"I'm not sorry," Buck said when he was settled back in the jail cell, though the strength had pretty much gone out of him so the conviction of the statement had to be sensed rather than heard.

"Ain't nobody said you should be," Teaspoon told him. "I doubt it helped your case any, but I don't reckon anybody blames a man for pushin' back when he's been put down enough times."

"Not that," Buck shook his head. "Though I'm not sorry for that, either. I mean breaking from my route to help that old man."

"Nobody thinks you should be sorry for that, either," Jimmy spoke up.

Jimmy and Cody were arranged outside the cell. Teaspoon had helped Buck to the cot and remained inside with him at the moment. Buck had stayed sitting up against the wall behind the cot, even though he looked like he'd've vastly preferred to lie down. Where Noah had gone off to was anybody's guess. The deputy, in the meantime, had grown tired of watching these little conversations, and left them to it to sit in the main office and drink coffee with the sheriff.

"Just what did happen between here and Kearney?" Cody asked curiously.

Buck sighed wearily and stared at the ceiling. "If you want to go pick a fight, Cody, don't use me as your excuse."

"That's not what I meant," Cody said. "But I think you had a point in that courtroom."

"Which one?" Buck inquired sarcastically, shifting his gaze from the ceiling to Cody. "The one that convinced the room I'm the uncivilized savage they already thought I was or the one that almost got me killed?"

"Let's not go around that bush again," Jimmy protested, shrugging an elbow at Buck. "It's late and I'm too tired to have it out with you again."

"I know," Buck nodded slightly, closing his eyes. "So am I."

Cody and Teaspoon exchanged looks, but neither had an inkling what that was about.

So instead Cody went back to his point. "I mean what you said about nobody lookin' at the Glassners."

"They went on the witness stand. What more do you want?" Teaspoon inquired.

"Sure they were on the stand, but there weren't nobody pushin' 'em around," Cody said.

"I wasn't pushing Buck around," Teaspoon told Cody, a rather cold look coming into his eyes.

"I know that, Teaspoon, but those questions you were prickling him all over with were like he said, about how he is as a man more'n what actually happened. Nobody pricked at Lee or Amos that way."

"What're you getting at?" Teaspoon asked.

"Well, they're the ones who've accused Buck, aren't they? Mr. Ellis sure didn't."

"And what about the old man in Kearney?" Teaspoon inquired.

"Well… what about him?" Cody asked a little haltingly. "Nobody's said. Did he accuse Buck, or did this posse of Charlie Harlow's just go an' find that guy Buck paid in the bar and bring him along? If you ask me, this is beginnin' to have a lot the look of a railroad."

"Then why not just hang Buck when they caught him?" Jimmy asked sensibly. "Why go to all this trouble?"

Buck had sort of fallen out of the conversation, his eyes still closed, but he finally had something else to say. "Charlie Harlow wouldn't let 'em. Said a lynching wouldn't be proper so close to Christmas."

"Who wanted to lynch you?" Cody asked, lighting to that information like a hound dog on a treed coon.

"Lee had it in for me from the moment they caught me. Him and Amos both."

"How so?" Teaspoon took over the questions.

Buck inhaled heavily and then exhaled sharply, but didn't immediately explain what he meant.

"Buck?" Jimmy prompted, and Buck finally opened an eye to glare at him resentfully.

It did get him to answer though. "Amos wanted to get it over with and get home. And Lee's the one who led that skittish crowbait nag he brought out for me to ride. Did everything he could to get that horse off the ground except light dynamite under his tail."

"He do that to your face too?" Jimmy asked, tipping his hat towards the more visible of Buck's cuts and bruises which the doc had already said were human-inflicted.

Buck clammed up and turned his face away. "I said don't make me your excuse and I meant it."

"So it was Lee," Jimmy said.

"Forget it, Jimmy," Buck spoke warningly.

"No," Jimmy replied. "No, I think we deserve to know why the Glassners were so hot to get rid of you, especially when we know you were nowhere near that stable and never did match the little evidence they had."

"Jimmy-" Buck began, but Jimmy cut him off.

"Somebody needs to ask. Maybe they really believe what they're saying, but what if they don't? What if the very thing, the only thing, that got that posse together was a lie?"

