elspethdixon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elspethdixon) wrote2005-06-05 01:27 am
elspethdixon) wrote2005-06-05 01:27 am
Magnificent Seven fic, part I
Like I need another Old West fandom, what with twenty chapters of Wyatt/Doc fic left to write, and the starts of four Lonesome Dove fics languishing on my hard drive. Not to mention the alternate history smuggler crack/Rafael Sabatini rip-off novel I really ought to be working on.
But sucky internet access will do wonders to increase one's level of microsoft word addiction, so here goes:
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by ah… various corporations and television stations whose names I can't recall at the moment. I think MGM may be in there somewhere. No money is being made and no offense is intended.
Posted By: Elspethdixon
Main characters: Ezra, JD, Nathan.
Warnings: This fic, which takes place about ten days after the episode "Serpents," contains profanity, violence, racism, and a few crossover cameos in the auction scene. It does not contain hot sex, either slash or het. Sorry.
Just imagine a suitable title [here]
Part One:
Ten days after "Serpents":
The trail between Four Corners and Julestown, Ezra decided, for what was probably the twentieth time since that morning, was a wretched, dusty little slice of hell. Fine, pale brown dust drifted up from the sun-baked ground to cover his hands, his legs, the sleeves of his dark green coat—which was going to require a considerable amount of time and effort to clean—and likely his face and even the crown of his hat, as well. Not to mention covering Chaucer, whose dust-impregnated coat would probably take even longer to clean than Ezra’s.
And as if that were not enough torment and misery, there was also the heat of the sun, which beat against Ezra’s head even through his hat, and the nagging ache in his left side and arm, which were constantly being jarred and pulled by Chaucer’s movements. He was hot, tired, filthy, thirsty, and in pain, and it was all Nathan’s fault.
He was supposed to be on the stage to Ridge City right now, not here in the middle of this godforsaken desert. If he’d taken the noon stage, as he had planned, he would be halfway there by now, arriving in the larger town just in time to buy dinner at the Regent hotel before settling down to a profitable night at the gaming tables. A nice, long evening with no one hovering over him and the promise of a substantial amount of money in the bargain. If he were on the stage, instead of out here, he would be out of the sun and the dust, and a stagecoach ride—provided the driver didn’t run them through too many wagon ruts or whip the horses on too fast—would not have aggravated the half-healed gouges left by Stutz’s bullet. He’d had it all figured out, right down to conning Nathan into declaring him recovered enough to go.
But no, the blasted man had had to announce his intention to travel to Julestown in the saloon the previous night, and JD and Ezra had been roped into riding with him, because Mr. Larabee had decided, in the wake of the attempt on Mary’s life, that “nobody should go riding off alone.”
“Take Ezra with you,” he’d said. “He’s planning on leaving town for a day anyway. Might as well go with you instead off to Ridge City by his lonesome.”
And then JD had bounced up and announced that he wanted to go too—probably to escape the one-man sink of gloom Buck had turned into after Miss Perkins left town without him—treating Ezra’s going as a matter of course, and Ezra had had no choice but to change his plans. He was on thin ice as it was, and telling Chris Larabee no to his face would only have made things worse.
So now, instead of riding to Ridge City in comfort, Ezra was stuck in the middle of nowhere—a hot, dusty nowhere—being miserable. And to make matters worse, Nathan kept looking at him. Careful, assessing looks that said, ‘I know your side must be bothering you and I’m just waiting for you to flinch so I’ll have an excuse to examine it and lecture you about lying to me.’ Or maybe they said, ‘I bet you were planning on hopping on a train in Ridge City and taking off for St. Louis, now that you’ve shown us your true colors.” Well, he’d be wrong about the second assumption, though not about the first. Damned if Ezra was going to admit to being in pain, though. Not after pretending to be fine so he could go to Ridge City.
Instead, he opted for a pointed, sullen silence, and listened with half an ear to Nathan’s conversation with JD. He might not be in the mood to join in, but he didn’t really want to be alone with his thoughts either.
“You think this Dr. Milburn is gonna have any medical tools you can use?” JD was asking, twisting about in the saddle so he could look at Nathan.
“Maybe. Doc Green in Eagle Bend says he’s auctioning off nearly everything, so there’s gotta be something there I need. Scalpels, forceps, maybe some books. He might even have a stethoscope or a syringe. Those would be real useful.”
“What’s a syringe?”
“It’s a little metal and glass tube with a needle attached. You use it to inject medicine right into a man’s veins.”
JD made a face, and shuddered ostentatiously, but Nathan continued on, too caught up in his enthusiastic explanation to notice. “There was a piece about them in one of my journals. Some doctors think medicine works quicker that way, and you can use ‘em to give doses to people who are too sick to drink anything.”
“Oh. Um, that sounds great.” JD’s voice lacked enthusiasm. “Ah, Nathan, if you do find one of those tube-needle thingies, don’t try it out on me, okay?”
“That’s what Ezra is for.”
That last was enough to spur Ezra into abandoning his silence. “No, Mr. Jackson,” he announced through gritted teeth, “that is not what Ezra is for. Please confine your experiments to someone else. I have been poked and prodded enough by you in the past ten days to last me the rest of my life.”
“Ezra, I was joking.” Nathan shook his head, speaking in a “humour the nasty-tempered man” tone that made Ezra want to wipe the longsuffering expression right off his face. “Though, come to think of it, you might learn not to go around throwing yourself in front of bullets if I had a nice big syringe to use on you afterward.”
JD actually smiled at that, and Ezra had to remind himself firmly that throwing his flask at one of his companions’ heads would be childish. “It’s not like I actually planned on getting myself shot. It was a momentary attack of stupidity on my part that I have no intention of repeating.”
“Good,” Nathan said. “Next time, you might not have a bundle full of stolen money in your coat.”
Oh yes, the Stutz money. Everyone just had to keep bringing that up, didn’t they? After all, if they just let the matter drop, Ezra might be able to forget about the whole miserable affair, and we couldn’t possibly have that, could we? Can’t let Ezra forget that we don’t trust him anymore. Not that they had trusted him overmuch in the first place.
That was another nice thing about Ridge City. No one there knew about the money or Ezra’s role in the whole assassination affair.
“Yes, it’s fortunate that Stutz’s blood money was substantial enough to stop his son’s bullet,” Ezra snarked back. “A few hundred dollars less and I might be flat on my back with a punctured lung.”
“You were pretty lucky,” JD put in, cutting Nathan off just as he drew breath to speak. Ezra wasn’t sure whether he had done it on purpose or simply not noticed that the other man had been about to say something.
“Yeah,” Nathan said sourly, finally getting his two cents in. “He could’ve been going for a head shot.”
He could have indeed. The great variety of fatal spots Stutz's bullet could have struck him in had played upon his mind at length recently. He really didn't want to consider it any further. “Lucky?” Ezra raised his eyebrows and gave his two tormentors a stare that he hoped adequately conveyed ‘withering sarcasm.’ “If I were truly blessed with good fortune, I would be in San Francisco by now, free of bullet holes and busy enjoying my ten thousand dollars.”
The statement should have been difficult to argue with—wealth being eternally preferable to gunshot wounds—but Nathan tried anyway. “Your money-“ he started, sounding disgusted.
Ezra nudged Chaucer with one heel and trotted ahead, ignoring the slightly hurt expression on JD’s face at his abruptness. He didn’t let the gelding drop back into a walk until he was too far away to listen.
The brief trot jarred Ezra’s stitches and half-healed cracked rib even more. That, he decided, knowing he was being unfair even as he thought it, was Nathan’s fault as well.
^_~
“Ezra’s in a real bad mood today,” JD commented, as he watched the gambler’s chestnut gelding slow back down to a walk a good ten yards ahead of himself and Nathan. Ezra was riding with a straight-backed stiffness that practically telegraphed ill-temper. Or possibly pain. “Are you sure he’s okay to be riding out with us like this?”
Nathan shrugged, looking after Ezra with irritation plain on his face. “He seemed fine when I checked him out yesterday. Anyway, if he’s well enough to go gallivanting off to Ridge City to gamble, he’s well enough to come with us and do something useful.” He turned his eyes back to the ground ahead of them, then added, “ I’ll take another look at him when we stop for the night.”
