Blood Money

Beyond the circle of firelight, the horses shuffled their feet, snorting or chuffing occasionally, the noise silencing a night bird's cry. The sound of his companions drifted to Buck Wilmington's ears, and occasionally one figure or the other would drift across his peripheral vision. He stared resolutely into the flickering orange flames, but still he could feel the boy's eyes upon him.

To Buck's left, and a quarter of the way around the dim circle, sat J. D. Dunne. The boy's hat was in his hands. Now and then he'd give it a twirl between his thumbs. He stayed silent, but Buck could feel his gaze. Same as he'd felt it yesterday. Same as he'd felt it all the long two days since they left that ranch, heaven turned to raging hell. Since they'd taken up the trail after Ella Gaines, a pretty face that hid a murderer - a murderer and something far worse that Buck didn't even have a name for.

Buck felt his own glower deepen just another notch, the furrow between his eyes that threatened to become permanent. His head ached with the wearing of it. He glowered even harder and wondered if it were possible for it to dent itself into his skull.

He heard the boy inhale, as if to speak, and he lifted his eyes to scowl. J.D.'s Adam's apple bobbed once as he swallowed whatever it was that he wanted to say.

See, Buck told himself, I can do it too. I can walk around scowling and glowering like the world owes me an explanation. Keep everyone at a distance and out of my affairs.

It worked for some. And Buck would bet that's where Chris Larabee was right now. Scowling and glowering like he had a right to it. Like he didn't own a piece of all this pain. Like he had no part to answer for. Goddamn him.

A twig snapped between Buck's knuckles and he tossed it into the fire, damning Chris savagely to hell and its flames.

One at a time, the rest of the party sat down to the fire. None of them looked at him or spoke to him, and he couldn't tell whether they were simply lost in their own thoughts or just respecting his. They hardly spoke to each other anyway, seeming to have nothing to say. Not since the decision to turn back to Four Corners empty handed, with nothing to show for three days hard riding and no more ideas where to look.

And which one of them was going to tell Chris that the search was over? That they had all been one step from the killer of his wife and little boy.

Buck almost snorted at that.

One step away. Not Chris. Chris had been much closer than that. He had bedded her, while the rest of them stood watches and guarded her ranch. He let her talk him into staying on while the rest of them prepared to go their ways. All the while, Chris treaded the torn edge of a life that Buck had thought sacred, and contemplated the possibility of living it again. All that time she knew. She knew what she was and what she had done to him. And all the while, Larabee had been too damn stupid to see.

No, Buck amended, reaching into his saddlebags for his last bottle of whiskey, fingers grazing the knot on the bandana beneath it. Not too stupid. Too damn stubborn. Too stubborn to think for himself about what didn't add up. Too stubborn to listen to friends who tried to tell him that the pieces didn't fit. Too stubborn to look at the evidence right in front of his face.

Buck tilted the bottle straight into his mouth and felt the fire pour down his throat. Remembering.

Remembering how Chris Larabee himself had lectured him - lectured him - when he had accepted the duel with Don Paolo. Wasn't that Chris who accused Buck of thinking with parts below his belt? Of risking other people for the sake of his own pride?

Well, look in the mirror, Larabee, Buck thought. A woman's dead because of you. He thought again and took the tally. Two women, actually. And a child with auburn hair like his mother and hazel green eyes like his father. And a bunch of men she hired to kill us.

He thought of the dead woman again. Hildegarde. "Hilda to my friends," she had said, the words spilling out on a breathless rush of nervousness. He thought of lemonade and cookies and berries she picked for him. How they sat on the porch and she so earnestly tried to sell him on her good points. How Chris had laughed and told him that he could run but he couldn't hide. He'd be next for the halter and bridle. And how Buck had scoffed at that.

She was dead now.

Bare pink feet, flowered nightgown with ruffles at the wrist, and a hole shot straight through her.

