Moved by Silent Hands

DISCLAIMER: The characters used herein, with the exception of original characters (please don't borrow) are the property of MGM and Trilogy. No profit sought or accepted.

RATING: PG13

WARNINGS: Language, violence

NOTES: This is a work in progress. Yakoke, Adrian, for a heart deep and true; words cannot say how much you mean to me, and to my writing. And to my new friend, Lynne Smith for beta-reading and valuable suggestions.

BIBLIOBRAPHY:
1) *Moved By Silent Hands: Title borrowed from Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam's latest "Binaural".

2) Adams, D.A.: Tapestry: The Institute for Philosophy, Religion and Life Sciences, http://www.tapestryweb.org

3) Brown, Dee: The American West. Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, NY, 1994.

4) Hutchens, A.R.: Indian Herbology of North America, Shambala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA, 1973.

5) Mails, Thomas E. Mystic Warriors of the Plains. Mallard Press, 1972.

6) Sandoz, Mari: Crazy Horse, The Strange Man of the Oglalas. Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 1992.; Originally published A.A. Knopf, New York, 1942.

7) Wexler, Alan: Atlas of Westward Expansion. Facts on File Books, New York, NY, 1995.

Chapter Eleven

It rained that night in drenching waves and rattling scatters, rain picked up off the snowy peaks of the Rockies driven before a relentless north wind coming in a howl down the silver-streaked buttes to meet him. Vin, his back against a north-facing outcropping about a mile out of town, let it wrap him in its wet violent splendor all that night.

He'd known all day he wouldn't sleep tonight, knew that before Travis, and he couldn't be wakeful in town with so much gnawing on him. So he'd come out here and met the storm because he had to let the one inside him out or end up twitching and killing crazy by the end of the week. That exhausted and ruined part of his soul that had given up every hope but one to gain peace was screaming after that lost peace now. Just leave it all and go back into the living wilderness and let it swallow him up as it once had, be alone and silent and unseen. He'd been crazy then, too, when he first walked those mountains, so far inside himself and so far removed from his own kind that he could kill men from a thousand yards and be looking right through them. Vin never wanted to be that man again, he couldn't be and hope to stand by her side one day in heaven - and that hope was all that had guided his life since her passing, all his reason for living upright on this earth so he could be with her again.

With his legs pulled up loosely and his forearms laid wide open over his knees, he stared hard into that beckoning north, and he let it rain on him, was a centered stillness in the lightening and thunder and wind. Didn't feel getting soaked to the skin, wouldn't have cared, indeed he felt a powerful kinship with the storm that could do nothing but rage and blow.

It was proving very hard on him to have Duley so vivid all the time, much as he hungered after the sense of her that had wakened at the arrival of her sister and grew stronger in her company. In her niece's. He was in a constant agitation and trying -so- hard to find level ground again, make sense of what was happening, why Duley wanted him in it, his guilt for having his friends pulled in as well. Lives rested in the hands revealed in a stroke of lightening, molten silver rain dripping off the ends of his dangling fingertips like the blood of the world. So many more lives that he'd thought, so much more complicated than just himself. Rain and wind and lightening created the siren song of everything he'd once loved and had left behind, coming to get him, now, shrieking and sighing out a welcome he didn't know whether to embrace or run from.

So he thought about the places they'd loved as the rain alternately pattered and drove against him, as lightening stalked the buttes on thunderous legs, he tried to plot the trail anew in his mind, folding in all he'd learned tonight. There was no way he could anticipate how he'd feel to see those places again without the sunny flash of her quick smile or the bright gleam of her hair or the purl of her slow warm laughter. She was there, though. And by going there, he might lose her forever. He didn't know why he knew that, but he did.

"God, Duley - what've you got me into?" Almost laughing for how many times he'd said that to her but holding it back, because too much more waited to get out behind it that he'd never be able to confine again.

The hour before dawn he finally stood up, slow and stiff yet feeling light inside, a little numb. For the first time in seven hours he looked away from the north and turned his face east, the direction of beginnings, closed his eyes and tried to settle his soul under the comfort of having thought through the mechanics of the how and where and who that would effect the trail to Laramie. The storms inside and out had quieted, purged him enough not to fight what he couldn't change, because he knew he could not. Though he was wet and cold to the bone, he didn't shiver, because a warrior didn't notice such things, and the warrior was what would be needed in the weeks ahead.

Actually, the warrior was needed this morning as well given that Peso was predictably irritated at spending the night on the range in the rain even mostly protected by an overhang. By the time Vin got him saddled and on the move toward town, he was bruised and a little torn and a lot muddy, but plenty warm enough.

*********

The stage was standing in the street when he rode in, by the mud and wet they'd started early, just after the storm broke, to get here. He'd intended to be back far earlier than this himself, but had spent hours chasing Peso - "Son-of-a-bitchin' horse" he muttered. The black still smirked in proud little prancing sidesteps of victory at having stayed a tantalizing inch ahead of the tracker's reach for most of two hours.

Vin sat him now with firm legs and short reins, and an eye to Peso's eye, which kept focusing on his leg with a hint of teeth. On the boardwalk stood several men, and Travis among them, smiling, and when the tallest took off his hat, Vin's stomach dropped and twisted inside him and Peso jerked to a halt. Red hair. Duley's brothers. He closed his eyes on a deep shaking breath, willing his hands still, his face, his heart. * Duley, don't ask this of me, Duley, I can't ... *

Then his muddy heels brushed Peso's flanks and he let the reins out and walked open-eyed into whatever would be like a man onto a gallows.

"Vin!" J.D. came off the porch as he passed and heeled back a little at how muddy and tattered the tracker looked, knuckles scraped and a tear on the near pant-leg with a bloody knee under it.

"What in hell happened to you?"

Vin thought about that, fingered the rein taut as Peso arched his chin into his chest trying to slip the bit. J.D.'s face told him how ragged he looked, unshaven and scraggle-haired and dirty as a hermit.

"Uh ... Vin?" J.D.'s dark eyebrows drew down; Vin just sat there, staring over at the well-dressed gentlemen talking with Judge Travis, their eyes dismissing the town and everyone in it with the disdain so common to easterners. Then a slow sweet smile crept onto his face and his body relaxed all over on a deep sigh.

What was, Vin thought, damned well was. He was in it and his trail was before him, dreading a thing had never kept it from happening. Had their minds made up about Four Corners, those two did, didn't care for it, nor likely for anything west of what they held to be civilized country. Well, he didn't care much for that society and reckoned he had as much right to his opinion as they did to theirs.

The smile was in his eyes, too, when he looked down at J.D., feeling more like himself than he had for awhile, and he drawled, "What happened? Well, sat out in that storm last night, n' then Peso this mornin' - Peso bein' the worst of it."

The kid grinned up at him, set at ease with only a smile, shaking his head at the contentious black horse and reaching for the cheekstrap of his bridle to draw his head forward. Peso forgot his vindictive ire for the moment in that absently knowing caress.

"Those the folks Travis was waitin' on, eh?" Vin confirmed, tipping his head toward the little group on the boardwalk."

"'Pear's so. Kinda snooty, y'ask me, all but laughed out loud when he told 'em I was Sheriff." Still bristling at that, though he pretended not to care and Vin felt a defensiveness rise in him. He didn't see Elizabeth, but as he watched, Chris, Buck and Ezra approached and smiling introductions were made. God, they were met and mingled now, it was begun right in front of him. There was a great deal of nodding, handshakes, Chris silent and hawk-eyed but Buck and Ezra engaging and friendly. He glanced down at himself, wrinkled and damp and disreputable looking, and his smile got the littlest bit wolfish. He'd thought for a second to get cleaned up first, but hell - might be more fun this way, and if he was going to be forced into unpleasant company, he might as well enjoy it as much as he could.

"Vin? Where ya goin'?" J.D. could hardly believe Vin intended to join the little group on the boardwalk the way he looked, but then he caught on and followed along, grinning, to see how it went over. Vin had a nasty sense of humor sometimes and J.D. didn't particularly care for the Monroe brothers himself.

" ... gentlemen, we'll all feel much more secure, certainly, to be traveling with men familiar with the territory and the Indians of the region." Judge Travis was saying, pleased with himself to have arranged the combination of parties. Indeed, everybody looked pretty pleased, the brothers examining the three regulators as if they were livestock they had just purchased.

Deliberately Vin took Peso past the hitching post within range of the brother's backs before dismounting, letting the reins and Peso's head go and swallowing a wicked grin when Peso acted like Peso and snaked his head forward to clip the nearest hat. So happened it was a fine beaver stovepipe hat that spun around on the man's head as he ducked and clapped both hands to the brim, turning to see what had caught at him and confronted by Peso's yellow teeth and black whiskered chin.

"What in hell!" He exclaimed, taking a little hop backwards and yanking the expensive hat with him so Peso's teeth clacked as it pulled free; the horse tossed his head rapidly up and down and both Chris and Buck recognized the black's amusement, turning away to minimize their own. Then Vin, muddy and bedraggled and wearing a broad hapless smile, came up the steps with his filthy hand outstretched and all three of his friends suddenly found the opposite direction fascinating, Buck seemingly suffering a slight fit of dust in his throat. Travis started, swallowed a frown and moved to make introductions as smoothly as the situation allowed; Tanner was more a rascal than he'd thought, and the expensively dressed and accoutered Monroe brothers both drew back from him like offended thoroughbreds.

"Ah, Mister Tanner!" Orrin said with an apologetic glance at the brothers on behalf of the uncouth wildman before them, "Mr. Monroe, this is Vin Tanner." Vin reached out and snatched up Stephen's limp hand, pumping it awkwardly but enthusiastically.

"And this is also Mr. Monroe ..." Tanner's face went faintly perplexed and the Judge fixed him with a stern eye, "Mr. -James- Monroe. They lead the party we will be escorting north."

"Well, ain't that jes' dandy as a rooster in th'mornin'." Vin drawled, and Buck's breath exploded out of him in a renewed coughing fit that was still insufficient to draw the brother's horrified attention away from the scraggly unshaven reprobate who had been contracted by Mr. Travis to lead their way to Ft. Laramie. Suddenly the idea of joining them seemed a little less attractive.

"Mr. Tanner is an experienced scout and frontiersman." The Judge offered, dark eyes arrowing from Buck and Chris to Vin - they had no idea just how leery easterners could get, "And he knows the route we'll be traveling as well as the tribes along the way." This did not seem to ameliorate the brothers' horror. He'd never known Vin to be so perverse, but it was all he could do to restrain moments of wanting to laugh himself at the uncouth barbarism Vin was so blatantly acting out. They were a stuffy pair, the brothers Monroe, looking at everything and everyone with a faint air of disdain, but they were not stupid.

