Billy Travis stepped down out of the coach smoothly,
and reached his hand in, grasping the woman's inside. She stepped out with
ease, her red locks forming around her angelic face, setting off her light
brown eyes.
"Is this Four Corners?" she asked, looking at some
of the large buildings. When Billy had described the small town where his
mother lived, she has expected dismal, falling apart buildings, not the
makings of a fine city. And this definitely was.
"Yes this is it. I haven't been here for awhile it
would appear," Billy replied his bright eyes looking over the structures.
His eyes softened at a familiar sight.
"How are you Billy?" Chris Larabee said his eyes
bright towards the boy.
"Chris. I would like to introduce you to someone,"
Billy said stepping forward to grasp the hand of the man he saw as a father
figure even after his mother had re-married so many years ago.
"This is my fiancee, Elizabeth Wilmington," Billy
said introducing the beautiful young woman. Chris smiled warmly at the
girl.
"Buck's niece," Chris said. Billy marrying one of
the seven's family seemed fitting. All those years, many believed Chris
would become Billy's father, but Mary Travis, then later Mary Dickens,
was too much like Chris for the two to marry. But still her recent death
was hard on him. Hell it was hard on all the men. They had come to call
one another family and Mary was a part of that family. So many deaths in
the past year had taken its toll on Chris and the other men.
JD had settled down and finally married. Emily had
returned to Four Corners after leaving Lydia's care, and had gotten into
some trouble, she sought out JD, knowing he would help her. When she returned
she had seen JD had grown up since she had last seen him, and after almost
dying for her, she realized how much she loved him, and soon later the
two had married. Their first born son was just entering his teen years,
and Emily was expecting another child. But she was also sick, so JD and
his kids were preparing for the worst.
Chris walked with Billy and Elizabeth to the old
office of the Clarion newspaper, the same one Billy's mother and
father had owned. He remembered the day Vin Tanner had left town with Buck
Wilmington after Vin and young Casey Wells had married. Such a long time
it would seem. Chris sighed. After Vin had left, Casey discovered she was
expecting their first child, but Buck had returned, alone, and he didn't
know if Vin was dead or alive, but assumed he was dead. They had both been
captured and taken prisoner in Tascosa while Vin was trying to clear his
name. They had gagged and blindfolded Buck and dragged him to the outskirts
of Tascosa. When he had freed himself he went in search of Vin, to no avail.
Vin was gone.
He had been the bearer of the bad news to Casey,
but she refused to believe her husband was dead. She gave birth prematurely
to a son, who almost didn't make it. Four days after the boy was born,
Vin returned looking as if he had aged ten years. He was never the same.
But he loved Casey, and they lived happily. Until three years ago when
a stray bullet meant for one of the seven men struck her while she was
pregnant with her second daughter, and both she and the child had died
in Vin's arms. Vin quickly turned into a man like Chris Larabee had been
when they met. Vin wallowed himself in the drink, and one night it cost
him his life. He had pushed Ezra Standish out of the way of a bullet, and
it struck him in the chest. His six friends had gathered around him, and
Ezra had asked him why.
"I couldn't bare to see another person I cared for
more than life itself die. You are all my family, but I must go join my
wife and daughter now, take care of my other kids," he had managed to strangle
out before his last breath had left him. All the men felt the brunt of
one of their own dying, and had decided to break up, but they couldn't.
For Vin and Casey's sake they needed to stay together. Soon Chris and Ezra
had become sole benefactors for the Tanner kids.
Ezra had changed the most of the men, meeting a formidable
opponent in a poker match almost three years ago, and she had whipped him
at the game good. She was merely a woman who loved the game, not running
from a past as the others seemed to be. She gave Ezra a spark for life
he had thought he had lost. They fell in love, and wed, now happily married
with several of their own children, as well as the Tanner kids staying
with them temporarily.
Josiah had decided to leave Four Corners a few months
after Vin had died, but soon returned, needing the company of friends.
But someone was chasing him, and he too was soon hunted down and killed.
Chris, Nathan, and Ezra had taken the Tanner kids on a stroll one day and
had walked into the church, only to find Josiah nailed to the cross above
the alter, blood still coming from his wounds, his face a gray pallor.
Ezra had quickly gotten the kids out of the church, but the memory of seeing
Big Bear as the affectionately called Josiah, hanging there dead
burned a large hole into their small memories, as well as one into the
more than once burned memory of Ezra. None of the men were ever the same.
Nathan Jackson had to leave, the memory of his best
friend killed like that had hurt beyond belief, and staying in the place
where it was the worst reminder and seeing the faces of his other friends
was far too much for the man who had seen hell and faced it down. But leaving
had been the mistake. One of the many men that had gotten away after having
faced time for the crimes the Seven had put them away for, had caught up
to Nathan Jackson, and he had been found shot in the back of the head,
face down in a bar in Arkansas. Some had said it was fitting for a black
man to die in a Southern bar. The other seven could do nothing, even attend
the man's non-existent funeral. They slowly had begun to drift apart, except
Chris and Ezra. The men had shared responsibilities with Vin's kids, and
where also neighbors. Chris never re-married. He had never found a woman
that could be as good for him as Sarah. But lately he had seen a woman
he was showing interest in. Perhaps he could be happy before it was too
late.
The distance between the men had bothered Chris a
little. Buck had turned into a drunk after Josiah had been killed, starting
when Vin and Casey had died. He felt as if he had no soul. He had a wife,
but she was very unfaithful, and though Buck had three boys he considered
his sons, no one really knew if they were. And frankly he didn't care,
they were the only thing good in his life right now, and he needed their
love. JD had his own life to lead with is family, and role as Sheriff still,
and Ezra had his own life as well with his wife and kids, but still the
distance troubled Chris. They had all become so close, to drift apart when
they had seemed unfitting. That is until a year ago.
A year ago, Mary Dickens found out she was very sick.
Cancer is what the doctors had called it. The remaining Seven had come
back together to rally around the ailing woman, they had all learned to
call sister and friend. They watched, slowly, as the woman withered away,
until finally a few days ago she had drifted asleep, her face calm and
serene for the first time since she became sick, and she never woke up.
And it was now today when Billy returned, a 27 year old man preparing to
marry himself, and coming to bury his mother, in the same cemetery where
his father was buried and had been for twenty years - since his murder that
Billy had witnessed.
Chris quickly escorted Billy and Elizabeth to the
hotel, promising to pick them up for the funeral service tomorrow.
+ + + + + + +
"So it would seem we bury another of our own. All
of us here once again returning to the earth where we all had met," Ezra
said as Mary's casket was lowered into the grave. Billy nodded, his eyes
filled with tears. Chris looked up and thought, Yes how fitting.
As a memory of a warm, windy day came into his mind. A blonde woman in
a deep burgundy dress strode into the street raising a gun to the men who
where dragging a black man to be lynched. After she had been knocked down,
Chris had made eye contact with a tall leanly fit man coming out of the
general store, a gun in hand. They silently agreed, and met in the street,
walking to the graveyard together, and soon rescued the black man.
"Name's Chris," Chris, dressed in all black, had
said.
"Vin Tanner," the other replied.... The memory faded
and Chris found everyone gone but Ezra, Buck, and JD. He noted that Billy
and Elizabeth where slowly walking, arm in arm back to town.
"So many things left unsaid," JD whispered. He looked
out and saw the other graves, or markers, of those they cared for. So much
left unsaid. But to them all nothing needed to be said, so they sat silently,
and said what they wanted to without opening their mouths. They knew those
they wanted to hear them would, without them uttering a sound.
The End
