Chris Larabee had decided long ago that there were just some things that were going to happen on a Saturday night.
One: Josiah would invite everyone to church on Sunday and sit there with his knowing grin as they all stammered out excuses--even though pretty much everybody would show up on Sunday. Wasn't really a good idea to piss off a preacher who had some trouble turning the other cheek. Josiah rarely spent a Saturday night worrying about church attendance.
Two: At least one person--be it indigent farmer, liquored-up ranch hand, or shifty -eyed desperado--would pull a gun, knife, or some other implement of destruction, on Four Corners' resident gambler, Ezra Standish. Ezra rarely spent a Saturday night outside of Nathan's infirmary.
Three: Buck Wilmington would use his much-vaunted animal magnetism--including some of the most inane lines to ever emerge from a man's throat--to get himself a lady. Buck rarely spent Saturday night in his own bed.
Saturday after Saturday rolled around the same way.
Saturday Night:
Josiah asked, "Can I count on all of you boys to greet the Lord together tomorrow morning in His House?
"I was thinkin' about askin' Casey to go fishin'," JD stammered out, flushing.
"Think the best place to be early mornin' is out on the desert, alone," Vin said, with a nod.
"Ought to head on out east toward the Primm's place. Miz Primm is right near her time," Nathan shook his head earnestly.
"Fine then, I'll expect you all before service, to help rearrange the pews." Josiah smiled serenely, leaving the younger men blinking.
"You no-good, low-down, cheatin' snake!" Came the roar from the table where Ezra held court. Everybody turned to look, the various members of the Magnificent Seven randomly pulling their own items of mass destruction to confront a wild-eyed redheaded giant bear of a man waving a Colt.
Forty-five, that is. Not a horse. Although knowing Ezra's Saturday night poker games....
The clicks, shricks, and rustles apparently warned Redhead that he was under siege. Glancing warily around, a stunned, almost hurt look covered his face at the array of handguns, shotguns, rifles, knives and dynamite--dynamite! Chris thought. Have to clean out Ezra's pockets before he sits down to the poker table--facing his direction. "What ya all pointing at me about?" he declaimed, pointing his gun in Ezra's face. "This here's a no-good gambler!"
"Might be a no-good gambler, but he's our no good gambler," Nathan intoned.
Ezra looked like he didn't know whether to be pleased or insulted.
"Put it down, Son," Josiah solemnized. "You're awful damn young to be feelin' St. Peter at your shoulder."
In spite of the fact that seven weapons--eight if you counted JD's matching pistols--were pointed at him, Redhead decided to go out with a bang. He did bang, hitting Ezra in the shoulder, before various other bangs, swishes, thuds and a rather half-hearted sputter from the outdated dynamite, sent him off to his Maker. Or wherever.
Nathan went speedily to Ezra's side. "Let me see what you've done to yourself this time," he scolded.
"I beg to differ. I did not shoot myself," Ezra protested. "And I won't need your exemplary medical care tonight, Mr. Jackson, it is barely a scratch."
As the "scratch" was producing a large amount of red blood that was soaking Ezra's sleeve, not to mention the surrounding floor, no one paid any attention to his words. Since he was the boss of this crew, Chris ordered Ezra to go to the clinic with Nathan. Ezra started to argue, but then passed out due to loss of blood or the fact he realized how close he was to the dynamite. Josiah sighed and made his way to Nathan's side, staring down at his errant black sheep. "I'll assist you, Brother Nathan."
Nathan was already planning how long he could keep Ezra prisoner in the clinic. From the way he kept shooting glances at Josiah, Chris figured he was banking on leaving Ezra in the clinic long enough for both of them to skip Sunday services.
And then, Buck--who'd been sitting and insulting JD--spotted his Prey for the evening and rose from his chair, those dark blue eyes sparkling. Chris craned his neck to see who had caught his old friend's attention tonight. He rolled his eyes and exchanged glances with Vin. Damn. Blossom.
"Thought Jimmy got home from Yuma Prison?"
Vin nodded, once. "Did."
That was a long sentence, for Vin.
"Anyone tell Buck?"
