Buck found Vin's jacket snagged on the low branches of a nasty looking shrub. If Chris didn't know that Vin was back in town, safe and sound at Nathan's, looking at the jacket he'd have to think Vin was dead. The leather was gouged and shredded, soaked in blood and barely recognizable.
"Pocket's gone." Buck said. "Ripped off by the looks of it. Probably on some other bush like this one."
Chris nodded. The pocket was gone, so Vin's harmonica and spyglass were gone too. Spilled out somewhere back on the trail that the bastard had dragged Vin down until he was just as bloody and shredded as his jacket.
"We have to go back to look." Chris said and Buck didn't disagree. Vin didn't have much in this world and Chris was going to do his damnedest to make sure he got to keep the little he had. In his saddlebag he already carried the hat they'd found a mile back. They'd gotten Vin's gun and gun belt off the already dead (and damn lucky for him he was) fool who'd abducted him for the price on his head. Vin's horse had run back to town on his own so all that was left was the harmonica and spy glass. Chris wasn't going back without them.
Buck folded the remains of the jacket into an oilskin and tucked it into his saddlebag. Then they turned their horses and headed back the way they had just come.
Chris kept his eyes on the ground as they rode, scanning the underbrush for any flash of metal. The spring was wet and where the ground was muddy, Chris could still see the marks where Vin had been dragged. On the dry ground, blotches and streaks and puddles of blood had dried.
Vin's blood.
"I'll keep looking if you want." Buck offered. "If you want to get back to town and check on him."
He was offering Chris an excuse if he didn't want to ride this trail of blood and suffering again.
"I'll keep looking."
Another hour of slow riding, getting off their horses to check whenever a site looked promising, finally produced results. Scratched but not dented, they found Vin's harmonica and his spy glass both within a few feet of each other, half hidden under leaf litter and broken twigs. Chris held them in his hand a minute. Buck stood beside him.
"He'll be grateful to have those back." Buck said.
"Yeah."
"He's one lucky fella, I'll tell you that."
"Yeah." Chris closed his hand around the cold metal. "Yeah, he is."
"Ready to head home and see how he's doing?"
"I'm ready."
M7*M7*M7
They got back to town well past dark. As they left their horses at the livery, Buck handed over the bundle of Vin's jacket.
"I'll let you go check on Vin." He said. "You let me know how he's doing."
"Thanks."Chris started up the stairs to Nathan's room above, but stopped when he heard Nathan call him from farther down the boardwalk.
"Chris! He ain't there. He went back to his room a few hours ago. I just came from checking him."
"How's he doing?" Buck asked.
"Same as yesterday - busted up but alive. You going over there, Chris? See if you can get him to eat something, maybe get some rest. Stubborn fool is just sitting there and won't lay down."
"I'll talk to him." Chris said and headed to the boarding house. Other people might think Vin must be feeling pretty well to take himself out of Nathan's clinic and back to the boarding house but Chris knew it was just plain stubbornness, like Nathan said. After the way Vin looked yesterday, it was amazing that he'd been able to get himself out of bed, much less all the way to the boardinghouse, but Vin didn't like to be fussed over and the only way to not be fussed over was to not be in Nathan's clinic.
Chris got to Vin's room and knocked on the door. He heard the lock turn and the door opened. When he went in, he found Vin sitting in a barrel back chair near the door, next to the table that held a pitcher of a water and a bowl of soup, both of which looked untouched. One small oil lamp on the wall filled the room with only a little more light than shadow.
Vin didn't look up at Chris or move other than to reach out with his left hand to turn the lock again after Chris shut the door. His right arm was swathed in bandages and held close in a sling, his face - and, Chris knew, the whole rest of his body - was bruised, torn, and stitched. He hardly looked any better than when they'd found him the day before, after his horse had come running back to town in a lather.
"You should be in bed." Chris said.
"I'd only hafta get outta bed to unlock the door every time Nathan comes t'see me." Vin answered him. He spoke stiffly around his damaged cheek. He sounded tired and frustrated.
"We can get you an official door opener." Chris offered. "Ezra says they got folks who do that in fancy hotels in big cities."
Vin only kind of shook his head and didn't say anything. Chris pulled out the other chair at the table and sat down. He took Vin's harmonica and spyglass out of his pocket and held them out to him.
"We found 'em -." Chris started to say 'where that bounty hunter first started to drag you', but he stopped himself. "We found 'em."
Still not looking up, Vin held his left hand out for them.
"'Preciate it." Was all he said.
"Found your hat too." Chris said, taking it out of his saddlebag. He set it on the table, near Vin who barely looked at it.
"That ain't my hat."
That answer stopped Chris cold.
