he didn't wish it. Vickers barely suppressed a shiver in an uncomfortable moment of remembering how he had set him in the shadows of his tent like a savage archangel during crucial meetings just to provoke fear in his colleagues.

What did surprise him, however, was that he had acquired allies such as the other six had turned out to be, formidable by reputation and his own observations. Tanner had been a loner, camped apart and hunted for himself and made it plain there wasn't a living soul on two legs except the occasional Indian he cared to associate with, no matter he served a white cause. Now he was one of seven in a town that seemed to regard him well by the reluctance of most of the citizenry to speak any ill of him. Cocooned in too much good will and his presence too prominent, friends who were not just gunslingers but intellects that even Mr. Standish respected and attachments to one another. Worse, attachments to Judge Travis, whose influential - and widely published - daughter in this town was also their friend, among other folk of substance. No, Vickers thought with cold calculation, he could not be rash no matter how urgently every instinct screamed to have a swift end to it.

The sense of his own endangerment grew, as it had been growing since he'd laid eyes on him, souring his satisfaction, gnawing at attentions and resources he needed elsewhere. In the east, his agents and allies were working in his conspicuous absence, but being distant so foul deeds could not stain him did not mean he could afford distraction. But knowing he was out there, a loose cannon, incited an increasingly breathless rage in him to feel things getting loose from his control, there was too much riding on the strategies being carried forth to assure his election to the Senate. "This matter has to be dealt with expeditiously and now, obviously, also with the utmost care. Thus, it seems time to be more imaginative, bring in a more ... delicate touch."

Orson turtled his head back into his collar at that, knowing what he meant. Marie-Laure was unpredictable and volatile and by rumor served herself as often as her master. Fearsomely beautiful as the daughter of Satan and as terrifying in the ways of her dark gods - like her mother and grandmothers before her, he was told. As an easterner, he was unfamiliar with bayou beliefs and practices but what he knew disgusted and terrified him.

Vickers, however, though an easterner himself, was reassured by the dark capacities he was content to let her keep secret even from him. Like quicksilver when freed to do her master's will in ways of her own invention, dangerous and unpredictable and usually expensive, but she had never failed. Out here, however, she might have to break a sweat to do so. In the bayou she could tap into the constant thrumming network of spies and helpers and friends - one skinny surly boy would never be enough. The thought was pleasant - she was getting too ambitious, and it was time she earned her keep. Colonel Vickers was as good at turning chance into opportunity as Marie-Laure could ever hope to be.

"I have already arranged for some reinforcements; it seems prudent to take advantage of the local resources given our paucity of 'frontier' experience, and there is a veritable cornucopia of skills available here for remarkably little money. Orson, my boy, we have to separate him from his comrades where we can get to him without anyone the wiser, and the tactics we've employed thus far haven't yielded results. The alliances he enjoys require more finesse than anticipated, and Marie-Laure has finesse in great abundance." He smiled expansively, believing in his invincibility with the stubborn single-mindedness of a man who had never had it denied, and Orson shivered. "You know, I'm finding the west quite more of an adventure than I'd expected. Go fetch the Lady to me."

CHAPTER SIX

Thoughtfully, she ran her fingertip across her broad velvety bottom lip, smug in his needing her but showing only enough of that to irk him without real anger.

"It will require some study ... what we need ..."

As though his needs were hers, her lush smile curled a pretty fraction as he harrumphed and interrupted her, "What we need is a way to take him down without attracting any undue notice. We can risk neither his friends' nor our fair newswoman's suspicions, so it must look convincingly accidental. There can be none of the diabolically complicated murder mysteries you so enjoy arranging, girl."

A roll of a delicately boned shoulder. "D'accord, 'den. I will need t'bring one to my side for a wedge - 'dis one be a wild t'ing, unpredictable - dat's dangerous." Reminding him of something he already knew, and her vague admiration was bitter as gall to him, though she pretended not to notice.

"The gambler is already in our camp." He said coldly, but she shook her head.

"No, no, he is too clever by far," As if considering it, though she had clearly seen who it must be days ago; the web being strung in this dusty little nowhere made her heart sing for its perfect order. The symbolism was more than coincidence, and holding the heart of a holy man would sanction all the spirits would have done.

"I will choose the one, and you, dear Master, must accept the price," Meaning she would seduce and he must curb any display of jealousy or possessiveness. Wide sloe eyes the color of warmed molasses regarded him calmly from beneath a glossy fan of lashes.

His big hand slid down her bare arm, smooth and soft-palmed but she was not fooled. This one's callouses were in his eyes, and he warned her with a smile that meant business. "Short of bedding him, girl, I will accept and no more. My rules on that subject have been amply reinforced in the past." He purred as his index finger traced the sweep of her collarbone, which he had once broken over a sultry smile given to another man. Then he snatched her up against him in a sudden violence of ownership; "The sweetness of this flesh belongs only to me, ma chere."

Hunger darkening his broad handsome face, hands arrogantly free upon her body and she accepted him as she had since she was 15, the only man her flesh had ever known. But not the last; that made her smile, and she let him think it pleasure.

"We must remove d' t'reat of 'is allies, n'cest pa?" She smiled knowingly, and his voice growled back from under her ear. "I can't kill six men to get to him, not these six in this town."

Her eyes, as she lifted her head up from his nuzzling, were droll. "To remove does not necessarily mean to kill, mais oui? Go to Davis as planned, n' take 'dem wit' you, make sure he is away when you leave ..." For a moment her expression lost focus, and she murmured as if to herself, "Bit o' weather, maybe, t'keep him off a while ."

