DARKEST HOURS
by Estevana Rey <mgnfcntsvn@aol.com>

Note: This story was written for Tiffiny as a result of the 1999 fan
fic auction sponsored by the M7 fic list. Much of the credit for the
good ideas in it belong to her, and she also gets the blame for Vin,
Ezra and JD all having to suffer in just one story.

Thanx: To the Dirty Dozen and the Bad AOeLement chat group for their
continuing encouragement and inspiration; to my beta readers, Barb G.
and Bonnie, for their helpful suggestions and boo-boo finding; and to
Amanda, who refused to stop bugging me until it was finished!

Warning: Gets kind of gross and yucky in parts.
_________________________________________

ONE

Funny how you thought you knew people.

Chris Larabee stared wearily through the gap in the closed curtains
down at the crowd below.

They had demanded that the windows be shut, the place sealed up
tight, but it was too damned hot. There was no way he'd allow Vin to
endure any more misery than he had to. You'd do as much for a dog.
Hell, you'd do more for a dog. You'd put a dog down so it didn't
suffer...

Nathan had tried to soften the blow as best he could, but Chris knew
Vin was dying. They'd probably lose JD and Ezra before it was over,
too. Nobody wanted it to happen, including the mob outside, most of
whom had been decent enough folks up until the last day or so.

But what you wanted and what happened were hardly ever the same
thing, were they?

*Why was that?* Chris wondered.

Why did living *and* dying both have to hurt?

He caught Mary Travis's eyes through the open window. She stared
back at him, only the barest trace of sympathy in her gaze. The rest
of her stare was hard steel. She was on the other side now.

He didn't blame her. She had Billy to think of, and he understood
that. He hoped she could understand why his loyalties had to lie
elsewhere, this time.

But if she didn't, he didn't care. It wouldn't change anything one
way or another.

They wanted to torch the place, those good townspeople gathered out
there in the street. As if flame would purge their fear. Maybe it
would.

"You reckon to burn us all alive?" Chris said, deliberately catching
Mary's eyes.

The thought would have scared most other men, but not Chris Larabee.
To him, it would be a fitting way to die. But he feared for the
others, the ones who had no choice.

"We want you out of town," Hank Conklin looked up, his face pinched
with righteous indignation. "We have to think of our wives, our
families."

"And yourselves," Chris added.

Conklin just stared.

"Might as well set them torches," Chris told the crowd. "We ain't
goin' nowhere."

"Chris..." Mary began gently, "Be reasonable."

"I ain't a reasonable man, Mary," he said, his eyes betraying no
emotion. "We can't move 'em. They'll die."

"They'll die, anyway," Conklin barked.

A stifled shriek escaped from a small figure in the crowd. *Casey.*
She made a move towards the building, but Nettie grabbed her and held
her back. This had to be tough on her, poor kid. JD, too. He'd asked
for her, at first, when he was still able to understand that she
wasn't there. They'd promised him she'd be there soon. No point in
telling him he'd never see her again.

Larabee leveled his gaze at Conklin. "Maybe so," he said. "But
they're gonna go as easy as they can. We ain't leavin'."

A gust of wind caught the yellow banner that hung conspicuously from
the front of the building, obstructing his view.

Just a plain yellow square of cloth. There was no writing on it, but
still, it told its story in words no one wanted to hear. 

Quarantine...

Plague...

Death.


TWO
*Five days earlier...*

They hadn't found out anything the first time they'd ridden into
Eagle Bend and now they were back without much hope for success the
second time. The trail had gotten that far and then had gone cold. It
was as if Warren Spriggs had ridden into the town and then been
swallowed up by it.

Not that they got all that much cooperation when they had asked
about him. Feelings between Eagle Bend and Four Corners had gotten
chafed because of Obediah Jackson's trial, and every man in Eagle
Bend knew who they were. If they didn't know their names, they knew
their faces, or at least their reputations - they were part of the
peacekeeping force in Four Corners - the seven men who had taken on
their entire town, and then rubbed salt in the wounds by winning.

They got more dirty looks than they got information.

No one had wanted to come here, but Vin hadn't been given a choice.
He was the one best able to  track down Spriggs. The outlaw had
slipped right through their fingers when he'd passed through Four
Corners, unnoticed. It was only by chance that JD happened to see him
on a wanted poster two days after he was long gone. JD felt that gave
him a personal stake in the matter, so he'd announced he was going
with Vin. The other five had drawn straws to see who would accompany
them both and make sure JD didn't drive the quiet tracker crazy, and
Ezra's luck had picked that time to run out.

Between the three of them, they had found out exactly nothing.

Vin was in a bad mood. He wasn't used to failure, but they had
worked a spiral path away from the town for 15 miles in an attempt to
pick up a trail with no luck. Either Spriggs was one crafty
sonofabitch, or he was still holed up in Eagle Bend.

Reluctantly, they rode back into the unfriendly town. Just because
the people of Eagle Bend didn't like the Four Corners peacekeepers,
it didn't mean they'd open their arms to a vicious outlaw just to
spite them. If Spriggs was hiding out there, it wouldn't be for long.

Ezra was hoping they wouldn't get a cold stare when they tried to
find a place to sleep that night. Camping out under the open stars
had about as much appeal to him as sleeping in a barn, both of which
he had done during the past two nights.

But this time when they rode into Eagle Bend, they didn't attract
any attention at all. A crowd had gathered at the rear of the local
feed store, in the large shed where the grain was stored. People were
milling about with disgusted looks on their faces, holding their
noses or batting away the foul odor that emanated from the building.

"Smells like something died in there," JD commented.

The three of them dismounted and edged their way through the crowd
to take a look.

"Well, guess we know now he didn't leave town," Ezra said when he
saw the body tucked among the sacks of grain. Beside it were two
saddle bags with the initials "W.S." tooled into the leather.

"You think it's Spriggs?" Vin frowned.

Ezra picked up the saddle bags. "Those are his initials," he pointed
to the letters.

Vin cleared his throat. "Uh... yeah..." He walked closer to the
body. It was easy to do. Everyone else was keeping their distance.
Spriggs didn't really smell that bad, not yet, but he was a
frightening sight. His tongue had swelled and protruded from his
mouth. The organ was black as tar, as were his lips and fingernails.
He looked like he'd been strangled, but there was no sign of foul
play, save for the sack of goobers beside him that had been slit
open. The outlaw still clutched a handful of the nuts.

Ira Pinsette, Eagle Bend's "doctor," made his way to the body. The
man didn't have a medical degree. He was a snake-oil peddler. He
claimed to have learned his healing skills during his travels in
Europe and the Orient, but Ezra doubted he'd ever been east of the
Mississippi. As a healer, he had no doubt the man didn't hold a
candle to Nathan Jackson, and as a con man, his skills were beneath
contempt.

Nevertheless, the man drew himself up after examining the body, and
in a solemn and authoritative voice turned to Sheriff Staynes and
said "Get these people away from here."

"What is it, doc?

"I've seen this when I was in India," he intoned. "It's plague."

"What?" Staynes asked, as if he'd never heard the word.

"During the Middle Ages it was called the Black Death. It spares no
victim and can move like a brush fire."

The sheriff's face paled.

Vin snorted and nudged Sprigg's folded hand with the toe of his
boot. "Like as not, he died from this." The goobers rolled out onto
the floorboards. The little round nuts didn't bother most people, and
they were tasty enough, but Vin had eaten them once and that was
enough to know he'd never go near them again. "They're like poison to
some folks. They can make your throat tighten up so you can't get no
air. Reckon he ate one too many of 'em."

The "doctor" looked at him scornfully. "Are you a physician?"

"No, and you ain't either," Vin said. "This feller didn't die from
no Black Death."

But the sheriff wasn't hearing Vin. He immediately began to scatter
the gathered crowd.

JD picked up one of the peanuts. He wasn't convinced Vin was right.
"Ezra, is there such a thing as Black Death?"

Ezra looked uncertainly at Spriggs. "Yes, JD, there is, but I've
never heard of it anywhere but in history books... I think Mr. Tanner
is correct in his assessment that our outlaw here was asphyxiated."

JD picked up Spriggs' hat to cover the corpse's face, and then let
out a little yelp of surprise as a dozen mice scurried out from under
it in all directions.

There were droppings everywhere, on the floor, and on the sacks of
grain, so it shouldn't have taken him off guard, but being that close
to a corpse had made him jumpy.

He looked at Vin sheepishly, but Vin wasn't laughing.

"Deer mice," the tracker said, frowning.

"Mr. Tanner?" Ezra looked at him.

"If the Navaho find a deer mouse in their hogan, they burn it to the
ground," he said. "Their medicine says they're a bad omen."

"Well," JD dropped the hat on Spriggs' face. "They sure didn't bring
him any luck."

THREE

With Spriggs found dead and Eagle Bend claiming the bounty on him,
the three men had no reason to stay in Eagle Bend, so instead of
staying the night, they decided to head for home.

As they approached Four Corners, Vin stopped to get a better look at
something in the distance that Ezra and JD couldn't even see. The man
had phenomenal eyesight, and between that and his spyglass, not much
got past him unnoticed.

"What is it?" Ezra asked as Vin squinted thoughtfully through the
instrument.

"Ain't sure what to make of it," he said and handed the spyglass to
Ezra.

With the aid of the special lens, Ezra was able to see what had
gotten Vin's attention. A group of men from the town were gathered in
the road ahead, and they appeared to be arguing with two men on
horseback. JD, Vin and Ezra had seen the two men in Eagle Bend. They
were just a couple of cowpokes looking for work, not out to make
trouble for anyone. But even without hearing the words that were
being exchanged, Ezra could tell they were heated.

He handed the spyglass to JD. "Looks like they're arguin' about
somethin'," the kid stated the obvious. "They're turnin' those fellas
away from the town."

Vin took the spyglass from him to make sure. "He's right," he told
Ezra.

"What do you think is going on?"

"Don't rightly know," Vin said, lowering the spyglass. "But I think
maybe we better cut our own trail back to town."

"They wouldn't keep us out," JD said.

"Maybe not," Vin answered. "But somethin's up, and I'd just as soon
not take that chance until I find out what it is."