She'd come out to defend him, to defend Buck Wilmington in a gunfight, without hesitation and wielding a shotgun Buck still wasn't sure she really knew how to use. But she used it once. She got off one deadly, accurate shot before a bullet slammed her back against the wall of the house.

It was the look of surprise on her face that Buck couldn't wipe from his mind.

All the while Buck had yelled to her to get down, to go back in the house, to take cover. All the while he stayed hunkered down and took his own advice. And he had to wonder about that. About why he didn't break cover for her, when he'd risked his own life so easily in the past and for less.

Hilda hadn't lasted long there on the porch. But it was long enough for shame to fill his gut. And long enough for him to see the unbearable senselessness of it that she, with the beautiful voice, "big as an ox, but you'll find I've got a heart to match", that she would think he needed her protection. That he had spent days avoiding her pursuit - and her kindness. He had actually run from her like a scared rabbit down the trap door in the bunkhouse. Yet it was Buck on the first day who had told J.D. that a buxom woman like her would make a man out of him. "Can't judge a book by its cover," he said. It stung him to know which of his own words of advice he had heeded.

Cookies, lemonade, and earnest kindness. All gone now. She traded her life for his. A bad trade. An unbearably stupid act of devotion. What could he do?

There was only one thing he could think of anyway. Beside her on the porch, he told her everything she had wanted to hear, everything he could think of, knowing they would be the last words she would ever hear. But still he could not tell her he loved her. He could not lie to her. Not even then, with the evidence of her devotion ruining the delicate fabric of her nightdress. Not even then could he say those words.

Hildegarde had never known that her warm heart and kindness made her worth more than any beer-guzzling, carousing, no-good gun for hire. She was dead because of Ella Gaines's mad desire for just such another no-good gun for hire. Hilda had got in the way. And had too good a heart to even know what little it was that she died for.

But Buck did.

Staring into the fire, he recalled Vin's shout into the sudden absence of gunfire. "Nathan!"

The tightness in it had chilled him to the bone. He and Nathan reached the corner of the house at the same time.

He saw the bare feet first. His eyes found the familiar Yellow Boy rifle discarded beside the porch and the well-cared for Colt in the dust. Shoeless and shirtless, Chris was crumpled in the dirt at Vin's feet.

Buck's feet stopped dead.

But Chris twitched. Not like the four or five others in the dust, lying too still, splayed to the sky. Chris twitched and Nathan couldn't get there fast enough. Josiah and Ezra came out from cover. J.D. - juiced up from his first quick draw kill - came up onto the porch. The juice evaporated on the air and the boy abandoned pretense and ran to help.

Buck stood still. Still at the corner of the house and listening. Low voices. Strident commands. Talking, ordering, questioning. He watched the way the body curled in on itself. And he listened for the words he dreaded.

Gut shot.

Like Hilda.

A death sentence.

For Hilda it had been fast - minutes only. Buck had seen others linger in agony for hours. Or even days.

His feet moved of their own accord, carrying him forward until his own shadow fell over the knot of his companions. It took him all that time to realize that the words were never said, that Nathan and Vin were preparing to move Chris into the house, to shelter, to a place where Nathan could properly clean and sew up the wound. The place where Nathan and the doctor who wasn't a doctor had sewn up Luis, a good man shot for the sake of a ruse. The good doctor stood on the porch, all sorrowful, his eyes confessing and begging for forgiveness. It was fortunate that Buck did not have time to exact the kind of penance the "doctor" deserved.

While he glared, Buck dimly heard Vin speak of Chris's unbelievable stupidity, standing alone on the porch, half naked, picking off their assailants one by one and ignoring Vin's shout to seek cover.

Stupid son of a bitch.

When they moved him, Chris bared his teeth in a tight, thin-lipped grimace. He spoke. But they were all too busy to listen.

A bloody hand gripped Buck's arm hard enough to hurt, and this time Buck heard.

"Not…going…in…there."

One word at a time, spat out onto the air, like empty bullet casings falling from a gun.

"Not…going."

