**Author's Note: 8/15/24

The beginning of this chapter was originally posted as the end of ch 8. In response to some reviews, ch 8 has been revised to include some of Slim's perspective. Nothing in chapter 9 is new, just rearranged. Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting this work!

Chasing Strays Ch 9

"Up and at 'em, pard."

A steady hand gently squeezed his shoulder. Jess didn't move. His head was pounding.

"C'mon, Jess, I can't leave you out here." It was Slim, he recognized now, pleading with him. It wasn't a tone he heard often. "I know it's hard, but I can't carry you both and I can't set Mike down yet."

Mike. Jess groaned.

"There ya go," Slim said. The hand on his shoulder disappeared for a second before returning, this time to the back of his neck. The rough callouses were a warm, familiar blanket against his skin. He sighed in relief as his headache started to ease.

"'Dere ya go, Jesh, c'mon," Slim coaxed, his words oddly muffled. Jess forced his eyes open.

He was lying on the ground in front of the open barn door, his chest and right cheek flat against the dirt. He swallowed against the stale, sick taste in his mouth and grimaced. Slim, kneeling awkwardly next to him with Mike balanced on one knee, winced in sympathy. His hat was missing, his hair was a mess, and the glove he'd pulled off his right hand dangled from his teeth. If Jess didn't feel so awful, he might have given Slim a hard time for how disheveled he looked. He was too grateful for the help to comment at the moment, though, never mind the fact that he probably looked even worse off than Slim.

"Can ya make it?" Slim mumbled around the glove. Jess sighed but nodded.

Not much of a choice, he thought, as he slowly pushed himself up onto his knees. Slim got both feet under himself before slipping his free arm under Jess's shoulder and hauling the whole group up. Jess was shaking again, but he was on his feet. He swallowed to keep his stomach where it belonged. Slim hitched Mike up a bit higher on his hip and they set off for the house, one step at a time, through the gathering evening shadows. Jess let his eyes close, trusting Slim to lead the way.

Jess had just about reached his limit when Slim lowered him down onto the couch.

"Here," he said, shifting Mike over to Jess's arms.

"He's not zoned?" Jess croaked, before clearing his throat.

"Nah, just you, pard," Slim answered with a rueful smile. Sure enough, Mike's blue peeked out at Jess before he tucked himself securely against his side, awake and alert. "I may have, uh, scared him a bit," Slim said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Couldn't calm him down until I calmed down."

Jess just chuckled. No wonder it had taken so long for Slim to make it back to the house. He tightened a reassuring arm around Mike and felt a little squeeze in response. He felt absolutely drained.

Slim helped Jess rinse out his mouth and wash his face, eased off Jess's boots, and covered him and Mike with a blanket. Jess followed his movements around the house with his hearing as he re-set his senses. Finally, after lighting a fire to chase away the evening chill, Slim crouched down next to the couch.

"I gotta go see about Alamo," he said, but he didn't stand. Jess cracked an eyelid to see his tall, confident partner chewing the inside of his lip nervously and looking just about as small as a man his size could manage. A blind man could see he didn't want to leave them alone.

"Better get to it," Jess agreed. Slim still didn't move.

"You gonna be alright?"

"We'll be fine," He said, his voice a low rumble in his chest. Slim sighed but reluctantly stood.

Before he got to the door, though, he paused again. "You've got your gun, though, right?"

Jess gave his very best unimpressed eyebrow in answer.

"Fine, fine," Slim said, taking a few more steps. "And you can hear right again?"

Now that, he figured, was at least a fair question, so he refrained from rolling his eyes. "I'm back to normal, Hardrock, no one's gettin' in here. Now get out there before I get up and do it myself."

It was an empty threat and they both knew it, but at least Slim finally relaxed a bit. He turned the knob, but Jess stopped him one more time.

"'Fore I forget, one of the stage horses is tied in the corral. He'll need reshod in the morning. And those two scrap pieces 'a iron out there are actually a brake rod."

There was a pause.

"Busy day?"

"Don't ask."

-Laramie-

Mike was thrilled with the idea of a "campfire supper" that evening, after Slim finished settling the horses. The stove was long cold and, if he was honest, Slim wasn't willing to let the other two out of his sight any more than necessary. Jess had dozed on the couch while he and Mike cooked steaks right there in the fireplace. They ate together in the living room, Jess sitting up on the edge of the couch, Slim in a pulled-up chair, and Mike cross legged on the floor between them with their plates on their laps. Even with the lingering unease, it was a cozy scene.