Ezra reluctantly agreed. Cutting across virgin terrain would no
doubt be unpleasantly rugged and would take longer.

He was right on both counts.

It was nightfall before they reached town. Luckily, at that hour, no
one was out and about to notice that they had entered from a
direction where there was no road.

The hostler, Yosemite, however, did ask them where they'd ridden in
from. His curiosity wasn't anything unusual - the man liked to make
small talk - but his reaction when JD answered "Eagle Bend" was.

He literally backed away from them, and then said "How'd you get
around the blockade?"

"What blockade?" Vin asked, even though he figured Yosemite was
referring to what he had seen through his spyglass.

"They got plague in Eagle Bend," Yosemite said. "Doc Pinsette there
sent word to Mrs. Travis so's she could put it in the newspaper."

Ezra rolled his eyes. "I see Eagle Bend's paltry excuse for a
physician will stop at no bounds to make a name for himself." He
dusted off his jacket, even though it was beyond hope.

"It came over the telegraph," Yosemite continued. "Folks droppin'
like flies o' what they call the 'Black Death'."

Vin looked at Ezra, who frowned. "They got folks down sick?"

"Almost the whole town, I hear tell. Mr. Conklin ordered the
barricade. Said no one from Eagle Bend gets into this town. We don't
want their plague here." He looked at the three somewhat
apologetically. "They weren't supposed to let you in. They turned
Mrs. Cumpsty away, and she was just over there visitin' her sister.
Made her ride all the way back."

"Where was Chris and the others when all this was goin' on?" Vin
asked.

"He said he was gonna wire Eagle Bend to see if you were there,
maybe find out what was goin' on. He wasn't expectin' y'all back so
soon."

Vin tossed the hostler two bits. "See to the horses..." He looked at
JD and Ezra. "We need to talk to the others."

Yosemite caught Vin's coin reflexively, but quickly set it down and
wiped his hand on his pants.

FOUR

Chris usually waited for Vin to come and sit by him, but as soon as
the young tracker was through the saloon door, the gunfighter got up
to meet him and ushered him back outside so he could speak to him
privately.

Ezra had headed to his room to clean up before socializing, and JD
had gone looking for Buck. It was just as well, since Vin preferred
talking to Chris one-to-one.

The untamed trail they'd ridden home must have been rougher than it
looked, Vin realized as he stood there waiting for Chris to say what
was on his mind. He was so tired his bones ached, and he wanted to
sit down, or better yet, crawl into his wagon and go to sleep.

"Looks like you went an' let this town go to hell while I was gone,
cowboy," he teased Chris with an easy smile.

Chris let the corners of his mouth turn up slightly, but he said,
"People are scared."

"There ain't no plague in Eagle Bend, Chris. That piss-poor excuse
for a sawbones they got there was just tryin' to make folks think he
knew somethin'." He went on to tell Chris his opinion of how Spriggs
had died.

"You saw the body?"

Vin nodded. "It was black, but that happens. You know that. It don't
mean he had this 'Black Death' thing."

"What about the other folks? Last telegram said there were a dozen
folks down with some kind of fever."

"Don't know nothin' about that," Vin admitted. "No one looked sick
when we were there."

"Doc Pinsette seems pretty sure."

"The man ain't no doctor, Chris, and what the hell is he doin'
sendin' telegrams to this town?"

"He wanted to be sure we kept you out," Chris smiled. "Says you
could be carryin' it."

"Sounds personal to me," Vin yawned and then clapped Chris on the
shoulder. "Let Conklin an' the others make fools outa themselves if
they want to. It'll all blow over in a day or two."

Chris knew Vin was right. Conklin's idea to isolate the town would
run out of steam when people started getting bored with maintaining
the road blocks.

"Buy you some supper?" he asked the tracker.

Vin thought it over, but then shook his head. "I think I'll get some
sleep."

"Kinda early for that, even for you," Chris noted. Vin was usually
awake well before dawn, but he was also usually the first one to fade
out at night. Still, it was barely sundown.

Vin just shrugged. "Been a long day."

Chris nodded. "See you in the mornin', then."

He headed for the hotel, hoping to find Buck. He hadn't admitted it
to Vin, but he wasn't one hundred percent opposed to Conklin's
actions. He'd lived through a cholera epidemic, spared only by the
grace of whatever God watched over him. He knew how a fever could
take a town off the map. Just the same, talk of plague and "Black
Death" and who knew what else that was over-exaggerated or simply
wasn't even true would only cause unnecessary panic and maybe get
someone hurt.

He stopped by the newspaper office first. Mary was up to her elbows
in ink, working with that single-minded determination that had
enabled the young widow to make a moderate success of the Clarion.

He picked up one of her proofs. The plague outbreak in Eagle Bend
was the headline.

"You aren't going to print this," he told her, not leaving the
subject open for debate.

She bristled. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's not true. Vin just came from Eagle Bend. He says there ain't
no plague."

"I mean no offense," Mary said firmly, "but Vin Tanner hasn't any
medical training of which I am aware."

Chris only stared at her, so she continued, "Besides, I only said
plague is suspected."

"Folks ain't gonna read the 'suspected' part, Mary. You're playin'
with fire printin' this."

She took the proof from him. "It's news, Mr. Larabee. You are
playing with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution if
you try and stop me."

Chris glared at her, then tipped his hat. There was no point trying
to change Mary Travis's mind. She was a smart gal - probably one of
the smartest people he knew - but she had a stubborn streak to her
that he almost admired, even when he disagreed with her.

He found Buck at the hotel. Ezra and JD were there, too, Ezra
looking like he'd just stepped out of the bath, which he probably had.

Buck and JD were eating. Maude had been back in town for the past
two weeks, and she had just invited Ezra to sit down to a game of
poker with four complete, unsuspecting strangers. No doubt mother and
son would cheat the newcomers out of everything they had, and then
Maude would take Ezra's share from him or vice-versa.

He pulled up a chair and sat with Buck and JD.

"Vin said there ain't no plague in Eagle Bend," he told Buck.

"Last word on that came from Sheriff Staynes hisself," Buck pointed
out. "You think they'd make something like that up just to start
trouble for us?"

"We ain't got no trouble unless we let it get outa hand." He turned
to JD, who was staring at his plate and looking as though he felt
left out of the older men's conversation. "You see Spriggs' body,
kid?" Chris asked him.

JD shuddered. "Yeah. Wasn't a pretty sight, Chris." He looked up at
Buck with worried expression. "He was all black and swelled up... Is
that what this Black Death does to someone?"

"Hell if I know," Buck shrugged him off. "I ain't never heard of it."

That wasn't what the kid wanted to hear, Chris could tell. He wanted
reassurance.

"Nathan is sending telegrams to some real docs asking about it," he
explained. "Meantime, ain't nothin' we can do about it."

"'cept keep folks from comin' here from Eagle Bend," Buck said. He
was in favor of the blockade. He'd made that clear early on.

Chris nodded. "Much as I hate to agree with Conklin, I reckon we
need to back him on this until we know what we're dealin' with."

Chris left to go find out if the healer had received any responses
to his inquiries. He wasn't optimistic. There weren't that many
trained doctors near enough for Nathan to know them by name. He was
having to wire towns at random and ask if they had a physician, and
then ask if the physician could and would take the time to answer his
questions. Nathan's reputation also worked against him - some doctors
knew who he was and were reluctant to offer advice to a colored man
with no formal medical training, no matter how skilled he was.

FIVE

Buck looked across the table at JD. For his small size, JD usually
had a healthy appetite, but he'd hardly touched his food.

"You ain't eatin' kid. I thought you was hungry?"

JD rubbed his forehead "I thought I was, too, but it just ain't
sittin' well."

"Too much talk about swollen up corpses don't do much for a man's
appetite, I reckon," Buck laughed.

In the corner of the room, Maude was making a fuss about something.
She got up from her table in a huff and stormed out of the place
muttering something about Ezra being stupid.

Ezra looked like he wanted to follow her, but then he thought better
of it and joined them instead.

Buck took a swallow from his beer mug. "What was that all about?"

Ezra shrugged. He looked mildly hurt by whatever Maude had said to
him, but he grinned genially as he shuffled his ever-present deck of
cards. "Mother has no tolerance for anything less than perfection
when it comes to me," he said. "Seems my game is a bit off tonight."

"So what happened, you get caught cheating?" JD asked.

"Worse, I lost fair and square." He sighed, "My mind wasn't on the
game. Three days of communing with the elements have taken their
toll, I fear." He cleared his throat, which brought on a coughing
spell.

Buck passed him his beer. "You okay?" he asked him.

Ezra assured him that he was and then started dealing the cards.
They played a friendly game for an hour or so, until JD started
nodding off. Buck considered suggesting that the kid go crawl into
his bed. He looked done in. But, it wasn't yet 7 o'clock and he
didn't think JD would even begin to consider the idea.

It was Ezra who suggested they call it a night. Strange as it
seemed, Buck had actually bested the gambler by that time, and was
gloating over a tidy pile of Ezra's cash. "As mother would say, it's
not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose, and I don't
intend to lose another hand to you rank amateurs," Ezra said, picking
up his cards.

Buck gathered his winnings. "Nice playin' with you, too, Ezra," he
laughed as the gambler left the table.

As he tucked the small bundle of cash into his poke, JD put his head
down on the table. Buck reached across and tossled his hair. "You
tired, kid?"

JD looked up. "Buck..."

"Yeah, kid?"

JD closed his eyes and shook his head. "Never mind... I'm goin' to
bed. I am sorta tired."

Buck followed him. Their rooms were side-by-side at the boarding
house, anyway, and he figured it might be a good idea to stow the
cash he'd won from Ezra so he wasn't tempted to spend it all in one
night.

He was tucking the bills into an extra pair of socks when he heard
something hit the floor hard in JD's room.

"JD, you make more damn noise than a herd of stampeding cattle with
their tails on fire," he called out.

He expected some kind of snot-nosed remark in return, but JD didn't
answer him. "JD?"

He opened the door that separated the two rooms to find the kid
trying to pick himself up off the floor.

He went to him and pulled him the rest of the way to his feet. "What
happened kid? Did you fall?"

JD had already taken his jacket and vest off, and he started
unbuttoning his shirt with shaky fingers. "I dunno. I think I passed
out."

