"Where's Molly, Nate? They told me at the hotel she was here. I'm fixin' ta take her east with me."
Nathan walked slowly to where Vin stood expectantly inside the clinic door and spoke softly. "She's gone, Vin," the healer said grasping the tracker's arm.
"Gone?" Whaddaya mean gone?" Vin demanded. "On the stage? Back to Baton Rouge? Her husband don't want her no more, just threw her away like so much offal." Moving out of Nathan's grasp he tore his hat from his head angrily scraping his fingers through his long hair.
Nathan's heart hammered in his chest but he knew he had to end his friend's wild speculation. "She didn't leave, Vin," the healer tried to explain but the tracker was more agitated that Nathan had ever seen him before.
"Then where is she, Nathan!?" Vin demanded. He was ready to lash out physically at the now reticent healer but the look on Nathan's face caused him to back off. His stomach lurched and he was suddenly filled with dread as "She's gone" echoed in his mind. "Nate?" Vin beseeched him knowing deep down in his heart that something was terribly wrong.
Sighing heavily, a look of sorrow on his face, the black man moved across the room and started to explain. "Laudanum, Vin," he said and pointed to the small bed against the wall, "She took enough to kill ten men." He stepped aside and, as Vin's eyes fell on the covered form lying on the bed, he watched the Texan squeeze his eyes shut, jaw working as he tried to come to grips with what lay before him.
"Oh, God," Vin cried plaintively, his eyes now bright with unshed tears.
"I guess she just couldn't stand the thought…" Nathan said tentatively, not really knowing, only guessing as to the woman's reasons.
"The thought of what, Nathan? Of leavin' with me? Of livin' with a man like me?" he asked as his heart broke, "I know I ain't book smart or strong on social graces but…"
"Stop it, Vin!" Nathan grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him gently. "I got to her just before she breathed her last. You were in her thoughts, your name on her lips when she passed. She said to tell ya she was sorry."
"How'd she get to the laudanum, Nathan? Weren't you here?" Vin wanted to know, ready in his newly born grief to cast blame on the nearest person.
"She came in all pale like and said she was feeling queasy, had been for a while. I told her to sit and rest and that I'd get her a little something to settle her stomach from the cafe. I was only gone ten minutes at most and when I got back she was layin' on the bed, the empty bottle next to her.
Vin's usually robust completion turned even more ashen. "Do ya think she was…" he started but Nathan was not going to let him go off on that particular tangent. Nothing could be proved and nothing good ever came of undeserved guilt.
"I don't know, Vin," he interrupted, "Her symptoms might'a just been a ruse to get me outta the clinic."
Vin was even more confused and angry and so very hurt. He had planned everything out. They would be fine, he and Gaylan…even a baby if it was to be. He would protect and provide for them and they would be happy. He would be happy. "Why, Nathan? You tell me why," Vin demanded lifting the blanket and taking a cold hand in his.
"Some women are strong, Vin. Strong like Ms. Waters and my mamma. So strong that it's takes a whole lot to break 'em but when they finally do, they just can't be fixed. My pa tried to fix my ma but he couldn't. Just like you tried to fix this highborn lady but she was broke in too many pieces...even before you found her. Maybe she couldn't stand what the Indians did to her, what they took from her and what they might have left to her."
Tears sparkled in Nathan's eyes as he thought of his mother and her shame, her fear. He looked at the woman who now lay dead in his clinic. A wealthy, southern, white woman, her life so very different yet ultimately mirroring that of his own mother, a penniless, southern, black slave.
"Vin, I think she'd a rather died than face the shame and the pain of this hateful world…just like my ma." Disgusted, Nathan momentarily thought to cursed all men but, as he looked into his friend's eyes now sharp with pain, he knew that for every man who would defile and hurt a woman there were men like Vin Tanner and his own pa who would cherish and try to protect them no matter what keeping an often times cruel world in balance.
Nathan could now see anger seething in Vin just below the surface as his friend placed the lifeless hand back under the makeshift shroud and stood to leave. It was the same anger that had eaten away at his own father year after year until he had extracted his vengeance, his pound of flesh, and had beaten his wife's attacker to death.
Boot steps pounded up the stairs that led to the clinic's door and, summoned by a small boy Nathan had given a penny to for his efforts, Josiah Sanchez burst through the door, his bible in hand. The look on Vin Tanner's face was all he needed to know. Nathan had broken the news to him and the preacher stepped up to stand in front of the tracker. "Vin, I know you want to blame someone for this."
"You got that right, preacher!" Vin said with a quiet, bitter certainty. He wanted to blame them all. Make them all pay. The Indians for sometimes waging war against the innocent, the townsfolk for their lack of humanity and Buck, well, for just being Buck. Most of all he did blamed her husband for abandoning his wife to circumstance and outcome beyond her control. Vin Tanner found he could blame them all and, above all, God. Vin glanced at the two men who stood between him and the door with cold blue eyes before he pushed his way past them and walked out.
"You best go after him, Josiah," Nathan said with a resigned sigh.
Josiah concurred but thought it prudent to stop by the jail and apprise Chris Larabee of the situation before confronting Vin and, quite possibly, his Sharps rifle.