“Oh, okay then.” If anything had gone wrong with Ezra’s healing injuries, Nathan would be sure to find it and deal with it. He had fixed JD’s own bullet wound back when Mattie had shot him, not to mention Buck and Josiah’s gunshot and sabre wounds after the fight at the Seminole village, and those had all been worse than Ezra’s messed up side. Of course, they hadn’t known that at first, and seeing Ezra lying there in the street bleeding had been pretty damn scary. Nathan had been right. If Stutz had been aiming for a head shot, Four Corners’ group of lawmen would have been reduced to six. And if he hadn’t shot at all, Ezra might have kept on going, out of town and south to Mexico or something, and they’d still have been six.
“So,” JD said, purposefully derailing that train of thought, “what’s Julestown like?”
“I dunno. I’ve never been there before. Josiah was there once, about a year ago. He says it’s a touch bigger than Four Corners, enough to have a couple of hotels and a school. No rail station, though.”
“I guess this Dr. Milburn’s heading out on the stagecoach, then.” JD shook his head. “I wonder why he wants to go back east. Doesn’t sound like he’d be short of business.” There was a slight tug on the reins in his hands as Milo tried to reach his head to the left to sneak a bite out of a patch of tall grass, and JD shortened the reins, pulling his head back up. “Stop that. You don’t need a snack.”
“Maybe he just didn’t take to things out here,” Nathan said. “Some people don’t. I just hope he has a nice set of surgical tools I can buy.”
Didn’t take to things? JD supposed it was possible. You would never catch him cutting out and heading for the east coast again, but there'd been a time not so long ago when he hadn’t been so sure he belonged out here. When he'd first arrived, he had figured a little dust and risk was worth it for the chance to get a fresh start and try something new, but Annie dying had almost changed his mind.
Maybe this Dr. Milburn had lost a patient, and decided to give up medicine.
The three of them rode along silently for a while, Ezra staying out in front. As time went on, he dropped back a little closer to JD and Nathan, but he didn't say a word to either of them, not even to complain about how dusty he was getting--though it was obvious he wanted to, because he kept brushing ineffectually at his coatsleeves. When JD tried to start up another conversation by asking him what he'd planned on doing in Ridge City, he practically bit his head off. In a frigidly polite, Ezra sort of way.
Eventually, it started to get dark, and Nathan pulled up his horse. Ezra and JD followed suit.
"Are we stopping now?" JD asked, a bit surprised. There didn't seem to be any likely place to camp nearby. The trail forked up ahead, one branch winding around to the left and disappearing into a stand of trees, the other continuing straight on, up a long, gradual incline.
Nathan nodded. "According to Josiah, there's a creek on the other side of those trees. He says it's mostly dry this time of year, but there ought to be enough of a flow left to water the horses."
Josiah's prediction turned out to be correct; the creek bed was mostly empty, but a thin trickle of water still ran along its bottom, enough for the three regulators to refill their canteens and give their horses a drink. Milo started edging toward the water even before JD had finished unsaddling him, shouldering Chaucer out of the way and earning JD a curse from Ezra, who was knocked a step backwards as his horse side-stepped to avoid JD's.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your animal under some kind of control," Ezra hissed through gritted teeth, pressing a hand to his injured left side.
"Sorry," JD apologized, a little hurt by the venom in Ezra's voice.
"Okay, that's it," Nathan announced. "Ezra, soon as you've finished with Chaucer, you're gonna sit down and let me have a look at that side a' yours. It's got you as bad tempered as a wet hen, and I for one am getting tired of it."
"It was perfectly fine this morning," Ezra said sulkily. "Of course, I can't speak for whatever damage riding all over Hell's half acre with you two may have done." Nevertheless, he dutifully stripped his coat off and unbuttoned his shirt and waistcoat so that Nathan could inspect the stitches over his ribs. Of course, this meant that both of them were otherwise occupied when the time came to set up camp, so JD had to collect wood and get a fire going by himself. He half suspected that Ezra had planned it that way.
Still, JD decided, as he set another armful of twigs down by the tiny campfire--built in a depression, like Vin had shown him, so that people riding up couldn't see the light--listening to Ezra whine while you cooked dinner over a campfire was better than sitting around back in Four Corners listening to Buck go on about Louisa Perkins and how all-fired perfect she was, and how he was a fool for letting her go. JD could now recite the entire list of Louisa's considerable--according to Buck--charms, as well as a good dozen ways to convince her to stay in Four Corners and marry Buck, all of them, of course, dreamed up after she had left. Chris had flat out told Buck to shut up about Louisa any time he was around. JD was about to the point where he was considering doing the same, despite his desire to be a good friend. He hadn't really liked Louisa all that much, anyway, given how she'd nearly gotten Buck to run off with her, and how her statehood campaign had come this close to getting Ezra and Mary killed.
He'd been careful not to mention that to Buck, though.
Ezra turned down his share of dinner, contenting himself with coffee heavily doctored with the contents of his flask, and was asleep with his head on his saddle before Nathan and JD had even finished eating. Still, Nathan had assured JD that Ezra's stitches were holding just fine and his wounds hadn't gotten infected, so he didn't worry too much. He didn't even worry about the fact that Ezra forgot to whine about sleeping on the ground, made no complaint about getting up at first light the next morning, and spent the entire rest of the ride into Julestown riding in silence. Ezra wasn't sick. Ezra was made at them for some reason.
This suspicion was confirmed when they got to town, and Ezra announced, in no uncertain terms, that he found the very idea of purchasing medical supplies "insupportably dull" and was going to find a saloon and a game of poker.
"Of course you are," Nathan said, "the rest of us being so boring. Have fun cheating people."
"I don't cheat," Ezra snapped. "One would think that fact would eventually penetrate the rest of y'all's heads. Or possibly that's too much to ask."
And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the livery stable, in search of his saloon. With him went most of the tension in the air.
JD watched him go with a sinking feeling inside his chest. Ezra usually went off to play poker whenever they hit a new town, but he wasn't usually so rude about it. Ezra snarling at them, Buck moping about Louisa…. Lately, it felt as if the Seven were drifting apart, like a family after someone had died. Except that they weren't a family, not really, despite JD's secret hopes that they'd end up one. Recent events had proven that.
Family trusted each other. Family didn't ride off and leave each other.
"So," Nathan said, cutting off JD's thought, "let's go find this auction. I'll show you the syringes I was talking about."
^_~
Across the street from the livery stable, Deputy Irving Harnett watched as the first of the three men he'd seen riding in stalked out, making a beeline for the nearest saloon. Harnett leaned against one of the posts holding up the general store's porch, and waited to see if the other two would follow him. Might be the three of them had just fallen in with each other on the trail and ridden into town together, or might be they were all three riding together.
He went over the contents of the wanted poster the Army had given Sheriff Aiken one more time in his head, mentally comparing the description on it with the newcomer who'd caught his attention. It matched, all right. Not perfectly--he had a beard when he'd held up the Army payroll wagon--but well enough. Beards could be shaved off.
When the other two--the negro and the kid--came out and headed in the opposite direction, toward Doc Milburn's office, Harnett breathed an inward sigh of relief. They didn't look to be with the gambler, which made things that much easier on Julestown's law.
Harnett watched the two men until he was sure they'd gone into Milburn's office, then left to tell Sheriff Aiken what he'd seen. By tonight, if his luck held, the Army's hundred-dollar reward would be his.
^_~
"Sold, to Doc Green for three dollars," the auctioneer announced portentously, slapping the palm of his hand down on Dr. Milburn's surgery table. He had the look of a local storekeeper pressed into service for the occasion, and Nathan figured that that was exactly what he was, since he called out bids in a normal speaking voice, instead of the fast-paced patter auctioneers generally used. The surgery table he stood beside was covered in medical supplies, from rolls of bandages to a neatly coiled stethoscope. Disappointingly, there was no syringe. If Julestown's soon-to-be-ex-doctor had one, he was taking it back East with him.
Dr. Milburn's office was crowded with people, more people than could really fit in such a small space. A good dozen men had been drawn in by word of the auction, though Nathan guessed one or two of them were only there out of curiosity, like JD was. The only two he knew personally were Doc Green, the thin, balding doctor from Eagle Bend, and Dr. Hunnicutt, the tall, moustached former Army surgeon from Dry Springs who had just lost out to Green in the bidding for a stack of back issues of the Philadelphia Medical Journal.