"You think? Don't you know?" Buck said curtly, attempting to keep
any concern out of his voice. JD hated being babied.

"Well, I ain't never just passed out before, so how would I know?"
JD shot back.

He sat down on the bed to pull his shoes off, but his hands were
trembling so bad that it was hard for him to do.

Buck pushed him down on the bed and pulled his shoes off for him. He
then had JD unfasten his pants so he could slide those off of him, too.

JD pulled his blankets up around himself while Buck piled his
clothes on a chair.

When he was done, Buck sat down on the bed next to JD and put a hand
on the boy's forehead. He wasn't burning up, but he definitely felt
too warm.

JD looked up at him with fear in his dark eyes and said what they
both already knew. "Buck, I don't feel good. I think I'm sick."

SIX

Buck found Nathan at the telegraph office, checking to see if
anyone, anywhere, had bothered to respond to him. He needed to find
out what he was dealing with should the sickness in Eagle Bend reach
Four Corners.

It was hard for Buck to keep his voice calm and even. "We got a
problem, Nathan."

The healer looked up from his cables. "What?" But Buck sensed he
somehow already knew.

"The kid's sick."

If Nathan hadn't heard the fear in the big man's voice, he would
have seen it in his eyes. JD meant a lot to Buck. To all of them,
really, but especially to Buck. He tucked the telegrams in his
pocket. "Let's go," he nodded for Buck to lead the way.

JD looked up at them when they entered the room, but he didn't say a
word, which was unusual for him.

Nathan sat on the bed at his side and felt his forehead with his
large, practiced hand.

"Well, you got you a fever," he told him. "How do you feel otherwise?"

JD shrugged.

"He passed out a few minutes ago," Buck said.

Nathan frowned. "What happened?" he asked JD.

"I dunno," the boy shrugged again. "I just got all weak and dizzy
all of a sudden. I thought I was gonna throw up, but the next thing I
knew, I was on the floor... My head hurts."

"It hurts because you banged it, or it just hurts?" Nathan asked,
checking the boy's head for some sign of injury.

"I got a headache. Had it all night, but it's gettin' worse."

Nathan made him open his mouth, but if that told him anything, he
didn't let on.

You still feel like upchuckin'?" Nathan asked.

JD nodded.

Nathan fetched the washbasin from the bureau and set it beside the
bed, just in case.

JD looked at Buck. "Do I got it, Buck? That Black Death thing?"

"Hell, no, JD," Buck scoffed convincingly. "You prob'ly ain't got no
more than a cold. Right Nathan?"

Nathan didn't like to lie to his patients, but sometimes, it was
best not to divulge the entire truth, especially when you didn't know
what the truth was.

"You don't seem too sick," he said to JD. "You just get some rest,
okay?"

"Okay," JD nodded.

"You want anything, kid?" Buck asked him.

JD shook his head wearily. Buck followed Nathan into the hallway.

The healer looked uncharacteristically grim. "I don't like this
Buck. Whatever is going around Eagle Bend, it's a killer." He handed
Buck a telegram from Ira Pinsette confirming that two people in the
neighboring town had died.

"You think it's plague, Nathan?"

Nathan shook his head. "I ain't never seen plague, Buck. I wouldn't
know what to look for." He pulled the rest of the telegrams out of
his pocket. "I need to find a doctor who is willing to do the
research for me, but all they wanna know is what right I got to even
be askin'."

Buck bristled. "Surely there has to be someone..."

"Buck, ain't nobody in the big city cares about a little town like
this, and there ain't many doctors anywhere that will talk to a
healer who ain't got no formal schoolin'."

Nathan didn't have to add, *especially when he's an ex-slave.* Buck
knew the score. Nathan had to fight twice as hard to get half the
respect that a charlatan like Ira Pinsette earned with nothing more
than a line of bullshit.

Buck nodded towards the telegrams. "What's gonna happen to him?"

Nathan shook his head. "According to Pinsette, this thing hits fast
and hard..." He looked Buck in the eye. As much as he hated to say
the words, he knew Buck could handle the harsh truth. "Buck, JD could
be dead by this time tomorrow."

SEVEN

Ezra didn't know what bothered him more, the nagging ache in his
chest or the fact that two people in a row that night had beaten him
at his own game. He hadn't let Buck win, and heaven knew he never
would have let a complete stranger take his money under even the most
dire of circumstances - unless it was somehow to his advantage.

What the hell was wrong with him? Try as he might to keep it there,
his mind just hadn't been on the cards, and they felt awkward in his
hands somehow. Maude was right to have called him stupid.

Even so, the fact that it was the truth didn't take the sting out of
her words.

It never did.

It was much too early to be retiring for the night, but he could no
longer deny the fact that he was feeling a bit less than his best.
His chest hurt, and he couldn't remember if that had started before
or after the coughing fit at the saloon. Truth be told, he didn't
clearly remember most of what he had done that evening, which was
strange and decidedly a bit frightening.

He removed the ever-present flask from the pocket of his vest. Maybe
it's time to give it up, he thought, as he opened it and took a
generous swallow.

He wondered where he'd left his nightshirt.

He looked for it in the obvious places, and, not finding it, simply
gave up and crawled into bed in his underclothes.

Normally, he would have taken the room apart looking for it because
he hated to lose or misplace anything. Ever since he was a child,
he'd taken a certain perverse delight in keeping close track of his
material possessions. It was one reason that, even though no one knew
it, he could easily buy half the town of Four Corners if he wanted to.

There was a distinctive tap on the door, and Ezra groaned. "What is
it, mother?"

Maude didn't wait for an invitation. Somehow, somewhere, she'd
gotten a key and when he didn't open the door, she let herself in.

Ezra pulled his blankets up, "Mother, I'm not dressed."

"And I'm your mama, darlin'. You've got no secrets from me..." She
dropped a small, red leather pouch on the bed. "I took the liberty of
getting your money back from those itinerant poltroons. They were
hardly a challenge."

She was mocking him, and he knew it, but he just didn't feel up to
playing her game. "Thank you."

He realized Maude was expecting him to be a bit more confrontational
when a frown creased her forehead. "Ezra, darlin', are you all right?"

"Your maternal concern overwhelms me."

"Now, there is no reason to be peckish," she huffed.

"I feel like shit."

She bent over the bed and felt his forehead, suddenly dropping the
charming and genteel facade that she wore like a cloak. "Ezra, you
were in Eagle Bend..." she said softly.

"Yes, mother, I was, and I fear that the mantle of pestilence is
upon me as a result."

"This isn't funny, son. People are dying there."

"Well mother," he coughed. "It looks like people might be dying here
before much longer, because I am definitely unwell."

"I'll go get Nathan."

"No. There's nothing he can do."

"Don't be a martyr, Ezra. It doesn't become you," she scolded, but
he actually thought he detected a hint of fear in her voice.

The woman was just full of surprises.

He let his head drop back against the pillow. "They are saying it's
plague, mother. Do you know what that means?"

"Of course I do," she said, "but that's nonsense. There's no plague
in this day and age."

A blinding stab of pain shot through his head, and Ezra sucked in
his breath.

"What is it, darlin'?" Maude asked him.

As quickly as it had come upon him, it began to fade, but it left a
dull throbbing in its wake, and his vision began to fade out.

He didn't think he was losing consciousness, but when he looked up
at Maude, he could barely make out her face. Blotches of bright white
space obscured his field of vision.

She seemed to realize that he couldn't actually see her and there
was an edge of panic in her voice when she took his face in her
hands. "Ezra?"

"I'm fine, mother," he lied. "I just need to get some sleep... if
you don't mind?" He attempted to convey the hint that he expected her
to leave. He didn't really want her to - he could feel himself
getting worse by the minute - but Maude had never been one to sit a
bedside vigil, so letting her think he expected her to go would make
it a bit easier when she actually did.

To his surprise, however, she sat down at the small dressing table
and took out a deck of cards.

"Why are you staying?" he asked her, because he really wanted to know.

"Well, son, if I had any mother's intuition, I'd blame it on that,
but since I don't, I can honestly say I don't know."

Funny how Maude was more skilled at running a con than any person he
had ever known, but there were still times when she couldn't lie to
save her life.

He had discovered that the whole town knew about the mysterious
illness that was striking down the citizens of Eagle Bend. Plague or
no plague, he'd also heard it was killing people, sometimes in a
matter of hours.

Despite his growing discomfort, Ezra still saw a perverse humor in
what Maude would not admit even to herself.

Damned if she wasn't actually worried about him...

EIGHT

Chris had decided to ride out to his shack after Vin had decided to
turn in early. Riding back the next morning, he encountered two of
Guy Royale's men manning the road block. No one had cared when he'd
ridden out of town the night before, but now one of them, Coop
Marvin, stepped in front of him and blocked his path.

Chris didn't even stop his horse.

Marvin cocked his gun, "That's as far as you go, Larabee."

Chris glared at him. "What the hell is your problem, Coop?"

"Ain't nobody comes into this town on this road," Marvin said.

"I ain't comin' from Eagle Bend."

"Don't matter. Mayor Conklin's orders."

"Mayor?" Chris scoffed. "When was the election, before breakfast
this mornin'?"

The other man, Ed Rice, cocked his weapon, too. Had the whole town
gone insane?

Chris stared them both in the eye. "So shoot me. I'm ridin' through."

He knew both men. He didn't think Rice had the cojones to shoot him
in the back, but he wasn't sure about Marvin. Luckily, it turned out
he didn't have them, either.

"You could be ridin' to meet your own death, Larabee," Marvin
shouted after him. "Your friends brought that plague into this town."

Chris turned in his saddle. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"

"Your boy, Dunne. Virginia says he's down." Virginia was the woman
who ran the boarding house where Buck and JD had rooms.

Chris turned away. He wasn't about to give Marvin any more of his
time, or the satisfaction of knowing that what he'd just said had
sent a cold chill through him.

Normally, he would have gone to the saloon. It was where everyone
knew to look for him if he was needed.

But instead, he went to the boarding house where JD and Buck stayed.
He didn't find either of them there, but Virginia appeared to be
cleaning JD's room. She'd stripped the linens off the bed and was
attempting to push the mattress through the window.

