...Makes You Stronger (Magnificent 7 - gen, 6390 words)
This is a story started quite a while ago (picowrimo last year, actually), and which now now finished. As usual, not a lot of plot, it's pure comedy with Our Heroes bantering, bitching and generally having a Very Bad Day, pretty much all of 'em :)
And all seven have, err, starring roles...
A million thanks to hiddencait and cougars_catnip for betaing it for me, all remaining mistakes are of course my poor brain at, errr, work :)
...Makes You Stronger
"Now, let me see...." Ezra licked a thumb and carefully turned the yellowed page of the book. "Ahh, here we are, gentlemen, I believe our illustrious healer mentioned his concern about Mister Tanner's fever, though not serious yet -"
"Ain't got a fever," Tanner mumbled from the bed he'd been unceremoniously dumped in that morning. "M'fine, like I told 'im."
"Indeed, and I - and I imagine half the town - heard you tell him. However, you'll forgive me if I'm inclined to take Mister Jackson's word rather than yours, given that he was the one attending to the hole in your leg. Ah, here we are... to reduce a fever, catch a granddaddy spider, pull of its legs and swallow it whole and alive."
"You're makin' that up!"
Large, utterly guileless green eyes gazed back at him. "You wound me, Vin, would I do something as heinous as that?"
"Damn right you would."
"No truly, it is here in black and somewhat begrimed white. Or perhaps you would prefer... put twelve red ants in a bag and tie it around your neck." He frowned slightly, turning the page over, then back. "It doesn't seem to make clear of they should be alive or not, though personally I would imagine even ants would be quite irate at being that close to unwashed -"
"You wanna get shot too?"
"No gratitude." Ezra sighed dramatically. "Then perhaps I should not mention the virtues of wild rabbit leavings in hot water."
"Skip it, Ezra," a third voice cut in, amused and only mildly intimidating. "You don't wanna bleed all over Nate's clinic, before Vin feeds you the leavings, do ya?"
Ezra shuddered dramatically. "No indeed, Mister Larabee," he said sweetly, "so perhaps we should turn to such time-tested cures for what ails... you. A simple headache, I gather?"
"Like hell you do." Chris's eyes narrowed - a mistake, given the concussion from being whacked over the head with a wooden leg - and all amusement left his voice.
"Oh but I insist, no trouble is too great." Ezra flicked through the pages of the old book, and beamed. "After all, you were both injured, my dear sirs. Albeit in the sorriest excuse for a gunfight this town has seen for oh, it must be several months now, given that the reprobates were blind drunk, had tried to stage a jail break with no prisoners and an extremely incensed Mister Larabee in charge, and in any case were all at least seventy years of age." He paused. "And the youngest is in fact lacking an eye. And a left leg, since you confiscated it."
"You're enjoyin' this a damn sight too much," Chris growled.
"Oh trust me, I am not the only one. Miz Travis gleefully acquired all of the salient details for her newspaper, and your heroics and frightful injuries will be front page news." He paused, and shrugged. "We can hardly fault her. The next most exciting occurrence in town was Dead-Eye Dora's sad encounter with a polecat in the town privy. Do be of good cheer, gentlemen, and Mister Jackson will return soon enough to monitor your welfare."
"Ezzzra..." The injured spoke together, and most folk in town - hell, in the territory - would have quailed at the level of menace in their combined voices.
However, their temporary keeper was not only one of the five - or maybe six, with Miz Travis - who didn't quail, he knew quite well where their boots, pants and most importantly guns were: not where either man could get at them unaided.
"So, as I was saying..." he went on serenely. "Take dried frog-skins... No, mah apologies, wrong affliction. I don't suppose crushed pillbugs would appeal either... Ah, this sounds better, as Mister Tanner needs the aforementioned spider, swallow a spider's web. The spider will hardly require it by then."
"Now that's true." Both of the non-walking wounded gave a groan at the all too jovial voice at the clinic door, and Vin pulled a thin pillow over his head. Buck merely beamed at them as he and JD crossed to peer over Ezra's shoulders. "An' it's uncommonly good of you, Ez, to take such pains."
"I'll give him pains," Larabee muttered, eyeing the definitely overloud newcomers and trying to work out how soon his head would not hurt too much to inflict some mayhem. Starting, of course, with...
