Part 8
About an hour
later, after Buck and Vin had finally gotten to eat,
Buck decided to stop back by the telegraph office to see if he had gotten a
reply.
Sure enough,
he arrived just as the link opened and it came through. Buck watched the operator and knew something
was up by the way the man’s eyes widened.
When
Buck opened
the telegraph quickly and read the message.
About time someone asked—Standish
arrested on contempt of court—caused scene when judge let family’s murderers
go—judge implied that white men should not die for killing colored
woman—Standish escape—hunt down those freed—killed all six in duels—all above
board.
Travis
Buck slowly
folded the message back up and bowed his head.
How wrong they had been! Since
the beginning they had viewed Ezra as a shiftless, greedy bastard. A man with no heart or
conscience.
Yet now, they
were finding that their friend not only very much had a heart, but that he had
survived an experience that would have driven most of them to insanity. The only one of them that came close to
understanding what Ezra had been through was Chris, and Chris had had enough
trouble dealing with losing one son. If he had had two and lost both of them? Buck shuddered as he thought about that. There would have been no way he could have
held Chris together.
Buck jumped
when Vin practically appeared out of thin air a foot
from his left elbow.
“What’s he
say?” Vin asked, in his usual blunt manner.
Buck silently
handed him the telegram and headed for the saloon. He needed a drink before going back to face
Ezra. Even if Ezra wasn’t awake at the
moment, he didn’t think he could stand to be there and know what he knew. He knew he needed to apologize, but right now
he was afraid he wasn’t going to get the chance.
It was only
after he was half way down the sidewalk that Buck realize that the only reason
he had been able to hand that telegram to Vin and expect him to be able to
understand it, was because of Ezra.
After Ezra had acted so rudely to Vin about the
poetry, Ezra had apologized and volunteered to teach Vin to both read and
write. By way of restitution, he
said. Vin was
no fool and had taken him up on the offer immediately. Buck shook his head in frustration with
himself. None of the rest of them had
offered, but the ‘shiftless, greedy bastard’ had not only offered, but also had
unfailingly followed through on that promise, finding time whenever Vin asked him about it.
As he
continued toward the saloon, Buck also thought about all the time Ezra spent
with the children of the town every week, or the village if they were out that
way. Since there was no school in town
as yet, Ezra had taken it upon himself to teach the basics of reading and
writing to the children. Using his own
books, he had set up a system whereby the children would learn to read a
passage from one of his books, then he would provide
them with paper and other materials for writing so that they could then copy
the passage out to keep for themselves.
By this time
Buck had reached the saloon, and going in, he got himself a drink and sat down
at their usual table. As he sat there,
he continued to think about all that Ezra had done around the town, yet never
seem to receive, or for that matter desire, any recognition or credit for.
A little while
later the chair beside him was pulled out and Vin
dropped into it with a soft sigh.
“Damn!” the usually quiet man burst out after a few seconds as he handed
the telegram back to Buck.
Buck remained
subdued as he agreed. “That about covers it.”
“We’ve been a bunch’a jackasses to him, ain’t
we?” Vin asked.
JD arrived at
the table just in time to hear Vin’s comment, and his
curiosity was piqued. “What are you
talking about?”
Buck looked
up momentarily, but couldn’t seem to meet JD’s eyes. “Ezra,” he answered him
brusquely.
When no more
information was forth coming, JD prodded, “And…?”
Vin
stayed quiet, but Buck finally asked, “JD, did you ever wonder what Judge
Travis slapped Ezra in jail for?”
“Of course,”
JD countered. “I asked him at the time,
and Judge Travis told me it was for contempt of court.”
“Did ya’ ever
ask any more about it?” Vin asked.
“Well, no,”
JD replied a little more subdued. “I
figured that was Ezra’s business and he could tell me if he wanted to.”
“Really wish
you’d asked Ezra at the time, JD. I
really wish you had,” Buck said as he slung back the last of his drink. When Buck stood to go, he noticed the look of
utter confusion on JD’s face, handed him the telegram, and explained, “The
contempt charge was for yelling at the judge that let the men that murdered his
wife and sons go. He skipped out to hunt
them down and punish them.”
“Damn!” JD
murmured as he slowly opened the telegram to read it.
“That about
covers it,” Buck repeated as he slowly strode from the saloon to resume his place
at Ezra side.
~~~~~
Later that
night, Chris and Buck sat in the clinic with Ezra, taking turns bathing the ill
man’s face with a wet cloth. Three hours
after the confrontation, and subsequent revelations that afternoon, Ezra’s
fever had started to come down, not a great deal, but enough to where Nathan
felt safe leaving Ezra’s side and getting some sleep.
As they sat
quietly beside the bed, each of them thinking of the years they had known this enigmic man, yet in all that time, neither of them could think
of a time where Ezra had given any indication of the magnitude of loss he had
experienced. There had been a few small
clues that they had missed, but Ezra had hidden so well, they had never
suspected anything.
“How, Buck?”
Chris suddenly asked. “Just answer me
that.”
Caught off
guard, Buck responded, “How what?”
“How did he
hide it?” Chris said. “Standish…Ezra…
he’s suffered so much, yet none of us had a clue.”
Sighing, Buck
answered, “He’s had a lot of practice hiding it, Chris. He’s been practicing for years. You remember what Maude is. She taught him to hide everything, every
emotion, every pain. He probably never
thought of not hiding it.”
“It’s still
hard to realize that he’s lost more than even I have, and yet I never suspected
a thing. He hid it so well that I never
saw it,” Chris lamented.