"Y'know, sirs," Vin said, cocking his head back and squinting one eye almost closed so the mud on his cheek cracked and flaked off in a tiny shower, "That's Indian country all the way, Comanche, Ute, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapahoe ..."

"Sioux, yes, yes ..." The eldest brother, Stephen, interrupted, brushing at something on his broad blue lapel, a handsome man, wide-shouldered and brawny and fit-looking; "Our brother Gerald is a Captain at Fort Laramie, Mr. Tanner, we are well aware of the denizens of those mountains." Unphased by a recitation of tribes that had been legend, and Vin frowned. As if they might already be quaint anachronisms and his chest clogged on a sudden aching fury that banished all trace of humor - indeed, of oafishness - from his face. The sudden sharpness of his blue eyes was lost on them, however. Smug and superior and proprietary as if all the west was already theirs, as if there was nothing they need fear from the savages who dwelt in the land they intended to take. The people were in the autumn of their time, Vin knew, and in these bland handsome Monroe brothers the certainty of winter was coming hard; he hoped he was dead and in Duley's arms before then.

Not yet, however, was that proud nation humbled, and that they were fools to travel those ancestral territories with such naivety was allowed plain onto his face. In their defense of Pa Sapa, the war societies of the Lakota would display all that war truly meant beyond the civilized counting of harmless coup or raiding for horses that was more entertainment between tribes than true conflict. On the sanctified breast of the world they would fight in full regalia and with every savage wile and spirit, every hill and canyon and tree their ally, and every act of defense a sacred act that would sustain both warrior and land. Behind Crazy Horse, as great a shaman as the people had ever known and humble as the least worthy among them, they would stand in determined ranks to keep the whites from gouging the life they could not even see out of the Pa Sapa, This gold would come drenched in white blood, and he knew a warrior's moment of pure uprushing eagerness for the honors they would pile up that no surrender could tarnish. They would stand like men, walk into the Spirit's will with war-song on their lips, their women and children hidden deep in unknown places.

They would lose, they would be driven and herded to the meanest lands that would remain theirs only until something of value was discovered thereon, then they would be driven and herded to still meaner patches until they were utterly dependent upon the government that had impoverished them to sustain their lives. But they would never be forgotten nor would the people be lost, this also his vision had shown him. They would stand in the dark generations to come like signposts back into harmony, and one day they would rise, pride renewed, though he and all he knew would long be dust by then. His smile was both teeth and amusement.

"Well, so long's you're -aware-, then." A dangerous edge to voice and eyes that again slipped past the scandalized brothers.

"Gentlemen - " Travis interposed himself between Vin and the Monroe men, seeing a sudden flare of true hostility, "May I suggest that we meet this evening to discuss the route and other travel plans?"

"That'd be fine, Mr. Travis, we gotta finish up at Nettie's anyway n' ought t'be on the road." Chris said, taking the lead as Vin wanted him to and ending the game that was maybe more dangerous than he'd thought. The gunslinger looked down at him without a smile anywhere but his eyes; "You get on over t'the bath-house and catch up, Mr. Tanner?"

"Reckon I need to?" Vin asked innocently, brushing himself off as if he wasn't just smearing it around and Buck came down to chivy him along from an upwind distance, always willing to make a bad impression.

"C'mon Tanner, what's it been, two months now? I swear, I'm afraid to light a cigar 'round you for fear you'll just catch fire or something ..."

Travis was almost relieved to see them head out of town not an hour later toward Nettie's to finish the work they'd begun the day before. Tanner in so mercurial a mood, being so uncharacteristically troublesome, had laid an uncertain and edgy shadow over everything he was trying to manipulate, and he was just as glad to have him away from the brothers Monroe.

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

Nettie had handed Vin coffee in the kitchen and made him look at her to get the cup from her grip. Every scrape and shadow on him went straight to her eye like every wrong thing happening leaping for redress, tattle-talin' on him. He couldn't hope to hide a thing from her, same as his own Ma.

"Boys say you're all goin' on a little trip north." She said pleasantly, smiling, but her eyes keen as hooks into his and him feeling like a rascal caught at something wicked, wishing it was so simple a thing.

"I meant t'speak t'you about that." And he held the screen open for her, saw her settled on her rocker before levering himself down onto the edge of the porch. He leaned forward, elbows braced on his wide-spread knees, and said with uncharacteristic hesitancy,

"Nettie, the woman who's goin' to Ft. Laramie, Elizabeth n' her niece ... she's ... well, she's sort of ... kin, I guess." How strange the word felt in his mouth, how explosively strange inside him and he didn't even know what to do with the feelings, didn't know what they were.

Nettie set her chin and peered down at him, but he only looked down into his cup, not giving her his eyes where he couldn't hope to hide anything from her. Not kin so close that Elizabeth hadn't had appreciative eyes to him, Nettie thought.

Nettie knew the ways of solitary men and had long since felt that disconnection in Vin Tanner, wild and fiddle-footed as the wind and always had been. He had no kin, had not since his Ma. It took her a moment to produce an even tone, not wanting to express any opinion of folks who could let a 5 year-old come up alone or go to an orphanage no matter how distant a relation he might be. "Don't think you ever mentioned kin beyond yer Ma, son." She said.

He sighed and bowed his head, feeling like a right coward but soothed by the faint anger in her tone in his defense. He'd always been honest with her and now was bound to disappoint her; telling her the truth and having her see the mortal dangers in his logic would not stop any of this. He was being moved by invisible forces he couldn't explain, he knew how much was unthought and how few pitfalls accounted for and she would know it, too.

Her quiet eyes lay heavy on him, knowing she suspected something going on between Elizabeth and him and reluctant to have her think him such a fool, but he just couldn't let this go, and she would not understand. No one understood what it was to have Duley feel so near, the Pa Sapa drawing on the wells of memory, how much he wanted it from the second he'd decided he had to go. God, he was crazy with wanting it, so lonesome for so long, empty ...

"Jes' somethin' I gotta do."

There was a stubborn set to his profiled chin as he lifted his head into the freshening breeze, a precarious boldness she felt the unsteadiness of and wondered at.

"I'm bound to it, Nettie, can't be helped." Nor refused, nor stopped in any way, this had to play out and there was a fatalistic note in the proclamation that made her squint at him over a little shiver. Fate moving in him, not knowing himself beyond it had to play out, not knowing where, into what, or even all of why.

At last she said in a deeply maternal hush, "Boy, you keep yer wits about ye, n' I'll keep y'in my prayers." He didn't move from his contemplation but for blinking slowly. She was certain there was a great deal she didn't know that would illuminate the mysteries he pursued, men being full of things they couldn't share with women. Things to do with the mysteries between male and female, made for each other but different, soul and mind. She sat back then, her chin tucked down and a steely smile touching her face. Friends he had, whether he knew what friends were or not, a brace of fine noble scoundrels and running between them that fierce rough masculine love that could bear any of them through anything. All these boys had suffered dire and deep in their time, all were damaged and scarred, but together, in this needful place where what was noble was called forth, each had their time to heal. Maybe Vin's time was upon him. She selfishly prayed that he was meant to survive it, and might be whole after whatever bleak craving pulled him away from her, from his friends, from this town - from himself.

Then Nettie did what she always did in the helpless face of a stubborn man's determination; she went back to her kitchen with a touch to his shoulder as she rose, and she left it in God's hands with all the faith in the world that He had given Vin what was needed, and would continue to give it.

Chapter Twelve

Nettie figured the coon must have come in after the wall went down and found a cozy spot under the fallen timber, they were opportunistic critters, loving comfort as much as Ezra Standish and as bold about taking it. Sympathetic though she was, however, cold and ugly as the tail of this winter had been, he was a critter after all and would go for the easy eggs and hens she needed herself. Plus he was making the stock nervous, Vin's horse in particular, damned troublesome creature suited Vin like prickly suited a cactus. They'd come in an hour ago, Chris, Buck and J.D., Vin a few minutes behind them, their horses muddy to the knees from the road, congratulating themselves on having had the foresight to complete the roof, and had put their horses up inside out of the drizzle. She could hear them in the hollow finishing the coop before completing the sheathing of the stable, so she figured she'd chase this old coon out of their way for them.

"Go on, now, coon, git on back where you belong ..." Poking and rattling around the fallen timbers and siding planks with the business end of her pitchfork, the pistol in her apron pocket just in case. Big male raccoons could be dangerously aggressive, and though she wouldn't hurt him if she didn't have to, if he came at her she'd be wearing him as a coat-collar.

By the deep timbre of the hiss and the sudden drastic motion of the loose wood as she prodded to the far right side of the pile, it was indeed a big one.

"Yeh, shoo, go on now ..." She was encouraged by the direction the shift of planks moved in, he could easily get out that way and quick into the rim of the woods. But the coon, looking huge from the standing bristle of it's fur as it popped unexpectedly out of the rubble, instead dashed under the lowest slat of the nearest stall - Vin's horse - going for the loosely stacked tack in the rear.

It all happened in a split second, though in Nettie's alarm it seemed to play out in pieces, any move she made could make it worse and she froze. That crazy anvil-headed monster of a horse reared high with blood in his eye, nostrils wide and teeth bared as he lunged with both sharp front hooves after what had startled him. Quick and deadly as his master's guns, he caught the raccoon a glancing blow in the hindquarters so it screamed and whipped around in a brindled blur at what had hurt it, sharp teeth striking and the big black horse wheeling like maddened top in the small space. Peso crashed into the walls trying to bring his big hind hooves to bear, and with a panicked squeal those powerful haunches launched a kick that went straight through the slats of the front of the stall and took Nettie in the head before she could get out of the way. She spun to the floor like a dropped stone, unmoving.

Peso was determined to kill that coon, and it scuttling along the back of the stall was all that kept the inflamed horse from trampling Nettie's still body, tines winking in the straw by her head.

Chaff and dust exploded out of the door as Vin yanked it open and ran in, the heart that had taken off hammering at the first sound of Peso's scream seizing up like he'd been punched - Nettie lay on the straw-strewn stable floor.

His shout was too primal to even be her name, but her name was all it was. With no thought to anything but getting Peso away from her, he ran straight at the hysterical animal with upraised arms and a savagely challenging cry. **Oh God, Oh God, please God** Making himself a target and scared like he'd never been scared since he was five, not of Peso, but of the bright flag of blood on her white hair. So long as he kept him away from Nettie, Vin didn't care if the damned horse finally killed him.

Peso nearly did.