"How're the calves lookin'?" Jess asked around a mouthful of beans.

Slim nodded as he finished chewing. "'Bout three more weeks oughta do it," he said, before going into details of where he'd found them, how many seemed to be missing, and where he thought the strays might be. Jess listened and nodded along, chiming in with questions now and again. The longer they talked, the better Slim felt. Mike, finished with his plate, crawled back up on the couch and curled up next to Jess.

"Bates and his boys should be about done by the time we need to start, so I'm hopin' we can hire the boys on here," Slim continued. "We'd finish branding in no time."

Jess hummed in agreement. They should be able to get by with four of them on the range and the youngest Bates boy here at the house. It also meant they wouldn't have to hire on any strangers, which Jess suspected was the driving force behind Slim's plan. After the chaos of the day, Jess didn't want new faces around the ranch any more than Slim did. There was no guarantee John would let them hire on all three, though, and it didn't leave anyone to care for Mike.

"Jess?" Mike asked. Jess glanced down at the boy, tucked in beside him and using his thigh as a pillow. His eyes had been drooping throughout the conversation but apparently, he hadn't fallen asleep quite yet.

"Yeah, Mike?"

"Did you zone today? Like I sometimes do?"

Jess gave him a wry smile and sucked his teeth. "Sure did," he said, running a hand over Mike's shoulder.

"What made it happen?"

Jess paused, thinking back. "'M not really sure," he said slowly. "We don't always know why. Sometimes it happens too fast for us to notice the reason," he explained, but he was still running through the events in his mind. If anything, he had slowly slid into the zone, rather than falling in all at once. It didn't fit the usual pattern.

Slim cleared his throat, pulling Jess's attention away from Mike. Slim had slouched down in his chair and kicked his feet up on the hearth. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes were a different story. Jess raised an eyebrow and waited.

"I, uh, might have had something to do with that," Slim said, chagrinned. Uncomfortable under the stare of two sentinels, Slim shifted around in his chair. He knew his heartbeat would give away his guilty conscience anyway, so there was no point in trying to hide it.

"Care to explain?" Jess prompted, his voice lacking any accusation.

Slim ran a hand through his hair and blew out a sigh. "I thought we might wait a while before we talked about this," he said, giving Jess a meaningful look. After Mike went to bed.

Jess shrugged in response. Too late now, might as well go on.

Slim sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That stranger was a guide, and he'd been working on you for a while, Jess."

In the dim light, Slim could see Jess's eyes narrow and his jaw tense. He could feel confusion and anger seeping through their bond. Slim carefully closed his mind. He figured that after what he had to say, Jess wouldn't appreciate any violation of his privacy.

"I was on my way back when I first felt it," Slim explained, watching the fire. "I was looking forward to being home and just wanted to check on you and Mike. When I opened up and felt our bond, though, it just felt… off. Before too long I knew something was really wrong. I didn't know exactly what until I got closer." Slim shuddered. "When I realized it was another guide trying to weasel his way in I… Jess, I dang near lost my mind. It felt like he was bent on unraveling everything we'd built."

Slim took a shaky breath and ran a hand down his face. Jess sat there, still and silent, waiting for him to go on. Mike didn't make a peep.

"I didn't know what to do," Slim finally admitted. "I was desperate to get your attention, to get you to snap out of it, but nothing seemed to work. Then I got here and found Mike missing. I was plain terrified that the guide would go after him instead, but I couldn't leave you there, not in the state you were in. So, well, I… I zoned you," Slim said, the words rushing out of him. "I purposely pushed you into a zone because I knew I could pull you out, but that stranger wouldn't be able to reach you. It was the only option I could come up with, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Jess."

He scrunched his eyes shut and waited. The wellbeing of a sentinel was his guide's responsibility. Jess trusted Slim to have his back. Jess wasn't one to trust easily, and Slim knew he had crashed through that trust like a run-away train today. Whatever reaction Jess had in store for him, Slim would deserve that and more. He held his breath.

The pops and crackles of the fire filled the space.

"You done feelin' guilty over there yet?" Jess asked, his drawl thick as molasses. Slim looked up. "If you're not, I could give you a few more minutes," Jess went on, "but if you're ready, I got a few things to say."

Not trusting his voice, Slim nodded.

"You made the right choice," Jess said, his blue eyes boring into Slim's. Slim felt like the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He didn't know what he'd expected Jess to say, but that hadn't been on the list.