As one, they all turned to look at JD. He wore the badge, after all.
JD squirmed, reminding Chris of the time last week when Billy Travis had insisted he didn't need to use the outhouse, only to relieve himself all over Chris' boots. Chris wasn't taking Billy out fishing any time soon, let Mary put that in her pipe and smoke it!
"Why you all looking at me?" JD finally whined.
"JD. Did you tell Buck that Blossom's husband is back in town?"
JD squirmed again. "Well...yes. I mean, well, no." He looked up, his too-young expression sincere. "I just want to see Buck get shot down!"
The alarmed looks around him must have caused him to rethink his statement. "I don't mean by Jimmy! I meant by Blossom! With words!"
"Well, howdy, Miss Blossom," Buck yodeled, standing in front of the, um, lady and turning back and forth. Chris, who'd known Buck a long time, knew he was trying to show off his best side. Only problem, Buck thought both of his sides were good.
'Well,' Chris thought, 'He's right about that.'
"Did anyone ever tell you your skin glows like pearls?" Buck went on, ducking his head and displaying his "shucks ma'am, I'm just a lonely cowboy" look for the giggling Blossom.
Chris knew that look well.
"Oh, like Buck's ever seen pearls!" JD groused.
Since Blossom's hand kept fluttering at her temptingly low-cut bodice, Buck moved straight into the Other Look. The "I just want to toss you down right here and ravish you" look. "What say the two of us take a bottle of Inez' finest and sneak off for a little time to ourselves?"
Chris knew that look pretty well, too.
And so Blossom and Buck--and a bottle of cheap whiskey because Buck couldn't afford the good stuff and Blossom wouldn't recognize it anyway--sneaked off hand in hand. Well, not actually sneaked, because after all Buck was six foot four and Blossom was dressed like a floozy, but the intent was there.
"Damnation!" JD pouted, digging a silver dollar out of his vest and handing it to a smug Vin. "Doesn't he ever get turned down?"
As one, the two looked at Chris.
Chris pursed his lips and thought for a while. Then he shook his head. "Nope. There's only one way to get Buck Wilmington sidetracked from a woman."
"And what's that?" JD asked quickly.
"I'll show you someday." Chris took another slug of whiskey.
One week later, another Saturday night...
"You boy's'll enjoy tomorrow's sermon," Josiah intoned, staring into his mug of beer. "Brother Ezra actually helped me with some of the words."
"Oh, great!" JD muttered to Vin. "Now NO one will understand it."
"Don't ever understand it anyway," Vin said, spitting into the tin on the floor. Well, he was aiming toward the tin. He missed.
"I've got to go to the Village tomorrow," Nathan said hastily. "I hear there's Bubonic Plague there."
"Better head out early, look for them cattle rustlers," Vin said, nodding at Chris.
"Umm...." JD was desperate. "I have to scrub the floor in the jailhouse!"
Josiah nodded, smiling that smile again--and were they sure he was really sane? "Come early," he said, rising. "Before eight. Thought we could put the new glass windows in before the townsfolk get there."
"You cheatin' bastard!" Right on cue came the cry from Ezra's table.
"Now, sir, while I may be a bastard, I still must protest the insult to my sainted mother. And it is not necessary to cheat when confronted with such an abysmal player as yourself."
The man--a bandito from the looks of him--lunged at Ezra, brandishing a wicked long knife. Everyone else pulled their weapon of choice and quickly dispatched him to--well, you know. However, as he plunged forward he landed on Ezra and the knife tore deep into the flesh of Ezra's arm.
Standish looked down at his crimson sleeve in dismay. "Damn. Another shirt ruined." Then his eyes rolled back in his forehead and he collapsed to the floor.
Exchanging tired looks, Nathan and Josiah hefted the gambler up and conveyed him, once again, to the clinic.
Chris idly thought maybe he should just let the judge know not to pay for Ezra a room on the weekends, as he never seemed to get to use it. On the other hand, one could say the same about Buck.
And there Buck went, right on time. JD stood up to see whom he was going after this time, and Vin peered around him. The Tracker let out a soundless whistle--a mercy since his harmonica playing was bad enough--and said, "Ole Buck may have just guessed wrong tonight."