Green elbowed his way to the front of the crowd and collected his journals, leaving three dollar coins on the surgery table. He returned to his place by the window, already flipping through the topmost of the journals.
"Right," the auctioneer announced, "next up we have a lovely pair of-" he glanced down at the next of the items laid atop the table, a pair of forceps, and hesitated, "…tongs," he said finally. "Top quality metal tongs. Worth at least a dollar. Do I hear a dollar?"
"You going to bid?" JD asked from beside Nathan. He been watching the entire affair with interest, and had displayed noticeable disappointment when most of the contents of Milburn's medicine cabinet had gone to a grey-haired man in wire-rimmed spectacles instead of to Nathan. He been smugly triumphant that Nathan had gotten the entire stock of carbolic acid, though, something Nathan had felt pretty triumphant about himself.
"Naw." Nathan shook his head. "I already got four pairs of forceps. I'm holding my money for that Liston knife he's got up there. And maybe another stethoscope."
"I have a dollar," the auctioneer said. "Do I hear a dollar five?"
"Which one's the Liston knife?"
"It's on the table next to the clamps." Nathan pointed to the long, straight blade, which was gleaming in the noon sunlight. Dr. Milburn's surgery was clean and airy, with large glass windows that let light stream in. If the man had ever had curtains up, he taken them down and packed them away now, so there was no cloth to keep any of the sun out. "The one that looks sorta like a big straight razor, and comes to a point at the top. So's it can cut clean through a man's muscle," he explained.
"Oh," JD said softly. His dark eyes were wide, and he looked a little green. Nathan could have explained that an amputation was easier on the patient if a doctor did it as quickly as possible, but he didn't think the younger man would really want to hear those sorts of details. Most people didn't.
"I don't like taking a man's arm or leg, I done enough a' that in the war, but if I ever have to, I'll need the right tools. Remember how Jim Daniels' leg nearly went bad?" Daniels had broken his leg last month, when the axle of a wagon he'd been trying to push out of the mud had snapped, dropping the side of the wagon bed on him. It had been a nasty, compound fracture, and the wound had gotten infected badly enough that Nathan had had to re-open and drain it twice. Only luck and Daniels' own strong constitution had saved him from losing his right leg below the knee.
JD nodded, but he eyed the Liston knife with obvious unease.
"Sold to the gentleman in the back for one dollar, seven cents," the auctioneer said, slapping his palm down on the table again. "And now," he reached down and picked up the Liston knife, holding it up by the handle to that the entire room could see it, "we have a real beauty of a knife. Good steel, nice bone handle." He tested the edge of the blade with a thumb and winced; apparently it was well sharpened. "And it's got a fine edge on it, too," he added. "Do I hear six dollars?"
"Six dollars," Nathan called out, raising his hand to call the man's attention to him.
"Six-fifty," Hunnicutt countered.
"Seven dollars," Nathan said, raising his hand again. He wanted that Liston knife. It was good steel, just as the auctioneer had said, better quality than any of Nathan's surgical knives or even his throwing knives. From the way the metal gleamed, it might even be better steel than Ezra's shaving razor, which had come from one of the finest shops in New Orleans and cost nearly fifteen dollars. Everything Ezra had was the finest quality he could get his hands on, and he took pleasure in informing people of this fact.
Nathan pushed the irritation that the thought of Ezra had conjured up out of his mind--mule-headed, never quite trustworthy, always reverting to his same old slick, arrogant, conman self just when Nathan got to where he expected better of him--and focused back in on the Liston knife. It truly was a good blade, easily worth eleven dollars and more.
The rest of the room agreed with him. The older man in the wire-rim spectacles bid eight dollars. Hunnicutt raised it to eight-fifty. Nathan raised his own bid to nine dollars, and a weak-chinned man in an expensive waistcoat raised the bidding yet higher, to ten-fifty.
"Eleven," Nathan said loudly. The man in the spectacles frowned and waved a hand dismissively, and JD elbowed Nathan with a pleased grin.
"Serves him right for buying all that laudanum and ipecac," he said gleefully. "That's our amputation knife."
"Eleven-fifty," Hunnicutt said.
In the end, Nathan got his knife for twelve dollars and forty-nine cents, which left him with just over fourteen dollars in his pocket, but was well worth every penny. The man in the expensive waistcoat glared daggers at him, but Nathan didn't care. He collected the Liston knife, and carefully put it away in his leather surgical kit--a Christmas present from Josiah--then rolled the leather kit up and tucked it away in his medical bag. He truly hoped he'd never have call to use the business-like surgical tool--it was the next thing to a butcher's knife, and butchery was what it was used for--but it was a fine, quality tool of a kind he almost never got to own. The kind he was never able to afford new, especially since the prices for medical equipment had a way of going up any time he purchased them in person rather than by mail, if the man behind the counter didn't approve of the idea of a black man practicing medicine.
Nathan watched, letting himself be entertained by the small dramas of bidding contests, while the rest of the medical supplies were sold off. Slowly, the collection of items diminished, to be replaced by a pile of coins and greenbacks stacked up beside the auctioneer. Finally, only the stethoscope was left.
"And last but certainly not least, we have a stethoscope. Practically brand new, gentlemen, with rubber tubing and everything." The auctioneer hefted the stethoscope in both hands, grinning the grin of a man whose business for the day was almost over. "Starting at eleven dollars."
"Eleven-fifteen," Nathan offered. He had held off bidding on anything else after buying the Liston knife, so that he'd have enough cash left to bid on the stethoscope, which was in considerably better shape than his own worn metal-and-wood one.
The man in the expensive waistcoat, the one who had lost out in the bidding for the Liston knife, frowned. "Eleven-twenty-five," he said loudly.
"Eleven-thirty," someone else countered.
"Eleven-fifty," Nathan said.
"Twelve-fifty," the man in the expensive waistcoat snapped, giving Nathan a nasty look.
"Thirteen dollars," JD shot back, glaring at the man. Then he glanced guiltily at Nathan.
Nathan smiled, and let the bid stand. It would leave him only a dollar to get dinner and a bed tonight, but weighed against a new stethoscope…
"Fifteen dollars," Waistcoat snarled.
Everyone looked to Nathan and JD, waiting to see if they would top his bid, and Nathan shook his head. That was more money than he had--and more money than a used stethoscope was really worth.
"Fifteen dollars," the auctioneer repeated. "Do I hear fifteen-five? Fifteen-ten?"
The room was silent. Everyone present had clearly already spent most of their money, and none of them were willing to pay top price for one more piece of medical equipment. None of them except Waistcoat.
"Sold, to the gentleman in the front there, for fifteen dollars." The auctioneer, slapped his palm on the table one last time, hard enough to echo through the packed room. "And we're done here, folks." He gathered up the cash from the table and presented it to Dr. Milburn, who had been standing against the far wall, watching the goings-on without much apparent interest. Milburn perked up when he was handed the money, though, counting it quickly--Nathan was again reminded of Ezra--and tucking it inside his coat with a small, pleased smile.
The crowd started to break up, Doc Green and the man in the wire-rims making for the door. It was smaller crowd than it had been at first; one or two of the onlookers had already left, disappointed when no shouting matches or fistfights had broken out over the bidding.
"Lot of money for a used stethoscope, Frank," Nathan heard Dr. Hunnicutt comment mildly.
"It was worth it," the man in the expensive waistcoat--Frank--said, his voice smug. "I'd have paid twice that to keep that darkie from getting it. Their kind shouldn't be allowed to swan around pretending to be doctors."
The words weren't intended to be overheard, but they rang across the swiftly emptying room nonetheless. Nathan felt his face flush with heat, shame and anger mixing until he wasn't sure which emotion was greater. True, he wasn't a doctor, but he never claimed he was one. Just a man with some medical skill, willing to use it to where it was needed. Who was this self-important little ferret-faced man to tell him what he should and shouldn't do?
JD let out a growl more suited to Chris and took a step forward, fists clenched, and Nathan, recalled to the need to be practical by the possibility of trouble, grabbed his arm.