His hands tightened cruelly; "As if they'll just come along for the fun of it? 'A bit of weather', indeed, as if that voodoo falderal impresses me! Marie, you're toying with me, and I don't like it. If you don't have anything more constructive than voodoo to add here, you can pack and get home to wait for me."

Unperturbed, she said, "You say 'dis judge be 'dere friend? 'Den use 'im, mon amour, spend a bit o'yer influence 'dere n' let 'im be d'mouth sayin' yer words, neh?" A thrill chased up from his stomach into his chest. Marie-Laure found irony delicious and had an uncanny knack for turning matters inside out, rearranging the factors to turn vulnerabilities into advantages, force opponents into unwitting servitude. No general, no master of strategy or war he'd ever known, save himself, was her equal. Her mouth curled sensuously at his approval. "Take 'd seven from among d' many, 'den d' one from among d' seven ..."

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Seen Tanner?"

"Am I crazy, or is that question flyin' around more ' a flock of crows on a corn-field lately?"

"Buck ..." Chris's hatbrim tipped impatiently, and Buck, his long length stretched out lazy as a just-fed cat away from the remains of his breakfast, waved a laconic hand toward the end of the street, cocking his head back with a smile that was a mite sharper than usual.

"Try the livery, Chris, no use huntin' all over town if that cantakerous wolf with hooves ain't there."

Nathan ambled through the batwing doors with a smile and an appreciative nose to the scent of flapjacks and bacon, and J.D. looked up from his plate.

"That guy's been complainin' about his arm, Nathan, could you look at him after breakfast and shut him up?"

"Sure J.D., but ain't much to do for it. Bullet-broke bone is gonna hurt."

"Specially outta that mare's leg; boy's lucky t'have an arm!" Buck winced dramatically but without sympathy.

With half-guilty insistence J.D. said, "He told me Vin just shot him for no reason. Said he was givin' up ...," His dark-fringed hazel eyes skipping among their faces for reactions so he might know how he was supposed to feel about half believing it himself. Threw him into that cell, and he'd never seen Vin handle anyone with such disregard, much less a wounded kid no more than sixteen.

"Well, boy, what'd you think he's gonna say? 'I was tryin' t'shoot him in the back n' he cat-footed on up n' got the drop on me?'" Buck laughed, but J.D. shook his head a little, eyes wide and troubled.

"You didn't see him, Buck, he had this crazy cold look in his eye like ..." He stopped himself with a giveaway glance that the gunslinger standing across the table felt without looking up from his cup.

Chris's voice slithered into the sudden silence; "Boy, if Tanner shot him, he needed shootin'."

And when the gunslinger did raise his eyes, it was to let J.D. see there what he'd likened to Vin -- that smile that made J.D.'s bones go hollow. J.D. didn't like being half-scared of Vin now, too, it set everything off balance, and he'd only just begun to feel solid again. "He's lucky t'be alive t'bellyache about a wound." Chris said with a meaningful tilt of his head, "Leave Tanner be about it, J.D.. Don't be pesterin' him, not that man, not now. Man does what he has to, you hear me?"

J.D.'s mouth characteristically went off before his brain could offer caution, "But what about Mr. Foley down at the stable a couple days ago? Vin damned near tore his head off for tossin' Peso an apple ..."

Chris didn't like him arguing with him -- nobody did by the way they were avoiding being drawn into it. Buck watched warily, recognizing anger in Chris's tightening shoulders.

"Bounty hunter can't afford to let his bounty or some bushwhacker get off with his horse, J.D., so they make sure nobody else can get near them, that means trained not to trust food from any hand but his. Foley knew that."

Chris explained himself with exasperated sharpness and Buck knew the boy was mortally unaware of what a favor was being done him. J.D. was too damned headlong to see danger before it was too late. He groaned softly and winced as J.D. kept on going, like Chris not taking his head off was enough to make it a conversation in his mind.

"Chris, he's taken shots at two or three fellers out on the range in the last couple of weeks and ..."

"Didn't hit 'em, did he? Think he couldn't?" Sharp and quick as a rattler and his temper riding too close an edge but he caught himself and took a breath. Restraint was neither instinct nor skill for him and hard to learn.

"You let it alone, J.D. Tanner ain't easy in town with so many strange folk, and I don't want you drivin' him up into the hills with your pokin' n' proddin'. Man's got a right to be what he is whether it tarnishes your image of him or not."

That set J.D. back, quiet but harshly said and with so many meanings. Like he was a hero-worshipping ten-year old didn't think any of them ever squatted to shit. J.D.'s cheeks got hot, he knew he looked like a slapped baby but he couldn't ever manage his face in front of Chris.

Buck broke the quick silence; "Chris, we all admire Tanner n' I know he's your friend n' all, but you got to admit he's been actin' a bit peculiar." Careful apology in the low tone but when Chris's blazing eyes darted at him they met those familiar blues looking back square on, reminding him that he, too, was his friend and had earned the trust to speak his mind and be heard.

"Every man walks days with angels and days with demons." Josiah said soberly, "And most've us, young John Dunne, have a few years and a lot of wickedness past us that sometimes requires reflection." Josiah looked pointedly at Chris when he said it, though, and Chris didn't deny the worry nor try to explain it.

"Leave him be, all of you. He wants t'talk to us about what might be troublin' him, he will, he don't, he damned well won't and nobody has the right to get their backs up about it," Reminding them all with a hard look that he demanded no less for himself and got it.

"That is correct, Mist'h Larabee, but at least we have finally agreed out loud that Mist'h Tanner is behavin' in an uncharacteristic manner; to wit, his enviable tranquility has apparently deserted him and he seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time being conspicuously elsewhere."