Buck stopped. Chris held on till his arm pulled with a jerk. He cried out and they stopped, all of them, and looked over at Buck.

The hand moved from Buck's arm to a white-washed porch column, where Chris held tight enough to dig wood up under his fingernails. The grip held steady.

With the last of his patience, Nathan told Chris to talk sense.

With the last of his strength, Chris tried to pull himself upright out of their hands. A fresh flow of blood spilled from the hole in his side and a ragged cry spilled from Chris.

A fountain of curses spilled out of Buck.

"Put him down," Buck ordered, while Nathan stared at him. "Put him down," he repeated.

That girl, "Hilda to my friends", had wanted nothing more than to live, to love and to care for someone, and to build a future. Her body lay cooling against the wooden sides of the house.

Chris Larabee, damn him, had no idea whether he wanted to live or die, whether he wanted to come to terms with the past or drown in it.

Decide, Chris, Buck had thought savagely, glaring down at him, while Vin and Nathan both put him down, too aggravated to be entirely gentle. Vin hovered, worried. And that aggravated Buck, too.

"What?" Buck asked, squatting down. And funny how his tone gentled despite himself. "Nathan's gotta sew you up, Pard."

"Not here," Chris gasped, eyes closing, face whiter than Buck liked. Beads of sweat lined his face and neck and chest.

The eyes opened again. "Bunkhouse," Chris said.

Nathan shook his head. He made ready to pick up Chris despite any objections. And Buck wasn't planning on giving any.

But the green hazel eyes flashed wide in an expression that Buck couldn't name but to call it desperation. It spurred Chris up onto his tailbone, hugging the column with one arm, raggedly ordering Buck to go upstairs first.

Somehow everyone else would simply wait.

Buck had had no idea why, or what he was supposed to find. But he knew that Chris was not going to let himself be carried into the house so long as he stayed conscious. And judging from the stack of glasses Buck had seen in the cantina in Purgatorio the night they went to fetch him, Chris was as stubborn as ever about staying conscious. So Buck went upstairs. He told the boys not to do anything until he came back down.

And when he did, God Almighty, he told them they weren't taking Chris in there. Fetch a mattress from one of the bedrooms. Chris isn't spending another night inside that house.

No one questioned him. Must have been the scowl on his face. That's where it started. And he went to fetch a shovel to bury the innocent - once again.

In the firelight, Buck poured another gulp down his gullet and felt the burn scorch all the way down. He noted almost disappointedly that the bottle was nearly half empty. He could kill it in another hour or two.

That's what Chris had been doing that night down in Purgatorio: Killing bottles. Killing memories. The night Buck and J.D. went to fetch him, the promise of fifty dollars apiece for the effort putting an extra jingle into their spurs. Fifty dollars. Money so easy it seemed like stealing.

It was no secret where Chris had hared off to after pulling down all the hitching posts in town. Or why. Or what he would do once he got there. So there had been very little asking around.

Crazy gringo. Downed twenty-one shots of straight tequila and stacked the glasses in a neat little pyramid on the table. Steady hands on that crazy gringo. He'd gone with the whore, Maria.

J.D. had wanted to meet Chris in the street. Buck thought it better to wait till he'd passed out. They both heard him fire two shots into the pasteboard wall just to stop a man from singing. It was time to get him before things got ugly.

Christ, Chris was a loud drunk. And an angry one. Unsteady on his feet. Buck had thought it might do the boy good to see his hero hardly able to stand upright. But the barrel of Chris Larabee's Colt had no trouble pointing itself at the window straight and true. Steady as a rock. Chris's hand didn't even shake. Though every line of his body was outlined in rage, his gun hand was deadly still.

A glance to his right told Buck that Maria was not impressed with their arrival. And while Buck told Chris the reason for his mission, J.D. blurted out that they'd been paid to bring him back.

Those rock-steady hands smashed J.D.'s hat down on his head and all but pushed him back out the window. Buck got between them, quieted Chris down and then laid Chris out on the bed with a right-handed hammer to the jaw. Larabee was out cold before he hit the covers.