All in one split second Vin tromped on the upturned tines, felt them pierce his boot and drive deep into the sole of his foot so he went off-balance with a wild jerk of his arms. The stable door got yanked open and a pair of mighty hind hooves caught him with a resounding thump that J.D. heard as he ran in and cried out helplessly. Vin got taken off his feet and knocked back into the wall so hard the shelves and the wall behind it cracked and a cloud of dust burst up into the sudden daylight lancing though the breach.

"HAAAAAAA!" J.D. snatched a saddle blanket off the floor and whipped it open right into Peso's tossing face, quick and sure as a boy knowing horses even when they were crazed, driving the plunging animal around him like he was a tethered pivot toward the door. "EyAH!" Encouraging him there, "Run!" Spotting the others past Peso coming toward the stable at an urgent run and shouting a warning, "Stay away from the door! Horse comin' out, Peso comin' out, let 'im run!"

They scattered like leaves before a hurricane, leaping and dodging as the big black horse exploded out of the door, shouldering the closed side open with a resounding crash and looking three times his normal size, eyes wild and rolling, ears swiveling in rapid jerks, head snaking out low ready to strike or bite anything that got in his way. They'd seen Vin take him on and knew how dangerous this horse was, they got out of the way.

Buck, the only one who'd been mounted, kept his gray between Peso and the road and flung his arm into the air to spook the horse away from the house and into the paddock, the gate already swung wide open and held with his foot on the top rail. Dust churned into a pall, the cries of frightened animals sharp and raucous. The rest were running for the barn before the fence pole clattered into place.

"Jesus ..." Buck exclaimed at the violent ruin, Nettie and Vin both down and J.D. frantic between them, Vin was trying to get up but couldn't seem to master his body enough for it, reaching toward Nettie with one hand the other pressed hard to the high left side of his chest. In the space of seconds his face went from red to white to an alarming shade of grey before Chris got to him, crouching down in front of him and pushing against Vin's shoulders.

"Stay down, Vin, stay there ..." The tracker's mouth was open in a useless attempt to drag air into lungs that felt like they'd been smashed flat and Chris dared give him a little shake, "Breathe, Vin, take it slow, c'mon now ... he get kicked, J.D.?" Trying to turn Vin's wide blue eyes to him, but Nettie was all Vin saw at the end of the dark tunnel he was falling backwards into, the terrible vision of blood on her hair and how white she was when Buck knelt beside her. J.D. helped to turn her gently and very carefully so her spine didn't move - Nathan's doing, that they knew to do this.

"Vin!" With a very small sound, choked and rattling, Vin collapsed back against the fractured wall like his bones had been stolen, his lips blue.

"J.D.!" Chris snapped, having had no response to his question, "What happened?"

"I don't know, Chris, I come in and Peso was kickin' Vin halfway across the barn, Nettie was already down ..."

Quickly Chris pulled Vin out from the wall and laid him flat, seeing for the first time the broad imprint of Peso's muddy shoe on the left side of the tracker's chest, a blurred patch in front of his left hip; likely broke the shelf behind him on the small of his back, too. Chris didn't know what to do but stay with him, half afraid to touch him and praying he was breathing, though he couldn't see it if he was. His eyes darted between Vin's face and his chest, no rise or fall, nothing there, and just when he was beginning to panic, the tracker suddenly jerked and sucked in a shuddering gasp, arms and legs reaching as if he'd suddenly wakened to find himself falling.

"Be still, Vin ..." Chris said, gripping the near bicep as hard as he dared, but Vin went to his side, his arm outflung toward her and a strange visceral sound in his throat, breathless and constricted. His hand closed fiercely on top of Chris' bent knee.

"Nettie ..." Chris didn't recognize the rasping wheeze as a word, stupidly patting Vin on the shoulder as Buck took the old woman's shoulders into his arms, J.D. taking her legs to get her off the floor and into the cabin. Vin tried clumsily to get his legs under him, bent double and breathing in a choked wheeze. Frantically he reached for Chris, trying to ask for help getting up, needing to get up, unable to do it as he was unable to get more than a teaspoon of breath for every laboring pull. Chris wasn't Nathan, and though he knew Vin should stay where he was and was deeply worried at his color, his instinct was to help a man to his feet without making him beg. With Vin, he had no choice, he wasn't about to stay down.

He squatted down and dragged Vin's right arm up and over him, setting his shoulder into Vin's armpit and standing them both up, ignoring the eloquently pained grunt. Half-bent was as far as Vin could go just now, but they followed Buck and J.D. carrying Nettie like a porcelain treasure into the house, moving in a broken shuffle.

"Go get Nathan, J.D." Buck said urgently the instant she was lying down, "Ride hard, boy," he hollered after him, knowing the kid could. Chris barely managed to interpose himself in front of Vin as J.D. came barreling out the bedroom door, one quick hand shot out to meet the kid and swung him past by his shirt before he collided with them and likely killed Vin. Even so, Vin pushed off Chris as if he were moving too slowly once they were in Nettie's room, staggering to her bed and finding nothing in her bloody stillness to reassure him.

"She's alive, Vin." Buck told him immediately, "She's breathin' fine, her heart-beat's good..." Vin's face was all eyes and tight-pulled angles. He was hurt, Chris knew it by the pain he couldn't bother to hide and that hand unable to break off his own side, like he was keeping himself together there. He pulled Buck out of his way to get to her, his knees cracking hard as he went down by the bed, panic in the hand that reached for the bloody cloth in Buck's hand, eyes fastened on her face.

"Nettie, damnit ..." Hardly a breath, rasping and rough, "I'll shoot ... that fuckin' horse 'tween the eyes ... Nettie." Tenderly bathing the blood away that had poured down her face, swallowing hard and panting against the nausea that took him deep to see the gash along her temple, the gleam of bone ... no breath to voice the prayer that thundered in his head, God, oh my dear God don't take her, don't take her from me ...

Chris and Buck exchanged anxious looks, Buck had his hand on Vin's shoulder, his long leg braced against Vin's back to steady him unobtrusively, and he was not steady but for the hand that touched her.

Two hours he knelt by the bed holding a compress to the terrible wound that would not stop bleeding. Both Chris and Buck could see what it cost him but neither said a word, only brought him what he asked for, pushed coffee into his hand and returned it to him when he just set it on the floor beside him.

He yielded only at the sight of Nathan coming through the door, head rising and face bald as a child with hope. Then he let Buck haul him up by the back of his shirt and catch him when his knees dipped, let him pull him back so Nathan could get to her. Nathan with his sure firm hands, Nathan with those eyes so achingly tender and wise, he had to know how to fix it ...

The tracker bumped gently into the wall behind him and one hand sought that support as he Buck let him slide down onto Nettie's cedar chest, refusing to move any further. Could not, but only Chris realized it.

As always, Nathan brought the calm with him; here was the one who could do something, who knew the terrible mysteries of blood and bones and torn flesh and could face them armed to win.

"Buck, how is she?" J.D. came barreling in to the front door on a beeline to Nettie's room, wiping sweat from his brow with his sleeve, hot and breathing hard with exertion. Buck didn't miss that he stopped at the doorway to Nettie's room, asking and anxious, but afraid to know if it wasn't good.

"Hasn't waked." Buck moved between J.D. and the bed, blocking the kid's view with a reassuring smile he didn't feel. "Close in here, ain't it? What say we tend t'those hard-run horses." Buck's long arm reached around and gripped his shoulder, turning him out the door and carrying him along.

"But ..."

"Kid, you faint at the sight of your own blood, let Nathan work. C'mon now, them beasts worked hard for you."

J.D. couldn't leave them frothed and blowing in the yard still saddled, his bay had run her heart out for him and kept up a flat run with Nathan's fresh horse all the way back.

Vin didn't look up when Chris sat next to him in a soft creak of leather, and the gunslinger kept his eyes on the long dark curve of Nathans' wide-shouldered back as he bent close to examine the wound, giving Vin that much privacy, at least. The tracker just sat there against the wall, leaning over his wide-spread knees as if a stone yoke lay across his shoulders. Long fingers tangled and worried at each other and Chris felt the jagged edge of his silence, simply maintaining a presence as anchor against the wash of his terror. Vin and Nettie were close as mother and child, and Chris didn't want to think what would happen if he lost his Ma twice.

From the kitchen came a soft cry as Casey came home and the murmur of Buck's soothing voice keeping her out of the room. Chris heard a sharp soft intake of breath beside him and felt a tremor shake the tracker, teetering on the verge of cracking into a hundred bleeding pieces and Chris' hand moved sideways off his knee before he even felt it go, carried by some strange instinct to settle over the knot of Vin's fingers. They stilled at once, all of him, Vin wasn't hardly breathing with trying to hold it in and Chris never looked at him. Just gripped there, just that hand strong to take the sudden deep shudder as Vin's breath broke. Hot wetness spattered on their joined fists, and it was all the sign Chris had that Vin wept.

Chapter Thirteen

It took Nathan over an hour to close the wound on Nettie's forehead, careful cat-gut stitches first in the muscle, then the overlying skin so the scar would be as faint as possible. No one breathed through the delicate dance of his big hands, Vin held the lamp and would not look away from the grisly task no matter how it hurt to watch. It was full dark by the time Nathan straightened up from this task, and she'd waked just as he did to a most dismaying discovery.

Nathan said Nettie's sight might return once the swelling went down, and though Vin keenly felt her fright to wake in such a condition, she'd quickly regained her composure and patted the healer's hand with a nod that made her wince. Vin's heart rode low as a stone. Nathan was encouraged that the blackness was not utter, and she'd trusted his hopeful opinion and allowed him to wrap her eyes in order that they, too, might rest. As he'd worked, she had smiled wanly at the unseen worry she could feel surrounding her, told the seven with gruff reassurance that they were breathing up all the air in the room and, as far as she knew, her stable still needed walls. No one said it was night.

Then she'd pressed her fingers into the long calloused hand around hers, knowing it was Vin's, and tugged him down to her, fully aware of the effect her blankly searching face must have on him and using it shamelessly. She knew him, and putting Peso down was not out of the question if the injury proved permanent. Sternly she told him that Peso was only a horse being a horse and was not to blame any more than the coon had been or her for standing there. That cantankerous beast was important to Vin whether he admitted it or not, and she wouldn't have it on her conscience. Then she slipped into a comfortable sleep. Exhausted, they had settled down themselves wherever they would but for Vin, who'd left the house by himself with a warning eye to the boys before Nathan noticed he'd been hurt, wanting all the healer's heart and skill focused on Nettie.

Weigh on him as it did, still, it had changed nothing. What he had to do was as clear now as it'd been last night, this morning, up to the very minute ... it was left only to figure how to get a good store of ammunition, maybe some rifles, definitely as many pistols as he could get his hands on ... and how to keep the rest out of it. He hadn't been able to help Duley when she needed help the most, but he was not unable to help the Lakota, and it hurt so much to think of being there again that she wouldn't have called him to it for any other reason, she'd loved him. No other reason. He was not thinking of losing her there. No, not thinking of that.

