Not many in the small town had ever met Cadence Nichols nor had even laid eyes on her before she was spirited out of town and the turnout at the small cemetery was sparse at best. Not even Chris Larabee was in attendance.
Dresses in black for most of her adult life, Sophia Nichols looked no different than she had when she had first come to town months before. Her four remaining sons, having convinced her to attend the graveside internment of her only daughter, also looked much the same, dressed all in black, with weepers on their hats and armed to the teeth.
In the town cemetery there were indeed two freshly dug gravesites adjacent to one another. One was filled with the coffin of the young Nichols woman while the other, a hole precisely three feet wide, seven feet long and seventy-seven inches deep, remained empty. The dimensions, not lost on anyone in attendance, were the same numbers 3-7-77 often written on slips of paper pinned by vigilantes to the corpses of their particular brand of justice.
As the family gathered around grave of Cadence Nichols, Nathan, JD, and Ezra formed a loose faction directly across the gravesites. Josiah took his place at the head of both holes while Vin sat on a barrel just outside the white picket fence, his Sharps rifle butt resting on his thigh as a precaution. The tracker didn't really expect any trouble. Chris Larabee was still at the saloon and still deep in his cups but with a volatile bunch such as the Nichols, one never knew.
Josiah waited a few more minutes then, deciding Chris Larabee was not coming, began the internment service.
"Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cast down, like a flower: he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?
Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.
Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts: shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer: but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal: suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee."
Josiah closed his book momentarily and began to stoop in order to retrieve a handful of earth. Sofia Nichols' cold voice stopped him and, at the same time, caused Vin to stand up.
"If the Lord truly knows the secret of my heart, if He has not shut his merciful ears to my prayer as you say, preacher, then he will deliver unto me the devil's own spawn, Chris Larabee."
"I don't believe he's coming," Josiah told her calmly.
Sofia simply smiled a predatory smile and said one word, "Peter."
Sofia's son drew both Schofields but fired only one shot - directly into JD Dunn's thigh - and hell rained down on them all.
Lured into the fray by gunshots, Chris Larabee bolted from the saloon and ran toward the cemetery.
"Here he comes, Ma!" Mathew shouted and trained his gun on Larabee.
With virtually no cover in the cemetery other than a few half dead trees and some flimsily constructed headstones made of wood, the gunplay was sporadic but effective.
Vin sighted in on Peter Nichols, the most accurate shooter in the Nichols' clan but before he could fire, Chris grabbed his shoulder and to the tracker's surprise pushed his weapon to the side forcing his kill shot to go wide.
Chris' gun remained holstered as he marched through the cemetery gate and shouted out at the top of his lungs, "This is going to stop here! This is going to stop now!"
"Look out, Ma!" John Nichols shouted a warning unsure of what the gunfighter had in mind. With his gun now trained on Larabee he looked quickly at Mathew who now lay still on the ground beside him but didn't fire.
Buck slowly rose from his crouched position, blood running down his side, his gun still aimed at the faction across the cemetery, the little square patch of fenced dirt now running with blood.
J.D. moaned softly. The bullet that had taken him down and that had brought Chris Larabee to a crossroads in his life, still burned painfully in his thigh.
Checking to see who was still able bodied, Chris shouted, "Nathan, Ezra, get JD outta here!" As the two of them picked up the boy and headed for Nathan's clinic, Chris took another deliberate step toward Sophia Nichols and called out, "Buck, you alright?"
"I'm here, Chris," the ladies man said letting Chris know that, even though he was wounded, he still had his back.
"Ma…." John said again and stepped forward closer to the gunman.
"No!" Chris' commanding voice sounded like a shot in the unnerving quiet that had settled over the gravesites. "It's over!"
Peter Nichols, his handsome face streaked with blood and grime, stepped from behind a scraggly tree and knelt clumsily by his brother. His eyesight was blurred with dripping blood from a wound deep in his scalp but he didn't need to see to know that Mathew was dead.
"Ma, Mathew's dead," Peter said to his mother but she ignored him and continued to stare at the black clad gunman standing before her.
John warned Larabee off. "You keep away from her!"
Josiah swung his gun, now held in his right hand, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, to bear and warned John, "Don't try anything, son," and for a moment they were all frozen in time.
