"How come he won't talk to us, Teaspoon?" Cody asked almost frantically. "He was talkin' like anything yesterday when you got him started, even if he wasn't making sense."

The judge had called a break for lunch, so for the moment they were back in the jail, as it was the only place Buck was allowed to be besides the 'courtroom.' It wasn't a long way from one to the other, but Buck was pretty much all in by the time they'd made it. He resisted assistance, and they'd put up with it on the way to the saloon, but Jimmy'd had enough of Buck's being ornery and practically carried him the way back. It seemed he was right, as Buck didn't put up much of a fight about it.

Each had chipped in for his own, but Noah was the one who'd brought them lunch from the hotel because he was the most used to dealing with the locals. Buck hadn't paid the slightest attention to his share, just laid down on his cot and shut his eyes, like he didn't have the energy for anything.

They'd left him alone in there and were conversing in the sheriff's office. The sheriff and deputy, after being sure Buck was locked up securely, had gone for lunch.

"I don't rightly know, Cody," Teaspoon said, mopping the gravy off his plate with a biscuit.

"Well, he's gonna have to talk sometime," Jimmy said, scraping up a mouthful of lumpy potatoes before adding around them. "Sooner or later, they'll want him on the stand."

"Don't mean he's got to say anythin'," Teaspoon observed.

"Why wouldn't he?" Cody asked, nearly dropping his fork. "Ain't nobody that knows what rightly happened except him. If he doesn't tell us the real story, how's anyone gonna know?"

"I'm not sure he believes it matters," Teaspoon replied.

"Could be he's right," Jimmy mused thoughtfully, elaborating when Cody gave him an accusatory look. "What I mean is, we all believe he's innocent already. But everybody else in this town had him hung the moment they laid eyes on him. What he's got to say about it won't make much difference."

"The truth always makes a difference, Jimmy. Ain't you learned that yet?" Teaspoon asked.

"But what difference could it make, Teaspoon?" Jimmy wanted to know. "Nobody in that courtroom will believe him except us and maybe Noah here."

"You don't know that," Teaspoon said firmly. "You can't know it. And neither can he. But he sure won't convince them of anything if he doesn't tell his side of things."

"Even I'm not convinced yet," Noah admitted, remembering what Jimmy had said about an unbiased view and so venturing to have confidence in saying it. "Some of the things those witnesses said were pretty convincing unless someone can tell me what I missed."

"What you missed is Buck wears boots and doesn't carry arrows," Cody spat. "What you missed is that Mr. Ellis lost his daughter and seemed to just stop caring about anything after that. What you missed is that the closest thing to an eyewitness is a man taking the word from somebody he found half-dead and delirious on the trail. The only facts anybody seems to have is Buck was where these things happened, maybe not even when they happened."

"Okay, okay," Noah said, raising an open hand. "You're right. But you've got to admit that it's an awful string of coincidences otherwise, that there'd be so much trouble right along his route, right at the time he was riding through."

"And how much trouble went on everywhere Buck wasn't?" Jimmy asked harshly. "Just because he was there, it don't mean he was the cause."

"No," Teaspoon drawled slowly. "But Noah's got a point."

"Teaspoon!" Cody objected in scandalized tone.

"Now don't get your britches all twisted up," Teaspoon soothed him. "I ain't sayin' Buck's done anything. For the record, I don't believe he did, and never did. But that don't mean Noah ain't right to have some amount of reasonable doubt."

"Oh, come on," it was Jimmy that protested this time.

"To anybody that don't know Buck, and don't know expressin' like we do, it looks like there's a lot more questions to be asked. And we can't fault 'em for the askin'."

Jimmy had finished eating first, and gone back to Buck's cell to menace him with food.

Since Buck had showed no interest in anything solid, Jimmy had come bearing broth, though this time it was in a mug where the day before Buck had been so out of it that Jimmy'd had to spoon feed him. He wasn't sure Buck remembered that, and figured it'd be better if he didn't. No man liked to remember being that helpless.