"Now Mister Larabee," Ezra caught the look of incipient mayhem coming his way, "I am only trying to be of assistance here. A few time-tested suggestions to ease your fleeting spell of suffering -"
JD was reading over Ezra's shoulder; his eyes widened. "Uh... are you gonna suggest that one, Ez? - Cause I think even if they survive it, you won't."
Chris ignored the sweetly satisfied smile on Ezra's face. "Buck, who they hell were they?"
"Y'mean our newest desperadoes?" Buck eased himself down into the chair on the other side of Vin's bed. "Three brothers they are, Hiram, Hammon an' Hannibal Prebble. Seems they've come to stay with kinfolk an' just spent the night makin' new pards at the saloon... an' then at another saloon, then 'nother, then..."
"We get it."
"So did most of the town, Chris," JD said cheerfully, reaching over Ezra's shoulder to turn a page. "They paid for drinks in near every bar they went to."
"An' then jis' decided t'break... into the jail?" The disbelief in Vin's voice was muffled by the pillow, but not nearly enough.
"Well now, you gotta understand, them three old coots were drunker than a dead drunk skunk," Buck said. "Got it in their heads that they had to... rescue their innocent ol' uncle from the underhanded arm of the law 'round here."
"Uncle?" Ezra stared at him. "Those reprobates must have been more than -"
"Yeah," JD bounced in a way that made both patients wince. "More than seventy, every one of them. Old Uncle Hersheimer Prebble, he died more than forty years ago back east, but they sorta forgot that, being drunk an' all."
Chris put a hand to his aching head. It was enough he got pretty much bushwhacked - in their own jail - by three old codgers in the first place, let alone two brainless and crazy old codgers and one brainless, crazy, and one-legged old codger. This was gonna do the reputation of Four Corner's peacekeepers no good at all.
Still, he thought, the whole mess coulda been worse. He pushed down the painful memory of how much worse (there was the still unsolved mystery of Widow McWhirter's missing toads, and the time Buck had been somehow outgunned by an angry and accident-prone mule, and then the business with dynamite, the bath house and a naked Conklin that no one in town ever thought of if they could help it, and damn it, he'd thought of it and it weren't doin' the pain in his head any favors) and glared, slightly fuzzily, at the man who'd been making his life hell for an hour or so.
"Standish, go an' watch the jail."
"Me?" More innocence, outraged this time, slid easily over Ezra's face. "I protest, it is not my turn for that particular drudgery."
"Nope, it's mine," Vin peeked out from the pillow, more cheerful at this idea. "I'm stuck here till Nathan says otherwise. An' I don't care t'argue with 'im."
"You don't???" JD blurted.
"Well, not that much, not more'n -"
"Every time." Chris snorted, and regretted it when his head felt like it was falling off. "Standish, just go, an' take that hellish book with ya. There oughta be a cure or two in there for drunkenness you can share with those idiots, an' the more spiders and snakes you can slither in, the better. Buck, you go contact the family, tell them to come pick up the brothers - who are the family, anyway? There's no Prebbles round here that I can recall."
Buck's eyes sparkled. "Now that, pard, is the good bit."
"There ain't a good bit, Buck."
"No really, Chris. Got it outa Hiram, who was beginnin' to see the error of his ways as the booze wore off and our Josiah's sermonizing got louder -"
"Josiah, sermonizing? My my, what a surprise," Ezra murmured.
"Kinda likes a captive audience, he does. Anyhow, Hiram told us they're here visitin' their sister, widow lives with her six daughters not far from the Wells place. Name of -"
"You're joking." Chris sat up, despite the pain.
"You are not serious, Buck." Ezra almost dropped the book in shock.
"You gotta be kiddin' us." Vin's head shot out from under the pillow. "Ol' Widow Zweigel an' her girls?"
"Yup."
JD cocked his head. "Isn't she that scary old lady? - the one with the face like a bad-tempered prune, who really really really hates drinking?"
"She really really really hates every damn thing, JD," Vin growled.
"But in particular the demon drink, true," Ezra smirked. "As our illustrious leader would know. Didn't she reprimand you for something like forty minutes over a shot of whiskey in your coffee Chris?"
Chris actually flinched. "By the time she finished jawin', I needed a hellava lot more whiskey."
"Y'scared of her, cowboy?" Vin asked sweetly.
Chris scowled.
