When Shadows Fall



    Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. We don't own these characters. This story is not intended to infringe upon the copyrights of MGM, The Mirsch Group, Trilogy, CBS or any others with claims. We neither seek nor receive any profit from writing this story.


    WARNINGS: This story contains some violence, harsh language, and spoilers for various episodes. It is rated PG13.

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    Part 91

    When Buck stepped outside the house into the windy night, he thought the brisk mountain air was the sweetest thing he'd ever smelled in his life. Mostly Buck didn't think much about what lay ahead or how things might go, but he had to admit there'd been moments in that cellar when he'd thought he might never see a night sky again.

    Chris and Nathan slipped past him, helping Vin between them and Buck fell in behind. They had managed to get out of the house without raising any alarm and now they needed to cover the distance to the others and the horses as quickly as possible. Buck turned and felt a quick sharp flash of pain arrow up his leg, but he ignored it. For now, he wasn't tired and he wasn't weak and he figured if he just pushed a little longer, he could make it out of this damned place.

    A flash of lightning lit the way ahead of them and Buck could see a long low rise with trees starting another hundred yards beyond where they were. JD and the others, with their loaded guns and their fresh horses, would be beyond that. But they would be there. That was something Buck knew beyond the shadow of a doubt. He found his hand resting automatically on his gun. It felt good to know it was there, even empty, as if it returned to him something that had been lost for days and that he had in his lowest moments thought he might never regain.

    He turned against his bad leg and looked back toward the house. Still dark. He looked ahead. Chris and Vin and Nathan were drawing away from him, looking almost like wraiths in the thick dark blackness of the approaching storm. Buck pushed himself harder, trying to catch up with them, but his bad leg just didn't work right and he found his limp worsening with each step he took. Ignoring the pain that seemed to expand and spread and work its way into the very bones of his leg and hip and ankle was easy, but even though he could ignore it, he couldn't seem to move any faster or keep the leg from half-collapsing out from under him every third or fourth step. He looked behind him again. If they were really lucky the men in the house wouldn't know they were gone until they'd reached the horses and disappeared into the night. But even as he thought it, he saw lights coming on inside and his heart began to sink. He turned back to yell at Chris and Nathan, to urge them to hurry, but they had disappeared completely. He stood still a minute and listened, but he couldn't even hear them anymore. He couldn't hear horses waiting or the shouts of desperate men. All he could hear was the rising wind and the shifting tree branches and the distant sound of thunder. In that single moment he felt as if he were all alone in the entire world. Just him. Alone. Forever.

    He started out again, determined to catch up. He was damned if he would let this all come to nothing because they had to wait for him. He took a step and this time his leg collapsed completely and he fell, rolling several feet back down the slope before he could catch himself. He was trying to catch his breath and get his legs back under him, when he heard it, the chill cold sound of baying hounds.

    Buck stood, turned back the way he had come, and pulled his knife. He crouched low, prepared to stop the hounds when they came. If he could keep them from following the others they'd have a chance. If he could take out a few of the men who almost certainly followed further behind, he could maybe ensure that they got away clean.

    He was completely unprepared for the silent black shape that hurtled at him out of the darkness, hitting him hard in the left side and knocking him down. He scrabbled frantically and felt teeth tear at the sleeve of his shirt. His right hand, the one holding the knife, lay half underneath him and he grabbed at the dog's neck, trying to hold it back as it snarled and snapped at him. Lightning flashed and in one stark nightmarish moment he could see the animal that had attacked him--black coat, pointed nose, huge white teeth and eyes that flashed red in the sudden light. The dog writhed violently, breaking his hold and backing away two steps to come at him again. Buck moved, freed his knife and plunged it into the dog's belly as its jaws snapped shut just an inch from his throat. He pushed it away and scrambled to his feet, breathing hard.

    He lunged up the hill toward a rocky outcropping. There were more of them out there. He knew it. He couldn't hear them, not with the rising wind and the thunder and the baying of the bloodhounds. But they were out there. He felt a little better with his back against something solid, but then another one came at him, invisible as it approached him, then, suddenly, _there_ going straight for his throat. He couldn't get the knife up and was only able to shove it away, using its own momentum to carry it over and away from him. It was a weak effort though and he knew he wouldn't be able to stand against these dogs for long. The one he'd thrown hit the ground with a quick, high yelp. But then it leaped to its feet and swirled away into the darkness and Buck knew it would be back. He swallowed hard and wiped a quick hand across his face and tried to see beyond the stormy blackness of the woods. Goddammit! He thought. I need lightning! Then, there it was, one big flash and for a second the woods were lit up bright as day. And he almost wished it hadn't been because he saw them, four more of them, red-eyed and hateful, waiting for him to show just one sign of weakness and they'd be on him. The lightning faded and he was left briefly blinded from its intensity. He could hear the hounds approaching on his right and he braced for them to swerve toward him too, but they paused for a moment just up the hill from him and then went on.

    Buck couldn't seem to catch his breath and he had to lean back against the rock behind him to keep from falling. He didn't even see the next dog that came at him and it was right there, right in front of his face before he knew it and he was bringing up his arms, already knowing it was too late, when the dog fell at his feet. Buck looked down and realized that it was dead. And only after that did he realize that somewhere in the noise of the storm and the baying of the hounds there'd been a single gunshot.

    Then, as if from nowhere, Josiah appeared next to him. Buck didn't even have time to think about it because at that moment two more dogs attacked them and for the next several minutes the two of them were too busy to do anything but stay alive. Then, as quickly and silently as it had begun, it was over. Buck drew in great gasping breaths of air, but it was as if he'd forgotten how to breathe because somehow it wasn't doing any good. He slid slowly down the rock face until he was on his knees on the ground and his head was bent low and he was still trying to get enough air in his lungs. It was raining and he didn't remember when it started, but looking at the ground he could see that it was wet. He wasn't sure about anything else or even what had just happened so in a way it reassured him to find one certain thing--it was raining.

    Josiah looked at Buck, nearly passed out on the ground. He looked down the hill at bobbing lanterns, still a good safe distance away, but approaching steadily. They had to get out of here now, he thought. There wasn't any more time. He reached down and grabbed Buck around the waist, preparing to drag him to his feet and help him up the hill to the waiting horses.

    Quicker than thought, Buck was on his feet, one hand wrenching Josiah's collar and the other nicking at his neck with the tip of his bloody knife. "Don't touch me," he said in a low and deadly voice that carried clearly through the sudden silence between thunderclaps. "Don't you ever touch me."

    Josiah saw it clearly again, the moment when he'd tried to crush the life out of Buck, the moment he'd said irrevocable, damaging things, and he slowly held up his hands with the palms facing outward. Buck's eyes flared with anger in the reflected light from a lightning bolt, but in that same sudden flash Josiah could see how bone-weary and desperate and pale he was. 'My God,' Josiah thought. 'My God.'

    "Buck," he spoke slowly, but with an edge in his voice and he hoped Buck would be able to understand the urgency. "I ain't gonna touch you, Buck. But we have got to go." He pointed down the slope at the approaching lanterns.

    Buck lowered his knife.

    The rain increased, soaking both men, though Josiah at least had an overcoat. He thought for a second about offering it to Buck who surely needed it worse than he did, but he didn't. There wasn't time for a gesture Buck would certainly refuse. They had to get out of there. "I'm going for the horses, Buck," Josiah shouted. "Wait here."

    And Josiah turned and ran back into the darkness and rain, leaving Buck to stare after him with a numbness he didn't completely understand. Gone, he thought. They were all gone and in a way he'd expected it. All his life he'd expected it and he'd covered that expectation with loud talk and a deadly gun and a fierce loyalty to anyone who mattered to him.

    He took a step and stumbled and almost gave up right there and let himself collapse in the mud. But then he saw a lantern swing way down the slope below him and a rush of wind carried the sound of shouting voices. Damn it! Buck Wilmington didn't quit. He never quit. Not when he was a skinny kid getting beat up by every one who came along and not now. If he had to walk off this mountain on his own he would do it. And all the rest of them could go straight to hell.

    The second step he took was easier than the first and he tried to ignore the breathlessness that assailed him. Ought to be used to that by now, he thought. He took another step and another. One step at a time, he thought, and all I have to do is stay away from dogs and lanterns. He smiled grimly to himself at that. Glancing down the hill he could see the lanterns swinging wildly. They didn't seem any closer to him now than they had several minutes ago. He almost wondered about that, but he didn't have enough energy to spare. The next step, he told himself. It's just the next step. And the next step. And the next step--

    He heard a sound and stopped, his hand going automatically to the butt of his gun. Horses, coming quick. He stepped back, looking around for some kind of shelter, but there was nothing. He wondered if he could make it back to the outcropping, only a few steps and no real protection, but it gave him a place to put his back against and when you didn't have anything, then the one thing you did have mattered. He'd managed to turn and stumble a half step back when Josiah's horse almost ran into him. He could see Josiah rein in hard, his horse plunging to a quick sideways halt. "Damnit, Buck!" Josiah yelled. "I thought you were going to wait."

    Buck looked at him as if he were an exotic stranger the likes of which he'd never seen before. The wind whipped rain into his face and a sudden flash of lightning struck shadows down the slope, making everything look even more unreal.

    "Come on, Buck," Josiah shouted, trying to make himself heard above the wind. "We have to go now."

    'Where?' Buck thought. 'Where is there to go?' But then the answer came. The answer he'd had just a minute ago. Off this mountain. He looked and realized that Josiah had another horse and he was waiting for Buck to mount up. Buck put his hands on the saddle and braced himself for the pain in his bad leg as he swung it across the horse's back. His arms trembled, threatening to collapse when he shifted his weight to them as he mounted, and he realized that it wasn't just his leg anymore. The pain didn't even seem to matter, though it jabbed at him every time he moved. It was that nothing was working right anymore. Not his arms with all the strength faded out of them, not his legs--not either one of them--even the good one kept shaking with exhaustion. His eyes weren't even working right. Things kept flashing across his vision and then away, like black and yellow streamers where sometimes the dark was brighter than the light. He sat in the saddle a minute, knowing that he should be moving and not even able to quite figure out how, like his brain had just stopped.