"It's not worth it, JD," he said softly. "I've been called worse by better." Not recently, though. Not in Four Corners, where people were finally starting to respect him, both for his abilities as a healer and for the work he did protecting the town. He'd stopped expecting to hear such comments, gotten out of the habit of taking abuse from white men who thought their skin color made them better than him, and it hurt more than it should have.
"Yeah, but he still shouldn't say-" JD protested.
"Leave it," Nathan said.
JD sighed, and Nathan felt the tension go out of his muscles. He let go of the younger man's arm, and nodded toward the door. "Let's leave."
"Yeah." JD agreed. The two of them started for the door, JD muttering, "he's lucky Josiah and Buck weren't here, the creep," under his breath.
Someone put a hand on Nathan's elbow just as he reached the door, and he turned around to see Hunnicutt standing there, a faint frown visible beneath his mustache.
"I guess you heard that," the surgeon said. "I'd ignore it if I were you. Frank lets his mouth run away with him." He smiled, a pleasant, friendly smile that reminded Nathan just a bit of Buck.
"Yeah," another man agreed. He was standing just behind Hunnicutt, arms folded across his chest. "And nothing but hot air ever comes out. Actual sense might get in the way of his foot going in." He smiled too, and Nathan found himself smiling back, reassured not so much by the fact that the two men were apologizing for their colleague as by the reminder that there were people--people other than the rest of the Seven--who were willing to see past his race and treat him like an equal, not an ex-slave.
"Thank you," Nathan said quietly. And then he turned away and went out the door, his full medical bag tucked under his arm. He might have lost the stethoscope to a petty man's prejudice, but he had a new pack of surgical needles, a spool of fine, catgut thread, two bottles of carbolic acid, and a Liston knife. More than enough to justify making the two-day trip to Julestown.
His step was light as he descended from the clinic's porch into the street. It was still only early afternoon, and if he and JD could drag Ezra away from whatever poker game he had found for himself--not an easy task, but one Nathan was more than capable of carry out--they could be on the road with plenty of daylight left, and back in Four Corners by tomorrow evening.
And that was when someone grabbed him by the collar.
"I've got you, you son of a bitch," a voice crowed loudly.
Nathan was already moving, jabbing an elbow back into the gut of the man holding him and twisting away when his captor's breath went out in a loud gasp and his grip loosened, even as he wondered desperately what in the pure hell was going on. Had the buyer of the stethoscope chased him outside, bent on further vengeance?
A stout, red-faced man with greying hair glared up at him, bent double over his abused stomach. "You'll pay for that, mister," he forced out through gritted teeth. "Now, drop your weapons and come along quietly, or my deputy there will put a load of buckshot though your chest." He straightened up, and nodded to two men who stood just behind him, flanking him. One of them had a shotgun in his hands, the other a pistol, and each had a tin star on his chest. The red-faced man had a star pinned to his coat as well, Nathan realized, a star with the word "sheriff" stamped into the metal.
"No." Nathan said flatly. He straightened his coat, which had been pulled crooked by the man's grip. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I haven't done anything. Who are you, anyway?" he added, even though the star on the man's lapel made his identity as the Julestown's sheriff perfectly clear. He'd avoided a confrontation in Dr. Milburn's clinic, but this one had been forced on him, and he was damned if he knew why, or if he'd go along to jail just because some loud sheriff felt fit to grab him in the street.
He heard JD jump down from the porch behind him, his feet hitting the ground with a thud, and the sheriff and both his deputies stiffened.
"Stay where you are, kid. I'm Sheriff Aiken," the red-faced man continued, speaking to Nathan again, "and I'm putting you under arrest for stealing an army payroll and murdering two men."
"For what?" Nathan demanded. "What army payroll?"
"The one you and two other men held up three days ago on the road to Eagle Bend." Sheriff Aiken smiled a wide, satisfied smile. "A big negro on a dark-colored horse, with a heavy beard. Guess you thought shaving would throw the law off the scent. As if we'd miss noticing a man as tall as you."
Things were starting to make sense now, though not much sense. "Look," Nathan said, forcing his voice to sound calm and reasonable when he really just wanted to shout. This was the sort of thing that happened to Vin or Ezra, not to him. "You've made a mistake. I had nothing to do with your hold up. I'm a healer from Four Corners. I can show you my surgical tools." He pulled the medical bag out from under his arm and reached into it, intending to bring out his leather surgical kit, to prove that he was a respectable tradesman and not whatever criminal this Aiken had gotten him mixed up with.
The deputy with the pistol started visibly, and yelled, "Look out, boss! He's goin' for a gun!" And then he fired.
A heavy blow slammed into Nathan's thigh, and he went down hard as his right leg collapsed, sprawling on his side in the dirt. His medical bag went flying, landing a few feet away with a crunching noise like breaking glass. Probably the bottles of carbolic acid.
JD was suddenly there, standing over him with his Colt Lightenings in his hands. He had one of them trained on the sheriff, and one on the deputy who had shot Nathan, and Nathan suddenly knew that both of them were going to die here, shot down in the street for a crime neither of them had committed. He felt a sudden surge of sympathy for Vin--was this how he had felt, when Eli Joe had showed up in Four Corners with that warrant?--but mostly he felt anger at the unfairness of it all.
"Drop those guns, boy," Aiken said, "or you'll be next." He thumbed the hammer back on his pistol, and Nathan could hear the clicking sound it made even through the echoes of the gunshot that still resounded in his ears. Everything seemed unnaturally sharp and clear, as if things were happening more slowly than they should.
He tried to get back to his feet, to stand up next to JD--the boy couldn't cover all three of the lawmen with only two guns; someone needed to get a bead on the one with the shotgun--but his right leg refused to work, and as he tried to move it, an explosion of pain awoke below his hip. He sagged back to the ground, hands clutching at his bleeding thigh. Everything greyed out for a moment, and his ears were filled with a humming sound that blocked out what JD was saying to Aiken. God, it hurt.
"… three of us and one of you," Aiken was saying, his gun still trained on JD. "You got no way out, kid. Now lower those guns, or you'll be the one bleeding next."
"What in the name of God is going on out here?" a man demanded from the clinic's doorway. Dr. Hunicutt's friend, Nathan saw, the skinny doctor with the dark hair who had apologized for Frank the fancy waistcoat wearer.
Both deputies swung around violently, their guns coming to rest on him, and he took a step back, hands up. Aiken and JD didn't move.
Then JD's shoulders sagged, and he lowered his Colts until they were pointing at the ground by his feet. Nathan felt a wave of relief, strong enough to make sweat break out on his skin, and to set him shaking. JD was not going to be shot down in the street after all. Good boy, Nathan thought. Do the smart thing and surrender. They could sort this out in a moment, as soon as everyone put their guns away. And do something about his leg, which was bleeding an alarming amount, and throbbing with a steady, intense pain that made everything from his toes to his teeth hurt in sympathy. He needed to stop the bleeding, get the bullet out… Well, someone needed to get the bullet out. Nathan knew it wasn't going to be him, not with the way his vision was starting to blur at the edges.
"Fine," JD said, his voice rough, as if he had to force the words out. "You win, mister. Just let me take a look at Nathan's leg."
"You can do all the looking at it you want after we've got the two of you locked up," the deputy with the shotgun said.
"You," Aiken snapped, "stay where you are and keep out of this."
The doctor on the clinic's porch, who had been coming down the steps toward them, froze. Behind him, Dr. Hunnicutt, Dr. Milburn, and the auctioneer were clustered in a group, looking shocked. "He needs a doctor," the man protested. "Let one of us take a look at him."
"Nobody's looking at nobody," Aiken said. "He's going to jail where he belongs, and y'all can just go on about your business." He holstered his pistol and strode toward JD and Nathan, yanking JD's guns out of his nerveless hands. "You and your accomplice are coming with me, kid," he said, and grabbed JD by the shoulder, pulling the smaller man away. "Irving, grab the other one. Make sure you get his gun. Andy, you make sure those doctors get on the afternoon stage and ride out of here like they're supposed to. I think we've had enough trouble for one day."
JD ducked away from the sheriff's grasp and made a grab for Nathan's medical bag, snatching it up by one handle just as Aiken collared him again. "No you don't, kid. I'll take that."