"And then," Ezra went on smoothly, "there was the time she stood just outside Dirty Dick's saloon and pummeled every man entering with her walking stick, and we were all but lynched trying to defend her from a well-placed fist or chair... or both. And you surely recollect how she upbraided poor Mary about the depraved evil that was her Christmas trifle."
"Well, to be fair, Ez," Buck said broodingly, "that there trifle was pretty damn evil. Lucky you had enough brandy to take away the taste an' all."
"True. But none the less -"
"None th'less, she's gonna be madder'n a wet hornet in a wasps' nest."
"Good," Chris snapped. "You an' Josiah go tell her to come take her kinfolk outa our hair. Ezra, go read your damn book to the kinfolk an' leave us in peace. JD, go with him. Once we get shot of the lot of you -"
"He does so love that word 'shot'," Standish said sotto voce, making JD splutter and their fearless - and currently weaponless - leader stare at him suspiciously.
"We might get some sleep before Nathan gets back and wakes us up to pour one of his horsepiss teas - and Ezra, you say one word about piss being in that book of yours and you'll regret it. Now get outa here, the lot of you."
Ezra sighed dramatically, but rose. "Your word is my command. " He smirked again at the glare both invalids gave him, tipped his hat, and strolled out.
Buck watched him go, grinning the whole time. "Gotta admit, Chris, he's got brass balls baitin' you an' Vin like that." His grin widened. "If he was just baitin', 'cause y'never know with him. Wonder if he's gonna show that book to Nathan?"
"Not if he's plannin' on livin' much longer, he ain't." Vin lay back, shifting uncomfortably as the bullet hole in his leg burned. "Y'know, cowboy, after all that listenin' to Ez, I damn near miss Nate and his disgustin' teas."
"Tell the truth, maybe his medicine ain't so bad..."
They looked at each other for a long moment.
"Nope, it's worse," they said together.
Buck, roaring with laughter, headed out the door and there was peace in the little clinic.
At least, for a while.
***
It was several hours later when the yelling roused them both - a tangle of shrill voices like icy nails through the skull, overlaid by Josiah's best 'bout-to-go-old-Testament bellow and JD's noisy, panicky tumble of questions.
Chris groaned and sat up gingerly, holding his head. "Wha' the hell -? Lady's Aid Society on the rampage again?"
"Cain't be," Vin mumbled sleepily, again taking refuge under his pillow. "Ain't Tuesday."
Growling, Chris started to struggle out of bed.
"Oh no, ya don't." The voice of their healer cut straight through his headache and Nathan's large, flat hand appeared from nowhere to push him back down. "Y'aint ready to deal with it, whatever fool mess they're in."
"Nathan -"
"No."
The door slammed open, and Josiah lumbered in, looked slightly gray-green. "Nathan, it seems we have another wounded for you to tend to." He shut the door with exaggerated calm, shutting out the racket outside.
"What?" Nathan turned sharply. "Where y'hurt?"
"Not I, brother, just feeling a might," he put a cautious hand to his stomach, "upset."
"What the hell's goin' on now?" Chris snarled, looking around for his gunbelt - and hat - and boots - and damn pants.
Josiah dropped into the empty chair with a thump that made Chris wince. "Nothing to worry you unduly, brothers, we just spent time with five of the Widow's daughters, and Buck may have to sleep it off. For an hour or two," he paused, "or ten."
Vin blinked. Nathan blinked. Chris blinked, and it hurt. "The Zweigels got him roostered?"
Josiah raised an eyebrow. "Hardly, Chris, the good ladies follow their mother's teachings on that. A harmless if rather elderly nettle cordial was what they swore on their sainted father's grave it was. However, it appears it was a touch too elderly... The daughters, all of them, insisted on accompanying us back, were quite," he shuddered, "deafeningly troubled that their hospitality had brought Buck to this state.
"And I also suspect that the opportunity to slip their mother's rule may have proven too much for even their ironclad virtue. She was mercifully absent, having headed off with the eldest - Prudence, I understand - to search for her lost brothers. Seems she was of the belief they headed north to Whiskery Creek."
"Hell, why's that?" Vin stared at him. "Ain't nothin' there but a saloon -"
"An' what used to be a post office -"
"An' another saloon -"
"An' the sorriest excuse for a boardin' house this side of Texas -"
"An' an undertaker -"
"An' two more saloons -"
"An' a general store that doubles as... a saloon."