    Then, Josiah was shouting at him, throwing the reins at him and pulling his horse around. And then they were riding, into the blackness, into the rain, into the bright flashes of lightning. And Buck was thinking--All right. I can do this. I just have to ride. And the world and the night and the storm all closed down around him until all that he had was that one thing--the ride.

    Part 92

    When Nathan had finally come, Chris had been ready. He felt as if he'd been ready for a long time--forever, maybe--ready to get out of that damp, stifling cellar. Out of a place that was too small and too dark and too close to even stand much longer. He wanted to get out and get going and take some action against all the things that had been going on--against the man, Striker, who had brought him there, against that smug bastard, Michaels, and even, though in a different way, against Buck. Maybe Buck wasn't his enemy the way the other two were, but there was something there, something at odds with the man Chris thought he knew, something that led to rape charges, to sacrificing a wounded friend, to walking out on a town that had supported him, and Chris intended, sooner or later, to find out what the hell that something was.

    Vin moved. Chris turned to look at him. And then, Nathan was there, slipping through the door at the top of the stairs, making his quiet way down to them. Chris didn't say anything. There was no need at that point for words, he figured. He took his gun belt when Nathan offered it and he had to admit that the weight of it felt pretty good. The revolver was empty, though. He frowned when Buck grinned at Nathan and said he'd throw his if he had to--an empty, reckless kind of gesture that, if he actually did it, would leave him, would leave _them_, worse off than before.

    There wasn't much time for those thoughts, though. Nathan had already pulled Vin's arm over his shoulder and Chris moved in to take up a position supporting Vin's other side. The tracker protested softly, but there was no time left and without further conversation, the four men moved out.

    Buck went up the stairs ahead of them. A familiar figure--Chris knew they'd done this before, in another time and another place, though he couldn't at the moment recall exactly when or where. Vin made another sound, of pain this time as he tried to keep his legs under him and Chris's face thinned down even more. Someone was going to pay for this, he thought. Someone was definitely going to pay.

    Buck checked the corridor and signaled back to them and they moved smoothly up the stairs and out into the hallway. A few silent minutes later they were through the house and out the back door, moving past Buck again. Chris tried to look at him as they passed, tried to gauge his stamina for what was ahead, but all he could see in the thickening night was a dark outline of his face, a darker shadow marking his moustache. Then, he and Nathan and Vin were moving up the slope away from the house, Vin struggling just to stay awake and upright, Nathan and Chris trying to match strides as best they could, trying to be swift and efficient and stronger than it was possible for two men to be. They might have hours before anyone knew they were missing and raised the alarm. Or they might have minutes. The wind was rising and Chris could hear it in the pine trees just ahead of them.

    They were halfway up the long slope now, maybe five hundred yards from the house. Vin was getting heavier, the little strength he'd had, long since given out. Lightning flashed. Flashed again. Followed by a long, slow roll of thunder that seemed to fill the entire sky with its low rumbling intensity.

    Chris dug in his heels and climbed. The slope wasn't steep, but they'd gone a long way already and for all he knew had an even longer way left to go. It wouldn't do to use all his strength too early and not have it later when he needed it. They were moving. They were out of the cellar. Every second that passed they were farther up the slope away from the house. He started to look back to see where Buck was when he saw Nathan's head snap back as if he'd been hit and in that same exact instant Chris heard what Nathan must have heard--the sound of baying hounds.

    Chris did look back over his shoulder then. He couldn't see the house any longer, but he imagined it, lit up like a celebration. Damn! How had they discovered them so soon! He looked over at Nathan, then his head snapped back behind him again when he realized that what he hadn't seen when he'd looked back the first time was Buck. He'd disappeared completely. Even in a quick bright flash of lightning, so stark it turned the world inside out and blue at the same time, Chris couldn't see him. He slowed his steps, almost causing Nathan to stumble. Damn! He couldn't stop now. Not with Vin depending on him. He sucked in his breath and turned back up the slope and grabbed hold of Vin even tighter and between them they almost managed to run. Get Vin to safety, Chris thought. Get him out of this. Then--

    Then, Josiah was flying out of the darkness toward them. "Nathan!" he shouted. "Chris! This way! The horses are just up--"

    Suddenly two riders galloped past like shadows only a shade darker than the stormy night itself. Without even seeing them, Chris knew--something about the feel in the air as they passed--that it was JD and Ezra gone to draw off the hounds and the men who surely followed them. It gave Chris a sharp, unexpected flash of something remarkably like hope to know that they were there, that the night was suddenly full of men who could see what needed to be done and had the means to do it.

    Josiah urged them quickly onward and Chris drew in his breath and ignored the tight strain of exertion in his chest and ground onward up the slope. Another long, dark, endless fifty yards, marked only by increasingly violent lightning flashes and sharp cracks of thunder echoing after them. And then, finally--finally!--they reached the horses. The three of them, Nathan, Chris and Josiah, all shoved Vin up onto a horse and Nathan grabbed the reins from Josiah's hands and shouted at Chris to hurry. Chris searched the darkness behind him. Damn! Where was he? Where was Buck?

    Nathan shouted at him again, but the wind and the thunder carried the words away. Then, the rain started, like the heavens breaking open. Chris grabbed the bridle of the horse Nathan was holding and leaned toward him, shouting, "I'm going back!"

    At the same time, Josiah appeared out of the darkness, looming in close to Chris and Nathan and he was shouting too. "Buck! Where is he?"

    Chris gestured back down the slope and started to speak. "I'll--"

    But Josiah never even heard him. He turned the minute Chris pointed and took off down the slope. He'd only taken three steps away from them before disappearing completely into the black cold rain.

    Chris took a step after him. "Chris! Chris!" Nathan shouted at him, almost screaming to make himself heard over the raging storm. "We have to go. NOW! Got to get Vin to shelter." And there was nothing more for Chris to do. Nathan needed him. Vin needed him more. He mounted up behind Vin, who was swaying dangerously in the saddle, not quite out of it, clinging to consciousness by half a thread, but not able to ride alone into this stormy savage night. Chris reached across for the reins Nathan handed him. "Hang on," he shouted at Vin and he cursed himself because he was leaving men behind, because he'd left Buck on the slope as they climbed and he hadn't even known it. Damn! He reined his horse hard and the three of them, Chris and Vin and Nathan, took off into the nothingness. They rode as if they could see where they were going, as if the track they followed was smooth and wide, as if the wind weren't snapping branches and smashing them to the ground in front of them. They stopped once after what seemed, even to Chris like an endless long time, and rested the horses for a bit and then proceeded on at a slower pace. Chris thought of asking Nathan where they were going, but it was a waste of energy trying to shout across the thunder and the sound of pounding rain and he figured he'd find out soon enough.

    Chris's arms ached from holding Vin in the saddle. He couldn't be sure how long they'd been riding, it was too dark and too stormy for him to judge, but it had been a damned long time, maybe ten miles from where they'd gotten the horses. He was just going to spur his tired horse up beside Nathan, when the healer slowed abruptly and looked back at Chris. He didn't say anything; it was still too hard to talk across the wind and rain, but Chris could now barely make out the dark shapes of cabins to his right. He frowned. What could be out here, so close to Michaels' compound? And in another instant the answer came, would probably have come sooner if he hadn't been so tired. A lumber camp for the mine.

    Nathan led them back along a flat, rutted road to a larger cabin at the back of the camp. He dismounted first and took Vin from Chris until Chris could dismount. The two of them carried Vin into the cabin and laid him on one of the lower bunks where he settled with a weak groan. The first thing Chris noticed entering the cabin was that it was possible to hear again. Thunder still rumbled and the wind swept rain against the cabin walls and the cabin itself was cold, but there was a security in shutting out the rain, in having a roof and four walls--a promise that had been lost and now regained, that things could perhaps get better.

    While Nathan stripped Vin's clothes and wrapped him in blankets, Chris started a fire in the stove and another in the fireplace stoking both of them as hot as he could, trying to hurry warmth into the place for Vin's sake. Now that they were here, he wanted to be busy, doing anything and not worrying about the others who were all still out there somewhere. He went back outside into the rain and put up the horses in a shed that Nathan pointed out to him and brought water back inside. Nathan had food and medical supplies and Chris was surprised by how well-prepared they seemed to be. He wanted to ask questions, well aware that he knew almost nothing about what was going on, but there was just so much to do.

    Vin had been briefly awake when they arrived and he'd asked about Buck, seeming almost panicked to know where he was, like he was afraid, and that made Chris frown, reminding him of questions that didn't yet have answers and confrontations that hadn't yet been had. Vin finally settled down, asleep or passed out, Chris wasn't sure, but he watched him for Nathan as the healer busied himself. Chris could see Nathan glance at the door every few seconds, waiting and worrying and trying not to let it show.

    "You'd best get out of those wet clothes yourself," Nathan told Chris at one point, but Chris noticed Nathan hadn't shed his own soaked pants and shirt either and the fire needed more wood and he was just going out in the rain again anyway and so the two of them went on and tried not to notice that time was passing.

    Once Chris glanced out the window and saw that the rain was slackening and the sky was beginning to grey. Damn! He looked across at Nathan, who was obviously exhausted and trying to hide it. And he looked down at Vin beside him. If the others didn't return soon he'd have to go out looking for them. Just then, he heard the sound of horses approaching. Chris's hand went to his revolver, an automatic gesture, and it made him glad that one of the first things he'd done when they'd arrived was load the damn thing. Nathan went silently to the window and looked out intently into the not-quite-dawn. After a minute he looked back at Chris and gave him a silent nod. Chris's hand slipped off his gun. One of theirs.

    "Looks to be JD and Ezra," Nathan said, moving back to the stove. Chris sat for a minute. Vin was restless and he knew he couldn't leave him alone right now. Nathan was busy. And Chris was only one man, though at times like this that frustrated him no end. He wanted to know if JD and Ezra were all right. He wanted to know if they'd seen Buck and Josiah. He wanted to know if anyone had followed them. They'd be dismounting, walking wearily to the shed, unsaddling their horses and making sure they were dried off and fed. He knew how long that would take them, but he still couldn't help being irritated when they didn't appear. And despite himself he kept listening for the sound of other horses.

