Another Fine Mess

Written By: Elspethdixon
Main characters: Ezra, JD, Nathan.
Warnings: "Another Fine Mess" contains violence, profanity, an unflattering portrayal of law enforcement officials, defamatory remarks about President Grant, gratuitous references to the Civil War, Nathan-torture (with accompanying Ezra torture!), ex-ConfederateSoldier!Ezra, and relatively little in the way of plot.

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Part One:

Ten days after the episode "Serpents":

The trail between Four Corners and Julestown, Ezra decided, for what was probably the twentieth time since that morning, was a wretched, dusty little slice of hell. Fine, pale brown dust drifted up from the sun-baked ground to cover his hands, his legs, the sleeves of his dark green coat—which was going to require a considerable amount of time and effort to clean—and likely his face and even the crown of his hat, as well. Not to mention covering Chaucer, whose dust-impregnated coat would probably take even longer to clean than Ezra’s.

And as if that were not enough torment and misery, there was also the heat of the sun, which beat against Ezra’s head even through his hat, and the nagging ache in his left side and arm, which were constantly being jarred and pulled by Chaucer’s movements. He was hot, tired, filthy, thirsty, and in pain, and it was all Nathan’s fault.

He was supposed to be on the stage to Ridge City right now, not here in the middle of this godforsaken desert. If he’d taken the noon stage, as he had planned, he would be halfway there by now, arriving in the larger town just in time to buy dinner at the Regent hotel before settling down to a profitable night at the gaming tables. A nice, long evening with no one hovering over him and the promise of a substantial amount of money in the bargain. If he were on the stage, instead of out here, he would be out of the sun and the dust, and a stagecoach ride—provided the driver didn’t run them through too many wagon ruts or whip the horses on too fast—would not have aggravated the half-healed gouges left by Stutz’s bullet. He’d had it all figured out, right down to conning Nathan into declaring him recovered enough to go.

But no, the blasted man had had to announce his intention to travel to Julestown in the saloon the previous night, and JD and Ezra had been roped into riding with him, because Mr. Larabee had decided, in the wake of the attempt on Mary’s life, that “nobody should go riding off alone.”

“Take Ezra with you,” he’d said. “He’s planning on leaving town for a day anyway. Might as well go with you instead off to Ridge City by his lonesome.”

And then JD had bounced up and announced that he wanted to go too—probably to escape the one-man sink of gloom Buck had turned into after Miss Perkins left town without him—treating Ezra’s going as a matter of course, and Ezra had had no choice but to change his plans. He was on thin ice as it was, and telling Chris Larabee no to his face would only have made things worse.

So now, instead of riding to Ridge City in comfort, Ezra was stuck in the middle of nowhere—a hot, dusty nowhere—being miserable. And to make matters worse, Nathan kept looking at him. Careful, assessing looks that said, ‘I know your side must be bothering you and I’m just waiting for you to flinch so I’ll have an excuse to examine it and lecture you about lying to me.’ Or maybe they said, ‘I bet you were planning on hopping on a train in Ridge City and taking off for St. Louis, now that you’ve shown us your true colors.” Well, he’d be wrong about the second assumption, though not about the first. Damned if Ezra was going to admit to being in pain, though. Not after pretending to be fine so he could go to Ridge City.

Instead, he opted for a pointed, sullen silence, and listened with half an ear to Nathan’s conversation with JD. He might not be in the mood to join in, but he didn’t really want to be alone with his thoughts either.

“You think this Dr. Milburn is gonna have any medical tools you can use?” JD was asking, twisting about in the saddle so he could look at Nathan.

“Maybe. Doc Green in Eagle Bend says he’s auctioning off nearly everything, so there’s gotta be something there I need. Scalpels, forceps, maybe some books. Might even be a stethoscope or a syringe. Those would be real useful.”

“What’s a syringe?”

“It’s a little metal and glass tube with a needle attached. You use it to inject medicine right into a man’s veins.”

JD made a face, and shuddered ostentatiously, but Nathan continued on, too caught up in his enthusiastic explanation to notice. “There was a piece about them in one of my journals. Some doctors think medicine works quicker that way, and you can use ‘em to give doses to people who are too sick to drink anything.”

“Oh. Um, that sounds great.” JD’s voice lacked enthusiasm. “Ah, Nathan, if you do find one of those tube-needle things, don’t try it out on me, okay?”

“That’s what Ezra is for.”

That last was enough to spur Ezra into abandoning his silence. “No, Mr. Jackson,” he announced through gritted teeth, “that is not what Ezra is for. Please confine your experiments to someone else. I have been poked and prodded enough by you in the past ten days to last me the rest of my life.”

“Ezra, I was joking.” Nathan shook his head, speaking in a “humor the nasty-tempered man” tone that made Ezra want to wipe the longsuffering expression right off his face. “Though, come to think of it, might be you’d learn not to go around throwing yourself in front of bullets if I had a nice big syringe to use on you afterward.”

JD actually smiled at that, and Ezra had to remind himself firmly that throwing his flask at one of his companions’ heads would be childish. “It’s not like I actually planned on getting myself shot. It was a momentary attack of stupidity on my part that I have no intention of repeating.”

“Good,” Nathan said. “Next time, you might not have a bundle full of stolen money in your coat.”

Oh yes, the Stutz money. Everyone just had to keep bringing that up, didn’t they? After all, if they just let the matter drop, Ezra might be able to forget about the whole miserable affair, and we couldn’t possibly have that, could we? Can’t let Ezra forget that we don’t trust him anymore. Not that they had trusted him overmuch in the first place.

That was another nice thing about Ridge City. No one there would have known about the money or Ezra’s role in the whole assassination affair.

“Yes, it’s fortunate that Stutz’s blood money was substantial enough to stop his son’s bullet,” Ezra snarked back. “A few hundred dollars less and I might be flat on my back with a punctured lung.”

“You were pretty lucky,” JD put in, cutting Nathan off just as he drew breath to speak. Ezra wasn’t sure whether he had done it on purpose or simply not noticed that the other man had been about to say something.

“Yeah,” Nathan said sourly, finally getting his two cents in. “He could’ve been going for a head shot.”

He could have indeed. The great variety of fatal spots Stutz's bullet could have struck him in had played upon his mind at length recently. He really didn't want to consider it any further. “Lucky?” Ezra raised his eyebrows and gave his two tormentors a stare that he hoped adequately conveyed ‘withering sarcasm.’ “If I were truly blessed with good fortune, I would be in San Francisco by now, free of bullet holes and busy enjoying my ten thousand dollars.”

The statement should have been difficult to argue with—wealth being eternally preferable to gunshot wounds—but Nathan tried anyway. “Your money-“ he started, sounding disgusted.

Ezra nudged Chaucer with one heel and trotted ahead, ignoring the slightly hurt expression on JD’s face at his abruptness. He didn’t let the gelding drop back into a walk until he was too far away to listen.

The brief trot jarred Ezra’s stitches and half-healed cracked rib even more. That, he decided, knowing he was being unfair even as he thought it, was Nathan’s fault as well.

“Ezra’s in a real bad mood today,” JD commented, as he watched the gambler’s chestnut gelding slow back down to a walk a good ten yards ahead of himself and Nathan. Ezra was riding with a straight-backed stiffness that practically telegraphed ill-temper. Or possibly pain. “Are you sure he’s okay to be riding out with us like this?”

Nathan shrugged, looking after Ezra with irritation plain on his face. “He seemed fine when I checked him out yesterday. Anyway, if he’s well enough to go gallivanting off to Ridge City to gamble, he’s well enough to come with us and do something useful.” He turned his eyes back to the ground ahead of them, then added, “ I’ll take another look at him when we stop for the night.”

“Oh, okay then.” If anything had gone wrong with Ezra’s healing injuries, Nathan would be sure to find it and deal with it. He had fixed JD’s own bullet wound back when Mattie had shot him, not to mention Buck and Josiah’s gunshot and sabre wounds after the fight at the Seminole village, and those had all been worse than Ezra’s messed up side. Of course, they hadn’t known that at first, and seeing Ezra lying there in the street bleeding had been pretty damn scary. Nathan had been right. If Stutz had been aiming for a head shot, Four Corners’ group of lawmen would have been reduced to six. And if he hadn’t shot at all, Ezra might have kept on going, out of town and south to Mexico or something, and they’d still have been six.

“So,” JD said, purposefully derailing that train of thought, “what’s Julestown like?”

“I dunno. I’ve never been there before. Josiah was there once, ‘bout a year ago. He says it’s a touch bigger than Four Corners, enough to have a couple of hotels and a school. No rail station, though.”

“I guess this Dr. Milburn’s heading out on the stagecoach, then.” JD shook his head. “I wonder why he wants to go back east. Doesn’t sound like he’d be short of business.” There was a slight tug on the reins in his hands as Milagro tried to reach his head to the left to sneak a bite out of a patch of tall grass, and JD shortened the reins, pulling his head back up. “Stop that. You don’t need a snack.”

“Maybe he just didn’t take to things out here,” Nathan said. “Some people don’t. I just hope he has a nice set of surgical tools I can buy.”

Didn’t take to things? JD supposed it was possible. You would never catch him cutting out and heading for the east coast again, but there'd been a time not so long ago when he hadn’t been so sure he belonged out here. When he'd first arrived, he had figured a little dust and risk was worth it for the chance to get a fresh start and try something new, but Annie dying had almost changed his mind.

Maybe this Dr. Milburn had lost a patient, and decided to give up medicine.

The three of them rode along silently for a while, Ezra staying out in front. As time went on, he dropped back a little closer to JD and Nathan, but he didn't say a word to either of them, not even to complain about how dusty he was getting--though it was obvious he wanted to, because he kept brushing ineffectually at his coat sleeves. When JD tried to start up another conversation by asking him what he'd planned on doing in Ridge City, he practically bit his head off. In a frigidly polite, Ezra sort of way.

Eventually, it started to get dark, and Nathan pulled up his horse. Ezra and JD followed suit.

"Are we stopping now?" JD asked, a bit surprised. There didn't seem to be any likely place to camp nearby. The trail forked up ahead, one branch winding around to the left and disappearing into a stand of trees, the other continuing straight on, up a long, gradual incline.

Nathan nodded. "According to Josiah, there's a creek on the other side of those trees. He says it's mostly dry this time of year, but there ought to be enough of a flow left to water the horses."

Josiah's prediction turned out to be correct; the creek bed was mostly empty, but a thin trickle of water still ran along its bottom, enough for the three regulators to refill their canteens and give their horses a drink. Milagro started edging toward the water even before JD had finished unsaddling him, shouldering Chaucer out of the way and earning JD a curse from Ezra, who was knocked a step backwards as his horse side-stepped to avoid JD's.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your animal under some kind of control," Ezra hissed through gritted teeth, pressing a hand to his injured left side.

"Sorry," JD apologized, a little hurt by the venom in Ezra's voice.

"Okay, that's it," Nathan announced. "Ezra, soon as you've finished with Chaucer, you're gonna sit down and let me get a look at that side a' yours. It's got you as bad tempered as a wet hen, and I for one am getting tired of it."

"It was perfectly fine this morning," Ezra said sulkily. "Of course, I can't speak for whatever damage riding all over Hell's half acre with you two may have done." Nevertheless, he dutifully stripped his coat off and unbuttoned his shirt and waistcoat so that Nathan could inspect the stitches over his ribs. Of course, this meant that both of them were otherwise occupied when the time came to set up camp, so JD had to collect wood and get a fire going by himself. He half suspected that Ezra had planned it that way.

Still, JD decided, as he set another armful of twigs down by the tiny campfire--built in a depression, like Vin had shown him, so that people riding up couldn't see the light--listening to Ezra whine while you cooked dinner over a campfire was better than sitting around back in Four Corners listening to Buck go on about Louisa Perkins and how all-fired perfect she was, and how he was a fool for letting her go. JD could now recite the entire list of Louisa's considerable—according to Buck—charms, as well as a good dozen ways to convince her to stay in Four Corners and marry Buck, all of them, of course, dreamed up after she had left. Chris had flat out told Buck to shut up about Louisa any time he was around. JD was about to the point where he was considering doing the same, despite his desire to be a good friend. He hadn't really liked Louisa all that much, anyway, given how she'd nearly gotten Buck to run off with her, and how her statehood campaign had come this close to getting Ezra and Mary killed.

He'd been careful not to mention that to Buck, though.

Ezra turned down his share of dinner, contenting himself with coffee heavily doctored with the contents of his flask, and was asleep with his head on his saddle before Nathan and JD had even finished eating. Still, Nathan had assured JD that Ezra's stitches were holding just fine and his wounds hadn't gotten infected, so he didn't worry too much. He didn't even worry about the fact that Ezra forgot to whine about sleeping on the ground, made no complaint about getting up at first light the next morning, and spent the entire rest of the ride into Julestown riding in silence. Ezra wasn't sick. Ezra was mad at them for some reason.

This suspicion was confirmed when they got to town, and Ezra announced, in no uncertain terms, that he found the very idea of purchasing medical supplies "insupportably dull" and was going to find a saloon and a game of poker.

"Course you are," Nathan said, "the rest of us being so boring. Have fun cheating people."

"I don't cheat," Ezra snapped. "One would think that fact would eventually penetrate the rest of y'all's heads. Or possibly that's too much to ask."

And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the livery stable, in search of his saloon. With him went most of the tension in the air.

JD watched him go with a sinking feeling inside his chest. Ezra usually went off to play poker whenever they hit a new town, but he wasn't usually so rude about it. Ezra snarling at them, Buck moping about Louisa…. Lately, it felt as if the Seven were drifting apart, like a family after someone had died. Except that they weren't a family, not really, despite JD's secret hopes that they'd end up one. Recent events had proven that.

Family trusted each other. Family didn't ride off and leave each other.

"So," Nathan said, cutting off JD's thought, "let's go find this auction. I'll show you the syringes I was talking about."

Across the street from the livery stable, Deputy Irving Harnett watched as the first of the three men he'd seen riding in stalked out, making a beeline for the nearest saloon. Harnett leaned against one of the posts holding up the general store's porch, and waited to see if the other two would follow him. Might be the three of them had just fallen in with each other on the trail and ridden into town together, or might be they were all three riding together.

He went over the contents of the wanted poster the Army had given Sheriff Aiken one more time in his head, mentally comparing the description on it with the newcomer who'd caught his attention. It matched, all right. Not perfectly--he had a beard when he'd held up the Army payroll wagon--but well enough. Beards could be shaved off.

When the other two--the negro and the kid--came out and headed in the opposite direction, toward Doc Milburn's office, Harnett breathed an inward sigh of relief. They didn't look to be with the gambler, which made things that much easier on Julestown's law.

Harnett watched the two men until he was sure they'd gone into Milburn's office, then left to tell Sheriff Aiken what he'd seen. By tonight, if his luck held, the Army's hundred-dollar reward would be his.

Dr. Milburn's office was crowded with people, more people than could really fit in such a small space. A good dozen men had been drawn in by word of the auction, though Nathan guessed one or two of them were only there out of curiosity, like JD was. The only two he knew personally were Doc Green, the thin, balding doctor from Eagle Bend, and Dr. Hunnicutt, the tall, moustached former Army surgeon from Dry Springs who had just lost out to Green in the bidding for a stack of back issues of the Philadelphia Medical Journal.