Saying so much so lightly, Chris narrowed his eyes at the dapper gambler but Ezra's meaningful smile remained unphased, his eyes bright and direct. No one, including Standish, knew about the bounty on Tanner, and though it would likely have explained his edginess, Chris wasn't about to breach that confidence to anyone much less to Ezra. He'd deserted them once in favor of self-interest, and though he'd come back, Chris didn't entirely trust him. He knew the value of secrets as well as any gambler. He finished his coffee and sat the cup down on the table thoughtfully, his face quiet, eyes like pallid agates.

"I was you, Ezra, I wouldn't be talkin' about Tanner's business where he could overhear. Wouldn't take kindly to it myself."

Ezra's eyes sharpened subtly at the implied threat, speculating whether it was Vin he was being warned against or Chris himself. Didn't like either prospect, as he considered it, and he sat back, spreading his hands with a conciliatory smile.

"Purely my concern for a fellow peacekeeper, gentlemen."

"And the fact that Tanner can hear a fly fart across a canyon ..." Buck mused into his coffee cup.

"And shoot you a new asshole from Texas." Nathan kept a straight face, nodding at Ezra's disapprovingly raised eyebrow as he went to breakfasting. Chris almost smiled.

"Think I'll just check the stable, see if Peso's home destroyin' his stall."

J.D. laughed at that, too loud but so relieved to have the tension broken that the rest found themselves willing to go along. As his breakfast was laid before him, Nathan remembered; "Josiah, , there was a truly handsome woman asking where the church was just now, said she was a Bible scholar of sorts herself and heard you knew some about the native, uh, mysticisms, that's the word."

"A 'truly handsome woman' in need of spiritual fortification and intellectual discourse and you the only man approaching learned sainthood in these uncivilized wastelands." Ezra smiled appreciatively; "Mister Sanchez, your God is a generous one ..."

Across Town

Chris was halfway surprised to find Vin at the livery, sitting on a nail keg inside the open paddock doors with harness over his knees and an oiled rag in his fingers. But his hands were still, his head lifted into the dusty wind, eyes somewhere far into that horizon. Chris let his duster brush the weathered gray slats of the stable wall so Vin would know he was coming and swore he saw a shudder run up Vin's back before he turned to him. It didn't take but one clear look before he mastered his expression for Chris to recognize a man remembering things he didn't want to. That bleak territory he knew himself with terrible intimacy and he hesitated, taken aback to see places in Tanner' every bit as vicious as his own. Deep as you might bury them, times came when ghosts answered some sound or sight or smell so quick you couldn't stop them taking you. Sometimes foolish what could catch a man unaware, he remembered a time a boy's excited laugh had set him off on a month-long drunk. A vague hope to discover the source of the peace he thought Tanner had was shaken to realize Tanner might only hide his demons better. It was unsettling to see himself in those brittle blue eyes and more unsettling to realize how much he'd come to count on Vin's steadiness.

He braced a foot back on the stable door and leaned, a long slinky sliver of black looking down the busy street with Tanner in the corner of his eye. Dark clouds threatened over the foothills far off.

"You headin' out?" Softly put, meaning nothing. Tanner's stillness was uncharacteristically uneasy, his voice almost insubstantial.

"Reckon so. Lotsa folks bumblin' 'round out there needin' lookin' after. Reason enough."

"Feelin' hemmed in, are ya?" Still conversational, a casual glance.

"Like a damned prairie dog." As honest an answer as it sounded but way more to it, Chris read impatience hard in him after something he was reluctant to seek. It was like watching a starving wolf circle a carcass that might be poisoned.

Finally Vin sighed and said quietly, "I'm sorry, Chris, I ain't no good in among too many. Sets my shorthairs bristlin'," Because it was true he could say it with conviction, but Chris' careful smile understood past it. "Tascosa preyin' on your mind? Bounty hunters?"

Vin wasn't surprised Chris recognized guilt, and he closed his eyes in a wish it was so clean a thing as Tascosa or bounty hunters. Didn't want to lie outright so he said nothing, folded the oilcloth and tucked it away in his saddlebag, picked up the harness, and headed for Peso's chewed-slat stall.

Chris didn't move, and he didn't mind not getting an answer. Tanner was the only one who'd never asked him questions, and he'd just let Chris ask a few in a row, so the gunslinger didn't feel slighted. Trackers were long thinkers by nature; if he needed time to get the lay of whatever it was that was bothering him, Chris was determined to let him, and if it was bounty hunters among the mob of folk in town, they'd be gone inside a month, according to the latest letter Mary had from Judge Travis, and things would get back to normal. He'd done fine so far on his own keeping out of their way, and Chris always figured it best to let a man take care of his own business.

"I'll see you later, then, pard. Watch yer back."

Vin made a brief tap of a finger to the front of his hatbrim as he led his big black by, then he surprised Chris by lifting his head like he wanted to say something. He didn't, but he looked Chris in the eye a moment and there was gratitude and even a little comfort in the slight smile that came and went.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was very late, and Chris was very tired. He wanted a drink and his bed, maybe both at the same time, and nothing else.

"Ah, Mr. Larabee ..." He stopped without turning, shoulders low, having known someone was there but not who. His mood did not improve to know it now. Ezra looked amiably at him across the table, the saloon otherwise deserted. "I wonder if I might have a word with you."

Chris thought about it a moment, sighed resignedly, and reached across the bar for a glass. He came to Ezra, the chime of his spurs as brittle as his mood, set the glass on the table, and looked down with dogged impatience.

"Please, sit down, allow me ..." Ezra poured for him from the bottle of private stock at his elbow, his smile bland but his eyes fox-sharp and careful.