Intrigued, although he'd never admit it, Chris actually moved his chair one- quarter inch so he could see the current target of Buck's amore. Then he stared. "Who the hell is that?"
"Miss Carter," JD informed him. "The new librarian."
"Librarian?" Chris snorted. "This town doesn't have a library. Or very many people that can read. No offense, Cowboy."
Vin was offended, but he nodded his head anyway.
"Library was Miz Travis' idea," JD informed him. "Says it'll bring culture to town."
With an effort, Chris kept from rolling his eyes. That sounded like Mary, all right.
"This just ain't right!" JD moaned. "She's a real lady!"
"JD, if she was a real lady, she wouldn't be in here," Chris pointed out.
"Maybe he won't have any luck with her," Vin comforted JD.
Cold comfort as it turned out. JD had bet on Buck this time.
The room fell silent as if everyone wanted to hear the latest of Buck's pick-up lines. He sashayed up to the woman--who was wearing starched black crinoline as befitted her job--and stared into her face for a full half minute before he took her hand gently in his own and bowed over it. "If I die tonight I'll die a happy man," he proclaimed. "Never before have I seen eyes the color of the ocean at night."
"He's never seen the ocean, either, probably," JD snarled. He was awfully unhappy about winning the bet. But win he did, as Miss Carter--her face all pink and giggling--arose from her chair and tucked both black-gloved hands around Buck's manly forearm. The Lothario reached up and pulled the clip that held her hair into that tight knot. Every man in the room gasped as a waterfall of red gold curls fell about her shoulders.
She now looked about ten years younger than she'd looked five minutes before, and right damn pretty, at that.
JD turned back to Chris. "Are you sure there's a way to stop Buck with a lady?" he whined.
"Positive," Chris nodded. "Used it myself."
"Show me!" JD begged.
"When the time is right," Chris said. Then his face grew hard and cold, the face of a killer--which, when you thought about it, wasn't that much different from the way he always looked--and said, "I might show you someday, JD...but you won't ever be able to use it yourself.
JD looked offended. "Why not?"
Chris clamped his teeth around his cigar. "Cause if I saw you, I'd have to kill you."
One week later, still another Saturday night...
"Tomorrow's sermon will be on the lilies of the field," Josiah announced.
JD muttered he was allergic. Vin remembered he needed to clean out his wagon. Nathan announced he was going to Colorado Springs to learn brain surgery from that lady doctor they had there. Josiah just nodded and then reminded them the floors needed sweping before the service.
There was a thwack! as leather hit flesh. Everyone turned toward Ezra's table on the dais, where a fancy-dressed man--one who bore a strong resemblance to Ezra, at that--had slapped the resident gambler's face with his riding glove. "You, suh, have dishonored mah name and our family! Ah demand satisfaction!"
Ezra yawned, buffing his fingernails. "What are the terms of engagement, Cousin?" he asked, bored. "Derringers at dawn, fisticuffs at noon, or swords at sunset?"
"Swords...now!" Pulling a flashy katana from some secreted part of his wardrobe, Ezra's cousin--at least, they assumed the man was his cousin, else why would he have called him cousin?--attempted to run Ezra through. The startled gambler jumped backward, the sword slashed through the rope holding the chandelier in place, and the chandelier crashed down on both Ezra and his cousin.
None of the other seven had even drawn their guns yet.
"Oops," Nathan said, heading towards Ezra.
"That was different," Vin stated.
Buck turned and stepped toward the lady who'd come in with Ezra's apparently now-deceased cousin. "Now don't you fret, Darlin'...ole Buck'll take good care of you."
"Okay," Chris announced, taking a last drink of beer. "That's IT."
Vin and JD looked on with their mouths hanging open as Chris strode resolutely toward the ladies' man. They cringed, waiting for a shout, a bullet, or a fist.
"Buck," Chris intoned silkily.
Buck, in the act of putting his arm around the now-widowed woman, froze. Slowly he turned to Chris, his eyes lighting up. "Yeah, Pard?"