Green elbowed his way to the front of the crowd and collected his journals, leaving three dollar coins on the surgery table. He returned to his place by the window, already flipping through the topmost of the journals.

"Right," the auctioneer announced, "next up we have a lovely pair of-" he glanced down at the next of the items laid atop the table, a pair of forceps, and hesitated, "…tongs," he said finally. "Top quality metal tongs. Worth at least a dollar. Do I hear a dollar?"

"You going to bid?" JD asked from beside Nathan. He been watching the entire affair with interest, and had displayed noticeable disappointment when most of the contents of Milburn's medicine cabinet had gone to a grey-haired man in wire-rimmed spectacles instead of to Nathan. He been smugly triumphant that Nathan had gotten the entire stock of carbolic acid, though, something Nathan had felt pretty triumphant about himself.

"Naw." Nathan shook his head. "I already got four pairs of forceps. I'm holding my money for that Liston knife he's got up there. And maybe another stethoscope."

"I have a dollar," the auctioneer said. "Do I hear a dollar five?"

"Which one's the Liston knife?"

"It's on the table next to the clamps." Nathan pointed to the long, straight blade, which was gleaming in the noon sunlight. Dr. Milburn's surgery was clean and airy, with large glass windows that let light stream in. If the man had ever had curtains up, he taken them down and packed them away now, so there was no cloth to keep any of the sun out. "The one that looks sorta like a big straight razor, and comes to a point at the top. So's it can cut clean through a man's muscle," he explained.

"Oh," JD said softly. His dark eyes were wide, and he looked a little green. Nathan could have explained that an amputation was easier on the patient if a doctor did it as quickly as possible, but he didn't think the younger man would really want to hear those sorts of details. Most people didn't.

"I don't like taking a man's arm or leg, I done enough a' that in the war, but if I ever have to, I'll need the right tools. Remember how Jim Daniels' leg nearly went bad?" Daniels had broken his leg last month, when the axle of a wagon he'd been trying to push out of the mud had snapped, dropping the side of the wagon bed on him. It had been a nasty, compound fracture, and the wound had gotten infected badly enough that Nathan had had to re-open and drain it twice. Only luck and Daniels' own strong constitution had saved him from losing his right leg below the knee.

JD nodded, but he eyed the Liston knife with obvious unease.

"Sold to the gentleman in the back for one dollar, seven cents," the auctioneer said, slapping his palm down on the table again. "And now," he reached down and picked up the Liston knife, holding it up by the handle to that the entire room could see it, "we have a real beauty of a knife. Good steel, nice bone handle." He tested the edge of the blade with a thumb and winced; apparently it was well sharpened. "And it's got a fine edge on it, too," he added. "Do I hear six dollars?"

"Six dollars," Nathan called out, raising his hand to call the man's attention to him.

"Six-fifty," Hunnicutt countered.

"Seven dollars," Nathan said, raising his hand again. He wanted that Liston knife. It was good steel, just as the auctioneer had said, better quality than any of Nathan's surgical knives or even his throwing knives. From the way the metal gleamed, it might even be better steel than Ezra's shaving razor, which had come from one of the finest shops in New Orleans and cost nearly fifteen dollars. Everything Ezra had was the finest quality he could get his hands on, and he took pleasure in informing people of this fact.

Nathan pushed the irritation that the thought of Ezra had conjured up out of his mind--mule-headed, never quite trustworthy, always reverting to his same old slick, arrogant, conman self just when Nathan got to where he expected better of him--and focused back in on the Liston knife. It truly was a good blade, easily worth eleven dollars and more.

The rest of the room agreed with him. The older man in the wire-rim spectacles bid eight dollars. Hunnicutt raised it to eight-fifty. Nathan raised his own bid to nine dollars, and a weak-chinned man in an expensive waistcoat raised the bidding yet higher, to ten-fifty.

"Eleven," Nathan said loudly. The man in the spectacles frowned and waved a hand dismissively, and JD elbowed Nathan with a pleased grin.

"Serves him right for buying all that laudanum and ipecac," he said gleefully. "That's our amputation knife."

"Eleven-fifty," Hunnicutt said.

In the end, Nathan got his knife for twelve dollars and forty-nine cents, which left him with just over fourteen dollars in his pocket, but was well worth every penny. The man in the expensive waistcoat glared daggers at him, but Nathan didn't care. He collected the Liston knife, and carefully put it away in his leather surgical kit--a Christmas present from Josiah--then rolled the leather kit up and tucked it away in his medical bag. He truly hoped he'd never have call to use the business-like surgical tool--it was the next thing to a butcher's knife, and butchery was what it was used for--but it was a fine, quality tool of a kind he almost never got to own. The kind he was never able to afford new, especially since the prices for medical equipment had a way of going up any time he purchased them in person rather than by mail, if the man behind the counter didn't approve of the idea of a black man practicing medicine.

Nathan watched, letting himself be entertained by the small dramas of bidding contests, while the rest of the medical supplies were sold off. Slowly, the collection of items diminished, to be replaced by a pile of coins and greenbacks stacked up beside the auctioneer. Finally, only the stethoscope was left.

"And last but certainly not least, we have a stethoscope. Practically brand new, gentlemen, with rubber tubing and everything." The auctioneer hefted the stethoscope in both hands, grinning the grin of a man whose business for the day was almost over. "Starting at eleven dollars."

"Eleven-fifteen," Nathan offered. He had held off bidding on anything else after buying the Liston knife, so that he'd have enough cash left to bid on the stethoscope, which was in considerably better shape than his own worn metal-and-wood one.

The man in the expensive waistcoat, the one who had lost out in the bidding for the Liston knife, frowned. "Eleven-twenty-five," he said loudly.

"Eleven-thirty," someone else countered.

"Eleven-fifty," Nathan said.

"Twelve-fifty," the man in the expensive waistcoat snapped, giving Nathan a nasty look.

"Thirteen dollars," JD shot back, glaring at the man. Then he glanced guiltily at Nathan.

Nathan smiled, and let the bid stand. It would leave him only a dollar to get dinner and a bed tonight, but weighed against a new stethoscope…

"Fifteen dollars," Waistcoat snarled.

Everyone looked to Nathan and JD, waiting to see if they would top his bid, and Nathan shook his head. That was more money than he had--and more money than a used stethoscope was really worth.

"Fifteen dollars," the auctioneer repeated. "Do I hear fifteen-five? Fifteen-ten?"

The room was silent. Everyone present had clearly already spent most of their money, and none of them were willing to pay top price for one more piece of medical equipment. None of them except Waistcoat.

"Sold, to the gentleman in the front there, for fifteen dollars." The auctioneer, slapped his palm on the table one last time, hard enough to echo through the packed room. "And we're done here, folks." He gathered up the cash from the table and presented it to Dr. Milburn, who had been standing against the far wall, watching the goings-on without much apparent interest. Milburn perked up when he was handed the money, though, counting it quickly--Nathan was again reminded of Ezra--and tucking it inside his coat with a small, pleased smile.

The crowd started to break up, Doc Green and the man in the wire-rims making for the door. It was smaller crowd than it had been at first; one or two of the onlookers had already left, disappointed when no shouting matches or fistfights had broken out over the bidding.

"Lot of money for a used stethoscope, Frank," Nathan heard Dr. Hunnicutt comment mildly.

"It was worth it," the man in the expensive waistcoat--Frank--said, his voice smug. "I'd have paid twice that to keep that darkie from getting it. Their kind shouldn't be allowed to swan around pretending to be doctors."

The words weren't intended to be overheard, but they rang across the swiftly emptying room nonetheless. Nathan felt his face flush with heat, shame and anger mixing until he wasn't sure which emotion was greater. True, he wasn't a doctor, but he never claimed he was one. Just a man with some medical skill, willing to use it to where it was needed. Who was this self-important little ferret-faced man to tell him what he should and shouldn't do?

JD let out a growl more suited to Chris and took a step forward, fists clenched, and Nathan, recalled to the need to be practical by the possibility of trouble, grabbed his arm.

"It ain’t worth it, JD," he said softly. "I've been called worse by better." Not recently, though. Not in Four Corners, where people were finally starting to respect him, both for his abilities as a healer and for the work he did protecting the town. He'd stopped expecting to hear such comments, gotten out of the habit of taking abuse from white men who thought their skin color made them better than him, and it hurt more than it should have.

"Yeah, but he still shouldn't say-" JD protested.

"Leave it," Nathan said.

JD sighed, and Nathan felt the tension go out of his muscles. He let go of the younger man's arm, and nodded toward the door. "Let's leave."

"Yeah." JD agreed. The two of them started for the door, JD muttering, "he's lucky Josiah and Buck weren't here, the creep," under his breath.

Someone put a hand on Nathan's elbow just as he reached the door, and he turned around to see Hunnicutt standing there, a faint frown visible beneath his mustache.

"I guess you heard that," the surgeon said. "I'd ignore it if I were you. Frank lets his mouth run away with him, and nothing but hot air ever comes out. Actual sense might get in the way of his foot going in." He smiled, a pleasant, friendly smile that reminded Nathan just a bit of Buck.

Nathan found himself smiling back, reassured not so much by the fact that the man was apologizing for his colleague as by the reminder that there were people--people other than the rest of the Seven--who were willing to see past his race and treat him like an equal, not an ex-slave.

"Thank you," Nathan said quietly. And then he turned away and went out the door, his full medical bag tucked under his arm. He might have lost the stethoscope to a petty man's prejudice, but he had a new pack of surgical needles, a spool of fine, catgut thread, two bottles of carbolic acid, and a Liston knife. More than enough to justify making the two-day trip to Julestown.

His step was light as he descended from the clinic's porch into the street. It was still only early afternoon, and if he and JD could drag Ezra away from whatever poker game he had found for himself--not an easy task, but one Nathan was more than capable of carrying out--they could be on the road with plenty of daylight left, and back in Four Corners by tomorrow evening.

And that was when someone grabbed him by the collar.

"I've got you, you son of a bitch," a voice crowed loudly.

Nathan was already moving, jabbing an elbow back into the gut of the man holding him and twisting away when his captor's breath went out in a loud gasp and his grip loosened, even as he wondered desperately what in the pure hell was going on. Had the buyer of the stethoscope chased him outside, bent on further vengeance?

A stout, red-faced man with greying hair glared up at him, bent double over his abused stomach. "You'll pay for that, mister," he forced out through gritted teeth. "Now, drop your weapons and come along quietly, or my deputy there will put a load of buckshot though your chest." He straightened up, and nodded to two men who stood just behind him, flanking him. One of them had a shotgun in his hands, the other a pistol, and each had a tin star on his chest. The red-faced man had a star pinned to his coat as well, Nathan realized, a star with the word "sheriff" stamped into the metal.

"No." Nathan said flatly. He straightened his coat, which had been pulled crooked by the man's grip. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I haven't done anything. Who are you, anyway?" he added, even though the star on the man's lapel made his identity as the Julestown's sheriff perfectly clear. He'd avoided a confrontation in Dr. Milburn's clinic, but this one had been forced on him, and he was damned if he knew why, or if he'd go along to jail just because some loud sheriff felt fit to grab him in the street.

He heard JD jump down from the porch behind him, his feet hitting the ground with a thud, and the sheriff and both his deputies stiffened.

"Stay where you are, kid. I'm Sheriff Aiken," the red-faced man continued, speaking to Nathan again, "and I'm putting you under arrest for stealing an army payroll and murdering two men."

"For what?" Nathan demanded. "What army payroll?"

"The one you and two other men held up three days ago on the road to Eagle Bend." Sheriff Aiken smiled a wide, satisfied smile. "A big negro on a dark-colored horse, with a heavy beard. Guess you thought shaving would throw the law off the scent. As if we'd miss noticing a man as tall as you."

Things were starting to make sense now, though not much sense. "Look," Nathan said, forcing his voice to sound calm and reasonable when he really just wanted to shout. This was the sort of thing that happened to Vin or Ezra, not to him. "You've made a mistake. I had nothing to do with your hold up. I'm a healer from Four Corners. I can show you my surgical tools." He pulled the medical bag out from under his arm and reached into it, intending to bring out his leather surgical kit, to prove that he was a respectable tradesman and not whatever criminal this Aiken had gotten him mixed up with.

The deputy with the pistol started visibly, and yelled, "Look out, boss! He's goin' for a gun!" And then he fired.

A heavy blow slammed into Nathan's thigh, and he went down hard as his right leg collapsed, sprawling on his side in the dirt. His medical bag went flying, landing a few feet away with a crunching noise like breaking glass. Probably the bottles of carbolic acid.

JD was suddenly there, standing over him with his Colt Lightenings in his hands. He had one of them trained on the sheriff, and one on the deputy who had shot Nathan, and Nathan suddenly knew that both of them were going to die here, shot down in the street for a crime neither of them had committed. He felt a sudden surge of sympathy for Vin--was this how he had felt, when Eli Joe had showed up in Four Corners with that warrant?--but mostly he felt anger at the unfairness of it all.

"Drop those guns, boy," Aiken said, "or you'll be next." He thumbed the hammer back on his pistol, and Nathan could hear the clicking sound it made even through the echoes of the gunshot that still resounded in his ears. Everything seemed unnaturally sharp and clear, as if things were happening more slowly than they should.

He tried to get back to his feet, to stand up next to JD--the boy couldn't cover all three of the lawmen with only two guns; someone needed to get a bead on the one with the shotgun--but his right leg refused to work, and as he tried to move it, an explosion of pain awoke below his hip. He sagged back to the ground, hands clutching at his bleeding thigh. Everything greyed out for a moment, and his ears were filled with a humming sound that blocked out what JD was saying to Aiken. God, it hurt.

"… three of us and one of you," Aiken was saying, his gun still trained on JD. "You got no way out, kid. Now lower those guns, or you'll be the one bleeding next."

"What in the name of God is going on out here?" Dr. Hunnicutt demanded from the clinic’s doorway.

Both deputies swung around violently, their guns coming to rest on him, and he took a step back, hands up. Aiken and JD didn't move.

Then JD's shoulders sagged, and he lowered his Colts until they were pointing at the ground by his feet. Nathan felt a wave of relief, strong enough to make sweat break out on his skin, and to set him shaking. JD was not going to be shot down in the street after all. Good boy, Nathan thought. Do the smart thing and surrender. They could sort this out in a moment, as soon as everyone put their guns away. And do something about his leg, which was bleeding an alarming amount, and throbbing with a steady, intense pain that made everything from his toes to his teeth hurt in sympathy. He needed to stop the bleeding, get the bullet out… Well, someone needed to get the bullet out. Nathan knew it wasn't going to be him, not with the way his vision was starting to blur at the edges.

"Fine," JD said, his voice rough, as if he had to force the words out. "You win, mister. Just let me take a look at Nathan's leg."

"You can do all the looking at it you want after we've got the two of you locked up," the deputy with the shotgun said.

"You," Aiken snapped, "stay where you are and keep out of this."