The deputy with the pistol took Nathan by the arm and hauled him upright. He didn't do it roughly, but the pain that shot through Nathan's leg when he was forced to put his weight on it made everything white out.
His last thought, just before he passed out, was to wonder why in hell Ezra hadn't shown up to help them.
^_~
But sucky internet access will do wonders to increase one's level of microsoft word addiction, so here goes:
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by ah… various corporations and television stations whose names I can't recall at the moment. I think MGM may be in there somewhere. No money is being made and no offense is intended.
Posted By: Elspethdixon
Main characters: Ezra, JD, Nathan.
Warnings: This fic, which takes place about ten days after the episode "Serpents," contains profanity, violence, racism, and a few crossover cameos in the auction scene. It does not contain hot sex, either slash or het. Sorry.
Part One:
Ten days after "Serpents":
The trail between Four Corners and Julestown, Ezra decided, for what was probably the twentieth time since that morning, was a wretched, dusty little slice of hell. Fine, pale brown dust drifted up from the sun-baked ground to cover his hands, his legs, the sleeves of his dark green coat—which was going to require a considerable amount of time and effort to clean—and likely his face and even the crown of his hat, as well. Not to mention covering Chaucer, whose dust-impregnated coat would probably take even longer to clean than Ezra’s.
And as if that were not enough torment and misery, there was also the heat of the sun, which beat against Ezra’s head even through his hat, and the nagging ache in his left side and arm, which were constantly being jarred and pulled by Chaucer’s movements. He was hot, tired, filthy, thirsty, and in pain, and it was all Nathan’s fault.
He was supposed to be on the stage to Ridge City right now, not here in the middle of this godforsaken desert. If he’d taken the noon stage, as he had planned, he would be halfway there by now, arriving in the larger town just in time to buy dinner at the Regent hotel before settling down to a profitable night at the gaming tables. A nice, long evening with no one hovering over him and the promise of a substantial amount of money in the bargain. If he were on the stage, instead of out here, he would be out of the sun and the dust, and a stagecoach ride—provided the driver didn’t run them through too many wagon ruts or whip the horses on too fast—would not have aggravated the half-healed gouges left by Stutz’s bullet. He’d had it all figured out, right down to conning Nathan into declaring him recovered enough to go.
But no, the blasted man had had to announce his intention to travel to Julestown in the saloon the previous night, and JD and Ezra had been roped into riding with him, because Mr. Larabee had decided, in the wake of the attempt on Mary’s life, that “nobody should go riding off alone.”
“Take Ezra with you,” he’d said. “He’s planning on leaving town for a day anyway. Might as well go with you instead off to Ridge City by his lonesome.”
And then JD had bounced up and announced that he wanted to go too—probably to escape the one-man sink of gloom Buck had turned into after Miss Perkins left town without him—treating Ezra’s going as a matter of course, and Ezra had had no choice but to change his plans. He was on thin ice as it was, and telling Chris Larabee no to his face would only have made things worse.
So now, instead of riding to Ridge City in comfort, Ezra was stuck in the middle of nowhere—a hot, dusty nowhere—being miserable. And to make matters worse, Nathan kept looking at him. Careful, assessing looks that said, ‘I know your side must be bothering you and I’m just waiting for you to flinch so I’ll have an excuse to examine it and lecture you about lying to me.’ Or maybe they said, ‘I bet you were planning on hopping on a train in Ridge City and taking off for St. Louis, now that you’ve shown us your true colors.” Well, he’d be wrong about the second assumption, though not about the first. Damned if Ezra was going to admit to being in pain, though. Not after pretending to be fine so he could go to Ridge City.
Instead, he opted for a pointed, sullen silence, and listened with half an ear to Nathan’s conversation with JD. He might not be in the mood to join in, but he didn’t really want to be alone with his thoughts either.
“You think this Dr. Milburn is gonna have any medical tools you can use?” JD was asking, twisting about in the saddle so he could look at Nathan.
“Maybe. Doc Green in Eagle Bend says he’s auctioning off nearly everything, so there’s gotta be something there I need. Scalpels, forceps, maybe some books. He might even have a stethoscope or a syringe. Those would be real useful.”
“What’s a syringe?”
“It’s a little metal and glass tube with a needle attached. You use it to inject medicine right into a man’s veins.”
JD made a face, and shuddered ostentatiously, but Nathan continued on, too caught up in his enthusiastic explanation to notice. “There was a piece about them in one of my journals. Some doctors think medicine works quicker that way, and you can use ‘em to give doses to people who are too sick to drink anything.”
“Oh. Um, that sounds great.” JD’s voice lacked enthusiasm. “Ah, Nathan, if you do find one of those tube-needle thingies, don’t try it out on me, okay?”
“That’s what Ezra is for.”
That last was enough to spur Ezra into abandoning his silence. “No, Mr. Jackson,” he announced through gritted teeth, “that is not what Ezra is for. Please confine your experiments to someone else. I have been poked and prodded enough by you in the past ten days to last me the rest of my life.”
“Ezra, I was joking.” Nathan shook his head, speaking in a “humour the nasty-tempered man” tone that made Ezra want to wipe the longsuffering expression right off his face. “Though, come to think of it, you might learn not to go around throwing yourself in front of bullets if I had a nice big syringe to use on you afterward.”
JD actually smiled at that, and Ezra had to remind himself firmly that throwing his flask at one of his companions’ heads would be childish. “It’s not like I actually planned on getting myself shot. It was a momentary attack of stupidity on my part that I have no intention of repeating.”
“Good,” Nathan said. “Next time, you might not have a bundle full of stolen money in your coat.”
Oh yes, the Stutz money. Everyone just had to keep bringing that up, didn’t they? After all, if they just let the matter drop, Ezra might be able to forget about the whole miserable affair, and we couldn’t possibly have that, could we? Can’t let Ezra forget that we don’t trust him anymore. Not that they had trusted him overmuch in the first place.
That was another nice thing about Ridge City. No one there knew about the money or Ezra’s role in the whole assassination affair.
“Yes, it’s fortunate that Stutz’s blood money was substantial enough to stop his son’s bullet,” Ezra snarked back. “A few hundred dollars less and I might be flat on my back with a punctured lung.”
“You were pretty lucky,” JD put in, cutting Nathan off just as he drew breath to speak. Ezra wasn’t sure whether he had done it on purpose or simply not noticed that the other man had been about to say something.
“Yeah,” Nathan said sourly, finally getting his two cents in. “He could’ve been going for a head shot.”
He could have indeed. The great variety of fatal spots Stutz's bullet could have struck him in had played upon his mind at length recently. He really didn't want to consider it any further. “Lucky?” Ezra raised his eyebrows and gave his two tormentors a stare that he hoped adequately conveyed ‘withering sarcasm.’ “If I were truly blessed with good fortune, I would be in San Francisco by now, free of bullet holes and busy enjoying my ten thousand dollars.”
The statement should have been difficult to argue with—wealth being eternally preferable to gunshot wounds—but Nathan tried anyway. “Your money-“ he started, sounding disgusted.
Ezra nudged Chaucer with one heel and trotted ahead, ignoring the slightly hurt expression on JD’s face at his abruptness. He didn’t let the gelding drop back into a walk until he was too far away to listen.
The brief trot jarred Ezra’s stitches and half-healed cracked rib even more. That, he decided, knowing he was being unfair even as he thought it, was Nathan’s fault as well.
“Ezra’s in a real bad mood today,” JD commented, as he watched the gambler’s chestnut gelding slow back down to a walk a good ten yards ahead of himself and Nathan. Ezra was riding with a straight-backed stiffness that practically telegraphed ill-temper. Or possibly pain. “Are you sure he’s okay to be riding out with us like this?”
Nathan shrugged, looking after Ezra with irritation plain on his face. “He seemed fine when I checked him out yesterday. Anyway, if he’s well enough to go gallivanting off to Ridge City to gamble, he’s well enough to come with us and do something useful.” He turned his eyes back to the ground ahead of them, then added, “ I’ll take another look at him when we stop for the night.”