Chris found him, of all places, about four feet up off the ground on a low crooking branch of one of Nettie's apple trees just outside the farthest shadows of the yard lamp. He perched there with his back pressed to the gnarled bole and one foot drawn up for balance, the other dangling in mid-air, and he didn't look over as Chris made his way through the damp litter of sticks and composting leaves and thin melting snow. The tracker crossed his arms over his chest like he was cold. More like he was prepared to be stubborn, and Chris swallowed a very impatient sigh. It was four hours before dawn, a near-full moon silvering the naked skyward grasp of tree-limbs, and too damned cold to be doing this outside. But indoors was not somewhere Vin liked to be when he was distressed.

"J.D. n' Buck are goin' back t'town come morning." Chris said as he approached, a moving sliver of shadow among stark black and white stillness. Vin wanted him to go away, would've gone himself if he could, needing solitude like nobody would understand to figure out how he was going to do what he knew he had to do. And then how he'd live with it.

"They can tell them Monroes n' Judge Travis ..." Chris went on, "That you won't be goin."

"-Will- be goin', don't remember stickin' any of my words in your mouth."

Sharp as a whipcrack and entirely misdirected, Chris knew - in fact, he was far more familiar with that explosive kind of irritation than Vin was, though he wasn't usually on this side of it. His respect for Buck's restraint rose considerably.

"'Goin'', are you?" He said, "Like we shouldn't have expected otherwise?"

"Ain't my concern what you expect, an' ain't yer place t'decide things for me. Last time I looked I was full grown n' plenty able t'do it myself."

The gunslinger's grin was feral, unthreatened and understanding of times when picking a bloody fight, even tempting death, was the only thing a man could do to feel like he had some kind of control. He leaned comfortably against the tree and peered up at the tracker, still as a dozing cat but nothing easy about him just now, he was wound so tight it was a wonder he didn't just start cracking into pieces. Vin had been still for too long, in that room all day, out here in the night ... there was a giveaway jitter in his fingers only a gunman would have noticed, a high hot fire ferociously suppressed. Right on the littlest edge, and so Chris kept him plain in the corner of his eye, rising to the bait and knowing it for bait as he did. The truth was always a potent force with Tanner, who was too honest to deny it even when it disarmed him. He wielded that truth now with authority now by saying,

"Figgered I knew where your loyalties were. Guess I was wrong."

He had always known that Vin was a dangerous man, and the look the tracker turned down on him held none of that back. He wasn't but a foot above him and could move snake-quick, Chris had seen him drop men three times his size when he wanted to. But the gunslinger just looked right back with the warning smile of a man not easily dropped - and every bit as dangerous.

Tanner's eyes got dark and he had the strangest expression on his face. Chris halfway thought he'd jump down at him but he didn't say anything nor move, his mouth thin and hard under the black half-moon of shadow cast by his hat-brim. Chris took advantage of whatever kept him where he was.

"Vin, there ain't no way in hell you'd leave Nettie right now over 'knew her Pa'. Now we're all in it too, and Mary."

Making himself plain and Vin's eyes widened - he'd missed that entirely. He ought to have known Chris would think along that path and he was ashamed not to have done so himself, Mary had proven herself an ally more than once. For Chris, preserving his own hide wasn't a matter of much concern, and he'd know the boys could take care of themselves if it got rough - but Mary was another matter altogether, and he should've known Chris would be in mind of her safety above all. Too much was slipping by him that could hurt them, things surprising him he should've thought through long and hard, and there was so much he had to keep hidden ...

Chris cocked his head with a lopsided shrug, knowing he'd made his point and a little surprised Vin hadn't anticipated it. He said reasonably,

"Now, much as I like you, I figger we can do this two ways: Bloody our knuckles on each other's hard heads is one - and I'm gonna have braggin' rights in that case, shape you're in ..."

Vin had a wildly savage urge to pit himself against the obstacle of this man and deflect the wrong things he couldn't change, but that small tight smile and the brightness of those green eyes said Chris had laid back all he was going to, he had his heels dug in and would do whatever it took. Ferocious in the defense of what he loved whether he admitted loving Mary or not. Vin would tangle with him at the risk of being hurt beyond being able to ride, much less do everything else he had to do before then. Not being able to catch a full breath would be a powerful handicap, and if Larabee hit him in the ribs it'd probably kill him, man had a punch like a hammer. Chris' smile stretched an infuriating inch.

"Or . we could have us a drink or four of Nettie's sippin' whiskey while you're tellin' me what's so important you'd leave Nettie blind n' ride off on the horse that done it to her."

Every brutally measured word struck Vin like a fist and he stilled in helpless and breathless guilt, knowing Chris had done it on purpose.

Chris nodded meaningfully, words as direct as bullets sometimes; "One way or the other, believe me, you're gonna tell me before me and the boys step into somethin' that stinks without even knowin' it might be underfoot."

For a long moment they teetered between violence and surrender, both too proud, Vin desperate to keep her private because anything he gave away in explaining would be pieces of her lost to him forever. Foolish, probably, impossible to explain, but it felt that way, he'd hoarded her that obsessively. He thought furiously about what to do, unwilling to accept the fact that telling Chris about Duley was all he could offer, because he had to keep them away from what else he intended to do on this journey. The sense of being unexpectedly cornered was almost more than he could stand and fight was his first instinct. Any other man would be flat on his back countin' stars by now - that it was Chris changed that instinct entirely.

Chris kept his eyes direct and his hands low and easy, less with the will to do senseless battle - unless Vin wanted to, in which case Chris could certainly be persuaded - than to have Vin trust him.

How important that was ghosted across the gunslinger's cool face and Vin got caught short on that, suddenly understanding the cruelty of Larabee's approach. What in hell did a wounded critter do but strike out at what hurt it? He was hurt to know Vin was hiding something from him and mad to have Vin's trust matter to him, as Chris was always angry at finding himself giving a damn. That unwilling admission of how much Vin counted to him undid the tracker's urge to violence. There was no choice, now.

Tanner sat there a long time scanning the valley and the edge of the woods, thinking how he could protect them all from blame for what he had to do on this journey. Couldn't keep 'em out of it altogether, so he had to find a way to keep them out of that part of it that would be seen as treason. Chris waited, patient as a man who dealt life and death understood. Tanner wasn't being stubborn, wasn't a talker at any time and didn't say anything he hadn't turned over in his mind first. This was obviously something so deep and private that he couldn't find a way to say it.

Chris had no idea how true that was, and Vin couldn't let him figure it out. He hadn't anticipated being pushed quite so far, quite so fast, and was unprepared. Damned well unprepared for just about every blessed thing that had happened in the last few days, and he had the ominously queasy feeling that he wasn't ever going to get his balance again 'til this was done. Moved by silent hands, invisible forces pushing him along, fate or ghosts or some cause he couldn't see dragging him toward something he couldn't know beyond his own ideas for it. What he had to do was clear, but it was all that was. The hows were murky still, and the others were getting tangled up in it without his being able to stop it.

Chris knew Vin well enough to recognize the fight going out of him, a resigned slant to his lowering shoulders that said conversation might now be possible without fists as punctuation.

"C'mon, cowboy." Chris beckoned, "Ain't room for two up there n' I ain't the sort t'roost anyway." A flash of teeth, a hand held up to him, and Vin leaned heavily coming down without caring that Chris knew he needed it. Nor had Chris said anything to Nathan, no one had. His foot hitting the ground made him hiss, the smaller hurt almost unexpected in his determination to conceal how badly his hip and chest and lower back felt; he'd passed blood when he relieved himself and hadn't said anything about that to anyone, either. Chris steadied him a moment, then let him go, walking ahead deeper into the orchard with the Nettie's whiskey bottle swinging like a pendulum from its neck between his fingers.

Vin followed reluctantly, knowing what he was about to do was as good as a lie even being a truth so dear he hardly knew how to put words to it. Knowing they were going to walk into dangers he had to keep them clear of, but clear himself that Duley was pushing him toward it. She would sacrifice herself for the people, and he must sacrifice some of her, more painful than giving his own life would be, for the same cause. Even if he didn't know how he was going to do that. Didn't have long to figure it out with Chris breathing down his neck, either.

He sank down loosely onto his haunches near the stump where Chris had come to light, arms tucked in to his aching body, and took the bottle from him, took a long bitter burning drink from it before handing it back. After they'd shared nearly half of it in utter silence, Chris realized Tanner was deliberately getting drunk. Maybe it was the only way he could say what he had to say, and that made him more than a little anxious, but he sipped while Vin drank and let an hour wind past in that way.

"By the time I was twenty-two, I'd been on my own for seventeen years ..." Vin's voice light as air, as if he were at a far lonesome distance and talking to himself. Then he stopped short, shook his head with a frustrated sigh and took another swallow or two. For awhile he was silent again, but Chris could feel the furious chaos in him, fingers tapping, rocking slightly, the fringe on his buckskins swaying so he appeared all in motion as a bird huddled on a wind-tossed branch. Knees and shoulders high and tense, all of him sharp angles but the deep curve of his back. Like too much folded down way too small.

Vin wondered how he could pull one thread out of the complicated loom of his past, and now the shaping pattern of his future, that would be enough to make Chris understand why he would lie to him now. Because he'd know it eventually. What he'd been even so young, what he'd done and what had been done to him, what she meant in that time of his life when all he'd seen was shades of gray. Yes, he'd finally been free and self-sufficient, welcome at the Lakota camps, loved even ... but he'd been so alone, battered and broken and wrung out so dry that he'd felt invisible. How did he explain that the color of her smile had been bright as hope when he'd had none of his own? How did he keep this man, any of them, as a friend after this was done? That was more important to him than he'd ever realized. They were all at risk from both the Lakota at war and the government that would assume they shared his treason. He would have to count on the Judge to convince the authorities otherwise if the worst happened.

The inside of his mouth bled from setting his teeth to it over and over, giving the whiskey an added sting and a coppery backtaste. He knew they all thought him to be temperate because he never drank to inebriation, but the truth was that too much alcohol weakened the walls that held back the flood he didn't dare tempt. He had to be careful here, a delicate balance in drawing those walls down enough to talk about her and not a jot more. His emotions were too close to the surface, now, too powerfully unpredictable and he had to find a way to do this, to pry open the vault he did not want to tamper with. Duley would be reason enough for his determination to go, even before Travis had asked. None of them would look past it for any hidden agenda, but knowing there was no choice didn't make the struggle to do it any less. Where did he get words to make Chris understand what he didn't wholly understand himself? Why he had to go where he was so afraid of going and, indeed, what he was truly afraid of? He couldn't reasonably explain the very real risk of losing so much more than he could tell them about now, he didn't understand it himself, which didn't make it any less real. God, he was thinking himself dizzy ...

