Author: Anonymous

Disclaimer: Oh bother! They don't belong to me. Everyone knows this.

Rating: PG-13. Some swearing, lots of blood and fever and so on.

It was bright, and that was all he knew. There was darkness and there was brightness, and the brightness hurt his eyes. It burned a white-hot hole that hurt so bad he tried shutting his eyes to escape it. But that didn't work and Chris realized it was because the brightness and the heat and the burning were pain. The only bright thing around that wasn't pain wasn't white or hot, either. It was blue, and he was looking at it and couldn't figure out why. He thought he might be lying down and tried to find his legs through the blaze of agony that was between him and them somehow . . . and fell through the darkness again, like a trap door.

It was later when he opened his eyes again -- at least later than it had been before. But 'before' was so damned uncertain that Chris wondered tiredly if time even meant anything any more. But he found he knew suddenly it was sky he was looking at when his vision cleared, and then he remembered he'd been shot. He knew the bullet had struck the right side of his chest and remembered hoping, as it leveled him like a hammer blow, that it would angle up and maybe miss his lung. Fury rose at that memory, sharp and white-hot as the pain itself, and he groaned and clenched a fist helplessly.

No one knew where he was. If he stayed here, he would die.

Chris clawed his way against the pull of oblivion with a grim determination that peppered his face in a burst of cold sweat. But even as he did, he felt himself losing ground. Red sparks burst across his vision as the blaze of agony flamed higher, burning ingots of molten metal racing from the bullet in his chest to neck and back, arm and abdomen as he fought to get up off the ground. _"To stay here is to die."_ It repeated endlessly now. At first it had been his own thought, an awareness. Now it seemed more like a taunt. _"Stay here and die. Stay here and die."_ The blue overhead was darkening as if twilight had come . . . but it was still day.

Chris heard a sharp cry of anguish and realized with a chill of cold dread that he was hearing himself as if from some other place, as if his own voice belonged to some other man. That man was fighting and losing, would have cursed if his breath wasn't being burned right out of his body, was suffering and dying alone. But that man was him, he reminded himself, thinking even more distantly in third person. Not "That man is me", but "That man is him." He grimaced then, and his heels jerked with the pain and the ferocity of his fight with it. His spurs rang dully against the earth, half-muted, the rowels digging into the soil. His arms spasmed suddenly, hands flying off the ground palm-up, fingers clenched, and then his knuckles beat a tatoo against the hard earth as he clenched his teeth and raised his head . . .

. . . and _made_ progress . . . inched one shoulder slightly off the ground, neck corded with effort and agony. Held his breath and squeezed his eyes shut and pushed against the pain consuming his chest like it was a boulder he could move by will alone. Slid one boot hard against the earth so that it scoured a fan shape in the soil. Shook more violently, clawing with his left hand at the sand and gravel and soil and litter of sticks where he lay, to find purchase. Screamed as a bolt of blinding agony arched his back like a bow, rigid as cast iron while an endless blaze of torture ripped his breath out all the way down to his gut in a single act of violence, and then pulled and pulled and twisted and tore . . .

Until Chris collapsed into stillness . . . a pale and deathly stillness in which the only thing moving was blood. It spread slow and thick, a darkening crimson that turned the earth black where it soaked in.

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Vin's face was dark with anger, crimson with suppressed rage. The pieces were starting to add up in ways that meant someone was liable to die -- maybe Chris, and absolutely whoever had lied, should that happen. Because someone HAD lied, and he knew that now.

Jarod Lacey had thrown the first lie right into Buck's face, with Vin standing right there beside him on the boardwalk outside the saloon. "Larabee never met my daughter at the train!" He had wheeled his blooded thoroughbred in the street, imperious, before Buck could even respond. "Tell that bastard when you see him that I've filed a formal complaint with Judge Travis. I know Larabee didn't want to do it from the start, but he let a young, innocent girl travel all the way from Ridge City by herself without even having the decency to tell me in advance so I could find another escort. You tell him what I did. I'll have him fired and thrown out of this town! Damned, too-good-for-anyone-else gunslinging son-of-a-bitch!"