    After what seemed like eternity, JD and Ezra finally came, but they were so tired Chris didn't have the heart to grill them the way he wanted to. "Take them clothes off now," Nathan admonished both men and it was all they could do to comply before crawling into their bunks and falling asleep. Chris looked at the two of them for a minute. He looked at Vin who was still moving restlessly, fighting the fever and exhaustion that pulled at him.

    "Nathan," he said, quietly. "I think--"

    Nathan was frowning at the window, not listening to Chris. "Somebody's got to go out there," he said. "We got to find out what's happened to them."

    "I know," Chris began, but he only got as far as the 'I--' when the door to the cabin slammed open.

    Part 93

    When Josiah thought about the journey later what he would remember was the rain.

    And the wind.

    And the fear.

    He knew Buck couldn't make it ten miles to the lumber camp. He'd seen him when he mounted his horse, limbs shaking from exhaustion, and the cold too, probably. But what was he supposed to do? There was nothing to do except keep the horses moving onward and pray that things turned out better than it looked like they would.

    There was water everywhere, dripping off the brim of his hat, down the back of his neck when the wind blew sharp lashings of rain against his back, creeping up the sleeves of his coat, soaking his reins and even edging down the tops of his boots. But the wet, cold, tiredness he felt was nothing, not when he looked at Buck riding beside him. The man was injured, how badly Josiah didn't know, but he remembered the blood at the rocks and under the hackberry trees. Buck's blood.

    "Buck," he said. "Buck!" He had to yell to make himself heard above the storm. Buck turned his head to face him and Josiah figured it was probably just as well he couldn't see him very clearly because it would have only served to make him more afraid. As it was, Buck's eyes were dull and dark, as if most of him had already departed into a quieter, warmer place and he was just holding onto consciousness by a thin dark thread.

    Josiah moved his horse one step closer and hollered, trying to communicate above the lashing rain and Buck's own exhaustion. "Buck!" he shouted. "We've got to rest. Find some shelter. Once this rain stops we can join up with the others." If they could get out of the rain, Josiah figured, that'd be something.

    "No," Buck said, but so quietly that Josiah wasn't sure he'd spoken for a moment.

    "What?"

    "NO!" Buck shook his head, slow, like it was too heavy for him to move it any faster. "Can't...we can't stop now. I won't..." then he closed his eyes and shook his head again. "We can't stop!"

    You won't make it, you mean, Josiah thought to himself. You won't make it. And that was the moment when Josiah realized that Buck might _not_ make it. And he cursed himself and the others for picking a site so far from the compound even though there had been no choice, even though anything closer wouldn't have given them the security they needed, and he cursed Buck for going up against black killer dogs and using all his strength before Josiah'd even managed to get him on a horse and on his way. As if he'd had a choice. As if--and now Josiah had worked himself back around to the real problem--Buck would even be out here at all if it hadn't been for Josiah and his temper and the whiskey.

    He reached out and laid a hand on Buck's arm. Buck's head snapped around and Josiah could see the glare in his eye. Even now, he thought bitterly as he moved his hand away. Even here. "Come on, Buck," he said, feeling as if there was some kind of pain centered in the middle of his chest that would likely never go away again. "Let's keep on."

    An hour passed and Josiah hunched deeper into his coat, pulling the collar up tight against his neck though it did nothing to prevent the rain from seeping in. He looked at the back of his horse's head; he looked at the trail in front of them; he listened for the sound of Buck's horse to his left, the normal sounds of a horse on the trail distorted by the mud and the rain. Buck's horse stumbled and Josiah heard a sharp cry of pain escape Buck's lips as he tried to catch himself. Josiah looked up and over to see Buck bent forward over the pommel of his saddle, his hand clutching at his wounded leg and the reins starting to slowly slip from his grasp.

    "Jesus, Buck!" Josiah reached out to steady him, but caught himself before he touched the gunslinger. A self-mocking smile twisted his face. 'You should be damned, Josiah,' he thought to himself, and he reached out and grabbed Buck's reins before they could fall to the ground.

    For a moment the two man just sat there in the middle of the woods in the middle of a storm and waited for Buck to catch his breath.

    "I'm all right." Buck finally spoke as he slowly straightened up in the saddle. "I'm all right. I'm all right. I'm all right." And Josiah realized Buck wasn't saying it to him. He was repeating it over and over to himself, trying to convince himself that it was so, that he could make it just a little further. Josiah sighed.

    A cool gust of wind blew into his face and he suddenly realized that it hadn't been accompanied by a cold splash of rain. He looked up; the rain seemed to be easing a bit. And...was the sky lightening? My God, he thought, was this night actually going to end? He peered more intently up the trail. Was that?...Could it be the vague outline of a cabin? He urged his horse forward. Yes! Yes, it was a cabin. They'd made it! They'd reached the lumber camp.

    He looked back to realize that Buck's horse hadn't moved. Feeling a hollow sense of dread in the pit of his stomach, Josiah rode back to him. "Buck!" he shouted. "Buck! We're here. We're safe now, Buck. It's just a little further."

    Buck turned and looked at him and now, in the easing darkness, Josiah could see his face. His eyes were unfocused, all but unseeing. There were deep, dark shadows under his eyes and sharp hollows beneath his cheekbones. His eyes drifted shut and then open again and the expression on his face never changed as if there weren't any difference now between being awake or asleep. And yet, there was still a tightness about him, a way of holding himself together and Josiah couldn't help wondering what would happen when he finally had to let go.

    "Come on," he urged gently. "It's just a little farther."

    Buck turned his head, but Josiah wasn't sure if he saw him or not. In any event he urged his horse forward to Josiah's relief and slowly they rode forward into the lumber camp. They'd passed the first cabin when they came across a huge branch lying across the lumber road. Buck kept going, straight ahead, and Josiah had to reach out and grab the reins and steer him around the barrier. Buck turned and looked at him, a small frown forming on his brow, as if he were taking in information, but couldn't process it fast enough to act on it. 'I hope you're ready for us, Nathan,' Josiah thought. 'Because we surely need you now.'

    Slowly, they crossed the deserted lumber camp to the cabin where, Josiah hoped, they would find all the others. Buck seemed to be hanging on only because he'd forgotten how to let go. And that was okay, Josiah figured, as long as it got them over the next hundred yards. A hundred yards. That was all Josiah asked anymore.

    It took even Josiah a moment to realize that they'd reached the cabin. His mind took a minute to register the light in the windows and the smoke floating out the chimney. We're here, he thought. We've made it.

    He looked over at Buck and thought, 'And how am I going to get you in there, if you won't let me touch you?'

    He dismounted, feeling an aching stiffness in every bone in his body. 'I'm way too old for this,' he thought wryly. He was going to go into the cabin and get some help when he realized that Buck had already dismounted. 'How the hell did you do that?' he wondered. But Buck was standing there, swaying and Josiah didn't even think, he just rushed up to him and grabbed him around the waist, throwing Buck's arm over his shoulder. Buck turned his head to look at him and Josiah thought--'this is it. He's going to spit in my eye or tell me to go to hell or something.'

    Buck blinked as if it were hard for him to focus. "All right," he said very softly. Then, he closed his eyes and started to slump.

    Josiah grabbed his wrist and tried to hoist him up. He stumbled toward the cabin. "Not yet," he said to Buck. "We're almost there now."

    Part 94

    Nathan layered the hot, wet leaves of the herbs he used to draw out blood poisoning onto the muslin, then folded the cloth over to cover them and laid a new layer in place. He layered and folded it several more times before carrying it carefully across the room to the bed where Vin was laying, to set it gently down on the bared wound. The tracker didn't react at all, except to slowly roll his head against the pillow in a way that he'd been doing all along anyway, and Nathan pressed the compress into place and then laid several thick cloths over the top of it to hold the heat in. He gestured to Chris to put a steadying hand on it long enough to make sure it didn't move, and then went back to the stove. He paused for a moment as the pan of green-tinged water blurred in his vision, and then shook his head to clear it. No time for that now, he thought. Not yet.

    The others weren't even back yet: Josiah and Buck, or JD and Ezra. Where were they? Who else was going to come in bloody and needing treatment? God, he thought, glancing at the doorway, just so they come back. Just so they can get here for me to try. Where are they? His eye caught Chris's suddenly, the gunman staring at him as if reading his thoughts, and Nathan looked away quickly.

    He'd couldn't understand what he was seeing in Chris since they'd gotten to the cabin. Yes, he'd seen the marks of a bad blow to the head on the man, but it hadn't seemed to be much of an issue any more, the few times he'd seen Chris in the cellar. And it was clear that the man had been treated badly, was exhausted and worried and cross -- well, maybe furious and tight and burning inside was more like it. Nathan poured the pan of herbed water into a can and set it on the back of the stove in case he needed it later to soak a sprain or something. That made sense. But they'd gotten away, and gotten Vin to the cabin -- so why was there a sense that Chris was somehow captive, held somewhere against his will, still expecting to be blindsided and hit? Nathan sighed and started tearing up willow bark into a small coffeepot to make a tea to bring Vin's fever down. Maybe, he thought, it was the fear that the others were in trouble but not being able to do anything about it. He glanced at Chris, who was looking at Vin's face now, his hands in his lap and his expression grim, and knew that wasn't it. It was there, yes, that fear. But that wasn't what was eating at Chris at all.

    The sound of horses outside made Nathan look up sharply, and then move to a window to peer outside with caution. After a long moment he saw the shapes of two horses and riders materialize out of the darkness and draw up in the yard of the cabin. The riders sat quietly a long, stiff moment before one of them dismounted. When he did, Nathan saw the unmistakable shape of JD's bowler hat, and he turned to let Chris know who it was that had arrived. Two in, he thought, returning to the willow bark tea. Just two still out. He stoked the fire in the stove and pulled the coffeepot over the flame. Come on, Josiah, he thought. Come on, Buck.

    A long time of waiting later, the door opened to admit cold, wet air and two men who were themselves as cold and wet as bedraggled leaves blown in by the storm. They staggered across the room towards unoccupied bunks and started to pitch forward, but Nathan reached out quickly to catch first one of them and then the other by an arm, to make them get out of their wet things first so they didn't catch pneumonia. He might not have been able to get Chris to put on dry things yet, but these two had been out long enough to be chilled to the point of it being dangerous, and he had no intention of losing anyone else at this point.