He took another drink, let it burn and loosen him. He'd never lied to Chris, he'd only kept his own secrets as any man had a right to. But Chris was going to feel betrayed by what he was about to reveal and there was no way around it. That they had more in common than he'd known, that Vin understood things about the gunslinger he'd never let on about. And once he found out Vin had only told him now to get him off the track of something else, he'd likely never trust him again. He'd already given too much away to the Judge, he knew it, cursed the passions that had overwhelmed his common sense and counting on the Travis trusting him and his own ability to dissemble.

This could cost them all their freedom or their lives if he wasn't scrupulously careful to keep them out of it, and Duley was the only thing that would distract Chris enough to do that. He intended to manipulate them all, and it was good as a lie this time. He didn't even know whether either the ammunition or the information he would bring to the camps would be of any help more than to keep them standing with honor a few months more, maybe long enough to hide the women and children, provision them against the siege to come. He only knew he had to try.

"Well, tell me this, then, Vin - what is it you think you owe the Monroes, or the Lakota?" Chris said quietly, a minor slur making the question gentle but it was still too close to the truth, Vin had to downplay his connection to the people.

Of all the reactions the gunslinger might've expected, laughter wasn't among them, if that's what so quiet and fragile a sound could be called.

"Owe?" Vin said in a throttled voice, "Jesus, have mercy ..." Taken so by surprise, shaking his head and laughing, shaking almost soundlessly with it and covering his face with one hand for a moment when it threatened to break into something too sharp. He shouldn't have taken that last drink, it wasn't making anything easier. His tone was weighted and old under the wry humor.

"Shit. I ain't seen thirty yet, Chris, n' I feel like I've lived a hundred years. Been an orphan and damn near a slave as a child, been wild as a wolf, been an Indian n' a sharpshooter in a war I didn't believe in, been a killer of buffalo and men, 'n in all that time I never owed a living soul a goddamned thing and was glad t'have it so."

Like quiet explosions one after the other, a whole life said with graphic and jarring simplicity and more cruel than Chris had imagined. It seemed to bemuse Vin as much as weigh on him, like he was numbly distant even to himself and being forced to share things too fragile for forcing. It made Chris suddenly ashamed that Vin felt he had to bare his soul to earn his help. Tanner wouldn't have led them into anything that might harm them, he was a deeply private man and had his secrets like they all did, but he'd go through the fires of hell before he'd let them suffer on his account. Maybe he would've told them whatever he was going to tell Chris now if the time had come that it was important. Course he would've, it didn't have to be now, they could follow Vin on faith alone.

"Vin ..."

"Don't stop me, Chris - shit, you poke at me for hours n' then when I'm tryin' t'talk you get in the way, damned contrary cowboy ... " A quick flash of wolfish teeth flicked in the darkness from where Chris sat and Vin faltered, knowing Chris thought he was getting the truth now. Lord, Lord ... how do I save the people I owe more than I can ever repay without endangering these six men and others to whom he owed just as much? His sigh was soul-sick and heavy, knowing how Chris would misinterpret it, tricking him into thinking he'd won his honesty. What Vin would withhold was so dangerous, just being with him ... and God - did some part -want- them with him, -want- the Lakota to have their guns and wits and mortal skills? Guilt bled inside, things were happening too fast, he barely got his feet under him from one thing before he got knocked off 'em by another.

(Duley, I'm sorry if usin' you this way isn't what you mean me t'do, I'm doin' my best not t'disappoint ...)

"Chris, I never spoke of this to a livin' soul but one, n' you deserve t'know, you ..." A short sound, a wavering tightness, but he looked at Chris until he found his voice and let him see the regret for laying trail to his trusting eyes away from the truth. He had to trust Duley, and he had to believe it was her guiding him now and something important he had to do for her ... not her, for the people. The gunslinger would be fit to be tied and might never trust him again when this was all done, but he took a breath and set out to mislead in faith Chris would understand, and forgive.

"You been a friend t'me, Chris, n' I got no practice with such things. Maybe it's time t'be explainin' t'somebody ... maybe I'll figger it out myself in the tellin' ..." Doubting that, but willing to try, and Chris knew it was a sacrifice Vin would not have ever made for anyone else.

"Chris, I never owed nobody nothing 'til I met her. Her I owe more than my life'll ever be worth ..." Deliberately leaving the debt he owed the Lakota out of it entirely.

"That red-haired woman? How'd you come t'owe her ..."

But Vin was shaking his head, "No, no, not her, her sister. Duley." It was the first time since the day she'd died that Vin had spoken her name out loud to another living soul and his teeth clenched against the rush riding up in him on the sound. The rest came by itself, he had no will to speak it, and even though it was camouflage, it was truth as struck him to the heart.

"My ... my wife. She was my wife. Died birthin' a daughter t'me a few years ago, the babe come too early 'n we were too far away from the camps, I couldn't ..." Oh, this was too near, too hard, speaking of it even in a noble cause made his stomach clench and his lungs constrict as if the horror was upon him right this instant instead of so many years past. Vin never looked up to see the stunned look on Chris' face.

A swallow of whiskey stuck in the gunslinger's mouth as his throat closed up. Nowhere in any realm of possibility had he ever expected that.

Married, and a widower. Wife and child taken from him. Vin, lost in the struggle to drag the words out of the safety of his silence, didn't notice Larabee's shock, though he'd anticipated it with great dread. There wasn't any other way, but every word bled him and it was so much more difficult than he'd thought it would be. In vain he'd hoped the necessity would make it easier, but it was like preserving one beloved thing under the corpse of another. Even the analogy was too much, duty owed the dead concealing a duty owed the living ...

"Sometimes I can't ..." His hand went wide against his chest with a kind of mortal wonder, his voice airless and faint, "Breathe ... can't ... don't know how I'll ever ... " The hand slipped over his face in a long slow pass. "Still feel that way now and again." When all the wide open wilderness just managed to keep him from suffocating, sometimes only if he rode very fast, velocity alone pushing air into lungs that couldn't unclasp from around the grief. Moments he didn't know to this day how he'd lived through. The indelible taste of his own pistol-barrel that had not been able to overwhelm Duley's taste, sweet as nothing else in the world approached. Wanting her more than killing himself, sparing himself the torture of missing her all his life was destined to be. Wanting to be with her again and certain he had to meet her with a clean soul and good deeds as his raiment. Sure as he'd been hell-bound when he'd met her, she was not, and he'd tried to live right, seeing it as the only path back into her arms.

Chris watched him, breathless in the sudden unexpected flood of his own memories of this cruelest loss, painfully familiar with so much of the torment that crossed the tracker's moon-stark face. How many times had he eased himself in Tanner's quiet stoicism? How many times had he shown him his demons and never guessed ... Chris was not a giving man anymore, and it shamed him to have given that most intimate and agonized part of himself to Vin and not had the trust returned.

Vin fished the little harmonica out of his vest pocket, needing something to justify not looking at Chris, avoiding the betrayal on his face knowing how much deeper that betrayal was going to go. He kept having to do one hurtful thing to avoid another and the whiskey was making him so dizzy ... He looked at the harmonica a long minute or so, turning it over in his hand for the flash of moonlight down its battered silver curves, asking Duley for the strength to use the painful truth of her death to hide the unavoidable lie of his treasonous intent.

"I been tryin' t'live right 'til I'm with her again, tryin' to make it time well-spent ... tryin' not t'break n' run from livin'."

Unlike Chris, on the other hand, who broke all the time, who was riddled with un-mendable cracks and chips and splinters that ground him bloody inside and it never was a peaceful thing, he never had a glad moment of good memory.

A bitter formless rage rose up in the gunslinger that Vin had found a way to live with what destroyed him by degrees every day, every hour. Had never told him he'd had a wife, a child, though he'd known about Chris' family. Chris felt a right fool for having been so wrong about what it was he'd recognized in the tracker at first sight. He'd hoped - and those hopes fell around him now like over-ripe fruit off a shaken tree - it'd been something noble in himself answering a similar quality in Vin, some capacity he believed he'd lost being mirrored back at him. A remnant of faith that might be fanned to life, an unknown strength Vin could help him resurrect that might let him stand against what crushed and blackened him inside. The faint hope that he had those capacities, too, and had just lost touch with them.

But it was nothing heroic, nothing noble or uplifting. It was only scars and shadows and hollows in Vin's soul just like he had, the same pragmatic willingness to die and the only difference being that Vin cared how that happened and Chris didn't.

That was what it was between them that had been comfortable and easy and intimate from the first ... nothing but shared ruin - Vin just hid his better. Nothing but two men facing empty lives, living with what couldn't be lived with, a common shadow of endless grief, lost dreams, lost innocence, endurance of the unendurable ... disappointment choked him.

How had Vin come to peace with it? Sure, he was solitary and held himself apart even among them, but there was no anger in it, no torment driving him into the company of murderers and outlaws he could quarrel with, bloody, even kill, without remorse. Vin was strong in his separateness, calm in a deep unshakeable place no matter how alone he was. Complete as Chris was not. If he knew how to get to such a place, how to reconcile his grief and the life he had left to live, why hadn't he ever shared it with Chris? Why hadn't he ever told him, knowing all this time better than anyone what drove Chris to his blind drunken rages, what urged him to bloody mayhem. Watching him sink low and never reaching out with whatever understanding he had that maybe would've helped. Pissed him off to feel like that kind of fool, someone knowin' something about him he didn't know about them, someone he trusted, liked, felt damned brotherly towards.

Vin felt his anger, expected it and encouraged it like a bird leading a predator away from the nest, purposefully pricking at it to keep Chris focused there.

"Sometimes I feel bad for bein' alive," Vin admitted gravely, painfully aware of the turmoil in Chris as he sat there on that stump dumbfounded, half furious, half griefstruck because he certainly did know how that felt.

Vin knew it wouldn't change anything that this much of what he gave Chris was utterly true. He couldn't expect not to suffer some penance for what he planned to do that could so easily catch these innocent folks all up in it, but he hoped with all his broken heart it would not be the cost of losing this friend forever.

"Sometimes I feel guilty for feelin' whole on a good horse in the wild somewhere beautiful and free ... " While she was dead, and he carried her death in his heart. Unconsciously his fingertips touched his chest in exactly the haunted place Chris knew so well, where it clutched and twisted and never quite rested.

Chris watched him, eyes colder than they'd been and yet blazing with pain, searching hard for what wisdom the tracker hadn't shared with him that could love being alive when everything that mattered of life was gone. Vin's face was so still that Chris was surprised to hear the depth of emotion rasping in his voice.

