Ezra whipped his head around peering over his shoulder through the deluge of rain at the surrounding forest. The grey silhouettes of looming trees were all he could see through the blowing storm.
The clap of a thunderhead seemingly just above and had him ducking, an involuntary action that allowed Buck Wilmington to slide to the mud covered slope in an unconscious heap.
Standish cursed as soon as he recognized his folly. With numb fingers, he grasped hold of Wilmington's torn collar and tried to haul the bigger man to his feet by sheer force.
Buck's one downed shoulder unpeeled itself from the muddy ground as did his neck and cheek, but not much else.
The slippery dead weight seemed too much for the cramping and cut hands of the gambler.
"Come on Buck," Ezra hissed, fighting his own nausea born of exhaustion. They couldn't keep running like this, couldn't keep trying to dodge their pursuers like blind rabbits running from the hounds.
They weren't going to survive, not this time.
Ezra felt the sudden weight of desperation settle heavily on his shoulder, soaking through his spirit like the heavy rain through his burgundy wool coat.
It sparked his ire.
"On your feet Mr. Wilmington!" Ezra ground out in anger; anger directed at his own physical weakness; anger aimed at Buck for laying beaten and half dead in the muck on some mud covered tree lined slope and Ezra was angry at having allowed himself to be put in this situation.
Mostly he was infuriated with the men who hunted them down with brutal intensity and tenacity.
Another deafening crescendo of thunder rolled across the darkened skies followed quickly by a loud crack of lightening. A tree near nearby snapped and exploded. Through the billows of wind whipped rain, Ezra stared up into the tops of the greying forest of muted shadows and lines trying to pinpoint the exact location of the falling tree top. A widow maker.
Branches snapped and cracked as the unseen tree toppled to the ground, tearing limbs and branches from itself and its neighbors in its wild descent.
Thunder rolled again, masking the sounds of approaching hoof beats. The thunder shook the earth, camouflaging the pounding of six horses that bore down on the two men trapped in the wallow of a muddy tree lined slope.
Though the rain and thunder muted the senses of the gambler, Ezra knew his and Buck's demise was imminent.
With strength born of desperation and the sheer will to survive, the gambler reached down and grabbed the Ladies' Man under the arms started dragging his friend across the slope, over and through bushes, under branches and around trees.
He would not give up. Ezra would not throw his cards on the table and admit defeat. He would not relinquish the ante that had become his and Buck's lives. He would be damned if he quit.
Every other step had Standish slipping in the ankle deep muck, tripping over his own mud laden boots. Muscles pulled and tore, crying silently but brilliantly as muscle fibers were yanked from their bony roots. Frustration and fury grew expodentially with the will to survive.
Maude Standish had not raised a lamb.
Standish's back and shoulders and legs cried in protest. Muscles burned with fiery agony and almost as intensely as he shouted at his friend to help him; to stand up, to show some fight.
Blood washed down the side of Wilmington's lax features caking them. Blood mixed with the rain that beat his face and head. Blood adorned his shirt collar and his side. His shirt flapped in the wind, peeling from torn skin in tattered strips, revealing lacerated, welted and bruised flesh.
Ezra turned a blind eye to the wounds. He refused to acknowledge the amount of blood that seemed to run freely from Wilmington's side and head. He kept his eyes diverted from the abuse that scoured his friends frame.
"Damn it all to Hell Buck," Ezra whispered out, his voice nearly cracking with fear and frustration and the building anger at his ineptitude to keep one of his friends safe.
The slope slipped from under Ezra's boot heel again, sending the gambler crashing to the ground and slamming a shoulder against a stump of a tree long ago felled.
Pain radiated across Standish's shoulder and down his back. Tears, masked by the torrent of rain, sprang unbidden to fierce green eyes.
Desperation built with every frantic gasp of breath.
"On your feet Mr. Wilmington!" Ezra shouted this time, voicing his fear and panic. His anger and aggravation mounted with the closing in of the yet unseen enemy. He could feel them tightening their distance. Ezra could sense them closing in for the kill, just as Vin had a said a hunted man or animal could just before a trap was sprung. The hunted always kept a weary eye alert, always sensing for the unseen trap that would ultimately bring about their demise…it was simply the nature of things. And, at that time, Ezra had thought Tanner spoke of himself and the bounty on his head….but now standing in the mud, hunched over Wilmington, Ezra clearly understood the meaning behind Tanner's words….and
Ezra damned Mr. Tanner and his unusual ways, and damned the other men for enclosing him in their circle of friendship and thus dragging him down to this position, where he feared for the life of a fellow man, a friend no less.
Ezra lay half crumpled in the mud, partially buried by the unconscious weight of his friend, waiting for the bullets that were sure to come…just as sure as the next thunder head that tolled above shaking the ground with its raw power.