    Nathan drew up short, realizing what he'd thought: anyone else. He looked over at Vin, whose skin was shining still with fever sweat and who moved slowly against the mattress in discomfort. But Vin wasn't lost. Not yet, at least, and not at all if Nathan had his way. Nathan pressed his lips together and went back to the stove as Ezra and JD crawled into thick blankets and dropped into the silent sleep of exhaustion. He heard Chris thank them, wondered how that fit with his own reflexive thought about "not losing anyone else." Maybe it was fear that was eating at the gunman after all. Maybe . . . Nathan looked at Chris and saw that he was staring again at the healer, watching him in a way that made Nathan's skin crawl uneasily.

    "Nathan," Chris said, quietly. "I think--"

    Nathan shook his head, trying not to hear words that might affirm the fear growing to a certainty somewhere inside him. "Somebody's got to go out there," he said. "We got to find out what's happened to them."

    Chris opened his mouth to answer, but before he could the door to the cabin banged open so hard that the lean gunman leaped to his feet with his pistol leveled at the two men staggering through it. Nathan took a single look and dropped the spoon he'd been stirring the tea with, to run help Josiah drag Buck into the cabin. Both men were dark with mud and debris from the storm, and their clothes were ripped in several places. Buck had clearly been at least semi-conscious not long before, but the walk to the cabin had used up the last of his strength. Now he sagged against Josiah as the big preacher held him up with one massive arm around his waist, the other hand gripping his wrist with Buck's arm across his shoulders. Even as Nathan caught his other side, Buck fell so entirely senseless that he would have gone to the floor despite Josiah's presence, had Nathan not been there to grab his other arm. Together they got him to the last unoccupied lower bunk and laid him down, stripping off his wet things as they did, so that he would be lying in dry blankets. Nathan frowned when their work suddenly revealed the horrendous wound on Buck's leg.

    "Damn," said Josiah softly.

    "Yeah. That's no bullet hole, either." Nathan lifted Buck's feet to the mattress and pulled the blankets around his torso to warm him, then pulled up a chair to sit on while he examined the wound. He looked quickly back over his shoulder at Chris as anger flared up where fatigue had been only a moment before. "Why the hell didn't you tell me he was this bad off?" he demanded.

    Chris stood silent, his pistol lowered, and then sat back down next to Vin without saying a word. His eyes were expressionless. Nathan snorted angrily and turned back to Buck as he addressed Josiah. "Get me some a' them cloths, an' that can a' greenish-lookin' water on the back a' the stove," he said quickly. "An' bandages." He began to pull tentatively at the edges of the jagged rent in his friend's leg as Josiah moved to do as he was asked, and Buck gasped very softly and then lay more quietly again. The whole immediate area was bruised so dark as to be nearly black, the edges of the wound itself beginning to heal over but in a way that would leave an enormous scar. It was obvious that the man had lost a huge amount of blood, some of it in internal bleeding that had swelled the tissues and colored most of his thigh in shades ranging from green and yellow through blue and purple to charcoal. Nathan cleaned it as best he could, his face dark and grim, then went silently to the stove to make a fresh compress. He looked over at Chris as he did, only to see that the man was sitting more tensely than before, his rage as palpable and banked and hot as Vin's fever was. He never looked even once in Buck's direction.

    Nathan shook his head to himself and wished the herbs would hurry. His ears were starting to ring in a way that warned him he had only a limited time left in which to do what needed to be done. At least Josiah was all right, he thought. If he'd get out of those wet clothes. Not one of these men had the sense God gave them, to get out of the rain, he thought crossly. Not one of them. He slammed the pot down on the stove lid between burners and began to layer out the leaves onto a fresh piece of muslin, aware that Josiah had risen and approached him.

    "Need some help, Brother Nate?"

    "No." Nathan heard how short his own voice was, but he couldn't help it. He was running out of time, he knew, and out of energy. It didn't help that no one had told him what he needed to know, what he had asked them about point-blank. It didn't help at all that things were going on in secret somehow, things that clearly affected the health of the three men they'd all just risked their lives to get out of Michaels' house. Buck had nearly bled to death, and no one had said a word, no one had . . . Nathan shook his head as he finished the compress and carried it across the room. The light in there was getting watery-looking, he noticed, and the floor seemed to be tipping. Damn. He laid the compress on Buck's leg and fell into the chair wearily and thought about the blood he'd seen on the ground near where Ezra had found Buck's coat, about how they'd agreed the blood in the stone enclosure near Vin's coat was also Buck's. I knew, he thought. I knew all along, myself. I didn't have to ask or be told. Why didn't I act on what I knew was so? Why wasn't I paying attention? He bound the compress to Buck's leg with thick bandages, and then pulled the blanket over him all the way, startled when he saw a broad hand on the wool next to his, and looked up into Josiah's concerned face.

    "I think you _do_ need some help," he said softly.

    Nathan tried to tell him no again, tried to stand up to go back to the stove to finish the willow bark tea and give some to Vin. But no words came out. His legs didn't work, either. He stared into Josiah's strong eyes and suddenly felt more helpless than he'd ever wanted to feel. There were men depending on him, men he was letting down, men who were his friends, who --

    "Chris, I think you better get Ezra off that bottom bunk," said Josiah softly. "Nathan appears to need it."

    Low murmurs, and Nathan looked at Buck's pale face and shook his head angrily. "No," he said. He looked at Josiah, who had lifted him from the chair somehow and was leading him to a bed that Ezra stood next to, his face dark and tousled, a look of deep worry on it.

    "Yes," said Ezra softly. He pulled back the blankets and Nathan tried to pull away from Josiah, but the room began to spin just then and he realized he was sinking to the floor.

    He never even knew it when Josiah pulled the blankets over him, a few minutes later after pulling off Nathan's own still-wet things. The preacher stood silently looking down at his friend's face and then looked at Ezra. They didn't say anything. Slowly Josiah turned to regard Chris, who had gone back to Vin's side as soon as he'd awakened Ezra when it was clear Nathan was about to collapse.

    "You're awful quiet about all this," observed Josiah.

    Chris flushed and turned brittle eyes away from the other men, to regard the wall.

    A knot of wood cracked in the fire suddenly, tossing a glowing ember out onto the floor. Josiah walked over calmly and set his wet boot on it. It hissed beneath his foot and then was silent. He looked back at Ezra and nodded to the upper bunk. "Might as well get some more sleep while you can," he said in his low voice. "I'm gonna' grab a cup a' hot coffee, then go out an' take care a' the horses." He looked once more at Chris, and then went about his own business.

    Part 95

    When the door to the cabin slammed open, Chris rose and drew his revolver in one smooth fluid movement, quicker than thought. When he saw who it was, he lowered the gun. His first reaction at seeing the two muddy and rain-soaked men stumbling through the door was relief. As if things had just notched down a level and it was finally possible to breathe.

    The relief was short-lived, however, replaced almost immediately by the anger that had been eating at his insides for days. Vin moved slightly on the bunk to Chris's right and Chris looked down at the tracker's face, still flushed with fever. His expression grew darker.

    Josiah and Nathan talked softly to each other as they half-carried a now unconscious Buck across the cabin and maneuvered him into the last remaining lower bunk. Nothing was over, Chris thought. Maybe they were all here together. Maybe they were out of that cellar, but they were all still trapped and Chris for one was getting damned impatient. He wanted answers. And he had so many questions. But here, he thought, was an easy one. What the hell had taken Josiah and Buck so long to get here?

    He was just opening his mouth, figuring he could get an answer to that question at least, when Nathan moved slightly and Chris got his first good look at just how badly Buck had been wounded. He sucked in his breath, his anger dropping suddenly to nothing, just as Nathan looked at him and said, "Why the hell didn't you tell me he was this bad off?"

    Chris clenched his jaw so tightly the muscles jumped out in stark relief and his eyes thinned down to a flat, blank stare. 'Because he wouldn't let me,' Chris thought and in that second, a deep sadness washed over him, as hard and suffocating as anything he'd felt when Sarah and Adam had died. He looked at Buck's pale form on the bed and he knew he'd lost something important. He closed his eyes and felt the skin stretch tight across his face as everything that had happened or ever would happen welled up and crashed over him like a tidal wave of grief built over long unforgotten years and when it was gone the sadness was gone with it and familiar black anger rushed in to fill the vacuum left behind. He opened his eyes. He had tried, damnit! Buck hadn't let him. Too stubborn, too righteous to take care of himself and by extension the man who'd been depending on him. It all came back to responsibility, Chris thought. And Buck just proved over and over that he'd never had any.

    Chris wished right then that someone would walk through the cabin door and he could shoot them. It wouldn't really make him feel better, but it would be something to do, something loud and dark and final. Just sitting here. Just waiting. That was too hard in this particular place and time. Vin moved and Chris looked sideways at him. 'At least we got you out,' he thought. He put his hand on the tracker's arm and noted that the fever was down some. 'At least there's that.'

    "Chris, get Ezra off that bottom bunk," Josiah said suddenly. Chris looked up. Josiah was holding Nathan. 'What the hell?' Chris thought. 'What was going on here?' But it was as if things were playing out in some way that caused Chris to miss half of every action that happened and guaranteed that he understood nothing. Nathan had been all right and now he wasn't. Buck had been his friend, the man he'd relied on even when he himself was not reliable. And now he wasn't. How had this come to pass? What had been happening when Chris had apparently been looking away?

    He'd gotten Ezra up and gone back to sit by Vin and he didn't even realize that Josiah had helped Nathan off with his wet things and into the bunk until he turned to Chris once again and said, "You're awful quiet about all this."

    'Because I don't know what's going on.' Chris thought about saying. 'Because everything changed somehow when I was in that cellar and I can't even begin to figure it out.' But Josiah didn't wait for him to say anything. He walked to the fire and set his boot on a glowing ember on the floor and he said, "I'm going out to put up the horses."

    "No," Chris said, "I'll do it." His long strides carried him quickly across the cabin to the door. He needed to be out of here right now, needed something he could do that didn't pull at him with needs and emotions and questions he had no answers to.