"What d'you mean that ain't your hat?"
"I mean it ain't my hat. The brim's too small." Vin said, still hardly looking at the thing. Chris took another look - the brim did look smaller than Vin's hat, but other than that, it looked exactly the same.
"Who the hell's hat is it?"
"Well, I'm sorry, I don't know. I'll try to keep a better look out the next time I'm being dragged to my death."
Vin huffed and curled his left hand in to himself, holding his harmonica and spyglass close. He didn't look at Chris.
"You feeling sorry for yourself?" Chris asked. He'd be kind of surprised, he'd never known Vin to feel that way. But something was going on.
"So what if I am? Got the right."
"Yeah, you do got the right." Chris considered Vin. "You'll get your gun arm back, you'll heal."
"That ain't it." Vin said, but his voice had lost the anger.
"Then what is it?"
It took a spell, but Vin finally answered.
"I'm alive on account'a he's dead."
"And I got no problem with that." Chris said. But that answer only seemed to annoy Vin more. He finally looked up at Chris.
"If he hadn't took a fit and died, if the reins didn't get tangled in a bush so the horse stopped, if he hadn't left my hands untied so's I could untie my feet, if we hadn't had so much rain so's he was dragging me across mud and green twigs instead'a dry ground and dead branches, if my horse hadn't run to town so you knowed to come looking for me, I'd be dead."
"So, you're feeling sorry for yourself because you're alive?" Chris asked.
"I'm alive on no account'a anything I done."
That was almost enough to make Chris give a sarcastic answer. But he knew - the pride that had gotten Vin from Nathan's to the boarding house on his own was the same pride that had kept him alive all along that long, muddy, bloody trail.
"Yeah, he fell dead off his horse and yeah, the horse got tangled and stopped, and yeah he left your hands untied. But when he did fall off dead, and when the horse did stop, you didn't lay there and let him win. You did untie your feet and you did stand up and you did get started back to town, when any other man woulda just stayed there and died. I'd say there's a lot more of you in surviving than there is anything else."
Vin only rolled his eyes and didn't answer that.
"What about my coat?"
"I'm gonna give it to the seamstress, see if she can repair it. It's about as shredded as you are."
"No need to bother then, I guess. Be just as well to bury it or burn it."
"You don't want to see if it can be repaired?"
"Wouldn't want t'wear a coat that's all over stitches in it." Vin sounded insulted. "Rather just get myself a new coat."
Chris kept his face blank, but if Vin hadn't been recovering from such a close brush with death, he'd be joshing him about being more particular about his appearance than Ezra.
"All right, then. I'll take care of it."
"'preciate it."
"You bet." Chris said. Then another spell of silence passed. "Need a hand getting to your bed?"
Vin shrugged.
"Need somebody'll keep Nathan from checking on me every quarter hour, so's I don't have to get out of it again."
"I'll make sure he lets you rest."
Vin nodded up, and Chris stood but stayed back while Vin set his harmonica and spyglass into his sling, pushed himself to his feet one-handed, and took slow, painful steps toward his bed.
He set himself on the mattress, but made no move to lie down.
"I let him get the drop on me, and I let him damn near kill me. I got myself headed back to town maybe, but I never woulda made it the whole way. If you hadn't come looking for me, I'd be laying out there on that trail, dead finally, or dying still. I'm alive only on accounta a whole lotta things that had nothing to do with me. And I don't like that. I gotta be able to count on me, not on a whole lotta things that happen only by chance."
Well, Chris couldn't rightly argue with that. This wasn't a land that suffered fools, or kept them alive for very long. This was a place where a man pretty much had to fight for every single thing he wanted. Relying on chance was as sure a way to get dead as pocketing a rattler.
Still -
"Would you rather be dead?" He asked Vin. "Would you rather be dead 'cause he got the drop on you, or would you rather be alive because of a coincidence? You can grouse all you want about the whys and wherefores of being alive, but I gotta tell you - I think you should just be grateful that you are alive, and back with us where you belong."
Vin stared at him, but didn't say anything. Chris poured a mug half full of water and brought it to him.
"So let's just stop poking at it and get you rested and healed."
"Yeah." Vin said. He took the mug in his left hand, emptied it in a few swallows and handed it back.
"Thanks."
"All right. Now get some sleep. I'll keep an eye on your door. Make sure Nathan don't bother you again 'til daylight."
"Yeah. Thanks"
Chris decided to leave Vin to put himself to bed. He pulled a chair from the table close to the bed and set the bowl of soup, mug, and pitcher of water on it, then turned to open the door and let himself out of the room.
"Anyway," he said, just before he closed the door. "I'm grateful."
Then he shut the door and left Vin to rest.
The end.