A/N: We're getting close to the end, probably only three or four chapters left. I hope you're enjoying this little AU. After it's finished, I'll be working on a set of "behind the scenes" moments from both movies and after them featuring what didn't fit in the story, like when Anna Maria found Doc decades later, and things like that. I'm open to requests, so if there's something you'd like to see, drop a review or PM me and we'll talk.
As always, entertainment only, I only own my OC's.
Interlude
Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, 1880
"Look at that!" Garrett flung the crumpled paper at his wife in a fury that left a metallic taste in his mouth. Damn Poe. He had more arrogance than brains, and he'd just destroyed himself if half the rumors from the border were true.
Even worse: it wouldn't be Poe who took the blame.
Few people, if any, knew the governor had taken his badge and made the Cattleman's detective the new Lincoln County sheriff. Wallace hadn't wanted to, but not so veiled threats from the remnants of the Santa Fe Ring had forced his hand. Killing a governor might be a few steps above slaughtering a bunch of kids, but who would be left to look at the facts besides their handpicked puppets? Or so the man had whispered after Chisum and Rynerson had stormed out …
"I would release the news of their pardons to the papers myself, but I don't have a copy. Young William was quite adamant about that." Wallace straightened his coat and lit a fresh cigar. "This isn't what I envisioned when Chisum approached me."
"If she took them into Mexico, Billy is wounded or dead, it's the only way she'd take over." Garrett scraped a hand through his short hair. "They're no longer a threat, why isn't that enough? The Ring got what it wanted."
"As long as those two are alive with a chance to tell their story, the Ring won't be satisfied." Wallace blew a smoke ring. "If they release a set of the pardons, I will of course attest to their authenticity, but until they make a move, there isn't much I can do."
"They went under." Wallace considered him with a resigned sigh.
"Then the Ring will pursue them without mercy and force them back into New Mexico."
Garrett shuddered. Force them Poe had. His wife stared at him over the crumpled page, tears swimming in her brown eyes. "How can you be part of this? They are your friends!" She tossed the page to the floor and stomped on it. "Poe is evil!" She crossed herself and whispered a prayer, fingers reaching for her rosary. "You betray them for money." Accusation rang heavy in her words and the hard glare in her eyes.
"What do you think would have happened if I turned them down? They'd have come after me, too, maybe even you!"
"Judas," she spit.
"There's nothing I can do!" Even if he were to stupidly try and meet them someplace, Jessie would put a bullet in his head before he could say howdy.
"You sought fame and discovered it is not an easy thing to walk over the bodies of friends." She clutched her rosary tighter. "May God forgive you." She pushed past him and disappeared out the door, likely heading for the tiny church. Garrett wished he could follow her, maybe seek whatever forgiveness he could scrape up, but his feet were frozen to the dirt.
He'd wanted to be somebody important, a man people pointed out on the street, and overnight he was. Just not the way he'd planned. The headline from the El Paso Sentinel glared at him in silent accusation.
LINCOLN COUNTY MANHUNT FOR BANDIT KING AND QUEEN OF SOUTHWEST CONSUMES MEXICAN BORDER TOWN IN FIERY DEVASTATION
Outside El Paso, Texas
"Can he make it?" Tommy whispered as she mounted up and took the reins to Billy's gelding. Jessie didn't answer as she turned the animal's head northwest towards New Mexico. Her heart skipped a beat and she glanced back, but Doc and Yen were long gone, riding out hours before to get as much of a head start as they possibly could. That posse was coming, no doubt about that. She was surprised they weren't already here, but Garrett hadn't been quick about pursuit in that other lifetime either. For all she knew he was collecting souvenirs.
"He's the luckiest white eye in New Mexico," Chavez insisted. "They might get all of us, but somehow, he'll slip away."
"Not if we don't get moving," Jessie hissed and kicked the horse. It was a fool's errand, but it was their only hope. Maybe sometime in those seventy years to come, someone would uncover the truth and they'd be vindicated and seen for what they really were.
Billy hissed in pain and clutched at the saddle horn with white-knuckled hands. Her heart kicked and she bit her lip. He shouldn't have been moved, not this soon, but the noose was tightening; she could almost feel it closing around her neck in the confused moments between sleep and waking up. No matter how much she reminded herself that neither one of them had been born to hang, the creeping dread wouldn't leave, an icy finger skating down her spine, chilling her very soul.
Tunstall's Ranch outside Lincoln
"We can't wait till full dark, Billy has to get off that horse." Jessie squinted into the half-gloom, the setting sun behind them cloaking the ranch yard in shadow. "It doesn't look like she has company." She hadn't wanted to come here, but he needed to rest and this was the closest place they had a prayer of being safe. Susan would help them. And maybe no one would expect them to come here, so close to Garrett's lair.
