Outlaw's Prayer (ch. 12)
Title: Outlaw's Prayer (12/22)
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: R
Pairing: Skibmann (Neal Tiemann/Andy Skib), Cookson (David Cook/Kelly Clarkson), Kradam (Kris Allen/Adam Lambert), various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: I have been working on this story for the past nine months and I am SO excited to finally be posting it. What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5, part one
Chapter 5, part two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7, part one
Chapter 7, part two
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
"Those who slay by the sword shall by the sword be slain." - The Pioche Record, on the murder of Morgan Courtney
The sounds of a gunshot were muffled within the walls of the Lambert Inn by the brothel's nightly sensual festivities kicking into full swing. A trio of musicians who also doubled as the inn's bodyguards accompanied a lively, soulful tune by a young Mestiza, compensating in vocal power what she lacked in age. The band stirred up a crowd of joyfully rowdy customers, fueled by liquor, lust, and the seizure of life's little pleasures, the roar of voices joining in on the young singer's verses though very few could follow the words. The buzz of voices hummed from front parlor to back saloon and around again, thundering through the thick timbers of the walls and even in the private quarters of the inn's proprietor, the rooms currently unoccupied, their owner choosing to spend a night engulfed in the revelries his boisterous staff had to offer.
By the time the song concluded, the diminutive redhead punching the air in triumph and garnering a roar of approval from the audience, the deed not three hundred feet from the inn's walls had already been done, and there was nothing left for Deputy Kris Allen to deduce that anything had gone wrong.
"She's good," he observed, nursing a particularly potent gimlet, the bartender well aware of the events of the day and predicting the good lawman would need one. The youthful, bubbly exuberance he saw in the Mestiza, who shrieked and playfully batted away the lewd brassman's trombone slide in between songs, was far sunnier than the dispositions of most young girls in a brothel, who often reached these dens of ill-repute after years of abuse, neglect and torment, with nowhere else to turn.
Adam put on a sour look as he sipped a glass of red wine; the musicians knew how to stoke a crowd just as much as his young singer, but he watched them carefully, making sure they did not step out of line. "She's gonna stay good," he assured, adamant ever since the pitiful orphaned girl arrived on his doorstep that she would stay at the inn as a ward, not one of the women on the Lambert Inn menu.
Expecting a laugh or quick retort--so commonplace when talking with Kris, Adam felt a foreign void when it didn't arrive on schedule--but receiving none, the innkeeper turned a concerned eye towards his companion. "Something wrong?" he asked; Adam's fingers itched to reach at the back of Kris's neck, massage away the tension he knew built up in his shoulders when he was distressed. But they were not within the safe haven of Adam's bedroom, away from the prying eyes of the town, and tales of such a gesture could spread like a pox through Hope by morning. Adam bit his lip against a scowl, his mind teetering between resenting having to hide his affections for Kris, and unceremoniously hauling him off to Adam's room so he could touch him whenever and however he pleased.
Finding the bottom of his murky glass of liquor fascinating, Kris shrugged glumly, reluctant to admit his mental exhaustion even to Adam. "It's Gokey," he said, his voice not masking his disappointment. It was trying alone on the deputy that he had to conduct the investigation of the robbery, but to also stoke the ego of the man who should have been doing it--instead of muttering self-indulgent, paranoid ramblings at his desk, desperate for retribution--was far too much for one day.
Kris lifted his gaze and immediately the clear blue of Adam's eyes filled his vision, warm and understanding, inviting even when there was nothing to which to invite but another drink and a witty conversation in a noisy saloon. It was how they had first befriended each other, suppressing the instant attraction and reaching for something deeper, a companionship that grew from the intellectual to the sincere, until one day when a stolen kiss proved to them both it meant much more. Kris looked into the same piercing eyes he had encountered his first day in Hope and couldn't help but smile, his mood softening slightly, never able to stay upset in Adam's presence for too long. "He's acting kinda crazy back at the office. Think the robbery's really gotten to him."
Opening his mouth to speak as he watched Adam nod with concern, the deputy was interrupted before he could get out another word. "Sorry to break up the social call," the young Mestiza said unironically, in a brief intermission from the entertainment, bright red curls bouncing as she approached the pair. "But you're wanted at the front door."
Adam began to rise from his seat at the bar, ready to grumble over one routine customer complaint or another, but the singer stopped him. "Not you, no one wants you," she joked, and received a playful cuff and a tousling of her curls in return. But when she turned to Adam's companion, a flash of urgency crossed her face; her information was indeed dire. "They want to see the dep."
With a resolute nod to his companion, Kris made his way to the front of house, where he met the Lambert Inn's emcee, who for the second time that day seemed uncharacteristically nervous. "What's wrong?" Kris asked, almost dreading the answer.
"A patron just came in, said the sheriff's hauling someone off to the jail." It was strange for Blake to speak so succinctly, but Kris saw that unusual times for Hope meant unusual measures.
The deputy's eyes widened at the news, surprised by so many details in that one sentence his mind couldn't figure out where to begin. "Gokey?" he asked incredulously. "You mean...arrested...Gokey?"
"It's what I saw," spoke up the patron, tall and broad, Kris immediately recognizing the short haircut and green eyes of the ranch hand from the outskirts of town. Chris Richardson continued his account, his tone honest with no reasons for a false statement. "He was dragging some poor fella down the street towards the jail, grin on his face like he just struck gold."
"Thought you should be aware," Blake said from the side of his mouth; it was clear to Kris that the staff of the Lambert Inn had made their decision on who was the real law of this town.
He gave a nod of gratitude to Richardson, holding his hand out to the emcee and waiting for the revolver he checked with him when he entered the establishment. Kris had no idea what Gokey had gotten himself into; Lord knows he might need that gun now. "You said it was right outside the inn?" he asked, receiving a nod in return.
"Was just coming in...for the music," Richardson hastily added, tugging at two lengths of string tied at his wrist. There was no shame or secrecy in ranch hands visiting the pleasure den, though many tried to save their meager earnings instead of spending them on women and wine; but a nervous look that passed between this particular ranch hand and the inn's emcee indicated this visit wasn't about the wine and it certainly wasn't about the women. Kris gave no notice that he saw the subtle look, weaving in through the crowd once more to give a regrettable goodbye; he knew that look because he shared it with Adam on more than one occasion.
Reunited with his revolver, Kris made his way out of the Lambert Inn and had to stop himself from breaking out into a run for the sheriff's office, unsure of what he would find there. He was so focused on his destination he failed to notice the spotted trail of blood leading towards the building underfoot, the moonless night so dark it was indistinguishable from the streets of dust and stone.
***
"Time's up, Neal."
He had been so engrossed in the waiting, eyes so trained on the distant horizon, that he had not heard David approach, his boots shuffling against the gravel of the campsite. Neal tried to tell himself he knew it was David all along, he could decipher the other man's footsteps without any alarm. It hadn't been true, of course, and neither David nor himself would have believed that excuse.
The night cast no shadows along the desert floor, the absence of a moon dropping their world into darkness for hours now and for hours more to come; there was the chance he had gotten lost, Neal remarked to himself, but he also shot that reasoning down, knowing that even if Andy's internal compass did not bring him back to camp, his horse's surely would. He felt a pang of disappointment when the presence revealed itself to be David and not Andy, but Neal tried to push that feeling aside, knowing it was pointless. But that feeling in his gut did not subside far enough to get him to relinquish his position on guard, not even for their leader.
David tried to take Neal's silence as his assent, even gratitude for relieving him of guard duty, but even he couldn't fool himself; the defiance shimmering in Neal's eyes was piercing even in the darkness of a fireless camp. It was times like these David saw the fierce loyalty that made Neal his natural second in command; it was times like these he was glad the Dr. was on his side. "Your shift's over," he explained, hiking a thumb back in the direction of their bedrolls; Neal did not make a move to follow it. "You should get some rest."