Buck had risen to his feet, face mottled red and white with outrage and shock, and started to ask, "How the hell do you know--?" when Lacey cut him off.

"She just got home -- rode there by herself! BY HERSELF! No luggage, scared to death, crying and shaking." He raised a clenched hand, index finger pointed like a stab. "You tell him. You just tell him. I wrote Travis. There'll be hell to pay!" He set spurs to the tall thoroughbred and galloped away in a burst of fury that seemed to extend to his horse.

But Chris HAD met Victoria Lacey. Vin had left within minutes of Lacey's declaration, Buck unwilling to stay but having no choice, since all the others were out. Vin had the tracking skills that might locate Chris, and Buck wanted Chris to be found.

By the end of the day Vin had spoken to the livery man in Ridge City and learned Chris had been there. He had picked up the black gelding's tracks in the lowering twilight, individual prints he knew as well as he knew those of his master, and followed them by the light of a full moon -- so far, over three-fourths of the way to the ranch Lacey called his "estate". The entire distance, there had been tracks of a second horse right alongside.

Chris had come this far, and WITH Victoria Lacey -- but he hadn't made it to the end of the journey. The girl had shown up alone. Vin leaned forward, eyes narrowed and black with concern.

"Where the hell are ya', Cowboy?" he whispered.

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There was still darkness and brightness, but the darkness was softer and colder this time, and so was the bright. It was almost like . . . moonlight. Chris sighed, feeling with that realization the change that passing time had worked against him. There wasn't any thought of trying to move or get up this time. Not only was there no longer the strength, there was no longer the fire of life trying to go on. More than his blood had seeped into the ground under him with the long, cold hours. Body heat had gone too. Chris felt as cold and heavy as if he was a long flat boulder of stone.

It was hard to think and harder to remember things he knew he wanted to remember. Images of his friends' faces seemed to materialize and then dissolve, one after another, between him and the night sky. It surprised him that the images of his wife and child appeared among them, mixed into the sequence in no special order, and that the feelings they engendered were no less and no more than those for his friends. Well, at least what feelings he could still feel through the numbness. Maybe he'd really become a rock, he thought idly. If so, did rocks feel? Did they remember anything? He hoped, if he was becoming a rock, that with time the pain in his body would fade away, too, become numb and then distant and then finally forgotten.

One of the faces came back again, then, and somehow floated down closer to his own as if trying to look into his eyes. He squinted, trying to make out the features more clearly.

Vin.

"Of course," he thought. "Vin." And apparently in the thinking he somehow mumbled the word, so that the apparition answered him in a ghostly voice thin as the wind. He wasn't sure what it said, and knit his brows in confusion. The face looked more solid than he'd remembered it. Had it blocked out the moon behind it before? It disappeared suddenly, just as he wondered that, and Chris closed his eyes disappointedly. Gone, like the chimera it was, and he was alone.

Then he felt something that wasn't the wind. Something warm, so warm!, that slipped beneath his neck and cradled his head in a way that made him feel loved and not forgotten, remembered and not alone. Gratitude welled up in what was left of him, and he wondered if this was the moment of dying. But then he felt something cold as a dagger brush his lips, followed by a sharp tang of liquid. Chris fought that, tried to turn his head, but found the warm support held him firmly and wouldn't let that happen, gently forcing the icy liquid between his lips and into his mouth instead. He jerked, trying to escape it, and that woke up the pain that'd been steadily numbing, so that he cried out reflexively. The liquid spilled into his mouth much faster when his mouth opened, and it choked him. He coughed and then bit the side of his own tongue as his jaws clenched in agony. His heart pounded so loud and the pain was so bright that for a long time nothing else existed but that. There was no thinking, no knowing, no feeling, no being. Only pain and the explosive gallop of his own heart killing itself.

But this time, after it slowly subsided, he heard words. Words. His name.

"Easy, Chris."

That sounded like Vin! Chris blinked, trying to pull open his eyes by sheer will. There was a fuzzy, dim shape like a shadow between him and the moonlight. It shifted and moved, and he felt the support cradling his head and neck move gently with it.