Jess leaned in closer. "You made the right choice," he repeated, low and sure. "He had his hooks in deep. Lookin' back, now that I know what was happenin', I reckon he'd been chippin' away at me for hours," Jess said, shaking his head. He absently rubbed a hand against his sternum. "I did feel it, you know, you pullin' at me through the bond. I was just too far gone to understand it was you. Probably nothin' else you coulda done at that point, 'cept what you did."

Slim just blinked at him, shocked by what he heard.

"Next time, though," Jess said with a smile, his tone lightening, "maybe you don't need to zone me quite so hard, huh?"

Slim let out a startled laugh. "Sure, pard," he said, "I'll keep that in mind."

They lapsed into silence again, each lost in their own thoughts as the twilight outside faded to night.

"You see that horse though?"

Slim turned his shoulders to face Jess fully, his eyebrows knitted together in disbelief. "That's your takeaway from all this?"

"Beautiful animal," Jess said wistfully, as Slim muttered unbelievable under his breath. "Not every day you see a piece 'a horse flesh like that all the way out here."

"What kinda horse was it?" Mike piped up.

"Most likely some Spanish blood in 'im," Jess answered, "What's the name for those again?"

"Andalusian."

"Right, Andalusian, and it was a beautiful dapple gray. Not many of those around here either."

"What's a… dapple gray?" Mike asked.

"It's a pattern on their coat," Jess explained. "Kinda like sunlight filtering through leaves. They've got light and dark patches, and they look real pretty."

Slim pushed himself up from his chair. "Here, Mike," he said, striding over to their small bookshelf. "I got a picture in here someplace." He took down a volume called Building A Recognizable Breed and flipped through it until he came to the section on breeding for coat patterns and colors. He handed it to Mike, and Jess pointed to the right drawing.

"Mama called that the Devil's horse," Mike stated confidently. "Why didn't you just say that's what you meant?"

The boy looked between his two friends, waiting for an answer.

Slim and Jess just stared at him, lips parted in surprise.

"Didn't your mamas ever teach you that?" Mike asked, confused as to why Slim and Jess couldn't understand something so simple.

Jess recovered first. "I always thought it was a red horse," he offered, glancing back at Slim.

"That's War," Slim said absently. "In Revelations, the second horseman. Far as I know, they never said what color the Devil had."

"Say, Tiger," Jess started, "Do you happen to know why she called it that?"

"Well sure! She said that's what kinda horse the Devil rode, and if I ever saw one, I was 'sposta run like the dickens," Mike answered with a decisive nod.

"Did you ever see one?" Jess asked. Slim could hear the tension in his tone, but thankfully Mike must have missed it.

"Nope. Guess the Devil wasn't after me," he shrugged, curling up in his blanket again, content to flip through the pages of the book.

Jess and Slim shared a loaded glance. They lapsed into silence. After a few minutes and only a small mental nudge from Slim, Mike was fast asleep. Jess gently eased the book out of his hands and set it on the floor. They continued to sit quietly a while longer, unsure of where to start.

"Pretty distinctive horse," Slim said softly.

Jess nodded. "Think we better crack that open?" he asked, gesturing toward the roll-top desk that held the Sherman family Bible.

"Naw. He was a dangerous man, but he was just that. A man," Slim answered. "Let's not go makin' this bigger than it is."

Jess shrugged. "Mike was wrong about one thing, though," he whispered. "The Devil actually was after him today."

Slim's blood turned to ice in his veins as Jess confirmed his fears.

"Right about the time you were crashin' our party," Jess murmured, as he watched Mike's chest rise and fall, "he'd finally got around to sayin' what he came for. He asked where Mike was, by name. Called him Michael. You made the right choice, Slim, goin' after Mike and leaving me. No doubt about it."

Slim shook his head in disbelief. "All those years," he said, his voice soft, "I was so worried a sentinel would come along and try to take Andy away from me. It never occurred to me that a guide would try something like this."

Jess just shrugged, not taking his eyes off his sleeping charge. Slim knew he'd had bad experiences with guides in the past. He'd told Slim the stories, but hearing about it was different than seeing and feeling it for himself.

Slim frowned. "I just can't figure it," he said. "Why would a guide like that be after a less than half-grown sentinel like Mike?"

Jess didn't answer. Why, indeed.

The flickering orange light of the fire cast shadows across Mike's face, throwing the contours into sharp relief. Jess watched as the flames moved and the shadows shifted across high cheek bones, ash blond hair, and a cleft chin.

A grim, sick feeling settled deep in his gut.

"I think I might know why," Jess whispered. Lord, please let me be wrong.