Josiah shrugged; through the doorway, the muffled but still piercing babble made him cringe. "Ours is not to divine the ways of women's minds, brothers. The sisters are overwhelmed, as you can hear, that they may have caused such suffering."
"What suffering?" Nate asked, clearly somewhere between vexed and downright pissed.
"Like the miracle of the water, my friend, I think the Widow Zweigel's cordial has turned into somewhat dismal wine."
"An' you damn fools drank it?" The healer was already sorting through the collection of evil black and brown bottles his friends knew and feared.
Josiah sighed. "Come, Nathan, even the Lord himself might have quailed before Purity, Chastity, Clemency, Patience and Constancy... all quite terrifyingly like their respected mother -"
"As JD said," Vin offered, "bad-tempered prunes -?"
"Not polite, brother, and not true," Josiah considered, "rather more fretful than in a temper. As we all know, Buck finds it tricky to say no to a lady at the best of times, a singular virtue he is even now being punished for with a hellishly sea-green sickness. JD and Miss Maybelle are seeing him to his room." He grimaced again. "I admit, the little I drank does not sit easy."
Chris sighed - was anything gonna go right today? - as he swung around to sit up and stared at Nathan challengingly, if blearily. "Better get out there..."
"Y'going out like that," Nathan indicated his state of underdress, "with the spinster sisters there and half the town gawkin'?"
"He has a point, Chris," Josiah rumbled. "The sight of a manly chest may set the five of them to a swoon, and Nathan has no extra beds here for them. Doubt myself that Vin is up to sharing," he paused as Vin hauled his blanket over his head, "or that the Widow would quite like it." He gazed quizzically at his leader. "Drawers - even black ones - wouldn't seem to be quite decent for strolling round town of an afternoon."
"So give me my pants, Nate."
"No."
"Nate!"
"JD an' Ezra can handle it."
"Someone's gotta go an' tell the old Lady that her kinfolk - hell, even more of her kinfolk - are cluttering up our town."
They all stared at him. "So let me get this right..." Nathan said finally, "you are aimin' to stumble out that door, fall down the stairs -"
"Ain't aiming to -"
"Get up, throw up, somehow make it to the stable, saddle yer horse, take in that y'saddled the wrong horse -"
"I wouldn't -"
"Saddle the right horse," and Nathan's voice was getting louder, "somehow get yerself on it, fall off, get back on, head out the wrong way, figure out y'goin' the wrong way, turn 'round -"
"I -"
"Fall off again, throw up again - or maybe throw up'n then fall off, ride back," Nathan was yelling now, "try n'remember which way it is to Whiskery Creek in th'first place??"
There was a silence. "You finished?" Chris rasped, holding his head.
"Maybe."
"Then no. I don't damn well aim to do any of that, I aim to go tell Standish to."
"Fall off'n his horse?" Vin sniggered. "Or go th'wrong way?"
Chris just glared at him.
"Good idea, though. After all, right now he's like to be readin' to Buck out of that little book of his. Got some damn ugly cure for bellyache, he has."
Nathan's head whipped round. "Cure?"
Vin blinked again. "Ooops," he said, just the wrong side of innocently. "Did I say that 'loud?"
"Cure???"
Chris smirked, albeit carefully in case it hurt too. "Guess ya did."
Nathan thrust one of the largest, most malevolent black bottles at Josiah. "Here, y'drink some o'this, then make Larabee take a swig. Tanner, you shift your ass from that bed an' I'll personally put y'other leg in a splint."
"Ain't broke -"
"I c'n fix that first, if you want. 'Siah, give him a dose too if he tries, won't hurt him." An evil look crossed the healer's face as he opened the door. "Much." He grimaced as the shrill sound of five sisterly spinsters still in full flow burst in on them. "I gotta get past them, and then I gotta see to Buck, an' then I got me a Southern pain in the neck to stop before he gets someone hurt or hisself shot -"
And he was gone, banging the door behind him.
Chris started, swore, then sighed. "Shoulda mentioned Ez was just reading the cures, y'know."
"Yup."
"Not selling them."
"Nope."
"An' only doing that to plague us."
"Yup. And now Nate's gonna plague 'im." Vin winced at the pain in his leg, then lay back again. "What's that y'allus say, Josiah -?"
"Misery loves company?" Sanchez guessed, gazing at the bottle for a moment, then putting it back unopened and right at the back of the shelf.
