Helluva Thing by SueN

ONE

It was the rain that woke him. Well, "woke" might be an overstatement. It was the rain that roused him. Big, fat, hard, wet drops of rain that pelted his face, throat, chest and hands, that sank right through his hair and slid coldly down his scalp. He hated that. He’d always hated that. It was one of the chief reasons he wore a hat.

Goddamn it, where was his hat?

He gave a low, hoarse growl of irritation and reached up – he thought it was up – and then back to pull his hat up onto his head where it belonged. Where it would keep the fuckin’ rain out of his hair and off his scalp. Because he really, really hated it when rain – especially big, fat, hard wet drops of rain – sank right through his hair and slid coldly down his scalp. Hated it just about worse than anything, except maybe when somebody found one of his ticklish spots. Wasn’t anything sadder in this world than a feller who was supposed to be such a tough hombre giggling like a goddamned girl because somebody’d accidentally happened on one of his ticklish spots …

Oh yeah, hat.

He licked his dry lips – how in the hell could his lips be dry when they were getting rained on? – and again sent his hand, which seemed to weigh a ton and felt only vaguely connected to his body, back behind him in search of his hat. Instead, his fingers collided with something hard. He thought about that a moment – well, "thought" might be an overstatement – then scraped his fingers against whatever it was they’d hit, only gradually recognizing the hard, rough surface there as the ground.

Now why the hell was the ground where his hat was supposed to be?

Confused, he scraped around against the ground a bit more, then gave a soft, exhausted groan and let his arm fall to his side. And groaned again when his hand landed on what could only be a rock.

Shit, this just couldn’t be right.

He licked his lips again – still dry and cracked to boot – and wondered what the hell he was missing here. He was out in the rain, his hat only God knew where, and just a mite closer to the ground than seemed right. There was something wrong here. He tried to piece together what it might be – smart

feller that he was, not much usually got past him – but kept getting distracted by the feel of the raindrops hitting his face and body and running down his skin.

Why the hell was his skin out in the rain?

And where the fuck was his hat?

Certain he was missing something – besides his hat and the good sense to get his skin out of the rain – he licked his lips again – shit, he had to stop doing that; it was starting to hurt – and wondered if it would help if he opened his eyes. They were closed, weren’t they? Hell, he hoped they were,

because if they weren’t, he was blind …

A big, fat, hard, wet raindrop splattered against an eyelid. Nope, they were closed. Which meant he had to open them. But he could do that. Been doing it all his life. Of course, he didn’t usually have to remind himself how to do it. Just like he didn’t usually have to keep reminding himself to quit licking his goddamn lips because it goddamn hurt.

Christ, surely he hadn’t lost his hat …

He sighed sharply, then immediately tensed and cried out as pain seared through his chest. Oh, shit, that wasn’t right! Another breath tore from him, another hot wave of pain crashed through him, and he instinctively rolled onto his side and curled into himself …

And screamed as his head, chest and side all brutally erupted into flames of agony.

+ + + + + + +

In front of the jail, Chris let his chair fall forward from two legs onto four and rose from it in a single lithe motion, his keen green gaze fixed steadily on the man riding through the light drizzle of rain and leading a horse behind him. Puzzled, he stepped to the edge of the boardwalk and leaned against the post supporting the porch roof, his head tipped quizzically to one side.

What the hell was Buck doing with an extra horse?

Wilmington drew up rein before the jail and swung down from his saddle, then looped the reins of both his big gray and the dirty, trail-worn dun he’d brought with him around the hitching post. Rubbing a big hand over the back of his neck, he stepped up onto the boardwalk at Larabee’s side and shuddered dramatically.

"Don’tcha just hate it when a drop of rain gets inta yer clothes and runs down yer back?" he asked, rolling and jerking his broad shoulders.

Chris lifted a cool gaze to the big man and arched a brow. "I generally avoid that by stayin’ outta the rain," he said blandly.

Buck scowled down at the gunman. "That why ya send the rest of us out on these damn fool errands?"

Larabee’s wide mouth twitched in the barest hint of a smile. "Pays ta be in charge, stud. Besides," green eyes glinted wickedly as that smile grew a hint wider, "since when do you consider ridin’ out to Miz Mason’s place ta be a damn fool errand?"

Buck huffed unhappily and shook his head. "Since she broke down an’ took her husband back," he answered disgustedly. "Hell, I cain’t see why a fine woman like that would want such a good-fer-nothin’, no-account sonuvabitch who cares more about–"

"So where’d you get the horse?" Chris asked, stopping the familiar tirade before it could start. He was already well aware of Buck’s thoughts on Leland Mason and had no desire to hear them again.

"Oh, well–" Forced off one mental track and onto another, Buck shifted his gaze to the animal in question and thoughtfully stroked the ends of his glossy black mustache with a thumb and forefinger. "Came up on him, oh, ’bout five miles outta town, I’d say, just sorta draggin’ along, head down, lookin’ just a sorry sight. So I brung him in, figured we could have Tiny put him in the livery until whoever he belongs to comes lookin’ for him."

Larabee frowned deeply and studied the horse, not liking this at all. The animal was fully tacked, which meant that at some point he’d had a rider. So how had horse and rider gotten separated? And where was the rider now?

"Don’t suppose there was any sign of a man afoot out there?" he asked quietly.

Buck shook his head and thrust a thumb into his gunbelt. "Not that I could see. I looked, but all I could find was this poor feller’s trail." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "And what with this rain, I reckon if there is any sign, we’d need Vin ta find it."

"Shit," Chris muttered under his breath, turning his head abruptly to stare down the street. Buck would have to go and touch on the one thing he’d been trying not to think about all day. He knew it was stupid to worry. Hell, Tanner’d been looking after himself a long time before he’d ever hooked up with the rest of them and he certainly didn’t need anybody fretting over him. He knew the land like Ezra Standish knew a deck of cards, could thrive in conditions that would flat-out kill the rest of them. He was a grown man, a more than competent man.

But he was also a wanted man with a price on his head. And that five-hundred-dollar head of his had been due back in town yesterday.

Buck saw the subtle tensing of the gunman’s lean frame, saw the narrowing of his eyes and the tightening of his face just before he looked away, and sighed heavily. "Still ain’t back, huh?" he asked softly. Chris didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. "Hell, I was afraid’a that. I rode a good piece out the way he’d most likely be comin’ in, but I didn’t see hide nor hair of him." He winced and looked at Chris, able to feel the worry radiating off the man. "I was kinda hopin’ I’d just missed him."

"You didn’t miss him," Chris grated in a low, taut voice. "He ain’t back. And I don’t like it."

Buck nodded slowly. Yeah, he could see that real well. Hell, right now a blind man could’ve seen it. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his thick dark hair, knowing there was nothing he could say that would ease Larabee’s mind. Only Tanner’s appearance would do that. He wasn’t sure he’d ever understand exactly what it was that bound the taciturn gunman and the solitary tracker so closely together, wasn’t sure he’d ever understand exactly what it was that resonated so deeply between the ravaged soul of the one and the distrustful one of the other. But he didn’t have to understand it to know it was there. All he had to do was look at Larabee to see a man worrying over a missing part of himself.

Lord, he hoped Vin turned up soon …

"Hey! That’s Henry!"

Chris and Buck both turned sharply at the shout of surprise, and Chris frowned to see Tiny hurrying toward them from across the street. He threw a puzzled look up at Buck, who only shrugged, then turned his attention back to the short, stout figure of the livery owner. "You know this horse?" he asked as the man reached them.

Tiny stopped beside the dun, his round face creasing with concern as he took in the animal’s condition. "I ought to," he answered absently, stepping closer and inserting a thick hand under the back edge of the saddle blanket, frowning deeply at the heat he felt there. "I’ve had him fer two years now." He pulled out his hand and turned to scowl up at Larabee. "Where is he?" he demanded angrily.

Chris’s confusion only deepened. "Where’s who?"

"The sonuvabitch who brought him in!" Tiny snarled, furious at the mistreatment of his horse. "Hell, I’d bet that saddle’s been on him since yesterday, at least! I wanta know what the hell makes somebody think he can treat an animal this way!"

"Hold on there, Tiny," Buck put in soothingly. "I’m the one who brought Henry in. I found him when I was out ridin’. Wasn’t a sign of his rider anywhere. And Henry looked like he’d been wanderin’ for some time. Somethin’ musta happened to whoever was ridin’ him."

"You know who that might be?" Chris asked quietly, not liking the thought of a man left afoot.

Tiny shrugged his thick shoulders, his anger giving way to that same worry. "All’s I know is that he called himself Carlyle," he answered. "Don’t know if that’s a first name or a last, but it’s the only one he gave. Came inta the livery a few days ago, said his horse’d gone lame an’ wanted me ta take a look. Well," he reached up and scratched his grizzled jaw, "wasn’t nothin’ serious, but the horse needed ta rest up a few days ’fore he could be rode again. This Carlyle feller said he couldn’t wait, said he had business in Ridge City an’ needed ta be there as quick as he could." He shrugged again. "So I said he could take Henry an’ leave his horse here, then he could come back an’ swap ’em out again when he was done."

Buck frowned deeply at that and again stroked his mustache, dark brows knitting over his eyes as he thought. "If he was headin’ ta Ridge City," he asked softly, trying to puzzle it out in his own mind, "then how come I found Henry out past the road ta Weatherby? They’re in completely different directions."

Shit, Chris thought, not just afoot, but lost, too.

He sighed and grimaced tightly, not particularly liking what he knew they had to do but seeing no way around it. "All right," he said quietly, "Buck, take the saddlebags inside. We’ll go through ’em and see if we can find out anything about this Carlyle and what his business was in Ridge City. Maybe there’s somebody we can wire, ask if he ever made it." He looked again at the hostler. "How long ago did he leave?"

Tiny frowned and thought back as Buck stepped down from the boardwalk and retrieved the saddlebags from Henry’s back. "Lemme see, it’s been at least a couple’a days … No, wait," he said firmly as the memory dawned, "he came in the same day Vin left, just a few hours later. I remember ’cause I was tryin’ ta get the dent out of a brand new bucket Peso’d kicked in while Vin was tryin’ ta saddle him." He snorted and shook his head in disgust. "That horse jus’ plumb hates shiny buckets. Don’t mind dull ones, but he’ll kick the hell out of a shiny one ever’ time. I jus’ don’t understand it!"

"It’s Peso," Buck retorted as he stepped back up onto the boardwalk and headed for the door of the jail. "What’s not t’ understand? Damn horse is crazy."

Tiny silently agreed but said nothing. He knew Tanner hadn’t returned yet, but he also knew how the man felt about that damned man-eater of his and wasn’t about to take the chance of any slight to Peso getting back to him. The tracker could be scarier than Larabee when he was truly pissed.

"All right," Chris sighed, irritated by the possibility of having to ride out in the rain to search for a man he didn’t even know, "go on and take Henry back to the livery, get him taken care of. If he’s been wearin’ that saddle all this time, he’s likely got some sores formin’." Even as he said it, he knew Tiny would go over the animal meticulously; the man thought more of horses than he did most people.

Not that Larabee could blame him …

"C’mon, Henry," Tiny said gently, unhitching the horse and lovingly stroking his nose, "let’s get you back home." He started to lead the horse away, then stopped and glanced back at Larabee. "I hope Carlyle turns up," he said worriedly. "Ain’t no tellin’ what all could happen t’ a feller out there."

"Yeah," Chris sighed, though his thoughts had drifted from the missing stranger to another "feller" somewhere out there. "No tellin’ at all." He managed a strained smile for the hostler. "Thanks for the help, Tiny. We’ll let ya know what we turn up." He watched the man lead Henry slowly toward the livery, then turned and went into the jail.

Buck was seated behind the desk and already had the saddlebags open and their contents strewn before him. He looked up at Larabee’s entrance and his face – a pale, tight mask of equal parts fear and fury – froze the gunman in his tracks.

"Chris," he said hoarsely, blue eyes dark and chillingly serious, "we got a problem." He lifted two items from the desk. One was a sawed-off Winchester in an all too familiar holster.

The other was Vin Tanner’s wanted poster.

+ + + + + + +

He clung tightly, desperately to the rock his hand had fallen against earlier, needing its unyielding strength and solidness to keep him from being swept away by the hard, hot torrents of pain battering him without mercy. Red mists swirled about him, blinding him, as his every sobbing breath drew the agony deeper still into his body. He vaguely heard the unmistakable sounds of someone being sick, but he had no idea who or why.

He only knew that he hurt like hell.

At long, long last, after what had to have been days, the distant sounds of retching ceased. More importantly though, at least to him, the violent heaves that had racked his own body stilled, lessening the ferocity of the pain assaulting him. He groaned thickly and tentatively loosened his grip on the rock. When he wasn’t swept away, he groaned again and rolled weakly onto his back.

Shit, it was raining again. Or still.

Had it ever stopped?

He swallowed and licked his lips, the pain there considerably less bothersome than before in contrast to that still throbbing and burning in the rest of his body, then grimaced at the foul taste in his mouth. Jesus, he’d almost swear that he was the one he’d heard throwing up his guts! Suddenly aware also of a deep, desperate thirst, he figured he might as well make use of the rain and opened his mouth to catch its cool wetness …

And wondered idly what the hell he was doing lying out in the rain in the first place.

Lord, if he was stretched out in the street in the middle of town, Larabee was gonna be pissed. Goddamn uppity gunfighter didn’t always have just the best sense of humor. Nathan probably wouldn’t be pleased, either. Didn’t think any of them had much sense to begin with, and he’d likely take this as a sure sign that he was right.

Where the hell was his shirt?

A hand lay limply on his chest, and it only gradually dawned on him that it was his hand and that his fingers – had to be his fingers if they were on his hand, though they sure as hell didn’t feel like his fingers – were touching bare flesh. Determined to make sure he had this right, he willed the hand to rise, willed the fingers to move, then just let the whole thing fall when his will gave out. And felt hand and fingers thump against a chest, sending another spear of pain through it and confirming his suspicion. His hand, his fingers, his skin, his chest, his pain.

So where the hell was his shirt?

And where the hell was his hat?

He frowned slightly, vaguely recalling someone asking him that earlier. But who else would care about his hat? Chris might …

Oh, shit. If Larabee knew he was losing his clothes and lying out in the street in the rain, he’d be more than pissed. He’d be … he’d be …

Hell, he’d just be Larabee, and that was never a good thing.

Except that it was. To him, anyway. Had been about the best thing he’d ever known. Something in the man called to him, settled him, gave him a reason to quit hiding. To quit running. Hell, the minute he’d stepped out into the middle of that street to march with the man on their fool’s errand to a cemetery full of liquored-up cowboys, he’d known his running days were over.

Was that it? Was that why he was stretched out in the street? Had one of those cowboys gotten a shot into him?

He thought a moment, despite the pain it caused him, and finally decided that wasn’t it at all. His memory wasn’t too good right now, but he did seem to recall that they’d gotten out of that unscathed, him and Chris and Nathan. Of course, that didn’t explain why he was out here now, in the street in the rain with a body plumb full of hurt …

Chris would know. Chris always seemed to know what was wrong with him. He just had to find Chris. Which meant he was gonna have to get up …

And, shit, that was gonna hurt. He just knew it. Because just lying here doing nothing hurt, and if doing nothing hurt, then doing something would surely to God hurt even worse …

Where the hell was his shirt?

He closed his mouth, only now realizing that it was full of water. Damn, he was thirsty! Reminding himself that his mouth was full of water, he swallowed, then wondered where the water had come from. He didn’t recall drinking from his canteen …

Oh yeah. Rain.

Why was he out in the rain?

Damn, he needed to find Chris. Needed to find anybody who could tell him what the hell was going on.

He groaned sickly. He was gonna have to get up. Shit.

He swallowed again – should’ve let his mouth fill up with water again first – and swept a leaden arm out clumsily in search of the rock that had been his anchor earlier. Hell, maybe he should take the damn thing with him. He found it and latched on to it, steeled himself for what was to come and slowly pulled himself over onto his belly.

And discovered immediately that preparing for pain did absolutely nothing to lessen its force when it hit. Fresh agony erupted through his head, chest and side, and this time when he heard the retching he was fairly certain he knew just who was being sick.

He lay there until the worst of it passed, until he thought he could breathe again without screaming, until he no longer thought his body would tear itself apart. When he’d recovered from that ordeal, he thrust himself into a new one, working against his pain, weakness and desire just to give up and roll over and die right here to get his hands and knees under him.

Slowly, so slowly, inch by hellish inch, he pushed himself up onto hands and knees, hung there for long moments until he was fairly certain his brains wouldn’t spill out of the top of his head, and wondered when the hell Chris would get here and tell him why this hurt so goddamn much. But instinct told him that Chris wasn’t here else he would’ve been here by now and he wouldn’t be doing this alone.

Alone. Shit, he’d forgotten how much he hated doing this alone. He’d been good at it once; had to be, because it was the only way he’d ever known. But six men had showed him another way, had gotten him so used to that way that he’d forgotten this way.

Only now he was back to this way again, and he had to remember how to do it. Except that it was so hard to remember anything just now …

He eased himself carefully back onto his haunches and slowly lifted his head, then gradually opened the eyes he’d only now realized had been closed all this time. When the world stopped spinning and settled into some sort of vague, gray, grainy focus, soft at the edges and not much better in the center, he lifted his head a fraction more and moved it carefully to take in something of his surroundings.

Well, hell, he wasn’t in town at all. He was out … somewhere … in the open, in the rain … His gaze snagged on a large, lumpish, indistinct object and he stared dully at it, working to put a name to it.

A body.

He giggled idiotically, ridiculously pleased with himself for recognizing the thing that lay not ten feet from him. A body. Had to be a dead one, too, because it’d been sliced open from gullet to gut, and too much of what should’ve been inside had pushed its way outside.

Poor bastard had been gutted but good.

Of course, now he really needed Chris, to tell him who the poor bastard was and why he was laying dead over there with his insides on the outside. Only Chris wasn’t here.

Which meant he’d have to go to wherever Chris was. Which wouldn’t be easy, because he didn’t have the slightest idea where he was. A soft, mournful sigh escaped him and his glee of a few moments ago plunged into despondency.

It was a helluva thing when a damn tracker lost himself.

But he forced the despair away, seizing firmly upon a much more positive thought. Maybe he was lost, but if he could find Chris, then Chris would tell him where he was and he wouldn’t be lost anymore. He just had to find Chris.

Which meant he was gonna have to get up. Onto his feet first and then, God help him, onto his horse. Because he sure as hell wasn’t in any shape to walk back to town. Wherever town was.

Shit.

But he had no choice. He didn’t know much else at the moment, but he knew that. He had to get away from here, wherever the hell "here" was, and get back to folks who could tell him what the hell was going on. And he had to do it now, before he passed out.

Because God knew that was looking like a mighty strong possibility right now.

But he managed to hold the threatening darkness at bay, managed somehow to lurch to his feet and actually remain on them, then nearly wept as he looked around.

Where the hell was his fuckin’ horse?

+ + + + + + +

"Now, Chris, just hold on here!" Buck grabbed the raging gunman’s shoulder and spun him around before he could storm out the door. He knew he was taking his life in his hands, but he had to force Larabee to think calmly – hell, think, period – if they had any chance of finding Vin. "You can’t just rush out there half-cocked!" He held tightly to Chris’s arms, his hard fingers digging into the man’s flesh. "We don’t know where Vin is–"

"He’s with Carlyle!" Larabee snarled, green eyes flaming, his whole body shaking with fury and fear. He tried to tear himself out of Buck’s grasp, but the big man only tightened his hold. "Goddamn it–"

"He’s right, Chris," Josiah said quietly, rising from the edge of the desk where he’d been sitting and walking slowly to the two men near the door. He fixed compassionate eyes on Larabee. "I know you’re worried. We’re all worried. We know Carlyle’s got him and why. But we don’t know where. And until we know that, there’s no use in us goin’ after ’em. There’s just too much territory out there."

"They could be halfway ta Texas by now!" Chris spat, terror for the missing tracker churning like acid in his soul.

"How?" Buck asked calmly, staring into Larabee’s anguished eyes and willing the man to listen to reason. "Carlyle’s horse is here. His gear is here. Looks like they only got one horse between ’em an’ that horse is Peso." He lifted two dark brows. "How far d’you think they’re gonna get ridin’ double on that crazy animal?"

Chris stared at Buck, trying to draw some reassurance from his words but failing. Yeah, Carlyle’s horse was here, but Carlyle wasn’t, and Carlyle had Vin. Or had had him at some point. But if something had happened to change that, then where the hell was Tanner? If he’d somehow been able to get away, then why hadn’t he come back here? Why had that goddamn horse done it and not him? Each new question served only to fuel his fear and deepening sense of helplessness. He wanted nothing more than to tear out of the jail, out of town and go after Vin, but didn’t have the slightest idea where to start. They needed a tracker …

Only their tracker was the one who needed tracking.

"God," he groaned, tearing out of Buck’s arm and whirling away from the man as the hopelessness of the situation hit him. He knotted his hands into fists at his sides and clenched his jaws hard, fighting desperately to control the emotions threatening to overtake him. "They could be anywhere out there! How the hell are we gonna find him?"

"Same way we do everything else," Buck said softly, as worried about Chris as he was about Vin. Larabee had lost so much of himself already, and what he’d gotten back had been largely because of his friendship with Vin. If he were to lose the tracker’s steadying, healing influence now, like this, God only knew what else would be lost along with it. "One step at a time, thinkin’ things through, makin’ a plan. We’ll find him, Chris," he vowed firmly. "We’ll find him."

Chris turned around sharply and fixed glittering eyes on Buck. "How?" he rasped through gritted teeth. "We don’t know where to look … Hell, Buck, he doesn’t even have his gun!"

"Buck," JD spoke up for the first time, his tone thoughtful. He was sitting in the chair behind the desk, his hazel eyes narrowed and intense, his young face screwed into a mask of concentration. "Are you sure there’s no way Henry coulda been comin’ from Ridge City?"

Wilmington wheeled on the young sheriff with an impatient sigh. "Not unless he was makin’ a grand tour of the territory!" he snapped. "I found that horse about a mile past the Weatherby Road, an’ there just ain’t no way he was comin’ from nowhere near Ridge City. Not if Carlyle took him outta here when Tiny said he did."

JD nodded absently, his mind working. Again and again he went over everything he knew about this area, everything Vin had taught him, wanting to be absolutely certain he was right. But Vin had also taught him to trust his instincts, and right now they were screaming at him. "Yellow Creek," he said at last, winning a sharp stare from every man in the room. "Has to be."

"Why Yellow Creek, JD?" Chris asked softly, very softly. He was dangerously close to snapping.

JD swallowed, made distinctly uncomfortable by Larabee’s tone and hard stare. But he also recognized the desperation behind the man’s attitude, felt that same desperation in himself, and knew he couldn’t afford to be wrong. Vin couldn’t afford it. "I was in the livery when Tiny brought in Henry," he explained slowly, wanting to be certain he had it all clear in his mind. "I helped clean him up. His hooves were a mess. Packed with yellow clay." Blank stares met his words and he sighed sharply, wondering how such trail-wise men could miss something so obvious. "C’mon, guys," he prodded, "yellow clay?" Various heads shook, a few shoulders shrugged, and he sighed again and rolled his eyes. "Yellow clay isn’t that common around here," he explained. "There are only a few riverbeds where you find it. A couple of ’em are out toward Ridge City, but the only one anywhere near the Weatherby Road is Yellow Creek. It’s how the place got its name."

Chris stared hard at JD, his whole hope fixed on the boy’s words. "And you know this because …?"

"Vin told me," JD answered softly, dropping his gaze abruptly as he thought again of his missing friend, about all he’d learned, and hoped still to learn, from the man. "He was telling me about the Indians around here, about where they’d get the different colors of clay to use in makin’ their pots." He drew a slow, steadying breath and looked up again, meeting Larabee’s eyes without flinching. "Henry had yellow clay all over his hooves," he said again, knowing to his bones that he was right. "If he wasn’t comin’ from Ridge City, the only other place he coulda got it is Yellow Creek."

Chris studied the boy for long moments, taking in the utter certainty in his voice and eyes, and felt the knot of sick fear in his gut loosen a bit. JD might be young, but he was also uncommonly bright and soaked up knowledge like he couldn’t get enough. And if he’d been learning from Vin, then he’d been learning from the best.

"Makes sense," Buck mused softly. He thought back to where he’d found Henry and nodded slightly. "He was comin’ from the northeast, just the way he’d be comin’ from Yella Creek."

"All right then," Chris breathed, drawing himself to his full height and pulling the mantle of leadership back onto his shoulders. "Yellow Creek it is. We’ll ride out together, see what we can find there. And hope t’ hell the rain hasn’t washed his tracks away."

Ezra had slipped into the jail during JD’s explanation and took the opportunity now to speak. "Gentlemen, I believe we should make all haste in our departure." He held a handful of telegrams out to Larabee. "I took it upon myself to contact a few of the sheriffs whose signatures appeared on receipts for bounties paid we found among Mr. Carlyle’s possessions." His handsome face was its usual bland mask, but an unmistakable anger simmered in his jade eyes. "A number of the replies have stressed that, presented with a choice between ‘dead or alive,’ Mr. Carlyle seems to have a marked preference for ‘dead.’"

Chris stared down at the flimsy strips of paper in his hand, then back up at Standish, and felt his gut clench anew. They might have Carlyle’s horse, but Carlyle still had Vin …

And Vin was wanted dead or alive.

+ + + + + + +

He leaned back against the trunk of the cottonwood and closed his eyes, wishing the world would stop spinning for just a while, long enough maybe for him to put together a decent thought and get it fixed in his head. Seemed now like every time he tried to get hold of one it just spilled right out through the long, deep gash he’d discovered in his scalp just above his left ear. Discovered it the hard way, too, by dragging his fingers through it when he’d tried to get his hair out of his face.

Damn, it’d hurt.

But, hell, he was finding all kinds of hurts on himself, and was trying to piece together how he’d gotten ’em. Except that the answers kept sloshing right out that goddamn ravine carved into the side of his head. He opened his eyes and stared blearily back across the short distance he’d managed to stagger before falling, fixing his less than focused gaze on the body he could still see.

Had to have something to do with him.

He squinted and tried to see the man more clearly, then gave up the effort and closed his eyes again, resting his head once more against the tree. Didn’t matter, he’d already seen all he needed. Didn’t know who the poor bastard was, but he had to have been the one who’d gutted him. He’d found his knife by the body, and he could still think just clearly enough to recognize his own handiwork.

And he never cut anybody open like that unless he had a real good reason.

He exhaled carefully, then gasped and absently raised a shaking hand to his chest as even that small breath sent the pain searing through him. At the last minute, though, he remembered not to touch his chest and let his hand fall back to the ground. Something else he’d learned the hard way. He’d found a real nice big, dark bruise on his chest and, startled, had touched it once. Just that once, though. Helluva way to discover busted ribs. After he’d come to, he’d told himself in no uncertain terms not ever to touch it again.

He was good and goddamn tired of passin’ out.

But at least he’d found his shirt. Hadn’t he? He lifted his other hand and brushed his fingers tentatively against his middle, relieved to feel it still wrapped around him and tied in place by the sleeves. Damn, he was glad he hadn’t lost it after all. It was his favorite, the bright blue one. Nettie’d given it to him for Christmas, said she’d picked it because it matched his eyes. It had immediately become his favorite shirt because she’d given it to him.

He sure hoped the blood came out of it …

He absently fingered the rain-soaked fabric and wondered if he’d cut it up or just wound it about him whole. Hell, surely he wouldn’t have cut it up, would he? Not this shirt. Though if he’d needed to stop the bleedin’ …

He grimaced. Another hurt discovered the hard way. When he’d first realized the shirt was tied around him, he’d figured he could use it to bind his ribs and had started tugging on it. Only to have it rip loose from the long, deep gash carved into his side just beneath his right ribcage. Turns out he’d been using the shirt to bind up that wound, and yanking at the thing had just started him bleeding all over again.

Not to mention hurting like all holy hell.

He opened his eyes again and stared across the distance at the body. Had to have been him who’d caused all these hurts; wasn’t anybody else around. He snickered at that. Any body else. He wished Larabee were here so he could share that one with him. Not that the man would laugh. Hell, Chris probably wouldn’t do more than give him one of those looks and shake his head like he did at all his wisecracks, like he wasn’t quite right. Goddamn gunfighter didn’t have just the best sense of humor in the world.

Still, it’d sure be nice if he were here. He didn’t quite know why, but things just seemed to make more sense when Chris was around. And even if they didn’t, he still felt better, knew they’d somehow figure them out together. He hadn’t had that in a long time, that kind of security, that kind of certainty. Surprised him to realize how much he’d gotten used to having it. Surprised him to realize how much he missed it now that he didn’t have it.

Lord knew he could surely use it.

His eyelids drooped and he let them close; hurt too damn much to keep them open. Hell, it hurt too damn much to do anything except just sit here and wait for Chris and the boys to come get him. Maybe he’d even let Nathan give him one of those God-awful potions the man was always pouring down them when they hurt. They might taste like shit, but they sure as hell worked–

Aw, hell. Chris and the boys would know he needed them … wouldn’t they?

He thought about that, and tried to keep those thoughts from spilling out through the new opening carved into his head. Did Chris and the boys know he was missing? Shit, was he missing? Hell, he had to be. He was out … somewhere … in the rain, with more hurts on him than he could name and within sight of the dead body of a man he had to have killed …

Hell, if that wasn’t missing, he didn’t know what was. But that didn’t mean that Chris knew it.

Shit.

He groaned tiredly and again wrenched his eyes open. If the boys didn’t know he was missing, they wouldn’t know to come for him. Which meant he’d have to go to them. And he just didn’t know if he could do that. So far he hadn’t been able to make it past this tree, and while he didn’t really know just where town was, he suspected it was further away than he really cared to think about.

Hell.

He was gonna have to get up again, move again. Wasn’t any way around it. He couldn’t just sit here and wait. No telling how long it would take the boys to figure out he was missing, and time was something he knew he didn’t have. Taken separately, his hurts weren’t serious; he’d had worse lots of times. But put them together and they all got just a mite worse. Add in the fact that obviously none of them were brand new, that he’d likely been bleeding for a while, likely been out in the rain for a while, sure as hell hadn’t eaten in a while …

Shit, he just plumb hated days like this.

He swallowed, his throat as dry as the ground under him was wet, and started to lick his lips, then stopped himself. Another painful lesson learned. He’d finally discovered that they weren’t just dry and cracked, but were damn near split open. Somebody’d beaten the hell out of him.

His fuzzy gaze drifted again to the body. Had to have been him. But why? Who the hell was he? And how in the hell could he forget a man he’d carved open like that?

His hand strayed up once more to his aching head, to the gash in it. Steeling himself against the pain, he probed it gently with shaking fingers, loosing a hissing breath as they trailed over torn flesh and got snagged in rain- and blood-matted hair. Bullet crease; had to be. He’d seen enough of them to know; hell, he’d had enough of them to know.

That explained why he couldn’t keep his thoughts straight. Likely also explained why he couldn’t remember how he got all these other hurts. If he’d been shot first, then anything after would’ve just slid right into the muddy mess of his thoughts.

But, hell, he was a tracker, wasn’t he? Reading even a muddy mess of a trail was what he did. And it was high time he started piecing this trail together, unless he wanted to die under this damn tree.

All right, he was shot. Who’d want to shoot him and why?

His broken lips twitched in a smile. Larabee would say it was more like who wouldn’t want to shoot him. Hell, the man threatened to do it himself often enough, usually after he made one of his wisecracks that pricked the gunman’s stubborn pride. Said he’d shoot him full of holes, drag his sorry carcass back to Texas and collect that bounty …

Aw, hell. His smile faded. That goddamn bounty. Gave any man a reason to shoot him. Or five hundred reasons. He could understand men who knew him wanting to shoot him, but that bounty’d be enough to convince even a perfect stranger to do it.