Chris sat down and kept his eyes on Ezra's face; not an easy read. Beguiling and smooth as any riverboat cardshark he'd ever seen and handsome as sin, a razor-sharp, almost inborn instinct to profit and survival that had proven invaluable more than once. However, Chris wasn't convinced it was much other than convenient self-interest; he took a swallow and set the glass down, fingers loose around it, lounging back.

Ezra's smile remained warm, but he toyed with the ever-present deck in front of him. Chris refused to be distracted by the restless motion. "I have waited to address this with you in private, a matter of a number of recent inquiries about our august personages. I thought it my duty to appraise you."

Chris grunted, but Ezra was not put off by his disinterest, delicately placing a solitaire pattern.

"More than simply idle interest, you understand. Indeed, some close - and very expensive - attention is bein' devoted to ascertainin' our habits, our domiciles, even our mounts - and our backgrounds most particularly. And all of this, mind you, with a degree of discretion that has ... attracted my notice. Do you suppose Mr. Tanner's recent change in temperment correlates in any way with these inquiries - both of which, I hasten to add, have become somewhat ... significant?"

He stopped, apparently distracting himself in the lay of the cards, but Chris knew better. Didn't like his background being looked into, and Chris found that interesting. He was also being too careful to be doing anything but fishing, but the gambler always had knowledge and ideas beyond what he would say.

Eyes, one pair sly emerald green and the other cold pale jade, men used to reading the tells of others for livelihood and life and yet unable to read each other. Tanner made no secret of being leery of what he called Ezra's pretty flim-flammery, taking poor folks' money for false hope too tempting for desperate men to ignore. Tanner had a pretty strict sort of morality, though, and Chris was far more liable to use whatever was a hand to work his will. Playing fair or dirty never made much difference to him as long as he won; that much he and the gambler understood about each other. For some reason, Ezra wanted to know what was up with Tanner enough to ask outright, and if he had some ideas, Chris wanted to hear them. He'd discovered that surviving this particular line of work was supposed to be part of the strategy, which he had little instinct for anymore for his own sake and none at all for anyone else. Ezra's harping about his discomforts and insisting on discussin' things had kept Chris from maybe killing them all a few times from his own headlong urges, though he'd never told him so. No sense encouraging whining. He rolled his shoulder and set his mind to getting more than he gave.

"Alright, Ezra." He countered finally with a hard tip of his chin, "Why would you think Tanner has anything to do with anything?" Ezra lifted one shoulder, "Mr. Larabee, in my profession as much as yours, attention must be paid to one's surroundings. Changes attract my notice. A clandestine inquiry into the company I find myself associated with arises, and at the same time Mr. Tanner suffers a precipitous decline in both civility and availability. Perhaps by happenstance and perhaps not. In my mind, the two seem related by a coincidence of timin', at the very least."

Chris's face was blank as a statue, watching Ezra intently, but saying nothing. Ezra was forced to give a little more, unused to yielding information without garnering significant advantage in return, but finding it disagreeably commonplace where Larabee was concerned. "I am not a believer in coincidence, as I'm sure you know by now. It happens I have been fortunate enough to strike a small arrangement with a gentleman who is one of several in town with the resources to sponsor such an inquiry ... " A vague wave of his hand, though Chris's eyes went stone cold.

"You know who's askin' around?"

Ezra went on as if he hadn't been interrupted, "I've been retained to foster introductions, make their acquaintance of the local economy and the situations of the landholders hereabouts, intercede in difficult negotiations, for a nominal consideration."

Nominal enough to make his smile cat-content, and Chris's temper was going. He reined it in - mad never helped with this tricky bastard, and Ezra was obviously protecting his own interests, as usual. Chris was protecting Vin's, but both might get done if he could keep from shooting the gambler in several painful places to loosen his tongue.

Ezra's eyebrows lofted agreeably, prepared to be stubborn. "Obviously you appreciate how delicate the matter is, Mr. Larabee. Moreover - and perhaps more importantly - " There was a smoke-screen coming, Chris read it like trail sign as Ezra continued, "Mr. Sanchez has struck up a significant friendship with an employee of one of said visitors - perhaps even a romance - that he sets great store by."

Which was putting it mildly, Ezra thought with little amusement. Josiah had fallen with a strangely desperate passion into lusting after forevers with Marie-Laure LeBeau. A bountifully beautiful woman and intellectually engaging, yes, but one schemer always recognized another, and this woman made even Ezra nervous. He was southern born and bred and had his suspicions about her origins and practices, though he had seen nothing overt. He hadn't yet deciphered the woman's designs on Josiah, but the situation made him anxious for him - which was quite unpleasantly surprising, unaccustomed as he was to being burdened with worrying about anyone but himself. He sighed; Mother would be disgusted.

"I have no intention of exposing myself to Josiah's potentially violent disappointment should the lady turn out to be less paragon and more an agent of this very inquiry, he is known to be one of us." Chris understood both his intimations and his concerns, and a half-smile for the theatrics encouraged Ezra to continue. "On his behalf, therefore, as well as my own and that of this breakable little hamlet should love prove fickle, it behooves me to discover whether all or only one of us is attracting this interest, and to what end. I have several theories, but since Mr. Tanner is the only one showing signs of duress, my surmise is that he could enlighten us if he so chose."

Chris only looked at him, a faint smile gone humorless teasing the corners of his mouth as he took a drink.

"You asked Tanner t'enlighten you, Standish?" Blunt himself in making mock of Ezra's unwillingness to dare the tracker's temper, but the gambler's eyes came up bright and hard.