Dr. Hunnicutt, who had been coming down the steps toward them, froze. Behind him, Dr. Milburn and the auctioneer stood together, looking shocked. "He needs a doctor," Hunnicutt protested. "Let one of us take a look at him."

"Nobody's looking at nobody," Aiken said. "He's going to jail where he belongs, and y'all can just go on about your business." He holstered his pistol and strode toward JD and Nathan, yanking JD's guns out of his nerveless hands. "You and your accomplice are coming with me, kid," he said, and grabbed JD by the shoulder, pulling the smaller man away. "Irving, grab the other one. Make sure you get his gun. Andy, you make sure those doctors get on the afternoon stage and ride out of here like they're supposed to. I think we've had enough trouble for one day."

JD ducked away from the sheriff's grasp and made a grab for Nathan's medical bag, snatching it up by one handle just as Aiken collared him again. "No you don't, kid. I'll take that."

The deputy with the pistol took Nathan by the arm and hauled him upright. He didn't do it roughly, but the pain that shot through Nathan's leg when he was forced to put his weight on it made everything white out.

His last thought, just before he passed out, was to wonder why in hell Ezra hadn't shown up to help them.

Part Two:

Julestown might be smaller than Ridge City, and it's saloons—even the finest of them, which the Morning Star undisputedly was—might not measure up to the better establishments the larger town offered, but there were still plenty of men on hand eager to try their luck and skill at poker.

And Ezra was more than happy to accommodate them.

His current opponents, two middle-aged ranchers and a sharply-dressed young man who worked as a surveyor for a mining company, were just skilled enough to be entertaining, but not skilled enough to keep Ezra from winning at least two hands out of every three. His injured left arm proved no hindrance at all; he didn't even have to cheat to keep his winning streak going. Not that he couldn't palm cards or deal from the bottom of the deck one-handed when he needed to.

Ezra rarely needed to resort to such tactics, however, despite the accusations of card-sharping the rest of the Seven were so fond of tossing his way. Poker was all about numbers and manipulation—of people, not cards. About calculating the odds, and keeping track of which cards had been played and which were still in circulation, and reading the other players' tells. The mining surveyor stroked his carefully waxed mustache when he wasn't sure what action to take, a minor tic that telegraphed an indifferent hand, and a player willing to be bluffed. The stockier of the two ranchers frowned ever so slightly every time he had a good hand, trying to conceal his luck, which didn't work, since he didn't frown when his cards were bad.

He wasn't frowning now, and his calm poker face meant that his hand was poor at best. The surveyor was stroking his mustache. The other rancher had already folded, and was now watching the game merely out of curiosity. Ezra glanced down at his cards, which held nothing more promising than a pair of sevens, and smiled cheerfully. "I raise, gentlemen."

He set a gold half-eagle on top of the stack of money in the middle of the table, and turned expectantly to the surveyor.

The young man studied his cards and frowned, still stroking his mustache. "Hmmm. I think I'll fold, if that's all right with you, sir."

"Perfectly all right," Ezra said. "And you, sir?" He turned to the rancher expectantly.

The rancher sighed, and laid all five of his cards face down on the table. "I fold."

"Ah. How fortunate for me." Ezra grinned, his cheerfulness real now, and laid his own cards out for the others to see. "A pair of sevens. Truly, a lucky number at the moment." And he pulled the small pile of coins in the center of the table towards him, stacking them in a neat column at his elbow. That was one thing the Morning Star had over Ridge City's Cosmopolitan. One played for cash, not poker chips. Chips might be classier, but money made leaving in a hurry with one's winning much easier, and there was nothing quite like the feel of cold, hard cash in one's hands.

Except that at the moment, the feel of those gold coins made Ezra's thoughts return to that damned ten thousand dollars, which was utterly nonsensical, since Stutz's money had been in bills, not coins.

A thick, freshly printed stack of bills, thick enough to save his life. And cost him his associates'—his friends'—trust in the process. Such a stupid, stupid thing to do, Ezra thought in disgust. No wonder Chris and the others hadn't trusted him with the money. He couldn't be trusted with it. After all his protests at having his honesty impugned, the first thing he'd done when Josiah had handed the money over to him—knowing full well what Ezra would do with it, or why else would he have made that comment about apples—was to prove all of their doubts right.

It wasn't as if he would even have gotten to spend more than a fraction of it, anyway. Chris Larabee would have hunted him down within a week and hauled him in front of Judge Travis for… well, not stealing, technically. The money had belonged to a dead man, so taking it hadn't exactly been stealing. Maybe for dereliction of duty? Which was really just fancy legal talk for running out on people.

Ezra set the last coin on top of the stack and pushed such thoughts firmly to the back of his mind. He picked up his half-full shot glass and drained it, hoping the whiskey would keep them there, and looked up at the full poker table. "Another round, gentlemen?"

"Hell, might as well." The stockier rancher grinned, and sipped at his own whiskey. "You've got to start losing sometime."

"Perhaps," Ezra said. He signaled the bartender for another shot of whiskey, taking a sort of rebellious pleasure in ordering another drink, now that Nathan wasn't here to watch him like a hawk, and started dealing cards. Mr. Jackson ought to be back from his auction, JD in tow, and minute now, and Ezra intended to enjoy himself in their absence as long as he could. Enjoy himself, and forget all about that damned assassination attempt, and that wretched, goddamned money.

"We're not road agents, I swear," JD said, for what felt like the tenth time. "We're lawmen from Four Corners. You have to let us out and get a doctor in here for his leg! There's got to be a half dozen of them in town."

"So first your friend's a doctor, and now he's a deputy, that right?" Sheriff Aiken, sitting behind his desk with a partly-disassembled shotgun across his lap, shook his head with grim amusement. "The two of you really need to run your stories past each other." He put down the shotgun he was cleaning and looked up to meet JD's eyes. "If you make a full confession, could be the Army'll go easy on you. Green kid, fresh from back East," he waved a hand at JD's brown suit, "fallen in with bad company. It was your friend there who murdered those two guards, not you. If you help us out, testify against him, you might not end up being hanged as an accomplice."

"I'm not an accomplice!" JD shouted, completely losing his last shreds of patience. "I'm the sheriff of Four Corners. Wire Four Corners and you'll see it's the truth!"

Aiken said nothing for a moment, just looked at him, and JD found himself wishing he were a little more intimidating, maybe taller. Chris and Buck didn't get those sort of patronizing looks.

Behind Aiken, the shorter of the two deputies didn't even bother to hide his snickers. "Sure," he muttered. "Yer a sheriff. And yer friend there isn't a wanted murderer, he's the town doctor." He rolled his eyes. "Like buyin' a bag o' medical tools'll make that one work."

"Andy," Aiken said, his voice a warning.

Andy shut up.

"Kid," Aiken started, "number one," he held up one finger, "Four Corners doesn't have a sheriff. It's got seven regulators hired on by Judge Travis. Everybody in this half of the territory knows that, so I suggest you find a new story. Number two," he held up a second finger, "I'm not wiring Chris Larabee to ask whether he's got a negro and a kid working for him, because I'm not gonna waste his time, and number three," a third finger, "all of the doctors that came in for that auction left on the afternoon stage, and Doc Milburn went out with them, so your pal will just have to tough it out."

"Yeah," Andy said. "If he's really a doctor like ya say, maybe he can fix himself up." He laughed, and JD glared at him, longing to wipe the mocking smirk off his stupid, pock-marked face.

"You can go to hell," JD informed him. "Come on," he said, trying to appeal to Aiken's sense of decency, if he had one, "at least give me his medical bang and let, um, and let me try to do something." His voice had dropped nearly to a whisper by the end of the sentence; even the thought of trying to treat Nathan's leg making him feel sick. He had no idea what to do, outside of the very basic 'get-the-bullet-out-somehow-and-put-a-bandage-on-it,' and anything he did to try and help might just make things worse.

"That bag has a knife in it as long as my forearm," Aiken said. "Like hell am I giving it to you. Andy, get some of those rags we keep around to clean the guns with." The deputy pulled a handful of cloth from the bottom of the gun cabinet and handed it to him, and Aiken rose from his chair and crossed the room to stand in front of the bars of JD and Nathan's cell. "Here," he said, holding the rags out at arm's length for JD to take. "You can bandage him up with these."

JD frowned, looking at the strips of grimy fabric. Nathan was insistent on only using clean cloth to tie up wounds, and this stuff was a long ways from clean.

"It's the best you're gonna get, kid," Aiken said impatiently, looking down at JD with a frown stamped across his red face.

"Fine." JD snatched the rags, pointedly not saying 'thank you,' and turned his back on Aiken. This left him staring at Nathan, who was lying limply across the pallet in the corner of the cell, eyes closed and face tense with pain. JD swallowed hard, and wished desperately that one of the others were there to do this so that he wouldn't have to.

Speaking of which, where was Ezra, anyway? He ought to have come running in the moment he heard that JD and Nathan had been arrested, demanding to know what was going on. Unless he had decided to wire home and tell Chris and the others first. Or maybe he hadn't heard yet—maybe he was still in one of the saloons playing cards, with no idea that anything had happened to them.

Either way, he was bound to show up eventually, when JD and Nathan failed to meet up with him. And then, maybe he'd be able to convince this arrogant sheriff and his thug deputy—who couldn't even be bothered to keep their jail cells properly swept out—to let them go. He could at least get a message off to the others, which would have Buck, Chris, Vin, and Josiah here in less than two days. And then Aiken would have to let them out. Or Ezra could just break them out. The lock on the cell door wouldn't take him more than a minute or so to pick, and then they could all take off for home.

Except that Nathan might not be able to walk. And, a small voice deep inside JD's head that he tried hard to ignore pointed out, Ezra might not come to help them at all. He'd been ready enough to leave everybody in the lurch before. He'd always come back in the nick of time, of course, but this time, this time Ezra was angry and resentful, and might just decide to keep on playing cards or whatever it was he was doing and let them both rot in jail.

Telling himself firmly that that was a completely ridiculous idea, and Ezra would no more leave him and Nathan in trouble than Buck would, JD knelt down on the dusty floor next to Nathan and peered worriedly at his friend.

The right leg of Nathan's pants was dark with bloodstains, and there were lines of pain around his mouth and between his brows. It was pretty much impossible for Nathan to look pale, but somehow he managed to give the impression of being bloodless and drained of strength anyway.

He needed a knife, JD thought. Something to cut the leg of Nathan's pants open so that he could get a look at the wound. But there was no way Sheriff Aiken was going to give him anything with an edge on it. He took a deep breath, grabbed the edges of the small tear the bullet had made in the fabric, and yanked. Cloth was harder to rip than most people thought, though, so he was only able to rip the pants apart a little, just enough to see the small, neat hole in the outside of Nathan's thigh. There was no exit wound; the bullet was stuck somewhere inside Nathan's leg, lodged in the muscle.

A slow trickle of blood was seeping out from the wound, blood Nathan couldn't afford to lose. JD folded the cleanest-looking of the rags into a pad and pressed it against the bullet wound, trying to get the bleeding to stop.

Nathan groaned, and rolled his head to the side, his eyes blinking open. "JD?" He tried to push himself upright, but JD grabbed him by the shoulder to keep him laying flat.

"Don't sit up. You're still bleeding."

Nathan grimaced, and started to move a hand to touch his wounded thigh, then checked himself. "Is the bullet still in there?" he asked, his voice low and strained.

"Yes," JD admitted. "I tried to get the sheriff to give me your medical bag, but he won't let either of us have any of your tools, in case we try to stab him, or pick the lock with them, or something. I'm sorry."

"Oh." Nathan didn't ask why Aiken wouldn't let a doctor in to see to him. Maybe he'd expected it, or maybe he was just hurting too much to think of it. "That's… that's all right. Just keep pressing on it like you're doing."

"Okay," JD said. He put both hands of the pad of cloth, which had a slowly widening splotch of red in its center, and leaned his weight onto it, trying not to flinch when Nathan's breath hissed out through his teeth. "Sorry," he apologized again. "What else should I do?"

Nathan, whose eyes had been drifting shut, blinked, and considered that. "Clean it with something," he said after a moment. "See if he'll maybe give you one of the bottles of carbolic."

"They broke when you went down." It looked like the bleeding might be slowing a little. JD kept pressing, knowing he was hurting Nathan and hating it. He was almost relieved that Aiken had refused to give him anything to take the bullet out with—he knew, knew he wouldn't have been able to do it, not without hurting Nathan more—and that furtive relief made him feel horribly guilty. As long as that bullet was in there, Nathan was in danger of getting infected. JD knew that much about bullet wounds, at least.

"Okay," Nathan said, "that's okay." For some reason, he seemed to be trying to reassure JD.

JD set his jaw firmly, trying not to look as scared and worried as he felt. "I think the bleeding is slowing down," he offered. Then he switched the subject. "I tried to get Sheriff Aiken to let us out. I told him that we were peacekeepers from Four Corners, that we didn't have anything to do with any robbery, and that if he wired Four Corners Chris would tell him who we were, and that we couldn't have done anything, because we were in town last week when that payroll was robbed, but he wouldn't listen to me." He lifted a corner of the pad and checked the bullet wound, to discover that the flow of blood had nearly stopped. "But I bet when Ezra hears what's happened and comes to get us out of jail, he'll have wired Chris and gotten proof, and then they'll have to let us go. So it should all be okay, and we won't end up getting hung for killing those two soldiers they say you killed. And," JD had a sudden flash of inspiration, "when Ezra gets here, he can take the bullet out for you. I bet he could do it. He's got real steady hands." And unlike JD, Ezra's hands only seemed to get steadier when things went badly.

Nathan didn't appear reassured by any of this news, if he was even listening to it. "The bleeding's stopping?" he asked. When JD nodded, he said, "All right, then now… now you need to tie the bandage on. As tight as you can. Can't clean it out, so we'll just have to hope…" he trailed off, then closed his eyes for a moment, opening them to ask, "What are you using for bandages? Not the ones in my bag. You said they wouldn't give it to you."

"The sheriff gave me some rags," JD said. "They're clean," he added, before Nathan could ask. "It's the only half-way nice thing he's done so far." He picked up the longest of the rags, glad Nathan couldn't see the stains on it, and slid it under Nathan's leg, a procedure that involved a silent flinch on Nathan's part and a muttered apology on his. By the time he'd finished tying the bandage off—as tight as he could, like Nathan had told him to, Nathan's eyes were closed. JD thought he was asleep until he spoke again.

"Can you ask the sheriff for some water?"

"Sure. Water. I can do that." JD got to his feet again—kneeling had left dusty streaks across the knees of his trousers, he noticed absently—and approached the bars once more.

While he'd been tending Nathan, the short, mean-spirited deputy had left, and the big one who'd shot Nathan had taken his place. He looked up when JD reached the bars, tensing a little.

"Can we have some water?" JD asked. "Please," he added, even though the last thing he wanted to do was be polite to any of these people.

"Yeah, sure," the deputy said. He glanced at Aiken afterwards, but the sheriff was once again absorbed in cleaning the shotgun, and didn't even look up. "Just a minute." He went outside for a moment, out back to a pump or something, JD guessed, and came back with a tin cup full of water, which he handed to JD. It just fit through the bars.

Nathan stayed awake long enough to drink it, and then closed his eyes and drifted off, leaving JD with nothing to do but sit, worry, and wait for Ezra.