Thunder boomed with enough force to seemingly shake the land. Small rocks rolled down the slope as mud shifted on its own accord.
Water sluiced down the muddy slope in tiny rivulets undermining the ground under which the two peacekeepers lay, eating at the earth and dragging it away in small bits.
Ezra struggled out from under Wilmington. Every muscle protested, his lungs burned trying to drag in one more breath of oxygen hoping to appease a frantically beating heart and the harsh demands of over taxed muscles.
With a will born of desperation, and the fire to survive as any wild creature would, Standish fought and shoved Wilmington's inert form from his legs and freed himself. He pulled himself from the sucking mud, ignored the excessive weight of the clinging mud on his clothes and pulled himself to his feet.
If Ezra P. Standish had taken the time to think, if he had taken a short moment to remember his mother's lesson, the Southern gambler might have realized that he did not have to die this bleak, dark, twilight, lost and hurt on the side of a mountain with no one to pray over his corpse or that of his associate. His friend
If Ezra had taken just a moment he might have realized his own survival and freedom lay in just a few small movements. If he turned his back and scrambled from his friend, if he took a few steps in another direction and left Wilmington unconscious and unaware of his fate, then he, Ezra P. Standish, might actually survive the brutality that awaited him when the horsemen rode upon them.
A brutality would be fall him and his associate if they were to be caught, there was no doubt. Death would become a welcomed visitor, a relief from the misery that was sure to accost them in a most vile manner if they should become captives again at the hands of the men that pursued them so ruthlessly.
Ezra could simply disappear. He could slip off into the rain and disappear, leaving his captors a corpse to try and get their answers.
Wilmington was practically dead, there was no feasible way Buck could survive the amount of blood loss that he had already sustained. He was no longer suffering. Nor would he continue to suffer at the depraved hands of those that hunted them.
Standing in the rain, covered with mud, with hunters just a few moments behind him, Ezra Standish did not recall, his mother's lessons. Instead, he pictured her elegant face smiling sweetly while muted disappointment shown in her eyes.
Without thought, without any inclination to his own survival, the gambler disregarded his mother's teachings, reached down with cut and bleeding fingers and grabbed Buck Wilmington from under the shoulders.
Running from Buck never entered his mind.
He closed his eyes trying to shield himself from the raw wounds that adorned Wilmington and tried not to feel his friends pain. A few years ago he would have been able to without hesitation, a few years ago he would have turned on his heels and skidded from the outskirts of their makeshift camp of two nights ago and left Wilmington in the sickening clutches of the marauders that tortured him. Ezra would have bet money that he himself would have put his own self preservation before that of anyone, until a few years ago….That damn Seminole Village, he had turned around. He had not only walked back into the lion den of Anderson's camp, but he freely walked back to face the ire of the villagers that lost loved ones because of his private search for gold, his lust for wealth. He had cockily walked back and faced Larabee….and had stayed.
And like flashes of lightening that streaked over head, impromptu, inconvenient, glimpses of an honorable man came to the surface at the most inoptune times in his life…..
This being one of them.
Ezra cursed Chris Larabee, cursed his band of merry men for unearthing the decent person in him that now stood beside a dying friend in a deluge of rain knowing full well fate would lash him with a painful death. He cursed his fellow peace keepers and he cursed himself.
The muted thud of a horses' hooves on mud had Standish snapping his head up. Through the wall of rain that moved in whitish waves in gusts of wind, Ezra could dimly make out the dark silhouettes of approaching riders.
Standish backpedaled as quick as he could, dragging his friend with him through the mud, the ever growing tributaries of water run off and between the sodden trunks of pine.
They had spotted him as easily has he had spotted them.
They were dead men. All around.
Mud erupted up by his boot, dangerously close to Mr. Wilmington's arm. Standish never even heard the rifle report. Ezra hastened his retreat into the wooded slope scraping his boots through the ever thickening mire and mud. Desolation flooding his system.
Lightening tolled without the overture of thunder. Another tree cracked and exploded close by.
Hunter and hunted alike froze. All waiting, searching the blackened sky through the waves of rain hoping to spot the toppling tree top. Listening intently over the surges of rain.
Somewhere just out of Standish's sight a horse screamed and men shouted. The lead riders turned in their saddles and searched their back ranks.
Suddenly only the sound of driving rain could be heard.
A twisted dimpled smile spread across Standish's mud splattered features. His green eyes glowered with pleasure.
Determination slipped into his system mingling with desperation like the rain soaking his clothes.
He was not dead yet.
With renewed vigor he started dragging Wilmington further into the trees, hoping to stave off a violent death for as long as he could. Scuffing his feet, and dragging his burden hunched over at a painful angle, Standish prayed Wilmington simply passed from this life without ever regaining consciousness. Buck did not deserve the mercilessness of the men that hunted them, he had not deserved the first round and certainly not a repeat performance.