"That I am offput enough to refrain from direct confrontation in favor of this more oblique approach is more a testament to Mr. Tanner's uncharacteristic volatility than my courage, sir. I have no intention of jeopardizing a highly lucrative business arrangement without very good reason, and if there is such a reason that I am unaware of ... To paraphrase something you yourself insist on repeating like a holy mantra, I need to know I can rely on the man at my back, as does Mister Sanchez, and the price on Tanner's head complicates the matters of Josiah's hopeful intentions and these inquiries considerably." Sometimes being blunt enough to toss a card long held back would surprise unguarded revelations, but instant hostility was all Ezra got back for this one.

Chris's eyes glittered dangerously, and his mouth drew down to a brittle chevron. How did Ezra know about the bounty on Vin, and for how long? It was too late to hide his surprise, so he let threat be plain. "I ain't seen nothin' but a man thinkin' his own thoughts, Standish. Tanner's got every bit as much right as any of us to keep his cards close to his vest - just like you do, just like all of us but the kid do.

Josiah's love life and your business outside the job we get paid by this town to do ain't Tanner's worry, n' just because he ain't been a pissy mood before don't mean he can't be. Me, I'm not gonna push a man like that with a burr under his saddle, don't care what 'arrangements' you got goin'. Fact is, you got a job already, Standish - that comes first, and he's one of us."

Ezra barely reined in what Chris was curious to see was real anger to have his loyalties scorned so bluntly. The gambler's reply was clipped. "If I believed it so simple a thing, as you so charmingly put it, as being in a 'pissy mood', and were not this inquiry of relevance to us - Mister Sanchez IS one of us, is he not? - then it would not warrant the concern I am so obviously expressing."

"Well then, let's get down to brass tacks, eh? Who's askin' around, what's this business you're into, and with who?"

"I am not certain of the identity of the person behind the inquiries." Ezra demurred on the other questions with some irritation that he'd aroused Larabee's curiosity about his extracurricular investments without gaining a bit of advantage himself.

Chris leaned forward, too impatient and too tired to do anything but lay his accusation flat on the table. "Five hundred dollars is a nice wad, Mr. Standish. Why in hell are you comin' t'me for information on Tanner, n' who the hell are you gatherin' the information for? I'm willin' t'lay short odds you ain't spoke these doubts of yours to Josiah, either, despite yer bein' so concerned about 'im and all. Now, I know you wouldn't turn a card as valuable as this bounty for Josiah's sake, and I know you got a stake in it somewhere. But I'm tired, and I ain't gonna bother tryin' t'beat it out of you."

He drained the glass and set it down with a decisive thump, looking up with cold threat.

"But I tell you this - I find out you use Tanner's bounty t'grease yer rails in this business of yours or any other way n' I'll shoot you myself." Ezra felt his face go sharp and stiff to have been so egregiously misunderstood. He couldn't have spoken at that moment had he wanted to. Deliberately, he stacked the deck of cards in front of him, tucked them into his vest pocket, and stood up. His face was hard, but it wasn't fear, or even respect, that blazed in his eyes with a force that actually set Chris back.

"I consider Josiah a friend, sir, but I see we have not reached an understanding between us yet, Mr. Larabee."

A quick bitter grin that surprised Chris for the tinge of hurt feelings in it.

Ezra said with upright formality; "Be that as it may, I assure you that I have no interest in the bounty on Mr. Tanner's head, paltry as it is, other than for how it might complicate or endanger all our lives. Nor have I spoken out of turn to anyone, and I will not. You will have to take my word on the matter whether you value it or not. Good evenin'."

Alone in the dark, Chris sat awhile and thought about the fact that Ezra hadn't said who was asking around about them, only that they had resources. About Josiah being distracted by a woman as only Josiah could be, maybe being drawn into something if Ezra's concern was even partially true. He really had no idea about that. Standish had never given a lick about anybody but himself that Chris had noticed.

Long after he would've liked to have been in bed, he thought about how the rest were on egg-shells around Tanner, when he was around, and how seldom that was. He thought about the bounty and too many strangers in town, about the other five maybe knowing things and not saying them even to each other out of respect for Tanner when sharing it might make a full hand for them all. Time to do that. It'd be like Vin to try to take care of bounty hunters on his own, without bringing them into it. Vin had a hard and unyielding sense of honor, but it could get him killed if there was something other than bounty hunters involved that he didn't know about. One thing these drifting men had all learned was that being rooted to a town where any enemy might hear of them meant they needed to watch one another's backs, and his own suddenly felt drafty.

CHAPTER NINE

Marie-Laure splashed wine into the skillet and flame leapt to it, showering sparks.

"D'devil's fireflies ..." She crooned to Charlie with a significant widening of her lush chocolate eyes and a throaty chuckle when the boy's narrowed despite a bravely scoffing sneer. The hotel kitchen was deserted as it always was when she came down to cook, her herbs and incantations scared off the superstitious townsfolk and the regular cooks made sure they were finished before she made an appearance. She preferred it that way - from her kitchen were ways into more than a man's stomach.. "Get me the butter, p'tit frere, n' Marie let you have some of that tart you been creepin' your way to."

The boy's smile was rare, and she liked it. He had a quick knowing air about him and didn't really fear her as most did who knew her true craft. This one had seen too much to be too cowed by anything, but he had a healthy respect of her ways and such made good helpers. She gave him the slice of peach and pear tart on a chipped plate where she'd been stripping vanilla, and his eyes lit like stars at the subtle extra taste.

"Miss Marie, this is the best thing I ever tasted."

"Chile, you say that 'bout everythin' I make."