Lord, he hoped Eli Joe was rottin’ in hell right now.

He glanced again at the body. Man had to be – well, had to have been – a bounty hunter, had likely shot him to make it easier to haul him back to Texas. He snorted softly. But judging from the sight of the bastard’s innards spilled out and his own sorry state, it hadn’t quite made it easy enough, hadn’t quite taken the fight out of him. ’Course, Chris always was sayin’ he had a hard head.

Lord, he wished the boys would get here!

But he knew he couldn’t count on that. He hated thinking that, because he’d come to count on them for more, and in more ways, than he’d ever counted on anybody. ’Cept maybe his grandpa. But he’d been just a boy then, and the years after Joshua Tanner’s death had taught him one hard lesson after another about how dangerous trustin’ others could be. He’d learned after more disappointment and hurt than he cared to think on that it just didn’t pay, and could sometimes cost, to rely on anybody except himself. Then he’d hooked up with six of the goddamnedest men he’d ever known, and slowly all those hard, painful lessons in trust were being erased and he was learning new and much more pleasant ones.

It was a helluva thing knowin’ he wasn’t on his own anymore.

Except that right now he was. And he figured he owed it to the boys to do more than just sit under this tree and die because some goddamned bounty hunter’d figured he’d make five hundred easy dollars off Vin Tanner’s dead body. Well, hell, he wasn’t gonna be easy money for anybody, and he for damn sure wasn’t gonna hurt Chris and the others by just up and dying on them. Not when they’d already gone out of their way so many times and put themselves at risk in so many ways just to keep him alive. He reckoned that if they were so willing to bleed for him then he must be important to them, and they’d each already lost enough that was important in their lives. He wouldn’t be responsible for them losing any more.

It was time he got up and got his sorry ass back to town, back to the folks who were important to him.

+ + + + + + +

Chris was figuratively chomping at the bit and literally chomping on a cheroot. Couldn’t keep the damn thing lit because of the goddamn rain. True, it had slackened to a drizzle, but that wasn’t enough for him. What he wanted was for the fuckin’ stuff to stop altogether, for the sun to come out and dry up the earth so they could find a clear goddamn trail that would lead them straight to Vin Tanner.

And Jesus almighty fuckin’ Christ, why the hell was JD stoppin’ again?

Josiah winced and looked away as Larabee wrenched the cigar from his mouth with a wordless, vicious cry and flung it violently to the ground. He could feel the fear, the frustration, the rage pouring in waves from the man’s tightly coiled body and prayed fervently that they found Vin, or at least some fresh sign of him, soon.

Before the man started shooting.

To be honest, though, none of them were exactly at ease right now. JD looked as solemn as Sanchez had ever seen him, kneeling on the wet ground and staring at it as if it held the secrets to all their fates. Which in a way, he supposed, it did. Buck stood by the boy’s side, head bowed, a hand resting reassuringly on JD’s shoulder, his normally loose frame so tight that Josiah would swear the air around him vibrated. Ezra, who never gave anything away, was fidgeting now like a man beset by ants, his hands in constant motion, his teeth worrying at one corner of his mouth, his green eyes darting restlessly all around. Nathan brooded in silence, dark eyes burning with worry, his face grim. Every time they stopped he went through his medical supplies with an obsessive thoroughness, though he already had to know by heart what he carried with him. As Josiah watched, the healer dismounted, took down his bag and delved into it again. Not that he himself was doing any better. He figured he’d already recited every Psalm at least twice, had uttered every prayer he knew and was now making them up as he went. Here and there, he sprinkled his prayers with verses from the Old Testament, calling down God’s holy and merciless wrath upon the man who’d dared take their brother from them for no better reason than money.

And then, God help them all, there was Chris.

Josiah simply couldn’t bring himself to look upon the man; none of them could. The agony in his eyes was too real, too raw, and looking upon it somehow seemed an unforgivable invasion of the man’s soul. Of his own private hell. Larabee hadn’t spoken since they’d set out, and Josiah figured it was because he couldn’t, because if he ever once pried open his jaws and teeth to let loose a sound all that would emerge would be screams. It wasn’t just the fact that Vin was missing that tortured the gunman, it was why the tracker had been taken.

Five hundred dollars. A bounty, a curse, put upon him for a crime he didn’t commit. And precious little hope now of ever seeing it lifted because Chris had killed the only man who could prove Vin’s innocence. He’d done it to save Vin’s life, but in saving his friend from a knife, he might well have condemned him to the noose.

Sometimes, Josiah thought, God had a truly nasty sense of humor.

He sighed heavily and bowed his head. He wanted to pray, but the well of words had run dry. His soul had run dry. Except for the endless fear that seethed in and clawed at it. How could this have happened? How could they have let a bounty hunter ride into their town and ride back out again? How could they have failed in their responsibility, their promise, to watch Vin’s back?

How could they have let a stranger take their brother from them?

He groaned thickly and lifted his head, opening his eyes and sweeping them across the gray heavens. Where was God now? Where was His mighty, protecting hand?

He hoped, he prayed that it was wrapped lovingly around Vin.

JD stood abruptly and turned to face them, eyes wide and clear in his pale young face. "Tracks," he announced, his usual flood of words dried to a mere terse trickle. "As best I can tell, they’re fairly fresh." He glanced down again, as if to reassure himself, nodded once, then lifted his gaze again and fixed it squarely on Chris. "And they’re Peso’s."

Chris jerked in the saddle as if he’d been shot, then righted himself and impaled JD with his flaming gaze. One word escaped him, a hoarse, harsh, ragged growl that rippled coldly down the spine of every man who heard it. "Where?"

But JD withstood that gaze and that deadly tone, drew himself up to his full height and suddenly seemed to grow up before them all. He extended an arm, pointing toward the east. "That way. But–"

And without waiting for anyone else, Chris loosed another terrible sound, dug his spurs into Pony and raced off toward the east.

"Goddamn it!" Buck spat, racing for his horse and vaulting into the saddle. Like a hound after the fox he tore after Larabee, his words hanging in the rain behind him. "Shit … goddamn it … y’ didn’t let him finish!"

+ + + + + + +

He staggered stubbornly forward, holding himself up by sheer will alone and forcing one step after another, determined not to fall again. He was tired of fallin’, tired of hurtin’ when he landed. And he was fresh outta things to use to bind up his wounds when falling jarred them into bleeding again. Wasn’t any way in hell he was movin’ his shirt from around his waist, not with that goddamn gash burnin’ below his ribs, and he now wore his bandanna folded and tied around his head to keep the graze there from bleedin’. He’d found a handkerchief in his pocket and had used it to bind up the nasty rope burn on his left wrist, but there his luck had run out; didn’t have anything left to use for the burn on the right one.

Shit, somebody’d trussed him up like a goddamn turkey!

He thought again of the dead man he’d left behind and frowned, trying to put the pieces together. Had to have been him who’d done it. Hell, who’d done all this. Shot him, tied him up, beaten the crap out of him and sliced a mile-long gash that burned like hell under his ribs. Shit, no wonder he’d cut the bastard open like that! He was an easy-goin’ man, everybody said so, but even he had his limits and bein’ treated like this was just bound to push him to them.

Sonuvabitch had obviously pissed him off, and even folks who liked him said that was never a good idea.

But at least he had his knife. Wasn’t exactly as clean as he usually kept it, but he reckoned that was to be expected. Wasn’t like he’d had any way of cleaning it except with wet grass, and Lord knew cuttin’ open a feller like he’d done would flat foul a blade. But sometimes these things just had to be done, and ’most anybody would say that Vin Tanner never shirked from doin’ what had to be done.

’Specially when it came to guttin’ some goddamn low-down bounty hunter.

He had to laugh and shake his head at that, no matter that neither was just a real good idea right now. Hell, he’d been a goddamn low-down bounty hunter, too. And he’d taken in more than one man tied, beaten, shot or cut. It was just the way of things. Didn’t go out of his way to do it, and if a bounty behaved then he’d stood a real good chance of getting to jail in one whole piece. But, hell, some men just didn’t cotton to the idea of being taken in and needed some persuadin’.

He’d obviously needed a lot of persuadin’ …

The sudden rush of memory caught him unprepared and dropped him to his knees as it seared through his brain. Confused, half-formed images exploded before him, sights, sounds and sensations assailed him, and he tried vainly to make some sense of them. But he had nothing firm, nothing sure, to tie them to, to anchor them on, and could do nothing more than kneel in the mud and clutch at his head while the senseless torrent overwhelmed him.

Hard hands grabbed him, gripped him, dragged him roughly while a harsh voice poured out a stream of vile curses. A horse … no, horses … snorted and blew angrily. The hard hands tried to force him toward a shifting mountain of black that protested both their nearness and that of the dun pressing much too close upon it. Another low, rolling, menacing snort sounded a warning, a flash of black passed before his eyes and he heard the shrill, pained scream of a horse. A streak of grayish brown plunged past him, more foul curses peppered the air and the hard hands shoved him away. He collided with … a tree? … and hung there, trying to see, trying to think, his head hurting like all hell and him wanting just to sink back into the darkness. But another shrill, pained scream split open that darkness and he looked up …

And saw the bastard he’d gutted lashing Peso viciously across the face with a coiled lariat.

"No!"

Enraged by the treatment of his horse and forgetting his own pain, he lunged across the distance, hurling himself into the man and sending them both sprawling to the ground. He tried to get up but couldn’t, his head threatening to split itself wide open, his hands tied before him. But the other man wasn’t hampered in any way and came at him in a full fury, yanking him up by the wrists and pounding savage fists into his face and body. He couldn’t fight back, couldn’t protect himself, couldn’t get away, couldn’t do anything except fall back to the ground. Then a booted foot connected solidly with his chest, hellish red pain exploded through him, and his own anguished cry filled his ears just before the darkness rose up and swallowed him again.

Peso.

He sagged forward, barely catching himself on his hands before he fell into the mud, as the memory faded. He shivered uncontrollably and gasped frantically for breath even through the burning waves of agony that effort caused him. But at least now he knew how he’d gotten his busted ribs …

Peso.

The sonuvabitch had been beatin’ his horse!

He groaned and barely resisted the urge to sink to the ground, knowing he didn’t have many more falls left in him before he wouldn’t get up again. With a painful effort, he raised his aching head and slowly swept the countryside with unfocused eyes, worry for more than himself churning sickly in his gut.

Where the hell was Peso?

+ + + + + + +

"Larabee, goddamn it, stop!"

Buck’s frantic bellow finally reached Chris through the fear and fury driving him ever onward. With a low, venomous snarl, he reined Pony to a sharp, plunging stop and yanked the gelding around to await Wilmington’s arrival. Green eyes burned like fire in his hard-set face, his lips thinned into a pale, savage line, and faint tremors ran through the hands holding just a bit too tightly to the reins.

Buck heaved a deep sigh of relief when he saw the gunman finally stop. He had no illusions that Chris’s head had cleared any since he’d torn off from the rest of them, but at least the man was no longer chasing madly after the devil’s own tail. Chris had stopped, which meant he’d heard him, and if Chris was hearing, then Buck might actually get the man to listen.

Eventually …

He slowed Beavis to an easy walk, giving himself time to regroup before he had to face the seething mess of the other man’s emotions. Long, painful experience had taught him that Larabee at a wild boil was not a thing to be faced lightly; getting caught in the spill-over one too many times had taught him to proceed with caution.

"You through chasin’ after shadows?" he asked quietly as he drew up rein before the man and eyed him steadily. God, Chris was unraveling before his eyes.

"Ain’t chasin’ shadows," Larabee seethed through clenched teeth. "I’m chasin’ Vin–"

"No, you’re not," Buck said firmly, crossing his wrists over the saddle horn and leaning forward, blue eyes intent on his old friend. "You’re chasin’ Peso–"

"Same thing!" Chris spat. "Find Peso, we’ll find Vin–"

"Not this time, ol’ son," Buck said gently. "JD was tryin’ t’ tell us somethin’ before you took off like a shot. Somethin’ you needed t’ hear."

The soft words sent a violent chill down Chris’s spine and he jerked unconsciously at the reins. Pony snorted and tugged back in protest, and Chris exhaled unsteadily and loosened his grip when he realized what he was doing. "Sorry, boy," he whispered, freeing one hand and patting the gelding’s black neck affectionately.

"Why’n’t ya get down fer a spell, let him rest," Buck suggested, easily able to see Larabee’s unsettled state infecting the usually even-tempered Pony. "Me an’ you can have us a talk."

"Vin–"

"Needs us, I know," the big man interrupted in a level voice. "But if you don’t calm down an’ hear me out, then we ain’t gonna be able ta do a damn thing for him."

That argument, as Buck had hoped, reached Chris as no other could. He stiffened in the saddle, green eyes widening and flashing with fear, then he forced his raging emotions into something approaching control and nodded tightly. Hating every moment of delay, he nonetheless swung stiffly down from the saddle and ground-hitched Pony, then crossed his arms against his chest and directed a hard stare at Buck.

"Talk," he grated.

Buck sighed and bowed his head, shaking it slowly and aching for his friend. He’d known that this was eating at the man, but he’d badly underestimated just how much. Since he’d been forced to kill Eli Joe, Chris had taken the threat posed to Vin by bounty hunters more deeply, more personally, than ever, as if he were responsible for the predators stalking Tanner rather than the sonuvabitch who’d truly caused this mess. And if they lost Vin to one of those bastards now, Buck knew with instinctive and heartbreaking certainty that they’d lose Chris as well.

It was a helluva thing havin’ friends who mattered so much …

He dismounted with his usual easy grace and dropped Beavis’s reins, letting the big gray graze on the sparse wet grass. The rain had finally stopped, and for that he was grateful, but the sodden ground still squelched messily under his feet. He couldn’t help thinking about Vin, wondered if he were holed up somewhere and dry or out in this God-awful weather. Maybe hurt …

Shit, why couldn’t they have gotten all this rain last week, or next week? Just one more goddamn complication …

He forced such thoughts away and focused instead on the tightly-leashed figure before him. Now and again, Chris’s gaze dropped from him to the ground, and Buck knew the man was searching for Peso’s tracks. Well, hell, it was time to put a stop to that right now.

"Followin’ Peso ain’t gonna lead us t’ Vin," he said quietly and without preamble. "There ain’t nobody ridin’ the damn fool horse."

Chris jerked at that and shot a burning stare at Buck. "What?" he spat.

Buck sighed and shoved his hands into his pants pockets. "That’s what JD was tryin’ t’ tell us," he explained slowly, patiently, meeting Larabee’s gaze without flinching. "The tracks the kid found are Peso’s, saw somethin’ in the print of the shoe that makes him sure of that. But the prints aren’t deep enough, especially in all this mud, for ’em to’ve been made by a horse carryin’ even one rider, much less two. I’m sorry, pard," he said softly, "but Vin just ain’t on that horse."

"Maybe he’s walkin’–"

"Ain’t no footprints at all, Chris," Buck said sadly, knowing how badly, how desperately, Chris wanted all this not to be true. Hell, he wanted that too, but he’d learned early on that wanting a thing rarely made it so. "Nobody’s ridin’ him, nobody’s walkin’ before, beside or behind him. That damn horse is just out wanderin’ loose."

Chris stared at Buck, eyes wide and dark in his pale face. He stood absolutely still, but was crumbling inside. Vin had to be with Peso, had to know the cantankerous, troublesome horse was his best – hell, his only – chance for getting away from Carlyle and getting back home! He wouldn’t just turn the animal loose, and, no matter that he lived to vex the tracker, Peso wouldn’t leave him unless …

Jesus, this couldn’t be happening!

Buck read every agonized thought that raced through those tortured eyes and felt a sick twist at his gut. With another soft, sad sigh, he stepped closer and set a big hand gently on one bowed shoulder, infusing every bit of strength, compassion and courage he could muster into Larabee through his touch. "JD wants t’ go on t’ Yella Creek," he said quietly. "Forget about Peso, concentrate on Vin. We know Henry was at Yella Creek, and we know Carlyle was ridin’ Henry. Could be when we get there we’ll find ’em both. Or at least find out more about what happened and where they are now."

Chris looked at Buck and tried to speak, but couldn’t find the words. Too many fears chased through him; too many horrible possibilities haunted him.

Buck saw that and managed a slight smile. "Think about this," he urged, squeezing Chris’s shoulder reassuringly. "Henry’s back in town. Peso’s out doin’ whatever the hell it is he’s doin’. That means they’re afoot. They’re walkin’, Chris. They been walkin’ through rain and now they’re sloggin’ through the mud. And you know as well as I do, ol’ son, that Vin ain’t goin’ of his own free will. Now, you tell me," his smile widened into a mischievous, knowing grin, "if you had to drag Tanner, who’s prob’ly soaked to the skin an’ mad as hell, somewhere that he didn’t wanta go, just how far d’you think you’d get on foot?"

Chris had to smile, however shakily, at that thought. If Vin had been out in the rain for three days against his will, he’d be pissed. If he were being dragged back to Texas against his will, he’d be pissed. If he were on foot against his will, he’d be pissed. And if he were being dragged back to Texas through the rain on foot, he’d be so far beyond pissed that Chris just wasn’t sure he wanted to consider the consequences.

Except that he hoped every one of those consequences fell squarely on Carlyle.

He looked into Buck’s eyes and relaxed under the man’s hand, his smile growing stronger. "He don’t much like bein’ told what ta do, does he?" he chuckled.

Buck laughed aloud, as much in relief at Chris’s returning steadiness as at the thought of Vin making life hell for the man who had him. "Shit," he snorted wickedly, "that boy’s a regular handful when he’s in a good mood!" He winked and slapped Chris’s shoulder. "I’ll bet ol’ Carlyle’s thinkin’ real serious about a change in jobs!" He wagged his dark brows. "Likely that five hundred dollars ain’t soundin’ like just a whole lotta money to him right about now."

Chris chuckled again and nodded. "Tanner’s got a way of puttin’ things into perspective for a man real quick," he joked, amazed that he could do it. Then he sobered and nodded at Buck. "Kinda like somebody else I know," he added softly, seriously. "Thanks."

The words, and the warmth behind them, startled Buck and brought a sudden lump to his throat. Maybe once he’d felt a twinge of jealousy toward Vin and the ease with which the younger man had settled into his singular place at Larabee’s side and in his life, had feared that the tracker had "replaced" him. God knew so much between himself and Chris had changed when the man’s family had been killed.

But time had taught him that Vin hadn’t replaced him at all. Whatever it was that bound the tracker and gunfighter together was wholly unique to them, had never been known by either man with anyone else before. And what bound Chris and Buck together was just as unique and just as deep in its own right, forged over time, sweetened by shared joy and strengthened by shared tragedy. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what it had been before, but then again neither were they. Both were older, wiser, sadder certainly and surely more scarred, but both were still here, both were still standing, and both were still holding firmly to those very few things that life had shown them were true.

"Well, hell, stud," he finally rasped, his heart full, "that’s what I’m here for." He squeezed Chris’s shoulder again. "I been kickin’ yer skinny, stubborn ass too long t’ fall down on the job now."

+ + + + + + +

Lord, he hoped he was goin’ the right way. He knew he had to head west. That goddamn bounty hunter had been takin’ him back to Texas and Texas was east, so he knew he had to head west. Trouble with that, though, was that "west" covered a whole helluva lotta territory, and he just needed one small speck of it.

Just needed the little speck that was home.

He stopped and closed his eyes, swaying on his feet, and pressed a shaking hand to his head. Pain wasn’t gettin’ any better, dizziness wasn’t gettin’ any better … Hell, nothin’ was gettin’ any better! Never thought he’d hear himself sayin’ it, but he needed to be in Nathan’s clinic. Needed to have the big, gentle healer fussin’ over and at him and callin’ him ten kinds of a fool and all the while soothin’ his hurts …

Lord, he just needed to be home.

He wasn’t at all sure exactly when that dusty fly-speck of a town had become home to him, sure as hell hadn’t ever expected that it would. Men like him didn’t have homes, just places to stop for a while and rest up a bit before driftin’ on to the next. He’d stopped and rested all right, but he’d never drifted on. Was now startin’ to think that maybe he never would.

And that was a helluva thing for a man who’d never been more than a fiddle-footed stray to think.

He knew he had no business thinkin’ that. He was a wanted man after all, a man who’d never be safe while that five-hundred-dollar shadow hung over his head. Hell, didn’t his bein’ out in the middle of nowhere right now with more hurts on him than a dog had ticks just prove that?

Except that he did feel safe there, felt safer there than he had anywhere else in a long damn time, even before the bounty. Felt like he could let his guard down when he wanted, even sleep a whole night through, and somehow just know as he hadn’t known anything in far too long that somebody somewhere was watchin’ his back. Six somebodies, sure, but even more than that. Had the Judge and Mary Travis, as fierce and fearsome a pair as he’d ever known, and Miz Potter with her sweet, motherly ways; Virgil Watson, who’d given him a chance when no one else would; Inez, Casey and Nettie … Lord, Nettie … who watched and fussed over and treated him like he was their own …

And God knew it’d been an awful long time since he’d been anybody’s own.

He opened his eyes and lowered his gaze to his middle, then lightly fingered the blood-stained once-bright blue shirt tied there and smiled slightly. Nettie was gonna give him hell for this, for ruinin’ the shirt she’d picked out for him special. But that was all right, because it wasn’t the shirt she’d be raisin’ Cain about, it’d be him. The holes in his hide, the blood he’d shed, the wear and tear on his body …

Wouldn’t be the shirt at all, because she could always replace it. But he knew with a bedrock certainty sunk deep in his soul that she’d be fussin’ because she’d never be able to replace Vin Tanner.

And he’d be goddamned if he’d make her try.

Which meant he had to find that little fly-speck of a town and get back to it. Which meant he had to figure out where the hell he was so he could figure out where the hell he needed to go. And the trouble with bein’ in the middle of nowhere was that nowhere just didn’t have many landmarks and one part of nowhere looked pretty much like another.

Lord, he wished he had his spyglass …

Hell, he wished he had a whole lotta things. Like his hat. Damn, he missed that hat. Maybe it looked a mite rough, but it was broken in just right, fit his head like it’d been made for him and kept the sun out of his eyes. Well, not that the sun was a problem right now. Hell, right now he’d be plumb tickled to see the sun! Would like to be able to look up and see where it was in the sky, reckon the time of day and directions from the shadows. Instead, all he saw was gray above him and brown around him. Thought he could vaguely see what might be hills or trees in the distance, but, shit, with his eyes workin’ the way they were, or the way they weren’t, wasn’t just no tellin’ what was really out there.

Yeah, his spyglass would be real handy right now.

And so would a canteen. He licked his lips and swallowed, and again realized just how dry his mouth and throat were. He’d been glad at first when the rain had stopped, but now he wasn’t so sure. ’Least with the rain he’d had water. And, Lord, he was thirsty.

Hot some, too. And the more he thought about that, the more it troubled him. Didn’t seem quite right that a feller who was soaked to the bone and losin’ blood to boot should be hot. He’d been soaked before and he’d lost blood before. And he seemed to recall that both had always made him cold. Not this time, though. This time, he kinda felt like he had a fire burnin’ on the inside, and he just had a feelin’ that wasn’t right.

Damn, he wished he had a canteen. Nice long drink of water might put out that fire …

He was walking again – well, maybe shuffling – and he wasn’t quite sure when he’d started doing that. Hell, he hated bein’ this scattered. Bothered him. A man should know when he started walking … shuffling … shouldn’t be surprised to find his body moving. ’Course, here just lately he was being surprised by all kinds of things.

Like how much he missed havin’ somebody to talk to. Hell, wasn’t that a kicker? Him wishin’ he had somebody to talk to. He laughed again – giggled, really, and, damn, wasn’t that gettin’ embarrassin’? A wild an’ woolly to the bone, hide-tough tracker, marksman and buffalo and bounty hunter, gigglin’ like a goddamn schoolgirl. Good thing the boys weren’t here to hear it.

Except that he wished they were. He missed ’em. Missed hearin’ Buck and JD arguin’ about everything and nothin’, missed hearin’ Ezra bitchin’ and moanin’ in them fancy five-dollar words about how miserable he was out in the wilds, missed hearin’ Josiah tellin’ one of those stories that never seemed to go anywhere in that deep rumble of a voice that soothed the hurt right out of a man’s head, missed hearin’ Nathan fussin’ and scoldin’ and frettin’, missed hearin’ Chris–

Hell, he just missed Chris. Missed just knowin’ the man was there and feelin’ that strong, quiet presence that just somehow made his world a little righter and his road a little straighter. Didn’t have to hear him to know he was there, but, still, he heard him just the same. He knew the rest of the boys wouldn’t quite believe that – after all, he and Chris weren’t exactly known for their long conversations – but it was true. Heard the man clear as day when they were together. Oh, not his thoughts, not like the others thought he did. Hell, half the time he had no more idea what the man was thinkin’ than anybody else did! But the other half of the time he did, because it was exactly what he was thinkin’, too.

No, wasn’t Chris’s thoughts he heard. It was just … Chris. Heard him in the calm, easy silence that filled him when the man was near, heard him in the sense of safety and certainty that came upon him when Larabee was at his side or when the man’s hand fell upon his shoulder. He’d never really liked being touched before. Too many hands had fallen upon him with hard and hurtful intent, and he’d learned early on that a firm grip on him meant trouble and pain would follow. And the first time Chris’s hand had fallen on him, he’d braced himself …

Then immediately relaxed into that grip because he’d just known that he had nothing at all to fear from the man. Hell, if anything, that grip had always meant a release from pain, a shield against trouble. Larabee’s hand might have fallen on his shoulder, but the man’s touch had sunk right through to his soul.

And since then he’d learned to let the others touch him. Had learned he liked it. Liked Josiah and Nathan’s firm squeezes of his arm and shoulder, liked Ezra’s slaps to his back, JD’s punches to his arm, liked Buck’s hugs …

Lord, Buck’s hugs. He sighed wistfully. Hadn’t been hugged like that since his grandpa’d died. Hadn’t been wrapped in long arms and caught up against a broad chest and made to feel as if nothin’ in the world could hurt him while he was held so. In all his life he’d never known a man like Buck Wilmington, a big man who towered over him and damn near blocked out the sun, but whose bright grin brought that sun right back out again and made it shine right through him. The sun always seemed to shine on Buck, and that light and warmth just naturally crept over and into whoever was with him. That light and warmth had even drawn him out of the shadows he’d always favored, had shown him it was all right to sit in the sun and enjoy the feel of it on him …

Hell, he could sure use some of that sunlight now.

He raised a dirty, shaking hand and rubbed it over his hot, aching eyes, wishing they’d clear just a little more. He hated not being able to see clearly, hated not being able to think clearly. For so long he’d survived by his senses and his sense, and to be deprived of both at the same time made him just a mite nervous. He’d been both hunter and hunted too long now not to know how dangerous it was for a man to be out in the open like he was with nothing quite workin’ right. Couldn’t see, couldn’t think, could barely walk …

Hell, he didn’t even have a gun.

He sighed wearily and dropped his hand to his knife. Wouldn’t be much protection, even for a man who knew how to use it like he did. For it to be any good, he’d have to be close to whatever threatened him. Like the bastard he’d gutted. Now there was close-up work …

He stumbled heavily, but managed to catch himself before he fell. Lord, he was tired! And damn near every part of him hurt. But he couldn’t stop, couldn’t let himself go down. Knew if he did, he wouldn’t be gettin’ back up again. And he just couldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t let it happen. Wouldn’t let some goddamn bounty hunter, even a dead one, get the better of him. Wouldn’t go down for five hundred dollars, even if it wasn’t collected.

Hell, he was worth more than that.

He didn’t often think of himself that way; hell, hadn’t ever thought that way ’til he’d met up with the boys. But they’d changed so much of the way he thought of himself, saw himself. Before them, he’d just been a bounty. Or a tracker. Or a hunter. A man whose worth was defined by his skills, by what he could do. Had always had to be useful to matter.

But not anymore. True, the boys valued his skills. And Lord knew they needed them. Never had been such a bunch for findin’ trouble and needin’ help to get out of it. He chuckled and shook his head. Kinda like him right now. Thing was, though, those skills weren’t why the boys valued him. They were useful all right, but they weren’t him. And it’d been an awful long time since anybody’d cared to find out who the hell Vin Tanner was. Since anybody’d shown him who he was. Hadn’t had that since his grandpa, but he sure as hell had it now.

And he’d be damned if he was gonna lose it. Especially to the likes of …

Carlyle.

The name came to him out of nowhere, stopping him in his tracks and tearing a sharp, painful gasp from him. Damn, he had to stop doin’ that! Just breathin’ hurt like hell, and Lord knew he didn’t need to be addin’ to it.

Figure you might wanta know who caught ya. Name’s Bert Carlyle, and yer gonna make me some easy money.

He remembered hearing the harsh, grating words through the hellish pain stabbing through his skull, remembered lying on his side and rolling onto his stomach as the sickness gripped him. Also remembered that Carlyle hadn’t done a goddamn thing to help him, had just let him lie there and be sick, then lie there and bleed.

And the bastard had tied his wrists so tightly that soon his hands’d gone numb …

I’d tie ’em behind ya, but I’ve heard about ya. Heard yer a tough one t’ hold onta. So I want them hands where I can see ’em. An’ where I can git to ’em if I need t’ cut ’em off.

He had no idea how long he’d lain there; couldn’t stay awake long enough to keep track. But he remembered that he’d waken up once and realized that it had started to rain. Had looked across the small camp – the camp he’d made, he remembered that, too – and seen that Carlyle had rigged a shelter for himself.

Sonuvabitch had just left him out in the rain, though.

Again he raised an unsteady hand to his throbbing head and forced himself onward on leaden legs. Right heel was startin’ to rub and burn some, too. Hell, all he needed was a blister …

But he remembered. Or remembered some. And knew he’d been right to gut the sonuvabitch. He remembered waking up, or maybe just coming to, the next morning – he’d thought it was morning, though he couldn’t really tell with the head wound makin’ a mess of his eyesight – and being dragged toward the horses. Two of ’em, Peso and a dun. Only Peso, Lord love him, was bein’ Peso and just wasn’t havin’ any of it. Didn’t like Carlyle – damn mule always was a good judge of character – and didn’t much like the dun that kept crowdin’ against him. Hell, Peso purely hated that. Uppity goddamn horse had a pretty high notion of himself and couldn’t see why he should share his ground and his grazin’ with any other animal. Then Carlyle had tried to force him onto Peso …

And, shit, tryin’ to force anything on that animal just never was a good idea.

Damn mule had gone crazy, had kicked the dun and then, just for good measure, bitten the hell out of him. That poor critter had screamed and torn loose from his picket in a panic, racin’ outta there like hell was at his heels – which, with Peso, he supposed it was – and damn near knocked him and Carlyle down. Then Peso had gone for Carlyle, those wicked teeth snappin’ at whatever they could reach and those fearsome hooves tryin’ to stomp the man into a bloody stain on the ground. Carlyle had flung him aside, into a tree, and he’d damn near passed out …

Until he’d seen the bastard goin’ after Peso with that rope. And suddenly his head, which felt damn near broken open, didn’t matter a lick because, goddamn it, nobody beat his horse! Carlyle had Peso backed against two trees too close together for him to get through ’em and the sonuvabitch was flailin’ away at his face and legs with that goddamn lasso. Didn’t matter that his own hands were tied, that he could barely see straight, he just charged ahead anyway, plowin’ into the bastard and sending them both sprawling.

Only Carlyle had been faster to get back up on his feet than him and didn’t have his hands tied. Bastard had jerked him up and beaten the hell out of him, then let him go and kicked him when he’d fallen. And he hadn’t known anything else until finally the agony of his ribs had forced him awake and he’d found himself ridin’ on Peso in front of Carlyle. Toward Texas and away from …

Yella Creek. Bastard had shot him while he’d been makin’ camp for the night at Yella Creek.