    The air outside was damp and cool, the sky a grey fading slowly into dawn. Chris gathered up the reins of Buck's and Josiah's horses and led them to the shed. The familiar tasks--uncinching the saddle, lifting it from the horse's back, unbuckling, untying, setting aside--were what he needed right now, a way to feel both outside the things happening in the cabin and a fixed and certain part of everything. He fed and watered the two tired horses, and checked the others to make sure they were comfortable. He brushed them down as best he could and laid the blankets across the saddles so they'd at least have a chance to dry.

    There were no judgments here. No complex interactions that could never be completely understood. Just the soft shift and rustle as the horses moved, a casual snort as one of them lifted its head and looked at him, then settled again. Chris laid his hand on his own horse's withers and just stood there with his head bowed.

    After a minute he straightened again and moved once more through the small shed making sure everything was as it should be. By the time he had finished and was on his way back to the cabin, the sky was several degrees lighter, the pale light of dawn edging around the receding grey storm clouds.

    When he reentered the cabin, he was struck by how quiet it was. JD was sleeping in the far corner of the room, his head completely buried under the blankets. Ezra had moved to one of the upper bunks and he had his back turned to the door, his shoulders hunched under the blanket that covered him. Nathan lay facing the center of the room, as if, even in sleep he wanted to be ready to help anyone who needed him. Chris could see exhaustion in the slackness of his features, in the slight frown as he slept. Vin was sleeping too, still moving restlessly, with occasional soft sounds of protest escaping his lips, but resting at least, and so much more comfortably than he had in that dark cellar. And for that Chris could be grateful. He looked at Buck last. His face was really pale, the starkness emphasized by his dark moustache. He lay very still, but there was something not at all peaceful about him, lines of pain or fatigue or maybe just the way he breathed, quicker than it ought to be. Damn, Chris thought, but there was less heat, less anger than there had been. There would time for everything. Time for answers and accusations and making right whatever the hell it was that had gone wrong with Buck.

    Chris turned away from the sleeping men and looked at Josiah who was sitting in a chair near Vin's bed. He'd taken off his coat and boots and found a pair of dry socks. His feet had been stretched out in front of him, his head bowed low to his chest when Chris had opened the door to the cabin. He had looked up when Chris had entered, but he hadn't said anything, just sat there, waiting.

    Chris took another chair from the wooden table in the middle of the room. He set it down to one side of Josiah. "You should get some sleep," he said quietly.

    "So should you." Even when Josiah spoke softly, his voice rumbled like distant thunder.

    For a minute, both men just sat, the heat from the stove creating a dry and quiet presence, like a wall the tired men could lean against. Chris looked away, at something high up on the wall that only he could see. Then, he turned back to Josiah. "What happened?" he asked quietly.

    Josiah didn't answer for a minute and Chris thought maybe he hadn't understood. I just want one answer, Chris thought. I just want to know one thing before a new day begins, something I can hold onto and examine and maybe comprehend. And he thought this was the easiest, 'what happened to you and Buck? What took you so long to get here?'

    "There were...dogs," Josiah finally said.

    Chris's head snapped up. "Hounds? We heard them. I thought you'd lose them in the rain."

    "No." There was something about Josiah's voice that forced a man to think, Chris thought, something that made it harder to just leap straight into judgment. "These were different." He sat up and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and interlacing his fingers. He stared at the flickering fire in the stove. "These were dogs for killing. Quick, silent, deadly. They'd already caught Buck before I got there. We had to fight them on the ground." He shook his head heavily. "I never want to see the like again."

    Chris turned and looked at Buck again, remembering the torn sleeve of his shirt. Maybe I didn't want to understand, he thought. Maybe I didn't want to know.

    Josiah stood and stretched, groaning as his sore and tired muscles protested. "He thought we left him, Chris," he said to the lean black-clad gunslinger. "I could tell by the look in his eyes when I found him. I'd think on that too. While you're thinking." And with that, Josiah walked to the other side of the room and shed the rest of his clothes and climbed into one of the remaining upper bunks.

    Chris sat in the chair and looked at the fire in the stove and listened to the sound of the other men sleeping and tried just not to think about anything much at all.

    Part 96

    Sterling Michaels was wet and cold and very, very angry.

    He looked at the men arrayed around him. Striker sat with his back against the far wall, his eyes glittering with something almost approaching anger. John Bland was pacing annoyingly back and forth between the long tables that lined the dining hall where they'd all finally retreated after fruitless hours of searching in mud and wind and rain. Damn them! Damn them! How had this happened?

    Miners coming off the night shift into the dining hall saw the large group of Michaels' personal 'security' men gathered on one side of the hall and sat as far from them as possible, until half the hall was full and men were leaning against the wall to eat their meal. Michaels didn't even notice them. He started to pace, leaving wet boot marks on the wooden floor. Then, he realized that Bland was matching him step for step and he stopped and glared. What an annoying man, Michaels thought. What good was he? Why was he here? But he'd brought Bland in from Kansas City, a man known for his skill with poison. Who would have known how downright annoying and stupid he would be in person?

    He glared at each man in turn, stopping with Striker who--and this annoyed Michaels no end too--was remarkably hard to glare at. He returned Michael's gaze with an impenetrable one of his own, as if every look anyone gave him was absorbed by him, taking something from the person who looked, but revealing nothing of Striker in return.

    "What the hell happened?" Michaels barked.

    Striker raised an eyebrow. "You let one of them into the house."

    "I know!" Michaels shouted. "How did that happen? Why didn't you know?"

    "Why didn't Bland know?" Striker countered. "It was the healer, after all."

    Michaels rounded on Bland who had finally stopped pacing and was trying to look, well, Michaels could only figure he was trying to look fierce.

    "Look," Bland snapped peevishly. "I didn't expect to see him here. How could I? I thought he was dead. He _should_ have been dead."

    "Well, obviously, he's not," Michaels remarked dryly. He turned away, took a few steps, then turned back with a snap. "You're no good to me, Bland. You failed in town. There was no epidemic. You failed me here. Is there a reason I shouldn't kill you right now?" 'I would love to kill you right now,' Michaels thought. ' I would really love to kill someone for this mess.'

    To Bland's credit he didn't shrink or grovel or beg, which in the end was what saved him. In fact, he straightened and looked Michaels square in the eye. "You hired me to do a job. I did the best I could. I have skills that could still be of use to you. But if you have no further need of me, I could also leave."

    Michaels laughed shortly. He liked audacity in a man, hell, he kept Striker around, didn't he? "You _better_ be of use to me," he said, his voice deepening down until the threat in his words was stark and clear. The words caused Bland to blink and take a step backward. Michaels could see something in John Bland's eyes, something dark and a little slimy and not-quite-recognizable, which Michaels himself thought with satisfaction must be fear. 'Good,' he thought. 'Be of use to me.'

    He turned back to Striker. "I want them back," he said.

    Striker stretched out one long leg. "Why?"

    "Why?" Michaels drew himself up and sucked in his breath. "WHY?" he thundered. "Because it's important. Because they know who I am and if they don't know what I'm after they damn well have enough information to figure it out. And because I had them and they got away. _I_ am in charge of this operation. ME!" He turned toward the other men who had stood silently, dripping water onto the dining hall floor without a word among themselves. Michaels paid them handsomely to be nothing more than what they were--men who would kill other men for money. Michaels broad finger stabbed out. "You!" he said. "You! And you! I want you out there now. They can't have gotten far. Find them!"

    "It's...still raining," Striker pointed out mildly.

    "I don't care! Do you think I care what the hell the weather's like? I want results. I want those men back here by the end of the day." He took a deep breath and watched the men leave as he had ordered, then he turned back to Striker. "Tell me how this happened."

    Striker looked up at him from under his hat. He raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. "I told you they were good," he said.

    "We took out half of them. We took out the ones _you_ said we should take out. I hold you responsible. Solely responsible for this disaster."

    Striker stood. He walked across the ten feet or so that separated him from Michaels until he could look him straight in the eye. He was two inches taller, but much thinner than Michaels, but it was Michaels who felt as if there wasn't enough space in that room for both of them. "You're the one that plays games, Michaels. I told you they were good. I told you to kill them. An accident or two. Half of them gone. But you had a better way."

    Michaels took a deep breath. He was in control. He. Sterling Michaels. Not this dour, expressionless saddle tramp. "It is important," he said calmly "that when I win, the people I defeat know who has beaten them and how. Otherwise, there's really no point."

    Striker eyed him for a minute. "Like you beat Sullivan?" he asked. Then, he turned and walked slowly out of the hall, a tall dark figure that men moved away from as he passed.

    Michaels watched him for a moment then shook his head. Striker worked for him. He wasn't the one with money or power or any of the luxuries of life. Michaels wouldn't forget that and it gave him some satisfaction to know that Striker probably wouldn't either. As for Chris Larabee and the others...well, they were exhausted, far from home, and had wounded men to care for. He'd find them. He'd find them all. And when he did...

    He turned to the dozen men remaining in the room, frowning at them as if he'd forgotten they were there. "I want you all out looking for them. Is that clear? I want no one back here until you find them."

    The tired men looked at him for a minute, then they all, one by one, nodded their heads and left the hall.

    Sterling Michaels turned to John Bland, the only man left in the dining hall with him. He was fidgeting nervously, looking at Michaels sideways, as if afraid to look at him straight on. Whatever spine he'd had that had allowed him to stand up to Michaels a few minutes ago seemed to have disappeared. He looked like nothing so much as a drowned rat. A dark flash of fresh anger ran through Michaels at the sight of the man's face. 'I let you live you worthless son of a bitch.'

    "What the hell are you waiting for?" he said sharply to Bland.

    The man jumped, causing Michaels frown to deepen. 'You better be of use to me,' Michaels thought, thoroughly irritated by Bland and the weather and all the things that had gone wrong in the last several hours. 'Because I don't keep anyone who isn't useful.'

    "Well?" he said when Bland still hadn't moved.

    "I, uh--"

    "I expect you out there looking for these men," Michaels snapped. "I _expect_ you to make up to me for your failure both in Four Corners and here. Do you understand me?" And his voice went flat, the threat explicit in each word he spoke.