"Nope, the one about servin' it cold. Revenge."
***
"Everything's fine and dandy, Chris, you don't have to worry."
The door banged open some time later and JD breezed in, looking way too jaunty and cheerful for his recovering leader to cope with. "The Zweigel sisters are all in the general store, lecturing Mary and Miz Potter and anyone who wanders in on the evils of coffee and tea and lace and tobacco and perfume and jewelry and dice and cards and harmonicas and toys and pickles and peppermint candy and sugar, and all about the, uhh, the promise of prunes, whatever that is. Mary's taking notes for the newspaper, gonna have a bumper issue this week, so she's happy. Buck, he's safe in bed with Miss Maybelle on hand to soothe his fevered brow or... well, soothe something. The old Prebble brothers - the ones that started all this? - they're hiding in the jail and offered to actually buy the whole of the next stagecoach out of town if it gets here before their loving sister finds them. They also tried to bribe me an' Ezra to bring them whiskey, but being the Sherriff and all, I turned them down flat."
"Great. How much whiskey did they get from Ezra?"
"More'n enough, I think. And then he sold them the remedy for drunkenness - mind you, I dunno where they'll get the eels, but they were too hungover to think about that. Oh, and Nathan came roaring over like a mountain bear, Ezra showed him the book an' the last thing I saw they were both of them studying it, something about a cure for bad temper."
He gazed round-eyed at Chris.
Josiah narrowed his eyes at Chris.
Vin peeked out from under the blanket at Chris.
"What?" Chris snarled. "Nothin' wrong with my temper, and I'll shoot anyone who says otherwise."
"Yeah, would have to be for the old lady." JD agreed hastily. "Anyways, everything's just fine an' dandy, and Hannibal Prebble's asking for his leg back."
"Same wooden leg he hit Chris with?"
"Well, yeah... but he's sorry 'bout that an' he really says he needs it!"
"Not while he's locked up, he don't. When his sister comes to collect them all, he can have it to take with him."
"I rather think that may be the point," Josiah said thoughtfully. "They do show a marked reluctance to stay for the touching reunion."
"Which is why he can wait. Unless you want to deal with the Widow when she gets here."
"C'mon Chris, he asked nicely!"
"JD -"
"My ma," JD said tentatively, "she always told me we should respect our elders. Didn't say nothin' about only respecting them when they're being respectable." He carefully didn't say anything about how often he would be able to respect certain of his elders if that were so, but Chris got it loud and clear anyway.
"Fine. Give it back, and tell him he hits anyone else with it an' the next time we give it back it'll be kindling."
"Thanks Chris, you're all heart." JD hauled the shabby wooden limb out from behind Nathan's workbench and held it up to look at. "He says it's a family heirloom, got real sentimental over it." He looked some more. "Can you believe it?"
"Folk do get sentimental over strange things," Josiah mused.
"Just take it, JD, and don't forget to tell him what I said."
"I won't," JD promised earnestly.
"An' that doesn't mean you can let them out of jail, mind. Not till Ezra brings back the Widow to collect 'em... has he gone yet?"
"Umm, as to that," JD stopped admiring the leg, and looked shifty, "he says he don't need to. Charity and Clemency say she'll be thinking of Four Corners the minute she finished searching Whiskery Creek." He paused. "And Greely and maybe Job Junction. But she won't go home till then, and even if she does, Charity and Clemency say they left her a letter."
Josiah frowned. "I can't say I recall that."
"While Buck was puking and you were... avoiding him."
"Ah yes, that I do recall."
"Anyway, Ezra decided he'd be better off staying here to smooth her ruffled feathers and help her - how did he put it? - 'gather her devoted brood and marshal them homewards'... so like I said, everything's fine and dandy."
An unholy screech echoed through the town, nearly sending the Seven's fearless leader straight through the roof.
Josiah cocked his head. "Now that, JD, sounded rather less than dandy to me."
"Uhhh..."
"Either a stuck pig, Ez's sanctified dead risin' from their graves..." Vin paused, thinking, "or one of the sisters jis' got -"
"Pinked." Josiah shuddered, though respect for any man brave enough to do that showed in his eyes. "And the wise money would be on the latter."
"JD," Chris wasn't about to admit he was still shaking, "go an' see who th'hell is goin' on, an' make it stop."