He tried to remember how long ago that had been. He remembered spendin’ the night out in the rain, but it’d been mornin’ when they’d left … Two days? No, three. He remembered wishin’ he had a fire last night, remembered lyin’ out in the rain again, in too much pain to move, wonderin’ where the hell Peso had gone and when he’d be back …

Shit, Peso.

He didn’t know how Carlyle had managed to get the both of them up on the pissed-off horse, wasn’t really sure he wanted to know. A man who could beat a horse with a rope surely wouldn’t balk at other means of force. And even Peso, hard-headed as he was, knew there came a time just to accept what he couldn’t fight and bide his time until he got another chance.

And that chance had come. He remembered that now, too. He didn’t know how long they’d been ridin’ or how far they’d gone, didn’t know much except that every time he woke up he hurt even more than he had the last, and had been sick a few times, too.

Just hoped he’d gotten Carlyle at least one of those times.

And he remembered – Jesus, did he remember! – how much it had hurt when that goddamn mule had suddenly gone crazy. Decided he just didn’t wanta be ridden anymore and did all he could to get shut of the two men on his back.

And Peso knew a lotta ways to do that, not one of ’em pleasant.

Damn horse had bucked and kicked and spun around like he’d been set upon by bees. One minute, two men had been seated on him and the next they’d both gone flying. He remembered the hideous pain of landing, remembered screaming as fire had exploded through his head and chest, remembered wanting just to curl up and die. But he also remembered Carlyle shouting, cussin’ up a storm and goin’ after Peso. He’d rolled over, sick again, and through hot tears of pain had watched Carlyle grabbing for Peso’s reins. But Peso’d had enough and was fighting back, with neither picket nor trees to restrain him now and him well and truly pissed. He’d snaked out that long neck, ears flat back and evil teeth snapping, had reared and spun and lashed out with front hooves and back.

Goddamn mule had the spine of a cat.

Carlyle must’ve figured out then that they wouldn’t be riding that particular horse back to Texas. As he’d lain there, he’d watched in hope as a vicious kick had sent the bounty hunter spinning to the ground, but his hope had died when the man had climbed back to his feet. Then horror had gripped him as he’d seen the man reaching for his gun.

No!

He had no idea where the strength or ability to move had come from, but all at once, sick and hurting as he was, he’d been on his feet and rushing toward the man. The gun had come up and Carlyle had grinned as he’d taken aim …

And he’d hit the bastard just as he’d fired. He’d heard Peso’s shrill scream as he and Carlyle had gone tumbling again and knew that somehow, God, somehow the horse had been hit. But before he’d been able to think too much on that, he’d had to roll and scramble wildly to avoid getting caught in the enraged animal’s charge. But Carlyle, too, was rolling, was grabbing and pulling at him, and all at once he was having to fight back as best he could with his hands still bound before him. He couldn’t fight well or for long, though, and before he knew it Carlyle was again yanking him to his feet.

The man had dropped and lost his gun somewhere in the fracas, but whatever relief he might’ve felt at that died when he felt the point of a Bowie knife – his Bowie knife – pressing into his throat. Carlyle’s dark eyes had smoldered with rage as they’d bored into his and he’d known then that he was lost.

But not beaten. Never that.

"Fuckin’ devil-horse a’ yer’n is gone," Carlyle had spat, sending a wave of relief through him. At least Peso was out of the bastard’s clutches. "But that don’t matter none. Yer wanted dead or alive. I’ll git my money if I have t’ drag yer dead body t’ the next town behind me. Now," he’d pulled the knife away and shoved him forward a step, "walk."

But he wasn’t beaten. With a snarl of defiance, he’d spun dizzily and spat square into the big man’s face, stubborn to the last. "I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you!"

And without warning, Carlyle had lashed out with the knife – his knife – and slashed under his ribs and across his side. The sudden, hot pain of it had torn a cry from him, and Carlyle had laughed. Then the bastard had grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked him to him, again holding the knife – his knife, stained with his blood – to his throat.

"I’ll take ya back in pieces if I have ta," he’d growled, then again had shoved him forward.

"You’ll have ta," he’d said, sinking to his knees in the mud and the rain.

Carlyle had been furious. Sonuvabitch had come at him, grabbing him with one hand and hauling him to his feet while driving the knife toward him with the other …

And he’d struck. With his last, desperate strength he’d blocked the knife with his bound wrists, felt the blade slice into the ropes between them and catch, and then he’d twisted, tearing the knife out of the startled bounty hunter’s grip. With instinctive skill he’d grabbed it, the knife his hands knew so well, and had righted it, gripping it hard between his hands and growling out his pain, fury and frustration as he’d shoved the fearsome blade deep into the bastard’s body beneath his sternum.

"I ain’t nobody’s easy money!" he’d spat, driving the blade downward in a killing stroke. As it had met and been stopped by Carlyle’s gunbelt, he’d merely shifted his grip and ripped up again and then over to one side, cutting the man wide open. "And ya shouldn’ta shot m’ horse!"

He remembered feeling a vague sense of satisfaction as he’d watched Carlyle fall. Sometimes killing bothered him; but not this time. He remembered thinking it fitting that now Carlyle’d be the one lyin’ out in the rain; served the sonuvabitch right. Then he remembered falling to his knees and wondering how in the hell he was ever gonna get back home again.

Was startin’ to wonder that again now. He couldn’t go much further, he knew that. He was stumbling now with every step, trying to hold himself upright on legs that felt like water, and it just wouldn’t be long before they gave out altogether. He was a stubborn man, everybody said so. But even he had his limits.

And he’d finally reached them.

He stumbled again, but couldn’t catch himself this time and fell heavily to the ground. Wouldn’t be no gettin’ up, either. With a thick groan, his whole body protesting, he managed at least to roll over onto his back, smiling slightly as he stared up into the vast gray sky.

Hell, at least it wasn’t rainin’ no more.

He let his eyes slide closed, let his body sink into the deep, dark waters of exhaustion and pain. He hated letting the boys down like this, hated it like everything, but nobody could say he hadn’t tried. Just hoped they knew how hard he’d tried, knew how hard he’d fought to get back to ’em.

They would know … wouldn’t they?

He had no idea how long he drifted like that, slipping ever further from the boys, hating it but unable to help it. Lord, he was just so tired …

Tired enough that at first he didn’t feel the gentle tugging at his hair. Gradually, though, the tugging got harder, reaching him even through his exhaustion, and began to pull him back up through the dark waters. He moved his head, trying to get away from the tugging that only made the pain there worse, but it didn’t stop. He groaned and raised a leaden arm to swat away the nuisance …

And was startled when his fingers fell against warm, moist velvet. Comforted by the feel of it, he let his fingers lay where they rested. Smiling faintly, he started to sink again, but was roused by a low, gentle whicker. More confused than ever, he forced his leaden eyes open and gave a soft, breathless laugh at the sight of the blazed nose nuzzling at his fingers.

Well, hell. He’d finally found his horse.

TWO

Chris didn't think he could take much more. By the time the others had caught up with him and Buck, he'd been calm, rational. He'd agreed that it only made sense to forget about Peso's tracks and just go on to Yellow Creek. And for the next three hours he'd ridden purposefully but without panic, thinking more clearly than he had since they'd started.

Vin and Carlyle were on foot, and Texas was a helluva long walk from here. Would be made even longer by the fact that Vin didn't want to go to Texas, and the man just never had been good at doing what he didn't want to do. Could make life sheer hell for anyone trying to get him to do it. Larabee knew that. He'd tried it a few times. It wasn't a task for the weak.

So he'd felt better about this than he had all day as they'd ridden to Yellow Creek.

Only now they were at Yellow Creek, and had been for three more hours, riding slowly up one side and then starting just as slowly down the other, searching carefully for any sign of the missing tracker. And searching without result. Time and again they'd stopped, dismounted and all but crawled over every inch of sodden, brush-covered ground around them, looking for something, anything, and finding nothing. Shit, when the hell had the damn thing gotten so long? True, he didn't come out here much, but the few times he had he'd been sorely unimpressed. It had always seemed a puny excuse for a creek to him. Now, though, the goddamn thing seemed to stretch and snake along like the fuckin' Mississippi River ...

Wait a minute. He stopped Pony abruptly and squinted into the creek, thinking. He didn't come out here much because it was too isolated, too far from anything and anybody. But Vin came here a lot, and for just that reason. And the few times he'd come, he'd been with Tanner.

Who'd always stopped and made camp at the same place ...

He snapped upright in the saddle and looked around to get his bearings, then shot a glance downstream. Maybe another mile ...

"This way!" he called sharply, wheeling Pony and taking off without waiting for the others.

"Goddamn it," Buck grumbled, running for his horse, "I wish he'd stop doin' that!"

Chris raced downstream like a bullet shot out of a gun. He knew they'd find something there. Didn't know how he knew, didn't care. He just knew it, and that was enough.

"There!" he called as the place came into sight. It was a clearing, sheltered by the trees that grew at the creek's edge but devoid of the thick brush that sprouted in abundance elsewhere. Brush meant critters, Tanner said, and some of 'em didn't much care for human company.

Well, hell, Chris thought, goddamn solitary tracker oughtta know all about that.

"It's gotta be ... here." The last word fell weakly from him as he drew up rein at the edge of the clearing, his last, frail hope deserting him. He stared at the remains of the camp through bleak eyes, his whole body slumping in defeat.

No.

"Aw ... shit," Buck breathed softly as he halted Beavis beside Pony, the fear that had gnawed at him now made bitter reality.

The campsite was deserted, and obviously had been for some time. What had once been a fire was nothing more than a wet pile of blackened bits of wood; even the ashes had been washed away by the rain. No one had been here for at least a day.

But while the site was deserted, it wasn't empty. In the middle of it, a pair of saddlebags lay in a heap as if they'd been dropped, their contents strewn about them and left in the rain and mud. Nearby in another sodden, mud-stained heap was a wrenchingly familiar hide coat and, a few feet from it, a wet cavalry hat. The implication damn near made Chris sick.

Carlyle was taking Vin back to Texas without anything of his own. Not even his hat and coat.

"Vin must be soaked t' th' bone," Nathan said hoarsely at Buck's side, his dark gaze fixed on the tracker's possessions and his healer's instincts stirred to life by the sight. "No hat, no coat ... He'll die of pneumonia or be baked alive by the sun b'fo' they git t' Texas."

Josiah moved his horse up to Chris's other side, wanting to reach out and lay a hand on the gunman's bowed shoulder but not wanting to risk provoking an explosion. Though none of them had truly expected to find Vin here, the sight of his abandoned belongings served only to emphasize his absence from them all the more deeply.

And to none so deeply as Chris.

JD swallowed hard and tore his eyes from the messy pile, horrified by the cruelty it implied. Carlyle had gone through Vin's things, his personal possessions, and then had just left them out to ruin as if they, and Vin, didn't matter worth a damn. It was a blatant invasion of a man's privacy, and JD had never known a man who took his privacy so much to heart as Tanner. He didn't have much, JD knew, didn't put stock in "stuff." But what he had he treasured, and to see those treasures treated with such contempt enraged the boy.

No man should be treated like that, and certainly not his friend!

Needing an outlet for his anger, he swept the campsite with his blazing gaze and let it settle on the stand of trees off to his right. Two of the trees each had the end of a rope tied around them, but the rope was broken in the middle, and the two severed ends trailed on the ground. He stared at the rope, imagined how it would have looked stretched between the two trees before it broke and wondered why it would have been stretched between them, then decided it must have been a picket line. His gaze slid to the ground and a deep frown creased his young face. Even from here, he could see that it was a mess. The mud had been deeply and wildly churned, as if a battle had been fought there, and numerous slender saplings to one side had been splintered or just pulled out of the ground, as if hit by some force of nature.

As he studied the debris for some explanation, a sudden sense of purpose gripped him. If the horses had been tethered there, then maybe, just maybe he could find sign enough to figure out just what the hell had happened here and where Carlyle had taken Vin.

It was about time he started paying Vin back for all those lessons in tracking.

Without a word to anyone else, he slid from Milagro's back and ground-hitched the horse, then strode firmly into the clearing. A mere second later, Ezra dismounted and followed him. He wasn't a tracker by any means, but still his life at the tables and running cons had given him an eye for detail that was unmatched. Like Vin, he had a knack for seeing what others missed, and he'd be damned if he'd let anything be missed here.

JD moved immediately to the site of the destruction, knelt without a qualm on the muddy, churned-up ground and went to work. Using the skills Vin had so patiently taught him, taking in both minute detail and the bigger picture, he began to read the story in the tells before him.

The force of nature had clearly been Peso.

He ran eyes and hands over the numerous and confused hoof and boot prints, separating Peso's from Henry's and Carlyle's from Vin's in his mind. Peso was a bigger horse than Henry, and even with the rain having washed away any fine details, he could identify the hoof prints by their sizes. He also knew Vin's tracks from their "practice sessions," and just figured the ones he didn't know had to belong to Carlyle.

Sometimes, Tanner had said with that sly grin of his, tracking wasn't anything more than common sense.

Chris clenched his jaws until they ached, curled his hands so tightly into fists that he could feel his nails cutting into his palms. He watched JD, silently screaming at the boy to find something that would tell them where Vin was, then switched his attention to Ezra.

Heedless of the damage done to his clothing by the mud, the gambler knelt among the tracker's scattered possessions and carefully picked up each one, wiping it as clean as he could with a handkerchief or on his trouser leg and then placing it inside a saddlebag. He didn't pry, never opened what didn't have to be opened, and never once passed judgment upon what Tanner considered important. He merely treated his friend's belongings with the same respect and consideration that same friend had shown him on so many occasions.

Ezra Standish put a great deal of stock in "stuff," knew how much about a man it could say, and just how much to him it could mean. The very least he could do for Vin, he thought, was to be able to restore his cherished possessions to him in some semblance of good repair.

Buck watched the gambler for a few moments, then started to swing down from his horse, determined to go help him. But Josiah leaned forward, looked past Chris at him and shook his head slowly. Buck frowned in confusion, but settled again in his saddle.

"Let him do this," Josiah counseled quietly. "We've all had our say already about how we feel. It's time we gave him his."

When he had re-packed the saddlebags, Ezra reached for Vin's hat and picked it up. He gave it only a cursory glance at first and shook his head at its dirtier-than-usual state. But one of the stains marring it caught his attention and he examined it more closely, his heart clenching as recognition hit him. He swallowed hard and rose slowly to his feet, took a moment to compose himself, then turned and walked stiffly to his mounted comrades, heading straight for Chris.

He stopped before Pony and stared up at Larabee, his jade eyes dark in his pale face. He handed the hat up to Larabee with a noticeably unsteady hand and said in a low, rough voice, "I fear he was not taken without injury."

Chris growled and snatched the hat from the gambler and felt his stomach lurch sickly as he stared at it. Three days of almost constant rain hadn't managed to wash out the all too familiar and all too frightening rust-colored stain on one side.

Jesus, Carlyle had shot him in the head!

"Lemme see," Nathan asked softly, reaching across Buck for the hat. When Chris showed no sign of parting with it, the healer pressed, "Mebbe I can tell somethin' from it." Only then, and only grudgingly, did Chris pass it over, and Nathan nodded his thanks. He took the hat, studied it, then looked at Ezra. "You're nearest his size here. Put it on."

Once Standish might have protested, declared donning the mud- and blood-stained thing as an affront to his dignity, but not now. Without the slightest hesitation, he removed his own hat and took Vin's from Nathan, settling it on his head. And he stood there, still without protest, allowing Nathan to study him.

"Right side of his head, mebbe two inches above his ear," Jackson guessed. He nodded at Ezra, who removed the hat and handed it back, then donned his own. "Lotta blood," he mused, again staring at the tracker's hat, "but that don' necessarily mean nothin'. Head wounds bleed bad, we all know that. Might not be more'n a graze."

"Might be more, though," Chris ground out. "And we don't know how long he's had it, don't know if that bastard's tendin' him ... Hell," he spat, "that ain't true. Vin's wanted dead or alive and Carlyle's got no problem with dead. Why the hell would he bother with treatin' a wound that'll just make Vin easier for him to take back?"

"Well," JD put in, coming now to join them, "it ain't all been easy for him." He set his hands on his guns and looked up at Chris. "From what I could make out, it looks like Peso went crazy over there. That's probably why Henry took off. His tracks go off in nearly a straight line that way," he nodded toward the southwest. "He was runnin' like he'd been scalded."

"Or bitten," Buck suggested.

"Maybe kicked," Josiah opined.

"It's Peso," Ezra reminded them with an arch of one chestnut brow. "The poor animal was probably bitten and kicked. And otherwise molested."

"Also looks like maybe Vin and Carlyle fought," JD continued. "There's places in the mud where it looks like two bodies were rollin' together." He smirked. "Guess it takes more than a head wound to make Vin cooperative, huh?"

"Where'd they go?" Chris demanded in a low, hoarse voice, seeing no humor in any of this.

JD turned and pointed east. "Peso's tracks head out that way. Deep, too, so they were both ridin'."

Chris frowned at that and shot a confused look at the boy. "I thought you said nobody was ridin' Peso?"

JD shrugged. "They weren't out there. But they were when they left here."

Chris's frown deepened; even for Tanner and that fool horse of his it didn't make sense. "Then what the hell happened?" he demanded, his voice growing steadily louder as he gave vent to his frustration. "How can he be headin' east from here with two riders on him, then headin' east again from out where we found his tracks before with nobody on him? What the hell's he doin', runnin' in circles?"

JD winced at Larabee's tirade but remained patient, sympathetic to the man's fear. Hell, he shared that fear. "I don't know," he answered calmly. "All I can figure is that they must've gotten separated somehow and he must've run off. But whatever happened, it didn't happen here. Peso was carryin' two riders when he left here, and they had to be Vin and Carlyle."

Chris exhaled sharply and bowed his head, rubbing a hand tiredly over his eyes. He should've known better than to hope. "Can you read the tracks all right?"

"Oh, yeah," the boy answered confidently. "He's carryin' double through the mud. So long as we don't get any more rain to wash 'em out, they should be easy to follow."

Chris raised his head slowly and nodded. "All right then," he sighed wearily. "You and Ezra mount up. We'll follow you-"

"Hold up there, pard," Buck interrupted softly, stilling JD with a gesture. "We ain't goin' anywhere." When Chris turned an outraged glare upon him, he leaned forward and said evenly, "We got maybe an hour of daylight left. And with whatever moon there is covered by them clouds, dark's gonna be dark. We're all tired, the horses are exhausted ... Hell, Chris, we've been ridin' 'em to a frazzle since we left town." He reached out and gripped Larabee's arm in a firm hand, his eyes boring into the gunman's. "It's time t' call it a day, ol' son. Ain't nothin' more we can do right now."

Chris snarled and jerked his arm out of Buck's grasp. "Vin's out there, and I don't think Carlyle gives a damn how tired he is or how dark it's gonna get! We can at least ride for the hour we got left-"

"And do what for water when we have t' stop?"

"We've done without before-"

"When we've had to, yeah," Buck agreed. "But we don't have to now, and it'd just be cruel to force these horses to go without water for a night after we've pushed 'em the way we have. They're all we've got, Chris," he insisted in a low, steady voice, his gaze never wavering from Larabee's. "And just how the hell are we s'posed t' find Vin if we kill the only means we got of gettin' to him?"

Chris wanted desperately to protest, to argue, to force Ezra and JD onto their horses at gunpoint if he had to and tear the hell out after Vin. Wanted it so much he could feel it churning hard and hot inside him.

But wanting to do it didn't make it the right thing to do. And doing it might only cause them to fail Vin when he needed them most.

Christ, he hated this!

Buck saw the acceptance creeping painfully into his old friend's eyes and ached bitterly for the man. He knew what Chris wanted to do; hell, he was itchin' to ride, too. The thought of Vin being in that bastard's clutches and hurt just tore him up inside. But Vin himself would've cautioned them against so foolhardy an action. The tracker was a practical man, even maddeningly so, and a realist. Had he been here, he would have been saying the same damn thing.

And, God, how Buck wished he were here!

"We start out the minute it gets light enough to see," Chris finally consented in a thick, harsh voice. "Any man who oversleeps gets left behind."

All five nodded. Not one of them planned to oversleep. Hell, not one of them truly counted on sleeping at all.

"I'll see what I can do about gettin' a fire started," Josiah volunteered, sliding tiredly down from Zeke's back. "Try to get some supper and coffee on."

"I'll take care of the horses," JD said. "Look 'em over real good, clean their hooves, make sure they won't have any problems in the mornin'." With that, he began gathering sets of reins as his friends eased themselves gratefully out of their saddles.

Except Chris.

Buck handed Beavis's reins to JD, then slapped the boy on the shoulder. "G'on," he said softly. "I'll bring Pony to ya in a bit." He sighed slowly and looked around. "Ezra, Nathan, give Josiah a hand. See if y'all cain't find somethin' around here that'll burn worth a damn."

Nathan nodded, Ezra touched two fingers to his hat brim, then they turned and followed Josiah, leaving Chris to Buck's experienced keeping. And leaving Buck to wonder just how much more of this he had in him.

"Need t' get down now, pard," he coaxed gently, coming to stand at Larabee's left leg and staring up into the man's shuttered face. "Ol' Pony's lookin' a mite tuckered. Reckon he's thinkin' how good it'll feel t' get shut of that saddle. An' I reckon mebbe yer bones could use a rest, too. We been pushin' it hard all damn day."

"How far d'you think they got?" Chris whispered, never looking at Buck.

The big man shrugged heavily and frowned. "Hell, I don't know. The two of 'em ridin' on Peso and him already pissed off ..." He sighed and shook his head. "Just ain't no tellin' with that damn horse."

"He shot Vin in the head."

Buck winced. "Hell, we don't know that for sure! We don't know what happened-"

Chris did look at Buck then, and a terrible certainty shone in his eyes. "We do know, Buck," he said in a soft, hopeless voice. "Vin's too careful, and too dangerous, to take any other way. It's the only way Carlyle could've gotten close enough to take him."

"Yeah, I reckon so," Buck breathed, knowing it was useless to lie. "We just have t' hope that it really was like JD said, that Vin wasn't hurt so bad he couldn't fight. Have t' hope he's fightin' still."

"He shouldn't have to fight." Chris slid exhaustedly from Pony's back and stared past Buck into the distance. "He's fought damn near his whole life, had ta scrape and scrap for everything he's ever gotten, and God knows he's never gotten much." He turned his gaze to Buck then, the ache in his soul pouring out through his eyes. "When is it gonna be enough?" he rasped. "When is he finally gonna be able just ta rest?"

Buck bowed his head and shook it sadly. "I don't know," he said softly. "I just hope he don't have t' wait 'til he's layin' in his grave."

Chris's head came up sharply at that and his face hardened. "Ain't nobody puttin' him in his grave just yet!" he swore in a low, fierce voice. "We're gonna find him. Then we're gonna kill Carlyle and take Vin home back where he belongs. Alive." He pushed past Buck and led Pony over to where JD waited.

"Sounds like a plan t' me," the big man called after him. Then, when he was certain Larabee couldn't hear him, he added, "I just hope t' hell it works better than our plans usually do."

+ + + + + + +

He was gettin' good and goddamned tired of this. Tired of gettin' sick, tired of hurtin', tired of passin' out, tired of bleedin', hell, tired of everything. He was just tired.

And he was pretty well tired of that, too.

He pushed himself over onto his back and stared up at the sky, wondering how long he'd been out this time. Wasn't no tellin'. Wasn't no way to tell with the sun still nowhere to be seen. The rain might've stopped, but the sky hadn't cleared at all, was still a solid slate gray and crowded by thick, ugly thunderheads whose dark, heavy bellies promised even more rain to come. He just hoped it held off a while longer.

He'd like to spend at least one night dry.

That wishful thought spurred him to remember why he'd passed out this time. He'd actually made it to his feet - been pretty damn pleased with himself for it, too - and tried to get his bedroll off Peso. It'd come as a vast shock to him that the horse still wore his saddle - he'd figured the damn mule would've gnawed it off by now, much as he hated it - and he'd damn near cried at the sight of his 'roll lashed in place behind it. Drawn by the thought of having real blankets beneath him instead of just mud, he'd fought against his exhaustion, pain and weakness and pushed himself to his feet, swaying none too steadily on them and giggling foolishly at his triumph.

Damn it, he had to stop doin' that! Just wasn't right for a man like him to giggle!

Turned out that standin' up had been the easy part, though. Peso, bein' Peso, hadn't shown any inclination to be helpful. Damn mule had just gone on grazin' where he was, flickin' an ear to show he knew he was bein' watched, but doin' no more than that. Couldn't be bothered to leave his little patch of grass and move closer, make this any easier. Oh no, not him. So he'd had to stagger to Peso, stumbling across yards that seemed more like miles, his right heel burnin' like hell all the while.

Definitely had a blister ...

That short walk had damn near done him in and it'd been all he could do to keep from fallin' or passin' out right there. But he'd wanted his bedroll, damn it, and the canteen still hanging from the saddle horn. He'd gone for the canteen first and managed to lift it free - Lord, he'd never realized water could be so heavy! - then had dropped it and collapsed against Peso as a wave of dizziness had hit him. Damn horse had startled, squealed sharply and leapt away at that, and, robbed of that support, he'd crumpled helplessly to the ground.

And only then remembered the deep graze Carlyle's bullet had seared across the gelding's shoulder.

So he'd lain there, mumbled an apology to Peso and given up any hope of getting his bedroll. Couldn't get up to get it, knew there wasn't any use in tryin'. He was played out. But he'd fallen close to the canteen, and he'd reckoned that was somethin' at least. He'd dragged it to himself, wrestled the stopper out of it and hefted it with badly shaking hands, treating himself to the first water he'd had in days that he could recall ...

And had immediately thrown it all back up as it had proved too much for his body to handle. He'd been horribly, painfully sick, the violent retching aggravating every one of his hurts and plunging him ever deeper into hell. By the time he'd finished he'd been near sobbing - hell, who was he kiddin', had to've been him he'd heard cryin' - and was stripped of what little strength he'd had. It'd come almost as a relief when he'd passed out that time, even though he was startin' to get awful damn tired of doin' it.

Still, he was even more damn tired of hurtin' and bein' sick ...

So here he was now, still on the ground and likely to stay that way. He had water, or at least what hadn't spilled out of the canteen when he'd dropped it to be sick, but his bedroll might as well've been on the moon for all the good it was doing him now. Strange, he'd never thought of himself as a man who needed his creature comforts, but blankets would've made a real nice change from the cold, wet mud.

Except that, now that he thought on it some, the cold of the mud beneath him actually felt kinda good, eased some of the heat burnin' through him. And that worried him a bit. He probably shouldn't be hot right now, probably just wasn't a good sign at all. Likely Nathan wouldn't be too happy to hear that. If Nathan had been here to hear it ...

Damn, he missed the boys! Needed to get back to them as soon as he could ...

But not right now. The light around him was failing - Lord, he hoped it was the light failin' - and he let his eyes close, no longer caring about the cold mud beneath him or the heat running through him.

Tomorrow. He'd go home tomorrow.

+ + + + + + +

Chris sat propped against his saddle and puffed slowly at a cheroot as he stared into the dying light of the meager fire. It had taken Ezra, Nathan and Josiah nearly an hour of dedicated scavenging, but they'd finally managed to find a small supply of wood dry enough to burn. Not much, though. Just barely enough to cook over, and certainly not nearly enough to hold back the darkness of the moonless, starless night.

And not nearly enough to ease the chill that had settled in the center of Larabee's bones.

He'd promised Buck that he'd wake him when it was the big man's turn for watch; he'd lied. But that was all right, because Buck had known he was lying. And he'd been grateful for the ready forgiveness for the lie he'd seen in Wilmington's blue eyes. He was a lucky sonuvabitch. A man could go his whole life without finding a friend like that. He'd found two.

Only one of them was out there now, in trouble, in danger, hurt. And he couldn't do a thing in the world about it except sit against this saddle, smoke a cigar and stare into that sorry fire. And lie to one friend while he failed another.

But come morning that would change.

He glanced over at the blood-stained cavalry hat hanging by its stampede strap from his saddle horn, then looked down at the dirty hide coat draped across his lap. Idly fingering its damp shortcape, he made one more promise, and this time swore he wasn't lying.

Tomorrow. They'd find Vin and take him home tomorrow.

+ + + + + + +

He swayed precariously on his hands and knees, praying desperately that he didn't fall. He'd done that twice already, and knew if he did it again that that'd be it; he wouldn't be gettin' up anymore. And he knew now as he'd never known anything else that he really didn't wanta die out here, so far from everyone and everything he'd come to hold so dear.

It was a helluva thing for a man to fear dyin' alone when he'd lived that way for most of his life.

So he balanced himself stubbornly on his hands and knees, refusing to give in to the terrible weakness that plagued him, refusing to think about the pain that racked him, refusing to do or think about anything except somehow gettin' up and gettin' himself on Peso.

Lord, Peso was still here, wasn't he?

He slowly lifted his heavy, throbbing head at that thought and exhaled unsteadily in relief when he saw the big gelding still grazing only a few feet away. Damn mule had slipped his bit - no surprise there - and he knew he'd have to replace it if he had any hope of controlling the animal on the ride back to town.

Hell, now on top of everything else, he was gonna have to stick his fingers in Peso's mouth. As if he didn't have hurts enough.

Shit.

He pushed himself back onto his haunches and sat there for long moments while he waited for the world to stop spinning. But at least he didn't fall, and for that he was deeply grateful. Hell, here lately it just didn't take much to make him grateful.

Josiah'd probably have somethin' to say about that ...

Lord, he missed the boys! And he was tired of that. He didn't wanta miss 'em anymore, he wanted to be with 'em! Wanted to hear their voices, see their faces, feel their strong hands on him and know that he was back where he belonged.

Well, hell, it was high time he got there then. Likely they were waitin' on him, maybe even worried about him. He wouldn't make 'em wait no more. He figured they'd all done waited long enough, worried long enough. Goddamn it, he was goin' home.

He raised an unsteady hand, stuck his thumb and middle finger in his mouth and, putting everything he had into it, gave a single piercing whistle. Peso lifted his head and turned it to him, stared at him a moment as if in startlement, then came trotting over as obediently as if he were a true horse and not some hell-spawned creature sent to bedevil his every waking moment.

Damn ...

The gelding stopped just before him, pawed the wet ground with a hoof, then lowered his head to nuzzle at his hair. He smiled and leaned into that caress, then raised his hand to the cheekstrap and curled his fingers around it. And with Peso standing as docile as a dog, he clung to that strap and pulled himself to his feet, collapsing into the steady strength of his horse.

Damn mule ...

He rested there for several minutes, just getting used to the feel of his legs and feet beneath him, then braced himself for the next challenge. That goddamn bit. To his surprise, though, Peso let him replace it without ever once struggling, without ever once snapping. Just took it like he was glad to have it.

He didn't think he'd ever loved the horse more than he did at that moment.

Taking up the reins and still bracing himself against the gelding, he lurched the few steps needed down Peso's left side to the saddle and locked both hands around the horn in a desperate death-grip. Never knowing how he did it, never knowing where he found the strength, he shifted his weight to his right foot, lifted his left the hundred or so feet it seemed to take to reach the stirrup and finally slid it home. Then he simply hung suspended there while he tried to figure out just how in the hell he was gonna do the rest of this.

Didn't usually seem this hard ...

But he thought again of Chris and the boys, of all the folks back home. Of home. And somehow, God, somehow, with a cry he barely recognized as coming from his own throat, he threw every last bit of strength he had into the effort and hauled his weak and wounded body into the saddle.

And that was it. It was all he had to do, which was good, because he couldn't have done any more. His strength gone, he touched his heels to Peso's sides and rasped, "C'mon, boy, take us home."

Then slumped forward in the saddle as Peso headed west.