"What the hell are you doing?" he startled her.

She turned on him, her eyes reflecting a mixture of fear and
indignation. "I'm burning everything in this room. Doctor Pinsette
says its the only way to stop the plague."

"You don't even know Pinsette," Chris frowned.

Virginia thrust a copy of the Clarion at him. Sure enough, there was
an article by Ira Pinsette in which he gave advice on how to thwart
the deadly disease that had stricken Eagle Bend. Ironically, next to
it was an article on the mounting death toll. There were now 7 people
dead.

"Where's JD?" he demanded.

"Your friends took him to the hotel. I won't have him here."

Chris's first impulse was to say something vulgar, but he left her
to her business. He had to make sure the kid was okay, although he
had no reason to expect that he was.

He arrived at the hotel and was directed to the second floor. The
hotel looked completely deserted, which was odd for that time of the
morning. Even the clerk took a few steps back when he spoke to him
and told him where to find JD.

Nathan stopped him at the door when he tried to enter the boy's
room. Behind the healer, he could see the diminutive youngster
huddled in the large bed, with Buck sitting on the mattress beside
him and Josiah standing over him.

"You might not want to go in there, Chris," Nathan said. It was the
look in his eyes that alarmed Chris more than any talk of plague.
Nathan had patched all of them up a time or two. He'd even seen JD
through a couple of rough days after he'd been shot by that little
bitch bounty hunter. During those times, he'd seen concern and
compassion in Nathan's dark eyes, but never fear.

It was fear he was seeing now. "What is it?" he asked.

"Chris, I don't know. Pinsette is blowin' smoke with all this plague
talk, but I can't be sure he didn't just make a lucky guess. I don't
know what this sickness is."

Chris looked past him. "How's the kid?"

Now there was fear in Nathan's voice as well as his eyes. "Not good,
Chris. He's slidin' downhill right before my eyes. It took everything
he had for him to walk over here... Virginia said he had to leave the
boarding house," he shook his head.

"Yeah, I know. I was just over there," Chris said angrily.

"Don't be too hard on her, Chris. For all we know, she did the right
thing by most of the other folk who live there."

"JD shouldn't have been moved if he's as sick as you say."

Nathan couldn't argue with that. The boy's condition had
deteriorated rapidly during the night. His fever had climbed and he'd
become confused and combative. It had taken Buck and Josiah both to
get him into his clothes, and then out of them again. They'd finally
gotten him settled, but he was scared, and any reassurances Nathan
could offer him sounded hollow. The boy had every reason to be
afraid, if he had whatever was going around Eagle Bend.

JD wasn't their only concern. "Ezra's sick, too," he told Chris.

Chris raised an eyebrow at that.

Nathan continued, "Maude came and fetched me in the middle of the
night. He's got some of the same symptoms as JD, but they each got
some different ones, too. I don't know if it's the same thing ailin'
'em both or not," he said, and then added what Chris already knew,
"but they were both in Eagle Bend, Chris."

*DAMN!* Chris cursed himself for not thinking of the obvious sooner
than this. "Has anyone seen Vin?"

NINE

Chris didn't waste his time looking around town for Vin. The
tracker's calm, quiet nature was misleading. The man never missed a
thing that was going on around him. Vin would have known JD and Ezra
were sick, and would have come looking for him by now, unless
something was wrong.

He headed straight for the wagon where Vin stored his belongings. He
usually slept there, too, although Chris didn't see how he got any
rest with the noise and hubbub of the town all around him until late
into the night.

It was almost 9 in the morning, several hours past the time Vin was
usually up and about. But Chris found him in the wagon, and Vin
didn't stir when he called out his name.

He climbed inside the small space so that he was kneeling beside the
tracker. He knew even before he touched him that he was burning with
fever. His face was flushed and his hair was damp with sweat. There
was a puddle of drying blood beside his head, and more of it streaked
under his nose.

"Vin?" He shook him gently.

Vin mumbled something, but his eyes stayed closed.

Chris grabbed Vin's canteen and a stray bandana and soaked the cloth
with the cool water. He wiped the blood and sweat off of Vin's face
with it, concerned that he'd been able to get this close to him
without Vin even seeming to be aware of it.

Vin finally opened his eyes. He put a hot hand on Chris's arm and
attempted to push the cloth away.

"You okay, Vin?" Chris asked, even though the answer to that was
obvious..

Vin's voice was weak, raspy. "Been better."

"Can you sit up?"

Chris watched him struggle to comply with that simple request.

"Damn, I hurt everywhere," Vin whispered.

He was wearing that cursed hide jacket that he never took off, and
Chris removed it hoping it would cool him down some. The tracker
didn't offer up any resistance, which Chris knew was another bad sign.

"We need to get you to the hotel. You can't stay out here."

Chris expected Vin to disagree with him. Hoped he would, in fact.

But there was no fight in him. He clearly felt as bad as he looked.

"Okay," he nodded.

Chris climbed out first and then literally had to lift Vin out of
the wagon. He got him on his feet, but he just stood there gripping
the frame for support as if taking that first step was just too much
of an effort.

He looped Vin's arm around his neck. "Let me give you a hand, pard,"
he said softly.

Vin didn't argue. They started walking towards the hotel with him
supporting most of Vin's weight.

Mrs. Potter was supervising her daughter as the youngster swept the
boardwalk in front of her store. Chris caught her eye, and the look
on her face was one of concern for Vin, but she stepped back away
from them and drew the child from their path.

"Mr. Larabee?" she asked in a small, nervous voice.

He answered her unasked question. "He's sick. I'm takin' him to the
hotel."

She stepped back even further, far enough that she and her daughter
were inside the store. She closed the door and bolted it as they
passed.

Vin's feet stopped moving and he grabbed his middle. "Chris..."

Chris suspected the problem. "You gonna be sick, Vin?"

The tracker nodded.

Chris looked up to see that other people in the street were watching
them. He didn't want Vin to embarrass himself in front of an
audience. He put an arm around his waist and dragged him into the
nearest alley.

Vin gagged and brought up an alarming quantity of what looked like
clotted blood. Chris felt the bile rising in his own throat and
quickly kicked dirt over the mess before the site of it made him
upchuck, too.

Vin had leaned against the wall, his head back and his eyes closed.
His features were all the same color - an ashen grey.

Chris pulled him close and then hooked an arm under Vin's legs,
lifting him off the ground.

"Chris, don't..." he protested weakly.

"We'll go around the back way," Chris assured him. "Ain't nobody
gonna see."

Vin nodded and let his head drop against Chris's shoulder.

TEN

The window of JD's hotel room faced the back of the building, so
Josiah saw them coming even though no one else did. He hurried down
the stairs and was there to meet Chris when he brought Vin in through
the kitchen entrance. There was no one in the kitchen. Normally, the
cook began preparing the noon meal as soon as breakfast was finished,
but she was nowhere to be seen.

Josiah offered to take Vin, but if he was still conscious, Chris
didn't want to be passing him around like a sack of flour. It was
enough of an indignity for him that he had to be carried.

"We need to get him a room," Chris said as he followed Josiah into
the main lobby.

Josiah jumped behind the desk and grabbed the key to room 9.

"We might as well help ourselves. Everyone else has left."

"The place is deserted?"

"Yeah, the clerk was the last to leave, but he said he wasn't going
to stay if we were going to be bringing sick people here... JD is in
10 and Ezra is in 11. Might as well keep the family together."

All of the rooms were on the second floor. Chris was panting from
exertion by the time he got Vin up the stairs and his taut muscles
relaxed gratefully as he laid Vin on the soft down mattress.

Vin opened his eyes. "Thanks, Chris," he muttered.

Josiah went to get Nathan as Chris moved to unbuckle Vin's gunbelt.
Vin didn't protest, and when Chris started to unbutton his shirt, he
opened his eyes again. He made no effort to stop him, but did manage
to rasp, "Whatya think yer doin', Chris?"

Chris managed a smile. He wasn't comfortable undressing another man,
and the tracker's sense of humor was still intact enough that he
wasn't going to make it easy for him.

"Just tryin' to get you comfortable," Chris said. Vin spared him
having to unbutton his pants. He did that himself as Chris pulled off
his boots. The pants followed, but he needed Vin to sit up so he
could take his shirt off. He was so weak, though, that when he tried
to raise himself up, he couldn't do it. Chris lifted him to a sitting
position and rested him against his shoulder while he removed his
shirt. His undershirt was soaked with sweat, so he removed that, too.
He tried to be careful, but Vin moaned with pain.

"What is it?" Chris frowned, still holding him upright.

"I dunno, Chris, everything hurts inside," he muttered.

Chris eased him back down as gently as he could. Vin managed to roll
onto his side and even though the effort was painful, he seemed less
uncomfortable that way. Nathan walked in as Chris was pulling up the
sheet to cover him.

The healer knelt down beside the bed. Vin had closed his eyes again,
so he gently brushed the side of the tracker's face with one of his
big hands. "Vin? Can you hear me?"

Vin nodded.

"How you feelin'?"

Vin was well past the point of trying to conceal how bad he felt.
"Not so good, Nathan."

Chris could see the concern in Nathan's eyes. "He's pukin' blood,"
he said.

Nathan frowned at that. He pulled down the sheet, but Vin didn't
want to straighten out and lie flat for him.

"C'mon, now," the healer prodded, and gently pushed him onto his back.

Vin cried out in pain and then was embarrassed when he'd realized
he'd done it.

Chris reached for his hand. He held it loosely because he was afraid
of hurting him, and because he wasn't sure Vin would accept that
small comfort. But when Nathan's probing fingers pressed against his
right side, Vin almost came up off the bed, and his fingers wrapped
around Chris's hand like a vice. "JESUS, Nathan!" he gasped.

The frown hadn't left Nathan's face. His fingers moved to the same
spot on Vin's left side. He pressed more carefully this time, but Vin
still flinched.

"What's makin' him hurt like that?" Chris wanted to know.

Nathan shook his head, bewildered.

"You still feelin' queasy?" he asked Vin.

"Not since I upchucked."

"Think you can hold down a spoonful of laudanum?"