"Don't make it not so, Ma'am," He said with a crooked smile speaking of a man's charming ways to come, and hers teased ruefully. "Rascal. Eat up, then, use what's left of that cream on it."

The rich cool creaminess made him close his eyes and chew slowly, true savoring as Marie-Laure appreciated. Took complexity for a body to appreciate fine cuisine, and the boy was showing many promising depths.

She turned back to her skillet and then he said, "Why does that plainsman bother Mister Vickers?" Tossed out around a mouthful and innocent sounding, but she turned quickly from the stove with a dark look so he swallowed and drew in like a little turtle. His eyes darted toward the door.

He knew something, she realized with a closer look - and this was important to him. Marie-Laure was deeply surprised.

"Why you want to know, boy?" Gently influencing him with her quiet voice and softened eyes, and he shifted, uneasy in the attention he usually accepted like light to the blind. She turned back to her pan and took up her whisk before the herbs burned, glossy black hair rippling like a raven waterfall.

"You know where he goes? Where he keeps?"

And though he usually answered anything she asked him, this time he did not, sensing a danger to the plainsman more sinister than he'd figured if Marie-Laure was being cagey about it. Should've kept his mouth shut, that's what he should've! Too late now, though, he'd tipped his hand, and Marie-Laure was too quick not to catch it.

"Y'like 'im," She said, not a question but no threat in it. Then, "Why?" Asked softly, her glance kind to soothe him and remind him of her friendship before going back to her work.

He didn't see the small smile of triumph as he finally replied, "I read about men like him. Pap taught me t'read outta dime novels, but he's the first one I seen in all the time we been out here. That's why I wanted t'come, anyway. A real frontiersman, that's what they call them. That newspaper lady's kid said he lived in the mountains all alone and weren't much older n' me, and he lived amongst wild Indians, too. He talks t'me, shows me stuff, and he has this horse, it's the meanest dang horse ..." The excited tumble of his voice stopped short to notice Marie-Laure's avid attention, and she berated herself inwardly for showing her interest. She hadn't expected Charlie would play a role here, and yet ... She smiled softly at him, pityingly.

"Mythical, hehn p'tite? Brave n' strong n' true, y't'ink?" Her eyes narrowed meaningfully; "Free? 'Dat what you feel on'im y'like so much? Never had a yoke on 'im, eh? Y't'ink so, Charlie?"

He did think so, she could see that as well as the wise trepidation in his face from sensing she was about to burst that bubble.

"Well 'dat man been yoked from shoulder t'soul, boy. Was one of d'master's time long gone, one of 'is dogs of war slipped 'd leash n'run wild."

The tart lay in Charlie's belly like a lump of cold paste. Dreaming vanished under the bitter backwash of reality. Charlie couldn't afford to like anyone, and he knew it. They always let him down, and she was going to tell him why this plainsman would, too. She likely thought it'd make it easier to accept the fact that the Plainsman was going to die, because this one Vickers wanted harm to, Charlie didn't mistake that in the velvet melancholy of Marie-Laure's eyes. So that's what would happen -- it always did.

"Why does he want to kill him? Why can't he let him alone? This ain't our place anyway, we're gonna be gone in a week or so, what's it to him?" Small-voiced and cold, growing colder when she didn't deny Vickers' intent. She only shrugged, a little sad to reinforce his grasp of cruel realities no matter how useful it made him.

"Someone who once betrayed him, 'dis I know, but not how. And it don' matter, you know 'dat be true. Don' worry so for it, boy, t'ings gon' happen like 'dey will, could be God's justice." Her belief that it was just that, as even her Preacher-man had unknowingly agreed in the midst of what he'd thought a theoretical discussions, gave her leave to use the plainsman as she intended.

This time the look over her shoulder caught the skinny boy like a fly in a web. "He has a lot of souls on him, 'dat plainsman - was one of d'Master's assassins."

Stubbornly, the boys' eyes hardened, unwilling shock and a surprisingly loyal will to disbelieve, but she knew the seed was already planted and rooting in the fertile ground of his suspicious mind. The boy had surprised her too many times in too few minutes, and as quick at that, she knew Charlie was the wild card in this gambit.

"Fool. You worship d'ideal, and it is not him, non."

Charlie didn't want to believe her, but he remembered the fierceness in the plainsman's eye at Vickers' name, the sudden edge in his quiet that was a little crazy. Charlie knew that kind of crazy, too, Vickers had such men he called on from time to time. The tracker asked about Vickers' doings,and Charlie'd told what little he knew. Now it scared him that he had. "Fool chile..." Marie-Laure murmured in a smoky tone, reading his doubts and fears and compounding them, trying to reel him back to her side, bind him with softness to her service. He'd been talking with the sharpshooter and more than once. Charlie wasn't easily won, and she'd never known him to openly admire anyone before, quirky and bristling all the time like he was. Vickers' men hadn't been able to get within ten yards of their quarry and yet this boy ... Thenceforth, she made it a point to know where Charlie was.

Sure enough, that evening she spotted him sliding around the corner in the twilight, quick and fluid as an otter. Her eye was always drawn to the furtive; for her kind, secrets were the heart of power.

Quiet as dust, she came against the wall of the nearest building, heard a brief but violent commotion in the stable that drew her nearer in some alarm for the boy, but it quickly settled. A man's voice, light and faded with a soft rasp she felt burr quietly up her arms. No threat in it, and then Charlie's nervous rapid-fire colored by a sincerely apologetic tone she'd never heard from him. She slid to a spot where she could see through the crack of the door jamb as they talked, hunkered down on their heels close and eye to eye, knowing each other. Though she knew he could not see her, her intuitions and instincts set on Charlie's Plainsman with a shining significance she would never ignore.