"She was the only woman I ever met who loved the wilds as much as me. Losin' her, losin' our ... daughter, was so much hell on this earth that nothin' else can hurt me. Just don't -feel- things ..." Surprising Chris again with a half-mad sort of terror that was closer to Chris' own way of living with it than he'd thought Vin could grasp.

There was nothing Chris could say to ease the fearful yearning in Vin's eyes, he'd never been able to relieve it in himself, either, and by now didn't believe it ever could be. Living on so many years after them, time stretching out ahead without the ones you loved, never whole again, the hearth of his heart cold with a bleak and black and murderous despair. He didn't know how - or even if - he would live through it himself, it was a day to day struggle. Chris Larabee had no hope of salvation, no belief in heaven. But Vin did. It was all heart for Vin, doing for others what he couldn't for himself, honoring the soul she'd loved in him even if he doubted that soul still lived. Which was sorrier? To spend what was left of life seeking violent death, or to live it waiting for death like it was a prize, a reward for hard work? Which was the bigger waste?

"This was hers." Vin said, lifting the harmonica in his hand, focused there with an intensity Chris had noticed him give it before without ever knowing why.

"When she ... she give it t'me n' said I should keep it even if I never learnt t'play it. She could. Lord, she could make rocks dance, make a panther lay down n' smile. Every time I put my mouth there, where hers had been so many times ... " Pale as a ghost and his heart tearing itself apart in his chest, it was the risk he'd taken in using her memory this way and it was savaging him mercilessly.

He still didn't know how she'd smiled then, how her eyes could've sparkled up at him with death carrying her off, softly stripping his denials away from him and challenging him to live on without her. In the empty places, in the silence and solitude, he'd searched for peace, in the wildernesses he'd fought to survive, and to keep his soul alive as it wandered the barrens within him. He'd found no comfort anywhere, he'd buried love as he had never buried her, but he'd found a reason in hoping to find her again when he one day passed. He pushed the memory away, refusing, as he'd always refused, to acknowledge her dying; the bundle that had lain across his thighs all the way to the Lakota camp, that he'd passed down to Lone Wolf and left there like a rolled skin, did not require the honors due the dead because she was just ... gone awhile, that was all.

He couldn't do this anymore, he had to hope he'd done what he intended, but he had to stop talking about her, thinking about her dying. God, he had to stop, finish laying the lie out and get off alone until he could push it all down, hide it all away again.

"So I owe it to her, Chris. T'get her family there safe n' sound." Saying nothing of what he owed to the Lakota. He knew by looking at Chris that what he'd said was enough, and Chris being mad about part of it Vin just didn't have the heart to be ungrateful about.

Dawn would be coming in another hour, he was as drunk as he'd allow himself to get and would be asleep as soon as he gave himself permission to be. Knowing that was a relief so profound that his sigh was long and easing.

"Chris, I don't want you to tell the boys about this. Nobody. Don't want to talk about it again, don't ..."

"I know." Chris said, and he did, very well, confused by his own emotions but satisfied in a bitter part of himself to see Vin flinch at the reminder that he did, indeed, know. Then he recalled laying a straight razor, grim as the reaper, to Buck's throat for divulging his private hell to a curious Mary and his anger bumped hard into that. What right did he have to expect Vin to do differently? Chris looked away, hot-eyed and confused between fury and sympathy, wanting about two or three more drinks and somewhere warm and dry to lay his bones down and black out. No way he'd make sense of any of this tonight, he wasn't even going to try, but the question came out of some vindictive instinct before he knew it would.

"They're gonna think you don't trust 'em, Vin, when it's done."

Watching Vin struggling, a helplessness in his eyes that caused Chris to relent, the palm of his hand flashing in the dimming moonlight. Likely he was being too sensitive to care so much that Vin hadn't trusted him with this until now - maybe he wouldn't ever have if he hadn't forced his hand tonight, and maybe he was six kinds of a fool for giving a damn. It didn't make him feel good, not about Vin, nor about himself, but for some reason he couldn't let animosity lie between them.

"I got only one more question for you, Vin."

The tracker spread his hands, forearms outstretched across his jacked-up knees, knowing he was bound to answer whatever Chris asked. Knowing he owed him, now, too.

Chris waved an unsteady hand up and down in an all-encompassing gesture at the tracker folded down low on his heels; "How in hell d'you sit like that for so long n' drink t'boot? Don't your legs fall asleep or something? Cccch, I'd've fallen on my ass an hour ago." Vin blinked owlishly at him, taken utterly off guard, and when Chris started to laugh at him he still looked uncertain.

"C'mon, pard ..." A wealth of forgiveness in the word that made Vin feel about an inch tall. Chris rose from the stump, staggering back a step and balancing himself with his fingertips on its uneven surface.

Vin shook his head, wrapped his arms around his knees and shook his head again; "Nah, lemme stay here. Can't abide bein' inside just now, Chris, can't ... just can't is all."

The gunslinger's duster spun a swirl of shadowed cloth as he took it off and tossed it at Vin, oversetting him onto his ass so Chris laughed again;

"Use that, then - you catch cold n' Nettie'll blame me."

Chapter Fourteen

J.D. and Casey made breakfast that morning, the girl barking orders like a general and the young sheriff obeying with a bewildered clumsiness that had even Nettie laughing in her bed.

"Where's Vin?" She asked the air, though she knew Nathan sat at her side, keen to the sounds of him doing something with his vials and bottles and leather packets of powders, as many Indian remedies as white. Open-minded as well as open-hearted. It was an amazement to Nettie that Nathan could be that way after being a slave, but some men - these seven each in their ways - were far and away more than their circumstances or history. She could picture his large gracious hands moving among his decoctions in the morning light from the window, which she couldn't see, but felt in a warm ribbon across her legs. She didn't need to see him to recognize wrong in his hesitation, in the care he took answering her.

"Got an early start on the stable walls, that's him sawin' in the yard yonder." As she turned, attentive to the oddly broken growl and rasp of the saw, her head cocked toward Nathan as though she were looking right at him, and on her face the unanswered questions she knew he had heard.

Nathan's wide flat chest filled and emptied on a deep sigh, his hands still as he looked at her, eyes covered and yet a powerful presence, as Nettie had always been.

"Miss Nettie, I can't say I know what's goin' on, don't have a grasp on it at all, just that there's ... somethin' not right."

"Got anything t'do with that woman and her niece?" Nettie's words just added to Nathan's confusion and he wondered what she'd picked up, sensitive as she was to Vin - to all them, for that matter.

"Well, I don't know 'bout that, Nettie."

"But he's goin' to Lakota territory for her, that's some important."

Nathan was shaking his head thoughtfully, then realized she couldn't see the gesture and said, "Maybe that's part of it, but I don't think she's all the reason ... he ever said anything t'you about bein' there before? Because he has - Josiah, too. Vin's got some strong feelings for the tribes there, like he'd lived amongst 'em some; everybody was surprised, even the Judge."

He paused, uncomfortable speaking about Vin's business behind his back but his hackles were up about all this without his being able to put a finger on exactly why; "He got kinda het up about it, never seen anybody talk t'the Judge that way. Hell, never saw Vin talk that way t'anybody. Maybe not wanting the lady's family caught up in government doin's, but ... I don't know. Seemed like more."

Nettie turned her face into the shaft of sun she felt on her cheek; must be a clear day out, birdsong breaking bright on the wind that ran a cold dry scatter through the bare orchard. Vin had never said he was familiar with the Lakota, she'd thought all his Indian ways were Comanche or Kiowa, and he'd let her think so. It surprised her a little and, she was ashamed to admit, it hurt her pride, too, that he'd held things back from her of his life. Always thought he'd been open as a child.

She didn't like any of this, didn't want Vin going off somewhere for the sake of duty when she knew he didn't have a grasp of it. Especially if that woman had some designs on him. For the first time in a long time he wouldn't talk with her about something that was troubling him - why? Because he knew she wouldn't approve? Would see a foolish man taking a foolish risk for a foolish reason?

Vin saw evil unerringly, instincts honed on cruelties Nettie shivered to imagine, what his young life must have been like that the innocent brutalities of the wilderness were a relief to him even city born and bred. And he was never wrong that she'd seen, even through smiles and kindness he listened for undertones, looked for shadows, read the heart that would be hidden. But what if the intentions were not evil, despite the almost inevitable fact it would end up that way? Would he be fooled? Worse - would he fool himself? A woman could be a powerful influence on a heart that so seldom ventured into the deep waters man and woman created between them, and Vin had always kept his very far from such those depths. Oh, she wanted him to find love with all a mother's hope for her child's fulfillment, but not there, with that woman. Oh, not there, where he could so easily drown.

Josiah came through the open door carrying two cups, holding one to Nathan and smiling when Nettie stuck her hand out for the other.

"Usin' them eyes you got in the back of your head, Nettie?"

She chuckled and let it be a mystery, appreciating warmth and steam and scent and taste with a new-blinded acuity Josiah marveled at. Admirable woman, was Nettie Wells, abiding in her faith as he struggled to be, adjusting with pragmatic equanimity to every necessity. He learned from her more than often than she realized.

She felt the bed dip under the Preacher's muscular weight as he sat down on the end, big hand settling warm and friendly on her ankle, and she moved on her instinct, seeking help from any quarter and not above using her injury to get it.

"Nathan and I were talking about this trip you boys are all taking. Wonderin' why it seems so important to Vin. Nathan said he'd been there, to the Sioux territories up in the Rockies."

Josiah and Nathan looked at each other as Nettie spoke, a silent understanding and agreement passing between the two friends, a common guilt to be prying into things Vin wouldn't, or couldn't, explain himself. Nettie had a clearer insight to their reclusive tracker than anyone and her intuitions might be helpful. Both men agreed on needing that help, and found forgiveness in the bonds of affection they all felt for the tracker.

"Vin never talked t'you about living among the Sioux?" Josiah asked carefully, but even behind the bandages her face showed puzzlement, and a small bit of hurt she could not hide.

"No, he never did." Her chin dimpled thoughtfully; "Now what d'you suppose the Sioux and the widow Elizabeth have in common?"

Nathan shrugged at Josiah's surprised glance; the preacher had not connected the two things in that way either, and now faced a sudden wide-flung door of possibilities he'd never considered. A romantic connection between the widow and the tracker? It seemed impossible. With the exception of Nettie, Vin's dealings with women were at a polite distance, old-world formal, none of them had ever known him to establish anything near a friendship much less a romance with any woman. Buck said he was scared of them, though Josiah saw a haunted quality in Vin's peculiar shyness. Buck had been teasing him about it, of course, but that was Buck's way, he amused himself and figured men out by testing any weakness, real or perceived.