Vin nodded and Nathan went to get the medicine. It would make Vin
sleep, which normally would have been a good thing, except Chris had
a nagging fear that if Vin went to sleep, he might not wake up. It
wouldn't leave his mind that there were seven people dead in Eagle
Bend.

He sat on the bed beside him. "Anything I can do for you, Vin?" he
asked.

Vin shook his head. "Wouldn't blame ya' if ya' had to leave," he
said softly.

Chris smiled to himself. That was Vin's way of asking him to stay.
"I ain't goin' nowhere, Vin. Count on that."

His nose was bleeding again. Chris got a washcloth from the dressing
table and dampened it with water from the pitcher there.

He gently dabbed the blood away.

Vin closed his eyes. "Ezra and JD... heard you talkin'..."

Chris knew he couldn't lie to Vin. "They're sick, too."

"Eagle Bend," Vin voiced what Chris was already thinking.

"'Fraid so."

Nathan returned with the laudanum and an old porcelain chamber pot.
"Vin, I need you to pee in this," he indicated the pot. "Think you
can do that?"

Vin opened one eye to squint at him suspiciously. "What the hell for?"

Chris just took the pot. "He'll do it."

Nathan smiled and shook his head. Vin might give him an argument,
but he'd do almost anything for Chris. He opened the laudanum and
poured a generous spoonful. Vin took it willingly. He'd refused the
drug before, despite some painful injuries, so Nathan knew he had to
be hurting more than he was letting on.

The healer opened the room's only window. It was only midmorning,
but the breeze was already warm. In a couple of hours, the room would
be a furnace if they didn't let some air in.

He knew Chris wouldn't leave Vin."You need to keep him from gettin'
too hot," the healer explained. "Sponge him down if you need to. I
don't know what we can do for any of them right now except try to
keep 'em as comfortable as we can." He ran his hand over his short-
cropped hair.

"You'll do your best, Nathan," Chris told him.

The healer looked at Vin sadly. "It ain't good enough, Chris. Vin,
JD, Ezra.... they were all fine just a few hours ago. If this starts
to spread through the whole town..."

He didn't finish. He didn't have to.

ELEVEN

Buck couldn't remember ever being as scared as he was then. His own
basic survival instincts screamed at him to get as far away as
possible from the three men who had brought a silent killer home with
them from Eagle Bend. But, he knew he couldn't leave JD.

He was not sure when the cocky little brat had roped his heart, but
somewhere along the way, JD had somehow become his best friend, his
little brother - his family. And you didn't leave someone you cared
about to die alone.

A lump rose in his throat. *JD could die. Nathan had said so.* Hell,
Nathan didn't need to have said it for him to know. People were dying
in Eagle Bend, and pretty soon, they'd be dying in Four Corners.

The kid had seemed okay the evening before, until he'd keeled over
on him. Through the night, he'd gotten steadily - and quickly -
worse. Having to move him from the boarding house hadn't helped,
either.

After they'd gotten him settled at the hotel, he had complained that
his legs hurt. Buck had figured maybe it was just the exertion. He
had offered to carry JD to the hotel, but the kid had insisted he
could walk on his own, even though he was so sick he could barely
stand up.

Nathan had checked him out, and had discovered that the muscles in
his legs were contracting in fierce spasms. He'd let Buck feel for
himself. The muscles in the kid's calves were like rocks. The pain
had to be excruciating.

What was causing it was anyone's guess. It was a symptom of a brain
fever, Nathan had said, yet JD was conscious and as alert as his
fever allowed. They had used linament to work some of the knots out
of the muscles, and then Nathan had heated water and soaked towels in
it, wrapping the hot, damp cloth around the kid's legs in an attempt
to ease the cramping and relieve his pain. It had helped, some, but
the spasms had moved upward, to his back, his neck, his arms.
Wrapping him completely in hot towels might have helped, but his
fever was already high, and that would have made him dangerously hot.

Nathan had dosed him with laudanum, but it had only taken the
sharpest edge off the boy's pain.

JD looked at him with pleading eyes. He wanted him to make the
hurting stop and Buck didn't know what to do for him. He felt
helpless, like he had the time the kid had taken that bullet in his
gut. Only this was even worse. That time, JD had gone into shock and
then had been unconscious most of the time. This time, he was feeling
everything.

Sweat was pouring off of him, and Buck wiped it off his face,
pushing damp hair out of his eyes. The muscles in his back were so
tensed up, he couldn't even lie flat against the mattress.

"Roll over, JD," he said, as he pulled the kid onto his stomach.

JD groaned and hissed from the pain the movement caused him but he
was too weak to resist.

Buck lifted the kid's undershirt and poured some of the linament
into his hands. Gently, he began to knead the tightened muscles in
the boy's back and neck. He knew it wasn't going to help much, but JD
seemed to appreciate the effort.

The boy closed his eyes, but not to sleep. The mid-morning sun
coming from the window seemed to bother him. "Buck?"

"Yeah, kid?"

"You don't gotta stay. This could be catchin'."

"If I'm gonna catch it, it's prob'ly already too late to worry about
it." Buck tried to sound casual, but that very fear was gnawing at
his gut. He wondered if by touching the kid, or even being in the
same room with him, he had already signed his own death warrant.

"I feel awful, Buck."

"I know you do, kid." Sympathy was about the only comfort Buck could
offer him.

The boy reached up and covered his eyes with his hand. The movement
was awkward, because the muscles at the back of his arms were
fighting his efforts.

"What's the matter, JD?" Buck asked him.

"The light... my head hurts. The light makes it worse."

Buck looked at the window. There was no shade or curtain on it, but
it did have a shutter on the outside. Problem was, if he closed it,
the room would get hotter than hell, but he decided to worry about
that when it happened. He went to close the shutter and chanced to
look down into the street below.

A small crowd had gathered near the back entrance to the hotel, and
they didn't look happy. Hank Conklin spotted him and pointed an
accusing finger at him. "You! Get Larabee out here. We need to talk
to him."

"Whatever you got to say to him, you can say to me," Buck answered.
Normally, he wouldn't have thought to step into Chris's place as the
leader of the Seven, but he didn't think Conklin was worth the effort
it would take to get Chris to go out there and listen to whatever he
had to babble about.

"Tell him you're under quarantine!" Conklin called back. "All of
you. No one leaves this building, for any reason."

"Unless it's to get the hell out of town!" someone behind Conklin
chimed in. A few people in the crowd cheered him on.

"They had no right to come back into this town carrying plague,"
Conklin continued. "They've put everyone in this town in danger!"


Buck couldn't think of a response to that. As much as he feared for
JD, deep inside he wasn't sure he blamed Conklin for his attitude.
Vin, Ezra and JD had brought whatever was killing people in Eagle
Bend to Four Corners. The townspeople had every reason to feel
helpless and afraid.

He didn't understand their anger, though. He looked at JD curled up
on the bed. He looked so young and so small - and so sick. He hadn't
done this deliberately, and he was paying as high a price as anyone.

He closed the shutter without another word to Conklin.

"What's goin' on, Buck?" JD asked. His voice was weak and raspy. He
was having trouble breathing, Buck could tell, but he hadn't
complained about it. Poor dumb kid probably figured so long as he
could ignore it, it wouldn't be so.

"Nothin' to worry about kid..." Buck folded a washcloth and covered
JD's eyes with it to keep out the remaining light in the room. "That
better?" he asked him.

JD nodded, but in the next instant cried out in pain as a new wave
of spasms wracked his body. "God, it hurts, Buck..." he sobbed.

Buck resumed the massage, telling the kid in a soothing voice that
everything was going to be okay, that he'd feel better soon.

He wished he believed it.

TWELVE

Ezra reached for the cup that Maude held to his lips. It was a
decidedly unnerving sensation to not know exactly where it was.

Maude pushed his hands down. "It's hot, darlin'. Let me hold it."

Ezra didn't have the strength to argue with her. He sipped at the
bitter liquid, which was beyond question one of the most vile
concoctions ever to pass his lips. He turned his head away.

"Drink it!" Maude ordered, although, he noted, not as sternly as she
was capable of... it was more an urgent request than her usual command.

"I assure you mother..." - he need to pause every few words to catch
his breath when he tried to talk - "if I drink that... we shall
both... see it again ... shortly thereafter."

He heard Nathan's voice from somewhere close by. "Do what your mama
says, Ezra. It's just some herbs. It ain't gonna hurt you and it
might help some."

Ezra's insided had already made that decision for him. He hated
being sick to his stomach. It was the most vile and repulsive bodily
function there was, and he hadn't the least inclination to invite the
experience upon himself. "No."

He knew it was impossible, but it seemed like he could actually hear
Maude's features contort into an annoyed expression. "Ezra, you're
being childish. Enough of that..."

She held the cup to his lips and tried to pour the contents into his
mouth. He shoved it away and heard it crash to the floor and shatter.
Then, he started coughing, violently.

And then, he got sick anyway.

Someone shoved a basin under his head before a real mess happened,
but that did very little to lessen the humiliation.

After he had completed the act of depositing what seemed like the
entire contents of his body into the basin, he dropped back onto his
pillow, exhausted. He felt completely, horridly wretched. He was
beyond any doubt sicker than he had ever been in his entire life, and
the inescapable knowledge that whatever name this abominable scourge
went by was potentially fatal did little to comfort him, beyond the
assurance that if he got much worse, he would be dead and out of his
misery.

Someone wiped his face with a damp cloth, and then moved to undo the
buttons on his undershirt. He was close to the point of not caring if
his mother undressed him, but he wasn't quite there, yet. He reached
up and grabbed the hand on his chest. It was large and the skin was
rough. *Nathan.* He released his feeble grip and allowed him to
proceed.

The big healer got him out of his shirt easily, but he didn't know
who was sponging him off with cool water. He supposed he didn't
really care. It almost felt good, if anything could at that point. He
could hear Nathan and Maude bustling around the bed, talking about...
something... He couldn't really understand them unless he
concentrated, and that was just too much effort. He couldn't see them
at all. Compounding the altogether abhorrent set of circumstances in
which he now found himself, he couldn't see. He wasn't blind in the
sense that he was in total darkness - he could easily perceive light,
shadow, color and movement - but there were pieces missing from the
overall picture, where big blotches of white nothing obstructed his
visual field. It was like trying to make out the picture on a jigsaw
puzzle from just a few pieces. The effect was so bizarre, it was
simpler just to keep his eyes closed.