Buck made some small move to try and sit up after the deputy had let Jimmy in, so he put a hand under Buck's shoulder and pushed him upright until he was able to lean against the wall behind the cot without a word. He couldn't tell if Buck looked grateful or offended. It was hard enough to read Buck on a good day, but now his face was lined with pain and stress, it was hard to see much else in his expression. Except maybe fear, but Jimmy wasn't going to remark on that.

Jimmy offered Buck the warm mug of broth, but Buck merely stared at it as if it were a rattlesnake, and refused to take it. Jimmy shrugged and sat himself down on the floor, sheltering the mug close to keep it warm in case Buck should change his mind.

"Teaspoon says you don't want to talk because you think it won't make a difference," Jimmy mused aloud. "But me, I'm thinking different. See, I'm thinkin' you're scared."

He'd expected that to get a rise out of Buck, but instead he got a hurt look on his face that couldn't have been greater if Jimmy had taken a crack at him with that whip of Noah's. Jimmy wasn't prepared for that. Anger, yes. Offense, sure. But the pained expression? That he didn't understand.

But he plunged on with his rationale, looking at the floor because it was easier than tolerating the wounded look in Buck's dark eyes. "The way I have it figured, you think the only things you could say would make it look worse for you. I couldn't figure why that'd bother you at first, but then I realized… it's because of us, isn't it? You're afraid to say what happened, because you think it'll make us doubt you. That hanging posse you can take, and the citizens of Ditchford. But if we start lookin' at you like you did something..." Jimmy nodded quietly to himself. "It's what his friends think and say about him that can really hurt a man, more'n anybody else ever could even if they hung him."

Jimmy paused, and looked up at Buck.

"Am I wrong, Buck?"

Now there was a slight element of what Jimmy thought might be anger in Buck's steady gaze, but he still didn't say anything, and Jimmy decided this was getting him nowhere.

"I ain't like Ike, Buck," Jimmy said. "I can't read your thoughts unless you say 'em."

Clenching his jaw, Buck looked to be struggling with something, but apparently it got the best of him, because he finally just tilted his head towards the broth Jimmy was holding. Changing the subject. Jimmy gave it to him, even though they both knew he didn't want it, he just didn't want to address what Jimmy had said for some reason or another. Selling the excuse, Buck actually took a sip of the broth, and that seemed to unlock him some, which Jimmy figured might be more important after all than talking. At least for now. Once they put him on the stand and asked him to talk though…

"Look, Buck," Jimmy sighed finally, at a loss for what else to say. "People say a lot of things, tell a lot of stories that aren't true. You can no more stop 'em from telling the stories than you can stop other people from believing them. Believe me, I've tried." Jimmy paused, gathering his thoughts. "But, I think I've learned this: if you tell the truth enough times… some people will believe it, and that's worth all the rest."

Buck narrowed his eyes and set the mug aside. "I did not ask for your help."

"That's the thing about friends," Jimmy said, with a half-smile. "You don't gotta ask."

"Friends?" Buck repeated. "Teaspoon is here for obligation, because I'm one of his Riders. And Cody… I don't know why, there's guilt in his eyes every time he looks at me. There is nothing I could say that would absolve them of it, or change the minds of the people in that courtroom. But there's a lot I could say that would bring satisfaction to the men who brought me in. They will hang me regardless, but that is all they will get from me."

"What about me then?" Jimmy asked. "What am I doing here?"

"The same thing you're always doing when you smell blood," Buck suggested.

"I'm gonna let that slide, 'cause you're too hurt to fight and I know you don't mean that," Jimmy told him.

"I thought you said you couldn't read minds," Buck challenged, but there was just a trace of a wisp of a ghost of his occasional sense of humor in his eyes.

"Maybe I'm developing a new talent," Jimmy replied, leaning into the brush of levity in the hopes of livening Buck up a little so he'd finish that broth and have a bit more strength on the stand.

Buck didn't seem to react for a moment, then he picked up the mug of broth and drank some more of it.

"So," Jimmy ventured. "You wanna tell us what really happened on your run, or are you going to wait to say it in that wet court they have down the street?"

Sighing frustratedly, Buck said, "There's nothing to tell that's going to change anything. I was everywhere they said I was, and then some."