"You want retribution?" Chris Larabee demanded, his voice low pitched and angry but well under control. He now stood directly in front of the Nichols' matriarch and she nodded her head. "Then you can have it - but only you. Not your boys - just you," he said as his eyes locked with hers.
Chris pulled his pistol from its holster and let it swing around on his trigger finger and, with the butt end facing her, he thrust it at Sophia Nichols and demanded, "Take it!"
Her jaw fiercely set, she took the pistol, righted it and aimed it at his chest. John and Luke, her only sons left unscathed, moved in closer as did Buck, Vin and Josiah.
"You say you want retribution, payment for the death of your daughter? Well, I'm here to pay the price. But before you take your due, know this. You forced her to run. You forced her to seek protection wherever she could find it. She should have been able to turn to you, her family, yet you turned away from her. You should have protected her. She was your flesh and blood and you threw her to the wolves and now she's dead. You'll have your retribution, Sophia, but you're gonna have to live with it!" Chris took a deep and painful breath and continued, his voice now tempered by his emotional pain as well as his exhaustion. The gunman was tired. Tired of the killing. Tired of all the death that seemed to follow him. Tired of caring.
"I loved her and I know she could have loved me given the chance," he said and sucked in another deep breath. He let it out slowly. "So take your retribution because I can't live with it. Any of it."
"John," Sophia turned to her son and demanded, "Kill him. Kill the fornicator."
The youngest Nichols stood mutely staring at his mother for a moment then turned to look at his brothers. Mathew – shot dead in the dirt. Peter - on the ground next to him, blood dripping from his head. Luke - unharmed but clearly rattled. He lowered his weapon.
"John, what in God's name is wrong with you? I said kill him!" Sofia commanded angrily.
"No," John said in defiance of his mother, "He's right, Ma. It will stop here. I won't kill him. He tried to protect Cady. He put his life on the line for her while we…we did nothing."
"We failed her, Ma…didn't keep her safe…or in our hearts," Peter spoke from the ground and from his heart, his strength waning.
"No, she was willful and spoiled…" Sofia tried to counter but she was cut off.
"She was spirited, full of life, Ma. Much too good for the likes of Henry Oliver," John insisted.
"But the marriage would have been good, good for business," Sophia also insisted dabbing her brow with a black hankie.
"But not for Cady," John added, "Larabee said it will stop here and it will - but you'll have to kill him yourself."
"Luke!" Sophia shouted fully expecting that when one son failed, another would prevail.
"No, Ma," Luke said lowering his guns to his side, "John's right. It stops now."
Chris moved one more step closer to the matriarch and grasped the barrel of the pistol in both of his hands and pulled it to his chest, over his heart. He looked Sophia Nichols in the eyes, his plea visible in them - his plea and much more.
As if under his spell the Nichols matriarch looked long and hard and deep into the soulless depths of the gunfighter's green eyes and whispered, "Oh, Dear God! Oh Lord! Cady my lamb," and tears began to roll down her suddenly ashen cheeks.
Sophia Nichols had looked into Chris Larabee's eyes and had seen the Lord's retribution - or perhaps the devil's reward. The man who stood before her hadn't been able to save those closest to him, not his wife, not his son, not his father-in-law nor even her own daughter and the pain and the guilt and the suffering shown plainly therein. Chris Larabee wanted to die, had wanted to die for years but his Colt dropped from her hand and fell unfired into the dust.
Sophia turned to face her sons. Her mouth opened and a soft moan preceded her words, words familiar to all who could hear her, words that had come back to haunt her. She turned to her sons and begged, "Forgive me, boys. Please forgive me. Forgive me, Cady, my last-born, my lamb, my youngest, my sweetest," she begged turning to the gravesite.
Sophia Nichols was suddenly weak and in need of strong and steady support. She turned once again to John and he wrapped his arm around his mother, suddenly grown smaller if not physically then most assuredly in his eyes. Together they walked out of the cemetery toward the hotel.
Chris watched them go and cheated out of what, in his mind, should have been a just and merciful death, cried out, "No!"
Sophia turned back to look at him. Her eyes held neither anger nor hope and, as his hands began to tremble and his eyes began to well up, Chris Larabee was even more lost than before.