Fellow Travelers
"Ezra."
"Mister Larabee."
From the shadowed corner of the near-empty saloon, he gazed up at his newly elected leader with calm, wholly guileless eyes, quite aware that they weren't fooling the man nor giving anything away either. Unlike his equally new - and equally unlikely - associates in law, Ezra knew how dismally the eyes could betray.
"Been talkin' to the Judge." Chris swung a chair round and straddled it, facing Ezra, staring at him with those half-closed, slate-colored eyes that betrayed nothing at all. "An' now I gotta couple of questions for ya."
"Really." This was, in all probability, not good. He didn't stop shuffling and flipping the cards in his hands, he'd long ago realized the action was soothing to him, and a convenient visual distraction for eyes that looked too closely into his.
"Yeah. Travis told me..." Chris paused, "told me all about Ezra Simpson."
Ezra sighed, but if any of them were expected him to be embarrassed by that happily defunct doppelganger, they needed to be enlightened, and soon.
"Now Chris," he cut in, as smooth as silk and as sweetly reasonable as a New York lawyer, "you know as well as I do, the conditions of the Judge's pardon offered in exchange for my efforts in keepin' this dustbowl of a town free from miscreants for the next thirty days. I don't believe I need to add to his quite unnecessarily thorough account -"
"You don't." Chris smiled in that flat, feral way Ezra couldn't quite read. "You tell me about... Elias Sullivan of Griswold Hill."
Ahhh, hell. "I don't believe I've had the pleas-"
"Ezra."
"-ure. But as I understand it..." he went on easily. "It was all a misunderstandin', between this Mister Sullivan and a decidedly disagreeable - but influential - officer of the law in that tedious place."
"Fraud."
"That's what the deputy claimed, yes. It was never actually decided in court."
"Because Sullivan jumped bail too, so I hear."
Ezra sighed. "Possibly he... found a more pressin' engagement." His eyes flicked down to the cut cards - a two, not good, not good at all - then back up to Chris's face. "I really have no idea."
"No...?" That flat smile widened mockingly. "Would that engagement have been like the one Mister Eugene Spalding took off from Whiskery Creek for?"
Ahhhh... hell again. "Judge Travis has been industrious," he allowed a thread of sarcasm to enter his voice, "and abnormally curious."
"I think he called it... needin' ta know." Chris drawled.
Ezra would have called it something else, but a gentleman didn't use that language. Of course, he was still tossing up how far acting the gentleman would get him in this place...
"Mister Spalding," he went on instead, "I regret to say, was not quite as careful as I always - usually - endeavor to be. A small matter of allegedly forged title deeds... there was a quite out-of-character moment of carelessness." Ezra flicked at a speck of dust on his coat. "However, in this fine country one is innocent unless proven guilty, true?"
"Hard t'prove anythin' when Spalding disappeared from a locked jail, and the deeds were found burnt to ashes."
"Now really, Mister Larabee, whose responsibility is it if the law cannot keep their offenders under lock and key? A very mediocre lock, admittedly, you'd think that a law-abidin' town like that would take pride in their jail, it was insultingly simple to escape... or," blinking artlessly, "so I've heard."
"From Spalding?"
Ezra opened his mouth, then shut it with an easy, glinting smile. "Not at all, Mister Larabee. I can honestly say I've never set eyes on the gentleman."
"Nor one... Ezekiel Sneed?" Chris was now grinning, evilly.
Ezra winced. "His... dear mothah had a lot to answer for." And not just for the name.
"Yeah, I'd say. And not just f'the name."
There being no answer to that - or none that Ezra could think of - he settled for his best innocent look, which wasn't fooling the other man for one minute.
"Got run out of Lower Sackville Springs back east, didn't he?"
"Now that is not how I'd tell it, frankly," Ezra was moved to protest. "Ah always say you should always look a racehorse in the mouth... especially if some mendacious charlatan with, shall we say, a mild relaxant, has been there first. Not that I would have anything to do with such devious practices, but one hears shameful things."
"What do you know about shame, Standish?"
"I'm familiar with - well, I've read about - the concept, Mister Larabee."
"Shoulda guessed." He could hear the thread of - yes, he wasn't wrong, it was amusement - in Chris's voice now.
"Unfortunately, the indignation of those who lost was out of all proportion." He sighed dramatically. "They thought they were on to a sure thing. Sad to say, avarice was their undoing."
"What they lose t'ya?"
"Me?" Ezra put a hand on his heart.
"Riiigght... what they lose t'Sneed?"
"Ah well... let's just say, more than enough to finance a month of luxury in New Orleans, Mister Larabee."
"What about one Elliott Sterling?"
"- Never actually claimed that they were genuine diamonds, of that I'm sure."
"Emery Sutton?"
"Now really, Mister Larabee," Ezra spread his hands, honestly at a loss, "be fair. How could anyone win roulette in Frisco without a little - manipulation?"
"Ephraim Summers?"
"Did much good, I'm sure, for many many lost and searching souls, preaching the holy word as he did. A pity folk were so narrow-minded about what he did at other times."
"Do I wanna know?"
"In all probability, no." Ezra shrugged. "Quite tedious, I cannot imagine what the Judge found to interest him in all these unfortunates."
"Edmund Sykes?"
"Was never actually caught with the goldbricks... to the best of my knowledge -"
"And your best'd be pretty damn good."
"Why thank you, Mister Larabee." Ezra beamed, totally failing to look modest, or cowed by Chris's growl. "Ah always do try."
"My patience, damn right you do." Chris stared at him for a minute longer, then rose to his feet. A smile, a wide, surprisingly sweet and very very dangerous one lit his face; the same one Chris had given him in their own jail along with the words, "figure you're dead if you're lyin'..." But the way Ezra looked at it, a lie would be fine as long as Chris knew it was.
At least, that was the assumption he intended to work on until Chris shot him to prove otherwise.
"Interestin' bunch of... friends you've had, Standish," Chris said flatly.
"Ah would hardly call them that. More..." Ezra shrugged. "Fellow travelers, of a sort."
Oddly, Chris seemed to understand that concept. "Whatever." He nodded sharply. "Just don't let them show up 'round here. You're what counts for an officer of the law now, y'don't need their sort of 'fellow traveler'." For a moment, his stern face softened. "We got five others t'do that job for ya."
He turned, and strode out into the harsh sunshine, leaving Ezra speechless for all of ten minutes.
In the corners of his mind, a whole host of conmen, swindlers and tricksters sighed and shook their auburn heads, green eyes sorrowful and appalled. What had Ezra Standish gotten himself into... now?
- the end -