Dumped in a wagon, Chris snored happily all the way back to Four Corners. And Buck wondered at what ignorance it was that J.D. didn't know how close he had come to being thrown back out that window the way he came in. It was the kind of stupid that could get a man hurt.

Buck took another long swallow from the bottle.

Fifty dollars. And a pretty face. That was all it took to lead Chris right to her. They baited the trap themselves. They lined right up to hire on to help her.

To help, Buck thought bitterly. Don't forget the sob story.

He took another drink.

Fifty dollars, a pretty face, and a pathetic plea for help. That's what it took.

Buck raised the bottle to the flames in silent salute. Here's to her. A lady who knows her mark. A shudder ran through him from stem to stern. Damn it if that wasn't the worst part.

She hadn't strung Chris up on greed or on that strange, almost comic weakness for people who need help. Or even by his balls alone - although those instincts certainly went a long way to closing the trap.

No. It was the horses. It was the house. It was the kind words and the plain and simple message that she wanted him. "Isn't this the place we always dreamed of?" The unspoken "I made this all for you."

Stupid bastard.

Buck threw the empty bottle directly into the flames. Ezra flinched at the clink and Vin backed up some as the last traces of alcohol sent a rush of flames into the air with a heat that Buck thought might have singed his foot right through the boot, laying where he'd stretched it carelessly out toward the edge of the fire.

He swore. The first words he'd said in two hours. Stupid bastard. He'd said it right out loud. They did not look at him for more. And nothing more came out.

Stupid, Buck thought, for not listening to your friends. Vin told you. I told you. Something's not right, Chris. The woman's no good, Chris. She lied to you, Chris. The suits aren't her husband's. It took you a whole night to keep your own counsel. All night to listen and see what was in front of your face. All night to think about it. What did it get you? A bullet knocked clean through your rib cage. Shot in the back.

Stupid bastards. All of us. 'Cause we all believed her.

Wrapped in the bandana at the bottom of Buck's saddlebags was the locket. Twisted in a fire just east of Eagle Bend, it had to have been taken from her neck because Sarah Larabee never took it off. They'd searched for it in the ruins of Chris's burnt-out home. Now they'd found it in Ella Gaines's upstairs hall. The locket had led him to that room, a room filled with ruined mementos of Chris's married life. Mementos that had been stolen from Chris's ruined house.

Before they loaded Chris onto the wagon, Buck brought him the locket and the torn picture, Sarah's face scratched forever from the image, Adam's small form torn from the paper. Chris refused to look at them. And Buck refused to look at Chris's face.

"Fowler," Chris said.

And in that one word Buck had understood what he had not wanted to understand. What Chris should not have had to understand.

He stood there, still holding the burned pieces of Chris's memories, while the wagon drove off, Josiah driving, Nathan riding beside, while J.D. tamped down the earth over fresh graves, while Vin and Ezra packed for a search party. J.D. shook his head and wished aloud that Vin hadn't missed his parting shot at Ella. And all that while, Buck pondered exactly how long does it take to scrape together enough money to buy a mining company, to marry a man who builds you a home that exactly suits another man's dream, and to use that house to bait a trap? Did she murder Joseph Petrie, too, just to get to Chris? And did her husband ever come to know that that he was just a pawn in her plan? How was it that no one in the house knew what she had done? Was it because they were good people? Because they had faith? Because they believed that others must be good, too?

Beside the fire, Buck nearly snorted at that, wishing for another whiskey bottle. Surely Chris Larabee, "the bad element" had walked enough on the dark side to be wiser for it. Surely any faith in mankind that Chris had had was long dead and buried. No, Chris let himself be blindsided, plain and simple. Taken in by long lashes, a warm and willing body, and the comfort of old acquaintance. By flattery. And by his own dreams handed to him on a silver platter.

Buck's mouth twisted in disgust. "Bareback Larabee" Ella had named him.

Blind, Deaf, Dumb and Plain Stupid Larabee was more like it.