He somehow sensed Josiah enter the room before he spoke. The
preacher had been relegated to the role of domestic, and Nathan had
sent him to prepare a steam kettle. Together, they rigged a makeshift
tent over the head of his bed. Nathan slipped the kettle inside,
setting it on the mattress beside Ezra's head, but taking care to pad
it with a towel so that there would be no accidental contact. The
steam smelled almost as foul as Nathan's herbal brew.

"That should help ease his breathin' some," Nathan told Maude,
sounding more like he was hoping that was true rather than certain.

Ezra felt Maude's cool, soft hand take his own. Under normal
circumstances, she would have chided Nathan that he'd better know
what he was doing, but Maude had run out of glib rejoinders and Ezra
knew why. She thought he was dying.

Hell, he probably was.



THIRTEEN

"LARABEE!"

Chris ignored the shouting from the street below. He leaned back in
his chair, arms folded, watching for any sign that Vin wasn't getting
sicker. He knew he was clinging to false hopes, but he wasn't ready
to buy into the possibility that the quiet tracker - his best friend -
could be dead in a matter of hours. His fever was alarmingly high,
and Chris had tried sponging him off like Nathan had said, but just
being touched seemed to make Vin hurt.

There was more shouting from the street, and he ignored that, too,
until a rock came flying though the open window and landed inches
from the bed with a loud thud.

It woke Vin up. He flinched and opened his eyes. He looked at Chris,
his thoughts muddled by pain and fever. Chris picked the rock up and
put it on the dresser where Vin wouldn't see it. "Sorry pard, I
dropped something," he said. There was no point in trying to explain
to Vin that the town he'd risked his life to protect was turning its
ugliest face on him as he lay there sick and helpless.

Chris poured some water into the sipping bottle Nathan had given
him. He'd said to get him to drink as much as possible. When Vin had
done his business in the chamber pot like Nathan had asked, his piss
was tinged with red. Chris didn't need Nathan to tell him that was a
bad sign.

He cradled Vin's head and lifted him so he could drink.

"Don't want any," Vin muttered.

"Sorry, pard, you ain't got no choice. You need it." The bottle had
a little spout that Vin could suck the water from if Chris could
force it between his lips. Decorative as well as practical, the
porcelain bottle was painted to look like a bird.

"Get that chicken away from me," Vin growled. He was out of his head
from the fever, so who knew what he was thinking, but it almost made
Chris smile. Vin could do that, even when no one and nothing else
could.

Chris forced the water on him, anyway. Vin sucked down a couple of
swallows, but then he choked on it. He couldn't catch his breath and
was coughing and gagging at the same time. Chris turned him over onto
his side in case he puked, and an instant after he did, a torrent of
blood came pouring out of Vin's mouth.

Chris had never been prone to panic, but that scared him. "NATHAN!"
he shouted.

Nathan and Josiah both came running, followed by Buck, who took one
look at the mess on the bed and had to lean against the wall so he
wouldn't pass out. "Aw, Jesus..." he gasped.

Vin was still choking. Nathan sat down on the bed beside him and in
one practiced movement pulled Vin's upper body across his lap so that
his head and arms hung over the side of the bed. Using the heel of
his hand, he struck him three times between the shoulder blades.

Vin's airway cleared and he cried out in agony. "Lemme alone!" he
sobbed.

Chris sat on the other side of the bed and took him from Nathan. His
eyes were closed, but tears were streaming down his face. He used a
washcloth to wipe his face off. They were going to have to move him
to change the bloody sheets, and he held the tracker's pain-wracked
body as gently and carefully as he could. "It's okay, Vin," he said
softly. "You're okay now," he lied.

"I'm dyin' Chris," Vin gasped.

"No you ain't. I ain't gonna let you."

For whatever reason, Vin didn't argue with that. He just nodded his
head and settled into Chris's arms.

Josiah had sent Buck for clean sheets, and he'd been eager to comply
so he could get out of there. Chris held Vin until Buck came back,
and he drifted off, either into unconsciousness or sleep. When Buck
returned, Chris stroked Vin's hair to rouse him so he could tell him
they had to move him. Earlier, his long, dark hair had been soaked
with sweat, but it was just barely damp now. Chris knew it was
because he was becoming dehydrated. He hated forcing the water on him
again, but there was no choice.

Vin tried to push it away. Chris's voice was stern. "Drink it, Vin.
If you don't, you *are* gonna die, you hear me?" The other three men
were shocked by his tone, but Vin took a few more swallows of the
water. Josiah and Buck were ready to swap the soiled sheets. "I'm
gonna lift you up, Vin," Chris warned him.

"No!" Vin pleaded. "Don't touch me!"

He was too delirious to realize that Chris was already holding him.
Chris ignored his pleas and raised him just far enough for Buck and
Josiah to slip the clean linen onto the bed. Josiah left with the
bloody sheets as Chris gently eased Vin back onto the mattress.
Nathan sponged him off again and looked him over. His breathing was
coarse and ragged now.

"We rigged a steam tent for Ezra," Nathan explained. "I reckon we're
gonna end up doing it for all three of them. I wish I knew if..."

He was interrupted by the crash of another rock hitting the pitcher
beside the wash basin and shattering it.

Chris pulled his gun and marched to the window. Without a word to
the crowd outside, he emptied the entire chamber into the street below.

There was screaming and panic, but those in the building knew Chris
hadn't shot anyone. Yet.

"You send another rock through this window, and one of you dies," he
said coldly. "Don't matter shit to me which one." His icy gaze
scanned the crowd, most of whom averted their eyes.

Most, but not all.

"We want you and your men out of town," Hank Conklin said. "Then
we're going to burn this place."

"We ain't leavin'," Chris stated flatly.

Someone had dipped what looked like a tablecloth in yellow paint and
two men were tying it with rope to the front of the building. Buck
joined him to watch the spectacle. "They're puttin' us in quarantine,
Chris," he explained. "Sayin' we can't leave unless it's to get outa
town."

Chris holstered his gun. "Don't matter. We ain't goin' nowhere,
anyway."

Buck nodded. "'cept maybe to Hell."

FOURTEEN

Nathan would have collided with the man who blocked his path if he
hadn't stepped sideways at the last second, backing off as if he were
deathly afraid of any contact with the healer. Nathan recognized him:
Jules Lahr. He owned a farm three miles from town and Nathan had
saved his wife from bleeding to death after delivering his twin sons.
Lahr seemed to have forgotten all about that as he drew his gun and
aimed it at Nathan's chest.

"Get back inside," he ordered.

Nathan shook his head. "I have to get to the telegraph office...
Need to find me a doctor who can..."

"Save it!" the man ordered. "Ain't no doc can help those men inside
now. Ain't no medicine for plague."

"I don't even know they got plague and neither do you. Now get outa
my way." Nathan would use physical force if he had to. He was not a
violent man, but he was a strong one, and even though Lahr was big,
Nathan was bigger.

Lahr cocked his weapon and raised it, and in a split second of
horror, Nathan realized he was really going to shoot him.

There was a blinding flash and a thundering roar and Nathan
instinctively clamped his eyes shut waiting for the fatal impact, but
none came. He opened his eyes when he heard Lahr howling in pain and
saw that he was holding his bleeding hand. Nathan looked around,
expecting to see Buck, Josiah or even Chris, but to his great
surprise, he spotted Jim Ramage lurking in the shadows. Ramage had
raised hell with Vin a few months before. Along with his friend Ted
Cole, he had done everything he could to make Vin's life as miserable
as possible. They'd all ultimately resolved their differences after a
terrifying accident had almost killed the pair of losers as well as
Chris and Ezra, but, even so, the Seven were hardly on friendly terms
with them.

Ramage holstered his gun. "Figured I owed you one," he said simply.
Nathan had set Ramage's badly broken arm after the accident. He'd
gotten full use of it back apparently, since he'd used it to shoot
the gun from Lahr's hand. Nathan nodded as Cole sidled up alongside
Ramage. The two of them were joined at the hip.

"Tanner dyin'?" Cole asked.

His tone was unreadable, and maybe he didn't mean anything by it,
but since Nathan disliked the man, he bristled. "Not if I can help
it." He moved towards Lahr. "Let me take a look at that hand..."

Lahr stepped backward. "Stay away from me!"

The man was in dire need of medical attention, and normally, Nathan
would have persisted, but he had more pressing things to do. "Suit
yourself," he shrugged.

Another unpleasant surprise awaited him when he got to the telegraph
office. The door had been bolted shut from the inside. The telegraph
operator peered at him though the window with a guilty look on his
face. "I can't let you in here," he said. He opened the window a
crack and handed him three messages. Nathan went to take them, and
the man let them fall from his hand onto the dirt.

Nathan picked them up, disgusted by the telegraph operator's
rudeness, but not really blaming the man for being cautious.

The first telegram he read was from a doctor in Denver who wanted to
know who he was, and emphatically stating that he did not assist
charlatans in the practice of medicine. The second was from a doctor
in Albuquerque who said he didn't know anything about plague.

But the third one...

It was from a Dr. M. Quinn in Colorado, and Nathan read it carefully
to make sure he'd gotten it right...

**Mr. Jackson,

 It is my privilege to have esteemed colleagues in the universities
and teaching hospitals of Boston, and through them I have availed
myself of the medical and scientific literature at their disposal..."
**

It went on to describe the symptoms of plague.

Some of them fit, but they were general symptoms that could fit a
dozen illnesses. Other symptoms, none of the sick men had - or at
least, he didn't think they did. He'd have to re- examine all three
of them. Also, some of the symptoms they did have weren't even listed.

The message also said if it was plague, he could expect more cases
to crop up within two days of exposure. It didn't paint a pretty
picture of the consequences should that happen. There was no
effective treatment for plague, and no known way of stopping the
spread of the contagion other than to quarantine the victims - and
burn the bodies of the dead.

It had been almost 48 hours since Vin, JD and Ezra had arrived back
in Four Corners, and even if it wasn't plague, he was expecting that
soon, those they had come into contact with would begin to show signs
of illness. Certainly the first would be those at the hotel with the
sick men.