"Nettie, I'm afraid you've posed a question I can't answer. Why do you believe the two are connected? Vin said something t'you about having an interest in the lady?"

Clearly skeptical, so Nettie understood neither Nathan or Josiah had noticed it. Men could be fairly dense at times, but still ... could she be wrong? Humph. Only one man among them she trusted to read a woman anywhere near right; Buck Wilmington was a scoundrel and a rake and a carnal sinner the likes of which she'd never in her life met, but he could figure the whys - or in this case, ifs - of a woman quick as a woman could. She set that in her mind, intending to question Buck the moment she could get him alone.

Josiah knew she was worried, and all that could ease worry for anyone of intelligence was information, he understood that very well.

"Nettie, it's the Judge wants the rest of us t'go, Vin never asked." Josiah said; "And I'm thinkin' he wouldn't've."

That surprised her, which surprised him.

Something he hadn't wanted the other six involved in, then. Something he considered personal, then.

"Judge Travis seems t'think there's some hanky panky goin' on with the land grants in those parts." Nathan said, "Thinks maybe somebody's plannin' on owning a good deal of the Indian territory before anyone else gets a chance. Even though it ain't their land t'begin with." They watched Nettie's mouth open and then close again while she thought about it.

"Hmm." She said, her white head turning toward the creeping bar of morning lancing across the room.

"Well, if you don't mind, I'd like t'pick your brains on this, there's somethin' off I haven't got hold of yet, but there's somethin' ... " Neither disagreed with her, and she hadn't expected them to.

"There's gold-fever coming to the Black Hills, Nettie." Nathan said, "And it upset Vin somethin' fierce t'know it." It upset Nettie, too, by her unconcealed dismay.

"God save them." She said fervently, and Josiah's heart enlarged to know it was the Lakota she prayed for, not the invaders of that sacred land. He prayed for them himself, crying out with his one small voice that the day would come when one group of humanity no longer felt the need to not only conquer, but obliterate another. As if obliteration would lessen the stains of theft and death and no one would remember that another people belonged to these lands long before a white face was seen. This was a weight he had long carried in his heart, and this was the innate cruelty of his own kind that almost killed him to understand. Vin understood it, too, he knew that now.

Nathan laid his big long hand over Nettie's where they were knotted together in her lap, feeling the chill in them, and said, "Vin said the Lakota were good t'him and he'd have no part in movin' that along. I ain't said this t'no one yet," With an apologetic glance at Josiah, who just shrugged, a weary wisdom darkening his pale blue eyes, "But I kinda got the feelin' Vin considered them friends. Friends he might want to help."

Josiah's eyebrows rose up toward his hairline at Nathan's perceptiveness, voicing a suspicion he'd hardly acknowledged himself. Things could get mighty complicated if that was so, given the Judge's involvement. Vin wouldn't want them along if that was his intent, it was a dangerous game of treason and betrayal that could catch them all up in bloody strife. But he understood the desire very well, harboring it himself, and if was what motivated Vin now, he couldn't let him go alone into it. Nor could he let Nettie get caught up in that worry.

"You know, Nettie," Josiah said thoughtfully, "We may be entirely wrong - he said he knew the lady's father - perhaps he owes him a debt he hasn't spoken of, maybe the man saved his life or something, so he feels like it's his duty to protect his kin in return. Could be simple a thing as that." This reasoning was undeniably sound, and both Nettie and Nathan stopped to consider it, neither seeing beneath the distraction of the fluttering wing Josiah extended over their faint suspicions.

Nettie's sigh was eloquently frustrated; Vin would hold hard to such a duty, carry it out at any cost and maybe find himself trapped in a larger scheme, but men had no grasp on how much more deadly affairs of the heart could be than of politics or war. How much more likely such an affair gone wrong - as it would surely go terribly wrong - would do Vin more harm than any enemy he could fight with flesh and will and weapons. She wished she could see their faces, needed to see their faces to know if she was being misled in some kind and merciful way ...

Nathan glanced out the window and then back again when he noticed Vin standing against the pale new wood of the wall, one foot crooked up behind him casually and his arms crossed over his chest. Liquid brown eyes narrowed suspiciously as they flicked between Vin and the saw-horse he'd been working at. A half-hewn plank and the saw wedged in the cut like it'd been let go mid-stroke, and Vin didn't leave anything half-done. Easy seeming, like he was maybe waiting for a train or something, his head dipped forward so his face was concealed by his hat-brim but tight in the shoulders ... tense. Something was definitely wrong.

Chris came in just then with his hat in his hands and he could feel the somber mood in the room. He looked to Josiah, to Nathan, knowing what they'd been talking about and knowing they wanted him in it, too, figuring he'd know things they didn't. He did, but it wasn't his place to say. What he -could- do was let them see his faith in Vin and hope they all had the same faith in him not to get them into something that'd cause them grief.

"I'm goin' back t'town." He said shortly, "Buck's comin' along t'spell Ezra before he quits on us. Gonna tell them Monroes we'll be meetin' with 'em maybe tomorrow, next day."

So Nettie's injury was not enough to cancel the venture, which both Josiah and Nathan had half-suspected would be the case. That information was not as comforting as Chris might've liked, but he'd known their reactions would be the same as his, though they were not likely to confront Vin about it. Chris' eyes encouraged that restraint, spoke a trust for the tracker that both Nathan and Josiah accepted easily, if not comfortably. Nettie had the sneaking suspicion that Chris was taking Buck away from her curiosity, knowing he couldn't keep a secret or an opinion to himself. Bit if that was so, he was showing a protectiveness toward Vin that said they'd come to an understanding between them, and that could only be good.

Nathan looked back into the yard; Vin hadn't moved, though he seemed to curve forward over his crossed arms. What was it about frontier men that they refused to acknowledge injuries? As if paying them any but perfunctory mind rendered the injuries somehow more real? Long as they could deny it, sit a horse, walk - saw a damned plank - they considered themselves just fine! Idiots! It infuriated him sometimes beyond patience, but it also spoke clearly for how vulnerable injury rendered a man in these lawlessly unforgiving territories.

"Josiah ..." The healer said, not taking his eyes off the tracker outside, "Why don't you tell Miss Nettie about our meetin' with the Judge." He swung his head towards Chris as he said it and his look was blunt. "Tell you the truth, I'd as soon someone here knew what was goin' on, seein's as we don't know for sure what we're getting' into up there."

That was vaguely alarming to Nettie - the seven were many things, but uncertain was not one of them - and being uncertain of one of their own had put them all on unsteady ground. Not good. Vin was their quiet rudder and they were floundering a bit in that absence. The boy had no idea how crucial he was to the other six, Vin never could see his own importance, overlooking himself in seeing so clearly the world beyond him, needs beyond his own. For a boy who'd come up abandoned and cruelly mistreated, he had an unselfish tenderness toward the rest of the world that he never seemed to apply to himself.

Chris made no objection to their sharing confidential information, cool jade eyes warming slightly as they came to rest on Nettie Wells' pale seamed face. Nathan was right. Someone they could trust outside the Judge's friends - who none of them knew - should be aware of what was going on in case ... well, just in case.

"Nettie, you rest easy." Chris said, and she heard all that he meant in those few words. He'd never been as comfortable as the rest around her, a sinner skittish around virtues he thought he didn't have himself. She knew different, but a man had to figure things out in his own time. She nodded in his direction so he'd know she understood and would hold him to it. Then Chris set his hat on his head, strangely comforted himself, and with a short nod left the room.

Josiah watched Nathan rise, looking out the window again with a gravely focused expression. Then the preacher registered the silence outside, and it was no leap to what Nathan was looking at. Vin was in for it now; Josiah had suspected the tracker might be hurt, but had held his peace about it - Nathan would not.

"Think I'll go get some fresh air, stretch my legs a bit." Nathan said, taking up a bottle of carbolic and bandages so quietly Nettie never heard, his pack off the floor beside the table. As he slung the strap over his shoulder, the look he turned to Josiah was dark and warning - Nettie wasn't to know if Vin was hurt, and the guilty expression that crossed Josiah's face told him there was no 'if' about it. The preacher shook his head at Nathan's scowl and raised a hand helplessly; maybe by now Vin would let Nathan do what he could, the tracker was pragmatic and had a journey ahead of him he surely wanted to be fit for.

Chris and Buck were knee to knee down the trail about a quarter of a mile when Nathan got to the front door, and he stood there a minute watching them go, the quiet murmur of voices from the bedroom behind him as Josiah filled her in on the Judge's intentions, Nettie asking questions now and again with a sharp tone that said nothing would get past her. Buck would be pestering and wheedling at Chris all the way, but Chris was easier about things this morning, and if Chris was at peace ... well, he reckoned they could all breathe a bit easier.

Chapter Fifteen

Vin heard Nathan coming and knew why, and couldn't stop it hurting in time. He saw the toes of the healer's boots stop right in front of him and the pack come to rest beside them. He didn't look up at him, but he could feel Nathan's dark eyes assessing him head to toe with great attention. And Nathan was, noting the hard clamp of arms across his chest, a stillness eloquent with pain. Nor did he miss the horseshoe-shaped crescent of stable mud on the front of his hip.

"Got kicked too, didn't you." Nathan said quietly, caring, but with that edge of real anger they all knew not to tempt. It flared as Vin's head started to rock and the tracker tried to put him off by saying,

"It'll do, Nathan, ain't nothin' ser ..."

One long brown hand shot out and touched the flat of Vin's side under his tightly crossed arms so he grunted softly and flinched away. Nathan's full mouth firmed with determination, regretting hurting him but satisfied to have made his point.

"Now, Vin, I know you don't want t'worry Nettie n' I respect that. But I am gonna have a look at you, n' you ain't gonna argue over it less you maybe want me t'raise my voice n' risk Miss Nettie hearin'."

This brought Vin's head up with a snap, eyes blazing to have Nettie's well-being wielded against him that way, but Nathan just looked calmly back, implacable as a rock.

"We kin do it out here, or go on into the stable, but it's gonna get done, Vin, believe me."

At length Vin surrendered with a glower, and he turned and went into the repaired stable, motioning Nathan to follow. Nathan set his pack on a saw-horse bench set up for the repairs and opened the shuttered window to let some light in as Vin reluctantly shed his coat and vest. As the healer got a bucket of water from the barrel nearby and set out his mortar and pestle, he remained keen to Vin's every hesitation and wince, gauging his condition in every intake of breath and carefully measured move. By now he was used to seeking such answers when the truth would not be said out loud. But when Vin stopped dead trying to get his suspenders down, Nathan stepped up with a look both scolding and kind and reached long dark fingers under them across Vin's shoulder to draw them down. Unbuttoned Vin's blue chambray shirt like he was a beloved, if disobedient, child, and it amazed even Vin himself that he allowed it. He hurt, and maybe Nathan could help, there was a comfort in that unjudging sense of safety.