"This is where it all started?" Tommy whispered as he guided his horse down the lane. Jessie swallowed hard, memories of another ride two years in the past intruding. "It must burn your English ass that the Irish run this county. Papa sells a commendable salve in his store, you must try it." So young, so naive, yet at the same time so old. How had everything gone so wrong, so quickly? She hadn't even seen Billy that day, but he swore he'd been there – in the pig pen of all places – because he'd intended to shoot the blasted animal.
Her father had been alive then, and he'd still loved her … hadn't yet sought to replace her with another …
"Yes," Billy choked out, voice raw and filled with pain. The reckless, stupid, idiot had insisted on riding in on his own, protesting he didn't want Susan to know how bad it was, that she would figure it out in a split second if he came in riding double, even though he needed help after all day in the saddle. "And it should have ended when Murphy and Dolan died, but it didn't." Tommy's gaze flicked to her and she nodded once in answer to the question he wanted to ask, but couldn't. Jessie glanced over her shoulder at Billy and Chavez, the setting sun nearly blinding her in an instant. She blinked the spots out of her eyes and led them towards the house, a sudden chill raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Her heart began to beat faster; she couldn't understand. Why did this moment feel so familiar? She slowed the mare, almost stopping the animal completely. "Jess?" His voice rose. "What's wrong? Let go, Chavez."
"I don't –"
A rifle barked and Tommy screamed, the sound drowned out by his horse's shrill scream as the animal pitched up into a violent rear and went over backwards. In that stunned second, gunfire poured from the house, snatching her hat from her head and tugging at her jacket.
"Jessie!" Billy kicked his horse, but Chavez had the animal by the bridle, already hauling the gelding around to run. "Let go, dammit! Jessie!" Tommy's horse lurched upright and shouldered through the middle, galloping wildly away, eyes rimmed white. She spun her mare and booted the animal into a wild gallop, bullets zipping past her head. The three of them clambered off the lane and up the ridge to the west, riding deeper into the setting sun. Rage sizzled through her veins and she yanked the mare to a skidding halt, spinning the animal on her hind hooves.
"Garrett," she shrieked in a bone-deep fury. "I'll see you in Hell!" Then she whipped her mare around and took off into the coming night.
"What now?" Chavez called over. "They're ahead of us."
"I don't know." There hadn't been time yet for Doc to succeed, they had to keep stalling. Susan was out, Lincoln was out, Sumner … God, she didn't want to go near Sumner, not until they had nothing else left. White Oaks was too far … Las Vegas and Porta de Luna were beyond Sumner, even farther away.
"Patricio," Billy said on a gasp, and clutched his chest. Jessie swallowed hard. They needed to go somewhere they'd never been, but the thought of finding the woman Billy had told her would have helped them in that other life was tempting.
"Alright." She doubted it mattered exactly where they went anymore. Charlie and Tommy, too, he'd said. A lump clogged her throat. Death had found them in spite of Billy's change of course, which didn't leave much hope for the rest of them. She wanted to sit down and cry, but that was the woman talking, not the regulator. "Skin out," she whispered into the wind, and the three horses galloped on into the lengthening shadows.
Patricio, New Mexico
"La Gata! El Chivato!" Shouts of delight greeted them as they rode down the rutted road that composed Patricio's main street, despite the early hour. Billy's chest burned and every breath seared his lungs like he was downing flames instead of air. Pride forced him upright in the saddle when all he wanted to do was lay down and cry.
He never should have taken Tommy with them. He knew the kid was dead. And after a pain-filled night with nothing to do but think as he rode, he knew why, or at least he thought he did. Garrett and his posse had no way to pick out who was who back-lit like they'd been. No way to know it was Jessie, not him, in the lead and Tommy in the spot Garrett knew to be hers.
They wanted Jessie dead, even more than they wanted him, but he couldn't figure out why. She hadn't killed Chisum's man, hadn't busted him out of jail, hadn't done anything she'd done in that other life that brought her a steeper price on her head than he'd carried.
Wracked with pain, Billy raised his head and scanned the gathering crowd, searching for a woman he'd never met, but who he was sure he could recognize if he saw her. But in the end, she found them, just as Jessie had written in her story.
"Jessica Dolan!" A shawl-clad woman appeared next to Jessie's mare. "Come, supper is almost ready, and you will be safe for tonight."
"How do we know it's not another trap?" The weariness in her voice was enough to gut him. The woman drew herself up.