"Thought the kid's supposed to relieve me," he noted, buying more time, wishing both David and the uneasy feeling in his gut would simply go away.
"Giving him a reprieve," replied David, glossing over the detail that he couldn't seem to rouse Kyle out of an exhausted sleep, the Californian's energy drained from his challenges with Sugarfoot and the gradual loss of adrenaline from the heist earlier that day. Kid was out like the moon, and since the nightly rotation of guard duty had just diminished permanently to three, David figured he could start his shift early.
The silence fell between the two, thicker than the night's darkness; Neal knew David would insist as much as David knew Neal would refuse. Andy had been late getting back to camp many times before, delaying for days because of a crisis in town, rendering him unable to escape without detection or notice. But Joey's departure left the rest of the men on edge, the undervalued outlaw among them leaving a hole in their daily routine both Neal and David hadn't been aware that he filled. Neal found distraction in his wait for Andy while David immersed himself in overprotecting his Kings, making sure as the leader he did not fail the rest like he failed Joey. Neither man planned to give up their comfort zones just as they refused to give up the ridge, to give up on one another.
David broke the tension with a heavy sigh, his shoulders sagging in the darkness. "He left to protect us," he referred to Joey, their conversation brief but intense, and the most important talk David ever had with Joey in the time he had known him. "He didn't want us getting caught up in...whatever he's got himself caught up in."
Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Neal, however, saw things a different way. "We would have helped him and he knew it," he said, shooting down Joey's perceived altruism. It wasn't that David had believed in the unselfish reasoning; it was that he had to. "He ran. He ran away because we wouldn't run with him."
The truth wasn't with either man, but somewhere in the middle, a self-surviving gray that spoke of neither chivalry or abandonment. When he had time to ruminate on their conversation that night, David decided that gray area was very much like Joey.
"I'll sure miss his beans, though," David said with a smile, sealing their conversation, trying to get a rise out of the stoic sharpshooter. What would normally garner at least an amused chuckle from Neal, acknowledging David's charmingly overdone attempt at humor, was met with silence, and though he could not see his face through the darkness David had reason to believe the other man had already turned his head back towards the horizon, attempting to spy a horse and her rider.
Stirring the dirt up underneath his feet noisily to announce his steps, David approached Neal, a friendly pat on the back encouraging him to heed the outlaw's advice. "If Andy shows up on my watch," he offered, hoping a promise would get Neal to relent and finally get some rest. "I'll make sure he kicks you and tells you he's alive."
But David's words made the opposite effect, the sound of their partner's name in the air steeling Neal towards his cause, boots firmly planted in the New Mexico dirt, his body showing signs of his fatigue but also determined not to let that hinder him. "I'll make sure for myself, thanks," he declined, knowing it was more than the sensuous, unique way he and Andy greeted each other upon return to camp fueling his stubbornness.
"He's taken his time before," said David, remembering nights before Kyle, before even Joey, when Andy would be gone from camp for days with no word, making appearances within a town to cast off suspicion. It seemed to have been easier then, with Neal more manageable during Andy's many absences; but he didn't let himself dwell on it, lest he start calling those "the good old days," and they weren't all that good to begin with, anyway. "He said there was law in the town; he's probably caught up in something. Waiting for the right moment."
Neal knew David spoke common sense. But over the years the sharpshooter had learned not to take his instincts lightly, that often the prickling hairs on the back of your neck and the air of a room growing suddenly and stiflingly hot could be the difference between life and death, between falling to someone else's gun and felling someone to your own. "Something just doesn't feel right," he insisted, the first and only time he revealed these kinds of suspicions to another.
If David had felt a sense of dread like the one touching Neal's pressure points, pricking his skin like treacherous thorns in a rosebush, he kept them to himself; even to his second in command he would never reveal such doubt. "The only thing not right about this is Andy's sleeping on a feather mattress in the finest hotel in town right now," he said. The best way for Andy to diffuse suspicion was to remain where he was--which so happened to be an enviable room at the Lambert Inn. It made Neal hearken back to the last time he even slept in a bed, the last time he had shared a bed with Andy; it had been decidedly less luxurious than the hotel room Andy had described to the rest of them. "While we are sharing sleeping quarters with the scorpions and prairie dogs."
He urged Neal once again to do just that, to sleep, and the physical exhaustion in the sharpshooter's limbs was breaking his resistance down. "He can take care of himself just fine, Neal; you know that." His hand fell upon Neal's shoulder, and even though he couldn't see the expression on his friend's face, David could tell he eked out a smile. "And if he gets here and finds out I let you drain yourself like this, I'm the one who's gonna get kicked."
With a sincere promise to notify him if the absent member of their gang returned, David sent Neal off for the last time, finally convincing him to relinquish his watch for much-needed rest. Neal laid down, the distant sounds of the desert in his head, of horses snorting and shifting in their upright sleep and of Kyle's deep, undisturbed slumber; but he couldn't bring himself to sleep, the emptiness of the bedroll next to him unsettling, keeping him alert for the sound of an approaching rider.
***
Crossing the distance between the Lambert Inn and the sheriff's office as fast as his legs could carry him without breaking out into a run, careful not to startle the townspeople pleasantly sleeping in their beds, Kris reached Gokey in record time, the deputy's revolver unholstered and at the ready for whatever might have awaited him inside the building. Kris only knew that Danny had hauled someone into the town's jail, and it most likely had something to do with the robbery from the previous morning; there was no other reason for Danny to arrest anyone, nor had he ever arrested anyone before tonight.
It could be a hoax, Kris considered, one hand on the doorknob and the other on his gun; some poor patron of the Lambert Inn, already detested by Gokey's pseudo-pious standards, stumbling through the darkness after one too many whiskeys, the sheriff claiming public indecency. Or--Kris gripped the revolver tighter, having never needed to use it on another human being before--it could be worse than he imagined, an actual criminal or outlaw playing possum with Danny in order to gain the upper hand. Kris could have been walking into a desperate sheriff's publicity attempt, or right into a death trap.
When he pushed open the door, the heavy pine swinging inward with a bright crescent of lamp light and the distinctive smell of blood soon following it, Kris saw it was nothing he had imagined at all.
Hope's law enforcement team was by no means large, and their headquarters reflected their size: a small structure of deep-fired brick, it was one of the few buildings made of more than timber in the town, save for the Lambert Inn itself. Sturdy and reliable, it housed a one-room office with a small, cornered-off jail cell in the back, fitted with floor-to-ceiling iron bars Sheriff Daughtry had purchased from Pittsburgh, one of his last acts before fatigue and illness did him in. Never in Daughtry's tenure nor in Gokey's did Kris witness a man locked in that cell, with most altercations in Hope ending in a gruff, reluctant handshake or a petition for arbitration sent to the closest big city, Silver Springs, at least a five days' ride to the closest tort judge. No one had ever found reason for the cell: there were no fistfights here, no violence since the wild days of the inn, now long gone with the added security and enforcement Adam brought in when he inherited the land. Kris never even used it as a drunk tank, allowing men to sober up in private, disliking other towns' enjoyment of humiliating the individual into temperance.
That cell was occupied now, for the first time in two years: such a jarring difference from routine Kris had to stop himself from gasping. A man lay motionless on the floor within, hands bound behind his back and his face to the hard-packed ground, covered by a fringe of thick, dark hair. Even from the limited, flickering lamp light in the room and the black clothing the bound man wore, Kris could see clear as daylight the spreading, darkening patch of red on his shirt, blood dripping down his right forearm and pooling onto the floor. Only a faint groan from the stranger's lips indicated that he was still alive.