"Hang on, Chris. Gonna' get ya' to Nathan." The whisper was hoarse, rough as sandpaper, but somehow the words were infinitely gentle, even tender. "Can ya' try an' take some more water before I get ya' up on my horse?"

So it had been water, that liquid. Water! Chris tried to nod, certainly willed himself to do that, whether it happened or not. And Vin gave him more water, very carefully this time, and Chris felt it seep down into his cold, stony body like a slow spiral of chilled life. Not warm yet, but moving. Moving like a man did, and like a rock didn't.

He opened his eyes again after that, and worked to focus on the dark face so close to his own. He wanted to raise his hand, grab a piece of Vin's shirt to reassure himself that the man was real and wouldn't evaporate -- but he was helpless. All he could do was look intently into those dark, fathomless eyes and touch the soul inside them, to find out.

And when he found out for himself that it really was Vin, he sighed and let himself slip away into the darkness again for a while. Because if Vin had hold of him, he wasn't going anywhere the tracker wouldn't be able to pull him back from. He had someone holding onto him now who wouldn't let go.

7-7-7-7-7-7-7

"I'm sure as hell glad you're back!" Vin practically growled the words as he kicked open the clinic door with the back of one foot, his heel slamming the wood so hard it rebounded and bounced off the hip he shoved out to catch it. Buck, bearing Chris's legs in his arms, followed as the sharpshooter backed into the room with Chris's half-folded torso grasped tightly against his own chest. There was a clattering of pans and instruments as Nathan threw things together.

"Put 'im here," he said shortly. He'd just returned -- they all had, but Buck -- not a half-hour before.

"God almighty!" panted Buck. "I'm gonna' drop his leg!"

"Got it!" JD leaped in just as the movement of being carried tore Chris's right leg from Buck's grip, and caught the limp limb before it could hit the ground and jar him. Vin was already starting to lower Chris's upper body to the bed as best he could without laying down on the bed himself first. It was a matter of sliding and lowering a limp body without dropping it that wasn't easy to accomplish -- but together the men did it.

"Out!" hissed Nathan. He didn't mean anythimg by it other than preoccupation and worry, and they knew it. His dark eyes were fixed on Chris's chest, the dried gore and the ugly dark hole that still seeped fresh red with the rise and fall of each breath. He was wiping his just-washed hands, his brain working a mile a minute, and the men backed out of the room to let him work without saying anything that would distract him.

Once on the landing, Buck pulled shut the door and turned to Vin, set a hand on the smaller man's arm.

"He say who did this?"

"Nope. Never said a word the whole time." Vin's face was tight though, tight and dark with locked-down rage, and Buck leaned closer to see it and know it for what it was.

"But you know."

"Got a damn good idea."

The men regarded each other in silence a long, pregnant moment, while JD -- who had started down the stairs and then stopped to listen -- watched them. Finally Vin sighed and shook himself, seemed to fall in on himself as if relaxing or giving up. He blinked and spoke softly, his gaze still fixed on Buck's.

"Sign out there was pretty clear. Damned clear." He paused again, so long that this time Buck spoke first.

"And . . . ?"

Vin looked away, out across the town and the street below, to the rolling hills beyond. Then he brought his gaze back to Buck, and this time his eyes flashed white, as with lightning bolts.

"And you know well as I do who done it. Only one person coulda'."

"And the sign supports it."

"Sure as hell does. No question, far as I can see."

Buck's hat had been hanging down behind his back on the string, but at this he pulled it up and jammed it down onto his head, and then pushed his gunbelt down over his hips as his mouth went grim and tight. "Think I might pay me a little call on someone, as soon as we know about Chris."

Vin smiled a tight, feral smile. "Figure I might just come along with ya' then, Bucklin."

The taller man slapped the younger one's shoulder and they set off down the stairs, splitting to go around JD as they headed for the street with heavy treads, boot heels thumping the wood.

"Hey! Hey, wait!" called JD. He hurried to catch up. "WHO must have shot Chris? What's going on? Hey WAIT!"