Ezra shuffled the pack of house playing cards, cut the deck, and then shuffled again, a complicated maneuver that sent cards streaming from one hand to another. He was mildly proud that, despite the amount of whiskey he had consumed, his hands were still perfectly steady. Oops. Hands. He wasn't supposed to be using his left hand. He glanced around guiltily, half expecting Nathan to materialize at his shoulder to scold him for this injudicious use of his injured limb, but Nathan did not appear.

Which state of affairs was perfectly fine with Ezra. He had two hundred and sixty newly acquired dollars neatly stashed away inside his coat, a fresh glass of whiskey at his elbow, and a table full of talented opponents to play against. The mining surveyor and the thinner, older rancher had departed a good hour or more ago, but two men in coats just as flashy as Ezra's green jacket had arrived to take their places, presenting Ezra with a real challenge for the first time in weeks. He was only winning every other hand now.

Cards, unlike law enforcement, were something Ezra was very, very good at, and it had been far, far too long since he had been able to forget about bothersome little things like duty and patrols and everyone else's apparently-not-quite-as-high-as-he'd-assumed expectations, and just play.

Still. Nathan. Nathan should have shown up to haul him out of the saloon by now, shouldn't he? After all, can't leave Ezra on his own for too long. He can't be trusted not to run off, can't be trusted with other people's money. Ezra surveyed the green baize tabletop before him, covered in other people's money that was about to become his money, and decided that, in the interest of proving that he could, in fact, be trusted, perhaps he ought to go and find Nathan and JD. In a minute or so. Just as soon as he finished this hand.

Ezra shuffled the cards one last time, just for the fun of it, and started dealing, tuning out the noise of the saloon, which had filled up as sunset approached—and when had it gotten to be almost sunset? There was a loud argument about territorial politics going on on the other side of the room, which Ezra purposefully ignored—he 'd had enough of politics recently to last him a damn long time—and a red-headed man at the next table over with a deputy's star pinned to his lapel was boasting loudly about some dangerous miscreant or other he had apprehended.

"So the feller reaches into his bag fer a knife or something, and bang! Harnett drops him with a bullet in the leg. And a good thing, too, or he'd likely o' sliced us up like he did those two soldiers he killed robbing the Army payroll wagon."

Ezra turned his cards over, fanned them out, and discovered five black cards staring up at him. Four of spades, five of spades, two of clubs, six of spades, eight of spades. Only long practice kept him from smiling. One more spade, and he'd have a flush. Or a seven, a seven of any suit would be even better. A seven would make it a straight. "Ah'll take one card," he said, enunciating carefully to avoid slurring any of the words.

"Well, no, we only got two of 'em," the deputy went on in the background. "The third robber's likely holed up somewhere, nursing that gunshot wound he got when they pulled the job."

Could he get no escape from law enforcement? Wishing heartily that the man would just shut up, Ezra discarded his useless two of clubs and drew another card. Seven of spades. Seven did indeed seem to be his lucky number today. This time, he couldn't keep from grinning. "Shall we open the bettin' at, say, twenty dollars?"

" 'Course, they say they didn't do it. That's what they all say." The deputy, who really was quite obnoxiously loud, snorted in disgust. "Like there's gonna be two six-foot-plus black men running around the territory with a brace of knives an' a white accomplice." He laughed. "Got nerve though. The darkie says he's a doctor, and the kid keeps going on about how they're both lawmen, if you can believe that. Damn. Men'll say anything to try an' get out o' hanging."

Ezra froze, a terrible, sick feeling sliding through his gut. The man couldn't be talking about…

"Are you talkin' about Nathan?" he demanded, interrupting the deputy's blather. "Ah assure you, Mr. Jackson would never participate in anythin’ that smacked of criminality…"

The deputy swung about and stared at him, and Ezra realized that he'd just damn near incriminated himself by announcing that he knew Nathan. And if Nathan and JD really had been arrested…. Damn it all to hell. It was frustratingly difficult to think, now that his attention had been dragged away from nice, uncomplicated things like cards, the alcohol clogging up his thoughts like molasses and slowing them down. Wait, had the man said something about Nathan being shot? He had, hadn't he? "Ah mean," he stammered, trying automatically to fix whatever damage he'd done, "Ah rode in with this man you're talkin' about, and he seemed perfectly respectable. Said he was a doctor."

"An' you fell for that?" the red-headed man hooted. He grinned, the expression making his pock-marked face look like some sort of demonic mask. "A southern boy like you? Damn, son, you know there ain't no such thing as black doctors."

Lunging for the man and wiping that smirking expression off his face, Ezra thought distantly, would probably not be advisable. Not at all. Would likely get him arrested, too.

The men arguing politics had started shouting, he noticed, with the part of his brain that wasn't quietly panicking. He'd give it five minutes at most before a punch was thrown. Really, he ought to be laying bets on it.

"Hey. Hey, Reb. It's your move. You gonna raise, fold, or call?"

"Ah fold," Ezra said quietly. And he laid his straight flush on the table, face up, and stood, gripping the back of his chair as the room tilted around him for a moment. As soon as he was certain of his balance, he let go and started for the door, not even caring that he was leaving twenty dollars of his money—plus sixty dollars that had been moments away from being his—behind on the table. His mother would have been dreadfully disappointed.

"Come on, Ezra," he thought, barely noticing that he was whispering the words aloud, "think of somethin'. Have to get them out, somehow, sneak in or-" and then he lost his train of thought as he stumbled on the bottom step, nearly landing on his knees in the street before reflexes that even alcohol couldn't totally bury kicked in and he caught himself.

Maybe sneaking into the jail wasn't an entirely viable option. Sneaking into places required difficult feats of dexterity like not tripping over things and walking across the street in a straight line. Both of which were proving tricky at the moment.

Something else. He needed to think of something else. And he would, in just a moment, when the soft, clingy fog that was filling his head and sending everything slightly out of focus went away.

There was a loud crash behind him, and Ezra spun around, nearly losing his balance again, his hand automatically going to his gun.

"Goddamn Republican sonuvabitch! You're all in it together, right up to that corrupt bastard in the White House."

Really, Ezra decided absently, the man's assessment of President Grant was right on target, but it didn't follow that he therefore needed to fling his Republican adversary into a table.

And then, belatedly, inspiration struck. Smiling devilishly at the sound of the chaos beginning behind him, Ezra turned and ran for the jailhouse.

Nathan was still asleep, and JD wasn't sure if this was good or bad. Sleep might help him recover his strength, but then again, it might be a sign that Nathan's injury was more serious than either of them had thought. He hadn't even woken up when Harnett, the big deputy, had brought them dinner. If Nathan's wound started to go bad, there would ne nothing JD could do about it, without medicine of any kind, or even whiskey to clean the wound with.

How long did it take for infection to set in, anyway?

A day? Half a day? Two days? By that time, surely someone would have shown up to bail them out. If not, Sheriff Aiken and his two—what was that word Ezra used? Minions, wasn't it?—his two minions would string them up like the robbers and murderers they all believed JD and Nathan to be.

Why hadn't Ezra shown up yet? JD wondered desperately. Had something happened to him? Maybe Ezra's wound had gone bad, and he was sick somewhere, not able to come. Or maybe he'd been knifed by a gambling partner who was angry at the loss of his money. Or he could be in the middle of a winning streak, in which case he could stay at the tables until dawn and never notice that JD and Nathan hadn't shown up after the auction like they were supposed to.

If it was the latter, JD was going to personally strangle him. It shouldn't be very hard; Ezra wasn't that much bigger than he was, and his left arm was pretty much out of commission, which meant that he wouldn't be able to draw his derringer nearly as fast as he usually did.

JD was imagining this future confrontation with Ezra, right down to the surprised and innocent look Ezra would be wearing, and the Chris Larabee-type growl in which JD would accuse him of letting him and Nathan sit in a filthy jail cell for almost an entire day, when the door to the jail swung open with a bang, and Ezra himself exploded into the room, tripping over his own feet on the threshold and catching himself on the edge of Aiken's desk.

"Sir," he said, after regaining his balance, "are you the sheriff of this fair metropolis?" The words came tumbling out hurriedly, the southern accent twice as thick as usual, so that the sentence was a jumble of thick vowels and soft, slurred consonants. Ezra, JD realized, was doing a dead on impression of being falling down drunk.

Aiken gave Ezra a flat, contemptuous stare. "That's what the badge says. What do you want?"

Ezra drew himself up, the picture of offended dignity. "Ah thought you might like to know about the altercation in the saloon. But Ah suppose you don't." He waved a hand dismissively, the gesture much broader than it normally would have been. "Doesn't matter. Probably be over soon anyway. Your deputy's not likely to be gettin' up again after bein' hit with a bottle like that."

Even JD knew better than to fall for a con as obvious as this one, but Sheriff Aiken and Deputy Irving Harnett were pretty obviously well below the level of any of Four Corners' peacekeepers.

"Andy's been knocked out?" Harnett demanded.

"Ah don't know why Ah even bothered to come in an’ tell you," Ezra went on, as if oblivious. He blinked, swayed slightly, and then added, "This town has no law at all. There was a man shot in the street this afternoon." He made it sound as if he found this state of affairs personally offensive.

"Shut up," Aiken snapped.

"Which saloon?" Harnett put in, right on the heels of that statement. He was halfway to the door by this point, and Aiken had risen out of his chair, looming over Ezra and radiating annoyance.

"The one with all the shouting goin' on in it," Ezra said, as if it were obvious.

Aiken swore, shoved Ezra roughly out of the way, and took off out the door. Harnett was already gone.

As the door slammed shut behind them, Ezra straightened up, smirking. "They really shouldn't have fallen for that," he observed.

"Who cares," JD said joyfully, his earlier irritation with Ezra replaced by glorious relief. "Come over here and let us out!"

"You'll have to pick the lock," Nathan added from behind him. "I think the sheriff took the keys with him." JD turned around to see him sitting up, his back propped against the wall. "And I'm gonna need some help walking out of here."

"How badly are you hurt?" Ezra asked. His face was carefully blank, the expressionless poker-face that he wore when he was trying to hide something, but was too upset or tired to do it well.

"Gunshot wound in the thigh," Nathan said, summing up his injury with a detachment JD couldn't help but admire. "JD bandaged it, and it's stopped bleeding, but the bullet still needs to come out, and it'd be best if I did as little moving around as possible. Not like that's much of an option, though."

"They didn't even get you a doctor?" Ezra half-yelped, outrage clear in his voice. "Deplorable," he muttered, and he pulled his flask from within his jacket and thrust it through the bars to JD. "Here. My compliments."

Then he knelt down, a slim metal lockpick already in his hand from somewhere, to put himself at eye level with the lock. He overbalanced when his knee hit the floor, swaying forward and catching himself with his left hand. "Damn. Ow."

JD frowned, confused by this unusual clumsiness, and then Nathan asked, disbelievingly, "Are you drunk?"

"Yes," Ezra said icily. "Yes, Ah am. What business is it of yours?" He slid the pick into the keyhole, taking two tries to get it in, and began to move it around carefully, his eyes closed and a look of intense concentration on his face.

"What? Why are you drunk?" JD demanded. He crouched down so that he could see what Ezra was doing to the lock, inspecting the gambler closely. Ezra's face was flushed, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. He was frowning, as if the task of opening the cell's lock was harder than he had expected. "Where have you been?"

Ezra cursed, opened his eyes, and hissed, "Stop distractin' me. This is hard enough as it is, Mr. Dunne." A long, silent minute went by while Ezra fussed with the lock, then two minutes. JD handed the flask to Nathan, who was glaring at Ezra with disgust, and glanced nervously at the door Aiken had departed from what now seemed an age ago.

"Hurry up, Ezra."

"Ah think Ah've got it," Ezra muttered. "Just a moment…"

Behind him, the door swung open, and Aiken stood framed in the doorway, both of his deputies behind him. "What in the name of-"

Ezra started, and swung around, reaching for his gun. He was half-way to his feet with the Remington in his right hand in less than a second, but by then all three lawmen were in the room, and Harnett made a wild lung forward and grabbed him by the elbow before he could bring the gun to bear on any of them.

Under normal circumstances, Ezra might still have had something approaching a chance, but his reflexes were working at half their usual speed, and his left side and arm were still recovering from Stutz's bullet. He managed to get off one roundhouse punch at Andy's jaw as the smaller deputy stepped forward to grab his other arm, and then Aiken clocked him over the head with the barrel of his shotgun, and he went down like a ton of bricks.

JD shouted, grabbing hold of the bars as if he could somehow get himself through them to come to Ezra's defence. But he hadn't been able to stop Nathan being shot, and he couldn't do anything to help Ezra now. The knowledge didn't make the sight of Ezra sprawled limply across the floor with three armed men standing over him any easier to take.

"Well, well," Aiken said musingly, rubbing with one hand at the grey stubble on his chin, "what have we here?"

Andy gave Ezra a vicious kick in the side, grinning at the choked-off growl of anger this produced from Nathan, and then slid the toe of his boot under Ezra's shoulder, flipping him over to lie face-up.

"Shit," he said, "it's that Reb card player from the saloon. I thought he took off in a hurry. First time I ever seen a gambler fold on a straight flush." He knelt down and stripped off Ezra's green jacket, then whistled. "Gunbelt and a shoulder rig. And whatever this thing is. Man's a walking arsenal." He stripped Ezra of both guns, and then yanked the derringer rig off his left arm. Ezra groaned, and his head lolled to one side.

JD's grip on the cell bars was white-knuckled now, and he felt an overwhelming desire to just flat out shoot the deputy, who seemed to get a cruel pleasure out of bullying them all. "Leave him alone."

Andy rolled his eyes, and stood, handing all three guns to Aiken. He kept Ezra's coat, rifling through the pockets and grinning in delight when he found a handful of money. "Look, boss. Think it's from the payroll?"

"The Army had gold stolen from them," Harnett said, "not greenbacks. And don't go trying to put those in your pocket."

"Give me the money, Andy," Aiken ordered. He held out a hand, and Andy grudgingly placed the wad of money in it--including the two bills he'd been about to tuck inside his shirt. "Thank you." Then he gave Ezra's unconscious form a long, measuring look. "So," he said dryly, "this one a lawman from Four Corners, too?"

Part Three:

His head hurt. No, that was an understatement. His head was a source of throbbing, pulsing agony, pain locked around his temples like a vise. Drinking was a bad, bad idea, and surely if he asked one of the other Seven, they would see to it that he never overindulged again. Ezra groaned, the sound echoing through his head and if anything making the pain worse, and reached up to feel at his skull. A matching—but far, far less intense—ache in his ribs woke to life at the movement, and he groaned again, recognizing the aftereffects of a beating of some kind.

“What hit me?”

“The sheriff.” JD’s voice came from somewhere above him, and Ezra, having satisfied himself that his head appeared to be intact—albeit with a swollen bruise just below his hair line—opened his eyes to find a slightly-out-of-focus JD bending over him. The younger man was tilted weirdly sideways. Ezra blinked, frowning, and then realized that he was lying on his right side, not his back, which explained why JD appeared to be horizontal.