But when Nathan tugged on his shirttail in front to pull it out of the high waist of his pants, Vin's hand unexpectedly clamped down on his wrist and Nathan looked up to see his face tight and pale, his eyes closed.

"Hurts there?"

That one terse nod was all the answer Nathan needed. "Alright, easy now, let's get it off ..." Moving smoothly and slowly, he drew the shirt back and eased it off his shoulders where it hung around his waist. But as he then peeled down the faded long johns beneath, his hands lifted away as if of their own volition. "Oh, my gracious Lord ..." He breathed, appalled. From just under the nipple on the left side of his body all the way down Vin's ribcage spread a livid angry bruise that curved around his sinewy body. Purple with broken blood vessels and interspersed with pale curves of the bones beneath, ribs Nathan prayed were still whole.

"Jesus, Vin ..." Nathan shook his head, astonished by the tracker's capacity to bear such an injury without complaint - indeed, without anyone seeming to even know. "Stubborn as a damned mule, every damned one of you, n' less brains t'boot, I never met such a foolish lot of men in my life, never in my whole life ..." Briskly, but gently, Nathan stripped Vin's arms of the faded red cotton, grumbling all the while so Vin nearly smiled, knowing the breadth of heart that prompted it and grateful for it despite his wish to be left alone.

"Dammit ..." Nathan said as he spotted the leading edge of a second bruise under the waist of Vin's trousers, and he straightened with an eloquently impatient gesture. "Pants, Vin, I'm gonna see where this goes. You don't do it, I will. Damn hard-headed men!"

Vin was plainly reluctant and Nathan's hands darted in and got the first button undone, brow deeply furrowed and ignoring Vin's surprised growl, batting his hands away easily with a lancing look and catching them in his own when they came back.

"Do it yourself, then! I got a set too, Tanner, ain't no need t'hide it from me. Peel 'em down on that side. Do it, Vin, or I swear I'll wrassle y'down n' strip you naked as a jaybird!" A kind man, but as tall as Chris and more strongly built, and he meant it.

Gingerly, with painful shyness, Vin obeyed him, unbuttoning the pants and folding the left side down so the terrible bruise running from the top of his hip down the flat narrowing descent of his groin was revealed. Again, the long crest of hipbone described a pale line under the angry color that stained the front of his hip nearly all the way down to the juncture of his thigh. Though Nathan was still shaking his head, some of it was amazement at the tracker's luck.

"You got an angel on your shoulder, I swear it. It's a damned good thing he got you where he did, on bones - he'd hit you that hard in the belly n' you'd be dead. Must hurt like the devil himself."

"Must." Vin commented wryly, and Nathan got a flash of blue eye and suspected, with a sudden surge of warmth, that Vin was feeling some relief in being looked at by someone who knew what was what. Damned men, so proud, so unable to admit weakness or ask mercy ... Nathan was merciful in the touch, one hand settling on the back of Vin's hip while the fingers of the other traced the arched edge of hipbone and the socket of his thigh-bone searching for breaks. He knew Vin was biting the inside of his mouth, knew he wasn't breathing, felt the fine trembling in his body that was the language of pain he couldn't speak. When he shifted his hand to the small of Vin's back to trace his ribs, the tracker gasped and jerked forward away from the touch ... yet another long bruise ran across his back there.

Nathan straightened, his hand clamped on Vin's near shoulder as the tracker looked at him over it, as if he were embarrassed to be hurt.

"How'd this one get there?" He asked.

"I don't know, hit the wall there ..." Where Nathan saw the ruins of a planked shelf. His eyebrows dipped and he asked tersely from behind Vin,

"You passin' blood when you piss? Don't lie t'me 'bout none of this, Vin - I ain't gonna try t'stop you from doin' what you think you gotta do, this damned trip n' all, but you gotta tell me so I know how t'help you."

Vin regarded him carefully; "You ain't gonna try t'make me go t'bed or somethin'? Make me drink ditch-water?" Suspicious, but with a touch of humor so Nathan relaxed a little. It was all out in the open now, and Vin wouldn't bother to try to hide what was already being seen.

"Ain't gonna put you t'bed, I know you wouldn't stay there but a second. Am gonna make you drink some ditchwater, though, likely a couple different kinds. Now answer my question - you pissin' blood?"

"Some ..." From that point on Vin felt like some dumb animal being examined, Nathan's hands firm and sure as he turned him this way and that, ran sensitive fingertips along the intercostal spaces between his ribs knowing it had to hurt but determined to find any possible breaks before bone-shards ended up in places he was sure Vin didn't want to know about. >From behind, he used the careful pressure of his thumbs, fingers hooked around Vin's flat waist for leverage, to check Vin's kidneys, stopping when Vin gradually bent over, nauseous from the deep ache and swallowing repeatedly, breath rough, against the need to vomit. Hurt a lot, then, Nathan knew.

For a moment they were still, Nathan's long big hand whispering soothingly up and down the furrowed curve of Vin's spine and bent over himself to watch the tracker's face as he went pale and broke out in a clammy sweat. "Breathe slow, Vin, not too deep, but slow ..." He waited, encouraging him with touch and soft-spoken words, until some color returned and he was able to slowly get upright again.

"Vin, you know how this feels now - " The eyes turned up to Nathan were dark and murky with pain, mouth set and white-rimmed. "I want you t'imagine how it'd feel bein' on horseback all day."

Nodding at the grim look Vin gave him and gripping his shoulder in what he hoped was reassurance.

"We ain't headin' out tomorrow, Vin, you kin take a day or so n' rest. I'm gonna make you up a poultice for them ribs n' hip, n' some herbs t'drink t'stop any bleedin' inside n' flush out them kidneys. Want you drinkin' water constantly - nothing but the tonic I give you n' water, you hear me? You don't do what I tell ya, n' you ain't gonna be able to sit a horse however much you want to." He sensed the reluctant refusal of weakness rising like an automatic survival instinct, and forestalled it with a sharp shake that made Vin wince.

"Vin, you gonna let me help you? I give you my word I'll do everything I know how t'get you in shape t'ride. I ain't tellin' you to go to bed, though that'd damned well be best, but I am askin' you t'cooperate with me." He shrugged, then, spreading his hands. "You don't, n' you're gonna do yourself real hurt - maybe mortal - n' leave them good folks on a dangerous road without you. Me, I don't want t'be roamin' Lakota territory without a friend of theirs t'speak for me." Offering a selfish motive and thus giving a proud man a gracious way to give in. "You gonna do what I tell you, alright?"

Vin nodded, the look on his face stubborn, but grateful, because he was shaky and half-scared of how much this hurt. Nathan sat him down on a bale of musty hay without protest and rummaged around in his leather kit, passing Vin a pinch of small oval leaves with wavy edges; "Witch hazel." He said, because Vin always wanted to know what he was being given; "Chew on 'em a bit, it'll taste bitter at first, but it'll get a start on stoppin' any bleedin' inside. So will this nettle tea I'm gonna brew up in the kitchen in a minute n' give you ..." Skeptically Vin popped the leaves into his mouth, grimacing at the taste but then surprised that the flavor became sweetly pungent.

"No coffee, no whiskey, no beer. In an hour, you come t'me with an empty canteen for this - " Waggling a little packet over his shoulder, selecting others as he spoke, "Cherry bark t'clear whatever clots might be in the kidneys." He took thin slices off a knobby stoneroot with one of his razor-sharp blades and ground it in a small mortar, adding tiny grey-yellow chamomile flowers and more shavings off the nettle root, then some fibrous grey bark Vin knew for willow. He set it aside with a gesture; "A cupful every hour - yeah, pure ditchwater, Vin, but this'll help flush you out, probably make you feel a little better, too, let you get some sleep."

Vin watched him closely, mystified and admiring, as if he were conducting magic tricks, but also with an eye to remembering. More of the small yellow-grey flowers went into a small bowl and were crushed, a few drops of a thick viscous brown oil and then the acrid scent of vinegar as he unstoppered a larger bottle, mixing a thick paste that he proceeded to spread on a bandage.

"Chamomile, oil of wormwood, boneknit, vinegar ... " As if talking to himself as he smoothed the pungent paste-smeared bandage around the tracker's narrow ribs and wrapped it snugly. Vin had to admit the support made them feel better, and the cool paste felt strangely good as well. Nathan heard his soft sigh and smiled to himself. Couldn't admit when they were hurt, and too proud to admit when something he did made them feel better. Lord, frontiersmen were contrary critters. The healer put more paste on another bandage folded into a pad, which he placed carefully over the leading edge of the bruised hipbone, and spread the remainder with gentle fingers on the bruises across the small of Vin's back before wrapping both together.

"Ain't a baby, kin do up my own trousers ..." Vin grumbled, and Nathan lifted his hands away and stepped back, letting him do so.

"Go without yer rig awhile, OK?" Easy to go along with, the thought of the weight of the mare's leg hanging on that hip was more than he wanted to imagine. Still ...

"I get shot cause I ain't carryin', Nathan, it'll be yer fault, y'know." He muttered wryly, and Nathan turned a smile over his shoulder as he replaced the packets and bottles in his bag and gathered up the makings of the tea to take back into the house and prepare.

"I'll have J.D. guard you, then." Smug. "Alright then, anything else, Vin?"

"Well ... " Vin's foot throbbed, and sheepishly he admitted, "Sort of drove the tine of a pitchfork through my foot, here." Nathan snapped upright, indignation in every line of his tall rangy body and his eyes wide with outrage.

"Is that so? Just a little pitchfork through yer foot?" He raised fervent dark eyes heavenward and prayed, "God Almighty, don't let me kill this man before You heal him! You sure you ain't stabbed or shot or maybe infected with the plague or somethin' t'boot?"

Vin knew he didn't expect an answer and so he said nothing as Nathan knelt, muttering blackly, and took the boot off with less than his usual tender care, peeling off the bloody sock with a furious snap and elevating Vin's pale foot to look at the sole so quickly that Vin almost got overset backwards. Square though his damned foot, passing between the bones of his third and fourth toes and punctures top and bottom.

Nathan set to disinfecting it with a vengeance, muttering blackly about filthy stables and God knows what on that damned pitchfork, horse-shit and damn stubborn idjits. Vin figured he'd finally pissed him off in earnest so he held his tongue when the carbolic hurt like blazes and the bandage nearly crushed the little bones in his foot from being so tight.

To be continued...

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