7-7-7-7-7-7-7

Afternoon sunlight fell across an edge of the damp, wilted pillow, turning that one little piece golden. It made Chris's face look even paler at the edge of the shadows, nearly blue. Vin sighed and leaned forward to study his friend's face intently. Even unconscious, the features twitched slightly in pain from time to time, his head rolling faintly against the pillow when fevered nightmare or wrenching agony drove a groan from panting lips. The tracker spoke without looking up.

"Nathan--"

"I don't know any more than I did ten minutes ago, Vin." The healer smiled sadly when Vin looked up in surprise at having been interrupted. "You've only asked me the same thing fifty times today."

Vin nodded wordlessly, working his lips in thought, and frowned in concentration. His gaze fell on Chris's pale face again, and then dropped lower to the white bandage wrapped so tightly around his right shoulder and chest. No blood showed there now, but Vin couldn't forget how much there had been there . . . when he'd found Chris. God, he'd thought he was dead at first. The tracker lowered his face and rubbed his hands against it wearily.

"Y'oughtta' go an' rest for a spell," Nathan said softly. "Won't do him no good if you--"

But Vin was already shaking his head, blue eyes troubled. "Not yet. Not yet."

Nathan drew a chair over close to the bed and sat down so that he could look at Vin sitting across from him. Between them and a bit lower, on the bed, Chris's irregular breathing was ragged, sometimes half-choked. The skin of his torso was slick with sweat wherever bandages didn't cover it. Nathan set his dark gentle hand upon the wounded man's forearm and studied his face as intently as Vin just had.

"If he can ever shake this fever, I think he'll be all right," he said again. He'd explained it two days ago, and one day ago, and this morning, and this afternoon. He figured he'd explain it again every few hours until either the fever broke or Chris hit the limits of his dwindling strength and passed on.

"Feel like I oughtta' be out takin' care of the one who did this to him," muttered Vin. His face darkened. "But I can't leave 'til I know for sure, one way or the other."

"Do what ya' think's best, Vin. I got no quarrel with ya' either way." Nathan got to his feet and stretched. The last few nights had been long ones, and trying. Chris had been through hallucinations from delerium several times, each time tearing loose a few stitches and losing blood he could ill afford to lose. They'd all had to fight him, but only Vin had been able to calm him down in the end. Nathan wasn't about to suggest the younger man leave right now to deal with the shooter. But he also knew Vin didn't react well to constraints or pressure. Independent though he was, he was level-headed enough to do the right thing if you left him alone.

"C'mon, Chris. You can make it," whispered Vin. There was a catch in the low drawl that Nathan pretended not to hear. He hurried to the door as if to run an errand, realizing suddenly that the man standing vigil needed privacy for a moment. He had just set a hand to the knob when he heard a short sound like a cough, that he knew had to be a choked sob. God. He leaned his forehead against the door and felt the wood against his skin. Broken bones and bullet holes -- he knew what to do for those things. He might not win the fight, but he knew what to do. A breaking heart was something else altogether.

Nathan turned only his face, to regard the slender young man sitting in the pooled sunlight, his hand on the still, pale arm of his friend, and found his own eyes filling with tears. Both of those men were capable of violence, both could stand up to great evil without batting an eye . . . And here was one of them silent and limp as a stillborn, and the other one totally helpless. No bullet Vin could shoot, no trail he could follow, no punch he could throw could help Chris Larabee now. The healer remembered something Josiah had said to him the night before, when they'd gone to eat a small dinner with little appetite.

"In the end," he had said, "we're all the same -- helpless, and dependent on grace."

"I'm gonna' go git a . . . some coffee," choked out Nathan. He hurried out the door and closed it behind him much harder than he'd meant to, knowing full well that he wasn't the only strong man standing on those floorboards who wept at that moment.

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"You know you look like hell, don't ya'?"

Vin shrugged and hunched lower into his coat, pulling his hat down. Buck stroked his mustache and frowned as if he'd found offense at his own words, which had been directed towards the tracker. His voice softened and he tipped his head.

"Reckon I'm grateful ya' went so many nights without sleep though. I was beginnin' to think we'd lose him this time. But you--"

Vin threw Buck a sharp look that was half-taunt and half-impatience. "Hell, Buck. Only reason ya' like me stayin' up all hours is 'cause it makes you look prettier by comparison."

