As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape ~John Lancaster Spalding

"Open your eyes, Ezra. God's sake, open your eyes."

Josiah's back room looked like nothing so much as a battlefield hospital. Lamplight flickered against the walls and a trail of red drips meandered across the floorboards towards the low cot. Occasionally there was the slap of water against tin.

Ezra's clothes lay discarded at their feet. They knew he'd been caught, trapped, undone. All Chris could think was that they hadn't protected him, not for one, goddamn, bitching second. Too busy tying themselves up in knots, thinking how fucking bad they were feeling. And now here he was, laid out and stripped to the bone again, everything sliced and hauled off him, just like before. Like he was nothing.

And this time those bastards had got him. This time, they'd really got him.

Nathan knelt by the cot with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his hands slick.

The scene was ugly.

Made Chris's jaw ache his teeth were gritted so hard. His hair was falling into his face and the skin on his fingers felt tight with dried and drying blood. From the opposite side of the cot to Nathan he tapped none too gently at the cool cheek laying near his hand.

"Come on now." Nathan had to make his voice heard. "Stop that. He ain't up to it. Ain't up to being knocked about."

Chris couldn't let it go. "Just don't want the last fuckin' thing he saw to be that bastard lookin' at him like that." It made sense, seemed like the kind of thing they could all agree upon, the kind of mutual understanding that had eluded them lately. "Come on, Ez, open your goddamn eyes, just for a second. Look at me."

That Ezra looked to be dying here in front of them seemed like another thing they could all agree upon.

"Leave him be, Chris, God's sake leave him be."

Chris turned, kicked away the clothes, his frustration vibrating through the atmosphere.

"What we doin' with Bracken?" JD's voice at the edge of the room was nervous. "He's still conscious. Vin has him covered."

"He's not comin' in here."

"Gonna leave him to die out in the street, Chris?"

"He's not comin' in here."

"What we gonna do then?" JD sounded a little desperate.

"Maybe Vin'll finish him off," Chris said. "Maybe I'll just let him. We don't hafta to be goddamn noble with Matt Bracken. We don't hafta."

"Vin won't do that." JD sounded certain.

"He'll die in the goddamn street then."

"Damnit, Ezra!" The sound of Nathan's helpless fury cut across them, echoed in the large room. "You ain't gonna bleed to death on me. Not in a church."

"Stop shoutin' at him," JD said in a small voice. "All of you, just stop shoutin' at him."

There was quiet for a while save for Ezra's over-breathing.

"Nathan?"

"Need iodine." Nathan's voice was clipped, uncompromising. "Thread. Bandages. Run on over to my place, JD. Go on now, you can't do anythin by standing there feelin' bad." He motioned to Buck to stay right he was, holding Ezra in place. "Where's Josiah? Need more hot water. Gonna be stitching him up and then we gotta move him. He's too cold here."

Josiah's voice drifted in from the body of the church. They couldn't hear the words, but the tone sounded angry.

JD was glad to get away from the smell of the blood. He slipped through the half-open door into the church, took a few paces towards the preacher standing by his lectern, wasn't sure how to interrupt.

"Enough, Lord!"

JD hadn't heard that tone of voice in this place before. It seemed more like a command than a request, made him cringe a little.

Josiah, it seemed, was not prepared to give any quarter. He'd had his battles with the Almighty for sure. JD suspected he'd ignored Him at times, argued very often. But he'd done His work, too. Had really never asked for much.

"This man has had enough!" Josiah could hardly keep the raging resentment from his voice. "He's risen above his tribulations, Lord. He's found his place, even when some of us turned him away. He did a good deed, a brave deed, and there is no need to take him. It would serve no purpose." Josiah looked at his candles and the altar, the jagged edges of the window Ezra had destroyed. He pressed his palms on his Bible. "It would be ... unfair." He frowned. "I know you love us all, even Matthew Bracken. But I would like to advise you ..." He trailed off, noticing JD in the shadows.

"Josiah," JD said in a dry voice. "Nathan says he needs more hot water."

Josiah's eyes burned at him from under the formidable brow. He laid the Bible down. "I would like to advise you," he continued, moving down the aisle and passing JD. "To overlook his sin."