“Oh, okay then.” If anything had gone wrong with Ezra’s healing injuries, Nathan would be sure to find it and deal with it. He had fixed JD’s own bullet wound back when Mattie had shot him, not to mention Buck and Josiah’s gunshot and sabre wounds after the fight at the Seminole village, and those had all been worse than Ezra’s messed up side. Of course, they hadn’t known that at first, and seeing Ezra lying there in the street bleeding had been pretty damn scary. Nathan had been right. If Stutz had been aiming for a head shot, Four Corners’ group of lawmen would have been reduced to six. And if he hadn’t shot at all, Ezra might have kept on going, out of town and south to Mexico or something, and they’d still have been six.
“So,” JD said, purposefully derailing that train of thought, “what’s Julestown like?”
“I dunno. I’ve never been there before. Josiah was there once, about a year ago. He says it’s a touch bigger than Four Corners, enough to have a couple of hotels and a school. No rail station, though.”
“I guess this Dr. Milburn’s heading out on the stagecoach, then.” JD shook his head. “I wonder why he wants to go back east. Doesn’t sound like he’d be short of business.” There was a slight tug on the reins in his hands as Milo tried to reach his head to the left to sneak a bite out of a patch of tall grass, and JD shortened the reins, pulling his head back up. “Stop that. You don’t need a snack.”
“Maybe he just didn’t take to things out here,” Nathan said. “Some people don’t. I just hope he has a nice set of surgical tools I can buy.”
Didn’t take to things? JD supposed it was possible. You would never catch him cutting out and heading for the east coast again, but there'd been a time not so long ago when he hadn’t been so sure he belonged out here. When he'd first arrived, he had figured a little dust and risk was worth it for the chance to get a fresh start and try something new, but Annie dying had almost changed his mind.
Maybe this Dr. Milburn had lost a patient, and decided to give up medicine.
The three of them rode along silently for a while, Ezra staying out in front. As time went on, he dropped back a little closer to JD and Nathan, but he didn't say a word to either of them, not even to complain about how dusty he was getting--though it was obvious he wanted to, because he kept brushing ineffectually at his coatsleeves. When JD tried to start up another conversation by asking him what he'd planned on doing in Ridge City, he practically bit his head off. In a frigidly polite, Ezra sort of way.
Eventually, it started to get dark, and Nathan pulled up his horse. Ezra and JD followed suit.
"Are we stopping now?" JD asked, a bit surprised. There didn't seem to be any likely place to camp nearby. The trail forked up ahead, one branch winding around to the left and disappearing into a stand of trees, the other continuing straight on, up a long, gradual incline.
Nathan nodded. "According to Josiah, there's a creek on the other side of those trees. He says it's mostly dry this time of year, but there ought to be enough of a flow left to water the horses."
Josiah's prediction turned out to be correct; the creek bed was mostly empty, but a thin trickle of water still ran along its bottom, enough for the three regulators to refill their canteens and give their horses a drink. Milo started edging toward the water even before JD had finished unsaddling him, shouldering Chaucer out of the way and earning JD a curse from Ezra, who was knocked a step backwards as his horse side-stepped to avoid JD's.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your animal under some kind of control," Ezra hissed through gritted teeth, pressing a hand to his injured left side.
"Sorry," JD apologized, a little hurt by the venom in Ezra's voice.
"Okay, that's it," Nathan announced. "Ezra, soon as you've finished with Chaucer, you're gonna sit down and let me have a look at that side a' yours. It's got you as bad tempered as a wet hen, and I for one am getting tired of it."
"It was perfectly fine this morning," Ezra said sulkily. "Of course, I can't speak for whatever damage riding all over Hell's half acre with you two may have done." Nevertheless, he dutifully stripped his coat off and unbuttoned his shirt and waistcoat so that Nathan could inspect the stitches over his ribs. Of course, this meant that both of them were otherwise occupied when the time came to set up camp, so JD had to collect wood and get a fire going by himself. He half suspected that Ezra had planned it that way.
Still, JD decided, as he set another armful of twigs down by the tiny campfire--built in a depression, like Vin had shown him, so that people riding up couldn't see the light--listening to Ezra whine while you cooked dinner over a campfire was better than sitting around back in Four Corners listening to Buck go on about Louisa Perkins and how all-fired perfect she was, and how he was a fool for letting her go. JD could now recite the entire list of Louisa's considerable--according to Buck--charms, as well as a good dozen ways to convince her to stay in Four Corners and marry Buck, all of them, of course, dreamed up after she had left. Chris had flat out told Buck to shut up about Louisa any time he was around. JD was about to the point where he was considering doing the same, despite his desire to be a good friend. He hadn't really liked Louisa all that much, anyway, given how she'd nearly gotten Buck to run off with her, and how her statehood campaign had come this close to getting Ezra and Mary killed.
He'd been careful not to mention that to Buck, though.
Ezra turned down his share of dinner, contenting himself with coffee heavily doctored with the contents of his flask, and was asleep with his head on his saddle before Nathan and JD had even finished eating. Still, Nathan had assured JD that Ezra's stitches were holding just fine and his wounds hadn't gotten infected, so he didn't worry too much. He didn't even worry about the fact that Ezra forgot to whine about sleeping on the ground, made no complaint about getting up at first light the next morning, and spent the entire rest of the ride into Julestown riding in silence. Ezra wasn't sick. Ezra was made at them for some reason.
This suspicion was confirmed when they got to town, and Ezra announced, in no uncertain terms, that he found the very idea of purchasing medical supplies "insupportably dull" and was going to find a saloon and a game of poker.
"Of course you are," Nathan said, "the rest of us being so boring. Have fun cheating people."
"I don't cheat," Ezra snapped. "One would think that fact would eventually penetrate the rest of y'all's heads. Or possibly that's too much to ask."
And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the livery stable, in search of his saloon. With him went most of the tension in the air.
JD watched him go with a sinking feeling inside his chest. Ezra usually went off to play poker whenever they hit a new town, but he wasn't usually so rude about it. Ezra snarling at them, Buck moping about Louisa…. Lately, it felt as if the Seven were drifting apart, like a family after someone had died. Except that they weren't a family, not really, despite JD's secret hopes that they'd end up one. Recent events had proven that.
Family trusted each other. Family didn't ride off and leave each other.
"So," Nathan said, cutting off JD's thought, "let's go find this auction. I'll show you the syringes I was talking about."
^_~
Across the street from the livery stable, Deputy Irving Harnett watched as the first of the three men he'd seen riding in stalked out, making a beeline for the nearest saloon. Harnett leaned against one of the posts holding up the general store's porch, and waited to see if the other two would follow him. Might be the three of them had just fallen in with each other on the trail and ridden into town together, or might be they were all three riding together.
He went over the contents of the wanted poster the Army had given Sheriff Aiken one more time in his head, mentally comparing the description on it with the newcomer who'd caught his attention. It matched, all right. Not perfectly--he had a beard when he'd held up the Army payroll wagon--but well enough. Beards could be shaved off.
When the other two--the negro and the kid--came out and headed in the opposite direction, toward Doc Milburn's office, Harnett breathed an inward sigh of relief. They didn't look to be with the gambler, which made things that much easier on Julestown's law.
Harnett watched the two men until he was sure they'd gone into Milburn's office, then left to tell Sheriff Aiken what he'd seen. By tonight, if his luck held, the Army's hundred-dollar reward would be his.
"Sold, to Doc Green for three dollars," the auctioneer announced portentously, slapping the palm of his hand down on Dr. Milburn's surgery table. He had the look of a local storekeeper pressed into service for the occasion, and Nathan figured that that was exactly what he was, since he called out bids in a normal speaking voice, instead of the fast-paced patter auctioneers generally used. The surgery table he stood beside was covered in medical supplies, from rolls of bandages to a neatly coiled stethoscope. Disappointingly, there was no syringe. If Julestown's soon-to-be-ex-doctor had one, he was taking it back East with him.
Dr. Milburn's office was crowded with people, more people than could really fit in such a small space. A good dozen men had been drawn in by word of the auction, though Nathan guessed one or two of them were only there out of curiosity, like JD was. The only two he knew personally were Doc Green, the thin, balding doctor from Eagle Bend, and Dr. Hunnicutt, the tall, moustached former Army surgeon from Dry Springs who had just lost out to Green in the bidding for a stack of back issues of the Philadelphia Medical Journal.
