It didn't take longer than twenty minutes from when Monty helped Gemma to her room that five riders showed up at their threshold. It was Monty's dubious responsibility to meet the five lawmen at the door. His father had the sense of hiding away in the back of the house confident of Jason's assistance were he confronted directly. Gemma wanted to convince her friends that this dispute was better left to herself, but she was in no state to talk let alone walk down to meet them.
"Chris will not like this," she whispered weakly to her husband.
"What can I tell them?"
Montgomery Junior was torn in two. He wanted to help Gemma, but he also knew his father. If he was confronted now by the less than reputable law keepers of Four Corners he would exact revenge of unpredictable proportions upon them all. Montgomery Senior wasn't just a rich man. He was a man of influence, a well-known San Franciscan politician and worst of all well-connected with organised crime. He was a man who got his own way through force, battery and murder, but kept his image clean to ripe the benefits in the reputability of high society. At the click of a finger he could have all the seven arrested, tried and executed. Monty didn't want it to come to that most of all for his wife and he had to convince her brother-in-law and the rest of her acquired family that it was better for all people involved if the couple dealt with Montgomery Senior themselves.
"Open the door before we tear the place down," Chris Larabee was clear.
"Let Nathan in. We'll make him understand," Gemma was barely intelligible. She moved her hand towards a drawer in her dresser and Monty opened it for her.
"Show this to Chris. Tell him..." Tears flowed down her cheek mixing with the desert sand that covered her face. "Tell him I begged him 'no'."
She closed her eyes after she finished speaking, all her energy gone.
Monty braced himself for the encounter. He gripped the newspaper clippings to his chest as he neared the front door.
"I'm coming out. Please, don't come in before I speak to you."
There was rustling in front of the door but no reply came. The young man braced himself for what was coming then sprung out of the house with a dexterity that took the awaiting lawmen by surprise. He locked the door behind him and put away the key in his trousers.
Chris Larabee had him pinned to the locked door before Montgomery Junior could turn around himself.
"You son of a bitch," he said and held a gun below his chin.
"Please," Monty said unsurprised with the welcome. "This is my father. Gemma wants you to stay safe." The man held out the clippings at whoever would take them.
Josiah's hand approached at last and the former preacher was the only one to take his eyes off the trapped figure. Buck Wilmington towered behind his oldest friend, JD was too embarrassed and confused to stand still or look to anything in particular and Nathan stood back waiting for an opening so he could rush up to his patient.
"She said to get Nathan and she would explain everything to him."
"Wouldn't you just like that," Buck let out a menacing whisper.
Montgomery Junior didn't shift his eyes from Larabee's. "She told me to tell you. She's begging you 'no'."
The blonde cowboy would have clamped the man before him with a gun for his words had Josiah not spoken at the same time.
"Perhaps we should consider sister Gemma's safety before we continue," he said.
"That's what we are doing," the womaniser barked back.
JD looked to the papers in the preacher's hands for something to do. He gasped in horror at the headlines.
"Is this Mr Monterrey's doing?" Josiah asked Junior slowly. He seemed the calmest of the bunch but inside anger was simmering steadily as it always did with the preacher, only to reach a boiling point of volcanic proportions with time.
All heads now turned to the news in his hands although Chris's grip never wavered.
"Police still searching for missing judge. Local business burnt to the ground. Search for owner continues. Frisco activists found disembodied. Woman missing after defying local thugs," Nathan read some of them out loud after JD was too disturbed to look again.
"What do I care for some sleazy Frisco snake? I'm the law around here;" the leader of the seven pushed his gun further up his target's jaw.
"He knows things, Mr Larabee and what he doesn't know he can find out or plant," Montgomery Junior whispered. "Gemma is worried about your safety. My father is not a man to play with. He does not lose."
This was not over by a long shot, but Nathan was getting restless.
"Let me go up, Chris. See if I can get some answers."
"Give me one good reason why I don't just go in and shoot the son of a bitch. After I've shot you."
Montgormery Junior swallowed at the conviction in the blonde man's words. Buck Wilmington nodded eagerly behind him and JD was already grabbing his guns.
"Jason."
"Who the hell is Jason?" Buck asked out of habit. He couldn't imagine a reason that would stop him of barraging into the house and shooting down every person who had ever eve looked at Gemma funny.
"You will not get past him and you will pay for your failure eventually."
Nathan stopped Buck from slapping the irritating man in front of him by interrupting.
"Let's go to Gemma."
"I need the rest of you to ride off first," the young man said and earned that slap.
"Like hell," Buck added.
"Josiah can stay outside and I'll meet you all back in town after I make sure that she's OK."
"She isn't OK. That's why we're here," Chris was adamant.
"Please," Monty tried and earned another slap.
"Let's not make this worse for her. Let me go up to her and we can work on the information she gives me," Nathan tried. He started to tense up and he had a bad feeling about all of this. He wanted to avoid anyone else being needlessly hurt.
"Let's make this easy on her. Help with her pain for start. Buck, c'mon."
Nathan directed his words to the ladies man because he thought he would be more receptive. He also started to realise that since Gemma was married to Montgomery any action that they took could be taken up legally by her father-in-law and could be the first manifestation of the trouble Montgomery Junior seemed so worried about.
The air remained quiet apart from silent murmurs of Chris Larabees curses. Buck placed his hand on his friend's gun arm and looked him in the eye.
"Let's figure this out in town, Chris."
"I'm not leaving her here!"
"Nathan and Josiah will look after her."
"You're a bloody coward."
"We all want what's best for her."
"He doesn't," Larabee waved his gun back towards Montgomery Junior.
"Let's give her the benefit of the doubt. She'll come to us if she needs us."
The phrase did the trick. The blonde man's face dropped and soured. He'd been guilty of forcing his decisions on his sister-in-law and causing her to rebel against them. Chris was hurt that his friend would use that as a weapon against him now. He gave up with displeasure. Chris holstered his gun and addressed Nathan.
"Any sign of trouble..."
"We tear them down," the healer agreed.
"Let's go before I do it now."
There was much more that he wanted to say and do, but for Gemma's sake, he rode off after Buck and JD without a second backward glance, all the way home battling with his insecurities. He dwelled on the question: Am I doing the right thing?