"Well you ain't going to that saloon tonight to find out," Teaspoon declared.

"We ain't?" Cody asked, surprised.

"No. Buck's got it right. You two go sniffing around for trouble and the most you can do is wind up in jail along with Buck and give folks around here the wrong idea about how express riders conduct themselves. And that'll just make things worse all around."

"So what are we going to do?" Cody was desperate to be allowed to do something.

"Same thing we already were, but better informed," Teaspoon declared. "The thing to do now is sleep on it. Trial starts up again in the morning. The clearer our heads are, the better."

Especially, Teaspoon's voice said what his words didn't, with that whole posse of Charlie Harlow's in the saloon, staying up late, drinking and sure to be regretting it by tomorrow.

"You two go on," Cody suggested. "I think I'll stay here with Buck."

Buck opened an inquiring eye, but said nothing.

"And just what is it you think you're going to do?" Teaspoon asked.

"Nothin'," Cody retorted. "Deputy'll lock the door just like always and it's here I'll stay. But I don't like the things I'm thinkin' about the Glassners, and I think somebody should keep an eye on Buck. May as well be me, since I'm the one worried about it."

"May as well be," Jimmy agreed.

Teaspoon looked skeptical, but grudgingly let Cody do as he wanted. Maybe it was just he knew Cody's inability to help and his guilt were eating him up, or maybe he had the same worries but didn't want to admit as much.

Though Cody and the other Riders complained and made jokes about it, Buck actually rarely snored except after a run. Nearly every Rider did. Too much trail dust and not enough sleep, Cody reckoned. Why Buck's snoring had been picked out of all the Riders was a combination of his bunk being right next to Cody's, and his being among the first of them to go on a run, when they didn't know each other very well, and knew how express riding was even less. At this point, complaining about Buck's snoring was practically an inside joke, because every time they complained about him, they were really complaining about the collective snoring they all did.

It was only in the quiet of the jail, settled into an empty cell's cot for the night that it registered with Cody how badly Buck was still doing. In the morning, before the trial had gotten started, Doc Q had said the fever was down and nearly gone, and that Buck should be lucid enough to testify. That certainly seemed to have been the case, to such a degree that Cody hadn't considered until the evening that some of Buck's more faltering moments might not have been stage fright, but exhaustion.

But sleep robbed a man of pretense, stole his pride and stoicism and tended to leave how he felt totally exposed. Something all the Riders had had to come to terms with was the fact that, if they'd suffered nightmares or otherwise slept badly, everyone in the bunkhouse knew it. They'd developed a habit of pretending to have been deaf or dead to the world in the night, but they all knew that was just about the kindest lie any of them had ever told.

Cody might not have slept much in any case, but Buck's continual shifting around and soft, choked off cries of pain were enough to keep anybody awake. He couldn't get comfortable and it seemed whenever he got close to it, he couldn't breathe. It wasn't the first time Cody'd shared a bunk room with a sick or injured Rider, but this time was different. This time the Rider was hurt on account of him. Every time Buck turned or shifted with a disquieted groan, it cut Cody like a knife. He couldn't have felt worse about it if he'd inflicted the damage himself with his own hands.

It wasn't supposed to have been Buck's run, and Cody kept asking himself over and over if none of this would have happened had Cody taken the run as scheduled. They'd chased Buck down because he was an Indian, and thus bore a passing resemblance to the barn burner, but they probably would have let Cody alone, because that fire was the crime that had started the hunt and eventually caused them to tie all the others together by the time they'd caught up with Buck.

Even if that was wrong, and they'd've chased down any express rider on that run, it had still been Cody's run to go on, so it should be him that was hurting and trying to avoid getting a rope around his neck now. If he'd only known what this run would cost Buck… he never would've asked Buck to take it. If they hung Buck, Cody would never forgive himself for it as long as he lived.

By morning, they had both given up the idea of sleep. Cody could tell when Buck wasn't sleeping anymore because he got quiet, something he hadn't been all night. Somehow, the quiet disturbed Cody more than anything, and he sat up, wondering when the sheriff or deputy might come in and start some coffee. The jail was better insulated than sleeping outdoors, but not by much, and Cody desperately wanted something hot to chase the worst of the chill out of his bones.