JD swallowed. Ideas of right and wrong had muddied his brain of late, that was true, but he'd not been thinking about sin. He wanted to stop Josiah, ask him what he meant, understand to which particular sin of Ezra's Josiah was referring.

Were there really that many?

He stood for a minute in the dark, listening to the sounds from next door. He thought he heard Chris curse. Thought maybe Ezra let loose a stifled moan, was hushed by Nathan. Was pretty sure Nathan and Josiah exchanged angry words.

The evening before they reached Sharpeville they'd sat in a tight circle eating poorly-cooked food and laughing about a whole bunch of stuff they probably shouldn't have been laughing about. They'd played cards in the firelight, talked deep into the night, all of them awake and together. It had been nothing but good. Right up until the moment Matt Bracken had spoken in the Sharpeville saloon, made his presence felt, JD had been content. Even though he'd hardly acknowledged it at the time, he'd felt grounded, capable, supported. Now something unexpected had wounded them, and they were scraping and picking at it as if such short-term relief would heal the sore.

We hafta stop this, JD thought. We really hafta stop this.

He still hoped one of the others was going to step up and show exactly how.

At nearing four in the morning Vin still sat at the bottom of the steps. JD had been out and back and now came out again. He lingered awhile, but he and Vin couldn't find too much to say to one another.

Link Chain's body, covered in a sheet, had been moved flush against the wall. It had taken all Vin's strength and fortitude to roll him off the boot-scraper. Bracken was curled a few feet away, hands clutching a thick square of cloth against his stomach. His eyes were closed but he was breathing calm and regular. Vin had been looking at him all this time hoping he'd stop, but he hadn't.

"Doin' better than Ez," JD said in a low voice. Not quite low enough, because Vin snapped a finger to his lips. Bracken didn't need to know about Ezra. He didn't need to know a goddamn thing.

JD hunched a little in his jacket.

Vin knew the kid's regrets were heaping up on him minute by minute. "He'll be just fine, JD. You'll get ya chance."

"I'm only stayin 'til I know, one way or another."

"Sure. Just don't go racking up any more people you gotta make ya peace with."

"Buck's the one who's mad."

"Shit," Vin said. "We're all mad, kid. That ain't the important thing right now."

JD made a helpless gesture. "I know ya right, I know it. But I can't help the way I feel."

"Leavin' ain't gonna make ya feel better."

"Why'd you always do it then?"

Vin could have pulled his own hair out. "Diff'rent," he insisted. "'Sides, I always come back."

And that was a strange truth that hung in the gloomy air for a while. JD slouched where he was, hand on the back of his neck, one toe kicking a furrow in the sandy earth. Eventually he muttered something and wandered away. Vin went back to watching Bracken. The injured man only stirred when a slow and somber procession passed, moving Ezra to Nathan's. Vin stood silent and watched. By the time Bracken had opened his eyes, they were gone and there was only Vin. A minute later there was Josiah, too.

"Nathan said to bring him in now."

Vin dragged his gaze from the end of the alley and back to Bracken. "We gotta patch him up?"

Josiah came slowly to the bottom of the steps. "Jist get him situated. Nathan'll come when he can."

Vin wanted to ask after Ezra but he wouldn't do it out loud.

Josiah understood that well enough. "About as bad off as he looks," was all he said, and although his eyes were on Matt Bracken, Vin knew who he meant.

Bracken moaned all the way inside. Josiah had thrown a blanket over the blood-soaked cot and they laid him on top, threw another blanket across his body.

"Water?" Vin asked unwillingly.

Josiah raised his brows. "Succour for the suffering," he agreed. "Perhaps he will succeed in drinking what Ezra was unable to manage."

"Damn." One of life's huge, gutting injustices was in play, Vin was sure of it. He took a cup from Josiah nevertheless, held it to Bracken's lips.

The injured man drank four or five good mouthfuls, then lay back and groaned.

"Shot me in the gut. Little whore's meaner'n he looks."

Vin, who'd been sitting ready to offer the cup again, placed it on the floor instead, got up and moved away, squaring his back towards Bracken. He felt Josiah come to stand close behind.

"You go. I'm all right here."

"Gonna say prayers for him?" Vin jerked his head at the cot. His tone was bitter as the cud.