“We also
never looked for it either.” Buck
pointed out.
Seeing the
belligerent expression growing on Chris’s face, Buck continued, “You know I’m
right, Chris. We’ve never taken the time
to get to know Ezra Standish, the man.
We’ve been too busy being wary of the Gambler that that was all we saw
most of the time. For the last three
years, we’ve not bothered finding out who he is, being
too concerned with what he is.” Buck
looked back down at the sweaty, still face lying on
the pillow as Chris thought about what he had said.
Instead of
blowing up, as he might once have done, Chris stopped and really thought about
what Buck had just said and found that he agreed. “Yeah, I guess so. That damn mask he wears all the time fooled
us all. Why he wants it that way, I
don’t know.”
Buck shook
his head as he said, “I don’t think it’s that that is the way he wants it, so
much as that is the only way he knows how to be. Maude forced him into that way of life as a
child, and that seems to be the way he makes his living now. Probably the only time where he has ever been
able to live as himself was while he was married, and the memories would
be….” Buck stopped when he saw Chris
wince and knew that he understood what Buck was trying to say. Ezra’s life had probably always been a
façade, and it would be a hard habit to break, but Buck was determined that
when Ezra got better, he would not be allowed to retreat behind that front
again. Buck wanted to get to know the
real Ezra Standish; the few glimpses he had seen fascinated him, and he wanted
to know more.
Even as he
made that decision, he heard a low moan coming from the man under his hand, and
both he and Chris moved closer to the bed, ready incase Ezra started trying to
move around.
“Ezra?” Buck called quietly, mindful of what Nathan
had told him about making sure Ezra came fully to consciousness, but not shout
at him.
Ezra turned
his head toward the familiar voice as he tried to figure out who it was. Very carefully he blinked his eyes open and
squinted up and the indistinct figure standing over him in the dim light. “Buck?”
Buck’s heart
leaped as Ezra said his name. Glancing
up he saw a smile growing on Chris’s face to match the one he knew was on his
own face. Ezra was back with them! Reaching out, he touched Ezra’s forehead and
found it even cooler that it had been before.
“Ezra, how are you feeling?”
“Lousy,” Ezra
grunted. “What the heck happened, Buck?”
Buck noticed
that Ezra’s accent was shifted and his speech was vastly different from the
Southerner’s usually cultured tones and fifty cent words, but for the moment it
was enough that Ezra recognized him. “You fell and hit you head on the rocks
out by the pool at Thompson’s Rocks.”
“Oh,” Ezra
closed his eyes and he carefully brought his hand toward the bandages that
covered the left side of his head. “That
explains why my head is pounding so badly.”
Buck pulled Ezra’s hand down away from his head when he winced as he
gently touched the bandages. “Damn, that
hurts. What time is it, Buck?” Buck was surprised by the question and didn’t
answer right away, but Ezra looked toward the clinic window and realized it was
dark out. “Shit, I’ve got to get
home.” With that Ezra started trying to
get out of bed, but both Buck and Chris held him back.
“Hold it,
Standish,” Chris said, as he held one hand in the middle of Ezra chest to keep
him down. “You’ve been more out than in
consciousness for the better part of three days, damn it. You not going anywhere until Nate says you can!”
Ezra stopped trying to get up and looked at Chris in confusion, “Three
days?”
When Ezra
relaxed back onto the bed, Chris and Buck backed off slightly, no longer
holding Ezra down, but ready to move if Ezra should try again. “Yeah, three days,” Chris confirmed.
Ezra looked
up at them in confusion for a second, but finally his face cleared. “Oh hell, Rachel’s got to be really worried
by now. She’s never going to let me go
out alone again after this. She’ll
insist on going with me every time from now on.” As Ezra spoke, Buck and Chris’s hearts
sank. When he finished, Ezra turned his
head away from them and closed his eyes, drifting into a healing sleep.
“Ezra?”
Buck called, worried.
When Ezra
didn’t answer, Chris put his hand on his forehead. “His fevers still down. He’s probably just exhausted from the
infection,” he tried to reassure the worried man.
Both men sat
back down and were about to discuss what had happened when Nathan entered the room
and asked what had happened while he was gone.
“Ezra woke up
and seemed to know me, but he was thinking Rachel was still alive and waiting
for him to get home,” Buck explained as the healer came over to examine his
patient.
Nathan
actually smiled as Buck described what had happened. It was the first time the man had had reason
to smile in days, indeed since this whole thing had started. Finally he looked up at the two anxious men
waiting nearby and said, “He’s on his way back.”
“Why did he
think Rachel was still alive, though?”
Buck asked, still concerned for his friend’s mental state.
“That should
correct itself as he heals. Right now, his mind is still trying to sort
out the past from the present,” Nathan explained as he smoothed the covers and
tried to make Ezra more comfortable.
“He’s speech
was different, too,” Chris pointed out.
“Probably
more of the same,” Nathan reassured them.
Buck looked
back and forth from the man on the bed to the healer that had worked so hard to
keep him alive. He trusted Nathan
implicitly, but that didn’t allay all of his fears for Ezra. “Now what do we do?”
“We
wait. There nothing we really can but
wait,” Nathan lamented.
The three men
set about getting things in order for the night, but they were both reassured
and worried. It was good that Ezra had
woken up and seemed aware of his surroundings, but they were worried that he
had mixed the past with the present.
They could only hope that his mind would heal as his body healed.