+ + + + + + +

Josiah used the last of the semi-dry wood to brew up a pot of coffee. He didn't even suggest breakfast, knew it very likely would've gotten him shot. Chris was already up, packed and pacing, a grim black specter haunting the outer edges of their camp, the man wound so tightly it hurt Josiah just to watch him.

Lord, he hoped they found Vin soon!

It was a hope shared by all of them, though none spoke it aloud. No one spoke anything aloud. Even JD was uncharacteristically silent and withdrawn, his mind already bent fully to the task that awaited him and the responsibility that weighed upon him.

Chris was trusting him with leading them to Vin.

Even before there'd really been enough light to see, he'd gone out to check the tracks as if to make sure that nothing had disturbed them during the night. And he'd been out several times since then, until finally Buck had come after him, grabbed him and all but dragged him back for a much-needed cup of coffee.

But he didn't want to miss anything. Couldn't miss anything. Not with Vin's life at stake and his fledgling skills quite possibly the only hope the tracker had.

God, how did Vin do this time after time and always look so calm, as if it were nothing at all?

Maybe because it was nothing at all to him, JD reminded himself. The first time he'd watched Vin take apart a trail and glean its hidden story, he'd been in awe. And that awe had only deepened over time. He knew that Tanner was what most folks would consider uneducated, suspected the man might not even be literate, but what the tracker knew just couldn't be learned from books. Vin knew the earth, its patterns and its rhythms, its turnings and its times. He touched it with the hands of a lover, listened to it as one who heard its whispers and groans inside himself, moved over it as one whose every step joined him to his mother. Sometimes JD would've sworn that Vin Tanner had simply sprung up whole from the earth ...

He only prayed now that the man wouldn't be returning to it anytime soon.

Buck came over to the where the boy sat on a wet fallen tree and squatted before him, pressing a cup of coffee into his hands. "Josiah made it fit t' wake the dead," he said softly, "but I reckon we all need that." He studied the boy's pale, tight face intently. "You sleep at all last night?"

"Did you?" JD mumbled, taking the coffee but never looking at the big man.

Buck sighed, his broad shoulders slumping. "Don't reckon any of us did." He forced a weak smile. "But that'll change once we get Vin home. Likely Nate'll have t' clean and patch up whatever scrapes he's collected this time, we'll give him a stern talkin'-to fer puttin' us through this, then we'll all get the best night's sleep we've had-"

"Ain't his fault!" JD defended in a low, hard voice, his head coming up sharply and fierce eyes fixing themselves on Buck's face. "He didn't do this, it was done to him! He-"

"Yeah," Buck breathed sadly, handsome face twisting into a pained frown, "I know. It was all that bastard Carlyle's doin'. He's the one took Vin away from us-"

"Vin don't deserve this, Buck," JD said softly, his anger fading. "He don't deserve bein' hunted like some animal. Don't deserve always havin' to look over his shoulder ... He don't deserve any of this!"

"I know, son," Buck said. "But Vin'd be the first one t' tell ya that a man don't always get what he deserves in this life. Sometimes he just gets what he gets."

JD sat up straighter, his strong shoulders squaring, his dark head lifting, his hazel eyes flashing. A look of iron determination settled over his youthful features, and in that moment he looked like a young man who belonged exactly with the company he was keeping.

"This time," he vowed in a low, firm voice that near throbbed with conviction, "this time he's gonna get what he deserves! He deserves ta be with his friends, he deserves ta be home and safe, and this time, so help me, Buck, this time he's gonna get it! I'm gonna see ta that! I'm gonna find him for us!"

Buck stared at the boy in wonder for a few moments, then smiled broadly and clapped a big hand to his shoulder. "Y'know, kid," he said, pride shining in his eyes, "I just believe you will! Now, finish that coffee and let's get mounted before Larabee starts chewin' on the trees."

JD glanced over at the tall, rigid figure paused at the edge of camp and staring out into the distance. "You take care of him, Buck," he said softly. "Let me take care of findin' Vin, you just take care of Chris."

Buck heaved a sigh and rose to his feet, stretching the kinks from his back. "I plan to, kid," he said. "Been doin' it fer a while now, don't aim t' stop anytime soon."

JD nodded, then raised the cup to his lips and drank the hot, bitter brew, grateful for its bracing strength. The coffee near scalded his tongue but he ignored it, ignored everything except the trail he was already following in his mind and the countless lessons Vin had so patiently imparted to him. The tracker never belittled him, never talked down to him, never made him feel like he was just a fool green kid who'd somehow gotten in over his head. Just treated him like an equal, like a man ...

Like a friend.

He finished his coffee, stood up and stared past Buck to the men - the older, wiser, more experienced men - all staring expectantly back at him. "All right," he called, striding forward, "let's get goin'. We're burnin' daylight here!"

+ + + + + + +

Peso picked his own path over the ground, following no trail except the one dictated by his own curiosity and interest. The man draped over his back had long since stopped giving him direction, was no more than a dead weight.

But that was all right.

He didn't really need direction, didn't always like taking it when he had it. He and the man had been together long enough for him to know that he was expected to go on even when there were no hands guiding the reins, even when there were no heels at his sides urging him onward. He'd carried this man like this before, and likely he'd carry him like this again. Seemed a fairly regular thing with him.

But the man had said "home" before he'd become dead weight, and Peso would get him there. Being Peso, though, he'd get him there in his own good time, and in his own way.

And that grass over there sure did look good ...

+ + + + + + +

JD led them at a steady pace across the flat, empty land, dividing his attention equally between the ground and the sky. Still no sun, but at least the rain was holding off and looked like it would for a while yet, sparing him the worry of having the trail washed out before him. And the trail itself was even better than he could've hoped for, Peso's tracks deep and clear in ground muddy enough to hold a good imprint but not so wet that it just collapsed back in upon itself.

His mama would've said that the angels were watching out for them. He just hoped that at least one of those angels was watching out for Vin.

Chris didn't have the comfort of believing in angels, didn't have the comfort of believing in anything right now. Except JD. He watched the boy and pinned all his desperate hope on the cool confidence with which he was working.

Just like Vin would be ...

He closed his eyes tightly and bowed his head as pain speared through him at that thought. God, how many times had he watched the tracker doing this same thing, leading them all across ground that looked empty but that, to Tanner, seemed to hold a wealth of information? Vin could kneel in one spot for what seemed hours, devoting his full and formidable attention to a single blade of bent grass or one overturned pebble while Larabee fidgeted and fumed beside him. Then he'd look up, that damned crooked smile curving about his mouth and those blue eyes dancing with wicked amusement while he shook that shaggy head.

Y' got ants in yer pants there, cowboy?

Chris's throat tightened as he heard again that lazy, raspy drawl. Vin was all deliberation - words coming slowly and only after considerable thought, movements unhurried, nothing about him rushed. But behind all that refusal to hurry was a mind that worked at lightning speed, that could take in, sift through and sort out a thousand and one details and thoughts before anyone else around him could blink and already have a plan forming.

Sonuvabitch could drive Chris crazy ...

And he thoroughly wished Tanner were here to drive him crazy now. Wished the man were here to poke and prod at him as only he could, to tease and torment him until all he wanted was to pull his gun and shoot the crazy, grinning bastard ...

Only to find himself grinning back in return.

Jesus, Vin.

How many times had he made that half-exasperated, half-laughing response to some truly outlandish crack Tanner had made? And how many times had he felt all his anger, all his tension, fading from him from him even as he'd made it?

Damn Texan was a marksman with more than his rifle.

"We'll find him, Chris," Buck said softly from Larabee's side, watching every trace of emotion that played across the gunman's normally inscrutable face. "Ain't none of us gonna stop until we do."

Chris wrenched himself out of his thoughts and turned to look at Buck. "Carlyle's shot him once," he said in a low, rough voice. "And Vin don't wanta go back. Carlyle might find it easier-"

"He ain't gonna kill him yet," Buck said, forcing into his voice a certainty he wasn't sure he truly felt. "Even if he tries ta claim that bounty before they get t' Texas, ain't no towns within two or three days the way he's headin', and don't nobody wanta haul around a dead body that long. 'Specially if he's got t' be ridin' on the same horse with it. He might rough Vin up some, but he won't kill him. Not yet. We still got time."

Chris didn't answer, didn't want to think about that. Any thought of what time they had left only served to remind him of how much time had already passed. Instead, he returned his attention to JD, who was leaning over Milagro's side to study the ground beneath him in a manner almost painfully reminiscent of Vin.

"Kid's doin' good," he rasped tightly.

Buck nodded, pride rising through him; Larabee wasn't a man to give praise lightly. "He'll get us there, you'll see. He ... Chris?" he called softly, frowning when he saw that the gunman's eyes, and his attention, had wandered from JD to some point in the sky. "Pard?"

"Buck," Chris whispered, staring strickenly at the dark silhouettes circling against the gray sky in the distance, "look."

Buck frowned in confusion and followed Larabee's line of sight with his own gaze. Then he saw one of the shadows streak down, followed by another, and a hard, harsh gasp tore from him as cold horror poured through him.

Buzzards.

+ + + + + + +

Peso stopped abruptly and lifted his head sharply as the breeze shifted directions, his nostrils flaring as a welcome scent came to him. Forgetting the non-existent trail he had been following, he turned into the breeze and started forward, trotting at first and then breaking into a tired run.

Water ...

Driven by thirst, he lengthened his stride and quickened his pace, cresting a small rise and then tearing down it, desperate to reach the stream now in sight. So desperate that he never once slowed ...

Not even when he felt the dead weight of his rider slipping from his back.

+ + + + + + +

"Oh, Jesus!" JD croaked, rushing away from the body and dropping to his hands and knees as his stomach emptied itself violently into the mud. Tears streamed down his face and his whole body shook as the sickness convulsed him.

God!

None of the others got sick, though none of them felt far from it, and all looked decidedly pale and queasy as they stared down at the corpse. Off to one side, two buzzards lay dead where Chris had shot them as the six had come racing onto the scene before the stench of death had hit them. The remaining buzzards, panicked by the shots, had either taken flight or simply retreated to a safer distance, content to wait their turn.

"I believe I shall go tend to Master Dunne," Ezra gasped through the handkerchief he held over his mouth and nose as he turned and fled toward JD with more desperation than dignity.

"It ain't Vin," Chris rasped, clutching his handkerchief to his face in an attempt to filter out the smell. It didn't work.

"Nope. But it looks like Vin's handiwork," Buck noted weakly of the gutted corpse, swallowing convulsively against the nausea churning heavily through him. "I reckon he wasn't too keen on goin' back t' Texas."

With the cold professional detachment that he'd first cultivated during the war and then perfected through some of his more unpleasant duties in town, Nathan tied a bandanna around his face and knelt beside the body to see what clues it offered. Buzzards and other scavengers had already been at it, and not just recently. He reached down, lifted a cold, lifeless arm and let go, nodding as it fell limply; no rigor mortis. He leaned over the terrible, gaping wound carved into the body and arched a brow. Damn, but Vin did know his way around a knife.

Chris stared down at the dead man. Carlyle. Had to be. He should feel a sense of relief, he knew that, even one of perverse delight. This was the bastard who'd taken Vin and now he was dead. He should find some satisfaction in that.

But all he felt was empty. They had Carlyle, or what was left of him, but they didn't have Vin. Didn't know any more about where Vin was or how Vin was than they had before they'd gotten here.

And he didn't have anyone he could kill.

He knew that probably shouldn't bother him, but it did. He'd been certain they'd find Vin with Carlyle, that they'd have to take Vin from Carlyle, had looked forward to the fight that Carlyle would put up so he could fill the bastard full of holes. Make him pay for what he'd done to Vin ...

What he'd done to him.

Only now he wouldn't have that satisfaction. He could admit to a small sense of gratification that Vin had done it, both because it had allowed the tracker to get away and because of what it implied about his condition. Wasn't easy to stick a knife into a man and cut him open. That Tanner had managed it had to say something ...

But it didn't say what Chris wanted to hear. Like where the hell Tanner was now.

Shit.

Nathan finished his examination and rose to his feet, then walked away in desperate need of fresh, or at least fresher, air. The others followed, just as eager for a change in location. By the time they'd stopped, Ezra and JD, still deathly pale and shaky but in control of himself, had joined them.

"I figger he's been dead mebbe two days," the healer began without preamble, speaking to them all but looking at Chris. "Rigor mortis has already gone, critters've been at him good ... he's been here a while. Also, there oughtta be a lot mo' blood an' such on him, around him, than there is. Means he's been out in the rain long enough fo' all that to've been washed away. There's some water collected inside him, too."

"Lovely picture," Ezra muttered in revulsion.

"All right," Chris said, ignoring the gambler, "it was rainin' when he died. Rain didn't stop 'til yesterday, though. What makes you think he's been out here longer?"

Nathan exhaled slowly and chose his words carefully to spare his friends' sensibilities as much as possible. "Condition a' the body, strength a' the smell," he studiously avoided looking at JD, "maggots. Y' see enough of 'em, y' learn their stages. Size a' these says he's been dead about two days."

Josiah reached out and laid a strong hand on Nathan's shoulder, easily able to imagine under what circumstances the man had learned such grim details. The war had taught them all more lessons about death than they'd cared to know, but he supposed no lessons had been more brutal than the ones learned by those charged with trying to clean up and repair the carnage.

Chris turned sharply on his heel and stalked away without a word, eyes burning, jaws clenched, hands knotted into tight fists at his side. Two days. Vin had been out here on his own, hurt somehow, for two goddamned days!

Jesus!

Buck exhaled heavily and bowed his head for a moment, gathering his strength. Then slowly he straightened and looked at JD. "Take a look around, see what y' can find out from the tracks," he said tiredly. "I wanta know exactly what the hell happened here. The rest of ya," he swept the other men with his gaze, "see what kinda meal you can put together that don't need a lotta time t' fix or eat, and somebody make sure the horses get tended good. Likely we're gonna be tearin' outta here again real soon, and I'd like t' be sure we ain't gonna lose any of our animals on the way. We've already lost too much as it is," he finished in a flat voice.

"We'll find him, Buck," Josiah said softly.

Wilmington shot an angry, anguished stare at the preacher. "When?" he demanded harshly. "Hell, every time we think we're gettin' close, we just find another twist in the trail! Carlyle's dead, Josiah, been dead fer two goddamn days! That's plenty of time fer Vin to have gotten himself back home. But he didn't, and you know as well as I do that that just ain't good! More important, Chris knows it ain't good, and I'm runnin'' outta ways of tellin' that man that everything's gonna be all right without soundin' like the biggest goddamn liar on God's green earth!"

He turned sharply and walked away before Josiah could answer. He strongly suspected that the man would say something about having faith, and he wasn't at all sure he could take hearing that just now without throwing a punch.

Behind him, the others moved away in a heavy silence to do as he'd ordered. And all of them wondered just how much longer this chase could possibly last.

Chris heard the steps approaching but didn't turn around, knowing instinctively who'd come after him. "Where is he, Buck?" he asked softly, his gaze sweeping the horizon for some sign of the missing tracker.

"Hell if I know," Buck breathed. "Got JD workin' on findin' out, though." He let his gaze, too, roam across the distance. He knew he shouldn't be surprised that he didn't see anything - hell, Tanner was a damn master at disappearing into the earth - but that knowledge did nothing to ease his disappointment. Or his worry. "The boys are gonna put together a quick meal and see to the horses," he said quietly, though he suspected that Larabee either wasn't listening or just flat didn't care. "Reckon mebbe a half-hour should do it before we're ready ta ride again."

Chris hadn't heard. "Two days," he rasped tightly, that one thought blocking all others from his mind. "He's been out there for two days, hurt, needin' help, needin' us, and we ain't been there-"

"Don't do this," Buck urged sadly, turning to face his old friend. "We've been doin' all we can, Chris, y' know that. We lit out as soon as we knew there was a problem, we been chasin' all over hell's back yard ... And, yeah, mebbe all that ain't enough, but I'll be damned if I can think of anything else we could be doin'."

Chris could think of a thousand things. Could stop Vin from goin' out alone, could stop him from goin' out at all, could shackle him to that goddamned town ...

Could cage him up and kill him. Take his freedom as sure as any bounty hunter would and watch him die a little bit more each day. Until finally hanging would seem like a mercy.

"Jesus!" he groaned, bowing his head as helplessness overwhelmed him.

Buck reached out and set a big hand on Larabee's shoulder, squeezing gently. "We'll find him, pard," he said, trying not to hear how small and empty and useless those words sounded even to him. How many times did a hope, or a lie, have to be repeated before it began to sound like the truth? "We won't give up until we do, you know that. Hell, he cain't've gone far. He's hurt and he's on foot-"

"We don't know that for sure!" Chris raised his head and fixed a ragged gaze on Buck. "We saw a horse's tracks out there and JD thinks they might've been Peso's, but how the hell can we be sure?" he asked harshly, his voice rising steadily as words poured from him in a torrent of frustration. "It doesn't make any sense! Carlyle and Vin were ridin' Peso when they got here. Then Vin killed Carlyle. Or we assume it was Vin who did it. Now, why the hell wouldn't Vin have just gotten up on Peso and ridden back to town? What the hell is goin' on here?" he shouted.

"I got an idea about that," answered a quiet voice behind them.

Startled, the two men whirled around to see JD standing a few yards away. He looked every bit as tired as they felt, yet there was a steadiness to him that they lacked. And that Chris sorely envied.

"Come back over here," the boy urged, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the area he'd just left. "Got somethin' I wanta show ya."

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked away, giving the two older men no choice but to follow. They exchanged wryly amused glances at such unconscious high-handedness, then did exactly that.

He led them past the body to a spot about twenty feet away and stopped, sticking his thumbs into his gunbelt and staring down at the ground. Like that at Yellow Creek, the mud here was deeply churned and what grass there was had been ground into it. There was a wild profusion of hoof- and footprints, all stamped into the earth with such violence that the rain had had little effect upon them.

"There was a fight here, too," JD explained, staring down at the mess and deciphering its meaning as easily as if he were reading words upon a page. "Those are Peso's tracks and they're all over the place, in every direction. Looks like he got real pissed and went into one of his fits. And the boot prints are all over, too, so Vin and Carlyle were right here with him, maybe fighting with each other, maybe fighting with him. Could be he threw 'em, could be they just dismounted to take a rest and then he wouldn't let 'em back on. But," he added forcefully, lifting his gaze and leveling it at Chris, "whatever happened, they didn't get back on him."

"Okay," Chris sighed, setting his hands on his hips and arching a brow at the boy, "I'll bite. How can you be so sure?" Because there was no doubt that the young man was sure.

JD nodded, then turned and stepped away from the churned ground, pointing down as he followed a line of marks in the earth of considerably less depth than the ones behind him. "These are Peso's tracks, too." he explained. "But they're shallow and they go in nearly a straight line. He was runnin' like hell," he explained as two sets of blank looks met his words. "And he didn't have anybody on him. Couldn't've ta make tracks this light." He shrugged. "He was either pissed or spooked and just took off."

"Spooked?" Buck asked, frowning. "By what?"

Again JD shrugged. "I don't know. Could be that Vin and Carlyle were fighting around him. If they got too close to him, that'd do it. He doesn't like that; no horse does. Or," again his gaze sought Larabee's, "could be that Carlyle got a shot off."

Chris stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath, then narrowed his eyes. "A shot?" he growled.

JD nodded, then turned and walked back to the torn ground. He stopped at its edge and pointed down to an object imbedded in the mud a few inches from his feet. "That's a gun. Gotta be Carlyle's. He must've drawn it, then either dropped it or had it knocked loose. There's a hoof print around it, which means Peso stomped it into the mud. And I don't figure a man like Carlyle would draw unless he was gonna shoot. We could pry it out, clean it off and see how many rounds are in the chamber. That'd tell us whether he shot, but not when."

Chris stared down at the ground and mulled over the boy's words, putting together a picture in his mind. "Okay, Vin and Carlyle were both afoot, whether because Peso threw 'em or just wouldn't let 'em mount. He's capable of both. If Peso's pissed enough to be tearin' up the ground like this, then maybe Vin decided to take advantage of the confusion and go after Carlyle, maybe get the bastard's gun away from him."

"Sounds like somethin' Vin would do," Buck agreed thoughtfully. "Carlyle's gotta be tryin' like hell not ta be stomped by Peso, which ain't an easy thing ta do. So he's distracted, can't watch Vin and Peso both. And Vin makes a grab for the gun."

"Which gets dropped," Chris added. "Maybe Vin's hurt too bad to keep hold of it-"

"But if he could take a knife to Carlyle over there," Buck asked, turning to stare at the corpse, "why couldn't he hold onto a gun over here?"

"Maybe because his hands were tied," JD put in quietly. He nodded toward the body. "I found some rope over there. It's been cut. And Carlyle wouldn't dare let Vin anywhere near his horse without makin' sure he was tied. Couldn't tie his feet because he needed him able to ride, but he could sure as hell tie his wrists."

A slow, broad smile spread over Buck's face as he stared at the boy. "Damn, but you're gettin' good!" he breathed. "Vin'll be real proud of ya when we tell him all this."

JD blushed hotly and bowed his head. Right now, he just wanted to find Vin. Anything after that could take care of itself.

"So we've got what?" Chris asked, bringing everyone back to the matter at hand. "Peso's pissed or scared and runs off, leavin' Vin and Carlyle on foot. And Carlyle's gun ground into the mud. He didn't pick it up, so either he couldn't find it or he figured he wouldn't be able to use it. But he's unarmed."

"Until a knife appears," Buck reminded him. "You can bet he had it. He sure as hell wouldn't let Vin keep his."

"Maybe Carlyle had Vin's," Chris mused, turning back to the body and staring at it. "There's no sheath on his belt, which means he didn't wear one normally. Likely he just took Vin's and shoved it into his belt."

"Or maybe Vin took the sheath off his belt after he killed him-"

"Why?" JD asked. "He's got one of his own. And Carlyle's belt is still buckled. If Vin was gonna take the sheath off a dead man, why would he bother bucklin' his belt back up after? Especially," he shuddered, "after what he'd have to put his hands in to do it. I mean, I know Vin ain't squeamish, but why would he take the time to do somethin' like that?"

"Besides," Chris said, still staring at the dead man, "Vin's knife is a Bowie, and it would damn near take a Bowie to do that. Hell, that's what that knife's made for."

"Okay," Buck said, easily seeing the logic of that, "with the gun gone, Vin makes a grab for the knife - his knife - and manages to turn it on Carlyle, slitting the bastard open-"

"Not here," JD countered, shaking his head. "Couldn't have happened here. Not with the body over there." He looked at Buck and lifted two brows. "I ain't Nathan, but even I know that if you've been cut open like that, you ain't goin' anywhere, much less that far."

Buck gave a rueful laugh. "I guess you're right, kid." He thought a moment, then suggested, "Maybe Carlyle pulled the knife first? Peso's gone, but he's still got Vin, and he's still gotta keep Vin in line. Can't find or can't use his gun, so he pulls the knife and ... what? Tries ta force Vin ta walk? He's still got that bounty ta claim."

JD nodded, then stepped back and pointed down. "You can't see 'em real good, but there are two sets of boot prints goin' from here to where Carlyle fell. Sometimes they're single-file, like Carlyle's behind Vin, but sometimes they're more beside each other, like Carlyle's havin' ta drag or force Vin."

"Imagine that," Buck muttered with a smirk.

"But Carlyle's go as far as he's layin' now," JD went on. "That's where Vin got him. Somehow. Got his knife back, used it on Carlyle and cut off his ropes. And then ..." His words trailed off into a soft sigh.

"And then?" Chris prompted firmly.

Instead of answering, JD walked slowly over to the body, tried not to look at it and stepped carefully around it, stopping at its other side and turning his back to it. When Chris and Buck joined him, he pointed to the ground with one hand and held the other over his mouth and nose. "Then," he said through his fingers, "he started walkin'. Only ..." He hesitated and glanced at Chris, then looked away just as quickly, not wanting to see the gunman's eyes when he continued. "Only I don't think he got far. At first."

Chris tensed and went cold, his face draining of color, his eyes filling with fear. "What ... whatta ya mean?" he whispered.

JD sighed and stepped forward. "No tracks," he said. "Well, not real good ones. Rain washed 'em away. All this happened before the rain stopped. But there's a place here," he stepped forward again, still pointing down, "where something heavy lay. Probably lay there a good while. You can see where whatever it was, and likely it was Vin's body, pressed into the ground, smoothed it out."

Chris closed his eyes and bowed his head. He didn't want to think about that, didn't want to think about Vin lying out in the rain, hurt, near the body of the man he'd gutted. Didn't want to think about what it meant that Vin, as tough and enduring a man as he'd ever known, couldn't make it any further.

Didn't want to think about what that meant they might find just a little further on.

"But he did get up?" Buck pressed JD, seeing and easily able to read the sick fear on Larabee's face. "I mean, he had to, else he'd still be here, right?" He knew he sounded desperate, but couldn't quite keep that edge out of his voice.

JD nodded, knowing his friends needed reassurance but not certain he had any to give. Not the kind they wanted, anyway. "Yeah," he breathed, "he got up. I found some more tracks." He turned and pointed to a sparse group of trees another twenty feet away. "Tracks lead from here to there," he said, "but they're all over the place." He shook his head slowly and stared up at Buck, worry plain in his eyes. "He wasn't walkin' straight," he said softly. "He was just ... I don't ... wanderin'. And on one of the trees ... he musta sat against it ... Buck," he swallowed hard, his eyes wide and dark, "there's blood."

Chris uttered a wrenching groan and Buck instinctively reached out to grip his arm to steady him, then forced a weak smile as he looked back at JD. "Hell, kid, we already knew Carlyle shot him in the head," he said with a brittle lightness. "Couldn'ta been too bad, though, else-"

"No, Buck," JD interrupted softly, trying not to look at Larabee but failing. "This ... this isn't high up enough to have come from his head." He swallowed again, then licked his lips. "He's ... he's hurt ... somewhere else, too."

Chris groaned again and tore out of Buck's grasp, all but running away. This time, though, Buck didn't follow, merely stood rooted in place as he stared at JD, too caught up in his own cold fear to have any strength left for Chris. He wanted to speak, but couldn't get his lips to move or his throat to work. He'd thought that knowing what had happened to Vin would make everything better.

He'd been wrong.

JD strode forward to Buck and grabbed his arm, holding tightly to it and staring intently up into the big man's white face. "We gotta find him!" he said urgently, digging his fingers harder into Buck's flesh. "Now more than ever! He's hurt worse than we thought and, judgin' from these tracks, he ain't movin' too good! He needs help. He needs us!"

"How?" Buck asked weakly, suddenly defeated by the magnitude of the task. "Hell, JD, look around! He could be anywhere-"

"You leave that ta me," the boy said grimly, releasing Buck's arm and drawing himself up to his full height. "You get Chris, the rest of you eat and see to the horses. I'm gonna keep lookin' around, see if I can pick up his trail."

"JD-"

"Do it!" the boy spat. "We don't have time ta waste. Vin doesn't have time! Just make sure you're all ready to ride when I say."

Buck was oddly braced by the boy's fierce tone and determined stance, and a weak smile graced his lips. "You takin' over, kid?"

JD snorted. "Somebody's got to. You're standin' there starin' inta space, Chris looks like he's been gutshot, and Vin just plain ain't here. So, yeah," he thrust his thumbs into his gunbelt and lifted his chin, "I guess I'm takin' charge. And you've got your orders."

Buck snapped into a military stance and saluted smartly. "Yes, sir, kid, sir!" he barked teasingly. He dropped his salute, then quickly used that hand to swat the hat from the boy's head. "Just don't get too big fer yer britches," he warned playfully.

And immediately JD went from man in charge to irritated youth. "Bu-uck!" he protested, kneeling to retrieve his hat and rising again as he jammed it on his head. "Would you just once do as I say?" he pleaded.

The big man winked. "Just this once. But don't let it go ta yer head." He chuckled as the boy rolled his eyes, then turned and walked jauntily toward Chris.

"Oh, Buck, one more thing," JD called after him. When Wilmington turned, he added, "I never thought I'd say this, but tell Josiah ta say a prayer of thanks for all this mud!"

+ + + + + + +

He was floating, which seemed strange because he couldn't recall when he'd decided to go swimming. Last he remembered, he'd been headed out to Yellow Creek for some time alone. But maybe he'd changed his mind, gone to that little pool he favored instead. Didn't matter really. What did matter was that it felt good just to float here, wherever "here" was. Didn't hurt anymore ...

Now why in the hell would he be worried about hurtin'?

He tried to think about that, but it came dangerously near pulling him out of his floating, so he just let it go. Some instinct warned him that he didn't want to stop floating, that he didn't want this warm, soft, safe nothingness to end. That something terrible would happen to him if it did. That being here was all that protected him from the pain that awaited him out there ...

Damn, there it was again. For some reason he was gonna hurt ...

Only he didn't want to hurt. Knew he'd already had enough of it, was good and sick and tired of it, though he didn't know quite why. But that was all right. He didn't need to know. Didn't want to know. Just wanted to go on floating here, where it was warm and soft and he was safely numb ...

Except for maybe that ache starting to throb in his head, that fire starting to burn in his side ...

Oh, shit.

And all at once he was no longer floating but falling, plummeting back to the hard, solid earth and landing with a force that awoke every hellish torment he'd tried so hard to escape. Wave after wave of pain crashed through him, stripped him of that blessed nothingness and snatched him back to agonizing awareness. His body jerked violently beneath the onslaught and he cried out hoarsely, certain that this was how it felt to die.

Terrified by that thought, he wrenched his eyes open and dug his fingers into the earth beneath him, not wanting to die, not ready to die, determined to hold himself here, to this earth and this life, with whatever strength and will remained to him. He remembered telling Chris once that he wasn't afraid to die, just didn't want to go out strung up like a mangy dog. But he didn't want to go out like this, either, stripped of damn near everything he owned, even his pride, and left alone with nothing but his pain ...

Alone.

Again the stark fear hit him. He didn't want to die, and he certainly didn't want to die alone. He'd always thought he would, couldn't imagine having anybody with him when he died since he'd never had anybody with him while he lived. Couldn't imagine that anybody'd care when he was gone, that anybody'd even know. Hard to think his death would matter when his life never had.

Only now it did matter, he mattered, in more ways and to more people than he'd ever thought possible, and he'd come to realize that he liked that. Liked the feeling it gave him, liked the strength it gave him. Lord knew he still had more troubles in his life than any one man ought, but that was all right. Because now for the first time in a long damn time he had folks around to help him bear those troubles, folks who'd even go outta their way to help lighten the press of those troubles upon him. And most of all he had six friends who'd move heaven and earth just to keep those troubles from pressin' in on him at all. Six men who would know he was gone, who would care, because they cared about him now ...

Well, hell. He dug his fingers deeper into the earth to anchor himself to its solidness, pushed aside his fear, fought against his pain and struggled to hold on just a little bit longer. He wasn't gonna die. Not now, not here, not like this. The boys would come, were likely already comin', wouldn't stop until they found him, until they'd taken him back where he belonged. He knew that, knew it with everything that was in him ...

And that was a helluva thing for a man who'd never known its like before.

THREE

It was a long, painful, nerve-racking ride for the men following JD, and for one man in particular. Every time the boy stopped and dismounted to get a better look at the tracks, Chris felt another painful twist at his stomach, at his soul. They'd left Carlyle's body behind three hours ago, and though he knew they'd ridden a considerable distance since then, they hadn't gone far enough. Wouldn't have gone far enough until they'd found Vin.

And, Jesus, wasn't it just like Tanner to drag this out past all bearing, to drag his sorry, wounded ass all over the fuckin' territory instead of just conveniently collapsing and stayin' put until they got to him? Goddamn stubborn tracker was just too goddamn ornery for his own goddamn good!

Christ, and now JD was getting off his horse again ...

Unaware of the near-murderous thoughts of the seething gunman behind him, JD knelt before the tracks that had caught his eye and studied them intently. He frowned deeply, leaned further down and ran a hand over them, certain he couldn't be seeing right. Except that he knew he was. He rose to his feet and looked around, then walked a few feet away and swept the ground there with his gaze, raising a hand to rub the back of his neck.