"I would never stoop so low. Come." She beckoned them down a side lane. Jessie turned, catching his eye, and he shrugged, the movement becoming a pained flinch when he remembered too late he shouldn't do that.
"At least we won't die hungry," Chavez muttered, and Jessie threw him a glare. He shrugged and she bit her lip, staring after the woman. Finally, she sighed and turned her horse. They stopped in front of a small house and dismounted, Billy requiring help from not only Chavez and Jessie, but the son of the woman's neighbor. His pride stung momentarily as they practically carried him into the house, but he was in too much pain to protest. They settled him in the woman's own bed while she called to her daughter in rapid Spanish to bring water and towels, along with food.
A small, dark-eyed, dark-haired girl rushed into the room, overburdened by a pitcher of water, a stack of towels, and a tray with three plates or rice and beans. Billy turned his head, staring her full in the face, and a shock ran through him at the sight of those dark eyes he'd known before, but in a face unlined by age.
Anna Maria. The only true friend he'd ever had after the death of his pals. The last connection he'd had to Jessie. "She knew you loved her, Billy." He swallowed the urge to cry.
"Mama, are they the last of the Regulators?" Her question brought Jessie's head around sharply and Billy held his breath. Had her half-sister's eyes been the same green as her own, she would have realized the truth in a heartbeat. But the resemblance wasn't obvious at the child's current age and with everything else Jessie had on her mind, the questions she'd harbored before had been swept away by more pressing concerns. Had she been able to see the photographs he'd seen of Anna Maria in her late teens and early twenties, she'd have been as shocked as he was. Or seen her in her old age.
"What do you know about that?" The woman rushed to collect her daughter's burden and turned to Jessie.
"Everyone has heard of Juarez, my child, and we have lit many candles for you all." She crossed herself. "And for the souls who have returned to God." Jessie's face twisted and she pushed off the wall, only to stagger and clutch at her leg.
"Jessie!" Billy lurched upright, fighting through blinding pain, and struggled to get out of bed and away from Chavez's hands. Mrs. Martinez shoved the towels at her daughter and lunged for Jessie. Now that his vision wasn't blurring, he could see the stain of dried blood on the outside of her thigh. A jolt shot through him when he realized it was in pretty much the same place as the wound he'd avoided outside Fort Sumner.
"Damn that worthless bastard!" She dropped into a chair, either forgetting or not caring the girl was still in the room. Mrs. Martinez gasped and crossed herself again.
"My child, you must not speak so."
"You defend a modern day Judas?" Jessie snapped. "Because that's what Pat Garrett is." She inspected the wound. "He ruined my last good pair of pants," she hissed in a low snarl. "Damn him." Billy fought the urge to laugh, it reminded him of her irritation with Peppin for ruining her shirt after …. It was the only part of that fiasco he'd ever found remotely amusing.
"I can mend them while you eat," Mrs. Martinez offered. "After you let me remove the bullet, there is no exit wound."
"Tell me something I don't know," Jessie said tartly and leaned back in the chair, eyes closed. Anna Maria glanced sideways at her mother, who shook her head slightly, just once, but it was all Billy needed to see. He could feel Chavez watching him and wondered if the other man had noticed it, too, and if he somehow knew what it meant. They'd tossed out Brady, other Murphy boys, and even Tunstall himself as a long shot, but hadn't guessed, even after Mrs. Martinez confirmed her daughter's father was a part of the Murphy-Dolan faction.
"You are heroes," the little girl said softly.
"Maybe to some people," Jessie admitted. "But no one outside this territory will ever know that."
"Because of the Ring?" Her eyes flew open and she almost leaped out of the chair.
"Where did you hear about them?" Anna Maria bit her lip. "Forget you ever heard that name, do you want your mother to bury you before your time? You're too young to understand." Her voice broke, and Billy realized she was remembering Tommy.
"Anna Maria, run and fetch some hot water and my sewing kit." The little girl scurried out of the room, but not before Jessie's eyes had flickered with something akin to the look she got when she was trying to puzzle something out. Had she …?
"You know our names," she said slowly. "And we know your daughter's. But what about you?"
"What about me? Would you like some whiskey to dull the pain?"
"It's hardly the first time," Jessie scoffed, her gaze shooting to his face. Billy swallowed hard. His stupidity could have gotten her killed that day at Blazer's, and they would have left her beside Dick, the two of them ending up in a common grave with old Buckshot. The reception that would have earned him …
His chest burned, forcing him to lie back down, sweat beading on his forehead. "Billy?" Her voice rose and he held up a hand.
"I'm fine, Jess."
"No, you're not." She swallowed hard. "None of us are. We've been hounded, and pursued, and lied about for the past two years, and there's no end in sight, no matter what we do."