And right before Kris, seated at the sheriff's desk that used to belong to an honorable man of the law, was Danny Gokey, furiously writing the body of a telegram, his grin barely able to conceal his excitement.
"Danny," his words came tumbling out of his mouth, and Kris was lucky they were mere words and not his lunch. "What the fuck did you do??"
Without looking up from his work, Danny held up an admonishing finger, blind to the look of shock and outrage on Kris's face. "Watch your mouth, deputy," he warned, though his excitement was evident in his tone, unable to be dampered. "I don't know what kind of manners they taught you in Arkansas, but here in Hope we do not take a liking to profanity."
Gritting his teeth against the backhanded insult--though Kris was not a native son to Hope, he always restrained himself from shouting that he loved the town more than Danny ever would--Kris stayed to task, the bleeding man in the cell of more import than Danny's condescension. "You shot a man?" Though the question was rather self-explanatory, Kris's mind was still trying to keep up with the images his eyes were relaying to his brain, added to the concept that Gokey had actually shot someone. This was a detail not brought to him by his informants.
The self-satisfied grin Danny shot Kris from the desk was just as startling as a real bullet. "I didn't arrest just anyone," he said. "I arrested one of the men responsible for the robbery this morning."
Kris could hardly believe what Danny was telling him; his jaw dropped open in spite of himself. "A King?" he asked, incredulous, and Danny nodded his head enthusiastically, returning to his telegram. "You caught a member of the Kings?"
"Everyone's gonna remember this now," the sheriff said, more to himself than to Kris, his conceit and desire for the town's regained approval as subtle as a mine collapse. "Everyone's gonna see I'm a hero."
Ignoring his boss, Kris walked around the sheriff's desk to reach the jail cell, concerned that the groan of pain he had heard from Danny's prisoner was faint at first and growing weaker by the minute. Kneeling down at the stranger's level, he reached into the cell tentatively, careful not to disturb the thick rivulets of blood trailing their way down like cobwebs on the man's skin. He only wanted to brush away that fringe of hair covering the man's face, see if he could recognize him. But the moment his hand made contact with skin, the prisoner jerked away, gathering whatever energy and strength he had to escape the threat he perceived Kris to be. It wasn't much of a struggle: a desperate grunt of exertion and the sparking of survival instinct only caused the prisoner to shift his weight onto his uninjured side, able to move very little due to his bound hands, and he slumped back to the ground, defeated.
The movement had caused the hair to slip from the prisoner's face, however, and for the first time Kris was able to get a good look at Danny's victim. Large, expressive brown eyes stared back at him, even wider than usual with fear, mouth breathing in shallow, panicked breaths. Instantly Kris recognized him, couldn't do anything but recognize the man: it was the same look they shared in the alleyway earlier that day, when Kris emerged from his lover's bedroom to investigate the bank robbery. The realization dawned on the both of them that the morning's fateful meeting did nothing to prepare them for this evening's.
It was clear to Kris, the horror of Danny's actions reflecting in his eyes as the traveler lay dying before him, that the sheriff had shot and arrested the wrong man.
"He's not a bank robber, damnit," Kris's voice cracked at the guilt he felt over Danny's wrong assumption, even if Danny himself didn't feel it. "He's just some guy passing through town! Danny--"
"No, he's one of the Kings," Danny insisted, his light, dismissive tone angering Kris even further. "No one knows who he is, he just showed up in town one day. And he was planning on leaving in the middle of the night, very suspicious if you ask me."
Kris gritted his teeth because he didn't ask Danny, the sheriff's evidence towards his guilt was all speculation and misguided instinct. He could have shot anyone and declared them a member of the Kings, and Kris was starting to believe that was his intention all along. Although an admission of their meeting earlier that day would have exonerated the traveler, Kris bit his lip, reluctant to reveal to Danny that he had been in the Lambert Inn that morning, missing his rounds while sleeping late in Adam Lambert's bed. But the pitiful situation the traveler was in tugged at the deputy's conscience; he couldn't just stand aside and let Gokey arrest a man for no reason, and he surely wasn't going to let him shoot him without consequences.
First things were first: Hope's first and only prisoner was getting paler by the minute, the shallow pool of blood underneath his prone body spreading as it grew, seeping into the grain of the wooden floor. The shine in his eyes was slowly fading, his gaze still upon Kris but less out of concentration and more for the lack of energy to look anywhere else. Kris hoped that wherever the poor soul's thoughts had taken him, it was a long way from here.
"Hey," he tried to catch the other man's attention, keep him alert and, if at all possible, still breathing. "Stay with me, man..." The prisoner backed away again, this time with much less force and fervor, and was rewarded with his immobile hands smacking against the jail's back wall; his face contorted in pain, baring teeth before he let out an anguished groan. It cruelly showed Kris that, whenever you think you cannot endure a pain any longer, the pain will remind you it is not done with you.
With the stranger still whimpering, Kris noticed through the bars that it was the rope bonds on his wrists, already stained with blood, digging into the skin there and holding his arms at an angle exacerbating the wound's damage that was the cause. He was already locked behind iron bars and barely alive, too weak to even move; there was no need for the additional precaution. "I'm untying his hands," he announced, already scanning the office for the rusty ring of keys to the cell.
Finally, Gokey gave Kris's actions some notice. "He's a dangerous criminal," he protested, rising from his seat and making a move towards the keys himself, to prevent Kris from opening the cell and loosing the presumed outlaw on the town. But Kris was younger, faster; he saw Danny reach for the keys, hung upon a nail along the office wall, and snatched them before the sheriff, gladly standing up to Danny's ire. "He needed to be restrained for the town's protection--"
"I," Kris repeated, emphasizing each word and letting the pauses in between them calm his temper. Getting angry with the sheriff would do no one any good at this stage. "Am untying. His hands." As he suspected, Danny backed down against the unrelenting fire in Kris's eyes, daring to challenge him, and returned to his telegram, the information he had to relay lifting his spirits once more.
"Sending this out to Santa Fe," Danny indicated the telegram on his desk, not noticing nor caring that Kris wouldn't listen. "Calling for a judge, and a few newspaper reporters. Everyone's gonna know I caught me one of the Kings."
Once he entered the cell, Kris could get a better look at the prisoner, seeing him before only once, and briefly at that--besides, the deputy had a little more on his mind that morning than the stranger in an alleyway. The wound was much worse than he had originally thought, the right shoulder of his shirt soaked in blood, the already black material looking as if the man had dunked his right flank into a watering trough. Kris untied the rope binding the other man's wrists, his arms falling limply to his sides once they were free, an uncontrollable sigh of relief the only gratitude he could give. Unwinding the kerchief at his neck, Kris moved to staunch the bleeding with some pressure. It was then that he noticed the actual entry point of Danny's bullet, the tiny tear in the man's shirt from the shot, was behind his shoulderblade, traced along the curve of the traveler's back, and not from his collarbone as Kris had expected.
The deputy's eyes widened with rage. His back.
"You shot him in the back?!?"
He turned furious eyes towards Gokey, who, even when distracted by his own hubris, noted the dangerous tone in Kris's voice. Never had he seen the laid-back man so livid, not even when he had lost the sheriff's position. "He...he's dangerous," he repeated, trying to convince both his deputy and himself. "He could have shot first, couldn't let that happen--"
"Did you find a gun on him?"