"But you didn't do anything wrong. Heck, they've half admitted it already."

"And yet you could see the verdict of 'guilty' in the eyes of that jury."

"Because everyone they've heard says you are," Jimmy exclaimed, standing up impatiently. "Right now they're in a room full of whiskey and echoes. Nobody's given them a reason to look for the truth in the lies because nobody has even suggested there are any lies."

Leaning back against the wall, Buck just stared at him rather bitterly. "And you think they'll hear anything I have to say? Some half-breed against a sea of white men?"

"Oh come off it, Buck," Jimmy snarled. "That's just an excuse not to fight and you know it."

"Is it?" Buck asked.

"You're painting that whole courtroom just the way you say they've painted you. Because of that Lee and a few others, and a few careless remarks, you're ready to just pack it in, say everyone's all decided on account of you bein' Kiowa. Teaspoon said nothing was fair in this town because everyone thinks in terms of Them and Us. Well… well that's how you're thinkin'. Just like that sea of white men."

He didn't wait to see how Buck reacted, turning and banging past the deputy watching from the doorway before he could break. He'd been just as harsh as he could think of to be, but he'd done it to be kind, to try and get through to Buck that he had to fight back, but fight back the right way.

Maybe it wouldn't make any difference, just like Buck said, but Jimmy couldn't let himself believe that. If he believed that, it meant he might as well accept Buck was dead already. And he couldn't do that.

"What happened?" Cody asked, seeing the look on Jimmy's face.

"Nothin'," Jimmy spat, and left the sheriff's office to go clear his head.

It didn't seem hardly fair to make Buck get up on the stand all by himself when he could barely move. Seemed even less fair to make him sit up there, facing the men who'd do anything to see him dead, and tell him to justify himself in front of him when they'd all decided already that he was just a liar, especially when Cody was sure Buck had only been doing his job. Or Cody's job, actually.

Buck moved slow, trying to hide the pain movement caused him, and when he sat in the chair alongside the judge's table, he spent a solid twenty seconds with his head down and eyes closed before he was finally able to be sworn in. For the first time, Cody thought that seemed unfair too. After all, Buck didn't hold with the Christian God, so what was the use in having him put his hand on the Bible and swear by it to tell the truth? He couldn't consider that a binding contract, instead it had to feel like an insult to his honor to put a God he didn't believe in above his own word.

Yet Buck took it, even seemed to take it serious like. It hadn't occurred to Cody that the value those in the courtroom placed on the Good Book had its own weight and power. Buck's respect for the Bible was founded on the strength of the conviction of those who did believe in it, not his own faith. It was a sacred thing in the world he walked, and deserved to be treated as such.

The judge had Teaspoon start the questioning process, ensuring the defendant had the best chance of having a fair say without interruption or heckling, at least for the first go around with the story. That is, if they could get anything out of him. Buck was barely audible when he was sworn in, and when Teaspoon asked him to begin his story with the morning he left Sweetwater, Buck just sort of stared around at everybody. Cody would never be able to understand Buck's aversion to being the center of attention, but he'd always been aware of it. Now, for maybe the first time, Cody realized it scared Buck. Too many people, all looking at him, waiting for him to speak.

As the dime store novels Cody was so fond of would have it, Buck could whip his weight in tigers. He'd sit on the back of the fiercest bronc, face the wildest cat in the wilderness, enter a gunfight right alongside the other Riders even with the odds against them. But this… Teaspoon asked him to start and all Buck did was stare like a coyote caught in a trap for the longest time.

When the judge cleared his throat impatiently, Teaspoon prompted Buck a second time to tell what had happened. Again, Buck just stared around. The judge's patience was wearing out by then, and so everyone in the room. Cody was pretty sure the saloon matron's promise of whiskey was the only thing holding their tongues. Then Buck's eyes settled on Jimmy, who'd spent all that time staring right back at him. For some reason, that seemed to light a fire in him. Buck looked at the floor a minute, took a shaky breath, and started the story from the beginning.

Hesitant at first, but gradually finding his legs in the story, Buck described (albeit rather dully, without the spice Cody thought it needed) his run.