Wait, he was lying on the floor. On a hard, dusty wooden floor that desperately needed to be swept and scrubbed. Why was he on the floor?

“What sheriff?”

JD frowned, looking worried. “You don’t remember? You were breaking us out of here, and Sheriff Aiken clocked you over the head with his shotgun. You were out all night long. Nathan was really worried.”

Nathan. There was something about Nathan he ought to remember. Something bad…. Ezra closed his eyes, blocking out the harsh glare of sunlight so that he could think. The memories came slowly, filtered through the sickening headache. Playing poker in the Morning Star. The red-headed deputy, boasting about arresting JD and Nathan. Getting the lawmen out of the jail by telling them about the saloon brawl…. The last thing Ezra recalled was kneeling to pick the lock on the cell door, though he was more than willing to take JD’s word for what had happened afterwards. Something had certainly hit him. Hangovers didn’t leave bruises. Whiskey didn’t kick one in the ribs and reawaken the ache in just-healed bones.

He realized belatedly that his rescue attempt must have failed, and that he must be in jail, too. Nathan and JD were no better off than they’d been before he showed up, and Ezra was a whole hell of a lot worse off. Nathan needed medical attention, and he wasn’t getting it here.

“Nathan,” Ezra croaked out. He forced his eyes open again and tried to sit up, regretting the attempt instantly when the jail cell lurched around him. He let himself sag back down to the floor, shutting his eyes tight and concentrating very hard on not being sick. The brief glimpse he’d gotten of their prison flashed against the back of his eyelids. Bars, grime, a dusty and worried JD, and Nathan slumped on a cot in the corner, leaning against the wall in a way that implied that he might not be able to stay upright on his own. “Is Nathan all right?”

“Better than you, at the moment.” Nathan’s voice sounded sharp, exasperated, but there was an undercurrent of tiredness to it. “Head wounds and drinking are bad things to mix. You might not’ve woken up.”

And wouldn’t that have been the perfect way to die, compounding his failure to help his friends by expiring on them. Could he do nothing right these days? Ezra took a deep breath, fighting down the urge to vomit, and managed, “You have my complete and utter agreement on that, Mr. Jackson. I assure you, I shall do everything in my power to avoid such a combination in the future.” There, that sounded nice and coherent. Rather impressively so, actually.

“Right,” Nathan said, his tone conveying less than perfect belief. “Your head’s got to be hurting. Do you feel sick at all? Is your eyesight blurring any?”

“Ah, that would be a yes, and a yes.” Ezra kept his eyes closed, lying very still and taking stock of himself. In addition to the headache, he was thirsty, his side and arm hurt, and his jacket and derringer rig were both gone. On the other hand, Nathan was clearly awake and well enough to be fussing over other people’s injuries, which was reassuring, especially since one of the confused memories he had of the previous night seemed include Nathan being left to rot in jail with a untreated leg wound. Other memories seemed to indicate the presence of a substantial amount of money, possibly won at the tables, though it was all mixed up with the Stutz money, and thus possibly not an entirely reliable memory—he also remembered leaving money behind in the saloon, which certainly couldn’t be correct. “Where’s my jacket? It had money in it, I think.”

“Andy took it off you to search you for weapons,” JD said. “He handed your winnings over to the sheriff as evidence.”

Ah, so the money had been real. That was nice to know, even if it had been stolen now. “Which one is Andy?”

“The red-head,” JD explained. “The big one is called Harnett. He’s a real sonuvabitch,” he continued, sounding disconcertingly like Buck Wilmington. “Andy, I mean. I asked if them to send a doctor in to take a look at Nathan, and he said that if Nathan was a really a doctor, he could fix himself, and wouldn’t need anyone to come in.”

“Physician, heal thyself,” Ezra muttered. “When we make our daring escape,” he said, more loudly, “I suggest we shoot him on the way out.”

“You do realize the other deputy’s right across the room listening to us,” Nathan said.

“He’s probably delighted by the idea,” Ezra said. “Sitting in a saloon with the man was bad enough. Lord knows what it must be like to work with him. He’s loud, and the most appalling braggart, and I think he’s a Republican, too. Or, wait, no, that was someone else. He got thrown into a table for defending President Grant. A deserved punishment, but a trifle excessive.”

There was a moment of silence. Ezra considered opening his eyes to check on JD and Nathan, but since keeping them closed really did seem to be helping with the headache, decided against it.

“Ezra,” JD asked finally, “what are you talking about?”

Ezra sighed, and reached his right hand up slowly and carefully to rub at his forehead. “In the saloon. I was playing poker—and winning—and this Andy came in and started going on about how he and his fellows had arrested you and Nathan. So I left and came to get you. Which didn’t turn out very well,” he finished. Explaining further was simply too much effort at the moment. Suddenly, Ezra realized that on top of the nausea and headache, he was intensely tired.

“No,” Nathan said dryly, “it didn’t.” There was a rustle of cloth as he shifted position, and the faintest of indrawn breaths, as if said shift had hurt him.

“That’s okay,” JD said, with forced cheerfulness, “when Buck and Chris and everyone else gets here, we’ll be out of here right away. And Chris will probably beat them all to a pulp for us, too.”

Ezra hated to put a damper on his enthusiasm, but, “How is Mr. Larabee going to know about our predicament? We’re not due back into town for at least another day, and much as we all like to credit Mr. Tanner with prescience…” something about the quality of the silence his words were falling into prompted him to let the sentence trail off, and he opened his eyes to see both Nathan and JD frowning down at him, wearing twin expressions of disappointment and surprise.

“You mean you didn’t send Chris a telegram saying we’d been arrested?” JD asked.

“No,” Ezra said, “I came straight here.” Even as he said it, he realized, with a stab of self-disgust, that wiring home to ask for help—or at least apprise everyone else of the situation—would have been by far the smarter thing to do. Had he done so, Chris, Vin, Buck, and Josiah would already be on their way to Julestown, arriving in only a day or so to explain to the local law that Nathan and JD were not, well, were not whatever they’d been mistaken for, and should damn well be let go. As should Ezra. As it was, it would be at least another day before anyone in Four Corners would begin to suspect that something might be wrong. The thought made the exhaustion dragging at him even more powerful, and seemed to make his headache pound harder. “Sorry,” he added. “I didn’t think of it.”

“Didn’t look like you were doing much in the way of thinking at all last night,” Nathan commented, frowning. His words were a reproach, and the bloody bandage tied around his thigh, even more of one. Ezra had, indeed, not been thinking yesterday. Intentionally not thinking about his fellow peacekeepers, and his—utterly deserved—loss of their trust, about his own shortcomings, about keeping an eye out for trouble, which was what he ought to have been doing. No wonder no one had trusted him to go off to Ridge City by himself; he couldn’t even be trusted to hold up his end of things tagging along to a stupid medical auction.

“Ah know,” Ezra mumbled. His head really did hurt, and his mouth was dry enough to be closer to painful than annoying. “Sorry. Ah don’t know what got in to me.” He closed his eyes again, feeling sleep creeping up on him. The miserably hard floor was barely a hindrance. “Unforgivably stupid. Ah keep living down to everyone’s expectations.” If anyone said anything after that, he didn’t hear it, drifting off into a doze that still didn’t quite manage to let him escape the ache in his head.

Nathan's leg hurt, he was thirsty, and, despite having slept through most of the night, he was tired, the unnatural, bone-deep tiredness he knew came from loss of blood. He was also deeply, intensely annoyed with Ezra, who should damn well have known better than to sit around getting drunk and gambling when he ought to have been keeping an eye out for Nathan and JD. It was difficult to be annoyed with Ezra when he was expending so much effort being pitiful, but not impossible. It helped that a good part of his obvious suffering was due to the hangover the gambler had more than earned.

At the very least, the man could have stayed sober enough to organize a more effective jailbreak.

Being annoyed with Ezra was much better than worrying about Ezra, which was what Nathan had been doing until he had woken up and spoken to them, erasing that nagging fear that he was going to die quietly in the night from the effects of a blow to the head made worse by whiskey. He was far, far luckier than he deserved to be; had the sheriff's shotgun caught him on the side of the temple rather than the forehead, he’d likely still be unconscious, and it was a minor miracle that Andy the thug’s kick to his ribs hadn't broken bones already cracked from Stutz's failed assassination attempt.

JD had been the one to determine that, carefully unbuttoning Ezra's vest and feeling at his ribs while Nathan, cursing the leg wound that kept him from kneeling down next to Ezra and doing it himself, told him what to look for.

JD himself didn't look as if he had slept a wink all night long. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his too-long hair was a mess. There was dried blood around his fingernails, and a streak of it across his face, where he'd rubbed at his eyes. Most of the blood was Nathan's own, but some of it was probably Ezra's. The rough treatment Ezra had gotten from Sheriff Aiken and his deputies had started his half-healed side and arm bleeding again, though Nathan's stitches had held. The two small spots of blood on Ezra's white shirt had only strengthened Aiken's conviction that the three of them were his robbers; apparently, one of the thieves had been wounded during the hold up. The ‘evidence’ against them just kept piling up. The thought that perhaps, if he were white, the ‘evidence’ might not be so forthcoming had crossed Nathan’s mind a time or two, but he tried not to keep thinking it.

"What are we going to do?" JD asked. He was staring at the floor, not looking at Nathan, and his voice sounded very young.

Nathan was silent for a moment, trying to think of something reassuring to say to him. Nothing came to mind. "Sit tight and wait for everyone back home to come looking for us, I guess," he finally said. And hope nobody tries to lynch us in the meantime, he added silently. Oddly, the thought didn't summon up much fear. Maybe he was just too tired to be afraid. Or maybe annoyance and worry were drowning the fear out. Annoyance over Ezra, worry over Ezra, worry for JD, worry over his leg, which didn't seem to be infected as far as he could tell, but had all too high a chance of ending up that way, despite attempts to clean it with the contents of Ezra's flask.

Of course, if they were all hung for robbery and murder, it wouldn't have time to get infected.

Nathan shifted position, trying to find some way of sitting that would make the hot ache in his thigh lessen. Apparently, there wasn't one. He sighed, giving up, and then a nudge from JD made him look up, to find the deputy on guard coming toward the jail cell, the key ring in his hand and a pistol in the other. The same pistol, Nathan suspected, that the man had shot him with.

"When I unlock this door," the deputy said, "one of you—one—is gonna come along with me to the privy. And then I bring you back and the next one comes along. Any of you," and he gestured with the pistol, sweeping its barrel across the three of them and finally letting it rest on Ezra, who was blinking blearily at him, "tries anything, I'll shoot you. Behave, and I'll see you get some breakfast."

It was the longest speech Nathan had heard out of the man yet. Harnett had previously been willing to let his boss—or Andy—do the talking for him.

“You first, mister.” Harnett pointed at Nathan, and Nathan glanced down at his leg, which he just knew was going to hurt like hell the moment he moved, and which would take that much longer to heal if he over-used it. Visiting the privy, on the other hand, would be a very welcome thing, and breakfast of some sorts would be even better.

He sighed. He didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter, since Harnett was the one with the gun—and had already demonstrated his willingness to use that gun.

Nathan braced his hands against the cot and prepared to push himself to his feet. Then Ezra spoke up, heading him off.

“Mr. Jackson has been shot,” he said, speaking slowly and distinctly, as if to a dull child. “He can’t walk.”

“So long as his leg isn’t broke,” Harnett said flatly, “he can. What’s it to you, anyway?” He frowned slightly, as if truly curious. “You didn’t look all that friendly with those two when you rode in. I could’ve sworn you weren’t in on things with them.”

“None of us are in on anything,” JD protested, yet again. “We’ve told you and told you, we’re lawmen.”

“Mr. Dunne speaks the truth,” Ezra said. “We are, indeed, lawmen, unlikely as it may seem, and I assure you, both Judge Travis and Chris Larabee will be most displeased if you don’t let us out. You may have heard of Chris Larabee. Tall, unpleasant temper, likes to wear black?”

Harnett just looked at them for a moment, his skepticism plain on his face. “If that’s so, why did we find you picking that lock last night?” He nodded at the cell door, then shook his head. “This story just keeps getting harder and harder to swallow. You, come on.” He waved at Nathan again, still gesturing with the gun. Nathan hoped the weapon wasn't cocked, or the man might just shoot one of them by accident.

Nathan pushed himself to his feet, gritting his teeth at the pain in his leg. The moment he tried resting his weight on it, it buckled beneath him, just as he’d suspected it would.

JD grabbed him by the arm, keeping him upright, and then Ezra was there on his other side, silently offering support. Nathan took a deep breath, blinked away the patches of grey that had formed on the edge of his vision, and then straightened up. “I’m fine,” he said. He had a feeling Harnett would decide that the two of them helping him over to the bars counted as ‘trying something,’ and the man seemed just impatient enough—or jumpy enough—to hold true to his promise to shoot them for it.

Nathan’s statement didn’t seem to have made much of an impression, so he repeated himself. “I’m fine. You can let go now.”

Ezra and JD obediently let go of his arms and stepped back—both clearly still holding themselves ready to lunge forward and grab him should it be necessary. It wasn’t. Somehow, Nathan managed to keep his feet, and even to take a step toward where Harnett waited outside the cell doors. And then another step.

Pain lanced through his leg every time his foot touched the ground, and he was sure he could actually feel the bullet in his thigh shifting as he moved, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it. There were times when a man just had to endure things.

JD, he noticed, with that part of his attention not fixed on keeping his feet, was glaring mutinously through the bars at Harnett, as if he wanted nothing in the world so much as to launch himself at the deputy and beat him to a pulp. He kept still, though, likely more because of the gun Harnett had trained on them than because the man was nearly twice his size.

Ezra was blank-faced, emotionless, but his face was pale, making the bruise on his forehead stand out sharply, and his eyes bloodshot, and he was in all likelihood no happier to be upright than Nathan was.

Nathan stopped at the cell door and waited to Harnett to unlock it. He grabbed hold of the bars with one hand, using them to hold himself up for a moment while he waited, trying not to be too obvious about it. The deputy worked the lock one-handed, keeping his pistol aimed somewhere between Ezra and JD, silently warning them not to ‘try anything.’

“I’ll be right back,” Nathan said, when the lock clicked. “Don’t nobody escape without me while I’m gone. And, Ezra,” he added, “sit down before you fall down.”

JD smiled wanly, and Ezra shook his head, winced, and stubbornly stayed on his feet. “I’m not the one in danger of pitching over,” he said.

Nathan made it out of the jail and to the privy out back just fine, Harnett one step behind him with the pistol pointed firmly between his shoulder blades, as if he honestly though Nathan might try to run for it. He didn’t manage the trip back quite as well; by the time they got back inside the jail, Harnett was dragging him along by the arm, half-supporting his weight. Nathan did his best to keep up, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that at least he had the somewhat more decent deputy dragging him around. Andy, he had a feeling, would have made him crawl rather than give him even that limited amount of help.

Andy seemed like the sort of man who liked watching people crawl.

Nathan nearly collapsed onto the floor the moment Harnett turned loose of him and pushed him back into the cell. Luckily, Ezra and JD were there to catch him and haul him back over to the cot. Nathan sat down hard, closed his eyes, and waited for the agony in his leg to subside. When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on his back with JD peering at the bandage on his leg, and Ezra was gone. He’d lost some time; how much, he couldn’t be sure.