"Oh, I am wounded." Buck pressed a hand to his chest, and Vin scowled quickly and looked away. A pained silence fell over the two men riding at the head of a group of five, Josiah, Ezra, and JD following not far behind.

"Sorry, Buck," Vin rasped. "Cuts a little close to the bone, still -- hearin' you say that, your hand there an' all."

"It does at that." Buck frowned and his brow knit over hardening eyes. "So let's take care of this part of things."

They had emerged into a large ranch yard as they spoke, and reined in their horses at the base of a wide set of white stairs that led to a high porch set off with two-story plantation-style columns. A door with enormous insets of cut-glass lead crystal moved on silent hinges and a man stepped out onto the porch, his face serious.

"Mornin', Jarod." Buck's voice wasn't polite or gentle for once. It was plain and even and no-nonsense.

"What do you men want?" Lacey's voice wasn't even civil. Hostility sharpened his words and face, both.

"Wanna' talk to your daughter," drawled Vin. He cocked his head to one side as if thinking. "We'll wait if she's out."

"She's here," admitted Lacey, his frown deepening. "But I see no reason you--"

Josiah dismounted and pushed between Vin's black and Buck's gray to approach the steps. He set one foot upon the lower one and looked up at Lacey. His eyes were hard. "You might want to tell Miss Lacey that Vin here found Chris Larabee and brought him back to town. He's going to live."

Jarod Lacey's anger was suddenly overlain with confusion, but before he could say anything the door moved a bit more and a slender form stepped into the dark opening it framed.

Vin hadn't seen Victoria Lacey since she'd left for the East and the fancy boarding school her father had insisted she attend. Everyone knew the spoiled "Princess of Lace" hadn't wanted to go, but there was no other choice. Jarod Lacey meant to have a queen preside over his estate, and his wife was no longer living. Victoria was the alternative.

Now, looking at what she'd become, Vin felt his heart drop with certain knowledge that the young woman had only grown more headstrong and less stable during her absence. She'd left revelling in opportunities to push her father's cowboys to set her up with dangerous horses and even more dangerous stunts. She'd come home fixed in it, in some way having blended that with the eastern idea of what the west was like with a little Wild West Show thrown in. The result was the young woman strolling imperiously onto the porch wearing a doeskin costume very much like the one Annie Oakley was pictured in on the handbills he'd seen. Only, the Princess of Lace had eaten a good deal more of her favorite sweetmeats and filled out the costume in ways Little Sure Shot never had. He wondered if a seam would suddenly split if she took a deep breath. Victoria's slow, patrician tones interrupted his assessment.

"I don't see what this has to do with me," she said coolly.

She lowered her gaze to Josiah, standing below her, and regarded him as a queen might regard a kneeling subject from her throne. The preacher stared back up at her without blinking. He left the speaking to the two men behind him for a moment.

"You know what it's got t' do with you," Vin growled suddenly. He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, trying to keep from setting his hand reflexively to his gun.

"No," asserted Victoria calmly. "I do not."

Buck and Vin exchanged a lightning-quick glance of fury, and Buck's face reddened with it. He pointed to the girl's waist and the gunbelt draped just below it, over the top of her fringed split riding skirt.

"You always carry a gun, Miss?"

The steady eyes rose from Josiah to regard Buck now. "A girl has to protect herself in this country." Victoria smiled and covered her mouth with a girlish hand gesture. She giggled softly, dizzingly turning from sovereign to coquette.

"Miss." It was Josiah who spoke this time. "You might remember that Vin, here, is a tracker. A very good tracker. He's the one who found Chris, and he read the sign there. He knew what happened even before Chris came to and confirmed it." He paused, waiting for her to respond to his implication.

Vin leaned forward suddenly, one arm upon his saddle horn, and fixed the young woman with a furious glare. "How long're you plannin' to stand there an' lie t' us?" he demanded roughly.

"Lie!" Victoria Lacey drew herself up with a pale face. She slipped quickly to her father's side and he clasped his daughter's hands protectively.