Couldn't be ... could it?

Chris watched with a mounting impatience as JD paced slowly over and stared fixedly down at a patch of ground about six feet square. Each time the boy stopped, Larabee stiffened, anticipating an explanation. But JD only shook his head, muttered to himself and resumed his pacing, his young face twisted into a scowl of confusion.

Finally Chris could stand it no longer. "Well?" he growled between tightly clenched teeth, green eyes glittering like jewels. When there was no answer, he exhaled sharply and dismounted, then stalked over to the boy. "Tell me somethin', JD," he ordered in a low, harsh voice. "Tell me anything!"

The boy looked up at Larabee, still scowling, and shook his head slowly. "I know it can't be right," he muttered, "but there ain't any other explanation for it."

"For what?" Chris spat, clenching his hands into hard fists at his sides to keep from reaching out and shaking the kid.

"Look," JD sighed, turning and pointing down at the ground. "See? Those are Vin's tracks. They're all over around here, like he was just, I don't know, keepin' himself movin' to keep from fallin'. But a couple of times," he winced and bowed his head, "he did fall. And I think maybe the last time, he just stayed down. Maybe even slept here. I mean over there." He pointed to a spot about three feet away. "Ground was still wet enough that you can see where his body pressed down into it. So he was there a good long while."

"But?" Chris prompted less vehemently. In spite of desperation, he could still admire the cool maturity and skill JD had revealed over the past two days. He'd seen and pieced together tells the others, older and more experienced, had missed, had held to the trail with a dogged determination that would've done Vin proud.

Their youngest was growing up.

"But he ain't here now," JD continued, doubt creeping into his voice, "and while I ... I mean, I can see the tracks, but ..." He shrugged and looked beseechingly up at Chris, capable man giving way to confused boy. "It just doesn't make sense!"

"Why don't you tell us," Buck suggested gently, coming up on the two with the others close behind him.

JD swallowed and nodded. "All right," he sighed. "Over here," he led then a few feet away, "I found these." He knelt down and swept the tracks gently with one hand. "Hoof prints. I tried tellin' myself it couldn't be, but ..." He looked up at Chris, needing to know what this man thought above all others. "Peso's," he said softly. "Exactly like the ones we saw back where Carlyle died. Only comin' from the west."

Chris went absolutely still, his gaze riveted to the tracks in the ground. He thought of all he knew of the troublesome, temperamental, cantankerous gelding, thought of the thousand and one battles he and Tanner fought on an almost daily basis and his stubborn refusal to recognize anyone's will but his own ...

And knew without a doubt what had happened.

"I'll be damned," he breathed, a slow smile breaking out over his face and easing the haunted look there. "Sonuvabitchin' mule came back for him." At that moment, he came damn near loving the fool animal. "That's why we saw his tracks headin' east out there." A sound escaped him that came suspiciously near a laugh. "Somewhere out there he stopped runnin' and turned around. He was comin' back ta Vin. And he found him here."

"Thanks be to God!" Josiah intoned softly, fervently, casting his eyes heavenward. "He does indeed send His angels."

Ezra arched a chestnut brow at that. "I never imagined I'd hear that hell-spawned beast referred to as an 'angel,'" he quipped dryly. "Yet," he winked at Josiah, "I have heard it said that the Almighty does work in mysterious ways."

Even as the others allowed themselves to relax a bit, Buck cast a glance at Nathan and felt a chill at the healer's worried frown. "Vin ain't afoot anymore," he said quietly. "That's good news, ain't it?"

All eyes turned to Nathan, and he wilted inwardly at the hope in them. He knew what these men wanted to hear from him, but he'd never lied to them and wouldn't start now. "I'd like t' think it is," he said, forcing himself to meet Larabee's gaze, "but I ain't so sure. If he's hurt bad, ain't no tellin' how long he c'n hold on. Could be Peso'll take him straight back t' town, could be he'll jes' be Peso an' go some damn fool way of his own. Hell," he sighed sharply in frustration, "could be he'll be Peso an' jes' throw Vin off." He shook his head slowly. "I'm glad as I c'n be that he ain't walkin' no mo', but we still got t' find him, an' b'fo he spends another night out here on his own."

On his own. The words struck Chris square in the heart and brought him up sharply. Vin had already spent too much time out here on his own, and he'd be damned if he'd let that go on. He nodded at Nathan to show his understanding, then turned and looked compellingly at JD.

"Can you read his trail?"

"Yeah."

Chris studied him a moment, saw the confidence that had nothing to do with cockiness, then smiled slightly and nodded. "All right, then, take us to him."

Within moments they were mounted and heading out, JD in the lead and keeping his eyes on Peso's trail. The depth and spacing of the big horse's tracks, along with the meandering path they traced, gave him a fresh feeling of hope. True, Vin had a good head start on them, but Peso wasn't running, wasn't in any hurry at all, was just sort of idly wandering ...

Which, now that he thought about it, might not be good at all. Vin would never have let the gelding roam like this, especially when he was hurt and needed to get back to town, would've pointed him in one direction and held him firmly to it. JD had watched enough battles between the two to know. If Peso was wandering like this, then Vin wasn't in control ...

He urged Milagro to a faster pace.

The others did the same, picking up on his heightened sense of urgency and accepting it without question. Behind him, they fanned out into a long, loose rank, increasing the distance between themselves to more effectively sweep the land around them and the horizon before them for any sign of their missing tracker. All were haunted by the realization that time was passing more quickly than the miles, by the fear that too much time might have passed already. All remembered too vividly the blood staining the hat still hanging from Chris's saddle horn, the blood they'd seen on the tree back with Carlyle's body.

Vin's blood ...

JD immersed himself in his task, blocking out awareness of everything except the signs of a big horse's unhurried, unguided wanderings. He was immensely grateful for the grasses and plants that grew up so quickly in the wake of a desert rain, the trail of crushed blades and broken stalks beaten through their midst by Peso's iron-shod hooves as plain to his eyes as a path scythed through a wheat field. The plainness of that trail allowed him to quicken his pace still further, allowed him to stop following one track at a time and ride ahead to the point where the path started to disappear from his view and pick it up again. And though he still worried about the implications of Peso's meandering trek, at least he began to feel better about their chances of catching up with the horse.

Of course, it would really help if he'd just stop ...

But this was Peso, and, as always with him, no good thing could last. Lulled into a dangerous sense of confidence by the ease of the tracking, and with his weariness and the humid, heavy heat of the afternoon weighing oppressively upon him, JD's attention began to falter, his attention to wander, and all at once he jerked upright in the saddle, realizing to his horror that he'd almost dozed off.

Even worse, he'd lost the trail.

He swore softly, furiously, and reined Milagro to a stop, turning in his saddle and looking frantically around for any sign of where he'd lost it. Before the others could catch up and question him, he saw where it had turned off sharply to the south, as if Peso had suddenly come upon a reason for changing direction. JD narrowed his eyes and chewed his lower lip, then gasped as understanding hit him.

Peso had to be thirsty ...

Still without waiting for the others, he wheeled Milagro and spurred him to a run, hope rising like a hard wave through him. "Waller Creek!" he shouted over his shoulder as he sped toward the south.

"Aw, hell, now he's doin' it!" Buck groaned as he set his spurs to Beavis. "Damn it, Chris-" But his protest died unspoken as the gunman raced away from him, tearing after JD at a mad pace and leaving him to chase after Pony's flowing tail.

One after another they all streaked off across the land, gripped by a common understanding and a common urgency. Waller Creek lay over the next rise. If Peso had scented the water, if he'd been desperately thirsty as any horse would after his exertions ...

If Vin had been too weak to control or even hold on to his charging mount ...

Please, please ...

The words throbbing through Chris's head and heart in time with Pony's pounding hooves weren't a prayer, or not a conscious one, for he'd long since abandoned that habit. Yet still he sent the frantic, fervent pleas somewhere in the desperate hope that Vin would be there, that he'd be alive ...

Jesus, Vin, please be alive!

Pony started to falter on the dash up the rise and ruthlessly Chris spurred him on, silently vowing he'd make it up to the tiring horse later. The gelding responded with his usual heart, powerful muscles producing another burst of speed that carried them to and over the crest. Chris gathered the reins tightly in his hands and leaned back, preparing to take Pony down at that same reckless pace ...

But brought him instead to an abrupt stop as his own heart slammed against his ribs. For long, long moments he simply sat like a statue on the startled, snorting Pony, never noticing the others drawing up rein around him. All that existed for him in that moment was the thin silver trickle of Waller Creek off to his left, the big black horse standing contentedly in the middle of the creek with his blazed nose in the water and, lying unnaturally still in a heap on the grass where he'd obviously fallen ...

"Oh, Jesus ... Vin!"

+ + + + + + +

He was sinking, unable any longer to fight the force dragging his weary, wounded body down into the darkness. He'd tried, Lord God, he'd tried with everything that was in him, fought with everything that was in him, but he just had nothin' left. He was too tired, his body worn out and weak and refusing any longer to answer to his will. He hated it, could've wept for it, but, God help him, all he wanted was to rest. Just ... let go ... and rest.

He was a stubborn man, everybody said so. But sometimes stubborn just wasn't enough. And that was a bitter disappointment to a man when stubborn was all he had left.

Worst part of it was that, unlike before, the pain didn't stop once he let go, but followed him down no matter how deep he sank. It wrapped around him like some goddamned serpent, crushing him in its hard coils and driving its fangs into his flesh without mercy. No escape, no rest, no peace, nothing but the constant torment of his wounds ...

And the soul-deep terror of dying alone.

He knew he shouldn't be afraid, but couldn't help it. Maybe once he'd thought he could do this, but not now. Not when he'd grown to count on the others so, on havin' 'em near when he needed 'em most, on havin' their strength when his own failed. He'd forgotten how to do this, wasn't at all sure he had time to remember how. Wasn't at all prepared for just how much it hurt.

For how scared of it he was.

Helluva thing for a man who'd inflicted death on so many others and faced it himself so many times to realize just how scared of it he really was. Or maybe not so much the dyin' part as the alone part.

Yeah, definitely the alone part.

And wouldn't the others just get a kick outta that? Him, the most solitary sonuvabitch in the territory, a man about as comfortable with people as a whore in church, scared of dyin' alone. Hell, he could almost hear 'em laughin' now.

Except Chris.

Chris wouldn't laugh because he'd understand. Larabee always seemed to understand him in a way no one else ever had. In a way no one else had ever tried. Maybe that was what drew him to the man. Not the understandin', but the tryin'. The fact that he thought Vin Tanner might actually be worth that tryin'. Meant a lot bein' worth somethin' to a man like Chris Larabee. Meant a lot knowin' he'd somehow earned the right to call the man "friend."

And hurt like hell to know what his death would do to that man.

Oh, Lord, he didn't wanta do this! He was tired beyond bearin', he hurt beyond bearin', but, Lord God, he didn't wanta die! Not like this, not out here, not alone! He'd been alone for most of his life already, God, wasn't that enough? Hadn't he earned the right to have somebody with him when he died?

If he could just stop sinkin', if he could just find somethin', anything, to hang on to, somethin' to anchor him here just a little longer, just until the boys got here ...

But there was nothing. And even if there had been, he was too weak to reach for it, his strength at its end. Unable any longer to fight, despairing at the knowledge that his body was failing him, he abandoned all hope and just let himself slip one last time beneath the waves ...

Only to feel a hand close firmly about his shoulder and haul him back out of the darkness.

+ + + + + + +

Chris couldn't get to Vin fast enough. He took Pony at a reckless pace down the rock-strewn slope of the hill, little caring that the drop on this side was considerably steeper than the rise on the other side had been. But what the worried friend in him hadn't registered, the horseman had and he instinctively compensated, shifting his balance to keep Pony from taking the slope on a tumble. Even so, the gelding was none too pleased with what was being asked of him, his reluctance and resentment showing even through his compliance, and Larabee knew he owed the animal some extra care after all this.

Damn horse had been learnin' too much from Peso ...

But all thoughts of temperamental horses ceased as soon as he reached the base of the slope. Concerned now only for the man lying on the ground halfway between himself and the creek, he set his spurs to Pony's sides and raced forward, his heart a cold, hard knot of terror lodged squarely in his throat. It scared him more than he could say that Vin, skittish as a wild creature under the best of circumstances, showed absolutely no reaction to or even awareness of six men bearing down on him like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. The tracker never even twitched, and that froze the blood in Larabee's veins.

He jerked Pony to a plunging stop about fifteen feet from the fallen man and threw himself out of the saddle. "Vin!" he called loudly, harshly, running forward and dropping to his knees at Tanner's side. The tracker lay on his stomach, frightfully silent and unmoving, his left arm trapped beneath his body and his right outflung at his side. Terrified by the prospect of what he would feel but needing to know one way or the other, Chris swallowed hard, braced himself, then stretched out a badly shaking hand and laid it hesitantly against Vin's naked back. Far from the half-expected cold of death, however, he felt the heat of a raging fever. And while he knew that wasn't good, he couldn't help the fierce shudder and sharp gasp of relief that tore from him.

If nothing else, a fever meant that Vin was still alive.

He could hear the others rushing up to join him - they'd clearly spared a bit more concern for their horses than he had for his - but he paid them no heed. His whole attention remained fixed solely on Vin. Besides just feeling the tracker's high fever, he could also see the filthy, blood-stained bandanna and shirt tied around his head and abdomen in makeshift bandages, and had to fight back yet another burst of rage at the man who'd inflicted the wounds. Carlyle was dead and that was good, but, goddamn it, Larabee wished he'd put a few bullets into the bastard's corpse when he'd had the chance!

But Carlyle wasn't the one who mattered here; Vin was. Pushing aside thoughts of the dead man, Chris focused again on his friend, sliding his hand from Tanner's back to his shoulder and gripping it firmly, then curving his other one against the tracker's bony hip and pulling him gently onto his back.

"Jesus, Vin!" he gasped sharply as similar exclamations of shock escaped the men behind him. "What'd that bastard do ta you?"

The evidence of Carlyle's brutality was sickeningly apparent. Vicious bruises the size of a man's fist darkened the the left side of Vin's face from cheekbone to jaw, another blackened his right browbone, eye and cheekbone. Both of his lips were deeply split and more of the hideous contusions covered the left side of his chest. A handkerchief bound his left wrist, but the ugly rope burns on his right gave Larabee a good idea of what the filthy cloth covered.

Carlyle had not only tied Vin, which would've been hell enough on the tracker, but had beaten him savagely as well.

"Oh, God!" Chris breathed strickenly. "God, Vin, I'm sorry!" Torn by the thought of what his friend had suffered, and suffered alone, he bent down and slipped an arm under Tanner's shoulders to lift and cradle the unconscious man to him, determined that somehow Vin would know he wasn't alone any longer.

"Don't, Chris," Nathan ordered as he knelt at Vin's other side and reached out to lay a restraining hand on Larabee's arm. "I don' want him moved b'fo' I get a chance ta see where all he's hurt."

Chris raised a ragged stare to the healer. "Can't we least get him on some blankets?" he pleaded. "Get him off the ground?"

Nathan shook his head slowly, his dark face lined with sorrow. "Not yet," he murmured. "'Sides," he dropped his gaze to Vin and felt his gut clench with worry at the extent of the damage done to his friend, "looks like he's been here a while. A few mo' minutes won't hurt him."

Chris hesitated a moment, then withdrew his arm and sat back on his haunches, submitting grudgingly to Nathan's will. Christ, why hadn't he gone ahead and shot Carlyle for the hell of it?

Nathan leaned over Vin and slipped a finger beneath the filthy bandanna wrapped around his head, then winced when he realized it had adhered to the wound. Glancing down at the shirt fashioned into a bandage around the tracker's middle, he imagined that the same was likely true of it. He sighed softly and looked up at Larabee. "Gon' need a canteen," he said. "Gon' hafta soak these loose so's he don' start bleedin' again."

Larabee didn't move. Behind him, however, Buck nodded at the healer and turned on his heel, hurrying back to the horses.

"Rest a' y'all," Nathan swept his gaze over the three other men who stood behind or beside Chris, "might's well get them horses stripped, start makin' camp. We ain't goin' nowhere t'day. Get a fire goin', get a bed ready fo' him, start bringin' up water from the creek an' boilin' it. I'm gon' need ta clean out his wounds real good, get him bathed somehow. Cain't half tell the bruises from the dirt."

Chris scowled at that. He could tell.

Buck returned with a canteen and handed it to Nathan while JD, Ezra and Josiah each scattered to start their self-appointed tasks. Buck dropped into a squat at Chris's side and cast a worried gaze at his old friend. "How you doin'?" he asked softly.

Chris never tore his gaze from Vin. The tracker had yet to move, had yet to make the softest sound, and that stillness, unnatural even for Vin, ate at his soul. "Depends," he rasped.

Buck swallowed and nodded. He didn't need to ask on what it depended; they were all hanging on the same edge. Still, for Chris's sake he forced a reassuring smile. "It's gonna be all right, you'll see," he soothed. "Vin's tough."

Chris turned his head slowly and fixed a diamond-hard stare on Wilmington. "Look at him again," he ordered in a low, hoarse voice. "Does he look tough to you?"

Buck did look, then sighed and shook his head, his broad shoulders slumping. "No," he whispered. At his best, Tanner wasn't a big man. He carried not a spare ounce of fat on his lean frame, with muscle and bone seeming to sit just beneath his flesh, yet there'd always been a sinewy strength to him that had nothing to do with size. Now, though, that was gone, bled out of him by wounds and burned away by fever, leaving him gaunt and hollowed and looking so frail that Buck feared a too-rough touch might simply snap his bones in half.

No, Vin didn't look tough at all.

Nathan didn't think so either, and it worried him no end. He reached out and laid thick fingers against Vin's hot throat, wincing as he felt the pulse there. Too weak, too fast. He dragged his hand away and stared down at the unconscious man. Lord, where to start? And would it even make a difference?

He wanted desperately to see the wounds under the makeshift bandages, but knew he'd have to wait until the fabric had been soaked loose. Last thing Vin needed now was to lose more blood. He sighed and handed the canteen back to Buck, then reached into his bag and drew out a few strips of bandages, handing them to Chris. He knew that nothing would budge the man from where he was and figured he might as well make use of the extra hands.

"Y'all start soakin' that bandanna and shirt loose," he instructed. "Go slow and be careful. I don' reckon he can afford ta lose much mo' blood." When the two nodded and set themselves to work, he leaned once more over Vin and began his examination.

Deciding just to start at the top and work his way down, he pressed his fingertips to Vin's face and skillfully palpated the various ugly bruises marring it, feeling carefully through swollen, discolored flesh for any sign of fractures. When none presented themselves, he heaved a sigh of what he knew would be short-lived relief.

Got lucky here, but there was still Tanner's chest ...

And that, as he'd expected, was where his, and Vin's, luck wore thin. Sliding his hands down to the tracker's ribcage, he started at the top of the vicious bruising there and worked across and down it, wincing when he felt the first give of bone. Then the second ...

Two ribs later, his luck ran out entirely when his fingers encountered the tell-tale softness of a break. Damn. He probed again to be sure, then found the same softness in the rib beneath. Goddamn. Two of 'em broken ...

And Vin chose that moment to rouse. The pressure of Nathan's fingers against the broken ribs drove waves of excruciating pain through his chest, the torment reaching him even through his deep stupor. He flinched and gave a faint, breathless cry, then tried to pull away from the hands causing him such agony.

"No ... don't," he gasped, rolling onto his side and curling into himself. "Please!"

Nathan reached for him. "Vin-"

But Chris pushed the healer's hand away and bent over his friend instead, slipping his left hand under Tanner's head and setting his right on the man's tight, shaking shoulder. "It's all right, partner," he soothed in a low voice. "You're safe now. You're safe, you hear me? But Nathan's gotta see ta your wounds."

Vin huddled miserably on the ground, racked by pain, seared by fever and awash in sick confusion. Yet even through all that, the quiet, familiar voice reached him, flowing like cool water through his hot, tired mind, and the touch of gentle hands upon him offered him a safety and a shelter he'd not known in far too long. He let himself float on that voice, surrendered himself to those hands, and gave a soft, unsteady sigh.

Chris.

"Yeah, pard, it's me," Chris assured him, swept by fierce waves of relief at that faint whispering of his name. "You gave us a helluva scare," he rasped as a shaky smile spread slowly across his face. "Wasn't sure you were gonna come back to us."

"S ... sorry," Vin breathed. "Didn't mean ... fer y'all ... t' go ... on ... the worry."

Chris nodded and squeezed his shoulder firmly. "I know. Wasn't your fault. It was all that bastard Carlyle's doin'."

Vin nodded faintly, then jerked violently, his eyes flying open, as Larabee's words registered. "Carlyle!" he gasped, clutching at Chris and trying to haul himself upright. "He ... wanted ... I cain't-"

"Ssh, hush, Vin, hush," Chris urged, gently pushing the panicked man back down against the ground before he could do himself more harm. "Carlyle's dead, remember? He can't hurt you anymore. You took care of that. You killed him, remember?"

Vin collapsed with an anguished groan as fresh pain stabbed deep into his body. He reached up and closed one hot, shaking hand weakly around Larabee's wrist, clinging to the man with his whole frail strength. "Dead?"

"Yeah, dead," Chris assured him. "You made sure of that. Cut him open with that damn Bowie of yours. Most harm he can do now is ta give the buzzards colic."

Vin thought about that a moment, then nodded. "I 'member now," he whispered. "He s ... he said ... he'd take me back ... in pieces ... if he had t'." He winced and groaned weakly, feeling the pain in every part of his body. "Reckon ... he come ... real close."

Chris swallowed hard and clenched his jaws against his own pain, frightened by the tracker's terrible fragility. But Vin was here, was hanging on, and that had to mean something. "Not close enough, though," he finally rasped. "He's the one feedin' the vultures. You'll be goin' home with us."

Vin forced his leaden eyes open and stared up at the man leaning above him, unable to see him clearly but taking comfort from his nearness nonetheless. "Weren't sure ... fer a while ... y'all'd find me," he breathed, unfocused and fever-glazed blue eyes fixed on the gunman's blurry face. "Reckon ... I shoulda known better."

"Yeah, you shoulda," Chris said softly. "'Cause we wouldn'ta stopped lookin' 'til we did."

"I know that now," Vin sighed, his eyes closing and a faint smile playing about his lips as he slipped back into unconsciousness. "'N it's a helluva thing."

+ + + + + + +

Nathan sat back on the ground and rubbed his hands over his face as he exhaled tiredly, his neck stiff and his shoulders aching. He felt like he'd been bent over Vin for hours, tending to the tracker's numerous wounds, and near every muscle in his body protested the strain.

Lord, he hated days like this ...

They'd finally managed to soak loose the bandages Vin had fashioned for himself, and he'd been appalled, and not a little frightened, by the ugly wounds beneath them. The "graze" in Tanner's head went near all the way to the bone, and the healer could only pray that no damage had been done to the man's skull or, worse, his brain. And the slash in his abdomen ran all the way under his ribs and around to his side, not deep enough for any damage to internal organs, but deep enough just the same. What really troubled Nathan was that, along with the head wound, it showed plainly the worrisome signs of several days of neglect. He'd cleaned them both out with liberal amounts of carbolic - and it had taken Chris, Buck and Josiah to hold Vin down during that ordeal - and stitched them carefully, applied poultices of yarrow leaves and comfrey and then bandaged them. He'd cleaned the dirt from the nasty rope burns at the tracker's wrists and slathered them with an aloe salve, then bandaged them as well.

And that had been only the beginning.

He sighed again and ran one big hand around to the back of his neck, rubbing the aching muscles there. Chris had banished the others with a single low-spoken word, then the two of them had stripped Vin of his boots, torn and filthy pants and ruined socks. And had found a blister of all things oozing pus and blood on the tracker's right heel. More yarrow and comfrey, another bandage.

These men were pure hell on his supplies.

And when they'd gotten Vin stripped and bathed as best they could, he'd sworn he'd heard a low growl rip from Larabee's throat. Besides the expected cuts and scrapes on the tracker's knees from his many falls, they'd discovered a near-perfect boot-shaped bruise marring his left thigh, still more evidence of Carlyle's cruelty. The man hadn't just been a bounty hunter, he'd been a savage, obviously taking delight in torturing a man he'd already known was marked for hanging.

Good thing they were too far away from the bastard's corpse for Larabee to ride back and vent some of his rage ...

On second thought, though, even if Carlyle had been just over that hill, Nathan doubted that Chris would've gone back. Not if it meant leaving Vin. The gunman had planted himself firmly at the tracker's side, and the healer doubted that anything short of an earthquake would move him. It was an amazing thing, really. Though he'd seen it before, he still marveled at the sight of the hard-as-nails, cold-as-ice gunfighter holding his injured friend's hand and speaking words of comfort to him in a low, soft voice, gently bathing his fevered flesh with a cool, wet cloth or carefully spooning water and medicinal brews into his mouth. More than once Vin had fought wildly in his confusion against Nathan's painful ministrations, and more than once it had been Chris and Chris alone who'd been able to soothe the frightened man into something approaching peaceful submission. In those moments, Nathan had figured he was getting a glance of how the former rancher had gentled wild horses.

Or, more likely, how the former father had comforted his sick child ...

He rubbed his hands over his face again, then dropped them into his lap and fixed his tired gaze on the two men before him, one stretched out on his bedroll, the other sitting at his side. Vin had drifted away again - man was gone more'n he was here, and Nathan just flat didn't like that - and Chris was once more sliding a wet cloth slowly over his face and throat. He watched them a few moments longer, then turned his head to look at the four men huddled around the fire a few yards away.

"Reckon I'd bes' go talk to 'em," he said at last, knowing Chris wasn't about to do it. "Likely they're eat up with worry an' questions."

Chris stilled his hand and looked up, fixing a tired gaze on the healer. For all their weariness, though, his eyes were clearer than they'd been since that first mad dash out of town, and his face had finally relaxed out of its hard and haunted set.

"What're you gonna tell 'em?" he asked quietly.

Nathan shrugged. "Same as I done tol' you. Taken separately, ain't none a' them wounds jes' real bad. 'Cept mebbe that head wound, an' that one I jes' don' know about. But put 'em all together, throw in that fever, the fact that he ain't had no kinda care, been wanderin' alone without food an' not near enough water ... Hell," he sighed, his broad shoulders drooping, "you tell me what I should tell 'em."

Chris studied the healer intently for long moments, taking in the man's worn and wearied appearance and the worry filling his dark eyes. Then he nodded once and a faint smile ghosted about his mouth. "Tell 'em Vin's in good hands," he urged. "Tell 'em his chances are a whole lot better now than they were this mornin'."

Warmth flooded Nathan's soul at that and a grateful smile tugged at his lips. Sometimes it scared him knowing just how much faith these men placed in his unschooled hands. Other times ...

Hell, other times it was all that kept him believing in himself.

"I'll do that," he said softly. "Thanks."

Chris arched a blond brow. "Wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."

"Yeah," Nathan breathed, "I know." He rose slowly to his feet and stood gazing down at Vin a moment, then turned and walked to the others.

When he had gone, Chris went back to bathing Vin. He'd managed to get nearly a cup of willow bark tea into the man, one spoonful at a time, before he'd lost consciousness again, and he desperately hoped that it and the cool water they'd been all but pouring over the tracker's body helped bring his fever down soon. Tanner had reserves of strength the rest of them couldn't even imagine, he knew that. But he also knew that those reserves had been utterly depleted by all that he'd endured over the past four days. Vin was holding on by a thread, by a very thin thread, and Chris knew it wouldn't take long at all for this fever to burn right through it.

But he'd be damned if he'd just sit idly by and watch that happen.

"You'd best get back here and start fightin', you hear me?" he asked in a low, rough voice, bending low over the unconscious tracker. "If you let that sonuvabitch Carlyle beat you, I'll follow you down ta hell and kick your scrawny ass myself!" He took Vin's hand and gripped it hard. "Listen to me, Tanner," he growled, leaning closer still to his friend, "I haven't spent two days chasin' you all over hell's back yard just ta lose you now, you got that? I don't like ridin' in the rain, I don't like sleepin' on the mud, and I sure as hell don't like worryin' about what the hell you've gotten yourself into this time. So if you die on me after makin' me do all that, I'll be pissed. Real pissed, you understand me?"

"Hell," came a breathless, near soundless whisper, "yer always ... pissed." Bruised eyelids lifted just enough to reveal two glassy slits of blue, and his hot fingers tightened ever so slightly about Larabee's. "'S jist ... part a' yer charm ... cowboy."

Despite the weakness of that voice and grip, Chris's heart lifted in his chest and a choked laugh escaped him. "Still a mouthy sonuvabitch, aren't ya?" he rasped. "And I coulda sworn I told you not ta call me 'cowboy.'"

"Prob'ly," Vin sighed. His eyes drifted closed, but he forced them open again. His body desperately craved rest, but he was afraid to heed its call, afraid that if he let go he'd start sinking again. Afraid that this time no one would be able to pull him back. He clung with what little strength he had to Chris's hand, determined to stay here. "Don't listen ... t' half the stuff ... you say," he slurred.

"Always figured as much," Chris said, worried by the tracker's struggle to stay awake. He, too, was afraid of Vin's weakness, afraid of his friend's tenuous grip on consciousness. On life. "And when ya do listen, ya just ignore it." He dipped the cloth he still held in the small pan of water nearby, wrung it out, then resumed bathing Tanner's battered face. "Can't imagine why I spent so much time chasin' after ya," he grumbled.

Vin smiled faintly, as comforted by his friend's gruff care as by the feel of the cool cloth against his too-hot flesh. He knew why Chris had come; it was the same reason he'd kept going when it would've been so much easier just to lay down and die.

Was what kept him hanging on right now ...

"Still ain't told me ... how ya found me," he breathed, more to keep himself awake than out of any true desire to know. "Ain't like ... you know shit ... about trackin'."

Chris snorted at that, but had to admit that it was true. He might be many things, but a tracker wasn't among them. "It was JD that did it," he explained, dragging the wet cloth down to Vin's throat. A smile tugged at his lips and he shook his head in wonderment. "It was the damnedest thing I've ever seen!" he marveled. "He was like a two-legged bloodhound, findin' and readin' tracks that the rest of us didn't even know were there. I don't know what you've been teachin' him, but it sure as hell took!"

Vin's eyes closed, and this time he didn't have the strength to open them. "Kid's real smart," he whispered, his voice as soft as the wind rustling through leaves. "Got good eyes ... quick mind." He swallowed weakly. "Be good ... if y' ever need ... another tracker."

Fear stabbed hard into Chris at that breathless tone, as Vin again seemed to drift away from him. Impulsively he gripped the tracker's hand hard, almost painfully, willing the man to stay where he was. "I don't want another tracker!" he snarled. "One I've got may be a Texas-sized pain in the ass who ain't got the sense just ta fall down and let us find him when he should, but I'm gettin' too damn old ta start breakin' in a new one. So you'd best not be gettin' any ideas about runnin'' out on me, Tanner, you hear me?"

"I h ... hear ya," he answered faintly. His eyes remained closed, but the shadow of a smile ghosted about his lips. "You ... pissed ... again?"

Chris nodded, his throat tight. "Usually am when I'm talkin' ta you," he rasped, feeling the tracker's weak hold on his hand failing.

Vin gave a breathless laugh. "Well," he breathed, drifting away again, "I reckon ... ever'thing's gonna be ... all right ... then."

Chris continued to hold Vin's hand tightly even after he'd lost consciousness and stared down into the tracker's slack face, ignoring the sting of tears in his own eyes. "God, I hope so," he whispered hoarsely. "But right now it ain't lookin' too good."

+ + + + + + +

Nathan joined the others at the fire and sat down with a tired sigh, eagerly accepting the cup of coffee Josiah pushed into his hands. "Thanks," he said quietly.