Looking over at Buck in the locked cell, rolled up about as small as he could get under the provided blanket, Cody renewed his acquaintance with an old question.

"Buck?" Cody ventured, waiting for Buck to turn his head slightly to indicate he'd heard before going on. "What happened to your coat?"

Sniffing and clearing his throat to find what little of his voice the rough night had left him with, Buck replied dully. "It doesn't matter."

"You got somethin' better to talk about?" Cody asked, drawing his legs up onto the cot so he could rest his arms on them. "Like what happened between Kearney and Ditchford?"

"Let it go, Cody," Buck grumbled warningly. Then he seemed to rethink it and exhaled heavily. "I gave it to the man I found in the gully. Figured he needed it more than I did."

"Oh," Cody said, somewhat nonplussed.

He'd simply assumed those men from the posse had something to do with it. He and Jimmy had gotten into an entire brawl over it. Apparently he'd been wrong about that too, just like so many things the last few days. If not for Noah, he and Jimmy might have gotten themselves hurt or killed for nothing.

"How come you didn't mention that in court?" Cody asked after a moment.

"Same reason I didn't bring up their shooting the pinto. It's not important."

"I think it is," Cody said.

"Not to the people in that courtroom," Buck told him flatly.

"Maybe not. But it is to me."

Buck started to shake his head in bafflement, then thought better of it and rolled over so he was facing Cody in the other cell to frustratedly ask. "Why?"

A little bit embarrassed and not knowing why, Cody just shrugged a shoulder and idly plucked at a thread of his blanket. "It just is, that's all."

"Why?" Buck persisted, pushing himself up onto one elbow. "Jimmy, I understand. Ever since I've known him he's looked for trouble, and found it everywhere just so he can have a fight with it. But why does it matter to you so much what happened to me?"

"Well..." Cody found he didn't want to say, it was too hard, so instead he tried a deflection. "Because we're friends."

Buck inclined his head slightly. "Since when?"

"I dunno" Cody shrugged defensively. "I didn't know I was supposed to mark that sort of thing down."

Buck seemed to consider for a moment. "So you think we're friends?"

"Well… yeah," Cody said. Then paused as a thought struck him. "Don't you?"

"If I thought it, I wouldn't need to say it," Buck replied cryptically.

He had one of his more inscrutable expressions on, the one where you couldn't tell if he was angry, scared or about to have a laugh at your expense.

"You didn't say it," Cody observed, shifting uncomfortably under the steady gaze.

"That's right. I didn't."

Cody narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what, if anything, Buck had just told him. Finally, he just shook his head in consternation and gave it up.

"Y'know, sometimes I don't understand you."

"Now you know how the rest of us feel about you all the time," Buck said.

Suspecting insult, but not sure what or where it was, Cody asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Buck just stared back at him with that expression for several seconds, then a slight smile appeared and he took a breath that sounded like a faint attempt at a laugh, before sighing and taking on a more serious look. "What is it that you want to know?"

"Well… now you ask… I don't rightly know," Cody admitted. "Seemed awful important a minute ago when you didn't wanna talk about it. Now I… what'd they hit you for?"

For a moment, Buck's expression soured, and he looked about ready to say it didn't matter, or to ask Cody just what difference he thought it made now, or why he wanted to know. But then he recollected.

"Same reason we stick on broncs until they stop trying to throw us off."

"Broncs are a lot bigger than us, and we don't send a whole posse after them at once," Cody said.

"You didn't ask me if it was fair. You asked me why," Buck pointed out.

"Yeah, I suppose I did," Cody admitted, scratching his head idly. "I suppose what I should have asked was if they were right, I mean the way they might've seen it given what they thought you'd done. If you got to fighting 'em when you got caught and they just figured it was self defense or something like that. I guess that's what I really want to know."

"No," Buck said quietly but tensely. "No, it wasn't right."

Cody nodded, remembering well what Buck had said the night before, then sighed. "Well, I guess Jimmy an' I already got into a fight over a coat they didn't even steal. S'pose I can let this go at that." He adopted a stern expression and went on in a tone that was only half-joking. "But just this once, you understand. I've about decided I don't like it when a bunch of folks get together to beat up my friends."

"Probably a good decision," Buck told him.