His friends.

He shuddered at the thought. Plague or no, maybe Conklin and the
others had the right idea. If they all came down with whatever it was
that had stricken Vin, JD and Ezra, the sanest thing to do would also
be the most unthinkable.

Nathan refused to let his mind dwell on that. Dr. Quinn had given
him some valuable information - and more importantly had offered his
assistance. He needed to reassess his patients and decide where to go
from here.

He walked back to the hotel, cataloging his patient's symptoms. All
three of them were having trouble breathing, although Ezra was by far
the worst off. All three had suffered bouts of nausea, although Vin
was the only one who had brought up blood and couldn't seem to keep
anything down. All of them were in pain, but JD seemed to be
suffering the worst of it. But according to Dr. Quinn, the one
definitive symptom of plague was boil-like swellings - 'buboes' - in
the armpits, neck and groin. Unless he'd overlooked something, he was
certain none of them had that one tell-tale sign.

He was lost in his thoughts and almost ran into Inez as she was
coming out of the saloon burdened with a large block of ice wrapped
in burlap. "Nathan!" she greeted him.

The healer looked up from his musings. "Hi, Inez..." He noticed her
arms sagging under the weight of the ice. "Can I give you a hand with
that?"

She passed it over to him. "I thought you might be able to use it,"
she said. "If not for the sick men, then for the others." 

Ice was a precious commodity, and Inez's offer was both generous and
welcome. "Thanks," he smiled.

"How are they?" she asked cautiously.

Nathan shook his head. "Not too good."

"You tell them I will pray for them."

Nathan nodded. "Thanks, Inez."

He meant that sincerely. Whatever they had, all three men were
clearly dangerously ill - maybe dying - and there was not a damned
thing he could do for them. At that point, Inez's prayers were as
effective as anything he had to offer.

The healer was so consumed by that thought that he didn't notice how
the townspeople fled from his path.

FIFTEEN

Nathan concluded his examination and replaced Ezra's night clothes
and blanket and then carefully readjusted the blankets that formed a
tent over the head of the bed. Maude had wanted to stay while he
checked Ezra for the signs of plague, but it hadn't seemed right to
lay a man out naked in front of a woman, even if she was his own ma,
and even if Ezra was too sick to care.

The gambler's condition had deteriorated so rapidly that if the
decline continued, Nathan feared he had only a few hours left. Ezra
opened his eyes once and squinted at him, saying his name.

Nathan touched a damp cloth to Ezra's feverish forehead, pushing
back ringlets of sweaty hair. "I'm here," he said simply.

"Why... can't I see... anything?" he frowned.

Nathan was honest. "I don't know, Ezra. Might be the fever."

Ezra turned his head towards the sound of his voice. "Am I to
consider... the possibility... that my demise is imminent?" he
whispered.

"You mean, is you gonna die?" Nathan countered. Normally, he loved
to tease Ezra by rephrasing his fifty-dollar words, but now he did it
out of a desperate hope that he'd continue to have the chance.

Ezra coughed and it sounded ugly. It came from deep inside his
chest, but it was too weak to effectively clear the congestion.
"*Are*... going to die," he corrected the healer, then he added. "I
need to know, Nathan."

Nathan nodded that he understood. He wrang out a cool washcloth and
placed it over Ezra's forehead and unseeing eyes. "You might, Ezra.
I'll do all I can for you, you know that, but I ain't gonna tell you
this ain't bad."

Ezra tried to say something else, but it brought on another coughing
spell.

"Hush now," Nathan said gently. "Save your strength."

Ezra shook his head. "In the wardrobe..." he gasped. "The red box.
Passbooks to my bank... accounts."

"Ezra, this ain't no time to be worrying about your money..."

"On the... contrary, my friend... I must..." He ran out of air
before he finished and tried to inhale deeply, but it just wasn't
possible, and what ever he was going to say, he wasn't able to
continue. "Yours," he gasped.

"What?"

"The money. Yours..."

He started to cough again, more violently this time. Nathan pushed
the tent out of the way and lifted his upper body off the bed,
calling for Maude to come back into the room. He had her pile pillows
behind Ezra's back to raise him to a sitting position in the hope it
would ease his breathing.

Maude quickly and efficiently did as he instructed, and even her
practiced poker face wasn't able to conceal her apprehension at
seeing her son struggling for air.

Ezra's strength was spent and he lay unmoving against the pillows.
Maude gathered her skirts and sat on the bed beside him, drawing the
tent around them both. She wiped his face with the washcloth. "Ezra?
Darlin'?" Her voice was tinged with panic as she tried to rouse him.

Ezra's green eyes opened slightly and Maude seemed relieved even
though he didn't actually respond to her.

Nathan wasn't sure his patient was still conscious. He tapped his
cheek gently. "Ezra? Can you hear me?"

Ezra nodded.

Relieved himself, Nathan turned to Maude. "Josiah is cookin' up some
broth. Try to get some nourishment into him."

Maude nodded. She was a smart and stubborn woman. She knew how sick
Ezra was, but Nathan could see there was still some fight left in
both of them.

He dipped his hands in the carbolic acid bath Dr. Quinn had advised
him to use after touching his patients. He saw the point to it, if
what he had read about disease being caused by microbes was correct.
He'd never seen a microbe - had a problem even contemplating a living
thing so small it was invisible without special instruments, in fact -
but wiser men than he seemed pretty sure they existed, and something
that sneaky couldn't be much use to anyone. It was a known fact that
whatever they were, carbolic killed them and that had to be for the
best.

"Nathan?" Maude said softly.

"Yes'm?"

She looked down at Ezra in her arms. "He's all I have, Nathan. All I
have that matters."

Nathan nodded. "Yes'm."

He didn't know what else to say to her, for he knew she wasn't
begging him to help her son - she already knew he was doing all he
could. She just wanted someone to know what she never seemed able to
say to Ezra.

"Miss Maude, this thing ain't got us beat yet. If anyone'll get
through it, it will be these three."

She nodded, a faint but determined smile on her lips. Nathan knew
that if will alone could keep Ezra alive, Maude would make it happen.
But it didn't look good. He had to admit that. He was sure Ezra
didn't have plague, but whatever he did have, it had caused his lungs
to become so clogged up that it was a wonder he was getting any air
at all. He had herbs that would make him cough it all up, but he just
wasn't sure Ezra was strong enough to endure the medicine's harsh
effects. He'd seen people with pneumonia cough until they died from
exhaustion. For now, the steam tent would have to do.

Maude chose to stay under the tent with Ezra as he re-rigged it to
seal it completely. It wouldn't do her any harm, and if Ezra were to
lose the battle with this unnamed killer, he might as well have the
comfort of doing it in his mother's arms.

+ + + + + + +

Maude Standish swiped angrily at the strands of damp hair that fell
into her eyes. The heat and humidity inside the blanket-tent were
unbearable to her, but she could tell that they helped. Ezra's
breathing was still labored, but the steam loosened the congestion
enough that he was able to rest.

She folded her arms around his shoulders. Funny, she thought, how
your child seemed to always fit into your arms no matter how old he
was. Almost like that was something nature intended.

She rested her cheek against the soft, dark hair, damp from the
steam and sweat. How long had it been since she had held him? Hell,
she couldn't remember ever holding him like this, not for long, anyway.

She had never been much of a mother. In all honesty, she had never
intended to be a mother at all. It had just happened, and then she'd
had to make the best of the cards she was dealt. She was good at many
things, but motherhood wasn't one of them, she knew. She supposed it
was too late to make up for any of that now. Water under the bridge
and all that.

She sighed and kissed Ezra's forehead. "Don't you dare die on me,
baby, you hear? You hear me, Ezra Standish? You are *not* going to
leave me..."

SIXTEEN

Heavy doses of laudanum had eased JD's pain, but it had also left
the boy in a dazed stupor that made it difficult for Nathan to tell
if it was the illness or the drug that was taking its toll.

The boy was unnervingly compliant as Buck undressed him and Nathan
checked him for the swollen nodules that Quinn had told him to look
for. The vicious muscle spasms had subsided, but his muscles refused
to relax completely, which had to be sapping his strength. Gently
manipulating the boys stiff, painful limbs, Nathan checked JD's neck
and under his arms, and then thought he'd better explain to Buck what
he was looking for when he pressed his hands into JD's inner thighs.

"They're called buboes," he explained. "Like boils, this Dr. Quinn
says. Everyone who gets plague has 'em.." He shook his head as he
finished his examination. "I didn't find any on Ezra, either.
Whatever this is, it ain't plague."

"Don't see whereas that makes any difference to JD," Buck said
sadly. JD shivered and Buck moved to cover him, but instead of
stopping, the shivering escalated to small, jerky spasms.

"Roll him over, Buck!" Nathan commanded, as he grabbed JD's
shoulders and attempted to turn him onto his side.

"What is it?" Buck asked, alarmed by Nathan's tone of voice.

JD's body continued to quiver.

"He's havin' a fit," Nathan said, his voice more calm than he felt.
He knew this was a very bad sign. "It should ease up in a few
seconds..."

The two of them stood by helplessly as the convulsions continued for
almost two minutes. Gradually, though, they began to ease off and
finally, JD was still again.

"JD?" Nathan called to him, pushing back his long hair. "JD? Wake
up, son."

JD's eyes opened, and he looked as dazed as he had before, but in a
hoarse whisper, he managed to croak out Buck's name.

Buck was at his side in an instant. "I'm here, JD," he took the
boy's hand.

JD stared silently for several seconds, and when he did respond it
wasn't so much with words, but with the tears that filled his eyes
until they overflowed. "Sorry..."

"Sorry for what, kid?" Buck asked, honestly puzzled.

Nathan, however, had more experience with the sick and guessed what
had happened. It was a common occurrence when someone suffered a fit
like JD just had. He looked at Buck. "We need some clean sheets for
the bed," he said, without giving details.

JD squeezed his eyes shut and understanding suddenly dawned on Buck.
He nodded. "I'll be right back."

As soon as he was gone, Nathan proceeded to strip the bed. "Don't
give it no mind, JD," he said casually. "Happens to sick folk more
often than you think."