The silence that greeted Kris's question was all the answer he needed, an answer he already surmised. Kris was no expert on the law but he knew well the codes of the West, the rules that gunfighters and thieves, even murderers lived by as a sign of respect for their adversaries, for the lives they may take along their dangerous journey. Spare women and children; give a man a fair fight by gun or by blade, and let him make peace with their God before sending the poor soul to Him. And one of the most stringent codes of the gunman, one that gathered no sympathy from the public eye once it was executed, was catching an unarmed man unaware and gunning him down with his back turned, robbing him of a chance to defend himself. Exemplified by the ugly death of Wild Bill Hickok some years ago, men considered it not to be justice, but murder, and Kris Allen felt no different.
"You shot an unarmed man in the back," Kris seethed through gritted teeth, wishing of all might that Gokey were a more competent man so Kris could challenge him without feeling equally unjustified. He stared the sheriff down, unable to control the vitriol in his eyes for a man who was supposed to be his superior, someone he held loyalty towards, took orders from. The sheriff was supposed to be a man to be respected, and more than the crime of shooting an innocent man down, Kris resented Gokey for destroying that in Hope in the course of one day.
Unimpressed, Danny stared right back, mouth quirking downwards into a contemplative frown. "I don't think I like your tone," he said flippantly, causing black bile to rise in Kris's gut even further. "When the papers come to write about this, I don't think I'm going to award you any credit in the arrest."
Danny Gokey may have been a coward but he was no idiot; when it came to self-preservation almost no one in the entire town could rival his skill. He observed Kris's square jaw clench, the hand at Kris's side balling into a fist, and knew more than a flippant explanation was in order. "You didn't see how they looked at me today." His voice went low, the tone desperate; it was the tone of a man who believed he had no choice but to do what he had done. "I'm their sheriff, I'm supposed to protect them and I failed." For the first time since his election, Kris saw something akin to duty in Danny's eyes, something he felt himself when he heard of the bank robbery while in Adam's bed. He never thought Gokey had it in him, but perhaps the deputy had underestimated his sense of loyalty...or his need for adoration. "I had to do something; I had to win them back."
"So you go out and you shoot a man in the back?"
This time it was Danny's turn to grit his teeth; he was the law in this town, he didn't have to explain his actions, especially to his subordinate. "I apprehended a dangerous outlaw," he stressed. "He's one of the Kings, I know he is. He's going to trial, and everyone's going to know who brought him to justice."
But with no evidence and Kris's own eyes witnessing the stranger far away from the action of the bank robbery that morning, the deputy's was a hard mind to convince. Both lawmen were stubborn in their own ways, Kris strictly adhering to his ideals on honor and justice and Danny holding faith in himself and his actions, regardless of the casualties. But while the two men had their standoff, a man lay bleeding in their jail cell, the product of Gokey's pride and the catalyst to Kris's rage. Kris had his entire life to resent Gokey and bicker about ideals; here, they had a man's life at stake.
"He's going to die if we don't help him," he diverted the conversation away from Gokey's egotism, with little avail. "Then you won't have need for your judge or your newspaper reporters."
Gokey looked less than motivated to save the young man's life, as Kris once again dropped to his knees in the cell, monitoring their prisoner's status. "Maybe I should call for an undertaker instead, then," he said dispassionately, eyeing the body of his telegram as if it were the word of God.
Kris's hands clenched until his knuckles were white, glad his face was turned away from Danny lest his anger over the sheriff's actions reveal itself outright. In a moment of emotion and a lapse in good judgment, Kris snapped back at him, his eyes on the bullet wound Danny inflicted, watching carefully as the blood flow slowed, marking the battered body's process of healing...or indicating the man was running out of blood to shed.
"He needs a doctor," he insisted, rousing a pained whimper from the traveler that sounded far worse than before, stemming from a pain deeper than the flesh wound.
"With what money?" Danny countered, one of the few times in their professional relationship Kris ever remembered the sheriff being effectively clever. "The town can't afford to treat a prisoner. If you remember, our bank was robbed this morning."
"I'm not letting any man die in my jail, Gokey."
From the silence behind him Kris knew he chose the wrong words; he tried to force his mind to regret them but he couldn't consequently force himself to accept a lie. "Your jail." After a moment Danny spoke, the silence a shield for which to hide his insecurities behind. "I see how it is."
"Danny--" Kris tried to explain but the sheriff cut him off; he had far more important things to do than handle a deputy looking to usurp his position.
"I'm going over to the telegraph station," Danny announced, snatching up his telegram draft from the desk, mustering what little authority he had and projecting it in his tone. "I'm waking up McIntyre so he can send this telegram right away via morse code, make sure the news gets to Santa Fe by dawn." It was a four days' trip from the territory's capital to their little boomtown, and Danny wanted to make sure that no time was wasted in informing the public of his accomplishment. Calling for a judge from Santa Fe showed that Danny wanted to make whatever trial he dreamed up into a full spectacle: only a judge from the capital could sentence a man to hang.
He looked down through his thick-rimmed spectacles at Kris, kneeling on the floor next to the man Danny brought close to death, the deputy feeling like a defiant, disciplined child and the sheriff his punisher. "So in the meantime, you can take care of your jail," he spat the words back at Kris, any semblance of professional friendship between the two lost that night. "And make sure my prisoner doesn't die."
Retrieving his hat and making sure to have his gun on him this time, Gokey left the sheriff's office, his optimistic mood soured, to be rekindled only by an enthusiastic telegram reply from Santa Fe saying they'd send as many reporters they could fit onto a stagecoach to tell the tale of the man who captured a King.
"Good riddance," Kris muttered under his breath once the door was closed, hoping the reply from the capital would be short, tart, and wholeheartedly mocking Danny's claim to have bagged himself a member of the notorious outlaw team. The more hot air deflated from the windbag of Danny's ego, the better.
But there were more important matters here than Kris's resentment and Danny's ego. The stranger was still silently suffering in the jail cell, curling his body away from Kris's kneeling frame, the survival instinct dormant in most people activated by his injuries. The wound bled slowly now, a testament to the self-healing powers of the body, but Kris knew the bullet was still lodged inside the other man's shoulder and would remain there until removed, infesting and poisoning the body with melted metal. There was no doctor in Hope; the closest physician would be hours away, and though Danny's refusal to call for one was heartless, it was also true: there would be no way to pay for one's services, and Kris didn't have enough in his savings to save a man's life.
The only other choice was to do it himself, with whatever crude instruments and procedures he could find. Any man spending time on the open plain alone knew how to care for simple wounds, lest they fall victim to infection and die from a papercut without medical attention. He had learned to fish bullets out of deer carcasses--his recurring role when in hunting parties in Arkansas and he was the only member returning empty-handed--but those subjects were usually dead by the time he reached them, far from concerned about the sanitary conditions of the procedure nor the excruciating pain involved in removing a bullet. Things were going to get worse for this poor man before they would get better.
"You'll be alright," he tried to soothe the stranger's addled nerves with a calming Southern drawl; he'd have to convince him to allow Kris to get close to him, and fast. Tentatively reaching out, he touched the wounded man's right arm, and thankfully, he did not flinch or fight to get away. Either the stranger believed his words, desperate to find a friend somewhere before finding himself in a hangman's noose, or he simply ran out of energy to fight back. Either way, Kris thought as he examined the wound through the hole in the man's shirt, a steel bullet lodged there, soaked in blood and mocking them both...it was going to be a long night.
The traveler's eyes searched the room wildly before falling upon Kris once more, the gears cleverly working in his mind to determine whether the deputy was a friend or foe. He had encountered a lawman in Hope already, and that tin star shot him in the back in the dead of night; not the most encouraging of goodbyes. Kris put a hand to his own chest, hoping his smile was genuine enough to mask the foreshadowing of a hellish night for the both of them. "I'm Kris," he introduced himself; though the manners his mother taught him required the deputy to shake a man's hand when they met, he figured even his Mama would understand these extenuating circumstances. "I'm one of the good guys."