    Bland's face paled, though there was still something dark and dangerous in his eyes. "I'm, uhm, I'm--" He took a deep breath and tried to pull himself up again, though it resulted in making him look rather like a squishy scarecrow. "Yes," his voice was markedly calmer, though. "Yes," he repeated. "I _will_ make up for it." Then he turned and left the hall.

    Michaels stood for a moment, still angry, but also beginning to realize that he was cold and wet and tired. He noticed the miners on the other side of the hall for the first time. Most of them were trying not to see him, but Michaels knew that it diminished his power over them a little bit to see him looking rumpled and soggy.

    Well. He had people working on the problem. And he knew that he was right. Those men were exhausted, some of them were injured, and they had no resources. At least not as compared to him. He _would_ find them.

    And in the meantime, he thought, as he strode out of the dining hall, he would have breakfast and a bath and fresh clean clothes.

    Part 97

    Sterling Michaels' long walk up to his house from the workers' dining hall provided more than enough time to reflect on what it meant that Nathaniel had in fact been one of _them_, one of the seven men he'd targeted for removal. By the time he got to the front door, its gas light turning the falling rain at the entry into long streamers of tinsel, he was livid. The eastern sky was already greying behind him, and he threw opened the front entry door with a crash that sent it rebounding against the wall behind it, the echo thundering through an otherwise silent house.

    Michaels stepped inside and stood dripping in the foyer, the puddles from his wet clothing ruining the inlaid parquet floor there. His eyes glittered furiously as he searched the rooms in view for a member of his household staff -- anyone at all. Probably all cowering in terror somewhere, he thought, and it was a damned smart idea right now. He felt like grabbing someone by the neck and just squeezing until the rage inside him had--

    "Drink this, Marse Sterlin'. It'll warm y'up some." He turned to see the woman Miz Ruby at his side, and started slightly that she had seemingly appeared at his elbow out of nowhere. He hesitated a moment before taking the steaming cup from her hand and sniffing it. Warm brandy. The man sipped at it and felt the welcomed heat slide down into his marrow, and thought maybe he'd resist the urge roaring through him to throw the woman against the wall as hard as he could. But he looked at her with enough bloodlust in his eyes that she shivered visibly before fixing him with a bold stare of her own. "Ya' gots t' get outta' them wet things afore y'all catches yo' death. Jus' drop 'em right here an' Ah'll takes care of 'em. Then gits yo'self upstairs int' the hot bath Ah gots waitin' for ya'." Miz Ruby took a step back and set her hands on her ample hips. "Go on, 'fore ya' catches yo' death."

    Michaels slid one heel into the boot tree in the foyer and pulled off a wet boot, then did the other. Then he downed the contents of the cup the woman had given him, feeling it burn its way into his gut. Only then did he break his gaze with Miz Ruby to stride forcefully up the stairs, his clothes trailing water behind him. Let her clean it up, he thought. It's what she's paid for. But by damn, there better not be any damage to the floors when this is all said and done. Not one bit.

    He turned into the long hallway and saw the girl Bitsy rushing to his room with several thick towels in her arms, clutched to her thin bosom beneath a face filled with fear. She froze when she saw him, and backed against the wall in the hallway, trying to disappear into the shadows. Michaels strode up to her on the balls of his feet and stopped, cocked his head to eye her up and down.

    "Those for me?"

    The girl nodded, speechless, and he put out a hand demandingly. She set the towels in it, shaking. Michaels dropped all but one of them to the floor and flipped out the last so that it unfurled, then threw it around his head and shoulders to rub them dry. The girl started to slide away from him sideways, down the long wall, but he reached out his free hand and caught her by one wrist and raised her hand up to pin it against the wall behind her.

    "Where do you think you're going?" he asked in a low voice. The girl merely turned her face away from his, as far as she could in the limited space, and closed her eyes. Michaels shook her wrist and spoke in more of a growl. "I asked you where you think you're going? I didn't tell you that you could leave yet." He let go of the towel he had draped over his shoulders now, and grabbed her other wrist in his other hand so that he had her pinned between him and the wall. He moved much closer to her, and pressed his face closer to hers. Bitsy's features scrunched up, her forehead wrinkling and her neck cording as she tried to turn her face even farther from his. Michaels shook her by the arms when he saw it, and then he stepped back into the hallway and started for his room with one of her arms in his grip. Bitsy's feet slid and danced in a light pattern of hysteria on the floor as he shoved his way into his room with her in tow, to throw her to his bed so hard that the headboard rebounded against the wall. He unfastened the buckle of his belt and slid it off in a quick, angry gesture . . . and discovered that the towels he'd left in the hall were being held out to him again by someone.

    "Once y'all gets them wet things off," Miz Ruby said softly, with confidence, "get yo'self in that tub pronto b'fore the water gits cold. Don' need no pneumonah', Marse Sterlin'." She was holding the towels out to him with a steady look on her face, as though she didn't even see what he'd intended to do, as if Bitsy wasn't crying in a forlorn and tiny heap on the enormous bed. Michaels looked from Miz Ruby back to Bitsy, and then took the towels. He gestured to the doors.

    "Get out of here. Both of you. Now."

    Miz Ruby held out her hand to Bitsy in silence, and the girl leaped to grasp it and then pressed herself fearfully against Miz Ruby's side as the woman left the room. She walks as if she owned the damned place, thought Michaels. Too bad she's not a man. I could use someone like her. Someone with that kind of brass -- instead of the idiots who work for me.

    He stripped his wet clothing savagely, thinking again of how he'd been duped, of how he'd even been misled about the expertise and qualities of the men Bland and Sullivan, about how their mistakes had cost him the finesse in this plan that he always demanded. He wanted nothing less than perfection -- always -- and now perfection was long gone, out of his reach. The most he could hope for was just to shove his will into being to achieve the victory.

    Well, no matter. He'd done it that way before and he could do it again. Michaels eased himself into the steaming water that had been poured into the gleaming enamel tub by the endless pan-full, and sighed as the heat soaked into his cold, tight muscles. There was more to what had happened than met the eye, he thought languidly, turning events over in his mind. More than met the eye. How had the darkie gotten into the house? Who had given him a job to start with, before Michaels had even seen him? Had he been working in the mine before this? In the stables? He needed to talk to the foremen, all the shifts. Who else had they seen around? What else had happened?

    He sat up in the tub, then, realizing for the first time just how well-planned things had really been. The question wasn't how the darkie had gotten into his house. It was how he'd known that Michaels' house was where he wanted to be, to begin with. And how he'd found the men in the cellar, for God's sakes. How did he know they were down there? Not many people in the house knew that. Michaels certainly hadn't said anything to him. Although . . . Michaels reached out to slip a cigar from the nearby nightstand and light it thoughtfully . . . he had been present when Sullivan brought in Larabee, in the library. What had Michaels said then, exactly? And later, and the next day? What things did those men know now, that Michaels didn't want them to know? What else had that damned colored boy learned while he was in the house looking for his friends? Michaels leaned back in the tub again, puffing on the cigar, thinking.

    His mind turned to the men on horseback who'd run through his own men and killed some and terrorized many of the rest of them, idiots that they were. Presumably, the horsemen were more of the men from Four Corners that his men had supposedly broken up -- how had they known the escape was coming off right then? How had they come to be here, now, so well-equipped, with enough horses in the right place and at the right time to pull this off?

    Striker was right. They _were_ good. Too good.

    They had to be stopped. Now.

    Michaels stood up and water ran from his steaming, pink body in sheets. He stepped out of the tub and rubbed his skin dry in brisk, hurried motions and then dressed. He opened the bedroom door and called for the boy, Pedro, and then sat down at his secretary and wrote a quick note in a firm hand. "Someone on my household staff has to have helped them. I want to know who. I don't want them to know they're being watched. Take care of it. M." The boy ran into the room and hesitated, and Michaels folded the note over and turned to him.

    "You know the man Striker."

    "Sí, Señor." The boy's voice was almost a whisper.

    "Take this note to him. Don't stop to talk to anyone on the way. Don't fail me, or I will punish you. Is that clear?"

    "Sí, Señor Michaels." The boy turned and rushed from the room, and Michaels heard his sandals pounding down the front stairs, and then a few moments later the sound of the door opening and shutting with a bang in the kitchen below. He walked to the window and looked down, pulling the curtain slightly aside, to see the boy racing through the grey light of morning, the wet grass turning his pants wet up to his knees, running for the mine works as hard as he could go. It figures, thought Michaels, that he'd know where a man like Striker could be found.

    He turned back into his room and looked at the bed, the covers rumpled where he'd thrown them aside earlier when he'd been awakened after the escape, and thought about Bitsy. Then he looked towards Belle's room and thought about her. She wouldn't be happy to see him at this hour of the morning, but that wasn't exactly the most important thing to him right now.

    Imposing his will was.

    Part 98

    "Explain to me again why we are on foot, in the forest, instead of asleep after such a ghastly night. I think I must have forgotten that part due to my advanced state of fatigue." Ezra slapped irritably at a small pine branch that hung across his trail, and it was slender and elastic enough that it merely rebounded to smack a cluster of needles across his mouth as he finished speaking. Josiah put his hand against the trunk of the tree, leaned heavily on it, and burst into such laughter that he couldn't walk for a moment. Ezra turned to face the preacher and scowled. Josiah leaned his back against the tree then, and got himself under control.

    "I'm sorry," he wheezed, "really."

    "So I see." Ezra shifted his weight and looked disdainful. "So are we going to continue on this ridiculous jaunt or return now?"

    "Oh, continue. By all means!" Josiah recovered enough to duck under the offending branch and clap Ezra on the shoulder. "You heard Nathan as well as I did. Buck needs meat to build up his blood."

    "Gruesome image." Ezra shook his head, looking down at the dappled forest floor under his feet as he walked reluctantly at Josiah's side. The carpet of russet pine needles was littered with small branches torn loose in the storm of the night before, with larger branches forming a crazy quilt pile of red, green, and grey here and there between the silent trees.

    Josiah grinned encouragingly. "Don't worry. Shouldn't take too long to find somethin', as early as it is."