"See here--!" he began.

"No, YOU see here!" countered Vin. He was off his horse the next moment and on the second step up from the ground, Buck right behind him and to the side. "Your daughter shot Chris Larabee an' left him t' die rather than admit anything. Then lied to cover it up."

"How dare--!!!"

"Let the man talk," said Josiah. His voice was deadly calm. Jarod Lacey swallowed, and his own face paled.

Vin climbed the steps as he spoke next, until he faced Victoria and her father on the porch itself. Buck trailed behind him and to one side, his eyes watching for Lacey's men causing trouble. JD and Ezra sat restive horses and stared down the hired hands drawn up across the yard, watching.

"You got no business carryin' a gun," spat Vin. "Don't even know how to use it, an' it went off on ya' by accident. Which wouldn't be such a problem if ya' hadn't been taking stupid fool chances with it all day, playin' with it, an' if Chris hadn't been comin' at ya' to take it away from ya' at the time." Vin's voice lowered to a menacing growl as he stepped nearer. "You laughed at him for thinkin' you could hurt yourself or anyone else with it. An' when you shot him, ya' told him he might as well just stay there an' die, an' you'd get yourself on home. Didn't ya'."

Victoria Lacey bit her lips. Then she threw back her long hair with a theatrical gesture. "What if I did?" she challenged. "It was an accident. You said so yourself. I'm sorry it happened. There. Now go away."

There was a collective low sound of menace from the five men ranged down the foot of the stairway and across the yard. Vin tipped his head and his eyes glowed like coals.

"First you gotta' give up your gun, Miss."

"I will not!" The girl stamped a foot and stepped forward, away from her father. "I have every bit as much right to carry a gun and shoot it as you do. Or as anyone else in this territory does. I'm a Westerner, and we--"

"Oh my dear, no," interjected Ezra. "You may have been born in the west, Miss Lacey. But you are no Westerner. That would require you to display characters such as honesty and humility." His eyes were cold as winter ice.

"I WON'T give up my gun," insisted the girl. "Or if I do, then I'll buy another. You can't stop me from--"

"We can stop you from being a threat to every man, woman, and child in this territory because of your fool ways. And we will. I will." Vin's mouth settled into a thin line when he said those words, and Victoria Lacey shrank back from him a little. She started to move her right hand, and Vin's mare's leg was in his hand in that instant, so quickly that the girl jumped with a startled gasp.

"One thing you need t' learn about wearin' a gun in the West, Miss Lacey," he drawled. "You go to draw it, you're liable t' get shot."

"You wouldn't dare shoot me!" Victoria's cheeks flamed scarlet with anger. She started to move her hand again, and Vin cocked the trigger on his own weapon.

"Chris meant t' just take that damn thing away from ya', but ya' had t' play games with it and try to twirl it around your finger. Only reason you ain't dead from that stunt is that you got a chance no man ever gets with a gunfighter like him. I reckon it was a one-time chance, though, and you've used it up. You won't get it from me."

The girl's lower lip extruded in a pout as she stood facing Vin, and then large tears welled up in her eyes. "Why are you being so mean to me?" she demanded.

"Does 'shooting a man and leaving him for dead' ring any bells?" Ezra's voice was dry enough to sand oak wood.

"I already APOLOGIZED for that!" shouted Victoria. "It was an accident! What's the matter with you men?!"

"I'm not sure you really understand what 'apologize' means, Miss Lacey," observed Josiah. "Certainly the concept of conscience seems beyond your experience. And that of your father." He looked pointedly at Jarod Lacey, who was standing immobilized as he watched the unexpected byplay between his daughter and the law of Four Corners.

"Go away!" screamed Victoria suddenly.

"Gimme your gun first," said Vin.

"I've apologized and apologized! What do you WANT from me!?"

"Your gun," repeated Vin. "Your not gonna' hurt or kill anyone else. Not around here." He jerked indefinably in response to a subtle shift of balance on the part of the girl, and his voice shaded suddenly deadly. "If you try to draw, I WILL shoot you. I know just exactly how dangerous you really are, which is somethin' Larabee didn't. Don't ignore me. And don't think you can move your hand even another half inch without me removin' most of your fingers."