Chapter 13
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: R
Pairing: Skibmann (Neal Tiemann/Andy Skib), Cookson (David Cook/Kelly Clarkson), Kradam (Kris Allen/Adam Lambert), various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: I have been working on this story for the past nine months and I am SO excited to finally be posting it. What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5, part one
Chapter 5, part two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7, part one
Chapter 7, part two
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
"Those who slay by the sword shall by the sword be slain." - The Pioche Record, on the murder of Morgan Courtney
The sounds of a gunshot were muffled within the walls of the Lambert Inn by the brothel's nightly sensual festivities kicking into full swing. A trio of musicians who also doubled as the inn's bodyguards accompanied a lively, soulful tune by a young Mestiza, compensating in vocal power what she lacked in age. The band stirred up a crowd of joyfully rowdy customers, fueled by liquor, lust, and the seizure of life's little pleasures, the roar of voices joining in on the young singer's verses though very few could follow the words. The buzz of voices hummed from front parlor to back saloon and around again, thundering through the thick timbers of the walls and even in the private quarters of the inn's proprietor, the rooms currently unoccupied, their owner choosing to spend a night engulfed in the revelries his boisterous staff had to offer.
By the time the song concluded, the diminutive redhead punching the air in triumph and garnering a roar of approval from the audience, the deed not three hundred feet from the inn's walls had already been done, and there was nothing left for Deputy Kris Allen to deduce that anything had gone wrong.
"She's good," he observed, nursing a particularly potent gimlet, the bartender well aware of the events of the day and predicting the good lawman would need one. The youthful, bubbly exuberance he saw in the Mestiza, who shrieked and playfully batted away the lewd brassman's trombone slide in between songs, was far sunnier than the dispositions of most young girls in a brothel, who often reached these dens of ill-repute after years of abuse, neglect and torment, with nowhere else to turn.
Adam put on a sour look as he sipped a glass of red wine; the musicians knew how to stoke a crowd just as much as his young singer, but he watched them carefully, making sure they did not step out of line. "She's gonna stay good," he assured, adamant ever since the pitiful orphaned girl arrived on his doorstep that she would stay at the inn as a ward, not one of the women on the Lambert Inn menu.
Expecting a laugh or quick retort--so commonplace when talking with Kris, Adam felt a foreign void when it didn't arrive on schedule--but receiving none, the innkeeper turned a concerned eye towards his companion. "Something wrong?" he asked; Adam's fingers itched to reach at the back of Kris's neck, massage away the tension he knew built up in his shoulders when he was distressed. But they were not within the safe haven of Adam's bedroom, away from the prying eyes of the town, and tales of such a gesture could spread like a pox through Hope by morning. Adam bit his lip against a scowl, his mind teetering between resenting having to hide his affections for Kris, and unceremoniously hauling him off to Adam's room so he could touch him whenever and however he pleased.
Finding the bottom of his murky glass of liquor fascinating, Kris shrugged glumly, reluctant to admit his mental exhaustion even to Adam. "It's Gokey," he said, his voice not masking his disappointment. It was trying alone on the deputy that he had to conduct the investigation of the robbery, but to also stoke the ego of the man who should have been doing it--instead of muttering self-indulgent, paranoid ramblings at his desk, desperate for retribution--was far too much for one day.
Kris lifted his gaze and immediately the clear blue of Adam's eyes filled his vision, warm and understanding, inviting even when there was nothing to which to invite but another drink and a witty conversation in a noisy saloon. It was how they had first befriended each other, suppressing the instant attraction and reaching for something deeper, a companionship that grew from the intellectual to the sincere, until one day when a stolen kiss proved to them both it meant much more. Kris looked into the same piercing eyes he had encountered his first day in Hope and couldn't help but smile, his mood softening slightly, never able to stay upset in Adam's presence for too long. "He's acting kinda crazy back at the office. Think the robbery's really gotten to him."
Opening his mouth to speak as he watched Adam nod with concern, the deputy was interrupted before he could get out another word. "Sorry to break up the social call," the young Mestiza said unironically, in a brief intermission from the entertainment, bright red curls bouncing as she approached the pair. "But you're wanted at the front door."
Adam began to rise from his seat at the bar, ready to grumble over one routine customer complaint or another, but the singer stopped him. "Not you, no one wants you," she joked, and received a playful cuff and a tousling of her curls in return. But when she turned to Adam's companion, a flash of urgency crossed her face; her information was indeed dire. "They want to see the dep."
With a resolute nod to his companion, Kris made his way to the front of house, where he met the Lambert Inn's emcee, who for the second time that day seemed uncharacteristically nervous. "What's wrong?" Kris asked, almost dreading the answer.
"A patron just came in, said the sheriff's hauling someone off to the jail." It was strange for Blake to speak so succinctly, but Kris saw that unusual times for Hope meant unusual measures.
The deputy's eyes widened at the news, surprised by so many details in that one sentence his mind couldn't figure out where to begin. "Gokey?" he asked incredulously. "You mean...arrested...Gokey?"
"It's what I saw," spoke up the patron, tall and broad, Kris immediately recognizing the short haircut and green eyes of the ranch hand from the outskirts of town. Chris Richardson continued his account, his tone honest with no reasons for a false statement. "He was dragging some poor fella down the street towards the jail, grin on his face like he just struck gold."
"Thought you should be aware," Blake said from the side of his mouth; it was clear to Kris that the staff of the Lambert Inn had made their decision on who was the real law of this town.
He gave a nod of gratitude to Richardson, holding his hand out to the emcee and waiting for the revolver he checked with him when he entered the establishment. Kris had no idea what Gokey had gotten himself into; Lord knows he might need that gun now. "You said it was right outside the inn?" he asked, receiving a nod in return.
"Was just coming in...for the music," Richardson hastily added, tugging at two lengths of string tied at his wrist. There was no shame or secrecy in ranch hands visiting the pleasure den, though many tried to save their meager earnings instead of spending them on women and wine; but a nervous look that passed between this particular ranch hand and the inn's emcee indicated this visit wasn't about the wine and it certainly wasn't about the women. Kris gave no notice that he saw the subtle look, weaving in through the crowd once more to give a regrettable goodbye; he knew that look because he shared it with Adam on more than one occasion.
Reunited with his revolver, Kris made his way out of the Lambert Inn and had to stop himself from breaking out into a run for the sheriff's office, unsure of what he would find there. He was so focused on his destination he failed to notice the spotted trail of blood leading towards the building underfoot, the moonless night so dark it was indistinguishable from the streets of dust and stone.
***
"Time's up, Neal."
He had been so engrossed in the waiting, eyes so trained on the distant horizon, that he had not heard David approach, his boots shuffling against the gravel of the campsite. Neal tried to tell himself he knew it was David all along, he could decipher the other man's footsteps without any alarm. It hadn't been true, of course, and neither David nor himself would have believed that excuse.
The night cast no shadows along the desert floor, the absence of a moon dropping their world into darkness for hours now and for hours more to come; there was the chance he had gotten lost, Neal remarked to himself, but he also shot that reasoning down, knowing that even if Andy's internal compass did not bring him back to camp, his horse's surely would. He felt a pang of disappointment when the presence revealed itself to be David and not Andy, but Neal tried to push that feeling aside, knowing it was pointless. But that feeling in his gut did not subside far enough to get him to relinquish his position on guard, not even for their leader.
David tried to take Neal's silence as his assent, even gratitude for relieving him of guard duty, but even he couldn't fool himself; the defiance shimmering in Neal's eyes was piercing even in the darkness of a fireless camp. It was times like these David saw the fierce loyalty that made Neal his natural second in command; it was times like these he was glad the Dr. was on his side. "Your shift's over," he explained, hiking a thumb back in the direction of their bedrolls; Neal did not make a move to follow it. "You should get some rest."