    "Excellent strategy, my friend. Excellent. Remind me that I am up and about far earlier than any civilized soul would be. That will compensate me for making this miserable trek." Ezra sighed, and Josiah chuckled softly.

    "You know, it's not gonna' work, Ezra. I heard how you were in town, while we were . . . not around." The gambler shot a quick, almost frightened look at the preacher that made the big man nod knowingly. "You were responsible."

    Ezra snorted. "I have shot men for less insult than that, my friend."

    The men approached a cluster of low brush as Ezra finished speaking, and as the gambler trod upon the edges of it, it exploded in a roar of whistling wings, feathers and leaves. Ezra's derringer snapped into his startled hand and discharged two shots even as the gambler recoiled from the commotion with his other hand going up to shield his face. He stood there for a moment, staring blankly at the hollowness that seemed left behind by the violent intensity of what had happened, and turned a shocked face to the preacher.

    "What in the name of hell was that?" he said.

    Josiah took three long steps forward, reached down into the brush, and lifted a great gold and brown bird by its feet. "Turkeys," he said, smiling. He turned the tom around slightly as it hung from his hand, looking at it. "Gotta' say, I ain't never seen one brought down with a shot like that, though!" He laughed, and held out the bird to Ezra to carry. The gambler shook his head.

    "Ohhh no. I shot it. You have to carry it back. That's the deal." He turned around smugly and began the walk back to the lumber cabin.

    "WHAT deal!? HEY!" Josiah jogged after Ezra, and the gambler laughed silently to himself while his back was to the preacher. Josiah caught up to him them, and Ezra pulled a serious face and glanced to his companion.

    "We must remember to get some of my prize turkey to our youngest member at his post," he said.

    "Yeah, well, I'll spell JD after a while anyway. Don't wanna' leave anybody in the main part a' the camp by himself too long without checkin' on 'em." Josiah frowned very slightly. "I know we need someone near the lumber road to watch for trouble, but I still don't like thinkin' about what could happen if those men came along there while JD was by himself. Those dogs . . ." Josiah's voice trailed off. Ezra shook himself lightly.

    "I believe there are far fewer of them now than there were last night," he observed simply.

    Josiah sighed and stepped over a storm-felled tree that had lodged against another with its tip several feet above the ground. "I gotta' tell ya', Ezra . . . " The preacher's voice trailed off and he was silent. Ezra nodded somberly.

    "Indeed," he replied. "Indeed."

    "Did you know there was a second kind," Josiah asked softly, "besides the hounds?"

    Ezra looked over at the preacher and shook his head slightly. "I had thought . . . " His voice trailed off as he ducked beneath another fallen tree, its trunk snapped off by storm winds six or eight feet off the ground and its tip lodged in the tree next to it. He paused to look at Josiah as the bigger man bent low to go under in his turn and then stood up again.

    "There was a kind that attacked, not bloodhounds," said Josiah in a soft, deep rumble. "Black. Hounds of hell sent to bring men down by the throat. To rip them to bits."

    "My God," said Ezra softly. "And we were worried about the men--" His voice broke off as he looked away from Josiah and into the forest littered with storm debris and thick, grey puddles. 'What we nearly did,' he thought, 'leaving them to a danger we didn't even see.' But he turned back to regard Josiah with a steady eye. The preacher met his gaze and nodded slightly.

    "The men would've killed us if the dogs hadn't," he said simply. "You an' JD did the right thing." Josiah lifted the turkey so that he could lay it over one broad shoulder, and he gestured towards the camp with a nod of his head. "Let's go cook this," he rumbled, "an' get our strength back."

    "Some more sleep wouldn't hurt, either, in that regard," observed Ezra.

    "No it wouldn't," agreed Josiah. He smiled with his face held away from Ezra's view as he stepped over a large downed branch. "And perhaps you can stand guard while we all get some."

    "Very funny." Ezra muttered as he trudged along in Josiah's wake, glancing from time to time at the bronze feathers of the bird over the big man's shoulder. He'd like very much to see them get their strength back at this point, he thought, and stop depending on him for everything. Yes. It really did sound like an excellent idea.

    *****************************************************************************************************

    JD looked around his surroundings. He actually wasn't in the main building but a smaller one that afforded the best view down the logging road. Before he decided on his vantage, he checked there was at least two exits. Actually there was a back door and a side window, in addition to the front door. He could hear Buck now, 'don't let yourself get pinned,' he'd admonish, 'always have two ways out.'

    JD let out a shuddering breath. Well, he had done that. Now what?

    The quiet was eerie; the sun was barely up and did little to illuminate the thick forest. It was still grey and overcast, the air was heavy with moisture and slight wind gusts would send a dousing of water onto the unsuspecting from the wet that clung to the pine boughs.

    JD couldn't afford a fire or any sign that anyone had been here. He opened the door making sure his tracks were well hid. Only a tracker like Vin would know that someone had been here.

    JD found a chair that he could place by a window to watch the road. He'd already decided that if they came, he'd head directly east -- giving the guys time to come up and support him without leading the bad guys to the cabin where Buck and Vin were.

    'Check your weapons, fill your gun belt then put your extra ammo in your left jacket pocket for easy loading,' JD could hear Buck quietly run him through a checklist to make sure he was ready.

    'Now remember, don't fire unless you have to. If you have to, for God's sake, don't fan your guns.'

    'Sheesh Buck, I got that one, I got it.'

    'See that you do, boy,' JD could see that smirk that always told him when Buck was teasing.

    Oh man, he looked bad. Nathan said he lost a lot of blood. Too much blood. Come on, Buck. You can do it.

    JD half-expected Buck's smiling visage to visit him and tease him for worrying about him, 'you worried about ol' Buck. This is just a scratch. A little vacation. I'll be back on your raggedy ass in no time. You best not let me down. I won't let you forget.'

    But Buck didn't come to visit. JD shuddered with fear -- he didn't quite know what he'd do without Buck.

    JD scanned the countryside avidly. Lives were depending on him. Had to stay alert. He did a quiet check of his hideout, looking out windows to make sure there was no one approaching from another direction.

    God, he hoped he was doing right.

    JD returned to his place at the front window. He scanned the lumber road, the surrounding woods and buildings. Then he would systematically repeat the process. Then he'd check out the other windows. And every time he made a check, the quiet seemed a little more quiet, the fear notched a little bit higher.

    God, he hoped he was doing right. He wished Josiah were here to reassure him with a clap on the back. Or that he'd get one of those little nods from Chris that he was doing good. There was none of that.

    Then, he saw them. Three men. JD slipped from his building to his first retreat point to the east, up a slight rise that gave him an overview of the whole camp but excellent cover.

    "Hell, this is a waste of time," one of the men exclaimed.

    The men half-heartedly looked around the complex, barely glancing into buildings. They turned around and headed back down the lumber road.

    JD held his breath thinking the slightest sound would give away his position. He didn't move for what seemed like hours but was probably ten minutes.

    He shivered in the damp morning air from fear and cold.

    JD slipped back into the shadows and returned to his outpost in this wilderness.

    To watch and wait. Alone.

    Part 99

    He was in pitch dark, a swirling maelstrom of storm, wild cries rising all around him on the crazy wind, and somewhere in the middle of it he suddenly saw Buck. The man was standing rock-solid in it, the wind whipping his hair and his shirt but the man himself unmoving. He turned his face to Vin and it was as pale as the moon. And as Vin watched, horrified, his pale face began to wane. The man himself slowly shrank in and narrowed and collapsed, and long coils of pale white smoke tendrilled out as he dissipated into the storm around him -- and Vin woke up with a gasp and a jerk, and felt a hand on his chest immediately, and heard words:

    "Easy, Vin. Lay still."

    He did lay still, for a long moment, his blood throbbing in his veins from the terrified leaps of his heart, and let waking reality seep into him. There was sunlight. _Sunlight._ Vin took a deep breath. Ah God, sunlight. The rich white sunlight of late morning, maybe almost afternoon -- and it was warm and dry and he felt like he was floating in it. He could smell the warm resin of pines, hear the distant call of a jay and then the screech of a red-tail some distance off, the tight hammering of a woodpecker. Vin relaxed, and the hand that had been on his chest pressing gently against him was withdrawn, reminding him that it had even been there. He turned his head very slowly, still not sure but what something might make that horrendous pain return, and saw Chris sitting next to him on a chair, looking at his face with a tight expression in which only a flicker of anything showed at all. And that flicker was of worry dancing with relief.

    Vin blinked slowly and then shivered involuntarily as the central image of his nightmare tumbled once past him again. Chris leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees.

    "Vin? Should I get Nathan?" The man's voice was low, the way a man speaks when he doesn't want to disturb the sleeping or the ill. Vin studied Chris's face a moment, trying to float back into the sunlight and away from the nightmare's darkness. He swallowed, shook his head slightly.

    "Bad dream," he rasped out. Chris nodded, his brows furrowed, and produced a tin cup from somewhere. He helped Vin get his head up high enough to drink some, and the tracker felt the water's coolness run down inside him in turbulent eddies, and he sighed again.

    "Where's Buck?" he asked. Chris inclined his head towards someplace that must be only a few feet away, and frowned slightly.

    "Sleepin'. More or less."

    More or . . . less? Vin looked at Chris with his eyes scrunched up as he tried to hitch himself up high enough to look around and see what the hell that meant. Chris reached out again to press him back down, and Vin winced and drew in his breath when their conflicting movements made his shoulder hurt again.

    "I'm sorry," said Chris. "Lay still, though. Nathan said--"

    "Nathan?" Vin was panting but already getting his breath back again as the pain ebbed back to a throb.

    "Yeah. He's sleepin', too. So's Ezra."

    "EZRA?"

    Chris pressed his lips together as the edges quirked upward a fraction, and his eyes lit up with a green flash. "I tell ya' what," he said, "If you'll lay still and be quiet a minute, I'll fill you in."

    Vin licked his lips and relaxed against whatever he was laying on, and listened and laid still.

    "Do you remember where you an' Buck were bein' held?" A dark shade raced across Vin's face at Chris's words, and the latter put a steadying hand on his friend's forearm. "It's all right," he said.