"Looks like you could use it." Josiah studied his friend closely, easily able to see the weariness and the worry etched into the man's dark face. "I take it Vin's not good," he guessed softly.

Nathan winced and bowed his head, staring into the cup cradled between his big hands. "No," he breathed reluctantly, wishing he had some other news for them. "Got him a ragin' fever, done lost a lotta blood, ain't had nearly enough water, God knows when he ate las', he's wore out ... No," he said heavily, "he ain't good at all."

"But he's gonna get better, right?" JD asked fearfully, wide hazel eyes fixed on the healer's face and searching it desperately for even the smallest sign of hope. "I mean, he's held on this long ..." He swallowed hard and looked from Nathan to Buck, who sat with his head bowed and his eyes closed, then to Ezra, who seemed fascinated by the buttons on his jacket sleeve, and finally to Josiah, who returned his gaze but with a terrible sorrow in his eyes. JD wrenched his gaze back to Nathan and shook his head slowly, his young face setting into stubborn lines. "No!" he said sharply, rising abruptly to his feet. "Vin ain't gonna die!" he insisted hotly. "Not after all he's already been through, not after everything he's already survived!"

"JD," Buck called gently, lifting his eyes to the young man, "son, sit down. Gettin' mad at us ain't gonna change anything."

"But-"

"Sit down," Buck said firmly, "and listen ta what Nathan's got ta say. He knows Vin's chances better'n any of us."

JD stood a moment longer, staring belligerently at Buck, then dropped back down, holding on to his anger as a shield against his fear. Vin couldn't die. Not now.

Nathan drank deeply from his coffee, grateful for its bitter strength, then lowered the cup and swept his gaze slowly over his friends, letting it linger the longest on JD. He understood the boy's feelings, even shared them. But refusing to admit the awful possibility wouldn't make it go away. "Hardest thing's gon' be that fever," he began quietly. "That'll wear a man out fast, an' Vin jes' ain't got that much left. We gotta get it down fo' him ta have even the smallest chance. So we gon' need all the water we can haul from that creek. Keep bathin' him, keep tryin' t' get him t' drink."

"All right," said Josiah, "we'll keep the canteens filled." He looked at Nathan. "You got enough willow bark?"

The healer sighed and shrugged. "Got some. Enough ta las' through tonight. Don't know 'bout t'morrow."

"That does bring up a question," Ezra spoke up quietly. "Clearly Vin is in no condition to be moved just now, so I dare say it is a safe bet that we will be remaining here at least until tomorrow, am I correct?"

Nathan looked at the gambler and nodded. "Yeah, we'll be stayin'. If we moved him now, it'd kill him fo' sure. His body jes' cain't take no more strain right now."

"I thought as much," Ezra said. "And even should his condition improve enough for us to consider moving him tomorrow, it seems obvious that, barring a miracle from on high, he still will not be able to ride. Yes?"

Nathan thought a moment, then grimaced. "Yeah," he breathed. "He's got two broken ribs and a head wound. Even if ever'thing else healed overnight, I still wouldn't want him on a horse. Ribs could punch through a lung, an' I still ain't sure what kinda damage that bullet did t' his head."

"Probably just as well," JD put in. When the others looked at him, he shrugged. "Peso ain't ready ta be ridden just yet. Back where Vin and Carlyle fought, Carlyle musta gotten a shot off. Peso's got a pretty deep graze on his shoulder. It's not real serious, but it's already started ta fester some. I cleaned it, put some salve on it, but he still don't need to be carryin' any weight."

"All right," Buck sighed tiredly, "we got a man who can't ride and a horse that can't be rode. Anybody got anything else they'd like t' add?"

"Perhaps a suggestion?" Ezra asked. All eyes turned immediately to him and he sat up straighter, pushing aside his own fatigue and anxiety to consider the options available to them. "When we left town, we brought just enough to sustain us for a very few days, and certainly most of that has been depleted. We need staples, we need cookware and utensils. Nathan, certainly, needs a far more extensive store of medicinal supplies than he has. And we need a safe conveyance for Vin."

"You got somethin' in mind, Ezra?" Josiah asked with a slight smile, knowing by the twitch of the gambler's lips that he did.

"I always have somethin' in mind, Josiah," he quipped in return. "This time, it even happens to pertain to our current situation," he added with a wink. "I was thinkin' that perhaps one of us should continue on to town and procure a wagon for Vin. Nathan," he looked at the healer, "you could write out a list of the items you will need from the clinic, and we could also work out a list of other supplies." He glanced up at the sky. "Granted, even if I left immediately, the last two or three hours of the journey would be made in darkness, but I am familiar enough with the way, I believe, to make it without incident. Tomorrow, I could simply load up the wagon and return here."

"You?" Nathan asked sharply, lifting two brows in surprise.

Ezra gave a slight grimace and waved one elegant hand. "I am, I believe, the one who would be missed least," he admitted. "Vin's condition makes you indispensable, Nathan, and we all know that Chris is not about to leave him. JD has already provided service above and beyond the call of duty and has earned a rest. Buck, no doubt, will wish to remain to look after Chris, who certainly will not be looking after himself, and Josiah," he smiled at the preacher, "well, someone has to cook." His smile faded and he gave a self-deprecating shrug. "There is little I can contribute here, but there is much I can do in town."

"So," Nathan frowned and stared at the Southerner, "lemme get this straight. You," he leaned forward and leveled a thick index finger at Standish, "are volunteerin' ta get on yo' horse an' ride in the dark back t' town, then turn right around t'morrow an' drive a wagon back out here by yo'self? Is that right?"

Ezra thought about it, considering the plan carefully, then spread his hands and heaved a dramatic shrug. "I cannot explain it myself, Mr. Jackson," he said mournfully. "But, yes, I believe that is precisely what I'm suggestin'."

"You're volunteerin'," Buck said in outright disbelief. "Why, Ezra, that's ... that's ... Hell, it's downright decent of ya, pard!"

Ezra flinched and grimaced deeply at that word and pressed a hand to his breast as if he'd been wounded. "Please, Buck," he protested in a deeply pained tone, "have some respect for my delicate sensibilities. It is difficult enough to conceive of myself," he winced and shuddered, "volunteerin for such a chore without havin' it described in such appallin' terms." Amused and knowing chuckles met his words and Nathan reached out to slap him fondly on the leg. Ezra scowled at the healer, then swept a highly affronted gaze over the rest of his grinning comrades. "You gentlemen are exerting a most unhealthy influence upon me," he accused hotly, "and I deeply resent it!"

+ + + + + + +

Chris puffed thoughtfully on his cheroot and listened in silence as Buck and Ezra told him of the gambler's plan. Nathan was already composing a list of items he'd need from the clinic, and Josiah was at work on a similar one for other supplies. JD had gone back to the horses, seeking an outlet for his worry in tending them. Chris understood that need to be doing something, felt it himself. And, as he studied Ezra through the haze of smoke from his cheroot, he suspected that he wasn't the only one.

"Gonna be dark before you get there," he said softly around the cigar stuck between his teeth. "You sure you wanta do this?"

Ezra shrugged. "It seems the only logical course," he answered simply. "If I wait until morning, then I will not return until tomorrow evening at the earliest. And while our needs could probably wait until then, Nathan's, and Vin's, certainly could not."

Chris couldn't argue that point. Vin's wounds were already taxing Nathan's limited store of supplies, and he wasn't foolish enough to believe that the tracker would make a miraculous improvement overnight. Still, for Ezra to volunteer for such a task ...

He thought a moment longer, then reached up and removed the cheroot from his mouth, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. "It's a long ride," he pointed out. "Not gonna be much moon, if any, through all the cloud cover."

Ezra met that unwavering green gaze with a steady one of his own, wondering if Larabee were subtly questioning his endurance. Or his trustworthiness. "I have had longer," he said stiffly, lifting his chin. "And under far worse conditions than this." He arched a brow and added pointedly, "You seemed to have no concerns when you dragged me out into the rain yesterday for a wild chase across the territory."

It was Chris's turn to shrug. "Figured you'd rather ride in the rain than get shot for sayin' no," he countered, returning the cheroot to his mouth. "That's a bit different than volunteerin'." Cool green eyes narrowed slightly as Larabee regarded Standish appraisingly. "I'da figured you'd be ready for a rest right about now. We're all worn pretty thin."

The familiar grin curved about the gambler's mouth. "Oh, I assure you," he drawled smoothly, "I have every intention of resting. Upon my feather bed with my down pillows." He lifted a single chestnut brow. "I have had my fill of sleeping upon the cold, damp ground while exposed to the elements and every sort of desert creature. I simply wish to return to a more civilized environment, and this provides me with the perfect opportunity to do so."

"I see," Chris said with a slight nod. "Runnin' this errand of mercy's just a means to an end, then."

"Of course," Ezra admitted easily. "I always have an ulterior motive."

Chris studied him yet another moment, then reached up again to remove the cheroot and blew out a perfect ring of smoke. "Bullshit," he said laconically.

Ezra blinked, startled by that response, then frowned. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said 'bullshit.'" Chris smiled thinly. "Should be a word you're real familiar with."

"I fail to see-"

"A man doesn't volunteer ta ride all afternoon and into the night just to avoid sleepin' outside," Chris interrupted. "That'd just be stupid. And you're a lotta things, Ezra, but you've never been stupid." He nodded once. "You're doin' this for Vin. And for us."

Ezra gave a strangled huff as horror creased his face. "Mr. Larabee, you have completely misinterpreted my intentions!" he insisted stubbornly. "My only concern at this point-"

"See?" Chris interrupted again. "Bullshit. Face it, Standish, you're a fraud."

Ezra blinked, then frowned in confusion, certain he should be insulted yet suspecting that he had somehow been complimented. Damn these men and their strange notions of friendship, loyalty and honor, anyway. "Well, of course I am a fraud!" he answered sharply. "You've met my mother! It is in my nature, bred into my bones, as it were-"

"I don't mean griftin'," Chris said, thoroughly enjoying the sight of the smooth-as-silk Southerner trying to squirm his way out of admitting that he wanted to help a friend. "I mean this. Pretendin' you're doin' this for your own sake."

Ezra stiffened where he sat and stared coldly at the smirking gunman. "Make no mistake, sir, my own sake is very precious to me," he declared primly. "I am not a frontier ruffian like the rest of you, and I do not enjoy sleepin' out in the wilds. I must have my creature comforts." He fidgeted unconsciously with the buttons at one jacket sleeve. "It is merely by coincidence that, in this instance, I can serve not only my own personal interests, but those of Mr. Tanner and Mr. Jackson-"

"You're gonna make me say it again, aren't ya?" Chris sighed, regarding the gambler with a weary patience. "Bullshit."

"Really, Mr. Larabee," Ezra muttered, "we must work on enlargin' your vocabulary."

Chris grinned at the man's sullen manner, knowing he'd hit a nerve. "All right, you can go. But," he added, the grin fading, "I don't want you goin' alone."

Ezra arched a brow. "Worried I won't come back?" he asked defensively.

Chris shook his head. "Worried you won't make it there." When Standish frowned in confusion, he sighed and tossed his cheroot into the fire. "We almost lost Vin to a bounty hunter," he explained quietly. "Hell," he winced and dropped his gaze, "we might lose him still." He swallowed hard and pushed that fear away with an effort, then returned his gaze to Ezra. "Could be I'm jumpin' at shadows," he admitted, "but right now I just ... I don't like the idea of any of us ridin' alone. Bounty hunters ain't the only threat out here, and a single rider is an easy mark. 'Specially when he's tired. Take Josiah. You two can keep each other awake, keep each other sharp. And don't argue," he ordered, his voice hardening. "Just this once do as I say without me havin' to threaten ya."

Ezra felt strangely comforted by that surly admission of concern. "You're worried-"

"I'm not worried!" Chris snapped. "I just ... don't like it. Besides," he added, seizing abruptly upon even the flimsiest justification, "the two of you'll be able to get everything rounded up and loaded that much faster. And the quicker you get that done, the quicker you can get back here with Nathan's supplies. Like you said, it's logical."

A grin spread slowly over Ezra's face and his jade eyes shone with a wicked light. "Bullshit," he said softly, delighted at having caught the gunman in his own trap. "Which one of us is the fraud now?"

+ + + + + + +

The hands came from every direction, digging viciously into his flesh or yanking savagely at his hair, dealing fierce, brutal blows that sent pain hurtling through every part of his body and left him choking on his own blood. And with the blows came the voice, the harsh, crowing voice that poured out a constant stream of vile threats, that taunted him with cruel promises of the fate that awaited him.

Oh, God, God, he didn't wanta hang!

He tried to fight, but was hampered by his bound wrists and the betrayal of his own body. He was weak, too weak, his wounds draining him of strength. Time and again he twisted away, time and again he fell, time and again he was jerked upright to endure more abuse at Carlyle's hands. Cries tore from him, but Carlyle only laughed and continued his punishment. Then he was stumbling, falling, pitching into the bastard and sending them both tumbling to the ground. A flailing fist connected agonizingly with the wound in his head, and a scream tore from him. he could hear himself sobbing, could feel the sickness convulsing him ...

And somewhere between his sobs and sickness, darkness rose up and took him, unconsciousness shedding its mercy upon him. But that mercy was shredded and another howl ripped from him when a boot drove brutally into his left thigh. The bounty hunter ground his foot into him, threatening to crush nerves and bone, and out of desperation to stop the pain he rolled instinctively toward the man and lashed up with his right leg, kicking the bastard off him. But, once freed, he could do no more than writhe on the ground while black waves of agony crashed through him. Then the hands again grabbed him, gripped him, the voice again mocked and threatened him-

"No!" he screamed, jerking himself upright in an effort to escape. Pain flooded him and hard hands held him, but he fought against them with a wild strength given him by his fear. "Let go a' me! Goddamn it, I won't letcha take me-"

"Vin!" Chris tried to hold the tracker without hurting him, but was startled by the unexpected force of his struggles. Between his wounds and his fever, he shouldn't have had the strength to bat away a fly. Instead, he was fighting like an enraged cougar, howling curses and threats in every language he knew and forcing Larabee to hold him all the tighter. And that only enraged him further.

"Jesus!"

"Vin!"

Roused by the tracker's yells, Buck and Nathan were out of their blankets in an instant and rushing to Larabee's aid. But, his arms now wound about Tanner like steel bands and his whole strength dedicated to keeping Vin from injuring himself further, he shot a freezing glare at the approaching men.

"Don't!" he ordered, stopping them with that single word. "He don't need anybody else grabbin' him!"

"Chris-"

"Don't!" Larabee shouted again. Right now, trying to subdue Vin claimed his whole attention; he didn't have any to waste on explaining himself to Buck and Nathan. "Just back off!"

Buck swallowed hard, but nodded. It tore at him to hear Vin's cries, to see his struggles, to know that his friend was so tortured and had absolutely no idea that he was safe. Then he almost laughed at that thought. Safe. Hell, how safe would Vin ever really be while that damned bounty hung like the shadow of death over his head? He couldn't imagine how Tanner had lived with that shadow for so long, couldn't imagine why he wasn't crazy or why he didn't just gun down every stranger he saw. Couldn't imagine why Vin stayed with them in town instead of running off into the highest, loneliest hills he could find and living like one of those hermits Josiah always talked about. Then he looked again at Vin and saw not just him but the man so determinedly trying to wrestle him back into sanity, the man refusing to let him suffer alone, and gave a faint smile.

Hell, maybe he could imagine why after all.

Nathan didn't want to leave, but knew he had to. Vin was weakening, but was still struggling and still had no idea where he was. Jackson had tended him often enough to know just how dangerous to himself and others the tracker could be when caught in a delirious panic. From that same experience, though, he knew that if anyone could reach him through that panic, it was the man now trying to calm him. He watched a moment longer, his healer's soul aching to help the wounded man. But in the end, he forced himself to turn and walk away, knowing that Vin already had the healer he most needed.

"Buck?" JD called fearfully as the two men returned. He was sitting on his blankets, his legs crossed and his hands clasped tightly together. He, too, had been awakened by Vin's cries and had jumped to his feet as well. But instinct had kept him from going forward, some vague awareness that too many bodies crowding in upon Vin would only make matters worse. So he'd sat down again and forced himself to wait, his insides churning the whole time. "He all right?"

"Not yet," Buck answered on a long sigh as he dropped down upon his bed. He glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at JD and forced a faint smile. "But I reckon he will be soon enough if Chris has anything ta say about it."

JD bowed his head and stared dejectedly at his hands. "I shoulda got us to him sooner," he said softly. "He shouldn'ta had to go for so long without help."

In the darkness, Buck could barely make out the boy's face, but he didn't need to see it to know what guilt would be written upon it. He sat up again and leaned forward, slapping JD's knee with a big hand. "You did everything you could, son," he said gently. "Hell, you did more'n the rest of us put together! No, Vin shouldn'ta had ta go so long without help. But, hell, he shouldn'ta needed that help at all! Shouldn'ta been grabbed by that bastard Carlyle, shouldn't have that price on his head, shouldn't have ta spend every night sleepin' with one eye open! But that's how things are, JD. You can drive yourself crazy thinkin' about what shouldn't be. Or," he leaned closer still and set a hand on the boy's bowed shoulder, "you can be like Vin and just take things for what they are, and hope ta God there's somebody around the next corner who can make 'em just a little better."

JD raised his head at that and stared at Buck, barely able to make out his features yet grateful for his presence all the same. "You think that's what we do for Vin?"

Buck jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "You look over there at those two men by the fire," he instructed. "Then think about what Ezra and Josiah are doin' right now. Think about what we've all been doin' for the past two days. Hell, yeah, son," he breathed with true conviction. "I think that's exactly what we do for Vin. What we all do for each other."

JD smiled then, his teeth a flash of white in the darkness. Saying nothing, he lay back down and stared up at the sky, his smile growing wider still.

Above him, stars were finally peeking through the parting clouds.

+ + + + + + +

"Ssh, easy, Vin, easy," Chris soothed, tightening his hold on the struggling man while trying not to hurt him. But, God, where wasn't Tanner hurt? "It's all right, partner, it's just a dream. Carlyle can't hurt you anymore, I promise."

"I ain't goin' back!" he snarled, still fighting against the arms that bound him though he could feel his strength failing. Fear and frustration welled up in him and erupted in a mournful cry. "No, damn it, no!"

"It's all right, Vin!" Chris assured him. "I don't wanta hurt ya, you know that. But you gotta stop fightin'. Just settle down and listen to me. Listen to me, Vin. You know my voice, you know who I am. You know I'd never hurt ya."

As his strength ebbed and his struggles grew less frantic, that voice finally began to penetrate the thick veil of confusion shrouding his tired mind. True, the arms holding him were strong, but they weren't hurting him. No more fists landed upon him, no more hands yanked at his hair, no more foul curses or cruel taunts hounded him. The only words he heard were low and soothing, lapping like cool water against his aching head, and somehow, God, somehow the arms holding him seemed more like a haven than a prison. He ceased fighting then, gave in to his hurting body's demands for rest and simply let himself slump against the warm and solid black wall around him.

"Chris," he whispered breathlessly.

Larabee clenched his jaws and swallowed hard against the fierce wave of relief sweeping through him. "Yeah, Vin, it's me," he rasped, loosening his hold upon the injured man but not releasing him. "You back with me?"

"Ain't sure," Vin breathed, his words slurring together. "Head's all muddled. Cain't ... cain't think clear. Hurts too much."

"Think you'd feel better if you were layin' down?" Chris asked.

"Don't wanta ... fall."

"I won't letcha fall, pard, I promise," Chris vowed softly.

Vin said nothing, merely gave a faint nod, sagging helplessly in his friend's arms. Still mindful of Tanner's many injuries, Chris shifted his hold carefully and lowered him gently back onto his blankets. True to his word, he never came near letting Tanner fall.

"Stay," Vin whispered, reaching weakly for Larabee, needing the man's warmth and solidness to anchor him here.

Sensing that need, Chris caught Tanner's seeking hand and gripped it securely between his two. "I ain't goin' anywhere."

Vin swallowed, then licked his dry, torn lips. "Carlyle?" he whispered shakily, still trapped in his fear of the man.

Chris squeezed Tanner's hand firmly. "He's dead," he said slowly, distinctly, wanting to be certain that Tanner understood him. "You killed him. He's rottin' in hell where he belongs." He wondered briefly how many times he'd have to repeat this, but knew he'd say the words as often as Vin needed to hear them. "He can't hurt you anymore."

"He h ... had me," Vin breathed, clinging to Chris with a frail and desperate strength. "Takin' me back ... Texas. Said ... he's gonna watch 'em ... hang me."

Chris felt the clench of Vin's fingers about his at those last words and realized then just how deeply that fear preyed upon his friend. Carlyle had been a bastard and had gotten what he deserved. If there was any justice in this world, Vin would get what he deserved as well.

"Nobody's gonna hang you while I'm around," he said in a low, firm voice, leaning close to make certain that Tanner heard him. "I told you once, I'll tell you again. I ain't gonna let that happen."

Vin turned his head and forced open his eyes, staring up at the man hovering just above him. He couldn't clearly make out Larabee's features, could see little more than a vague, shapeless blur, but that was enough. He didn't have to see Chris to know he was there. He could hear him, could feel him, and that was all he needed.

"Carlyle's dead," he whispered, not asking, but telling with a dawning certainty.

"Yep."

"I k ... I killed him."

"You sure as hell did," Chris said on a chuckle. "You and that damn knife of yours."

Vin frowned slightly and licked his lips, thinking. "Gutted him," he said slowly.

"Yep."

He remembered then, and gave a small nod of satisfaction. "Good. Had ... had it comin'." He swallowed. "Bastard ... shot ... m' horse."

Chris bit back any comments on that particular horse's nature and his frequent need for shooting, doubting that Vin would appreciate them just now. "You thirsty?" he asked instead. "Nathan's watchin', and if I don't pour somethin' down ya soon he's gonna come out of his skin."

Vin licked his lips again. "Could use some water," he allowed.

Chris loosed one hand from Vin's and reached for the cup sitting nearby. Then, freeing his other hand, he slipped it beneath the tracker's bandaged head and lifted gently, setting the cup at his friend's mouth. "Slowly and in small sips," he said. "You get sick and Nathan'll carve me outta my skin."

Vin sipped gratefully at the water, then made a small sound of protest when the cup was removed. "More-"

"Not yet," Chris said softly, gently lowering Tanner's head back to the blankets. "We're gonna see how that sits before we try any more."

"Tastes good," Vin sighed.

"Yeah, well," Chris chuckled, "there's some tea comin' next that'll take care of that."

"Hell," Vin groaned, "ain't I suffered enough?"

"Sorry, pard," Chris consoled, laying a hand on Tanner's shoulder and squeezing lightly, "Nathan's got two days of frettin' built up inside. You're in for a long, rough ride."

Vin stared up at the man he could barely see and mustered a weak scowl for the expression he just knew Larabee would be wearing. "Ain't gotta ... look ... s' smug," he slurred.

Chris slipped his hand beneath Vin's head again and lifted, once more setting the cup to his lips. "That's what you get for puttin' us through all this worry," he chided as Tanner sipped. "Dragged Ezra out into the rain, kept Buck away from Blossom, Josiah's damn near worn a hole in his prayer book, Nathan ain't stopped countin' bandages since we left, JD's spent two days crawlin' around in the mud lookin' for tracks, and me ..." He winced and fell silent, his own fears still too raw for him to put them into words.

"Yeah?" Vin whispered as the gunman's words trailed off.

Chris looked down at his friend, saw the damage inflicted upon him and felt his soul clench at just how close a thing it had been. He set the cup aside, then balled his hand into a fist to conceal its shaking and gently lowered Vin back onto his blankets. "Me?" he rasped, his voice rough and thick. "Hell, I was just worried about that bastard gettin' my five hundred dollars."

Vin let his eyes slide closed and smiled faintly, hearing clearly the message behind those words. "'S all right, cowboy," he breathed. "I'm still here. Ain't goin' ... nowhere ... yet."

"You'd better not," Chris growled as he leaned back against his saddle and prepared to sit vigil over his friend as he slept. "I still ain't figured out just how I'm gonna spend that money."

+ + + + + + +

He continued to drift in and out, too weak to brave for long the pain that greeted him with each awakening, too tired to keep himself from slipping back into the world of shadows and numbness when his body craved relief from its suffering. Yet no matter how long or how far he drifted, some part of him knew that he was never alone, that there was always someone, and usually several someones, sitting close by him, waiting for him to return, soothing his pain while he lingered and helping to ease his passage when he left.

And making sure that he never drifted too far or stayed too long away.

Sometimes he could hear them, their words indistinct but their voices a low, soft hum that seemed to cushion him against the pain, that dulled its edges and gave his mind a place to retreat when the hurt became too much. Mostly, though, he could feel them, their hands carefully tending his wounds and gently bathing his too-hot flesh with blessedly cool water. Strange that hands so accustomed to gun and knife could be so gentle. Strange that men so used to and good at killing could show him such tenderness. Strange that he, who'd learned early in his life to shun another's touch because of the pain it could cause, should now rest so comfortably in the hard, callused hands of gunmen and brawlers, instinctively seeking release from pain in them. And strange that with these men, none of that really seemed so strange at all.

So he just let himself drift, knowing it was all right to do so, knowing it was safe to do so, knowing with everything that was in him that no more harm could come to him now. Not with such constant, fierce and gentle guardians at his side, watching his back. Not with those gunmen's deadly hands tending him with all the softness a mother would show her baby. As bad off as he was right now, he was still infinitely better with these men than he'd ever be without them.

And for a man who'd had only himself to depend on for so long, that was a helluva thing to know.

+ + + + + + +

"What the hell did you boys do?" Chris barked in sharp surprise as he watched Josiah peel the cotton duck tarp off the top of the wagon to reveal the stash of goods in the bed. "Buy out Miz Potter's store?"

Ezra jumped down from the driver's seat with a jaunty smile, his gold-capped incisor winking in the afternoon sunlight. "Rather impressive, isn't it?" he asked, enjoying tremendously the stunned look on the gunman's normally impassive face. "And mostly charitable donations, too, so the outlay of money was actually quite small."

Chris turned his gaze upon the grinning gambler, and the familiar glare quickly took shape. "Tell me you didn't con or cheat anybody out of any of this, Ezra!" he commanded in a low, hard voice.

Standish heaved a martyred sigh and rolled his eyes, then held up his right hand. In a deeply aggrieved voice he solemnly intoned, "I swear upon the Bible Mr. Sanchez surely has somewhere in his possession that no unsavory means were employed to procure any of these goods. Indeed, I was so completely forthright and honorable in my dealings that I fear I may never recover from the strain."

Buck laughed aloud and slapped the Southerner soundly on the back, sending the smaller man stumbling forward a step. "Hell, Ezra," he boomed, "we just might make an honest man of you yet!"

Standish shuddered heavily and blanched as he righted himself. "God forbid!" he gasped in horror, laying a hand over his heart. "Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I must go sit down. I fear that a morning of moral rectitude and menial labor is wreaking havoc with my delicate system!"

"Go sit down and have some coffee," Chris said. Then, reaching into the wagon and withdrawing a bag of coffee, he grinned and tossed it to Standish. "And as long as you're over there, feel free to make some more."

Ezra caught the bag and scowled at the gunman. "And you dare question my motives!" he groused.

"Yeah, well, I'm a natural-born skeptic," Chris deadpanned. "Comes in handy with you."

"You wound me, sir!"

Chris lifted a golden brow. "It's a thought," he cracked. "Especially since I ain't had nearly enough coffee today."

"Your snarl is my command," Ezra retorted, giving an exaggerated bow. Straightening, he lifted his chin, fixed a withering stare on Larabee, then turned sharply on his heel and swept away from them with a loud huff.

"Y' just got a natural way with people, don'tcha, pard?" Buck asked on a chuckle.

Larabee snorted. "Hell, Buck, Ezra ain't 'people.' He's Ezra." He turned back to the wagon and stared inside. "What all did you boys bring, anyway?"

Josiah leaned on one slatboard side and gave Larabee a toothy grin. "Little bit of everything," he answered. "That big wooden box there just behind the seat is Nathan's supplies. We got everything on his list, and Miz Potter sent a few more things he'd ordered last time he was in. That dear lady also refused to charge us for the coffee, flour and beans." He tilted his head to one side and regarded Larabee steadily. "Ezra pressed her, Chris," he said quietly, "tried every way he knew to get his money into Miz Potter's hands, but she just wouldn't take it. And Inez sent along three bottles of whiskey, a basket of sweetbread and some of her tamales. She wouldn't take our money, either. Said the only payment she wanted was to see us bring Vin home again where he belongs."

Josiah's words sent a wave of warmth through Chris. Sometimes he forgot that for every Carlyle out there, bastards who looked at Vin and saw only a bounty, there were also those like Mrs. Potter and Inez, Mary Travis and Nettie Wells, people who saw past the five-hundred-dollar price on his head to Tanner's true worth. He also knew that those four women weren't the only ones, could make a pretty fair list of folks who respected and liked the quiet tracker and who had gone out of their way more than once to help him.

"Vin'll be real grateful when he hears," he said softly. "Shocked as hell, but grateful. I don't think he's got any idea how much he means to folks around here."

"How is he?" Josiah asked quietly, finally giving voice to the question that had haunted him since he'd ridden out with Ezra yesterday. Through all the long ride back from town, they had spoken little of the tracker, but their shared worry for the man had hung heavily over them the entire way.

Chris sighed and shrugged, then instinctively turned back to look at where Vin lay with Nathan sitting beside him. The healer had applied fresh poultices to his wounds and rebandaged them, was now rubbing liniment into the worst of the bruises from Carlyle's beatings. Swallowing hard, Larabee turned back to Josiah and shook his head slowly.

"Ain't much better," he said in a low voice, his worry all too evident. "Damn fever won't break, and he can't seem to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time. That damn knife wound's still lookin' so bad that Nathan's thinkin' about takin' out the stitches and drawin' out the poison, then leavin' it open to drain. We'll be stayin' here again tonight."

Josiah nodded. "Figured as much. I told Mary what happened, she was workin' on roundin' up some men ta watch over things while we're gone." He winked. "When I left the saloon, Inez was cleanin' her shotgun."

Chris chuckled quietly, knowing the feisty barmaid was more than handy with that weapon. "I guess we don't have ta worry about any trouble there."

"Uh," Buck stepped forward and looked hopefully at Sanchez, "I don't suppose she gave you any kind'a message fer me, did she?"

Josiah turned and nodded thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact, brother," he answered solemnly, "she did. She told me ta be sure and tell you," he stepped closer to Buck and said with mock confidentiality, "that you still owe her for last month's bar tab." He nodded firmly and patted Buck's shoulder warmly.

And Chris laughed aloud at the crestfallen look on his old friend's handsome face.

FOUR

Supper was a simple affair of Inez's tamales, Josiah's beans, and coffee laced with whiskey. Six men sprawled comfortably around the fire while their seventh lay close by in a shelter constructed of the wagon tarp and tree branches, sunk deep into a laudanum-induced sleep. Conversation ebbed and flowed naturally between them, stories were told, jokes shared, and good-natured barbs flew like arrows. For the first time in too many days they were all together, the seven whole again even if one of its members was not, and, as always, these men found a renewed strength in closing their circle once more.

Even Chris felt the strange power of that circle despite the worry for Vin that gnawed at him. He was stretched out now on the blankets he'd positioned between the ailing tracker and the other five and leaning back against his saddle, his meal finished and a fresh cup of coffee liberally dosed with whiskey cradled between his hands. And for the first time in three days, he was truly relaxed.

Not that matters had improved through the day. Vin was only marginally better, if any at all, still unconscious more than he was awake, still weaker than a newborn foal, still racked by fever and plagued by pain. But he was alive, he was here and he was fighting, and Larabee had only to turn his head the merest fraction of an inch to watch the slight rise and fall of his chest or the occasional movement of his head to know that they were still seven.