By this time everyone was staring, waiting to see just how Chris Larabee could stop Buck Wilmington from his self-appointed task of bedding every woman in the territory.
Good bet no one expected what they saw.
Chris stepped right up to Buck, close, so close their chests were touching. And then....
Then...
Vin sat down hard, in shock, and JD turned green, then white, then some color not on the spectrum. "Damn," he whispered.
The whole saloon stared as Chris Larabee, the Dark-clad Bringer of Death, and Buck Wilmington, Ladies Man Extraordinaire, stood locked in an embrace that quickly steamed up the whiskey tumblers and Old Man Adam's spectacles.
The kiss--well it was more than a kiss--but remember, Vin was illiterate and JD was too stunned to think and Ezra was unconscious, so "kiss" will have to suffice--went on and on. And on.
JD blinked. He fancied himself a good kisser (Casey might have other thoughts on the subject) but he'd never seen anything like this before. Chris wasn't so much kissing Buck as devouring his mouth. JD was pretty sure he now knew what the phrase "Cleaning her tonsils" meant. Although of course, in this case, it would be "cleaning his tonsils."
And Buck, instead of struggling or just reaching for a gun and shooting Chris, melted into Chris' arms and somehow their bodies were so close together it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other began. Chris didn't help matters when he dropped his hands from Buck's back and cupped them possessively around the taller man's fine-formed buttocks, melding their pelvic regions together.
And this went on so long that Nathan--at least--was wondering how the two of them kept from passing out. "Man's gotta breathe sometime," he grumbled to Josiah. He didn't get a response because the preacher was just staring at the entwined duo with a funny look on his face. Nathan wasn't real sure what he was thinking but he didn't think it had anything to do with Sodom. Or Gomorrah. Nathan resolved to make sure he sent Josiah off early tonight. No use putting him in a situation they might have to shoot him for.
About the time there was some talk of throwing buckets of cold water on the Seven's leader, and his "old friend"--and geez--that term took on a whole new meaning, Chris finally pulled away from Buck.
And everyone stood there, waiting to see what Buck would do. If Ezra had been taking bets--which he wasn't of course, being that he was unconscious--the top bet would have been Buck Wilmington drawing his gun and blasting his old friend Christopher Larabee into perdition. Or Purgatory. Wherever.
Instead, Buck just stared at Chris, apparently forgetting all about his lady of the evening. Finally, a slow smile worked its' way across those kiss-swollen lips. "Now, Chris, all you had to do was tell me you were gettin' itchy." His voice was velvet soft and somewhat reminiscent of a cat confronted with cream.
"I just done told you," Chris pointed out. "Git goin'."
Buck didn't doff his hat to the lady, or grin at JD, or do anything he normally did. He just turned and headed for the exit. Just before he pushed the doors open, he tossed a smoldering glance over one shoulder.
"You aren't going to keep me waiting, are you?"
Chris was right behind him. "I'm right behind you," he said, clapping his hand to one of Buck's ass cheeks.
Buck jumped, then the grin widened. "You old dog, you. And who said romance was dead."
"Not you, I'm sure," Chris said dryly. Before he followed Buck out the swinging doors, he looked back at Vin. "You all take care of the town for a few days, Vin. Me and Buck have got some...stuff...to do."
Vin actually changed expression. "'Stuff'?" he squeaked.
"Stuff." Chris nodded, then sat his hat back on his head and marched out the doors.
For about ten minutes everyone just stood, or sat, frozen. Finally, Ezra groaned, shattering the spell. The music started back up and people went back to their business as if nothing had happened, although there was lot more whiskey consumed that night than normal.
Josiah and Nathan hefted a groaning Ezra to the clinic. Someone from the undertaker came in to take care of Ezra's cousin. Someone else guided the cousin's wife--or whatever--out of the saloon and across the street to Mary Travis' house.
And Vin and JD just sat at their table. JD was the color of three-day old milk and he'd lost his voice. Vin shook his head and closed the kid's mouth with the tip of his fingers. He poured himself a drink, then toasted JD.
"Here's to Saturday nights."
End
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