A deathly silence settled over the yard as Victoria stood paralyzed. Her eyes were locked on Vin's, testing to see if he was as adamant about the point as he seemed to be.

"Now," breathed Vin. "You can unbuckle the gunbelt -- slowly -- and drop it to the porch. Or you can raise your hands and let me."

Victoria turned to her father instead.

"Shoot him for me, Daddy."

"WHAT?!?!" Jarod Lacey threw his hands out away from his body as he cast a horrified look at Vin. Then he turned disbelieving eyes upon his daughter, who was swinging her hips back and forth angrily, eyes bright with fury.

"That man," said Victoria. "He just threatened me. You heard him. He says if I don't give him my gun, he'll TAKE it from me! And if I try to stop him by pointing it at him, then he'll SHOOT me! Kill him! Kill all of them!" Her lips were white with anger, and her eyes were suddenly filled with furious tears of rage. She looked at her father and screamed, "OH! You aren't going to do it! My own father won't act like a man! What's the matter with everyone here!? How many times do I have to apologize for something? Why are you all TREATING me like this!?!?" She dashed the tears from her eyes with an abrupt gesture, shouting, "I'm going back East again, where people are DECENT! Not savages!" And turning suddenly on her heel, the girl started for the door. Vin blocked her way.

His gun was leveled at her. He nodded at her waist. "Your gun."

An exasperated hiss of wordless rage was the girl's only reply, and Vin's eyes narrowed. "Miss, I've pulled my gun an' I have it pointed at ya'. I don't ever pull a gun an' I don't ever point it at someone, less I mean t' shoot 'em. I've given ya' more chances than I shoulda', seein' as how I KNOW you don't know that. Any fool that plays with a gun the way you did, when ya' shot Chris, don't. But this is your last warnin'. Give . . . me . . . the gun."

With a sudden hateful gesture, the girl jerked loose the buckle and ripped the gunbelt from around her waist. Shoving it against Vin's chest, she tried to push past him into the house. He caught her, though, and slammed her against the doorframe, shaking with barely-controlled anger.

"You stupid, foolish little liar! If I ever see you around these parts again, you won't have to be wearin' a gun t' cross me. Get outta' here, an' do it fast before I change my mind about lettin' you live." He leaned in closer, set his face so close to hers that she would have turned away if he hadn't had her pinned so tightly. "If you were a man, I'd have killed you for lyin' about it, an' leavin' him there to die just t' cover your own behind. Do you understand yet?"

The girl nodded faintly, eyes large and still furious, but her face pale. Vin stepped back then and released her, and the men heard her rapid footsteps disappearing into the house. Vin jerked the pistol from the gunbelt he'd confiscated and threw the empty leather at her father's feet with disgust.

"I trust YOU understand," he spat.

Jarod Lacey just nodded, one shaking hand finding its way to the porch railing to steady his trembling legs.

Without further comment, Vin, Buck and Josiah remounted, and all five men galloped out of the yard. The sound of hysterical, furious crying floated out of an upstairs window as they left, followed by the crash of bric-a-brac being thrown against the walls in a rage.

7-7-7-7-7-7-7

Once again Tanner sat on the little chair by the bed in Nathan's clinic -- the bed that was really Nathan's own, but that so often supported the healing bodies of his friends. And once again, late afternoon sunlight gilded the edge of the pillow upon which Chris Larabee's head rested as he slept.

Still far too pale, his skin was at least white now, instead of pale blue. Dark hollows beneath his closed eyes spoke to the depth of illness that still claimed him even though he was finally, however slowly, on the mend -- at least according to Nathan. Vin was worried and had a hard time shaking the fear that Chris was going to have a difficult time with this. The nature of the events that had taken place, the personality of Victoria Lacey -- with which Chris'd had to deal for a long day before she'd brought disaster down on them both, the very fact that the girl's lack of conscience was so reminiscent of Ella Gaines -- all of those things weighed oppressively on Vin's hope that Chris would heal quickly. The fact that Chris had apparently been plagued by nightmares from which he often woke startled wasn't reassuring, either. Even as Vin thought about that -- and despite the silence of Vin's presence and of the room itself -- Chris startled suddenly in his sleep, and his eyes opened in weary, confused alarm.