And had to turn his head only the merest fraction of an inch in the other direction to see the rest of his men. He knew it was ridiculous, knew it was likely an unforgivable sign of weakness on his part, but he'd spent the better part of this afternoon and evening repeatedly counting heads, routinely seeking out and making note of each man's location, mentally gathering his flock like some over-anxious sheepdog. He chided and cursed himself for it, but, goddamn it, he couldn't help it.

And would gladly have shot the first man who made mention of it.

Not that any of them would; they were all too busy doing the same thing themselves. He'd caught each of them at one time or another in a moment of "sheep-herding," just as he knew they'd each caught him. It would've been funny if it weren't so mortifying. They were all - with the possible exception of JD - supposed to be hardened gunmen, habitual loners, men who'd been on their own longer than they cared to remember and survived more on their own than they cared to recall. Yet every time one of them so much as stood up and walked away to check on Vin, check on the horses or answer the call of nature, five other heads swiveled, five other pairs of eyes followed, and at least one pair of eyes kept steady track of the absent man until he returned.

Hell, it was just about the saddest damn thing Larabee had ever seen. And he was fully determined to stop doing it.

Eventually.

Forcing himself to stop staring at JD, who'd excused himself to go tend Peso's wounded shoulder one last time before darkness fell, Chris tried to shift his gaze to the campfire, but found it straying toward Vin instead. This was getting on his nerves, too. Tanner had been sleeping peacefully under the laudanum for almost half an hour, hadn't wakened in a panic from one of the fever-dreams since just after Ezra and Josiah had returned, and, when he was awake, now remembered without prompting that Carlyle was dead and that he was safe. He could take a whole cup of water now without throwing it back up and had even managed to keep down a few bites of tortilla softened in some pot-liquor from the beans.

It wasn't a staggering improvement, but it was enough to wipe the look of grim desperation from Nathan's eyes and replace it with something akin to hope. Jackson was still fretting, but he was no longer frantic. And that should've been enough to reassure Larabee that he no longer had to hover at his injured friend's side like a second shadow.

But just looking over at him now and again ... okay, maybe every few minutes ... wasn't really hovering. Was it?

Buck smiled into his coffee cup as he watched Chris fight an almost physical battle with himself not to get up and go check on Vin. As strange as it sounded even to himself, he was glad to see his old friend so worried about someone. After losing his family, Chris had been determined to cut himself off from all humanity, including his own, had tried to protect himself from further hurt by walling off his heart from all feeling. And that had worked fine until a quiet young man with a cocky grin and absolutely no fear of the glowering gunman had somehow slipped past those walls and dragged Chris Larabee back into the world of the living. For the life of him, Buck would never understand the friendship between those two, but that was fine with him. He could see its healing power in the face of the man fidgeting across the fire from him, and that was more than enough.

He only barely choked back a laugh when he saw Chris lose the fight, get up with a muttered curse and stalk to where Vin slept, then drop with an irritated huff to the ground at the injured man's side to resume his vigil. Grinning like an idiot, Buck Wilmington finished his coffee, then lay back against his saddle with a contented sigh and folded his arms loosely over his broad chest.

It was a helluva thing what havin' friends could do to and for a man.

+ + + + + + +

Vin groaned thickly and arched his back as Nathan probed the knife wound in his side. White-hot agony seared through him at the healer's touch and he tried to twist away, but felt his shoulders and thighs gripped and held down firmly. Opening his eyes, he stared up to see Chris leaning over him from behind his head, then glanced down to find Ezra kneeling between his legs.

"Forgive my familiarity, Mr. Tanner," the gambler drawled, trying to distract his friend from his pain, "but I fear I was unlucky enough to be within Mr. Larabee's grasp when Mr. Jackson called for 'volunteers.' I assure you, this in no way implies any unsavory feelings for you on my part, but merely a desire to keep my arm from being ripped from my body."

Nathan pressed into the wound and Vin cried out harshly and bucked, but was again stilled by his friends. Tears stung his eyes and cries beat against his throat for release as the healer's hands tortured him, but he somehow fought back both, clenching his jaws hard and balling his hands into fists at his side.

"Really," Ezra continued, pitching his voice to its smoothest, most honeyed tone, "one would assume that a man of our esteemed leader's years and obvious education would understand the difference between voluntary service and conscription. Of course, one would also think that by now I would know better than to place myself within his reach. A most lamentable lapse of attention on my part that I am determined never to repeat."

Vin groaned again and closed his eyes, but found himself listening to Standish, not so much to the man's words as to his voice. That voice rippled and flowed about him in a supple, silver stream, rich and warm and lyrical, weaving a barrier of sound between him and his pain. He fixed on that voice, focused on it and clung to it, let it wash over him and through him and prayed it would carry him away.

"... attention is all," Ezra went on blithely, never once allowing the strain of holding Vin still to sound in his voice. "Surely you, in your twin vocations as tracker and marksman, would agree? Attention both to detail and to the larger picture, attention to one's surroundings and to the placement of others within those surroundings. And that, I fear, is where I failed and why I now find myself here ..."

Chris didn't think he'd ever been more grateful for the Southerner's natural verbosity than he was at that moment. He could almost feel Ezra's silken voice wrapping itself around Vin and drawing him away from his pain, and was deeply thankful that the man had been close enough to grab when Nathan had called for help.

"All right, Vin," Nathan breathed as he finally withdrew his hands, "I'm done." He eyed the tracker worriedly a moment longer, then turned away to wash his hands. The knife wound had looked uglier than ever this morning, red and angry and swollen, leaving him no choice but to take out the stitches and try to drain the poison from it. He'd cleaned it thoroughly again, packed it and bandaged it, but would not stitch it again until it looked considerably better. Which he hoped but didn't entirely believe would be soon. "Chris," he dried his hands and turned back to his patient, taking the tracker's wrist between his fingers to gauge his pulse, "pour some water in that cup, let's get some mo' laud'num in him."

Ezra watched Chris reach for the cup and winced to see the man's hand shaking. He didn't say anything about it though, couldn't; not when he had to clasp his own together to conceal their trembling. He told himself such unsteadiness was only a natural reaction to the exertion of trying to restrain the writhing, bucking tracker.

He knew he was lying through his teeth.

Chris handed the cup to Nathan, then shifted around to Vin's side and laid a gentle hand on the man's tight shoulder. Vin was paler now than ever and breathing in harsh, sharp gasps through clenched teeth, his bloodless face deeply lined with pain. "You did real good, partner," he said quietly, taking the tracker's hand in a firm grip. "We all still got our teeth and no new holes in our hides."

Vin forced open his eyes to slits and turned his head toward Larabee. "Reckon ... I got enough ... holes ... fer us all," he whispered.

"Yeah," Chris sighed, "I guess you do." He glanced up at Nathan, saw the man's nod, then returned his attention to Vin. "Got somethin' here for ya ta drink," he said, slipping his free hand beneath Tanner's head and lifting. "It'll help you sleep."

"All I done ... is sleep."

"It's easier ta keep you outta trouble that way," Chris cracked as Nathan set the cup to Vin's lips. "I'm thinkin' of tryin' it on Ezra next."

"He prob'ly talks in his sleep," Nathan said, not entirely pleased that Vin took the laudanum without argument.

"Must I sit here and be insulted?" Ezra protested.

"'Course not," Chris answered easily. "I'm sure there's somebody out there who'd be glad ta do it, too."

"Undoubtedly," the gambler sulked. "It seems my lot in life to provide sport for you ... gentlemen."

"Everybody needs a purpose," Chris said, gently lowering Vin back to his blankets. The normally rawhide-tough tracker looked as fragile as a china doll. Pain and exhaustion had leached all the color from his skin, leaving it a sickly gray, and the fever seemed to be consuming him from within, reducing him to parchment-thin flesh and sharp, brittle bone. "You doin' all right?" he asked as worry for the man stabbed deep into him. He didn't like seeing Tanner like this, didn't like thinking that the man who always seemed as solid as the earth itself now had no more substance to him than a wisp of smoke.

Didn't like knowing how much the thought of not having this man's solidness and strength in his life scared him.

Vin nodded faintly. He still felt about half gone, but even so that meant he was still half here, and he figured that even half a hold was better than none. "Reckon so," he whispered tiredly. He turned his glassy, unfocused gaze to Nathan. "Ain't I?"

Nathan smiled at him and patted his shoulder. "Yeah, y' are," he soothed. "Frayed at th' edges some, but you'll likely mend."

Vin stared up at the healer, trying to read his face. His vision had cleared somewhat, but still not quite enough to see the man's eyes clearly. "Y' mean that?"

Nathan nodded and squeezed the tracker's shoulder. "Ain't ever lied to ya befo'," he said firmly, "I ain't gon' start now. You still ain't doin' jes' real good, but I think you're gon' live."

Vin's eyes fluttered closed but a faint smile ghosted about his mouth. "Good," he breathed. "Mebbe then ... you'll stop ... pokin' at me."

"You boys go on, get some breakfast," Chris said to Nathan and Ezra, reaching for the cloth set in a small pan of water. "I'll be along in a few minutes." He lifted the cloth and wrung it out, then pressed it gently to Tanner's forehead.

"Don't need ya ... nursemaidin' me," Vin insisted breathlessly, delighting nonetheless in the feel of that cool wetness against his hot, dry flesh.

"I'm not nursemaidin' ya," Chris said as he slid the cloth slowly over Tanner's face and throat. "Just wanta make sure you stay where you are and go to sleep instead of wanderin' away again. I ain't chasin' your sorry ass another step."

The softest breath of laughter escaped Vin. "Must be hell ... gettin' old."

"You keep this up," Chris warned, arching a blond brow, "and you'll never find out."

"Goddamn ... uppity ... gunfighter."

Ezra and Nathan both smiled as they withdrew from the small shelter, relieved and reassured by the familiar prickly by-play between gunman and tracker. Once again, each man realized just how much of the stability and well-being of the seven as a whole rested upon the twin pillars of Larabee and Tanner.

When they had gone, Chris settled himself more comfortably on the ground. He was as hungry as any of the others, could surely use a cup or three of coffee, but could not yet bring himself to leave. Not until he felt more certain in his own mind that Tanner really wouldn't slip away between one breath and the next.

"Ain't gotta stay ... on my account," Vin sighed, his words beginning to slur as the laudanum went to work. "Been goin' t' sleep ... on my own ... fer a while now."

"I don't mind," Chris said, still bathing his friend's face and throat. "Hell," he grinned, "it's bound to be quieter here than over with the magpies around that coffee pot."

Vin licked his lips. He could feel sleep coming on, but held it at bay just a while longer. "Ain't thanked ya yet ... fer comin' after me," he murmured, trying to open his eyes again but failing. "I 'preciate it ... more'n ... I c'n say."

"Maybe you shouldn't say anything right now," Chris said, purposely slowing and lengthening the strokes of the cloth to lull the injured man to sleep. "You need ta rest."

"Lar'bee-"

"Let go, Vin," he urged in a low, gentle voice. "We can talk later."

The tracker's lips moved, but no sound escaped him. Moments later, he was asleep.

Chris watched him drift away and smiled slightly, relieved to see the lines of pain gradually easing from his face. "You're welcome, partner," he whispered. When he was certain that Vin wouldn't wake again, he dropped the cloth back into the pan, then left the small shelter and went to join the others.

Buck watched him approach, poured a cup of coffee for him and held it out. "Well?" he asked. Nathan had already updated them on Vin's condition, but Buck knew that whether they remained here another day or started for home depended as much on what Larabee would allow Vin to endure as what Jackson thought he could endure.

Chris accepted the coffee gratefully and sipped from it, then shrugged. He knew what Buck was asking, just wasn't sure he had an answer. "Still looks and sounds like he ain't far from crumblin' to dust and blowin' away." He looked at Nathan. "What do you think?"

Jackson sighed and shook his head slowly, frowning worriedly. "I think I wish he was a whole lot better," he admitted. "Knife wound's still bad, head wound ain't much better ... Hell," he snorted sharply, "ain't none of him much better! That fever ain't showin' no sign of breakin', an' he won't get no strength back ta start healin' until it does."

"But?" Josiah prompted quietly.

"But," Nathan said on another sigh, "he ain't gon' get better any time soon, an' we cain't risk keepin' him out here much longer. He could still take a turn fo' the worse, an' if that happens there jes' ain't much I could do about it here." He glanced up at the sky. The day was already warm and unusually humid, and enough dark clouds lingered in the sky to make more rain a possibility. "An' there ain't no tellin' what the weather's gon' do, either. Las' thing he needs is ta be rained on again, but even if it don't rain it's still gon' be hot, an' he don' need ta be out in that, either." One frightful possibility after another played itself out in his mind and he exhaled sharply, shaking his head tightly. "He needs ta be back in town, in the clinic, in a real bed. An' the longer we wait t' get him back there, the mo' chances we're takin' with him."

Chris stared at the healer for long moments, deeply torn. He knew that Nathan wouldn't advise starting back if Vin couldn't take it, but he also had a fair idea just how hard on the injured tracker such a trip would be. Staying here would certainly be easier on Vin than traveling across rough country in a wagon would be.

But staying here, out in the open with limited resources to hand, would also put him at more risk for complications, and God knew Tanner didn't need any of those just now. Likely wouldn't survive them. True, he seemed better, but Chris knew how fragile that "better" was, how precarious Vin's condition still was. The fact that Nathan had deemed it necessary to open that knife wound again to keep it from poisoning Vin was surely proof of that. Taking him back would put a strain upon him that he clearly didn't need, but staying here might very well kill him.

Hell.

But all eyes were now fixed squarely upon him, and he knew he had to decide. "What if we take it slow?" he finally suggested. "Watch him, see how he does, stop whenever he needs to. Even if it means takin' two days to get back."

"We brought back plenty of blankets from the clinic," Josiah said. "Figured we could pad the wagon with them. They should provide some comfort."

"Some, yeah," Nathan agreed. "It's still gon' be rough on him, though. Ain't a part of him that can stand jes' a whole lotta jostlin' right now. But," he winced and shook his head slowly, "I cain't see that we got a choice. I don' wanta take no mo' chances with him. He's been through enough as it is, an' I jes' don' know that he could take much mo'."

And that settled the matter for Chris as nothing else could. "All right," he said quietly, the decision made, "we'll eat, get packed up, then start back. JD," he sought out the boy with his gaze, "give Peso another doctorin'." He smiled slightly. "I don't want him to have any more excuses for actin' up than he already needs."

"Aw, hell, Chris," JD protested sharply, "you don't have to worry about him. He's been on his best behavior!"

"This is Peso, kid," Buck reminded him pointedly. "All 'best behavior' means with him is that ain't nobody died yet."

+ + + + + + +

Goddamn, it hurt.

They'd told him it would, Nathan and Chris, and he'd said he understood that, but he hadn't really believed 'em. Hell, how hard could just ridin' in the back of a wagon be, anyways? Wasn't like he was gonna be ridin' Peso, after all. Which he'd done before, more times than he cared to recall, with broken bones and bullets in him. Gave a man a whole new understandin' of "hurt." So, really, how hard could it possibly be just to lay in the back of a wagon, so full of laudanum he could scarcely move? But he'd told 'em he knew that it'd be hard just to make 'em stop fussin'.

He really needed to start listenin' to others more. 'Cause it hurt, he hurt, like a sonuvabitch. Just like Nathan and Chris had said it would.

Shit, he really hated it when they were right. 'Specially when they were right about things like this.

He remembered once seeing a dog take a rag doll in its teeth and just shake the damn thing apart. And he felt ever' bit like that rag doll now, gripped in some dog's teeth and bein' shaken to bits. Big damn dog, too, with big damn teeth. And him in little bitty bits, ever' one screamin' in pain.

Lord, he felt like he might scream. Except he knew that'd hurt, too, and, frankly, he figured he had enough hurt in him right now without courting any more. More'n enough. Screamin' wouldn't be worth it. He'd have to take a deep breath, and, merciful God, he just didn't think he could take addin' to the hammer strikes already fallin' on his ribs with every jolt of the goddamn wagon. Knew for sure he didn't wanta add to the torment in his side, which just had to be on fire. And his head ...

Sweet Jesus, why didn't his head just go on and cave in and get it over with?

And how the hell could he hurt this much when Nathan'd given him enough laudanum to put Peso down?

'Course, that'd likely been some time ago. Hadn't it? Hard to keep track of time when his head was comin' apart from the inside. Hell, when all of him was comin' apart from the inside. Bein' shaken apart by some big damn dog ...

No, wait, that couldn't be right. Wasn't a dog shakin' him. Couldn't be. He couldn't imagine the others just lettin' that go on. One of 'em would've stepped in by now, shot the dog. Or maybe shot him. 'Cept it sure felt like one of 'em already had. Shot him. Maybe a couple of times ...

Oh, yeah, wagon. He was in a goddamn wagon. Bein' shaken apart from the inside. Because Nathan'd said it was better for him than stayin' flat and still back ... well, back wherever the hell they'd been ... would be. He still didn't quite understand how that could be, but, hell, he didn't understand a whole helluva lot just now.

Except that he hurt. Like a sonuvabitch.

Oh, Lord, why didn't they stop? Why didn't they stop for even a few minutes just so's he could take a breath without havin' to fight back a scream? Or maybe so Nathan could give him more laudanum ...

God, why didn't they stop?

Every rock the wheels hit, every rut they dropped into, sent yet another hard jolt of pain through his body, drove the hurt ever deeper into him. He tried to find something to grab on to, to hold on to, but couldn't force his hands to loosen their grip on the blankets tucked around him. Again and again the wagon bounced and shook, again and again the sharp spikes of pain speared through him, again and again it took all he had, which wasn't much, not to scream.

Even so, he knew he made some kind of sound, could feel it tearing from somewhere deep inside him as the wheels bounced off what had to be the biggest goddamn boulder in the territory. The wagon shook, he shook, and the wordless cry he couldn't hold back ripped from him as he rolled onto his side and curled into himself in a desperate attempt to tear himself loose from the dog's damn teeth.

Then, God, merciful God, the shaking finally stopped.

+ + + + + + +

Nathan cringed when he realized that Vin was regaining consciousness. He'd dosed the tracker good before they left, hoping to keep the man out for as long as he possibly could. He'd wondered at first if he hadn't overdone it, if maybe he'd worried a bit too much, but all too soon he'd been proven right. The wagon's suspension was by no means the best and, on a good road, would've jolted a healthy man's bones damn near to powder. But out here, on ground strewn with rocks and rutted by days of hard rain ...

And Vin wasn't nowhere near healthy.

So Nathan had given thanks that he'd had the foresight to drug the man damn near into a coma and had prayed the laudanum would hold until they got over this stretch of ground, which had to be the worst they'd encountered yet.

Hell, he should've known better.

He'd noted Vin's awakening at first from the small, breathless groans that had escaped him, then had seen the white-knuckled fisting of the tracker's hands in the blankets. He'd hoped against hope that Vin's weakness would play in his favor and drag him right back under, but he'd hoped in vain. Stubborn didn't begin to describe Tanner, and once the man had fixed on waking, nothing short of a bullet, or another heavy swig of laudanum, would drive him back into the darkness.

Damn it all to hell. Why, why couldn't the man just this once do what was best for him?

Vin moaned again, a low, wordless, wrenching sound of sheer agony, and Nathan leaned over him, laying a big hand gently against the side of his face to try and still the thrashing of his head. Between Carlyle's bullet, Carlyle's beatings and the wagon's fierce jostling, he figured the man's brain had been sloshed around inside his skull enough as it was without Tanner adding to it himself.

"Easy, Vin," he soothed, rubbing a thumb against the tracker's uninjured temple in an effort to calm him. "Go back ta sleep. Ain't gon' do yo'self no good by wakin' up now."

Lord, how he hoped the man listened!

But, hell, he shoulda known better.

Vin groaned again and shifted weakly on his blankets, his face twisting into a mask of deep pain. His eyelids flickered and his lips moved, and Nathan could've sworn he heard the man muttering something about dogs, rag dolls and coming apart.

Hell and damnation.

He looked up from Vin and saw Chris and knew then they'd be stopping soon. Larabee had Pony as close to the wagon as he could without actually getting the big horse inside, and those icy-hot green eyes of his were focused tightly on the stirring tracker. The man's face was set as hard as stone, and while some would've said his expression was impassive, Nathan had no trouble reading it at all. Then Vin cried out weakly and curled onto his side, and Nathan saw an answering pain flaring in Larabee's eyes.

Oh, yeah, they'd be stopping any minute.

"JD, hold up!" Chris called sharply.

The boy hauled back on the braces, bringing the two-horse team and the wagon to a stop, then set the brake.

Nathan heaved a sigh of relief as the wagon's rough bouncing finally ceased. Then he bent low over Vin and gripped his shoulders, trying to turn him onto his back. And fought to hide his smirk.

Hard, tough men, ever' one of 'em. 'Til one of their own was down.

Even before JD brought the wagon to a full stop, Chris tossed Pony's reins to a startled Buck and leaned over, grabbed the back of the seat and hauled himself out of the saddle, over the wagon's side and into its bed next to Vin.

And caught Tanner's fist in his hand before it connected with Nathan's face. "Easy, Vin," he called as as he felt the first tremors of panic race through his friend's body. "Just settle down!"

Nathan blinked in surprise, then nodded his thanks to Chris and bent once more over Vin. He'd never even seen the tracker's fist flying toward him, though he told himself now he should've been watching for it. Should've known better than just to grab Vin like he'd done. That was something the man never took well, and certainly not when he was half out of his head.

Why couldn't these men take bein' hurt and bein' tended like normal, sane folks did?

"Ssh, easy, Vin, easy," Chris continued to soothe as the tracker continued to struggle. He held Vin's fist in one hand and gently rubbed his tight arm with the other. "It's all right, pard. Ain't nobody here gonna hurt ya."

The familiar voice worked its way gradually into Vin's pain-clouded mind, and recognition of that voice and the accompanying touch combined with his weakness to drain the fight from him. He collapsed against his blankets with a shuddering groan, then tried to turn again onto his side.

"No, Vin, don't," Nathan urged, carefully holding the man on his back. "You got broke ribs on that side, don' need ta be aggravatin' 'em none." He felt the trembling of Tanner's tight, pain-racked body and cupped a big hand around the tracker's neck, fingertips finding and gently massaging the base of his skull. "'S all right now," he murmured slowly. "I know ya hurt, got ta hurt like hell, but I'm gon' do all I can ta make it better. Gon' take care of ya, Vin, I promise."

Vin exhaled unsteadily as strong fingers skillfully eased some of the pounding torment in his head. He shuddered and swallowed, licked his lips and forced open his eyes. "Always ... do," he whispered.

Nathan smiled slightly, touched by those words and by the simple faith behind them. Then he looked up at Chris and waited for the man's gaze to shift from Tanner to him. "Gon' rest here a while," he said as soon as it did.

Chris nodded once and glanced over his shoulder. "Buck, Josiah," he called, bringing the two men closer to the wagon, "we're stoppin' here." Vin's hand was now curled around his in a death-grip, betraying the ferocity of his pain. Chris reached up with his other hand and pushed the hat back off his head, then ran his fingers through his hair.

Hell, he was gettin' too old for this.

"I'll start gettin' dinner together," Josiah said quietly, his gaze slipping past Larabee to Tanner. Nathan was speaking in soft tones to the tracker, and now and then Vin hissed an answer through tightly clenched teeth. It hurt Sanchez just to look at the younger man.

"I'll see to the horses," Buck offered. "C'mon, kid," he called to JD, "you can help me."

JD turned around on his seat and looked down at Vin, then bowed his head and closed his eyes. Feeling another's gaze upon him, he looked up and opened his eyes and stiffened when he saw Chris looking back at him. "I tried," he said softly, feeling responsible for Vin's suffering. "I really tried, but-"

"It's all right, JD," Chris sighed. "You did the best you could. We knew it was gonna be rough on him." He forced a thin, strained smile for the boy's sake. "There's nothin' you can do to make the ground softer."

"Yeah, I guess not," JD breathed, grateful for the gunman's absolution. "You need me to do anything here?"

Chris's smile grew less forced and his eyes warmed. JD should be exhausted after driving the wagon for so long over such rough ground, should be looking for any excuse to rest. Instead, he was looking for one more thing to do. Chris tried to remember what it was like to be so young, so earnest, but for the life of him couldn't do it.

"No," he finally said. "Just go on with Buck, take care of the horses. I don't think Vin needs too many people around him right now."

JD nodded, understanding. He knew how Vin hated to be the center of attention and figured the tracker would hate being stared at in his present state. And it would be nice to get off this hard seat ...

Ezra shook his head in wonder as JD jumped down and hurried after Buck with more energy than he should have left. If only they could somehow bottle and sell whatever it was that powered that boy, they'd make a fortune!

He finally tore his gaze from the young man and returned his attention to Vin and the men kneeling at his side. Nathan was pulling aside blankets to get to his wounds while Chris was simply still lending the hurting tracker a hand to grip. As Ezra watched, Vin stiffened and gasped sharply and Chris leaned over him, setting his free hand to Vin's shoulder and murmuring something to him, trying to soothe him. But the tracker's jaw set tighter still and his head ground into the blankets beneath him, his whole body one long, rigid line of pain. Hurting for the man, Ezra reached into his coat pocket and drew out his silver flask, holding it down over the side of the wagon.

"Perhaps a bit of pain relief is in order," he drawled softly.

Chris looked up, startled, then nodded once and took the flask. "Thanks," he said softly, sincerely.

Ezra withdrew his hand and shrugged, made uncomfortable by that sincerity. "Yes, well," he cleared his throat and pasted on a weak smile, "it's an inferior brand-" He saw one blond brow lift and sighed deeply. "Yes, I know," he said resignedly, "'bullshit.'"

Chris grinned at the gambler. "You're learnin'."

"Yes, but they are all the wrong lessons." He scowled at Nathan's smirk and lifted his chin defiantly. "Can I be of service here, or shall I go assist Josiah in his culinary efforts?"

Chris glanced at the healer, who thought a moment and then shook his head. "Think we're jes' gon' leave him in here," Nathan said. "Don' wanta move him more'n we have to."

"Very well then," Ezra bobbed his head in acquiescence, "I shall see if I cannot persuade Josiah that a meal should consist of something more than simply beans."

"I don't know, Ezra," Chris mused, "cookin' comes awful close ta menial labor."

Standish flashed a gold-toothed grin. "Never fear, Mr. Larabee," he drawled, "I shall confine myself to a supervisory role. Gentlemen." He touched two fingers to his hat brim, then led his horse toward where Buck and JD had gathered the others.

"That man's so sharp he's gon' cut hisself one day," Nathan grumbled as he bent back over Vin and started untying the bandage around his middle.

"Oh," Chris breathed, unscrewing the cap of the Southerner's flask, "he ain't nearly as sharp as he thinks he is." When Nathan threw a questioning glance up at him, he winked and grinned. "Else he never woulda got mixed up with us."

+ + + + + + +

It was nearing noon the next day when the tired and dirty peacekeepers finally reached the small town they'd each come to call "home." Townfolk stopped in their tracks and stared at the somber procession plodding slowly down the dusty street toward the clinic, four riders slumping wearily in their saddles as they flanked the wagon like a bedraggled honor guard. Word of Vin Tanner's near capture and wounding had already spread, and the citizens now studied their regulators' grim faces closely in an attempt to see whether their Seven was still seven ...

Or had been reduced to six.

In front of the saloon, Mary Travis and Inez Recillos stood close together, arms linked as if for comfort, unlikely companions given the vast differences between them, yet, like the men of the Seven, bound by a friendship that cared little for race, station or occupation but found its source in the much deeper parts of the soul. On the corner, Gloria Potter stood outside her store and clutched her broom tightly to her, her gaze fixed on the wagon but her mind already working on what the men would need to see them through yet another crisis. And in front of the jail, the men who'd taken on the task of watching over the town while the seven were away prepared themselves to remain on watch, knowing that, just now, the true peacekeepers had other matters on their minds.

From his seat as he guided the wagon down the street, JD saw all this, recognized what he was seeing and marveled at it. Marveled that people once so lost in fear and helplessness had learned from a band of gunmen, outlaws and rogues how to step forward and take charge, how to close ranks around their own.

It was a helluva thing to see.

He finally pulled up in front of the clinic and stopped the team, setting the brake on the wagon with a gusting sigh of relief. His arms and shoulders ached, his butt had long since gone numb, and if he never had to drive another wagon for all the rest of his life, he'd die a happy man. He had true skill at it, he knew; that's why Chris had chosen him to do it. And it hadn't even been really difficult, just ... nerve-wracking. When he'd needed the road to be straightest and the ground to be smoothest, all he'd gotten instead were sharp turns, hidden rocks and deep ruts.

But now, thank God almighty, it was finally over.

He heaved another sigh and pushed himself off the hard seat, then turned and jumped down ... and very nearly went sprawling into the dirt as his tired and cramping legs buckled beneath him. But Tiny was there, waiting to take the horses and relieve the regulators of that concern at least, and caught him in one beefy hand, holding him upright until his muscles unkinked and would hold his weight again.

"Thanks," he murmured as color flooded his face, throwing a sheepish grin to the thick-set hostler.

Tiny winked and grinned. "Drivin' one a' them'll take it outta ya, no doubt about it." He released JD when he thought the boy could stand on his own again, then nodded once more. "You fellas don't worry about the wagon," he said. "Unload it when ya can. I'll come for it when you're done." His gaze flickered to the back of the wagon. "I figure y'all got more pressin' concerns right now." He looked back at JD. "How is he?"

The boy frowned and bowed his head, stubbing absently at the dirt with the toe of one shoe. "Not good," he said softly, worriedly.

Tiny winced, then set a big hand on JD's shoulder and squeezed. "Lemme know if you boys need anything," he said, then released the boy and walked back toward the others.

JD drew a deep breath and turned around, not at all certain what he should do next. Ezra was hurrying up the stairs to open the clinic, Buck, Chris and Josiah were carefully unloading Vin from the wagon while Nathan gave orders, Tiny was already collecting the horses ... JD shoved his hands into his pockets and again stubbed a toe into the dirt. After five days of tracking and driving, five days of being not just useful but indispensable, after five days of doing what no one else could do, or at least do as well as him ...

Well, hell, it was kind of hard just to stand and feel useless. To feel like the kid who was just in everybody's way. He'd gotten used to being needed, had liked it ...

Then, from where the older, bigger men were so carefully handling Vin, JD heard a snarled curse and recognized that snarl as Larabee's. He looked up, startled, then looked around and saw a knot of townfolk edging closer, clearly wanting to see Vin, their curiosity overcoming their good sense. And before Chris could release Vin to reach for his gun, JD shot forward, a huge grin plastered to his face.

"You fellas go on," he called as he set his hands to the butts of his guns and went into his most menacing "sheriff's walk" toward the approaching gawkers. "I'll take care of this!"

+ + + + + + +

Josiah thought they'd never get Vin up the stairs and into the clinic, into that waiting bed. It wasn't that Tanner was heavy; the tracker was as spare-built a man as Sanchez had ever seen. But he was also a deeply unconscious man just now, head and limbs lolling loosely with all the structure of a bag of water. And they were all tired, bone-tired, worn down to their souls by days of endless worry and hard riding.

Right now, any of them would've been hard-pressed to carry Billy Travis up these stairs.

But somehow, thanks be to God, they managed, got Vin into the bed Ezra had already turned down without once dropping him. Though each of them heaved a groan as he straightened again, and Buck, who'd had charge of Vin's long legs, stretched his back until the bones of his spine popped.

None of them would have trouble sleeping tonight.

As soon as they laid Vin down they moved away to make room for Nathan. Except for Chris, who planted himself in the chair at the unconscious tracker's left side and clearly wasn't about to be budged. He removed his hat and hung it over the back of the chair, then settled back, staking out his place for the duration.