"Me??" The youngest squeaked.
"You're th'sheriff, Sheriff," Vin said cheerfully.
"But, but -"
They all flinched at another shriek from outside, this one rather more less like a stuck pig and more like the wail of outraged virtue.
"Then go'n see what the hell is going on, an' make Nate and Ezra make it stop," Larabee snapped. "Or else I'm going out there, an' it ain't gonna be pretty."
Vin glanced at him. "In them britches, Chris, that's f'sure."
"Tanner?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up. JD?"
"I'm going, I'm going, I'm..."
JD backed out the clinic door, half-turned and stopped dead, staring down the road leading into town. "Uhhh, sorry Chris but... Josiah? You got a minute?"
"That would depend." Josiah spoke cautiously, not budging from his comfortable sprawl in the rocking chair. "These poor afflicted brothers of ours need me right here, after all." He serenely ignored the glares from both of the afflicted.
"Yeah, but well, you know how you feel about crows?"
"I'm not partial to feathered harbingers of doom, no." That was even more cautious.
"So how would you feel about a, like you say, harbinger driving a buckboard wagon down the main road?"
"What?" Josiah jerked upright.
"What??" Vin did too - and yelped in pain.
"What???" Chris jerked to his feet, wobbled, and thumped back down again.
"Yeah, big old black crow, sorta. Kind of."
Josiah hauled himself up and lumbered out the door, turned to stare down the road... and groaned.
"What, Josiah?" Larabee growled. "If JD's seeing things -"
"Sad to say, he is," Josiah said. "An all-too-human crow in black plumage. With a resemblance," he mused, "a very unhappy one -"
"To a prune," JD agreed, backing towards the clinic doorway. "A bad-tempered one."
"Fretful."
"Cantankerous."
"Perturbed."
"Mad 'nough to peck a man's -"
"JD!" Chris barked.
"What? Jeez, Chris, I was gonna say a man's eyes, we're talking about a lady here!" JD stared at him reproachfully. "Old Lady Zweigel may be a bit -"
"Yeah, that," Vin agreed.
"And possible a trifle -" Josiah added.
"That too."
"And way too...."
"Oh yeah, definitely too."
"Tanner?"
"Yeah, Chris?"
"Shut up."
"Anyway, she wouldn't do anything unladylike. Not 'less she was provoked."
"An' you think finding her brothers drunk an' in jail, her girls running all over town, an' a goddam heathenish gambler the only one in authority ain't gonna provoke her?"
The others all thought about it. Vin was the first to move, and all he did was pull the pillow over his head again.
"JD..."
"Yeah Chris, I'm going." JD paused at the door. "Might take the shortcut to the jail, though - y'know, instead of straight down the main street I'll just duck back through the stables and round the alley an' through the saloon an' behind the church, and then round..." He was still mumbling as he sidled out.
"Hey 'Siah," Vin said mildly as the door shut behind the kid, "might also be an idea to turn that lock so's no one else can get in here till the whole clan's outa the way, don't ya think?"
Josiah stared at him. "Now that would be right cowardly, brother, you want to desert our friends in their time of peril?"
Vin looked at Chris, who looked back, and they spoke together.
"Yup."
Josiah nodded. "Wise men, both of you."
***
"Uh-oh."
Josiah, placidly determined to stay with the injured in their time of need however much they didn't need him, was now watching the action in the main street from the safety of the clinic door, and giving them a running commentary which, in true Sanchez style, made little sense to ordinary folk. The ordinary folk in question didn't exactly blame him for staying, given what they could hear.
"Uh-oh?" Vin echoed.
"Uh-oh." JD agreed. He'd obviously learned a few lessons on discretion and better parts, and had delivered the message to Ezra and Nathan that their brave and bad tempered leader was ordering them to 'make it stop', and then retreated to help Josiah. He now bounced a little on his toes, craning to see over the bigger man's shoulder.
"Why uh-oh?" Chris, still sitting on the edge of the bed where he had thumped down, demanded.
"I don't think our heathenish gambler beguiled the widow into compli-" Josiah broke off, and grimaced. "Quite the opposite, in fact."
"And here comes ol' Buck to the rescue!" JD said brightly. "Pity he forgot to put his clothes back on... I think Chastity just fainted."
"She did." Josiah nodded. "As has both Patience and Purity."
"An' Prudence."
"Nathan'll have his hands full."