Though only moments earlier, Ezra had nearly begged, offered up his paltry life in exchange for Buck's survival, to the God Josiah spoke of, Standish now feverantly prayed that Wilmington be spared from having to open his eyes and register the pain and masochistic tendencies of the bastards that hunted them down from just a few hundred yards away.
I tried my friend…by God I tried. Ezra whispered silently to Buck as he backpedaled no longer trying to hide their tracks, knowing that the riders that approached them, followed them by sight and no longer needed a trail.
Through the grey downpour, Ezra could see the individual faces, he could make out the rough clothing, the guns, the leather whip tied to a saddle and the rifles that lay across soaked laps.
The, now , five riders approached the two downed men.
Ezra worked feverishly to save them both, knowing full well he held dead man's hand.
The five approached cautiously. The silhouettes of horse and rider materializing slowly as they edged their way through the wall of rain.
Ezra matched the leader's eyes and continued to drag Wilmington away from the five that slowly and methodically closed the distance.
Standish smiled, mocking and belligerent. They feared him and Buck enough not to rush them blindly.
There had one time been ten riders in the group that now stood as five.
Buck and Ezra had proven their worth and their own skill at surviving, costing their pursuers a loss of lives.
The leader did not rush the men. A cornered animal would attack and kill just as easily and efficiently as the hunter that stalked it.
The gambler and cowboy had proven their ability and resourcefulness numerous times over the last few days.
The leader would not underestimate them again. He only needed one of them and didn't need him for long.
The tall cowboy appeared already gone. The gambler, however, had the spark of fire and life. With his friend gone, he became a man with nothing to lose and thus a very frightening and dangerously unpredictable opponent.
The five men started to fan out. Two horsemen angled up slope while two more angled down slope. Their horses slipped and struggled in the deepening and shifting mud just as their prey. The leader maintained his attention on the gambler keeping eye contact with a pair of fierce green eyes.
The defiant cocky smile unsettled the horseman. He rested his hand on the stock of his rifle.
Even a badger could maim and kill a man if not treated with enough respect.
The badger in gambler's clothing would not get a chance to sink his wily teeth or claws into any of them if the horsemen did their jobs correctly.
Though a trapped badger would lunge and spit and tear at its bindings, if handled properly the trapper could escape unscathed and with a new pelt.
The leader hefted his gun, bearing it up to his shoulder. He would wound this badger, bring him to his proverbial knees and stake him out until his defiance drained from him like blood from a wound.
Ezra ignored the four horse men that flanked Buck and himself. He no longer felt the burn of over exerted muscles or the violent nausea that rippled through him. Instead, he stared at the man on the horse, who was forced to show Ezra the respect he was due.
Standish's smile deepened as the middle rider raised his rifle to his shoulder and prepared to fire. Even down in the dirt with an unconscious burden at his knees, Ezra Standish finally commanded the full respect of another. Not the disdain of a loser at the poker table, not the cowardice of a want-to-be gunman, and not the look of someone who surrendered because seven to one just were not good odds.
Standish smiled, defiantly because, even backed into the corner, holding a losing hand, he commanded the respect and fear from someone who held all the cards.
Standish let Wilmington slip from his grasp, hoping to spare Buck any more physical abuse. Perhaps Mr. Wilmington had already slipped from this world.
Mr. Larabee would be devastated at the loss of his oldest friend, but not nearly to the degree of JD. Mr. Dunne would once again lose an integral part of his family. Would he follow Mr. Larabee down the dark path of cynicism and self destruction?
Ezra braced himself for the impact of the bullet knowing it would not be a killing shot, but already wishing that it were.
Another clap of thunder burst over head, deafening in its close proximity, intense in its force. Standish felt the vibrations. Through the blinding rain, staring into the eyes of the man who would murder him, Ezra thought of his mother and wondered if she would mourn the loss of her son alone or in the company of the other five peace keepers.
Mud shifted under him. The water running past him increased in strength and speed.
He felt himself slide and shot one hand out to steady himself and laid a protecting hand on Wilmington's inert form.
He broke eye contact with the man with the raised rifle.
The shifting and sliding of mud had his attention.
Another crash of thunder exploded over head with frenzied zagging streaks of lightening interrupting the horrific clap of noise, as if too impatient to wait its proper turn.
The mud moved in earnest, as a slab.
Ezra snapped his eyes up in macabre fascination to the horse and rider just a few feet from him.
He had just enough time to register the wild panicked dancing of a single horse and the screams and whinnies of other horses somewhere in the forest.
He thought he heard the rifle report just a split second before another roll of thunder.
The earth finally let go.
Standish was flung back his head snapping backward and toward the side, twisting his body with it as blood spurted from the corner of his forehead.
Wilmington started to slide away with the land. Standish's twisted unmoving form following a moment later.