Green elbowed his way to the front of the crowd and collected his journals, leaving three dollar coins on the surgery table. He returned to his place by the window, already flipping through the topmost of the journals.
"Right," the auctioneer announced, "next up we have a lovely pair of-" he glanced down at the next of the items laid atop the table, a pair of forceps, and hesitated, "…tongs," he said finally. "Top quality metal tongs. Worth at least a dollar. Do I hear a dollar?"
"You going to bid?" JD asked from beside Nathan. He been watching the entire affair with interest, and had displayed noticeable disappointment when most of the contents of Milburn's medicine cabinet had gone to a grey-haired man in wire-rimmed spectacles instead of to Nathan. He been smugly triumphant that Nathan had gotten the entire stock of carbolic acid, though, something Nathan had felt pretty triumphant about himself.
"Naw." Nathan shook his head. "I already got four pairs of forceps. I'm holding my money for that Liston knife he's got up there. And maybe another stethoscope."
"I have a dollar," the auctioneer said. "Do I hear a dollar five?"
"Which one's the Liston knife?"
"It's on the table next to the clamps." Nathan pointed to the long, straight blade, which was gleaming in the noon sunlight. Dr. Milburn's surgery was clean and airy, with large glass windows that let light stream in. If the man had ever had curtains up, he taken them down and packed them away now, so there was no cloth to keep any of the sun out. "The one that looks sorta like a big straight razor, and comes to a point at the top. So's it can cut clean through a man's muscle," he explained.
"Oh," JD said softly. His dark eyes were wide, and he looked a little green. Nathan could have explained that an amputation was easier on the patient if a doctor did it as quickly as possible, but he didn't think the younger man would really want to hear those sorts of details. Most people didn't.
"I don't like taking a man's arm or leg, I done enough a' that in the war, but if I ever have to, I'll need the right tools. Remember how Jim Daniels' leg nearly went bad?" Daniels had broken his leg last month, when the axle of a wagon he'd been trying to push out of the mud had snapped, dropping the side of the wagon bed on him. It had been a nasty, compound fracture, and the wound had gotten infected badly enough that Nathan had had to re-open and drain it twice. Only luck and Daniels' own strong constitution had saved him from losing his right leg below the knee.
JD nodded, but he eyed the Liston knife with obvious unease.
"Sold to the gentleman in the back for one dollar, seven cents," the auctioneer said, slapping his palm down on the table again. "And now," he reached down and picked up the Liston knife, holding it up by the handle to that the entire room could see it, "we have a real beauty of a knife. Good steel, nice bone handle." He tested the edge of the blade with a thumb and winced; apparently it was well sharpened. "And it's got a fine edge on it, too," he added. "Do I hear six dollars?"
"Six dollars," Nathan called out, raising his hand to call the man's attention to him.
"Six-fifty," Hunnicutt countered.
"Seven dollars," Nathan said, raising his hand again. He wanted that Liston knife. It was good steel, just as the auctioneer had said, better quality than any of Nathan's surgical knives or even his throwing knives. From the way the metal gleamed, it might even be better steel than Ezra's shaving razor, which had come from one of the finest shops in New Orleans and cost nearly fifteen dollars. Everything Ezra had was the finest quality he could get his hands on, and he took pleasure in informing people of this fact.
Nathan pushed the irritation that the thought of Ezra had conjured up out of his mind--mule-headed, never quite trustworthy, always reverting to his same old slick, arrogant, conman self just when Nathan got to where he expected better of him--and focused back in on the Liston knife. It truly was a good blade, easily worth eleven dollars and more.
The rest of the room agreed with him. The older man in the wire-rim spectacles bid eight dollars. Hunnicutt raised it to eight-fifty. Nathan raised his own bid to nine dollars, and a weak-chinned man in an expensive waistcoat raised the bidding yet higher, to ten-fifty.
"Eleven," Nathan said loudly. The man in the spectacles frowned and waved a hand dismissively, and JD elbowed Nathan with a pleased grin.
"Serves him right for buying all that laudanum and ipecac," he said gleefully. "That's our amputation knife."
"Eleven-fifty," Hunnicutt said.
In the end, Nathan got his knife for twelve dollars and forty-nine cents, which left him with just over fourteen dollars in his pocket, but was well worth every penny. The man in the expensive waistcoat glared daggers at him, but Nathan didn't care. He collected the Liston knife, and carefully put it away in his leather surgical kit--a Christmas present from Josiah--then rolled the leather kit up and tucked it away in his medical bag. He truly hoped he'd never have call to use the business-like surgical tool--it was the next thing to a butcher's knife, and butchery was what it was used for--but it was a fine, quality tool of a kind he almost never got to own. The kind he was never able to afford new, especially since the prices for medical equipment had a way of going up any time he purchased them in person rather than by mail, if the man behind the counter didn't approve of the idea of a black man practicing medicine.
Nathan watched, letting himself be entertained by the small dramas of bidding contests, while the rest of the medical supplies were sold off. Slowly, the collection of items diminished, to be replaced by a pile of coins and greenbacks stacked up beside the auctioneer. Finally, only the stethoscope was left.
"And last but certainly not least, we have a stethoscope. Practically brand new, gentlemen, with rubber tubing and everything." The auctioneer hefted the stethoscope in both hands, grinning the grin of a man whose business for the day was almost over. "Starting at eleven dollars."
"Eleven-fifteen," Nathan offered. He had held off bidding on anything else after buying the Liston knife, so that he'd have enough cash left to bid on the stethoscope, which was in considerably better shape than his own worn metal-and-wood one.
The man in the expensive waistcoat, the one who had lost out in the bidding for the Liston knife, frowned. "Eleven-twenty-five," he said loudly.
"Eleven-thirty," someone else countered.
"Eleven-fifty," Nathan said.
"Twelve-fifty," the man in the expensive waistcoat snapped, giving Nathan a nasty look.
"Thirteen dollars," JD shot back, glaring at the man. Then he glanced guiltily at Nathan.
Nathan smiled, and let the bid stand. It would leave him only a dollar to get dinner and a bed tonight, but weighed against a new stethoscope…
"Fifteen dollars," Waistcoat snarled.
Everyone looked to Nathan and JD, waiting to see if they would top his bid, and Nathan shook his head. That was more money than he had--and more money than a used stethoscope was really worth.
"Fifteen dollars," the auctioneer repeated. "Do I hear fifteen-five? Fifteen-ten?"
The room was silent. Everyone present had clearly already spent most of their money, and none of them were willing to pay top price for one more piece of medical equipment. None of them except Waistcoat.
"Sold, to the gentleman in the front there, for fifteen dollars." The auctioneer, slapped his palm on the table one last time, hard enough to echo through the packed room. "And we're done here, folks." He gathered up the cash from the table and presented it to Dr. Milburn, who had been standing against the far wall, watching the goings-on without much apparent interest. Milburn perked up when he was handed the money, though, counting it quickly--Nathan was again reminded of Ezra--and tucking it inside his coat with a small, pleased smile.
The crowd started to break up, Doc Green and the man in the wire-rims making for the door. It was smaller crowd than it had been at first; one or two of the onlookers had already left, disappointed when no shouting matches or fistfights had broken out over the bidding.
"Lot of money for a used stethoscope, Frank," Nathan heard Dr. Hunnicutt comment mildly.
"It was worth it," the man in the expensive waistcoat--Frank--said, his voice smug. "I'd have paid twice that to keep that darkie from getting it. Their kind shouldn't be allowed to swan around pretending to be doctors."
The words weren't intended to be overheard, but they rang across the swiftly emptying room nonetheless. Nathan felt his face flush with heat, shame and anger mixing until he wasn't sure which emotion was greater. True, he wasn't a doctor, but he never claimed he was one. Just a man with some medical skill, willing to use it to where it was needed. Who was this self-important little ferret-faced man to tell him what he should and shouldn't do?
JD let out a growl more suited to Chris and took a step forward, fists clenched, and Nathan, recalled to the need to be practical by the possibility of trouble, grabbed his arm.
"It's not worth it, JD," he said softly. "I've been called worse by better." Not recently, though. Not in Four Corners, where people were finally starting to respect him, both for his abilities as a healer and for the work he did protecting the town. He'd stopped expecting to hear such comments, gotten out of the habit of taking abuse from white men who thought their skin color made them better than him, and it hurt more than it should have.