All too soon, Nathan hightailed through the door, looking harassed. "You win, Larabee," he said breathlessly, yanking open a cupboard and tossing black clothes at the man on the bed. "You're every bit as fine as you said you -"
"Like hell I said that." Chris, instantly suspicious, leant back and crossed his arms.
Nathan blinked. "You didn't?"
"I didn't."
"Y'did, Chris," Vin, never squashed for long, offered.
"If I did, so did you, Tanner."
"Well yeah, but.... but I lied."
"Damn it, Chris, get y'duds on and help us. The Widow's gonna stage herself a jailbreak if Ezra cain't talk her outa bustin' her brothers out. Seems to think they're poor blameless innocents bein' persecuted by that same damn underhanded arm of the law her long dead Uncle suffered under - and worse, the underhanded arm of the law's a scandalously lawless gamblin' man an' an unclothed molester of the pure and virtuous - her words, not mine, Buck in his union suit ain't helpin' matters - and she hasn't stopped long enough for the underhanded law to let her know she's welcome to them." He took a deep breath and barreled on. "The problem is the poor blameless innocents don't wanna be busted out if it means going back home with her darlin' daughters. And some of their new pards from the saloons last night are not helpin', can't make up their minds if they wanna help the jailbreak or protect the jail from the old lady, so they're just gettin' in the way.
"We need backup of the right menacing kind, and you're it."
"Standish can handle one old lady."
"You scared of her, Larabee?"
Chris gave him an evil, narrow-eyed glare, but before he could answer, there was the muffled, muddled and unholy crash of what sounded like a blunderbuss with a bad attitude that made even Vin shoot up, yelping in pain though he did.
The door banged open and Buck - still in his now filthy and somewhat tattered union suit, and still a touch greener in the face than normal - half-dragged Ezra in and steered him towards what had only just stopped being Chris's bed.
"Ezra -?" Vin tried to sit up - and yelped yet again, but didn't let it stop him. "Ez, what's wrong?"
"You hurt, Standish?" Chris's temper flared.
JD shuffled his feet. "It was..."
"A minor... misunderstandin'... with the wrong end of an ancient ordnance," Ezra gasped, one hand going to his bloodied head.
"A what?"
"Some sort of... antiquated weapon..."
JD, who had trailed in behind them, managed to look shifty, guilty and desperate not to laugh all at the same time. "Sorry, Chris."
The most recently injured lifted his head and shot a green-eyed glare at him. "Mister Larabee is... hardly the one who merits your contrition, young man."
"Uhhh... maybe not, Ez, but he's the one I most don't want mad at me."
Ezra kept glaring for a moment but - whether because it hurt too much or he actually agreed with the sentiment - gave up and sank onto the bed with a faint groan. Now that Chris and Vin could see more clearly there wasn't that much blood, but any blood was more than enough to rile their invariably rileable leader.
"What the hell does he mean by misunderstanding with an... ordnance?"
Buck nodded helpfully if groggily. "'Nother Prebble family heirloom... tell 'em, JD."
"You tell 'em!"
"I'm busy tryin' not to puke on Ez here. And you gave it to them."
"I didn't know!"
"Didn't know what?" Vin stared with huge worried eyes as Ezra collapsed with a groan, batting away the hands trying to remove his coat.
JD scuffed his feet some more, and didn't look at them. "Thelegwasarmed," he mumbled.
"What?"
"The... the leg was armed, okay? The Prebble brothers, they kept Old Uncle Hersheimer's old flintlock hidden in the wooden leg, it hasn't been fired since the Mexican War from what Hannibal yelled at me, but they thought we'd back off if they had it. Thing is, Clemency got to the leg first and she and old Hannibal sort of wrestled over it -"
"Not that it was much of a wrestle," Buck interrupted, "th'old fool would be weak as than Dirty Dick's whiskey."
"An' Ez tried to take it off them an' got whacked with it."
"So I am to blame? I must protest..."
"Well, Clemency didn't mean to! Anyway, it sorta went off - they didn't think it was loaded, honestly! - or not so much went off as exploded. Just a little."
"A little?"
"...Or not so much exploded as disintegrated. And went off. And all their new pards from last night aren't feeling so pardlike any more, Chris, 'cause there's a huge hole in the saloon door." JD stopped to think. "Or you could more say there's a bit of saloon door left around a huge hole, to tell the truth..."