“Where’s Ezra?” he asked, feeling a fuzzy sort of alarm start to spread through him.

JD gave him a funny look, and said, “Out back, with that deputy.” He frowned uncertainly. “You were out of it for a good quarter-hour. You okay, Nathan?”

Nathan was tempted to say yes, to keep the boy from worrying, but it would have been a lie. “No,” he admitted flatly. “I’ve got a hole in my leg, Ezra’s all bruised up, and the three of us are stuck here until Chris and them all figure out we’re missing. Unfortunately, there ain’t much any of us can do about that.”

“No,” JD said softly, “I guess there ain’t.” He sighed, and made a face. “Why won’t they listen to us?”

“Would you?” Nathan asked. “A black man, a gambler, and a kid walk into your town, one of them matches the description of a man wanted for murder, and when you arrest them, they tell you they’re all lawmen.”

“Yeah, well, I know I don’t look much like a lawmen, but they ought to at least check out our story. I mean, any of us would do that right away.”

“The problem isn’t you, son,” Ezra drawled from the doorway. Nathan looked up to see him standing silhouetted against the light, Harnett at his back like a guard dog. Ezra, Nathan noted, had been put in handcuffs for the trip to the privy. It figured. He and JD might actually be capable of running off. “I get the feeling the issue at stake here is myself and Mr. Jackson,” Ezra went on. “Neither of us presents an appearance commensurate with what people expect from an officer of the law.” He strode over to the cell door and stood beside it, waiting for the deputy to unlock it for him, looking for all the world like he was a guest at some fancy hotel, waiting for the staff to open up his room.

Harnett opened the door, shoved Ezra into the cell, and slammed the door shut again behind him. He locked it securely, crossed the room to set the keys well out of reach on the desk, and only then returned to remove the cuffs from the gambler’s wrists. “You got to talk every minute you’re awake?” he asked.

Ezra ignored this remark with an aplomb Nathan figured he’d practiced on purpose to annoy people, and said, “My associates and I would like some breakfast. A hot breakfast, preferably one including coffee. And some water. And if you could see fit to send a telegram on our behalf to Four Corners, that would be much appreciated.”

Harnett rolled his eyes heavenward for a moment. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. He turned back to the desk, muttering, “Sure will be glad when the army gets here to take you lot off our hands.”

"The army?" Ezra repeated. He slumped down onto the floor and leaned his head back against the wall, rubbing at his forehead with one hand. "What on earth do they think the two of you did?"

"They think we held up an army payroll," JD said. "Haven't you been paying attention?"

"Not really," Ezra admitted. "I think my head is going to come apart." He groaned theatrically, one hand still pressed against his forehead. “I leave you two gentleman alone for one afternoon, and you not only get yourselves arrested, you end up with the U.S. Army out for your blood. As if this dreadful town’s lawmen weren’t trouble enough.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “Chris is going to kill us all.”

“Maybe that ain’t such a bad thing,” Nathan offered. His leg continued to ache, making concentrating on the conversation hard, but he was following it well enough to know he disagreed with Ezra’s pessimistic outlook. The army, unlike the local law, was not likely to lynch them out of hand. “When the army detachment gets here, they’ll see we ain’t the same men that held their payroll up, and they’ll let us go.”

“Because Lord knows the Union Army has never acted unjustly,” Ezra said snidely.

Nathan and JD both ignored this remark. “Maybe we can get their officer to send that telegram to Chris,” JD said hopefully. “He has to be more reasonable than these people.” He frowned then, and bounced to his feet with an energy Nathan could only envy, kicking at the bars to get the deputy’s attention. “Hey, deputy, when are you going to feed us? If this were my jail, I’d have brought my prisoners breakfast by now.”

“And water,” Ezra added, under his breath. “And coffee. And medical treatment.”

“You’ll get fed when the sheriff gets here.” Harnett picked up a pocket watch—Ezra’s pocket watch—from the desk and consulted it. “Should only be a half-hour or so.”

He brought them water, though, which Nathan drank gratefully. Ezra gulped down his own water, completely forgetting to whine about the fact that their captors had stolen his watch, and JD drank his with a stubborn set to his jaw that told Nathan that he’d seriously considered throwing it back in Harnett’s face. Not being Buck or Chris, the kid had fortunately thought better of it.

Nathan’s throat felt dry as dust even after he’d finished the water, and a glance at his leg told him that the walking he’d been forced to do had started it bleeding again, but he couldn’t find the energy to do anything about it. It wasn’t too terrible an injury, really—Harnett’s gun was small caliber, and the bullet hadn’t broken anything or hit anything vital—but unless he could get the bullet out and stay still for a few days, it was never going to start healing. He hoped that when the army showed up, they’d have a doctor, and an interest in keeping their prisoners healthy until they tried them.

Nathan closed his eyes, trying to ignore the fire burning steadily away in his thigh. He opened them again what felt like moments later to find JD shaking his shoulder and thrusting a tin cup full of beans into his hands.

“Here. They finally gave us food. It’s lousy, but better than nothing. Ezra and me were going to jump Harnett when he opened the door,” this in a lowered voice, “since he couldn’t pull a gun with his hands full of plates and things, but he passed everything through the bars. That’s why it’s in a cup and not a plate.”

Nathan wasn’t hungry, but he would have made any patient in his situation eat, and the fact that the patient was himself this time didn’t change things. “He hand you any spoons to go with it?”

“Oh, yeah.” JD looked sheepish, and handed over a battered-looking spoon. “Here. There’s cornbread too, but it’s all dry and stale, and I think it’s left over from yesterday.”

“Why waste good food on prisoners when buying yesterday’s leavings from the restaurant across the street is so much cheaper?” Ezra asked acidly. Privately, Nathan thought his assessment of their meal was likely spot on. The cornbread was indeed dry, and the beans, when he dug into them, were cold.

Ezra handed his beans to JD, with an ostentatious shudder of disgust. “Feel free to help yourself to my share. The mere thought of eating this substance is enough to make my stomach revolt.”

JD pounced on the food eagerly, but Nathan intervened before he could polish off Ezra’s cornbread as well. “You know damn well Ezra don’t eat anything when he gets to playing cards. He’s gonna finish what’s left of his breakfast whether he likes it or not.”

Ezra obediently ate, glaring at Nathan the whole time. When Harnett collected their spoons and empty cups, he handed his back over accompanied by a demand for fresh bandages, and then, upon receiving them, set about changing the dressing on Nathan’s leg.

It was not a pleasant experience, and Nathan suspected Ezra didn’t enjoy his part of the thing much either, going by the pale, faintly greenish look he had on his face by the end of it. He made a decent job of it, though. Better than JD, though Nathan would never tell the kid that; Ezra was used to doing careful, finicky things with his hands, after all, and JD wasn’t.

Still, it hurt like all get out, especially when Ezra splashed the last of the contents of his flask onto the injury. After the gambler had finished, Nathan lay with his eyes closed for a long moment, waiting for the cot to stop swaying beneath him and the hollow sound in his ears to go away.

“Is he okay?” JD’s voice, concerned and a little scared.

“I’m not sure.” Ezra’s voice, cool and emotionless. “He’s not bleeding too badly, but I have my misgivings about that bullet in him. I don’t think he has a fever, but it’s too hot in this damnable cell to be certain.”

Hot? Nathan had thought it was kind of cold, the early morning chill lingering on oddly. He was about to disagree with Ezra, and to protest that there was no need to speak about him as if he weren’t there—he’d never before realized how annoying it was when people did that, and determined to avoid doing that sort of thing in his clinic from now on—but JD was talking again before he could.

“What if his leg goes bad? I mean, we don’t have any medicine, or, or anything, and if it gets infected we won’t be able to do anything at all.” The last bit came out in a rush, more forceful than the rest.

“We must sincerely hope it does not, then.” A sigh. “Gangrene takes several days to develop, JD, and you can smell it starting to form. If worst comes to worst, I’ll know before it gets too serious, and can explain in detail to our friends on the other side of the bars exactly how much they don’t want to witness the edifying but highly unpleasant spectacle of their prisoner dying of gangrene. Trust me, they’ll get a doctor in here then.”

“What does gangrene smell like?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, but if Nathan gets it, I might have to.”

Nathan had been trying not to think about gangrene—the sickly, rotting smell, the dark color of dead flesh, the speed with which it spread to leave a man dead or maimed—ever since he’d first woken up in the jail cell and heard that his leg was going to go largely untended. He opened his eyes and pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Could y’all two talk about something else?”

“Gladly,” Ezra said. There was silence for a moment, and then he shrugged. “I’d offer to engage the two of you in a game of chance, but the deputy over there is playing solitaire with my deck.”

“They stole my hat, too,” JD offered, as if Ezra might take comfort in knowing that he was not the only one whose things had gone missing. “And Nathan’s medical bag.”

“I know.” Ezra sighed. “It was most inconsiderate of them to take that medical bag. I could have used one of the probes to pick the lock. In the future, remind me to keep a selection of lock picks in my vest as well as in my coat.” He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

Nathan started to drift off again, comforted in some strange way by the familiar sound of Ezra complaining. Ezra had been sullen and standoffish ever since the whole mess with that money, and Nathan had begun to worry that the friendship the gambler had struck up with the rest of them might have died along with Stutz, or, worse, never been more than a façade to start with. He’d been even more prickly and less reliable than usually, lately. The fact that he had tried to break them out of jail—admittedly without much success—and was now talking with JD in just the same way he always had, went a long way towards easing those worries. Then JD, who never could leave a thing alone once he was interested in it, started back in on gangrene.

“Where you learn so much about gangrene?” he asked Ezra. “I mean, you’re not a doctor or anything.”

“It’s a long and unpleasant story,” Ezra said. Nathan was pretty sure he was going to leave it at that, but he went on, adding, "Let’s just say we could have used a man of Mr. Jackson’s talents at Sharpsburg.”

“I was at Sharpsburg.” Nathan said the words quietly, swallowing hard at the memories even the name alone dredged up. Men said it had been one of the worst battles of the entire war. Nathan couldn’t really give a judgment one way or the other. He’d seen little of the fighting, spending most of the battle behind the lines in a surgeon’s tent, but the aftermath alone had been enough to provide a lifetime’s worth of bad dreams. There had been piles of severed arms and legs nearly waist high outside the surgeons’ tents by the end of the day, and the field had been covered with so many wounded and dead that men had gone untended and died of their wounds where they fell, on earth dyed rust-red with blood. The Maryland soil had turned the color of Georgia clay.

“Oh. Well, I wish you’d been on my side.” Ezra looked away then, probably realizing how foolish the comment was.

Nathan decided to take it as the compliment it was clearly meant as, and didn’t tell Ezra that he’d rather be shot dead than fight for the sake of slave owners who thought they could treat other human beings like cattle. The last thing he wanted to do at the moment was start an argument. “I don’t know that it matters which side you were on then,” he said instead. It wasn't entirely true, but the truth would have set them both to snarling at each other. “Seems like both sides did the same amount of dying.”

“If I’d been smart,” Ezra said, “I’d have listened to my mother and gone to Bermuda with her to invest in blockade running. I spent four years going hungry and getting shot at, and she spent four years flirting with British ship captains and making money.” Put like that, Nathan wondered why exactly Ezra hadn’t gone with Maude. Smuggling was of a piece with just about everything else he’d heard so far about Ezra’s past, and seemed much more likely to be up the gambler’s alley than soldiering.

Of course,” Ezra went on, “she did make the mistake of accepting payment in Confederate dollars.” He grinned, gold tooth glinting briefly. “Probably the only time she ever let sentiment get in the way of making a profit.”

“I never knew you were in the war,” JD said. “How come you never said anything about it before?”

Ezra shrugged, winced, and closed his eyes again. “I prefer not to dwell upon losing.”

In point of fact, Ezra always ‘dwelt upon’ losing. And harped on it. And went back over whatever game or wager he’d lost in tiresome detail, trying to figure out why he hadn’t won and how he could make sure such a thing never happened again. However, there were some things no one liked to talk about, or think about much. Nathan wasn’t all that fond of talking about the war either. Holding down a terrified sixteen-year-old while his arm or leg was sawn off was not an experience that improved in the telling.

“Oh. I thought maybe you just didn’t like talking about it.” JD shifted position, and reached up to adjust a bowler hat that wasn’t there, looking momentarily crestfallen when he recalled its absence. “Buck doesn’t like talking about the war either, except for that story about the two girls in Vicksburg.”

“You mean the identical twins with the affinity for military uniforms?”

“You know half the things in that story ain’t physically possible,” Nathan pointed out. JD looked faintly disappointed.

"They are apparently possible for Mr. Wilmington," Ezra groaned. He waved a hand in a gesture probably meant to indicate disgust. "Working girls talk to one another, Mr. Jackson. On occasion, they also talk to Inez. It's one of the drawbacks of living over the saloon."

"What kind of things did they say?" JD asked, eyes suddenly alive with curiosity.

"Trust me," Ezra said, "hearing them the first time was traumatizing enough. I'm certainly not going to repeat them."

This turned out to be untrue. After a few minutes of pressure from JD, Ezra did repeat them. Nathan, listening, decided that either Ezra was lying, or Miss Susan and Miss Betsy had been flat out making things up. Possibly a bit of both.

When he said so, Ezra gave him a flat, expressionless look. "Trust me, Mr. Jackson, Buck does not need my assistance to inflate his reputation. He accomplishes that on his own. I merely repeat what I hear."

"Didn't say you was lying," Nathan said, "just meant it ain't possible. There's no way even Buck has that much stamina, and no woman is that flexible." He shifted his leg again, wincing at the sharp stab of pain. There really was no position where it didn't hurt. "You think the deputy over there will give us more water if we ask?"

JD was on his feet and over by the cell bars in moments. Nathan wondered dully where he got the energy. "Hey," he called to Harnett. "Hey, you. Nathan needs more water."

Harnett sighed, and rolled his eyes to heaven as if asking the Lord for patience, but he did bring the water. "Never had a prisoner tell us how to run our own damn jail afore," he said, as he handed JD the water. He kept well back from the bars the entire time, making JD reach for the tin cup, and his right hand hovered near his gun until the kid sat down again. If they hadn’t been bloodied and locked up, Nathan might almost have thought the man was afraid of them. For the first time, he started to wonder just what this man they had him mixed up with had done when he robbed that payroll.

"I wouldn't have to tell him how to do things if they were doing a proper job," JD muttered to himself. He sounded thoroughly disgusted with the whole thing, a feeling Nathan could only share.

The water was cool on his dry throat, but even after the cup was empty, Nathan still felt thirsty. He hoped the Army got there soon. Surely, when the cavalry commander showed up, he'd tell Sheriff Aiken that Nathan was innocent, and they all be let out of jail, out to where there were cool sheets and clean bandages and someone who knew what he was doing to take the bullet out of Nathan's leg, because there was no way he was going to let Ezra or JD do it. Not that they'd be able to, without a knife.