"Maybe I will. Some for you, Vin. Some for us all."

Judge Travis might have had cause to wonder what in hell was going wrong with law enforcement in the far western territories. Certainly he didn't feel much inclined to consign his grandson to a grisly fate in Four Corners, where it seemed even seven peacekeepers couldn't keep men like Bracken, Chain and Wilton behind bars long enough for the army to come and deal with them. He was heavily inclined to re-consider their tenure.

After learning that an arrest had been made in Carson City, the Judge experienced a brief spell of satisfaction. Then he felt he couldn't much blame Larabee after all, not when he heard that those colorful reports of Bracken and Chain's apprehension had been somewhat ... exaggerated.

A positively algebraic telegraph arrived.

B +C here STOP ES bad hurt STOP C dead + B dying STOP Who takes custody of bodies? STOP CJL

The Judge was shocked, in spite of himself, that they'd come back to meet their end in Larabee's town. Larabee was angry, the Judge could tell. Unfortunately, the Governor was still pretty angry, too.

Will return STOP Governor wants independent verification STOP Hon O Travis.

He wondered how on earth Standish had gotten himself into a mess this time. He knew snatches of the man's history. That's all they were, though. Snatches and rumor. All was smoke and mirrors, far as Travis had ascertained, very little as immaculate as it appeared. It was hard to pin down any proven certainties. Well, except maybe one. What there didn't seem to be much doubt about was that trouble followed Ezra P. Standish at a determined lope, like a hungry bloodhound.

Ten days' shy of his seventeenth birthday, Ezra had arrived in Savannah, Georgia, with his mother. They'd been solvent at the time, thanks to the last will and testament of her late second husband. On a sweltering midsummer afternoon, they'd sailed upriver from the ocean and been escorted to rooms in a building choked by Spanish moss.

Ezra remembered that time as if it was yesterday.

Five days' shy, forever wandering to find adventure, he'd met a boy his age at the docks. They'd hung around the falling-down cotton warehouses, smoking tobacco and playing cards. Theirs had been an easy, temporary friendship.

Three days' shy, Ezra had helped net a considerable sum of money from some gentlemen visiting a gaming-house Maude had astutely identified as a gold-mine. The gentlemen, flinty-eyed bachelors from the north, thought the cocky, quick-witted Ezra P. was a delightful entertainment until they discovered they'd been conned. Maude had quickly appropriated most of the winnings, and with the remainder burning a hole in his pocket, Ezra and his friend had sat in a square crowded with dogwood and the last of the magnolia flowers, drinking Bourbon and laughing.

It had been almost too hot to breathe.

Two days' shy, in the very same square, the gentlemen had come for their money and more.

"Hush."

Tell me, are you a sinful child, pretty little Ezra P.? Is this boy?

They would have had their way with Ezra's friend, only Ezra wouldn't let them.

Are you asking for it, Ezra P.? Are you begging me?

Ten brutal minutes in the magnolia-scented dark. The bruises had lasted all summer long.

"Y'all right. Come on now. Gonna ruin all Nathan's good work if ya fuss like that."

Ain't no fun unless they beg.

"Hush now, you're all right. Just dreamin'. Ya not there, ya right here and ya need to sleep."

Afterwards, Ezra's friend had said nothing. Not one word. His silence nearly killed Ezra.

"I guess I don't know what ta say. Vin's mad at me. Can't say as I blame him, but I don't know how to thank you right. Know I shoulda spoke up before, just ... well jeez I'm sorry it happened and they hurt ya like that, because you're one of the best, Ezra. One of the best I've met."

The ground was hard, Ezra's throat was full of earth and the night was hot, so scorching hot he could hardly drag breath into his tired lungs.

Eight bits for a poke, I heard. How d'you like that?

"Damn, Ezra, please ... you gotta quiet down. Shit, I'm goin for Nathan."

Coins rained down on his head. Something crashed across the other side of the square. Ezra supposed it was the gate clanging shut as everyone ran. The gate clanging shut and leaving him all alone.

Nobody else stopped getting sick or breaking their fool bones, just because Nathan Jackson was presiding over a battle for survival. Folk didn't stop drinking and playing cards in the saloon just because its resident cardsharp wasn't brightening the day by being engagingly duplicitous in their midst. There was the usual sprawl of small-time troublemakers and threats to be investigated around town. None of that stopped. Somehow felt like it should.