"My name is Isabella Martinez." Jessie glanced at the woman, but there was no recognition on her face. "Would you ride a different path if you had the chance?"
"You mean ignore John's murder?" Chavez spoke up for the first time, his eyes darker than the night sky. Billy closed his eyes against a wave of nausea.
"We couldn't do that," he whispered through the pain. "John deserves justice."
"That's not who I am," Jessie hissed sharply.
"Then remember who you are," Isabella said softly. "And be strong tonight and all nights to come. You have been wronged, and one day, the world will know the truth."
"Not if the Ring has anything to say about it," Chavez said.
"The Ring will fall, it must. Once Dolan and Murphy ran Lincoln County, but not any longer. If they could be toppled, so can the others."
"Maybe," Billy choked out. His head spun and his stomach churned. He closed his eyes and fought to keep from passing out. He'd never admit how much it had taken out of him, when he could normally ride all day and night without a second thought. The food Anna had brought smelled wonderful, but he was too tired to attempt even one bite. He drifted into a half-doze while Isabella worked on Jessie's leg. A fork scraping on the plate told him Chavez at least was taking advantage of the offered food.
"Is there anything else I can bring you?" The woman offered and he cracked his eyes open. Jessie was picking at her plate, her leg bandaged and pants patched. Billy shook his head carefully and she nodded, then turned to go. "I will check on you later." When they were finally alone, Jessie gave up all pretense of eating and set the plate back on the tray.
"Gata."
"Don't, Chavez. Garrett was aiming for me, we all know it. He knows Billy always leads and I'm to his right." Her eyes misted. "And he got Tommy instead. I should have made him leave with Doc."
"He knew he might not survive this, but he also knew who he was, just as we do." Chavez stood up and crossed the room to put his hand on Jessie's shoulder. "Tommy died a man and the Spirit Horse took him home. As she will do for us."
"What do you see, Chavez?"
"Death follows us like wolves. Do not ask me to leave, Gata. I will not go this time." Jessie looked at him, but all he did was return her stare with one of his own.
"What do you mean this time?"
"We all know what I mean." He turned to Billy. "You have changed, Chivato. I have known for a long time you care for her as more than a friend, but even knowing you could lose her did not alter the path you led us down. I saw what would have been, a vision you must have been granted also."
"I wish it was that simple," he mumbled. "But that vision really happened. She got you and Doc out, got me out, but I … I got her killed. And I spent seventy years alone, haunted by the losses I couldn't change."
"I could have walked away that night," Jessie protested. "I couldn't let go of what he'd done."
"And if I'd just ridden in the day you busted me out, we'd have been long gone before Garrett roused himself out of Lincoln!" Billy clutched his chest and took a few shallow breaths. Damn, he couldn't react like that again. It hurt too much. Her face twisted and he held up a shaking hand. "I'm okay. If I'd just done a better job of fixing things, we wouldn't be here now." His eyes stung. "I thought getting the pardons and going to Mexico would solve everything."
It hit him, then, like a bolt of lightening. He forced himself upright and stared at them in horror. "Garrett knew about the pardons," they said in unison.
"He must have told the Ring."
"That's why they targeted you at Susan's, they know you hid them, not me." The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he threw back the blankets. "We have to ride, now."
"You'd never make it."
"All I want is for you to get away, Jess. That's all I've wanted for seventy years was for it to be a nightmare and I'd wake up to find you right beside me like you always were. I'd die if I lost you again."
"I promised I'd never leave, and I meant it. You're all I have left, Billy, and whatever happens will happen to both of us." He snapped his mouth shut on a secret that wasn't his to tell. If she knew she had a sister, it might be enough to get her to let go, and … his heart sank. None of them would be able to stay in New Mexico, and this woman likely didn't have the money to start over somewhere else on a whim. Jessie left the chair and sat beside him on the bed, her hands framing his face, their foreheads touching. "I never will," she whispered, and his heart shattered. Billy forced his arms to listen and wrapped them around her, ignoring the pain stabbing into his chest.
"We'll make it, Jess, I swear we will. There's got to be a way out."
That didn't involve the Spirit Horse.
"We must return to Fort Sumner." Billy jolted.
"No, Chavez."
"We cannot escape what is coming, Chivato. Only there do we have a chance. I do not know how, but I have seen it. Many threads weave together to make a rug." Billy swallowed hard. He didn't want to go within a dozen miles of the town, but if Chavez was right … he leaned back and met Jessie's gaze.
"What do you think?" His voice was rough. She shook her head and leaned carefully against his chest.
"I don't think we have a choice, Billy."