"It's ok," said Vin. He put his hand out to Larabee's closest arm, grasping and squeezing it gently. Chris's eyes slowly gained focus and then slid sideways to regard the man sitting nearby. His lips parted very slightly, and he exhaled shakily. Vin nodded and released Chris's arm to reach for a cup of water on the table by the bed. He didn't say anything about it, simply slid one arm beneath his friend's neck, raised his head carefully, and held the cup to his lips. Chris sipped a small amount and then sighed, closing his eyes again, and Vin lowered his head to the pillow and returned the cup to the table. He leaned forward and draped his forearms across his thighs, studying Chris's face carefully. The injured man spoke then, in a voice that was weak but clear.

"You ever go home?" he asked. He tried to effect a querulous tone of voice, and the small effort left him nearly breathless. But he smiled very faintly nevertheless and opened his eyes to regard his friend's face. Vin shifted his weight on the chair.

"Thinkin' to shake me off your trail?" A small twitch pulled at one corner of Vin's mouth.

"Never!" declared Chris. Vin chuckled softly. Chris's face grew more serious and he eyed Vin in a way that made the younger man feel a shaft of concern. "You know, I figured that was it for me, Vin," the wounded man said softly, unexpectedly. "Sometimes I think that again. Then I wake up."

"It can take some gettin' used to -- livin' through a thing that shoulda' killed ya'." Vin agreed. His face was serious, too. Chris was silent a long moment, then spoke so softly that Vin had to strain to hear the words.

"Second time now. For me."

Vin cocked his head, thinking, as Chris closed his eyes again. He watched his friend ride out a wave of the pain that still plagued him, waiting to see if he wanted to continue the conversation. After a long moment, Chris squirmed slightly on the bed, trying vainly to get more comfortable, and Vin stood up to lean over him and gently rearrange the pillows beneath his chest and arm. When he finished, Chris sighed and regarded the younger man with weary eyes.

"Thanks," he said softly.

Vin just smiled openly and settled back into the chair, sliding down onto the base of his spine. He crossed one foot up over the opposite knee. "You hear yet about Buck an' this new gal he turned up, who does a high-wire act in some circus? We didn't believe it at first, but damned if she can't--"

"Vin."

"Yeah?" The younger man broke off his story to lean closer to his friend again, face closed in with worry once more.

"You know the difference . . . between the first time . . . and this one?" Chris was panting, his strength fading again as pain and injury pulled him back into darkness that was still more than just sleep.

Vin blinked, surprised. He hadn't expected this part of the conversation to go on. He'd brought up Buck's latest lady friend, in fact, to give his friend a distraction to get out of it. But he looked into the clouded green eyes fixed on his own, pain still shining just behind them, and shook his head slowly. "No," he said.

"First time," and Chris paused, marshaling his strength, ". . . I kept thinkin' I'd wake up an' they'd still be there. But I was alone. This . . . " He gasped lightly, and shifted in the bed, but pressed on when Vin would have stopped him. "This time . . . I keep thinkin' I'll wake up . . . an' still be alone. And . . . _I'm not_."

The injured man's eyes brightened indefinably.

"This one's a lot better . . . to get used to." Chris sighed. His eyelids drooped and his breath slowed as he drifted to sleep while speaking the next words. "Almost feels like . . . comin' full circle somehow. Comin' . . . home."

Vin sat silently a long moment, watching the slow rise and fall of his friend's chest as he slept. And healed. Then he smiled. He reached into his coat pocket to slip out his battered harmonica and, raising it to his lips, he began to blow air across the holes in the nearly soundless way he liked to do sometimes. A low and faintly melodic rush of air slowly filled the clinic room, until it almost seemed as if great douglas firs were whispering in a wind all around the two men.

On the bed, Chris Larabee's features relaxed in his sleep, until at last they formed an expression of deep and simple peace.

The End.