The day wore slowly on. Nathan dozed through most of it, not able to summon the energy to stay awake. He thought Ezra slept, too; at least once, he woke to find the Southerner slumped against the wall, eyes closed. JD paced back and forth in the narrow confines of the cell, tried without success to get Ezra to tell him more about the war, tried once again to convince their guard that they were all lawmen—Andy, who had replaced Harnett some time while Nathan slept, threw a book at him—and finally sat down between Nathan and Ezra, watching the deputy in resentful silence. After a while, JD reached through the bars for the book Andy had thrown and started to read it.

Dinner never made an appearance, and supper was as unappetizing as breakfast; this time Nathan couldn't force himself to eat. The dull pain in his leg made him feel sick, and the chill that had plagued him earlier had been replaced by heat that made sweat break out all over him. Fever, obviously. Just as obviously, there was nothing to be done for it.

This time, when he closed his eyes, it was to find dreams waiting for him. Aiken, all in gray with the stars of a general at his collar, was insisting that black prisoners were not real soldiers and should all be “strung up like rebellious slaves.” Beside him, Andy and Harnett stood with ropes in their hands. Ezra played cards at a table behind them, the loops and whorls of gold trim on the arms of his gray uniform glittering even brighter than the stacks of double eagles piled in front of him.

Pain stabbed through his leg, and then Andy and Harnett were holding him down, while the doctor in the fancy waistcoat approached him with a Liston knife in his hand, grinning evilly. Nathan tried to scream, but his voice was gone. He tried to call out to Ezra to help him, but only a whisper came from his throat, and when Ezra turned his head toward him, a red artilleryman’s sash was bound over his eyes, blinding him to Nathan’s plight.

Then it was Nathan who held the Liston knife, and JD who was stretched out on a surgical table with a mangled, broken leg that stank of gangrene. “Hurry up and cut it off,” he told Nathan, the hideous mess below his knee seeming not to bother him at all. “The others are waiting their turns.” He waved a hand to the front flap of the surgical tent, where the rest of the Seven were being carried in on stretchers. Ezra’s eyes weren’t covered by a uniform sash at all, but by a bandage, dripping red with blood. Chris’s chest was a mass of shrapnel wounds, and Vin and Buck had matching saber cuts, gushing bright, arterial blood. Josiah’s arm was gone at the elbow, and a crow perched on his shoulder, pulling loose the tourniquet that bound it. “Hurry,” JD said again. “We all need to be fixed, and they’re going to hang you in the morning.”

Part Four:

It was dark in the jail now, save for a small pool of light cast by the lamp on the sheriff’s desk. From where he sat against the wall, Ezra could just see Andy’s dusty boots propped up on the desk beside the lamp, the dim yellow light picking out every scuff and crack in the leather. No wonder the man wouldn’t lift a finger to take decent care of his prisoners; he couldn’t even be bothered to polish his own boots.

Ezra leaned his head back against the wooden boards and closed his eyes. His temples still throbbed, but the sick feeling had gone, and maybe if he stayed quiet and still he could go back to sleep.

“Do you think these army guys will get here tomorrow?” JD’s voice broke in on his attempt at slumber. “I mean, by then it’ll have been two whole days. That’s got to be long enough for them to get here, right?”

“They’ll come when they come,” Ezra mumbled, not opening his eyes. “It’s not as if we’re going anywhere.”

“But do you think they’ll come tomorrow?”

Ezra kept his eyes shut and stayed silent, hoping JD would think he’d fallen asleep.

“Ezra?”

Ezra sighed. “JD,” he said, in a voice he hoped was sufficiently laden with long-suffering weariness, “Mah head hurts, mah side hurts, and mah arm hurts. Because Ah have been shot. And beaten. And locked up in this disgusting hovel because I was stupid enough to try and break you two out. Nathan has also been shot, and needs to sleep. Can you please, please be quiet?”

“Sorry,” JD said in a small voice. “I… sorry.” He was silent for a moment, then, “I just—You don’t think they’ll really hang us, do you? We didn’t do anything!”

Ezra opened his eyes and sat up a little, turning his head to look at JD. Somehow, despite the day’s growth of beard that darkened the lower half of his face, the kid managed to look about fourteen. Maybe it was the eyes, huge and scared in the dim light. His clothes were smudged with dirt from the cell floor, and he had a streak of blood smeared across one cheek. Nathan’s blood.

“I don’t know,” Ezra admitted. “Chris and Josiah and the rest will show up eventually, though, so at least if we are lynched, we’ll be well-avenged.” It wouldn’t make much of a difference to them one way or the other if they were already dead, but it was something to say.

“I’d rather be rescued.” JD stared down at his hands, turning the dime novel he’d borrowed from Andy-the-deputy over and over. “I wonder if being hung hurts.”

“Probably,” Ezra said. He realized a moment too late that he ought to have lied; he’d gotten out of the habit of telling falsehoods to his fellow lawmen, but there were times, like now, when circumstances called for it. “One of the few benefits of this job was supposed to be a reduction of my chances of winding up at the end of a rope,” he added.

“Yeah, well, if you don’t like it, why don’t you quit?” JD grumbled. It had the sound of a rhetorical question, but was still sharper than anything Ezra had expected to hear from the younger man. Unaccountably, he felt compelled to defend himself.

“I’ve never had any intention of quitting,” only a small lie, “and it wouldn’t do me much good under the circumstances anyway.”

“Then why did you leave?” JD demanded. “You were going to take off for Mexico or somewhere with that money and ditch the rest of us. And yesterday, you just took off to play cards while Nathan got shot! All last night I waited and waited and Nathan was bleeding and bleeding and that damn sheriff wouldn’t listen to anything I said, and now Nathan’s getting worse and they’re going to hang us!”

And, really, there was nothing one could say to that. Ezra tried anyway, however. “One should never put too much trust in a conman, son,” he said lightly, trying for a humorous smile. Inside, he cringed, wanting desperately for this whole conversation to end. JD was correct; he had done next to nothing to aid his friends, too absorbed in his own self-pity and ridiculous resentment to provide them back up when it was needed, or even to manage an effective jailbreak, something he generally prided himself on being quite adept at. It did, indeed, not pay for his associates to place too much trust in him.

JD remained un-amused. “Oh, give me a break, Ezra. And don’t call me ‘son.’ You’re not that much older than me.” He folded his arms across his chest and glared at Ezra. “So, what, you were just pretending to like us for two years?”

“Ah, well, that is-“ Ezra stammered. He felt his face grow hot, but luckily it was too dim inside the jail for his blush to be noticed. His feelings had of course been genuine, but it had made damn-all difference in the eventual outcome. When push came to shove, he had still put profit first and his friends second. Josiah had clearly given him custody of the money as some sort of test—a test he had failed—and Nathan had made his disapproval over the whole affair more than evident. Vin, the one member of the seven who hadn’t seemed to care about the cash, had merely shrugged in an amused sort of way, and asked Ezra exactly how far he’d expected to get leaving town on foot. Money had never been among Mr. Tanner’s top priorities.

Buck had been too preoccupied with his lost love to say anything on the subject at all.

Chris had not said anything about it either. He had simply looked at Ezra in that silent, threatening fashion he had perfected and pointedly refrained from mentioning Ezra’s promise not to “run out on him.” And then set about making quite sure that Ezra never left town or went anywhere on his own. Somehow, it was more effective a chastisement than shouting would have been.

Ezra had quite obviously forfeited the privilege of Chris Larabee’s trust, not that he seemed to have held that much of it to begin with, and the same could probably be said for the rest of his friends as well. The fact that he had only himself to blame only made it all that much worse.

“’Course not,” Nathan said. “He’s got no reason to go pretending to like the rest of us. There wouldn’t be no profit in it.”

Ezra turned sharply to stare at Nathan, whom he’d thought to be asleep. “My apologies, Mr. Jackson,” he began, “we didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You could have tried being quiet,” Nathan pointed out tartly. “A man can’t hardly sleep with you two jawing on like you’ve been doing.” He pushed himself up onto his elbows, wincing at the movement. “What-all are you arguing about that money for at this time of night? It was all over and done with weeks ago.”

“I believe it was ten days ago, actually,” Ezra couldn’t help pointing out.

“Weeks, days, what does it matter? Like we don’t got enough problems to worry about now.”

Ezra dropped his gaze to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw JD hang his head.

“We’re real sorry, Nathan. We didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Nathan sighed. “Guess not,” he said. He eased himself carefully down onto his back again and closed his eyes. “It ain’t your fault we’re stuck here, Ezra,” he said, after a moment. “You could have handled getting us out better, but they’d probably have arrested us even if you’d stayed with us instead of running off to gamble.”

“Of course it’s not my fault.” Ezra leaned his head back against the wall again and let his own eyes drift closed. The bruise on his temple ached dully. He resisted the urge to rub at it, knowing that that would only irritate the injury further. At least his ribs had stopped hurting, now that he was no longer trying to sit up straight. “I can’t be blamed for this town’s cretinous sheriff’s inability to read wanted posters correctly.”

“Yeah, they’re all cree—what you said,” JD muttered. “We don’t look anything like outlaws. I mean, we don’t, do we?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Nathan said. “All us ‘darkies’ look alike.” He sounded tired, and more than a little bitter, for which Ezra certainly couldn’t blame him. Faces and mannerisms were part of his stock in trade, and his mother had made certain that the dangers of making assumptions based upon a person’s appearance were drilled into him from childhood—it never paid to misevaluate a potential mark—but he had encountered that particular dismissive attitude toward blacks countless times. He had never though about the problems inherent in being on the receiving end of it.

“Well, that’s just stupid,” JD said forcefully. “How’s somebody supposed to be a lawman if he can’t tell the difference between you and some random other guy?”

“My sentiments precisely,” Ezra mumbled.

There was quiet for a long moment after that, and Ezra had begun to hope that he would finally be able to get some sleep, when JD spoke up again.

“You weren’t really going to leave, were you?”

Why, why couldn’t the kid just leave well enough alone? Ezra debated his answer, torn between saying something false but reassuring that would get JD to shut up, and admitting the actual truth. The trouble was, he wasn’t completely sure of the answer himself.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’d like to think that I would have turned around even if I hadn’t overheard Stutz’s plans, but there was so much money…” he trailed off, feeling somewhat disgusted at how weak that sounded.

“I honestly didn’t think you’d run off with it,” Nathan said. His eyes were still closed, and Ezra was starting to become concerned over how still he was lying. “I thought you’d learned better than that,” Nathan went on. “Well, hoped you had.”

“I never gave two cents about the damned money,” JD announced. He shrugged, and waved one bloodstained hand—it was too dark to see the blood, but Ezra knew it was there. “I mean, hell, Ezra, of course nobody trusts you with money. It’d be like asking Buck to quit trying to use his ‘animal maggotism.’ I just didn’t think you’d actually want to leave.”

“Yes, JD. I think we’ve all figured that out by now.” It came out sounding lighter and more sarcastic than he’d intended. Sincerity was a difficult habit to acquire. To be too overtly emotional was to make oneself a target, and tiresome, besides. “I assure you, I have no desire to find a new line of employ.” As he said it, he realized with a small shock that it was true. Even his visions of owning a saloon had altered from daydreams of a gambling parlor in San Francisco or Denver to a quiet fantasy of a small building in Four Corners with a well-stocked bar and a player piano that could produce something other than the mangled version of “Marching Through Georgia” that was the only music one ever heard in the Seven’s usual watering hole. The details of the establishment itself were hazy, but the six faces that always populated one of its tables were quite distinct.

All of which made his attempt to run off with those stacks of greenbacks seem even more ridiculous. He didn’t even need his mother’s interfering touch to ruin his life; he’d sabotaged things quite well himself. Not that any of it would matter all that much if the Army really did decide to hang them.

“Good,” Nathan said. “I’m glad you’ve made up your mind to stick around. We goin’ to go to sleep now?”

“Yeah, might as well,” JD said. He sounded studiedly casual, but the grin on his face was clearly visible even in the poor light. Seeing that expression directed at him almost made up for the whole painfully awkward conversation. It seemed that in one quarter, at least, Ezra could consider himself forgiven.

“Do you people ever shut up?” Andy the thug demanded suddenly, swinging his feet down off the desk and turning to face them. “Jabber, jabber, jabber, like a bunch a’ damned chickens. I swear to God, I never heard such a set a’ conversationalists. And throw my book back over here, city boy. You won’t like it if I have to come over there and take it.”

JD obediently picked the dime novel up and threw it back. It came within an inch of the deputy’s head, and missed hitting him square between the eyes only because the man saw it coming and jerked out of the way. JD’s aim at close range could always be relied upon.

Really, Ezra thought, as he watched Andy’s chair tip over backwards and clatter heavily to the floor, the man should have known better.

* * * JD tried to go to sleep, he really did, but the thoughts of hanging that kept sneaking into his mind no matter how he tried to ignore them made sleep impossible. He wasn’t sure how Ezra and Nathan managed it.

Hell, he wasn’t sure how Vin managed it. The tracker had to worry about this sort of thing happening to him all the time. JD was pretty sure that he would be a nervous wreck if he were in Vin’s shoes.

JD leaned back against the cell wall, pulled his knees up to his chest, and watched Andy the Thug sleep on guard duty. If Ezra had still had his lock picks, the three of them could have been out of there before the man even knew they were gone.

The army, he told himself, would show up just as soon as morning came. They would come striding in, tall and impressive in their blue uniforms, and would know right away that he and Nathan and Ezra weren’t the men they were looking for. Their commander would demand that Aiken let them all go immediately, and, if they were really lucky, he’d be angry enough about having his time wasted to rake Aiken and his deputies over the coals for it.

Or maybe, just maybe, Chris and Buck would show up to rescue them all, and make the sheriff let them go at gunpoint. And then they’d get a doctor for Nathan, and Aiken would have to admit that JD was a lawman.

Or the army might be just as convinced as everyone else that Nathan was their payroll bandit, and would hang him for robbery and JD and Ezra for being accomplices.

Ezra was probably right. Hanging probably did hurt.

And, damnit, how come nobody ever believed him when he told them he was a lawman?

JD knew he looked like a kid, and that he’d certainly never have ended up a sheriff if he’d stayed in Boston. He’d asked around, before deciding to go West, but the city’s police force hadn’t wanted someone as young and small as him—not when there were plenty of big, hungry Irishmen and experienced war veterans available for the job. Out here, though, things were supposed to be different. He’d read the newspaper reports and dime novels; Bat Masterson was only twenty-three, just a couple of years older than JD was, and nobody doubted that he was a lawman.

Bat Masterson would not have ended up locked up in some jail in the middle of nowhere, waiting to be hanged for a crime he hadn’t committed, because no one would listen to him long enough to send a telegram.

The army would get there tomorrow. They had too. Because JD was pretty sure that Nathan’s leg was getting worse.

He had been certain that there was no way he was going to get any sleep, but somewhere along the line he must have drifted off after all, because the next thing JD knew, he heard the sound of the jail door opening, and open his eyes to find sunlight shining in through the window.

His neck ached from sleeping sitting up, and his butt was numb from sitting on the floor for hours, but the moment he saw the man standing in the jail’s doorway, none of that was important anymore.

The newcomer was lit from behind by sunlight, making it hard to see his face, but the silhouette of his U.S. Cavalry slouch hat was unmistakable.

Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God.

JD wanted to jump up and whoop with glee, but kept himself still, just in case Andy-the-Thug was still in a throwing-things kind of mood. He glanced around the cell, finding Nathan still motionless on the bunk and Ezra stretched out on the floor, eyes closed.

“Ezra.” JD leaned over and nudged Ezra in the shoulder, willing him to wake up so that he could share in the good news—because it was going to be good. It had to be. Now that someone other than Aiken and his deputies were here, people were going to start listening to them. “Ezra. Wake up. I told you the army would get here today.”

“Joy,” Ezra muttered, eyes still closed. Then he opened them and sat up, groaning. “I loathe sleeping on the ground. Humanity invented beds for a reason.” Ezra’s hair was sticking up every which way, something he was sure to fuss about the moment he noticed it, and the bruise on his forehead had spread downward into a spectacular black eye. The cuffs of his shirt were stained a rusty brown from Nathan’s blood, and his waistcoat was covered in dust. Because he’d tried to break them all out of jail. Because he was staying, not running off

JD grinned. Ezra was staying. He hadn’t meant to leave, he wasn’t mad at them all for some strange, Ezra-type reason, and he wasn’t going to quit being a lawman and take off for greener pastures, even though it had landed him in a jail cell with JD and Nathan. And best of all, none of them were going to be hanged.

“The army are here,” JD repeated happily. “They’ve got to let us out now.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Ezra grumbled. He brushed ineffectually at his grimy waistcoat and frowned at the cavalry officer, who was now standing by the desk, listening to Sheriff Aiken’s colorful description of their capture and trying unsuccessfully to interrupt him.

“…so we locked ‘em up and set in to wait for you,” Aiken wrapped up. He was standing with his thumbs hooked through his belt, shoulders back and chest out. “Didn’t expect you to get here so soon, though. We only cabled you yesterday morning.”

“Doc Hunnicutt sent us a telegram the day before yesterday,” the officer said flatly, in a voice redolent of New England, “saying there’d been a, and I quote, ‘gross miscarriage of justice,’ and that you fellows had arrested some doctor by mistake, thinking it was the man who ran off with our payroll.”

Aiken sighed, shaking his head. “He tried to jump in when we were taking them into custody, too.” He shrugged, and spread his big, swollen-knuckled hands. “I'm sure he's a fine doctor, but he ought to know better than to stick his nose in where it don't belong, especially when he doesn't know what's going on."

"Doc Hunnicutt," the officer said, "knows everything about everything. Ask him and he'll tell you. In this case, though, he's right. I don’t know who you’ve got in there, Sheriff,” he went on, his New England accent still the most beautiful sound JD had ever heard, “but it isn’t our payroll thief. We caught him three days ago, got him in the lock-up at Fort Huachuca.”

This, JD decided gleefully, was even better than he could have hoped for. There was no way even a stuffed-shirt clod like Aiken could doubt his word now. "I told you!" he burst out. "I told you it wasn't us! Boy, are you in trouble now, mister."

Aiken looked flabbergasted, staring from the jail cell to the cavalry officer and back with his jaw hanging open. "But," he spluttered, "they matched the description. A big negro and two white men, traveling together. And they resisted arrest."

"And said they was lawmen," Andy chimed in. "And doctors, too, like anybody's ever heard of a darkie doctor." He spat in the general direction of the room's brass spittoon, missing by several inches.

"Cretin," Ezra muttered. He stepped toward the bars, tugging his ruined waistcoat straight. "Well, lawmen or not, I trust you gentlemen are now satisfied that we are not road agents. If you could let us out now?"

"You might not be road agents, but you're sure as hell something," Aiken countered, glaring at Ezra from beneath his bushy eyebrows. "My deputy and I found you trying to pick the lock on our cell door. Or," he inquired sarcastically, "was that a case of mistaken identity, too?"

"You know what?" the cavalry officer said, holding his hands up before him and taking a step backwards, "I'm going to let you folks sort this out amongst yourselves. I'll come back in a couple minutes with one of our surgeons for your man with the bullet hole."

"No way," JD protested, seeing their prospects of immediate freedom dwindling. "Nathan gets let out of here now! And we get to cable Four Corners to prove we're who we say we are."

"Well, that I can do, kid," the officer said. He smiled at JD, and picked up a loose sheet of paper from the jail's desk, producing a pencil out of his pocket. "Give me your names, and I'll wire the telegraph man in this… Four Corners, you said?"

"Four Corners." JD repeated. "JD Dunne, Ezra Standish, and Nathan Jackson. We work with Chris Larabee; the telegraph operator'll tell you."

"Or Mr. Larabee will, when he gets wind of this little affaire," Ezra drawled. He looked as if he were relishing the thought of that confrontation as much as JD was. Normally, JD wouldn't have wished a pissed-off Chris on anyone, but Sheriff Aiken and his men deserved to be on the receiving end of the Larabee glare if anyone did.

"Nathan Jackson?" the officer frowned. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Cold Harbor," Nathan volunteered in a cracked voice. "Broken arm."

"Nathan!” JD felt himself grinning wider than ever. “You're gonna be fine now. They're going to let us out and get you a doctor."

"I heard,” Nathan rasped. He smiled, a flash of white teeth that looked more pained than happy, then tilted his head to look up at the cavalry officer. "You were in the war, weren't you? I set your arm after Cold Harbor."

"Damn.” The man gaped at Nathan, his right hand going to his left bicep as if by instinct. Then his lips slowly curved into a smile. “I guess you did." He turned to Aiken, and went on, "Right, you can let them out. I don't know about the lawmen part, but Jackson there was a stretcher-bearer during the war. He saved me from having my arm cut off, or as good as." He shook his head, still smiling. "Looks like Doc Hunnicutt was right about that whole doctor thing."

"I told you," JD informed Aiken. “I told you men over and over, but did anybody listen to me?”

“Y’all gonna let us out now?” Nathan asked. He was propped up on his elbows now, and looked like he was getting ready to struggle to his feet.

Ezra stepped away from the bars and put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder, holding him in place. “I believe you ought to stay put, Mr. Jackson. Their surgeon can just as easily come to you.”

“He could, but he’s not gonna,” Nathan said, through gritted teeth, as he shrugged off Ezra’s retraining hand and sat upright. “I’m walking out of here. Now.”

Ezra frowned, but gave Nathan a hand up, followed by a shoulder to lean on. “Sharpsburg, Cold Harbor,” he grumbled under his breath, “I suppose you were at Manassas and Fredericksburg, too?”

Nathan nodded silently, jaw set in obvious pain, and Ezra rolled his eyes, continuing with, “You must have made the grand tour. It’s probably pure coincidence I didn’t blow you up.”

“I’ve seen your aim with a canon, Ezra.”

“I was out of practice,” Ezra protested. “It had been nearly a decade since I’d had the opportunity to fire one.”

Normally, the byplay would have been interesting, but… “Why isn’t anyone unlocking the door?” JD demanded.

“I’m gonna be damned glad to get rid of you, you little brat,” Andy muttered, snatching the keys off the wall and stomping over to the cell door. “Larabee or whoever you really belong to is welcome to ya.”

“Yeah? Well you’re just lucky he’s not here,” JD returned.

Andy’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t respond, beyond jerking the cell door open with more force than he needed to. Probably because the cavalry officer was watching.

JD stepped out of the way, letting Ezra leave the cell first, Nathan’s arm draped over his shoulders. The healer was a full head taller than the gambler, and it would almost have been funny to see him bent half double over the shorter man’s support, were it not for the lines of pain in his face.

Forget Chris, JD decided savagely. He wished Judge Travis were here, to kick Aiken and his deputies out of their posts and bring them up before the bench on charges of… well, charges of something. A bullet was only half of what Julestown’s lawmen deserved.

Aiken said nothing, simply watching the proceedings with folded arms and an increasingly red face. When Ezra sarcastically inquired as to whether he and Nathan might have their possessions back, he silently handed over Ezra’s coat and Nathan’s medical bag, jaw tightening and a vein in his forehead throbbing when Ezra silkily suggested that Nathan examine the bag’s contents to make sure nothing was missing.

“I’m sure these here fine gentlemen ain’t thieves,” Nathan said, in a disgusted tone that implied exactly the opposite.

JD reclaimed his hat from the peg on the wall where Deputy Harnett had hung it and examined it for damage. Aside from the old bullet hole in the crown and the dust from the day before yesterday’s ride, it was as good as new, and having it back made him feel better immediately. Buckling his gunbelt back on felt even better; he felt half-dressed without his Colts nowadays.

“I distinctly remember carrying a large amount of cash money when I entered this place,” Ezra announced, eyeing Andy significantly.

“Consider it a fine for attempted breaking and entering,” Aiken told him. “And get out of my jail before I change my mind.

“Technically, it was breaking and exiting.”

“What it was was illegal,” Aiken drawled, “and you can consider yourself lucky to be walking out of here at all. I better not see any of you three in my town again.”

“We wouldn’t want to come back to your stupid town, anyway,” JD told him, as he settled his hat back on his head where it belonged and made his way out the door. “This is the worst jail I’ve ever been in,” he called back over his shoulder. The door swung shut behind him, cutting off any reply Aiken or Andy might have made.

The cavalry officer, who introduced himself as Captain Cantwell, escorted the three of them straight across the street to Julestown’s only hotel, and brought in the promised Army doctor—yet another doctor, JD thought—to dig the bullet out of Nathan’s leg.

Doctor Potter, white-haired and barely taller than JD, claimed to have been pulling bullets out of people since the Mexican war, and chatted companionably with Nathan about battlefield surgery as he set out his instruments.

“If this had been a minée ball, I’d be taking your leg off,” he announced, as he sliced through Ezra’s clumsy attempt at bandaging. “The damned things were worse than being kicked by a mule; shattered the bone into a dozen pieces.”

“I know,” Nathan grunted. He propped himself up on one elbow to watch as Dr. Potter picked up a long, thin metal probe and began poking at his wounded thigh.

“There’s some inflammation, but not as much as there might be. You’re a lucky young man, son.” Dr. Potter slid the probe inside the bullet hole and moved it around, Nathan hissed, and a fresh trickle of blood began oozing from the wound.

JD looked away, feeling sick, and tried not to listen to the little sounds of pain Nathan kept making. When Captain Cantwell suggested that JD accompany him to the telegram office to wire Four Corners, he accepted with a flood of guilty relief. Ezra stayed behind with Nathan; when JD and Cantwell left, he was watching Dr. Potter work as if he were going to be called to judge him on his performance.

The road out of Julestown was just as hot and dusty as the road in had been, but JD had never been quite so happy to leave a town behind him. Well, except maybe for Jericho, that place with the illegal prison camp, but as far as he was concerned Julestown’s lawmen were a little better than that sheriff who’d tried to turn Chris into convict labor.

Ezra more than shared this opinion, and had spent the past three days loudly lamenting the theft of his hundred and fifty dollars, which he claimed was far more than even the strictest of judges could fine a man for attempting a jailbreak. Captain Cantwell, who had cast a jaundiced eye over Ezra’s bottle green coat and ruffled shirtfront, had proved singularly uninterested in getting it back for him. When pressed, he had reminded Ezra that some towns had rules forbidding former Confederate soldiers to wear guns, and did he really want to get into another argument about what Sheriff Aiken did and did not have the right to confiscate from him? Ezra had brushed a hand over the hilt of his Remington, pointedly adjusted his left cuff, and shut up.

Nathan had said very little on the subject at all, beyond remarking that Ezra’s money had all been cheated out of people anyway, and that he could always replace it with new ill-gotten gains. However, he had insisted on mounting Lincoln and riding out of town a mere three days after getting the bullet removed from his leg, something he would never in a million years have let any of the other Seven get away with.

Somehow, the rules about proper rest after injuries that Nathan enforced on the rest of them never seemed to apply to Nathan himself.

“Gentlemen,” Ezra began, as the three of them steered their horses past the skeletal water tower that marked the limits of Julestown, “I think we can all agree that Mr. Larabee doesn’t need to know every detail of our little adventure.”

“You mean, like you running off to gamble and drink?” Nathan asked, raising his eyebrows and grinning.

“I was thinking more of my being humiliatingly caught in the act while breaking you two out of prison, but in a word… yes.”

“Don’t worry, Ezra,” JD told him. “We’ll just tell him you got the black eye defending President Grant’s reputation.”

Ezra muttered something uncomplimentary, of which only the words “corruption” and “profiteering” were clearly audible, and JD suddenly felt ridiculously happy. Ezra might be favoring his left side and sporting a black eye, Nathan might be riding stiffly, but the three of them were going home, free and unhanged, and Ezra was talking to them again. Nathan had even gotten his big Lister knife back, though the newly purchased bottles of carbolic acid had leaked away into the Julestown street.

Buck and Chris were supposed to meet up with them halfway back to Four Corners, and since Ezra had finally stopped sulking, there was a slight chance that maybe Buck had shut up about Louisa Perkins, and they could all put the whole Stutz thing behind them.

JD patted Milagro on the shoulder and began to whistle tunelessly. After a moment, Nathan began to whistle as well, though his notes formed an obvious tune. JD recognized it as a Civil War marching song, though he couldn’t remember any of the words beyond the bit in the chorus about “rallying round the flag.” Some of Captain Cantwell’s soldiers had been singing it in the saloon the other day.

Ezra obviously couldn’t remember the words either, since the ones he started singing softly a few minutes later didn’t resemble any version of “Battle Cry of Freedom” JD had ever heard. He actually had a decent-sounding tenor when he wasn’t pretending to be a girl, though.

Nathan shot him an indecipherable look and launched into song himself, about “welcoming to our numbers the loyal, true and brave,” while Ezra, in near perfect harmony, loudly sang a completely different set of lyrics about resisting tyranny.

“The Union forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah,” Nathan sang, starting in on the refrain.

“Down with the eagle, up with the cross,” Ezra caroled.

“And we’ll rally round the flag, boys, we’ll rally once again,” they sang in unison, finally getting to the bit of the song that JD remembered, “shouting the battle cry of freedom.”

Then Lincoln stumbled over a stone and Nathan broke off singing with a wince, pressing a hand to his wounded leg. Ezra fell silent as well, letting Chaucer drop back a few paces to take up his habitual drag position. JD kept whistling.

.

Notes: Doctors Hunnicutt, Frank the ferret-faced, and Potter are borrowed from MASH. All other non-canon characters are completely made up. “Battle Cry of Freedom” is one of the many Civil War tunes to have two different sets of lyrics, one Northern and one Southern. Nathan and Ezra sing the third verse of each version, which go thusly:

"We have welcomed to our number the loyal, true, and brave
(shout, shout the battle cry of freedom)
and though a man be poor, he shall never be a slave
(shout, the battle cry of freedom)
The Union forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah
down with the traitor, up with the star
and we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again
shouting the battle cry of freedom”

and:

“They have lain down their lives on the bloody battlefield
(shout, shout the battle cry of freedom)
Their motto is resistance, to tyrants we’ll not yield
(shout, shout the battle cry of freedom)
The Southland forever, she’s ne’er at a loss
Down with the eagle, up with the cross
and we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again
shouting the battle cry of freedom”