Jarrod placed his coat over the open wounds in the stomach, appalled at the damage. Blood seeped through the cloth and Jarrod started calculating time: 10 minutes for Angela to get to the ranch and send help, then someone would have to get the Doctor. He sought ways to shave precious seconds. ... If someone had heard the shots and was already on the way. If Agatha was on her way here... Of course, it was always possible she might be out visiting a patient. Jarrod shuddered and pushed the thought away. No, it was evening. The Doctor might be coming here for dinner and he desperately tried to remember if she was supposed to. Jarrod searched relentlessly for shortcuts, not even aware that he was issuing a steady stream of words intended to be reassuring.

"You'll be fine, little brother. Everything will be fine. The Doc will get here, we'll get you patched up and the next thing you know you'll be in bed with Mother hovering over you and Audra waiting on you hand and foot."

He heard a whispered name and instantly understood.

"I saw Angela and Jordan galloping for the ranch. They're in better shape than you are, but you'll be all right. You'll spend a week or so in bed and then we'll make plans for the move to Canada."

Nick's eyes lit up and Jarrod kept rambling.

"That's what I was coming to tell you, little brother. I'll take care of everything. It's my wedding gift. We'll …. We'll hate losing a good foreman but I know you'll be happy there. You and Jordan and Angela. You just have to promise to write."

Blackish blood was seeping from the coat…the liver…there's a puncture to the liver. Jarrod remembered his army days and shivered.

Where in God's name was help?

BVBVBVBV

Nick was trying very hard not to laugh. For one thing, it would probably hurt like hell. Second, and most important, it would upset Jarrod. Propriety was very important to Pappy, and Nick suspected that snickering at his brother's panicky effort to project reassurance would hurt his feelings. Pappy DID look funny, though; with his fancy coat off, his shirt spotted as if he'd flailed around in scarlet paint and his perfectly combed hair mussed up and falling over his forehead.

Good old Pappy Nick thought. He had spent his entire childhood rescuing Nick from one scrape or another, managed to get him through puberty alive and even now as an adult, Jarrod was still there, like some exasperated, overworked guardian angel... And like that, he understood what Doc Marten had been saying. It became shiningly, radiantly clear and Nick could only wonder, dumbfounded, at how complicated he had made everything. It was so obvious, so unbelievably easy that he started to laugh.

And it didn't even hurt.

BVBVBVBV

Jarrod pressed down harder on the gaping hole in the torn stomach and wondered if he wasn't simply inflicting even more pain on the injury-racked body. He cringed slightly as Nick uttered a wheezing, whistling sound, then realized it wasn't a gasp of pain but a cough of laughter.

Nick grasped his collar and pulled Jarrod close.

"Anjl….M' gard'n anjll" he chuffed, each word sending out a small spray of blood "M' Whol' lyf.."

His brother stared blankly at him, and Nick wished he could explain, could make Jarrod understand. But he couldn't; couldn't talk anymore, couldn't hear, couldn't even see anything other than his brothers' eyes of cerulean blue. They were so intense, so bright, that the color blurred and spread until it was all that he could see...

BVBVBVBV

The two men sat silently in an open field. The younger, still warm but unmoving, and the elder clutching the lifeless body closely as if to offer-or accept- comfort from the chill of approaching night. In the distance Jarrod could hear staccato sound of approaching horses and he wearily wished them gone. When the riders arrived this final time alone with his brother would be banished and anguish would take its place.

It would fall to him to shatter his family, to break his mothers' heart and rend his siblings with grief and pain; to destroy the dreams and happiness of the woman his brother had loved. The encroaching hoof beats warned of all the pain that awaited and more.

So, Jarrod clung to these last peaceful moments and wept, an endless shower of grief that was oddly comforting though he could not have said why. And only in some distant, wondering corner of his heart did he marvel at the acid tears that seared his cheeks and scarred his sight yet fell to his tongue cool and sweet and tasting of rain.