It wasn't even that serious a wound, mind. The stiletto had streaked through muscle, hadn't hit anything that'd kill him outright, far as Nathan could tell. Ezra had bled all right. Fast and hard and messy, but even then not enough to wash away whatever filth had been on the knife-blade. The unconsciousness that had fallen over him like a blanket outside the church was deep and he'd already worked himself up into a furious fever by the time morning arrived.

"It's bad," Nathan had said. "But it shouldn't be this bad. What the hell's he playing at?"

He watched Ezra's legs for movement for the first hours. Said if the knife had severed the spinal cord they might as well all pray for him to die straight away.

"How can you say somethin' like that!" Buck had demanded. "What the hell kind of a friend are you?"

"You set things right with him, Buck? You ever gotten around to it?" Nathan had bitten back. "You and JD and Josiah ... you said one goddamn decent thing to him since it happened?"

When Chris couldn't stand it a moment more, he went out to his old place.

Nathan couldn't leave town and Vin didn't want to, which was a newsworthy item Chris couldn't get his head around. The other three were drifting about like they were looking for a new home. At least Chris had somewhere to go.

Solitude was a comfort but it also felt like an indulgence he couldn't afford. Plenty of time for it once they'd lost Ezra and Travis had terminated the agreement.

"You reckon that's what's gonna happen?" Vin demanded of him as he'd prepared to ride out.

"Lookin' like it." He'd baulked at the way Vin was keeping his hand looped into the reins of his horse, preventing departure. "Tell me you see it another way."

"Ain't nobody given up on nothin' yet, cowboy."

Chris hesitated. He'd told Nathan he'd be up to sit with Ezra for the night, and the relief that greeted the promise had made him wonder if maybe Vin was right about all this goddamn head of the table shit.

"Go on then," Vin said. He released the reins and made a shooing motion. "Git on out there and break somethin'."

"It'll be heads if I stay here."

Vin flapped a hand. "No, you get along now. We'll manage."

"Ezra'd call ya downright ironical."

"Huh, that right?"

"And I'd call ya a smart-mouth sonofabitch."

Chris ghosted Vin a smile and rode away at enough of a speed to loosen up some of the cords of tension that were starting to draw tight.

Out at the half-homestead that was still known as the Larabee place, there was no need to break anything. It was enough just to walk around kicking up dust and wondering if he wanted to invest himself out here once someone more goddamn official than any of them was ensconced behind a badge. Once whoever was left of them had packed up and ridden out. Chris had no more true optimism in his bones than Ezra, and was a whole lot less skilled in pretending he did. However, he was big on sticking by your friends, especially when they were in need. Buck had taught him that much.

After a couple of hours, he couldn't live with his own company anymore, and felt such a powerful pull back towards town that it surprised him.

It was dark when he arrived.

When Chris let himself into Nathan's sickroom, he was expecting Nathan to be there. It gave him a jolt to find Josiah sitting by the bed, discarded book on the floor. Wasn't who he counted on finding here at all. They'd once again exchanged fruitlessly bitter words earlier in the day, the healer and the preacher. So Vin had told him.

"Nathan couldn't keep going. He's asleep." Josiah looked near exhaustion himself.

Chris unbuckled his gun-belt, laid it quietly on the chair by the door, looked to the bed.

In the dim light of a single lamp he could see the unquiet body fighting a confusion of chills and sweats that Nathan couldn't control. The left hand was splinted and bound from wrist to fingertips. It had been fractured badly, Nathan said, hitting something solid. They guessed that'd be Link Chain, couldn't see how else the giant fell. The right hand was another white paw. Three fingers, burned by the imperfect placement of the Derringer barrel as it discharged.

Ezra's face was pale as ashes.

No severance of the spinal cord. Just grievously damaged nerves, firing off in protest.

"Hasn't Nathan given him something?"