"Thought the kid's supposed to relieve me," he noted, buying more time, wishing both David and the uneasy feeling in his gut would simply go away.
"Giving him a reprieve," replied David, glossing over the detail that he couldn't seem to rouse Kyle out of an exhausted sleep, the Californian's energy drained from his challenges with Sugarfoot and the gradual loss of adrenaline from the heist earlier that day. Kid was out like the moon, and since the nightly rotation of guard duty had just diminished permanently to three, David figured he could start his shift early.
The silence fell between the two, thicker than the night's darkness; Neal knew David would insist as much as David knew Neal would refuse. Andy had been late getting back to camp many times before, delaying for days because of a crisis in town, rendering him unable to escape without detection or notice. But Joey's departure left the rest of the men on edge, the undervalued outlaw among them leaving a hole in their daily routine both Neal and David hadn't been aware that he filled. Neal found distraction in his wait for Andy while David immersed himself in overprotecting his Kings, making sure as the leader he did not fail the rest like he failed Joey. Neither man planned to give up their comfort zones just as they refused to give up the ridge, to give up on one another.
David broke the tension with a heavy sigh, his shoulders sagging in the darkness. "He left to protect us," he referred to Joey, their conversation brief but intense, and the most important talk David ever had with Joey in the time he had known him. "He didn't want us getting caught up in...whatever he's got himself caught up in."
Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Neal, however, saw things a different way. "We would have helped him and he knew it," he said, shooting down Joey's perceived altruism. It wasn't that David had believed in the unselfish reasoning; it was that he had to. "He ran. He ran away because we wouldn't run with him."
The truth wasn't with either man, but somewhere in the middle, a self-surviving gray that spoke of neither chivalry or abandonment. When he had time to ruminate on their conversation that night, David decided that gray area was very much like Joey.
"I'll sure miss his beans, though," David said with a smile, sealing their conversation, trying to get a rise out of the stoic sharpshooter. What would normally garner at least an amused chuckle from Neal, acknowledging David's charmingly overdone attempt at humor, was met with silence, and though he could not see his face through the darkness David had reason to believe the other man had already turned his head back towards the horizon, attempting to spy a horse and her rider.
Stirring the dirt up underneath his feet noisily to announce his steps, David approached Neal, a friendly pat on the back encouraging him to heed the outlaw's advice. "If Andy shows up on my watch," he offered, hoping a promise would get Neal to relent and finally get some rest. "I'll make sure he kicks you and tells you he's alive."
But David's words made the opposite effect, the sound of their partner's name in the air steeling Neal towards his cause, boots firmly planted in the New Mexico dirt, his body showing signs of his fatigue but also determined not to let that hinder him. "I'll make sure for myself, thanks," he declined, knowing it was more than the sensuous, unique way he and Andy greeted each other upon return to camp fueling his stubbornness.
"He's taken his time before," said David, remembering nights before Kyle, before even Joey, when Andy would be gone from camp for days with no word, making appearances within a town to cast off suspicion. It seemed to have been easier then, with Neal more manageable during Andy's many absences; but he didn't let himself dwell on it, lest he start calling those "the good old days," and they weren't all that good to begin with, anyway. "He said there was law in the town; he's probably caught up in something. Waiting for the right moment."
Neal knew David spoke common sense. But over the years the sharpshooter had learned not to take his instincts lightly, that often the prickling hairs on the back of your neck and the air of a room growing suddenly and stiflingly hot could be the difference between life and death, between falling to someone else's gun and felling someone to your own. "Something just doesn't feel right," he insisted, the first and only time he revealed these kinds of suspicions to another.
If David had felt a sense of dread like the one touching Neal's pressure points, pricking his skin like treacherous thorns in a rosebush, he kept them to himself; even to his second in command he would never reveal such doubt. "The only thing not right about this is Andy's sleeping on a feather mattress in the finest hotel in town right now," he said. The best way for Andy to diffuse suspicion was to remain where he was--which so happened to be an enviable room at the Lambert Inn. It made Neal hearken back to the last time he even slept in a bed, the last time he had shared a bed with Andy; it had been decidedly less luxurious than the hotel room Andy had described to the rest of them. "While we are sharing sleeping quarters with the scorpions and prairie dogs."
He urged Neal once again to do just that, to sleep, and the physical exhaustion in the sharpshooter's limbs was breaking his resistance down. "He can take care of himself just fine, Neal; you know that." His hand fell upon Neal's shoulder, and even though he couldn't see the expression on his friend's face, David could tell he eked out a smile. "And if he gets here and finds out I let you drain yourself like this, I'm the one who's gonna get kicked."
With a sincere promise to notify him if the absent member of their gang returned, David sent Neal off for the last time, finally convincing him to relinquish his watch for much-needed rest. Neal laid down, the distant sounds of the desert in his head, of horses snorting and shifting in their upright sleep and of Kyle's deep, undisturbed slumber; but he couldn't bring himself to sleep, the emptiness of the bedroll next to him unsettling, keeping him alert for the sound of an approaching rider.
***
Crossing the distance between the Lambert Inn and the sheriff's office as fast as his legs could carry him without breaking out into a run, careful not to startle the townspeople pleasantly sleeping in their beds, Kris reached Gokey in record time, the deputy's revolver unholstered and at the ready for whatever might have awaited him inside the building. Kris only knew that Danny had hauled someone into the town's jail, and it most likely had something to do with the robbery from the previous morning; there was no other reason for Danny to arrest anyone, nor had he ever arrested anyone before tonight.
It could be a hoax, Kris considered, one hand on the doorknob and the other on his gun; some poor patron of the Lambert Inn, already detested by Gokey's pseudo-pious standards, stumbling through the darkness after one too many whiskeys, the sheriff claiming public indecency. Or--Kris gripped the revolver tighter, having never needed to use it on another human being before--it could be worse than he imagined, an actual criminal or outlaw playing possum with Danny in order to gain the upper hand. Kris could have been walking into a desperate sheriff's publicity attempt, or right into a death trap.
When he pushed open the door, the heavy pine swinging inward with a bright crescent of lamp light and the distinctive smell of blood soon following it, Kris saw it was nothing he had imagined at all.
Hope's law enforcement team was by no means large, and their headquarters reflected their size: a small structure of deep-fired brick, it was one of the few buildings made of more than timber in the town, save for the Lambert Inn itself. Sturdy and reliable, it housed a one-room office with a small, cornered-off jail cell in the back, fitted with floor-to-ceiling iron bars Sheriff Daughtry had purchased from Pittsburgh, one of his last acts before fatigue and illness did him in. Never in Daughtry's tenure nor in Gokey's did Kris witness a man locked in that cell, with most altercations in Hope ending in a gruff, reluctant handshake or a petition for arbitration sent to the closest big city, Silver Springs, at least a five days' ride to the closest tort judge. No one had ever found reason for the cell: there were no fistfights here, no violence since the wild days of the inn, now long gone with the added security and enforcement Adam brought in when he inherited the land. Kris never even used it as a drunk tank, allowing men to sober up in private, disliking other towns' enjoyment of humiliating the individual into temperance.
That cell was occupied now, for the first time in two years: such a jarring difference from routine Kris had to stop himself from gasping. A man lay motionless on the floor within, hands bound behind his back and his face to the hard-packed ground, covered by a fringe of thick, dark hair. Even from the limited, flickering lamp light in the room and the black clothing the bound man wore, Kris could see clear as daylight the spreading, darkening patch of red on his shirt, blood dripping down his right forearm and pooling onto the floor. Only a faint groan from the stranger's lips indicated that he was still alive.