"Yeah, but he still shouldn't say-" JD protested.
"Leave it," Nathan said.
JD sighed, and Nathan felt the tension go out of his muscles. He let go of the younger man's arm, and nodded toward the door. "Let's leave."
"Yeah." JD agreed. The two of them started for the door, JD muttering, "he's lucky Josiah and Buck weren't here, the creep," under his breath.
Someone put a hand on Nathan's elbow just as he reached the door, and he turned around to see Hunnicutt standing there, a faint frown visible beneath his mustache.
"I guess you heard that," the surgeon said. "I'd ignore it if I were you. Frank lets his mouth run away with him." He smiled, a pleasant, friendly smile that reminded Nathan just a bit of Buck.
"Yeah," another man agreed. He was standing just behind Hunnicutt, arms folded across his chest. "And nothing but hot air ever comes out. Actual sense might get in the way of his foot going in." He smiled too, and Nathan found himself smiling back, reassured not so much by the fact that the two men were apologizing for their colleague as by the reminder that there were people--people other than the rest of the Seven--who were willing to see past his race and treat him like an equal, not an ex-slave.
"Thank you," Nathan said quietly. And then he turned away and went out the door, his full medical bag tucked under his arm. He might have lost the stethoscope to a petty man's prejudice, but he had a new pack of surgical needles, a spool of fine, catgut thread, two bottles of carbolic acid, and a Liston knife. More than enough to justify making the two-day trip to Julestown.
His step was light as he descended from the clinic's porch into the street. It was still only early afternoon, and if he and JD could drag Ezra away from whatever poker game he had found for himself--not an easy task, but one Nathan was more than capable of carry out--they could be on the road with plenty of daylight left, and back in Four Corners by tomorrow evening.
And that was when someone grabbed him by the collar.
"I've got you, you son of a bitch," a voice crowed loudly.
Nathan was already moving, jabbing an elbow back into the gut of the man holding him and twisting away when his captor's breath went out in a loud gasp and his grip loosened, even as he wondered desperately what in the pure hell was going on. Had the buyer of the stethoscope chased him outside, bent on further vengeance?
A stout, red-faced man with greying hair glared up at him, bent double over his abused stomach. "You'll pay for that, mister," he forced out through gritted teeth. "Now, drop your weapons and come along quietly, or my deputy there will put a load of buckshot though your chest." He straightened up, and nodded to two men who stood just behind him, flanking him. One of them had a shotgun in his hands, the other a pistol, and each had a tin star on his chest. The red-faced man had a star pinned to his coat as well, Nathan realized, a star with the word "sheriff" stamped into the metal.
"No." Nathan said flatly. He straightened his coat, which had been pulled crooked by the man's grip. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I haven't done anything. Who are you, anyway?" he added, even though the star on the man's lapel made his identity as the Julestown's sheriff perfectly clear. He'd avoided a confrontation in Dr. Milburn's clinic, but this one had been forced on him, and he was damned if he knew why, or if he'd go along to jail just because some loud sheriff felt fit to grab him in the street.
He heard JD jump down from the porch behind him, his feet hitting the ground with a thud, and the sheriff and both his deputies stiffened.
"Stay where you are, kid. I'm Sheriff Aiken," the red-faced man continued, speaking to Nathan again, "and I'm putting you under arrest for stealing an army payroll and murdering two men."
"For what?" Nathan demanded. "What army payroll?"
"The one you and two other men held up three days ago on the road to Eagle Bend." Sheriff Aiken smiled a wide, satisfied smile. "A big negro on a dark-colored horse, with a heavy beard. Guess you thought shaving would throw the law off the scent. As if we'd miss noticing a man as tall as you."
Things were starting to make sense now, though not much sense. "Look," Nathan said, forcing his voice to sound calm and reasonable when he really just wanted to shout. This was the sort of thing that happened to Vin or Ezra, not to him. "You've made a mistake. I had nothing to do with your hold up. I'm a healer from Four Corners. I can show you my surgical tools." He pulled the medical bag out from under his arm and reached into it, intending to bring out his leather surgical kit, to prove that he was a respectable tradesman and not whatever criminal this Aiken had gotten him mixed up with.
The deputy with the pistol started visibly, and yelled, "Look out, boss! He's goin' for a gun!" And then he fired.
A heavy blow slammed into Nathan's thigh, and he went down hard as his right leg collapsed, sprawling on his side in the dirt. His medical bag went flying, landing a few feet away with a crunching noise like breaking glass. Probably the bottles of carbolic acid.
JD was suddenly there, standing over him with his Colt Lightenings in his hands. He had one of them trained on the sheriff, and one on the deputy who had shot Nathan, and Nathan suddenly knew that both of them were going to die here, shot down in the street for a crime neither of them had committed. He felt a sudden surge of sympathy for Vin--was this how he had felt, when Eli Joe had showed up in Four Corners with that warrant?--but mostly he felt anger at the unfairness of it all.
"Drop those guns, boy," Aiken said, "or you'll be next." He thumbed the hammer back on his pistol, and Nathan could hear the clicking sound it made even through the echoes of the gunshot that still resounded in his ears. Everything seemed unnaturally sharp and clear, as if things were happening more slowly than they should.
He tried to get back to his feet, to stand up next to JD--the boy couldn't cover all three of the lawmen with only two guns; someone needed to get a bead on the one with the shotgun--but his right leg refused to work, and as he tried to move it, an explosion of pain awoke below his hip. He sagged back to the ground, hands clutching at his bleeding thigh. Everything greyed out for a moment, and his ears were filled with a humming sound that blocked out what JD was saying to Aiken. God, it hurt.
"… three of us and one of you," Aiken was saying, his gun still trained on JD. "You got no way out, kid. Now lower those guns, or you'll be the one bleeding next."
"What in the name of God is going on out here?" a man demanded from the clinic's doorway. Dr. Hunicutt's friend, Nathan saw, the skinny doctor with the dark hair who had apologized for Frank the fancy waistcoat wearer.
Both deputies swung around violently, their guns coming to rest on him, and he took a step back, hands up. Aiken and JD didn't move.
Then JD's shoulders sagged, and he lowered his Colts until they were pointing at the ground by his feet. Nathan felt a wave of relief, strong enough to make sweat break out on his skin, and to set him shaking. JD was not going to be shot down in the street after all. Good boy, Nathan thought. Do the smart thing and surrender. They could sort this out in a moment, as soon as everyone put their guns away. And do something about his leg, which was bleeding an alarming amount, and throbbing with a steady, intense pain that made everything from his toes to his teeth hurt in sympathy. He needed to stop the bleeding, get the bullet out… Well, someone needed to get the bullet out. Nathan knew it wasn't going to be him, not with the way his vision was starting to blur at the edges.
"Fine," JD said, his voice rough, as if he had to force the words out. "You win, mister. Just let me take a look at Nathan's leg."
"You can do all the looking at it you want after we've got the two of you locked up," the deputy with the shotgun said.
"You," Aiken snapped, "stay where you are and keep out of this."
The doctor on the clinic's porch, who had been coming down the steps toward them, froze. Behind him, Dr. Hunnicutt, Dr. Milburn, and the auctioneer were clustered in a group, looking shocked. "He needs a doctor," the man protested. "Let one of us take a look at him."
"Nobody's looking at nobody," Aiken said. "He's going to jail where he belongs, and y'all can just go on about your business." He holstered his pistol and strode toward JD and Nathan, yanking JD's guns out of his nerveless hands. "You and your accomplice are coming with me, kid," he said, and grabbed JD by the shoulder, pulling the smaller man away. "Irving, grab the other one. Make sure you get his gun. Andy, you make sure those doctors get on the afternoon stage and ride out of here like they're supposed to. I think we've had enough trouble for one day."
JD ducked away from the sheriff's grasp and made a grab for Nathan's medical bag, snatching it up by one handle just as Aiken collared him again. "No you don't, kid. I'll take that."
The deputy with the pistol took Nathan by the arm and hauled him upright. He didn't do it roughly, but the pain that shot through Nathan's leg when he was forced to put his weight on it made everything white out.
His last thought, just before he passed out, was to wonder why in hell Ezra hadn't shown up to help them.