That tore it. Finally and for sure.
Chris growled something that made them all blink, grabbed his hat and guns and strode - bare-chested and barefoot and only a little unsteadily - out the door.
They all waited for a few minutes, listening to the babbling, blathering racket of voices from the street and very carefully not looking at each other.
JD - of course - was the one to break first. "Shouldn't some of us we go an', ummm, back him up?"
Vin blinked at him. "Uhhh, not that I'd be volunteerin', but... why?"
"There's six of us up here, an' just him out there -"
"True." Josiah nodded gravely. "Facing down six spinster sisters -"
"Three crazy old coots -" Buck said.
"Half a dozen unhappy ex-pards -" Nathan put in.
"Miz Travis still takin' notes for her story -" Vin added.
"And," Ezra added shakily, "one genteel, virtuous and oh-so-righteous widow."
There was a silence, then Josiah and Nathan looked at each other, shrugged and headed towards the door. "Be a pity to miss it, brother."
"Yup."
"Wait for me!" JD bounded after them. Buck looked at the two current invalids, shrugged and followed the others, though he was still a little wobbly on his feet.
"Ah think... I'll pass," Ezra murmured, still holding his head. Vin ignored him; he was listening to the racket, waiting for Larabee's distinctive bellow or even more distinctive gunfire...
And suddenly - everything went silent.
Dead silent.
Vin stared at Ezra, who gazed back, and they spoke together. "Oh, he is good."
"Bit of an letdown, really," JD said some time later, lounging in the doorway of the clinic and failing dismally to keep his voice down as Nathan (who firmly believed in letting sleeping gamblers lie) had asked. "Chris went down there in his britches an' hat an' gunbelt. The old lady was so appalled, she couldn't argue; the sisters seemed to be somewhere between appalled and rather awestruck; the brothers all had their nerves shot to pieces when the leg went boom and didn't put up a fight about being given back to their loving family; none of the locals were about to argue with a Larabee with a sore head; an' Mary couldn't stop laughing long enough to ask Chris for an interview. Which was a pity," he went on thoughtfully, "it would have been something to read, wouldn't it?"
"Quite the - what's 'Siah call it? - saga," Vin agreed. "Be a pretty good yarn, iffen Chris doesn't talk her outa the more interestin' details."
"So anyway, everything's all done and finished, and the whole clan's left and won't be back."
"So where is Larabee now? Watchin' the jail?"
"Don't have to, there's no one left in there." Chris appeared at the door. Still bare of chest, but having had time to find and don his boots, he looked a hell of a lot better than he had - his friends had noticed long ago that doing some wholesale looming and intimidating always agreed with him - as he stared down at Ezra's sleeping form. "He gonna be okay, Nathan?"
Nathan shrugged. "Yeah, he'll be cheatin' and card-sharpin' before you know it." He grabbed his bag and several bottles, including the one Josiah had hidden at the back of the shelf. "Put yer damn clothes on, Larabee. The crisis is over and I'm off to check on some proper invalids - or at least, less annoyin' ones than you boys. Oh, an' here," he handed a small, old, leather-clad volume to his leader, "this belongs to that Southern fool, you'd better give it to him when he wakes."
Chris stared down at it, looked at Vin and then Ezra again, and smiled slowly, wickedly.
"Nah," he said. "Or rather, yeah, later. A hell of a lot later. Got a better use for it first..."
***
He licked a thumb, and carefully turned a yellowed page over. "Now lessee what would help Ezra's pain..."
Groans came from both beds; Vin sent a glare to his new fellow prison- err, patient, and dragged the pillow back over his head.
"Mister Larabee," the voice was weak and faint, and definitely aggrieved. "You would not be so unkind, would you? - bein' as you are a better man than that -"
Chris looked up, as if struck by the idea.
"Certainly a better man than I."
"Yeah, guess I am at that."
Ezra sighed and relaxed a little.
"But not that good. Now, then... this sounds good, Standish. Wear a rattlesnake in the hair..."
-the end-
The cures in Ezra's dear little book, by the way are taken from one of Sis's greatest treasures The Book of Home Remedies and Herbal Cures by Carol Bishop, and are for the most part authentic (okay, I have taken a few literary liberties... but trust me, many of those in the book for all sort of ailments are just as, ummm, creative :) I do love domestic history, don't you? {veg})