And right before Kris, seated at the sheriff's desk that used to belong to an honorable man of the law, was Danny Gokey, furiously writing the body of a telegram, his grin barely able to conceal his excitement.
"Danny," his words came tumbling out of his mouth, and Kris was lucky they were mere words and not his lunch. "What the fuck did you do??"
Without looking up from his work, Danny held up an admonishing finger, blind to the look of shock and outrage on Kris's face. "Watch your mouth, deputy," he warned, though his excitement was evident in his tone, unable to be dampered. "I don't know what kind of manners they taught you in Arkansas, but here in Hope we do not take a liking to profanity."
Gritting his teeth against the backhanded insult--though Kris was not a native son to Hope, he always restrained himself from shouting that he loved the town more than Danny ever would--Kris stayed to task, the bleeding man in the cell of more import than Danny's condescension. "You shot a man?" Though the question was rather self-explanatory, Kris's mind was still trying to keep up with the images his eyes were relaying to his brain, added to the concept that Gokey had actually shot someone. This was a detail not brought to him by his informants.
The self-satisfied grin Danny shot Kris from the desk was just as startling as a real bullet. "I didn't arrest just anyone," he said. "I arrested one of the men responsible for the robbery this morning."
Kris could hardly believe what Danny was telling him; his jaw dropped open in spite of himself. "A King?" he asked, incredulous, and Danny nodded his head enthusiastically, returning to his telegram. "You caught a member of the Kings?"
"Everyone's gonna remember this now," the sheriff said, more to himself than to Kris, his conceit and desire for the town's regained approval as subtle as a mine collapse. "Everyone's gonna see I'm a hero."
Ignoring his boss, Kris walked around the sheriff's desk to reach the jail cell, concerned that the groan of pain he had heard from Danny's prisoner was faint at first and growing weaker by the minute. Kneeling down at the stranger's level, he reached into the cell tentatively, careful not to disturb the thick rivulets of blood trailing their way down like cobwebs on the man's skin. He only wanted to brush away that fringe of hair covering the man's face, see if he could recognize him. But the moment his hand made contact with skin, the prisoner jerked away, gathering whatever energy and strength he had to escape the threat he perceived Kris to be. It wasn't much of a struggle: a desperate grunt of exertion and the sparking of survival instinct only caused the prisoner to shift his weight onto his uninjured side, able to move very little due to his bound hands, and he slumped back to the ground, defeated.
The movement had caused the hair to slip from the prisoner's face, however, and for the first time Kris was able to get a good look at Danny's victim. Large, expressive brown eyes stared back at him, even wider than usual with fear, mouth breathing in shallow, panicked breaths. Instantly Kris recognized him, couldn't do anything but recognize the man: it was the same look they shared in the alleyway earlier that day, when Kris emerged from his lover's bedroom to investigate the bank robbery. The realization dawned on the both of them that the morning's fateful meeting did nothing to prepare them for this evening's.
It was clear to Kris, the horror of Danny's actions reflecting in his eyes as the traveler lay dying before him, that the sheriff had shot and arrested the wrong man.
"He's not a bank robber, damnit," Kris's voice cracked at the guilt he felt over Danny's wrong assumption, even if Danny himself didn't feel it. "He's just some guy passing through town! Danny--"
"No, he's one of the Kings," Danny insisted, his light, dismissive tone angering Kris even further. "No one knows who he is, he just showed up in town one day. And he was planning on leaving in the middle of the night, very suspicious if you ask me."
Kris gritted his teeth because he didn't ask Danny, the sheriff's evidence towards his guilt was all speculation and misguided instinct. He could have shot anyone and declared them a member of the Kings, and Kris was starting to believe that was his intention all along. Although an admission of their meeting earlier that day would have exonerated the traveler, Kris bit his lip, reluctant to reveal to Danny that he had been in the Lambert Inn that morning, missing his rounds while sleeping late in Adam Lambert's bed. But the pitiful situation the traveler was in tugged at the deputy's conscience; he couldn't just stand aside and let Gokey arrest a man for no reason, and he surely wasn't going to let him shoot him without consequences.
First things were first: Hope's first and only prisoner was getting paler by the minute, the shallow pool of blood underneath his prone body spreading as it grew, seeping into the grain of the wooden floor. The shine in his eyes was slowly fading, his gaze still upon Kris but less out of concentration and more for the lack of energy to look anywhere else. Kris hoped that wherever the poor soul's thoughts had taken him, it was a long way from here.
"Hey," he tried to catch the other man's attention, keep him alert and, if at all possible, still breathing. "Stay with me, man..." The prisoner backed away again, this time with much less force and fervor, and was rewarded with his immobile hands smacking against the jail's back wall; his face contorted in pain, baring teeth before he let out an anguished groan. It cruelly showed Kris that, whenever you think you cannot endure a pain any longer, the pain will remind you it is not done with you.
With the stranger still whimpering, Kris noticed through the bars that it was the rope bonds on his wrists, already stained with blood, digging into the skin there and holding his arms at an angle exacerbating the wound's damage that was the cause. He was already locked behind iron bars and barely alive, too weak to even move; there was no need for the additional precaution. "I'm untying his hands," he announced, already scanning the office for the rusty ring of keys to the cell.
Finally, Gokey gave Kris's actions some notice. "He's a dangerous criminal," he protested, rising from his seat and making a move towards the keys himself, to prevent Kris from opening the cell and loosing the presumed outlaw on the town. But Kris was younger, faster; he saw Danny reach for the keys, hung upon a nail along the office wall, and snatched them before the sheriff, gladly standing up to Danny's ire. "He needed to be restrained for the town's protection--"
"I," Kris repeated, emphasizing each word and letting the pauses in between them calm his temper. Getting angry with the sheriff would do no one any good at this stage. "Am untying. His hands." As he suspected, Danny backed down against the unrelenting fire in Kris's eyes, daring to challenge him, and returned to his telegram, the information he had to relay lifting his spirits once more.
"Sending this out to Santa Fe," Danny indicated the telegram on his desk, not noticing nor caring that Kris wouldn't listen. "Calling for a judge, and a few newspaper reporters. Everyone's gonna know I caught me one of the Kings."
Once he entered the cell, Kris could get a better look at the prisoner, seeing him before only once, and briefly at that--besides, the deputy had a little more on his mind that morning than the stranger in an alleyway. The wound was much worse than he had originally thought, the right shoulder of his shirt soaked in blood, the already black material looking as if the man had dunked his right flank into a watering trough. Kris untied the rope binding the other man's wrists, his arms falling limply to his sides once they were free, an uncontrollable sigh of relief the only gratitude he could give. Unwinding the kerchief at his neck, Kris moved to staunch the bleeding with some pressure. It was then that he noticed the actual entry point of Danny's bullet, the tiny tear in the man's shirt from the shot, was behind his shoulderblade, traced along the curve of the traveler's back, and not from his collarbone as Kris had expected.
The deputy's eyes widened with rage. His back.
"You shot him in the back?!?"
He turned furious eyes towards Gokey, who, even when distracted by his own hubris, noted the dangerous tone in Kris's voice. Never had he seen the laid-back man so livid, not even when he had lost the sheriff's position. "He...he's dangerous," he repeated, trying to convince both his deputy and himself. "He could have shot first, couldn't let that happen--"
"Did you find a gun on him?"