And what of "Handsome Jack" the hired gun? What did Averill get for his trouble? What inducement had she given him to murder six men in their beds. Buck hoped he had been smart enough to get paid in advance because Vin hadn't missed that shot.

After the wagon was long gone, Buck wrapped Ella's "mementos" in a blue bandana he had seized from J.D.'s saddlebags. It was new. J.D. never wore bandanas. It was for Casey, the boy had protested.

"Casey doesn't want your blood money," Buck had spat back.

The size of the boy's eyes lodged in Buck's brain. He could see them even now while he could feel the boy staring.

Blood money to fetch Chris Larabee into the arms of the woman who murdered his family. That's the hard truth of it, boy. Blood money. And you bought that innocent girl a bandana with it.

And what did Chris get out of it?

Was it worth it, Chris? Buck asked the stars. Was it worth it? Because once again, everyone around you paid the price.

We're coming back empty handed. Good people are dead. Who paid the bill for you this time? Handsome Jack and his men, sweet Hilda, Nathan and Josiah, Ezra, Vin, and me. What did it cost J.D.? His first show down? Another piece of his innocence? And Sarah and Adam paid for you, too.

So what did you pay?

And over the stars and firelight washed the answer, a picture in his mind's eye: Chris in the corral, his face open and all honesty between them. No walls this time. Chris did not love her. But he was ready now to believe in something more than drinking and fighting. Too old to be trying to kill himself anymore, he'd said. And he meant it. He was ready to live. To want something and to work for it. To raise horses. Maybe to love again. So simple.

That alone should have told Chris Larabee not to trust it.

But then Buck saw Chris's face again, when he looked at her. Even at first sight in the Four Corners jail, when the sly smile of disbelief blossomed on his face, the hard gunslinger's gaze melting away. It wasn't love. Chris had been truthful about that. But at least there had been affection in his face. Affection born of old days and memories. A kind of fondness. For her.

The one thing that probably saved her life when that Colt had pointed at her, rock steady, while Chris made up his mind what to do with her.

But Ella killed that, too. Killed hope, affection, and all promise of the future. All hope of happiness to come.

And for fifty damn dollars Buck had helped. <

Surely he could not be blamed for that, Buck thought, shifting his foot away from the fire. Surely it was a long road from "Something's not right here" to "She's planning to kill us." Surely no one had seen that coming, not even Vin who had told Chris she was a liar.

Chris would never speak of the money; that much Buck knew. But there was much that Chris never spoke of that he had not forgiven. Forgiveness was not Chris's strong suit. And maybe less so for himself.

Chris was too lucky to die in the dirt in front of Ella's porch. And he was too stubborn to die in the wagon on the way back to Four Corners. The telegram in Ezra's pocket proved that. But Buck knew there was more than one way to die. And he feared for it. Feared being the one to tell him that Ella was gone. Feared that this time Chris really would decide. He feared seeing that last stubborn spark of humanity gutter out and feared watching Chris take up the blood trail again, no turning back this time, no taking anyone with him, and no intention of coming out of it alive.

Already Buck could see himself standing there, holding torn and burnt mementos wrapped in a bright blue bandana, blood money still weighing down his wallet, finishing what Ella Gaines started.

Fuck it, Buck thought, suddenly. Let someone else tell him.

No matter what, Chris was bound to be mad. Fighting mad. Killing mad. Fifty dollars in guilt wasn't enough to make Buck stupid.

It wasn't hardly likely that Ezra was dumb enough to do it either. And J.D. was dumb enough but Buck wouldn't let him. That left Vin, who seemed a likely choice. Besides Chris would believe that Tanner had done all he could.

Let Vin do it, Buck counseled himself. Just keep your head down and stay out of the line of fire. He was better at picking up the pieces afterward anyway.

A red flowered nightgown fluttered into his mind. Delicate and stained with blood.

"Stupid bastards," Buck said aloud. "All of us."

No one answered him.

What was there to say?

The End