Josiah indicated a brown glass bottle on the table by the window. "As Fortune would have it, Nathan has a goodly supply. But, as Fortune would also have it, a single swallow of such strong medication and our obstinate brother forgets how to breathe right. Hallucinates bad enough he'd scare himself to death." The way Josiah shook his head made Chris realize he'd been absent during a crisis. Once again. "Dear Lord, loading him up with laudanum might dispatch him quicker than anything else." He stroked Ezra's forehead once or twice with his big hand.

"He takin' water?"

"Ain't had much luck. Nathan has a plan but he's just too weary to see straight." Josiah sighed. "Let him sleep a few hours more if you can. Said he didn't need it, but he's wrong." After retrieving his book Josiah rose cautiously and stood where he was. "Nathan thinks I have been hard on Ezra. Always too hard."

Chris had heard Josiah on Ezra's misdemeanors all right. The strength that lay under the weakness. Or was it the weakness that lay under the strength? He'd also heard Josiah on Ezra's willingness to offer himself up for what they none of them could bring themselves to mention. And he'd heard Nathan, too. The healer had launched an unexpectedly passionate defense of the man who so often seemed to represent the worst of his formative experiences. For some reason, or maybe for a whole slew of reasons, the violation of a friend was not a simple crime they could unite behind. It had driven some kind of wedge between them all which wouldn't damn well be dislodged.

"They forced him, Josiah."

"He was quick to invite the wrong done against him, that's all I'm saying."

Chris felt a scalding, helpless anger. None of this was simple for him, either, but one thing was crystal clear. Without analysis or extrapolation, one unassailable fact was blindingly, crystal clear.

"It wasn't Ezra's fault. He did everything he could to help his friends. That's what you preach, isn't it? That's what you want from him?"

"I want him to be a righteous man."

Chris couldn't help his raised finger. "You'd better stand by him, Josiah. I won't be riding with anyone who doesn't stand by Ezra for this."

Josiah gently tapped his book against his thigh. "I told you. You have no cause to doubt me. He remains my brother, no matter what he's done."

"But that's the whole goddamn point. He hasn't done anything. Would you rather he'd offered up his life instead?" Chris was trying hard not to allow his voice to raise above a hoarse whisper.

Josiah was silent, chewing the inside of his cheek.

"Damnit, so suppose he'd done that." Chris lowered his voice even more because he was becoming angrier. "Suppose he'd done that. He'd be dead, and JD still woulda been ... we were what? Ten, twenty minutes away? Too damn far away to stop it. And then what? Would you and Buck have turned around and blamed the kid instead?"

"Ezra made a choice," Josiah insisted. He investigated his stubbled jaw with one hand. "And maybe it isn't the first time he's made that choice." When Chris opened his mouth to say something, to refute a claim that he didn't even properly understand, Josiah held up a hand. His voice was full of foul-tasting memory. "I have lost young men down that road before. Wilful young men who freely chose to overturn natural order and paid dearly for that choice."

"I don't know about natural order, Josiah. I just don't know." Chris sat himself down by the bed carefully, laid an unconsciously protective hand on Ezra's chest. "But look at him, he's out of his head with fever. Whatever you heard him say proves nothin'. And even if it did ... even if it did ... "

"I find Brother Ezra a challenge," Josiah allowed in a murmur. "But he should have no cause to doubt me either."

"He know that?"

"Been trying to tell him all night."

"Well you just hold on to it, Josiah. You just damn well hold on to it."

Chris supposed it would be an unbearable burden, not being able to save all the sinners. Especially when sin itself was something so goddamn easy to get back to front. He stared at the shut door for a few seconds after it closed and then looked back at the bed.

Hell, Ezra. None of this is your goddamn fault.

"How'd you do it?" he said, moving his hand carefully. "Huh? Upsettin' Josiah when you're not even awake?" He copied Josiah's action, trying to smooth the tight furrows that bit into Ezra's forehead. "Or maybe it's him bin upsettin' you?"

There was no response, of course. Ezra was far too busy fighting potent memory and spliced nerve-endings. Chris knew the man had a healthier fear of death than any of the rest of them but that if it came to it, he'd rather go fast and messy. Not long drawn-out, lost in a nightmare.

"Shshshsh," was all he could say. He brushed fingertips along the sweaty hairline from one side to the other, wondering if Ezra needed the touch now, if he could feel it, if he could take it.

Or if it was pleasing him to lay down and die.