Dun and tan and grey, leathers and fringes that distracted the eye around him, she was looking right at him, and he was nearly invisible against the earth tones of the wood. Energy, a fey barbarism that made her tingle again in the certainty he was the one she needed.. Trouble here for Vickers, that mortal danger simmered around him, disaster - and in it, her victory.

She should have known he would be fine, thank the gracious spirits, elegantly boned as a thoroughbred for all his roughness ... He turned toward her, a wide angular jaw tapering into a squared-off chin, high striking cheekbones and large piercing blue-gray eyes, ruthlessly alert yet deeply gentle on Charlie. Strength in the quiet authority of his rangy grace, intellect in his economy and keenness, fine traits for a child born to the service of spirits to inherit. So admiring was Marie-Laure of the mate the loas had brought her, so entranced by the sense of continuance for her line, that she made the rare mistake of not remembering there could always be more than one wild-card.

Charlie looked up at the man with a naked longing she'd never seen, and she acknowledged the power there, too, that this hard- scarred boy she still had not wholly won had tamed to the plainsman's hand in days. Her thoughts turned in a silky arrangement as she left Charlie and his plainsman and walked back to the hotel kitchen. Something with a red wine sauce to quiet Vickers so she had her time of ceremony. Josiah had provided the fresh herbs himself in a bouquet, sweet man, he had no idea just how much more than the gifts of his wooing he was giving her. Now she needed prayer to detail the plan that had taken shape in her mind, breathtaking in its ironic simplicity.

A wild animal, for so Charlie's plainsman was in instinct and craft, could either be wooed or trapped. With Vickers' anxiety and the pleasant necessity of entertaining Josiah's affections to keep the holy blessing on her side, she would not have the luxury of time to coax so wary a man near enough to get hold of. He was either out of sight entirely or in company of the other six, none of Vickers' men could get at him in this town or out ... That Charlie had no problem finding him unattended, however ... there was no better bait than an ally to a man who would find himself suddenly without.

CHAPTER TEN

He'd only thought to look at the cut on his leg, maybe impress the plainsman with his skills and hold onto the friendship a little longer, stupid as that was. That was all he'd thought to do, and he was quiet and calm like he knew skittish horses needed, but Peso wasn't skittish, he was mean smart. He waited until the stall was latched behind him before he went for Charlie with a quiet nasty wicker and a heavy lash of hind hooves. Surely he was dead, surely he'd be killed, the horse cut him off from the gate and slewed so quick and hard, he couldn't dodge him fast enough and there was nowhere to hide, nothing to put between them as the big head snaked out, yellowed teeth bared and agape. Quick as a blink a shadow darted between them, and the plainsman took the bite on the shoulder with a snarl and a hard backfist to the horse's head that drove him away squealing. Charlie felt like he was flying as fast as he was out of that stall, swept into the air by his shirtfront and suspenders, and tossed over the top rail like he didn't weigh but a thistle's worth, landing on his back with a thump that knocked the breath out of him. By the time he picked himself up, coughing and blinking, the tracker had backed the horse into the corner, arms widespread as they came to an uneasy truce. His hands came onto the halter and held the tossing head down firmly, but he was speaking to him this time, low, in a language Charlie realized with a shaky thrill had to be an Indian tongue.

"I'm sorry, mister." Contritely soft and quiet himself, a tone for nervous horses and dangerous men, and the plainsman just kept on doing what he was doing so he couldn't tell if he was mad or didn't care or wanted him to leave or what. Finally the big horse settled, accepted a stroke down his face, and fell to his alfalfa with musty huffs and rumbling teeth. Tanner came out then, and looked down at Charlie, color high and his hands on his flat narrow hips. Charlie dared to just look back, wide eyes searching out the soulless servant Marie-Laure had named him, the murderer on Vickers' leash, and though Charlie had eyes to see such as that, he didn't see it now.

"I'm real sorry, mister, I didn't mean to spook him. I handle horses all the time, and I wouldn't never do nothin' to hurt 'em or upset 'em ... " Piercing blue eyes held on, mouth thin with irritation; "You know so much about 'em, you should've knowed the tells, then, Peso ain't shy." "I never met a horse I couldn't get along with," Charlie said with offended pride, and a twitch of a smile tugged one corner of Vin's mouth for the spirit. The boy hadn't run away, he was standing and taking responsibility.

"Met you one today, you reckon?"

"Well ... yeah. I reckon," rolling the euphemism in his mouth and liking it, a grin bursting forth so ripe with relief that Vin smiled again. Who'd the little rascal mind him of but himself? He hunkered down with his back to the slats and motioned Charlie to follow suit, like Indians having a palaver, offering a strip of jerked meat out of a hide bag and taking one himself. For a little while, they chewed in nearly ceremonial silence, Charlie slowly for the wild smoky taste, and the savor of the moment. He was a boy who hoarded the rare good times as fuel for hopes he shared with no one.

"How long you been on your own, boy?"

It was gently said, and Vin got a startled and revealing stare that admitted all the vulnerability of the young undefended in the violent world of adults.

The plainsman just looked at him in an easy backlean, arms dangling loose across his jacked-up knees and a look almost kind on his face. Charlie knew then why Vickers hated him. Why Marie-Laure was so curious about him, neither understanding what he was. This was the one that had broken free, run for the wilds, and left wickedness behind without giving up his soul. Charlie intended that for himself one day, more now than ever before for witnessing that it was truly possible.

"How long, son?"