The silence that greeted Kris's question was all the answer he needed, an answer he already surmised. Kris was no expert on the law but he knew well the codes of the West, the rules that gunfighters and thieves, even murderers lived by as a sign of respect for their adversaries, for the lives they may take along their dangerous journey. Spare women and children; give a man a fair fight by gun or by blade, and let him make peace with their God before sending the poor soul to Him. And one of the most stringent codes of the gunman, one that gathered no sympathy from the public eye once it was executed, was catching an unarmed man unaware and gunning him down with his back turned, robbing him of a chance to defend himself. Exemplified by the ugly death of Wild Bill Hickok some years ago, men considered it not to be justice, but murder, and Kris Allen felt no different.
"You shot an unarmed man in the back," Kris seethed through gritted teeth, wishing of all might that Gokey were a more competent man so Kris could challenge him without feeling equally unjustified. He stared the sheriff down, unable to control the vitriol in his eyes for a man who was supposed to be his superior, someone he held loyalty towards, took orders from. The sheriff was supposed to be a man to be respected, and more than the crime of shooting an innocent man down, Kris resented Gokey for destroying that in Hope in the course of one day.
Unimpressed, Danny stared right back, mouth quirking downwards into a contemplative frown. "I don't think I like your tone," he said flippantly, causing black bile to rise in Kris's gut even further. "When the papers come to write about this, I don't think I'm going to award you any credit in the arrest."
Danny Gokey may have been a coward but he was no idiot; when it came to self-preservation almost no one in the entire town could rival his skill. He observed Kris's square jaw clench, the hand at Kris's side balling into a fist, and knew more than a flippant explanation was in order. "You didn't see how they looked at me today." His voice went low, the tone desperate; it was the tone of a man who believed he had no choice but to do what he had done. "I'm their sheriff, I'm supposed to protect them and I failed." For the first time since his election, Kris saw something akin to duty in Danny's eyes, something he felt himself when he heard of the bank robbery while in Adam's bed. He never thought Gokey had it in him, but perhaps the deputy had underestimated his sense of loyalty...or his need for adoration. "I had to do something; I had to win them back."
"So you go out and you shoot a man in the back?"
This time it was Danny's turn to grit his teeth; he was the law in this town, he didn't have to explain his actions, especially to his subordinate. "I apprehended a dangerous outlaw," he stressed. "He's one of the Kings, I know he is. He's going to trial, and everyone's going to know who brought him to justice."
But with no evidence and Kris's own eyes witnessing the stranger far away from the action of the bank robbery that morning, the deputy's was a hard mind to convince. Both lawmen were stubborn in their own ways, Kris strictly adhering to his ideals on honor and justice and Danny holding faith in himself and his actions, regardless of the casualties. But while the two men had their standoff, a man lay bleeding in their jail cell, the product of Gokey's pride and the catalyst to Kris's rage. Kris had his entire life to resent Gokey and bicker about ideals; here, they had a man's life at stake.
"He's going to die if we don't help him," he diverted the conversation away from Gokey's egotism, with little avail. "Then you won't have need for your judge or your newspaper reporters."
Gokey looked less than motivated to save the young man's life, as Kris once again dropped to his knees in the cell, monitoring their prisoner's status. "Maybe I should call for an undertaker instead, then," he said dispassionately, eyeing the body of his telegram as if it were the word of God.
Kris's hands clenched until his knuckles were white, glad his face was turned away from Danny lest his anger over the sheriff's actions reveal itself outright. In a moment of emotion and a lapse in good judgment, Kris snapped back at him, his eyes on the bullet wound Danny inflicted, watching carefully as the blood flow slowed, marking the battered body's process of healing...or indicating the man was running out of blood to shed.
"He needs a doctor," he insisted, rousing a pained whimper from the traveler that sounded far worse than before, stemming from a pain deeper than the flesh wound.
"With what money?" Danny countered, one of the few times in their professional relationship Kris ever remembered the sheriff being effectively clever. "The town can't afford to treat a prisoner. If you remember, our bank was robbed this morning."
"I'm not letting any man die in my jail, Gokey."
From the silence behind him Kris knew he chose the wrong words; he tried to force his mind to regret them but he couldn't consequently force himself to accept a lie. "Your jail." After a moment Danny spoke, the silence a shield for which to hide his insecurities behind. "I see how it is."
"Danny--" Kris tried to explain but the sheriff cut him off; he had far more important things to do than handle a deputy looking to usurp his position.
"I'm going over to the telegraph station," Danny announced, snatching up his telegram draft from the desk, mustering what little authority he had and projecting it in his tone. "I'm waking up McIntyre so he can send this telegram right away via morse code, make sure the news gets to Santa Fe by dawn." It was a four days' trip from the territory's capital to their little boomtown, and Danny wanted to make sure that no time was wasted in informing the public of his accomplishment. Calling for a judge from Santa Fe showed that Danny wanted to make whatever trial he dreamed up into a full spectacle: only a judge from the capital could sentence a man to hang.
He looked down through his thick-rimmed spectacles at Kris, kneeling on the floor next to the man Danny brought close to death, the deputy feeling like a defiant, disciplined child and the sheriff his punisher. "So in the meantime, you can take care of your jail," he spat the words back at Kris, any semblance of professional friendship between the two lost that night. "And make sure my prisoner doesn't die."
Retrieving his hat and making sure to have his gun on him this time, Gokey left the sheriff's office, his optimistic mood soured, to be rekindled only by an enthusiastic telegram reply from Santa Fe saying they'd send as many reporters they could fit onto a stagecoach to tell the tale of the man who captured a King.
"Good riddance," Kris muttered under his breath once the door was closed, hoping the reply from the capital would be short, tart, and wholeheartedly mocking Danny's claim to have bagged himself a member of the notorious outlaw team. The more hot air deflated from the windbag of Danny's ego, the better.
But there were more important matters here than Kris's resentment and Danny's ego. The stranger was still silently suffering in the jail cell, curling his body away from Kris's kneeling frame, the survival instinct dormant in most people activated by his injuries. The wound bled slowly now, a testament to the self-healing powers of the body, but Kris knew the bullet was still lodged inside the other man's shoulder and would remain there until removed, infesting and poisoning the body with melted metal. There was no doctor in Hope; the closest physician would be hours away, and though Danny's refusal to call for one was heartless, it was also true: there would be no way to pay for one's services, and Kris didn't have enough in his savings to save a man's life.
The only other choice was to do it himself, with whatever crude instruments and procedures he could find. Any man spending time on the open plain alone knew how to care for simple wounds, lest they fall victim to infection and die from a papercut without medical attention. He had learned to fish bullets out of deer carcasses--his recurring role when in hunting parties in Arkansas and he was the only member returning empty-handed--but those subjects were usually dead by the time he reached them, far from concerned about the sanitary conditions of the procedure nor the excruciating pain involved in removing a bullet. Things were going to get worse for this poor man before they would get better.
"You'll be alright," he tried to soothe the stranger's addled nerves with a calming Southern drawl; he'd have to convince him to allow Kris to get close to him, and fast. Tentatively reaching out, he touched the wounded man's right arm, and thankfully, he did not flinch or fight to get away. Either the stranger believed his words, desperate to find a friend somewhere before finding himself in a hangman's noose, or he simply ran out of energy to fight back. Either way, Kris thought as he examined the wound through the hole in the man's shirt, a steel bullet lodged there, soaked in blood and mocking them both...it was going to be a long night.
The traveler's eyes searched the room wildly before falling upon Kris once more, the gears cleverly working in his mind to determine whether the deputy was a friend or foe. He had encountered a lawman in Hope already, and that tin star shot him in the back in the dead of night; not the most encouraging of goodbyes. Kris put a hand to his own chest, hoping his smile was genuine enough to mask the foreshadowing of a hellish night for the both of them. "I'm Kris," he introduced himself; though the manners his mother taught him required the deputy to shake a man's hand when they met, he figured even his Mama would understand these extenuating circumstances. "I'm one of the good guys."
Chapter 13