Josiah wondered if the unpredictable gunman realized just how incredibly predictable he could be.

Nathan settled himself into the chair at Vin's right and immediately went to work tending to his patient. They'd gotten Vin dressed for the trip back to town, knowing he'd be mortified to be seen any other way, but now that work would have to be undone.

"Help me get him stripped," he ordered quietly. He directed his words to Chris, knowing from experience that, when given a choice, Larabee reserved this infringement of Tanner's privacy to himself and the healer. Then, raising his voice but never turning his head, Jackson continued, "Gon' need water, an' lots of it. Hot and cold. I wanta clean him up good, then we need ta start coolin' down this fever."

Buck sighed and peeled himself from the wall against which he'd been leaning, then rolled his shoulders in anticipation of the strain they'd soon be feeling. Just as he started toward the door, JD walked through it. Without a word, Buck grabbed the boy's shoulders, turned him around and marched him back out of the clinic.

"Gon' need clean cloths, fresh bandages," Nathan went on, calmly directing the remaining men as a field general would his troops even as he worked to remove Vin's shirt. "Ezra, look up in that cabinet by the window, get me mo' carbolic and that tin of yarrow leaves. Might's well start brewin' some willow bark tea, too. I done gave him all the laud'num he needs fo' a while." He waited while Chris carefully removed Tanner's trousers and drawers, then quickly covered the man's nakedness with a sheet. "An' once I start cleanin' them wounds, I'm gon' need at least two of y'all ta hold him down."

"You sound like you're anticipatin' a fight," Josiah remarked in quiet surprise as he gathered bandages and cloths.

Nathan snorted softly. "Hell, it's Vin, ain't it?" he asked wryly. "I'll still be anticipatin' a fight three days after he's dead." And though he'd never admit it, secretly he hoped that Vin fought like hell. For the past two hours, the man had been too quiet, too still, sunk so deep into his pain and fever that Nathan feared he might not pull himself free.

God, God, he hoped and prayed the man was just biding his time and strength ...

Chris shared that same desperate hope as he leaned forward and took Vin's hand in his. The tracker's fingers were too hot, too lax, the man himself too silent and unmoving, the frightfully shallow rise and fall of his chest and the unnatural heat in his flesh the only signs that he yet lived. Chris squeezed his hand hard, waited tensely for some response and swallowed against his fear when there was none.

Goddamn it, surely they hadn't gone through all this just so he would die at home?

A taut, heavy silence descended on the clinic, broken only by Nathan's occasional softly-voiced order and the unconsciously muffled movements and footsteps of the men assisting him however they could. Even Buck and JD, as they began bringing up buckets of hot and cold water, were unusually restrained.

Ridiculous as they all knew it was, they nonetheless feared that any sudden sound might somehow snap Vin Tanner's tenuous hold on life.

Time passed without notice as the battle to save him was waged with a grim determination. Nathan used every man and every means at his disposal, called upon every scrap of knowledge gleaned from his precious books, the skills gained in his practice, the lore absorbed from wise slave women while still a child. Knowing from his wartime experience that clean bodies healed faster and better than unclean ones, he put Ezra's deft hands to use washing the tracker's filthy, matted hair and Chris's gentle father's touch to work bathing the rest of the man. Josiah mixed teas and put together poultices, Buck held or moved Vin's limp body as directed, and JD's seemingly endless supply of energy had him running errands, fetching supplies or simply lending his hands or strength where needed. And all the while Nathan's hands, as nimble as Ezra's for all their size and steady as a rock despite his fatigue, tended with skill and infinite care the various ugly wounds threatening Vin's life.

And when finally they were done - several hours, three changes of bedding and countless buckets of water later - six bodies were sprawled about the clinic in various stages of exhaustion like wreckage after a storm. The seventh lay as silent and still as ever, though at least now clean and freshly bandaged, utterly oblivious to the ferocity of the fight that had been joined on his behalf.

Hunched forward in his chair, head sagging between aching shoulders, Nathan extended a leaden arm and took Vin's bony wrist between his fingers, measuring the tracker's pulse. Still too fast, still too weak, but, God, still there, as stubbornly enduring as the man himself. Vin should be dead by now, he knew that, should never have survived the trip home, should never have survived walking, crawling and riding three days without any care, hell, should never have survived Carlyle! But he had, somehow, had hung on until his friends could get to him, had hung on until they could get him home, was hanging on still, though God alone knew how.

It was the goddamnedest thing Nathan had ever seen.

But then again, he reasoned, Vin's wasn't the only stubborn will at play here. He laid Tanner's arm back down on the mattress, then sat back and swept his red-rimmed, gritty gaze slowly around the clinic, smiling slightly as he beheld the aftermath of the fight. Buck was seated on the floor in a corner, long legs stretched out before him, his head back against the wall, eyes closed and soft snores issuing from his open mouth. JD, not surprisingly, sat right next to him, his head pillowed on Buck's broad shoulders, his dark hair flopping into his face and making him look even younger than he truly was. Against the adjoining wall, Ezra slouched in Nathan's rocker, head back and face completely unguarded in sleep. He'd taken off his dirt-stained jacket and rolled up his sleeves to the elbows, his familiar silk cravat nowhere to be seen and his shirt open at the throat. Nathan shook his head and smiled at the sight of the rumpled, dozing gambler, then turned his head and met Josiah's equally amused but heavy-lidded gaze. Sanchez sat in the clinic's other chair, one leg crossed over the other at the thigh, and regarded them all with benevolent if sleepy eyes.

Which left only ...

Nathan turned his gaze back to the bed and fixed it on the man sitting across from him, his smile fading and a soft, troubled sigh escaping him. Chris wasn't sleeping, wasn't anywhere near sleeping, looked for all the world as if he never intended to sleep again. Not while Vin teetered between life and death before him. The gunman had moved his chair as close to the bed as his legs would allow and gripped Vin's slack left hand in his, strong fingers curled tightly about his friend's. He was bent over at the waist, his elbows on his thighs, in a manner that made Nathan's back ache just to see, and was staring intently at the tracker, that sharp killer's gaze fixed on the unconscious man's face.

Except there was no trace of the killer in him now.

Nathan wondered if Chris had any idea just how much of himself his eyes revealed, wondered if the man knew how much of his soul they were now pouring forth. Often so guarded and so cold, those eyes were now completely and painfully naked, the worry in them raw and heartbreaking, the fear in them so terrible that the healer wanted to look away. But he didn't, and was glad of it. For with the worry and the fear there was also determination, the same sheer stubborn will that he knew resided in the tracker's frail body. Chris was calling on Vin's will now, Nathan could almost feel it, was using his own to summon forth and fortify Vin's. And Jackson suddenly realized that he wasn't the only one who felt it.

Had he looked away as he'd wanted, he would've missed it. Even staring at them as he was, he just barely caught it. But when he made himself look closer, he saw it and gave a tremulous smile. Vin's left hand had moved just ever so slightly, his pale, thin fingers curling faintly, almost imperceptibly, against Chris's. Somewhere, somehow, yet again that strange connection between the two had been made, will had undoubtedly spoken to and joined with will, and Nathan knew without a doubt that the gap between life and death had just been spanned by the simple clasping of two hands.

It was truly a helluva thing.

+ + + + + + +

Hot.

Hurt.

Lord God, when had his whole world shrunk to nothin' but hot and hurt? Couldn't remember a time now when he hadn't felt like he was burnin' alive, couldn't remember a time when this pain hadn't throbbed through him with every beat of his heart.

God, he just wanted it to stop!

And sometimes ... it almost did. Sometimes he could feel the glide of something wet and cool against his flesh, almost quenching the fire raging inside him. And sometimes he could feel the slide of something wet and cool down his throat, almost relieving the pain coursing through him. During those blessed, fleeting moments, "almost" was more than good enough, was a mercy, and more than once he was pretty sure he wept at the sweetness of it.

But the "almost" never lasted long enough, and all too soon the hot and the hurt would have him again.

God, why wouldn't it stop?

He wanted it to stop, wanted it so bad, was fairly certain he wept for that as well. Felt like he'd been fighting against it forever, fighting just to keep himself above it, and he was tired, so tired, couldn't imagine that he had much more, any more, fight left in him.

And sometimes he thought maybe, just maybe, not fighting anymore might be the only way to make it stop. Just give up, give in, admit he'd finally found a fight he couldn't win ...

Except that he couldn't. Every time he tried to let go and started to sink, somebody always grabbed him and pulled him back. Hands gripped him, held him, forced him to stay where he was. Reached right down through the worst of the hot and the hurt and refused to let him go.

And much as he wanted to, hard as he tried, he just couldn't fight against them. Not when he knew, knew with everything that was in him, that somehow lettin' go would hurt them more than stayin' here hurt him.

Didn't make any sense, he knew that, too. But, hell, since when had anything to do with them made any sense at all?

Except that it had, it always had, right from the very first. With them he'd found pieces of himself he hadn't even known were missin', and every crooked path he'd ever walked had suddenly been made straight. And suddenly the fiddle-footed stray who'd spent his whole life skirtin' campfires for fear of gettin' burned not only had but wanted a place right in the midst of their warmth and light.

A place right in the midst of them.

And they'd come after him. Tracked him down and dragged him back just so's he wouldn't lose his place. And so they wouldn't lose him.

And they were with him right now, pourin' cool water over him and in him, doin' all they could to ease the hot and the hurt and holdin' on to him so tight he didn't have a hope in hell of slippin' away. Callin' him back even when he knew they didn't think he could hear them. Soothin' him with their touch even when he knew they didn't think he could feel them.

But he could.

He did.

And he figured maybe it was time he started holdin' on, too.

+ + + + + + +

Chris stood by the window, one shoulder hitched against its frame, and stared out over the busy street below, watching disinterestedly as the townfolk went about their normal lives. People milled about on the boardwalks, went in and out of shops, talked, laughed and argued as if nothing at all were wrong. Wagons rolled up and down the streets, kids and dogs chased or dodged horses, men haggled over the latest land, livestock or grain prices. Life was going on as always. He sighed wearily and dropped his head against the window frame.

How could it go on down there when it had all but ceased up here?

They'd brought Vin home two days ago, somehow convinced, like soldiers seeking the high ground, that if they could just get him here, they would naturally win the battle for his life. After all, nothing and no one had ever beaten the seven here. And at times it seemed that Vin sensed and shared their determination, seemed that he was fighting just as desperately as they were, hanging on with every bit of his shattered strength. At other times, though ...

God, at other times Chris could almost hear the man begging them to let him go.

But they hadn't. They'd refused to surrender their high ground, refused to admit defeat, and, or so it had seemed, even managed to turn the tide of the battle in Vin's favor. Last night Nathan had restitched the knife wound, declaring it as clear of the poison that had festered in it as he could get it. And this morning, just before dawn, the tracker's raging fever had finally broken in a sudden, searing burst of heat that had left him and his bedding drenched in sweat when it had released him. They all should have rejoiced. Would have rejoiced ...

Except that it hadn't seemed to make a damn bit of difference. Vin hadn't come around, hadn't shown even the slightest sign of improvement since then, and Nathan had grudgingly uttered the words that none of them had wanted to hear. Fever running that high for that long could just burn up a man's body, cook his brain ...

Chris didn't understand how the people of this town could just carry on as if none of that mattered.

He sighed and closed his eyes, utterly exhausted. He'd finally kicked Nathan out about two hours ago, insisting that the healer go get something to eat, then use his room in the boardinghouse and get some sleep. He fully expected one of the others to come and try to relieve him soon, though he knew he'd never be able to bring himself to leave. He hadn't been there for Vin when all this had started; figured the least he could do was to be here for the man at the end. Couldn't do anything else for him; Nathan had said there was nothing that anyone could do.

Except Vin. It was all up to him now ...

Chris swallowed hard and opened his eyes, then turned slowly to look at the man who lay as still and pale as death in the bed.

And, goddamn it, wouldn't it be nice if just this once the aggravating, contrary sonuvabitch did what Chris Larabee wanted him to do?

+ + + + + + +

Lord, he could stay here forever.

Didn't rightly know just where "here" was, but he didn't rightly care, either. Just knew he felt good here, better than he had in a long damn time, and he wasn't in any hurry to leave this place behind.

Because he had a feelin' that out there, wherever the hell "there" was, he wouldn't feel near as good as he did here. And he'd just about had his fill of not feelin' good. Wore on a man after a while, got him thinkin' foolish thoughts, like that maybe dyin' might be a relief ...

Oh, shit. He wasn't dead ... was he?

He groaned. Lord, if he was dead, then Larabee was gonna be pissed. The man plumb hated it when folks did things he didn't want, and he was pretty sure that Chris didn't want him to be dead.

Well, not unless it was Chris who'd killed him. Lord knew the man threatened to often enough; probably at least once a day. Goddamn uppity gunfighter didn't have just a whole lotta patience; didn't have just the best sense of humor, either. And he'd been told more than once that anybody who rode with him needed an awful lot of both. Chris swore up and down that he was enough to drive a Quaker to murder. And Chris Larabee for damn sure weren't no Quaker.

Though he wore enough black to be one. 'Cept his hat didn't look much like a Quaker's hat. And he was pretty sure a Quaker wouldn't have conchas on his gunbelt. Well, not that Quakers wore gunbelts. 'Least not the ones he'd ever seen. Not that he'd seen many, but he'd come across a few in his time. None of 'em wearin' gunbelts, though. Mostly he'd seen 'em with shotguns for huntin' ...

Oh, yeah, Chris.

Had Larabee finally snapped and killed him? Surely not. He'd remember that, wouldn't he? Seemed like a man'd remember bein' killed by his best friend; thing like that was bound to leave an impression. 'Specially if the best friend doin' the killin' was Chris Larabee. Man just had a natural talent for makin' an impression. Usually several impressions, right through some poor bastard's hide. Man might not say more'n three words a day, but he wasn't nearly so stingy with bullets. Not that he wasted 'em, though. Didn't need to. Man had a real knack for puttin' 'em right where he wanted 'em. And if Larabee had wanted to put one, or more, into him, that would sure as hell explain why he was dead.

Lord, he was thirsty! Seemed like Chris could've at least given him some water before he killed him ...

Wait. Would he be thirsty if he was dead?

He thought about that a minute; or tried to, anyway. Truth was, it was hard to think about anything just now. Head was all muddled, brain felt slow and thick like it'd been turned to mud ...

Aw, shit, he wasn't still out in the rain, was he? Goddamn Chris Larabee anyway! Killin' him wasn't bad enough, no! Goddamned bad-tempered sonuvabitch had left him out in the rain and thirsty to boot! Hell, if this was the way the man treated his friends, it was no wonder he had so damned few of 'em! Man just had no idea how to deal with people ...

But if he was out in the rain, how come he wasn't wet? 'Least he didn't think he was wet. Not like he'd been before Chris had killed him, back when he'd been out ... out ...

Out by Yella Creek. Yeah, he remembered now. Kinda. He'd been out there just mindin' his own business when Chris ...

No, not Chris. Carlyle. Had to be Carlyle, 'cause Chris wouldn'ta shot him in the head. Always said a bullet would just bounce right off ...

Like the smug sonuvabitch had any right callin' anybody else "hard headed." Hell, Larabee could give lessons in bein' stubborn! Once he got hold of an idea, dynamite wouldn't shake it loose. Man was about as reasonable as Peso on a bad day ...

Oh, yeah. Carlyle. He'd been the one to shoot him in the head, leave him out in the rain.

Leave him thirsty ...

At least if he was thirsty, then he couldn't be dead; he was pretty sure of that. But if he wasn't dead, then just where the hell was he, and why the hell wouldn't somebody give him a fuckin' drink of water? Usually when he'd been shot, he couldn't so much as move without Nathan tryin' to pour somethin' down his throat. Usually it was somethin' that tasted pretty bad, but right now he couldn't see bein' picky.

He just wanted a drink. Didn't seem like much to ask. Seemed like his friends would understand that a man who wasn't dead got thirsty. After all, they weren't dead, too, and they sure as hell got thirsty. Anybody could just ask Inez about that ...

Shit. That's why there wasn't anybody here pourin' anything down his throat. They were all probably at the saloon, pourin' stuff down their own goddamned throats! Slakin' their own thirsts and not givin' a damn about his. Too busy drinkin' to come here, wherever the hell "here" was, and check on him and find that he wasn't dead anymore and he wasn't out in the rain anymore and, goddamn it, he was ever' bit as thirsty as they were!

Well, hell. If they thought he was just gonna sit here ... lie here ... whatever he was doin' wherever the hell "here" was ... they had another thing comin'. Didn't care how much better he felt here than he would out there, just knew there wasn't anybody givin' him a drink here so he'd have to go out there to get it.

And those six so-called "friends" of his better hope to God that he really was dead, because if he wasn't, he was gonna kick all their asses. Starting with Larabee's.

Just as soon as he got a drink of water ...

+ + + + + + +

Chris poured himself yet another cup of coffee and replaced the pot on the stove, then raised a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed the aching muscles there. Then felt the ache in his shoulders. And his back ...

He picked up his cup with his other hand and sighed. Hell, maybe he did need to lie down. Wasn't doing himself any good sleepin' in Nathan's chair ...

"Thirs...sty."

Larabee dropped his cup and whirled around as the faint, rough whisper split the silence of the clinic like a gunshot. Not at all certain his mind hadn't just conjured the voice he'd been waiting desperately to hear, he crossed to the bed on badly shaking legs and looked down ...

Into two heavy-lidded, unfocused but open blue eyes. "Jesus, Vin!" he gasped unsteadily, sinking onto the edge of the bed as his knees buckled beneath him. He simply stared at the tracker for long moments, his heart in his throat, then reached for the man's thin, pale hand and gripped it tightly in his own. "Goddamn it, you scared me ta death!" he finally rasped. Tanner's fingers closed weakly about his, and a hard wave of relief swept through him. "It's about damn time you woke up!"

"H ... had ... to," Vin whispered breathlessly. He clung to Larabee with what little strength he could muster, half-afraid he might just drift away again. "Only ... way ... get water ... this ... place."

Chris forced a choked laugh past the hard knot in his throat. "Think we ain't got anything better to do than wait on you hand and foot?" he chided in a thick voice. He reached out absently and brushed the long, lank hair out of Tanner's eyes. "Y'know, while you been up here sleepin' your days away, the rest of us have been workin'. You do remember that we all get paid to do a job, right?"

"Damn ... uppity ... cowboy," Vin sighed, his eyes slowly closing as his leaden body began to sink back down into its lethargy.

"Oh, no you don't!" Chris said sharply, tapping his hand against the tracker's whiskered cheek insistently. "You open your eyes and look at me," he ordered. "You ain't goin' anywhere just yet!"

"Hit me ... again ... kick ... yer skinny ... ass," Vin warned, forcing open his eyes and fixing a less than focused glare on the gunman's blurred face.

Chris chuckled and withdrew his hand, delighted by that weak growl and unsteady glare. "I'm shakin' in my boots," he retorted. "As for callin' me skinny ..." He swept his gaze over the tracker's gaunt, bloodless face, taking in the over-sharp flare of high, hard cheekbones over the sunken hollows of his cheeks, then looked down at the hand still wrapped in his and shook his head at the unnatural protrusions of wristbones and knuckles. "Don't think you've got any room ta talk, pard," he finally said.

Vin heard the worry, the sorrow, in his friend's voice, saw it in his face, and felt a twinge of guilt for putting it there. "Sorry," he whispered. He swallowed weakly and licked his dry lips, then slid his left hand slowly to his chest as even the once-simple act of breathing taxed his strength. "Didn't mean ... worry ya ... none."

Chris frowned worriedly at the strain in Vin's breathless voice and the lines of pain etched into his ashen face. The terrible bruises from Carlyle's beatings had begun to fade, but Larabee wasn't entirely certain that their present sickly yellow and green was any improvement over their previous purple-black. And while the tracker's other injuries had finally taken a turn for the better as well, still they - and he - were a long, long way from being healed.

"Yer st ... starin'," Vin breathed. "I look ... that ... bad?"

Chris gave a soft, wry snort. "'Bad' would be an improvement," he joked. "Hell, Tanner, I think that Texas trail boss looked a shade better than you!"

Vin scowled weakly at the insult. Truth was, he felt like shit. Hurt to move, hurt to breathe, hell, hurt to think, but he wasn't about to admit that. Of course, the way Larabee was looking at him, he probably didn't have to admit it; goddamn gunman could likely see it for himself. "Y' gonna ... gimme a drink ... or do I gotta ... get it ... m'self?" he asked irritably.

A slight smile twitched at Chris's lips. Hell, he had absolutely no doubt that Vin would try just that. He'd never make it, would likely fall and bust something open and then get his ass royally chewed by Nathan, but he'd try. And part of Larabee wanted to see him do it, just to know that Tanner truly was back. But another part, the more rational part, knew that he'd get that same royal ass-chewing for not protecting Vin from his own hard-headed foolishness.

"I'll get it," he said, releasing Vin's hand and reaching for the cup on the bedside table. "Knowin' you, you'd find some way to hurt yourself and Nathan'd take it out on me. Don't know if you've noticed," he arched a golden brow, "but he don't have just the best sense of humor in the world."

Vin gave a dry, breathless chuff of laughter. "Y' don't say?"

Chris frowned at that, suspecting that some jibe at him lay behind the tracker's words. "You're a pain in the ass, you know that?" he groused, slipping his other hand beneath Vin's head and lifting carefully. "I should make you do this for yourself, see how far you'd get." He placed the cup against Tanner's lips and tilted a small amount of water into his mouth. "Gonna take this slow," he said as he removed the cup again. "You get sick on me, I'll have ta shoot ya."

Vin nearly wept at the feel of the blessedly cool water sliding smoothly down the parched length of his throat. Wanting more, needing more, he swept the tip of his tongue over his lips, desperately seeking whatever drop he might have missed. A small, involuntary sound of distress broke from him when he found none.

"Easy, pard," Chris soothed, placing the cup again to his mouth. "There's plenty. We're just gonna take it slow and easy."

Vin tried to reach for the cup and keep it where it was, but couldn't lift his hand. And when he tried to drink more greedily, Chris simply withdrew the water. "No!" he whispered strickenly.

"Then we do it my way," Chris insisted gently. He arched a blond brow. "Deal?"

Vin wanted to argue, wanted to snatch that cup from Larabee's hand and down it all in one gulp. But he didn't have the strength for either. And he was so thirsty ... "Deal," he finally whispered.

Chris nodded and again pressed the cup to Vin's mouth. "Anybody ever told you that you're a stubborn sonuvabitch?" he asked.

Vin took another drink, waited for the cup to be pulled away, and swallowed. "Reckon ... you'd be ... th' expert," he breathed with a weak smirk.

"Smart-ass," Chris chided, more grateful for that smirk than he could say.

With the gunman's patient assistance, Vin finally finished the water, almost able to feel it seeping into every hollow of the burned-out husk that was his body. A soft, contented sigh escaped him as Chris lowered his head back against the pillow and a faint smile ghosted about his pale mouth.

"Better?" Chris asked quietly.

"Yeah." His heavy eyes slid closed. "Thanks."

Chris set the empty cup back on the table, then sat back and returned his attention to Vin. Beneath the fading bruises and bandages, the tracker's flesh held the gray tinge of utter exhaustion, and the lines of pain creasing his face deepened with every breath. "You need anything?" he asked worriedly. "Got some laudanum-"

"'M all right," Vin slurred.

"Yeah, I can see that." A shiver raced through the tracker's frail body and Chris frowned, then reached down and pulled the covers higher, tucking them close about Tanner's shoulders and sides. "Go back to sleep," he urged in a low, soft voice. "We'll talk later."

"'Kay," Vin sighed, already drifting away. But a sudden thought struck him and he pulled himself back for a moment. "Chris?"

"Yeah?"

He frowned, tried one last time to open his eyes, then let the effort go. "You seen ... my hat?"

+ + + + + + +

He sat in Nathan's rocker out on the landing of the clinic, his still healing body wrapped in blankets, his face turned toward the sun. The light midmorning breeze ruffled playfully through his long hair and a contented smile curved about his mouth. After four days spent in the cramped confines of the clinic since his awakening, he'd finally wangled permission from Nathan to sit outside and breathe fresh air once again. The healer had promised to rope and hog-tie him if he moved so much as an inch from where he was now, and he had solemnly sworn to behave.

Hadn't been a hard promise to make, though. He wasn't stupid enough to believe that he was up to any more than this.

Yet.

But, for now, this was enough, just sitting here with the sun warming his face and bones, truly comfortable for the first time in what seemed forever. Most of his memories about what happened centered around being in pain, being soaked through and through, being sick, being scared. And in the days after the fever had finally burned itself out of him, a chill seemed to have sunk so deeply into him that he'd feared he'd never be warm again. Nathan had assured him that it was just an effect of blood-loss and his body's weakness, that as he regained his strength and health the chill would disappear. But it hadn't yet, which was why he still needed the blankets.

And why he'd wanted so desperately to sit in the sun.

That sun was working on him now, though, working in him, and he reveled in its touch. He needed this warmth, this light, the sweet kiss of the breeze. Together they chased the cobwebs from his head, drove the dark memories of pain, sickness and fear back into the far corners of his mind where they belonged.

Threw the shadow of that bounty behind him, where he didn't have to see it ...

"Hey, Vin!"

His head snapped up and his eyes flew open as the bright greeting startled him out of sleep. This was something else he was well and truly tired of, this new and embarrassing habit of just dropping off to sleep between one breath and next without ever realizing he was doing it. The boys never said anything about it, but he knew it had to worry them. Hell, it worried him ...

"I see Nathan let you out," JD said as he bounded onto the landing. He flashed a bright smile at his friend, more relieved than he could say to see him finally out of the clinic. "Guess that means you're gettin' better, huh?"

"Yeah, reckon so," Vin agreed softly, watching as JD hoisted himself nimbly onto the railing to sit before him and envying the boy that ease of movement. He'd had it once, but now was stiff and slow as an old man, and plagued by just about as many aches.

"That's good," JD said, oblivious to the tracker's thoughts. "Maybe you'll be outta here for good soon. Peso misses you, y'know."

Vin's eyes widened at that and a pang of longing shot through him. "You been t' see Peso?" he asked wistfully.

"Every day." JD shrugged lightly. "I'm the only one he'd let tend his shoulder. And," he laughed, "I'm the only one who can get him back in his stall when Tiny turns him out into the corral. Anybody else tries, well," he grinned and winked, "you know Peso."

Vin had to chuckle at that. Yeah, he knew Peso. Missed him like hell, too. "Reckon he's jist feelin' cooped up," he mused. "He ain't never took well ta that. Needs somebody ta take him out an' run th' vinegar out of him."

JD snorted sharply. "Yeah, I can see him lettin' somebody slap a saddle on him right now!"

"He'd let you," Vin said softly, regarding the boy steadily.

Now JD's eyes widened and he went absolutely still. "You mean that?" he breathed, hardly daring to believe that Tanner would let anybody, let him, ride his beloved horse. "You're not just jokin'?"

"Wouldn't joke about this," Vin said seriously. "Y' know I wouldn't let nobody on Peso I didn't think could handle him. Wouldn't let nobody on him I didn't trust with him. You're 'bout th' only other one 'sides me he tolerates. 'N if Peso tolerates ya, he likes ya. 'N if he likes ya, well," he grinned slightly and winked, "'least he won't kill ya."

JD just stared at the tracker, for once bereft of words. He'd long known that Peso trusted him, and understood exactly what a rare thing that was. But to know that Vin trusted him, and trusted him with Peso ...

"Try not ta fall backwards, kid," Vin teased softly, both amused and touched by the wonder and gratitude pouring from the boy's eyes. "Clinic's too small fer me ta have a roommate."

"You really are serious," JD breathed. "You want me to take Peso out, exercise him."

Vin shrugged slightly. "Ain't like I c'n do it yet. 'N if he don't get outta there soon, he's gonna kill somebody."

"I'll take him out this afternoon," JD said eagerly. "I've got ta ride out to old man Harmon's place." He rolled his eyes. "He was in again yesterday, said somebody's been creepin' around his place at night, tryin' ta steal his stock. Not that he's got anything worth stealin'. He wanted you, but Chris told him you were laid up and 'volunteered' me instead." He made a face of disgust. "Fun, huh? Spendin' the afternoon with a crazy old man-"

"He ain't crazy, JD," Vin put in softly, "jist lonely. He knows ain't nobody been around his place. This is jist his way of gettin' somebody out there ta talk to." He leaned forward in the rocker, letting the blankets fall away from him, and snared the boy's gaze with his own. "You go on out there, make a good show of lookin' fer tracks, then tell him whoever it was is long gone. Then when he invites ya ta supper, an' he will invite ya, you say yes an' you go inside an' you visit with him. An' you listen real respectful to him, kid," he ordered gently, blue eyes mild but compelling. "You'll be surprised jist how much that 'crazy ol' man' knows. He's seen things won't any of us ever see again. You need t' honor that."

JD swallowed hard and nodded, duly chastened by the tracker's words. And as he saw the familiar light in Vin's blue eyes, heard the intensity in his soft, raspy voice, he could well imagine himself in years to come saying the same words about the tracker. Not so much older than JD, Tanner nonetheless belonged to a time, to a world, that was passing. He, too, had seen things that no one would ever seen again, and JD desperately hoped that someday someone would honor that.

"I will," he promised solemnly.

Vin nodded and sat back, again pulling the blankets about himself as the intensity, and the brief strength it had given him, drained from him. "I know ya will," he breathed. His gaze, tired but still steady, remained on JD. "Yer a good 'un, kid," he said quietly. "Reckon I wouldn't be here if ya weren't."

JD bowed his head, embarrassed by the tracker's praise. "Aw, hell," he muttered, made strangely uncomfortable by the thought of having a man like Vin Tanner beholden to him, "I didn't do that much-"

"Yeah, ya did," Vin insisted softly. "The boys told me all about it, how it was you that put ever'thing together, led 'em to me. And I'm more grateful than I can say." He dropped his gaze to his lap and absently pulled the blankets more tightly about himself as the memory of those dark days sent a chill through him. "I wasn't so far outta my head that I didn't know jist how bad a shape I was in," he rasped. "I'da died out there if y'all hadn'ta found me when ya did."

JD slid down from the railing and stepped forward to Vin, then knelt before him. "We weren't gonna let that happen," he said quietly, gazing steadily into Tanner's down-turned face. "I knew we'd find ya, because we wouldn'ta stopped lookin' until we did." He reached out and laid a tentative hand on Vin's knee, knowing the tracker didn't always like to be touched but sensing that, just now, the man needed it. "You belong here, with us, and we'da done ... I'da done ... whatever it took to find you and bring you back home."

Vin tensed beneath that hand and stared down at it, but made no move to escape or dislodge it. Then slowly, slowly, he relaxed as that touched banished the dark chill that had taken hold of him.

Strange how easily this boy, and five other men with him, could do that ...

He swallowed hard and slowly raised his head, meeting the earnest hazel gaze fixed on him and somehow feeling its warmth and strength slipping into him. "Been a long time ... since I had folks who felt that way," he breathed. "Reckon it's jist ... gonna take me some time t' get used to it."

"Yeah, well, you'd better start," JD said firmly. He nodded once, then withdrew his hand and rose to his feet. As Vin's gaze followed him up, he set his hands on his hips, lifted his chin and arched a dark brow, his young face setting along determined lines. "'Cause you got it now, and it ain't goin' away any time soon. You're ours, Vin, and we aim ta protect what's ours."

Vin stared at JD for several moments, seeing so clearly in the boy signs of the man he would become, and felt the last of his fear release him. He sat back in the rocker with a faint smile and let the blankets fall away, basking in the combined sensations of the sun's warmth and JD's protection. And suddenly, with this boy watching over him and those five other men ready to do the same, the shadow of that bounty, and the noose it represented, just disappeared.

"Yeah," he breathed, his smile widening and his blue eyes shining, "reckon I know that now."

And wasn't that a helluva thing?

END