The truth came out in that spark of hope. "Maybe a year n' a half. Da went of the lung sickness n' he worked for Mr. Vickers, so he took me on t'groom and such, livery. Makes him look kindly, you know, takin' in pitiful orphans and all," Charlie said with a little sneer that actually made Tanner laugh, sad as it was. Children saw motive and intent clearly when innocence was torn from them -- he believed God gave them that clarity to protect them.

Vin's look was contemplative, but Charlie didn't fear that from him and said, "You know that horse got a cut on his left cannon, I was tryin' t'get a look at it. I got some ointment if you want," Charlie offered diffidently.

"Yeah, I seen it. Don't need nothin' ... can't pamper this old son, gets all big-headed. Charlie, it was a near thing this time, n' I reckon you know better now."

Not a question, but like an agreement between men, and Charlie nodded, flushed with a strange powerful joy to be trusted even after having bulloxed something so badly.

The plainsman touched his fingertips to his hatbrim, like Charlie was every bit a man, and started to rise. Charlie wanted to thank him, do something for him just for not falling short of his expectations.

"He's scared of you, y'know."

Vin paused and looked back over his shoulder quizzically, "Peso? Not hardly ..."

"No, not the horse, Mr. Vickers."

It seemed he barely moved yet suddenly the man was crouched in front of him and had him hard by the shoulders, eyes like gun-barrels so fear came leaping out in instinctive struggling.

"He knows me? He's seen me?"

"Shit mister, he's been tryin' t'find a way t'kill you for days, that hurts, you better let me go or ..."

Vin saw the fright in his face, heard terror so familiar it made his skin crawl, and he let him go at once, standing up taut as a strung bow, thinking furiously. If Vickers had seen him, recognized him, and knew he was alive, he'd stop at nothing to kill him - and whoever might know what he knew.

"Dammit!" Low to himself and fervent, "Damn me fer bein' a pure idjit!" What had his indecision brought to this unsuspecting town? To these folk he'd been trying so hard to keep out of it? For an irrational moment, his instincts almost took him off to just shoot the bastard and have it done. In fact, he turned and took a step - only to find the devil himself nearly at the door.

Vickers strolled into the open door of the livery and half-turned, smiling, toward the stall of a gelding saddle horse being sold before he felt the pressure of eyes hard on him. It took every ounce of a lifetime's will for Vickers to continue moving, eyes locking and tracking helplessly as his smile sickened and died. With an iron will he measured breath and stilled the gripping urge to flee.

From the shadows near the tackroom doorway, his prize dog of war looked back, a haunt from his past slipping like poison into his present and virtually obliterating his future. Wide blue eyes marked him, blue as he remembered, and the terrible vicious innocence tempered and matured into something far more dangerous than he'd been. Tanner was letting himself be seen like a wolf spooking elk into ambush, and it frightened Vickers, as it was surely meant to. A full dozen men hunting these ram-shackle streets daily, yet there he was in the musty shadows not six yards away unnoticed as a ghost. Vickers experienced a sudden unmanning rush of fear, and in its grip he could say no word, do no act in protest.

"Go on, boy, he ain't seen ya." Vin said, quiet as a breath, feeling Charlie trembling under his hand where he'd shoved him behind him, hearing the rabbiting rasp of his breath. The instant Vickers turned to alert his bodyguards, Vin took a quick back-step with the skinny arm in a bone-crushing grip and snatched Charlie into the tackroom and out into the alley so quickly the boy's feet barely touched the ground. He hauled him without raising a sound along a twist of alleyways and backyard gardens and paddocks until the sounds of furtive searching faded. When they got clear, he sent Charlie on toward the hotel with a hard shove, and the boy ran like the hounds of hell were on his heels.

Vin knew how close to true that was, more than half-crazy himself from the close sight of Colonel Malcolm Vickers. He leaned back against the wall on shaky legs and braced his hands on his knees with the overwhelming urge to puke, something frantic, a fluttering in his ears more than the hammering of his heart. God, to meet his eye, to look into that face! Avidly cruel and self-satisfied as any a demon reaping the innocent to hell, and Vin had been a tool in that hand. He hadn't meant to let himself be seen, but the boy ... There was some consolation in the fact that Vickers hadn't moved overtly to kill Vin, that meant he had a vulnerability he was protecting, something a murder, or even the hint of it, imperiled. Nothing for it now but to be invisible until he figured out how to take him down first; his own skin now became less of a consideration than the folks of this town and six men he called friends who were suddenly in Vickers' way. Vin knew pathetically well how Vickers removed things that dared be in his way.

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That night, Colonel Malcolm Vickers was visited by the memory of bone-shards stinging the side of his face, of falling under a dead weight that had been his business partner, blood and bits of flesh and brain matter raining down upon him in a warm wet patter. Twitching in his sleep with it, horror on his face and Marie-Laure on her elbow watching hungrily, knowing his fate was racing upon him. He dreamt of lying there on the hollow earth when the report echoed from so far away, by that distance knowing what cold eye focused on him and daring no move, the slightest sign of life would be his death. Terror and disbelief at the choice Tanner had made, a naïve righteousness as foreign to him as he'd thought it was to a merciless white boy with Indian eyes.

Stark terror thrummed through his body beside Marie-Laure, and she knew whose face he saw in his dreaming, knew why he was throwing every resource into killing this one man. For all his might, insulated by bodyguards and influence and opulence, this one primitive man had the power to terrify him day or night. Neither guards nor locked doors would stop him, his terror revealed Vickers' faith in that. What the tracker might know of him that made him so dangerous was not of much interest to her. That he had not yet killed him nor spoken the secret, that he rather chose to torment him with the spectre of ruin - striking true terror into a powerful heart - was a power itself that not many possessed. What man could terrify Malcom Vickers was worthy in all ways.

To be continued...

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