    Vin shook his head, closing his eyes briefly. "No it's not," he breathed. The darkness. The damp, the chill that had somehow still been suffocating, the man in buckskins . . . Vin's eyes snapped opened, and he looked at Chris with something like panic in them. "Where's Buck?" he asked again.

    Chris shook his head. "Sleepin'. Remember?"

    Oh yeah. That's right. Vin relaxed against the bed -- ah, it was a bed, then, he thought -- and his eyes drifted shut in relief. He opened them again a moment later and looked at Chris once more. The man was sitting just as he had been, regarding Vin as closely if he was studying the page of a book.

    "He ok?" asked Vin.

    "Yeah. Nathan thinks he'll be fine." Chris's face flashed and Vin felt confused. Wasn't that a good thing? If Buck was going to be all right? Was Chris hiding something?

    "He ain't . . . gonna' lose his leg . . . "

    "No, no." Chris patted Vin's forearm, where his hand was still resting. "An' Ezra's gone out an' shot a tur-"

    "I thought sure that fella'd kill 'im. Before we could get out."

    "Apparently Buck thought so, too." Chris's voice took on a dry tinder quality that made Vin shake his head a little, more confused. What the hell was going on? It was as if he couldn't quite wake up, couldn't quite get things to make sense. Vin swallowed the panic that tried to rise in his throat at that, and looked carefully at Chris's face.

    "I tried not to let 'im get to me," said Vin softly, regret biting at his words. "Each time. But . . . "

    "We'll talk about this later." Chris's voice was suddenly tight with locked-down rage, and Vin felt a shock of serious unease ripple through him.

    "What's wrong that you ain't tellin' me, Chris? Where's Buck?"

    "He's _right here_. Sleepin'." Chris's voice was nearly a hiss, he was so mad now. Vin wondered if he was still asleep, still dreaming. Oh God, now there was a terrifying thought. What if he was really still in that cellar, or if it was still that ride . . . The tracker's eyes snapped opened and he clutched at the bed underneath him to feel of it and know if he was on what he thought he was or not, or on the damp cold earth, or on a saddle with his hands tied and --

    "Settle down, Vin. It's ok." Chris's voice was gentle again, and he was touching a hand to Vin's forehead. "You're still running fever, although it's comin' down. But you've got to stay still."

    "Chris." Vin's voice had a strangled sound to it that he could hear but couldn't get rid of. Why didn't anything make sense any more? He looked at his friend and tried one last time. "He kept usin' me, to try t' get to 'im, to make 'im make a mistake--"

    "I KNOW!" This time Chris's voice exploded into a loud enough pitch that he drew up short and looked quickly at others who were apparently sleeping in the room, and then looked back at Vin with darkening eyes. He lowered his voice to a savage whisper in which it was clear he was trying to sound much calmer than he actually was. "We're gonna' talk about what Buck did later. Right now, you need--"

    "Hell, nothin' makes sense." Vin felt like just giving up. Why bother? He looked up and saw the bottom of a mattress over his head. So he was under a bed, not on one. Figured. Everything was upside-down and inside-out. Why not the bed? He looked at Chris with real resignation in his eyes. "I just wanted to know if I got Buck killed is all. I tried so hard not to, but it just hurt so damned bad that every time that man grabbed me--"

    "What are you talking about?" Chris's grip on Vin's forearm tightened slightly, and the tracker shook his head. That's what he'd like to know, he thought, was what the hell anyone was talking about. Patiently, resigned to it meaning not a damned thing, he explained.

    "There was a man that took us prisoner, wanted t' kill us, but he'd been given orders not to. So he was tryna' egg Buck into a fight. The whole time. So's Buck'd blow up an' then this fella'd have a reason to kill us both. But Buck wouldn't give 'im nothin'. So after a while, the fella' figured out he could pick on me an' that I couldn't help but give 'im what he wanted. That damned slug musta' been the size a' Texas, cause every time 'e grabbed me or hit it, it liked t'--" Vin paused, shook his head wearily. "I couldn't believe how Buck held 'is temper, though. But I kept thinkin' he was bound t' blow up sooner or later. An' I thought maybe . . . " Vin trailed off, suddenly exhausted. He looked at Chris's face with tired eyes, and said softly, "You got a little more a' that water around?"

    Chris blinked as if he'd been asleep, and then he had water again, and Vin drank it, and he laid back and looked at his friend's face. The anger seemed to be gone at least, now. Maybe it had all been his fever he'd been feeling. Maybe it was just all in his own head, he thought. He was starting to sink back down into sleep when he felt a gentle hand on his arm again.

    "It's all right now," he heard Chris say. The man's voice started sounding soft and fuzzy at the edges as Vin drifted off. "The man in buckskin can't do that any more. He's dead." There was a deep sigh. "Buck took care of him for you. Take it easy."

    Part 100

    For a long time after Vin went back to sleep, Chris sat in the chair with his hands resting on his knees and looked at the floor. Vin's words had been like hammer blows--each one of them--even as weak and as softly spoken as they'd been, they'd slammed into his chest, like his own personal punishment.

    How could he have thought that Buck would use Vin as bait in a personal battle with Sullivan? How could he have--Shit! He straightened, started to rise, and then stopped and bent forward again, staring once more at the floor as if there were answers there written in the dust. He had been so sure. He had seen the interaction between the two men.

    And he knew Buck. That thought pulled him up short. He hadn't been acting lately as if he knew anything at all about the man. Buck had his faults. And damned if Chris couldn't list most of them by heart. But Buck was also loyal. And he cared about his friends. And somehow Chris had forgotten that.

    He straightened in the chair and rubbed a weary hand across his face. Still, Buck had a temper. And he was impulsive. Both of these things were true as well. And what he'd seen...

    Chris shook his head. He'd been wrong. It was that simple. And he should have known. That was what ate at him now--why had he jumped to the conclusion he had and not a different one? Why did he expect the worst instead of the best? Especially of Buck. 'Because the other way will get you killed,' said a tight, dark voice from somewhere deep inside him.

    He pushed himself up off the chair and crossed the room to put more wood on the fire. When he turned around, he stood for a minute and looked at Buck. 'Why the hell didn't he just say something?' Chris thought. And the answer came directly on the heels of the thought. 'Because I wouldn't have let him.'

    He picked up the coffeepot on the back of the stove and poured himself another cup. Josiah was outside plucking and cleaning the turkey that Ezra had killed. JD was on watch in one of the cabins near the entrance to the camp. Everyone else was asleep.

    Chris sat at the table. He found himself staring into the coffee mug instead of drinking from it. I was wrong, he thought. I was wrong. His mind seemed stuck on that one thought and he couldn't shake it. It wasn't as if he'd never been wrong before. Or even afraid to admit it. Maybe he was just tired. Or maybe there was something else. Something he still didn't understand. He sat up a little straighter. Why had Buck left town in the first place? Such a long time had passed since that question, but it still sat there, unanswered. To avoid a fight? Because the charges were true? For some murky dark reason utterly his own? It was enough to make a man doubt he'd ever known anything. It was enough--he gripped the mug tightly between his two hands--it was enough to make a man doubt...

    "Mr. Larabee."

    Chris looked up sharply to see Ezra awake and sitting up. He looked....rumpled, Chris thought with surprise. Could a man look rumpled without his shirt on? Well, if it was possible, Ezra did.

    Ezra wrapped a blanket around himself and jumped lightly down from the bunk. A look of distaste flashed across his face. "It is decidedly chill in here," he declared.

    "I just put wood on the fire," Chris said mildly. Glad to have anything, even grousing interrupt his own morose thoughts. "Put your boots on."

    Ezra flashed him a look of annoyance. "Yes," he said dryly. "Thank you."

    Chris watched Ezra pull on his boots, pull out a chair and toss aside the blanket as he donned his shirt. When he'd gone to the stove and poured himself a full mug of hot coffee, he turned and studied first Vin and then Buck. "Are they better?" he asked.

    Chris wondered if it were possible to tell how serious Ezra was by the directness of his questions, if he saved the fancy words for times when the answer wasn't so important. He tilted his head to one side. "Better," he confirmed. "Nathan says Vin's fever should continue to come down. And Buck is...sleeping," he finished awkwardly, aware that he hadn't been paying as much attention as he should have when Nathan had been telling him. He shifted in his chair. "Tell me what's been happening in town."

    "Since you left?" There was a bite in Ezra's words that made Chris look at him sharply. Ezra went back to the chair and sat down at the table.

    "Yes."

    "Since. You. Left." Ezra scratched his chin as though deep in thought.

    Chris's eyes narrowed. "You have a problem?"

    "I find it curious," Ezra studied his hand, "that a man who professes to have the welfare of an entire town at heart would simply...leave and not tell anyone where he was going."

    Chris clenched his jaw. His hand tightened on the tin mug he was holding. "You do," he said bitingly. He leaned forward. "Then let me ask you this. When I talked to you the day before I left, what did you know about what was going on in town? You're a man who--what was it?--'professes to have the welfare of the town at heart' don't you? Did you know that Josiah was drinking himself to death over a woman, that Buck had left town?"

    "Well, I--"

    "Did you know that no one could find JD or Nathan? That Vin had left to look for Buck?"

    "I knew--"

    "Did you know anything except the fall of the cards in front of you? Tell me that, Ezra? Because I would like to know."

    Ezra's eyes had gone flat and almost as hard as Chris's at the words Chris flung at him. For a long quiet moment both men sat there and looked at each other.

    Ezra looked away first, gazing at the forest through the cabin window. "I might," he said in a low voice, "have paid more attention to what was going on."

    "Yes," said Chris and Ezra looked at him sharply, but Chris was looking at Buck who had started moving restlessly in his sleep. He'd tossed the blankets aside, exposing the large white bandage on his leg. Chris went over and put a hand on Buck's shoulder which seemed to quiet the man, then he pulled the covers back over him. He turned and looked back at Ezra with a level even gaze.

    "I should have too," Chris told him.

    He looked as if he might have said more, but the door swung open and both men shifted, instantly alert. Josiah came in, carrying the turkey Ezra had shot earlier that morning. "Gentlemen," he announced with a grin, "I believe we need to cook this thing."

    Continued...

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