But it was little consolation to the kid, whose pale features were
crimson with shame. Nathan worked quickly to get him cleaned up
before Buck returned, but he noted with concern that the wetness on
the sheets was tinged pink.

Damn, what was doing this to them?

Buck returned and lifted the boy and held him while Nathan flipped
the mattress over and spread out the clean bedding. He noticed the
bloody stain on the soiled sheets.

"Oh Jesus, Nathan..." he said, the fear in his voice unmistakably.

Nathan nodded sadly.

"Didn't mean to, Buck," JD murmured.

Buck looked down at the young man in his arms and steeled himself.
"Hell, kid, you got so much laudanum in ya you wouldn't know if ya
had to go or not. Ain't no big deal."

But he knew it was. He knew the kid was embarrassed and he was too
sick to have to worry about something so insignificant as some wet
sheets. He decided the best thing to do was not to dwell on the
accident as he got him settled back into bed just as Josiah came in
with a steaming bowl of broth.

"Made from finest bone marrow," the preacher announced proudly,
trying to ease the tension he could feel in the sickroom, "with some
other stuff that's good for what ails anyone."

JD looked up at him. "Bet it... tastes... like crap."

"Don't matter how it tastes," Buck admonished him as he lifted him
to a sitting position. "You're gonna eat it."

JD shook his head. "No. Can't. I'll upchuck it."

"No you won't," Buck promised, knowing the kid would believe him,
whether it was true or not.

Nathan motioned for Josiah to hold back while he listened to JD's
chest with his stethoscope. He wasn't as congested as Ezra, but
Nathan could still hear a tell-tale gurgling deep in the boy's lungs.
"We need another steam kettle, too," he said.

Josiah looked at the stricken youngster, "We only have the two we're
using for Vin and Ezra."

"Then you have to find another one somewhere!" Nathan snapped,
without meaning to.

Josiah didn't take it personally. "I'll do that," he said, and left
to keep his word.

Buck didn't have the luxury of allowing his feelings to show. He
lifted a spoonful of broth to JD's mouth, but the kid was already
drifting off on him again.

"JD? C'mon, kid, just one spoonful."

JD obediently opened his mouth, and Nathan was somewhat relieved. If
Buck could get the boy to eat, it would bolster his strength. That
had to count for something.

"I need to go check on Vin. Will you be okay here for awhile?"

"Sure we will," Buck said more confidently than he felt.

As he was leaving he told Buck, "If he starts having another one of
them fits, turn him on his side like before. He might puke if he's
got something in his stomach."

"Don't wanna throw up," JD mumbled.

"You ain't gonna," Buck assured him again. He got JD to take a few
more spoonfuls, but the boy was just so, so sick. It was all he could
do to swallow. Josiah returned and begin rigging a tent over the bed.

As sick as he was, JD's curiosity hadn't left him. "What's... that
for?" he asked.

Josiah explained it to him, holding up the kettle that was spouting
aromatic steam from the boiled herbs and elixirs Nathan had
prescribed. "It will help you breathe better," he explained as he
slipped the kettle under the blanket and again took precautions to
keep JD from being burned by it.

"Where'd you get another one?" Buck asked.

"He's sharin' this one with Vin for now. I'll see if I can round up
another one."

"Hurts," JD mumbled.

Buck reached for the linament and began a repeat of the rubdown he'd
given the boy earlier. It probably didn't do him a lick of good, but
it did seem to ease his pain.

As the big man's hands kneaded the younger man's tense muscles, he
wondered who was going to care for the rest of them if they came down
with whatever JD, Vin and Ezra had. He tried to admonish himself for
his selfishness, but the thought really scared him. Even more
frightening was the knowledge that if he and the others got sick, JD
would just slip away with no one to ease his passing.

*NO! The kid was not going to die!* He cursed himself for even
thinking that.

JD quickly drifted off to sleep and he settled back in his chair,
keeping one hand in contact with JD's arm. He stroked it gently, just
to let the kid know he was there.

SEVENTEEN

Chris appeared to be dozing in the chair next to Vin's bed, but he
immediately lifted his head when Nathan entered the room. Vin was
quiet and still, but Nathan knew it was because he was too sick to
move, not because he was resting comfortably. He hated to disturb
him, but he had to make sure that he also did not have the defining
symptoms of plague.

He carefully pulled the covers back and Vin shivered involuntarily
as the cooler air hit him. He opened his eyes, silently pleading with
Nathan to leave him be.

"I'm sorry, Vin," the healer said softly. "I just need to check you
over real quick like." Vin couldn't put up any resistance. He was
alarmingly weak, but unlike the others, Nathan hadn't dared try
feeding him anything, not bleeding into his belly like he was, so he
would only continue to grow weaker.

He checked Vin over carefully. The tracker hardly flinched when he
examined his groin for the swollen nodules. Normally, Vin would have
put up a fuss at being touched like that, if he would have allowed
such intimate contact at all. Nathan didn't find any sign that the
tracker had plague, either.

He pulled the blankets back over Vin, pulling back the steam tent
they had rigged earlier. Josiah had taken the kettle for JD, so there
was no point in leaving it draped over him at the moment. "What we
need are 4 more kettles," he said absently. "That way, we can keep
the steam going continuously for all three of them."

"I'll see you get them," Chris said.

Nathan told him about the incident with Jules Lahr. "Ain't nobody in
town gonna let you get close enough to ask for 'em."

"Who said I was gonna ask?"

"That mob out there is ugly, Chris. Gettin' uglier by the minute. I
don't know if it's gonna do any good to tell them that these men
don't have plague."

Chris looked up at him. "You're sure?"

Nathan nodded. "Doc in Colorado sent me a list of signs to look
for." He shook his head. "They got some, but not the important ones,
the ones that mean it's plague for sure. Problem is, I don't know
what they do have...." He paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then
frowning, questioned Chris. "How do *you* feel?"

Chris thought about it, shrugged his shoulders. "Tired. Hot from
havin' that steam goin'. But I ain't sick."

Nathan nodded, thankful, but mystified. "Seem odd to you that no one
else in this town has come down with anything?"

"Folks in Eagle Bend are dropping like flies, though," Chris
reminded him. "Could be just a matter of time."

Nathan sighed. "This Dr. Quinn feller says other folks would start
turning up sick fairly quick if it was plague." He was thinking out
loud. "Maybe whatever this is just takes a little longer to come over
a person...." He looked at Vin, who despite being so terribly ill was
listening to him. "Or maybe all the sick folks got it from the same
place..."

"Mice," Vin wheezed.

Both Chris and Nathan turned to him, and leaned closer to hear him.

"Deer mice. We saw them," the tracker struggled to get the words
out. "Bad luck."

Nathan tried to conceal his skepticism. His concerns were serious
ones, and he couldn't afford to be waylaid by the tracker's
superstitions.

Chris, however, either took those same superstitions seriously, or
he was indulging Vin's belief in them. "Why are they bad luck, Vin?"
he asked.

Vin shook his head almost imperceptibly. Any movement seemed to
increase his discomfort. "Don't know," he admitted. "Navajo's say
it's so."

He started coughing again, and it was intermingled with a sharp cry
of pain. Chris turned him over and Nathan shoved a towel under his
head so they wouldn't have to change the bedding if he vomited up
more blood. He didn't though. He coughed up a few drops, but his
strength was quickly spent, and he lay gasping for air.

Nathan hated to do it, but he pulled him upright. Vin cried out in
pain again, but his breathing quickly improved.

"Pile some pillows behind him," he told Chris. The gunfighter did as
he was told, and as they eased Vin back down he looked so pale that
Chris thought he might be taking his final breaths.

Vin must have thought that, too. He looked Nathan in the eye. "How
long?" he whispered hoarsely.

Nathan pretended he didn't know what Vin meant. "How long 'til what,
Vin?"

Vin tried to take a deep breath and was pretty much unsuccessful. He
closed his eyes against the pain and whispered "'Til this is over?"

Chris wanted to shout at him not to talk like that. To shake him and
demand that he not give up so easily. He was suddenly angry and he
didn't know at what or who. He managed to stay calm on the outside
though. It was what Vin needed most from him.

He wrang out the washcloth in the basin beside the bed and wiped
Vin's face with it. "You feelin' that bad, cowboy?" he said softly.

Vin nodded. "Ain't never... been this sick, Chris."

The tracker's slight frame was wracked with chills, and acting on
impulse Chris took him in his arms and held him close to warm him up
again.

Nathan didn't think anything could make Vin any worse at this point,
and warmth of Chris's body seemed to soothe him.

He knew there was a special bond between the two men. Hell, everyone
could see it. If there had been any way for Chris to give all the
strength he had to Vin to get him through this, he knew the
gunfighter would do it in a heartbeat. Perhaps this was the next best
thing. Despite his misery, Vin seemed to rest easier and the chills
quickly abated.

"Chris?" he whispered

Chris looked down at the man in his arms. Nathan saw the hurt in his
eyes. Chris thought Vin was dying and he couldn't tell him any
different because he was probably right.

"What is it, cowboy?" he said softly.

"Somethin' I need... to tell ya... before..."

Chris hushed him. "It'll keep, Vin."

"No... Chris. If I go... I...can't take this... with me...."

"You ain't goin' anywhere, Vin," Chris said sternly.

Exhausted from even that small effort, Vin didn't persist. Nathan
looked at Chris questioningly and Chris shrugged slightly. Neither
knew what Vin had wanted to say, but whatever it was, Vin didn't need
the added stress of trying to get it off his chest. Chris was letting
him know, in that unspoken way of theirs, that whatever it was, he
was okay with leaving it unsaid.

EIGHTEEN

Nathan was on his way to the kitchen to replenish the steam kettles
when he heard Josiah talking to someone.

The big preacher had been toiling continuously, preparing food and
the teas and medicines Nathan had prescribed as well as boiling
sheets, towels and nightclothes as they were used. He'd caught a few
hours of sleep here and there, but like the rest of them, he was
weary from the continuous vigil.

And now he was having to patiently argue with Casey Wells.

"She wants to see JD," he explained to Nathan.

Nathan looked at the young girl, her dark eyes moist with tears. She
tried to keep her voice from cracking when she spoke. "Aunt Nettie
says he's dyin'." She said it more as a question than a statement. "I
jus' wanna see him."

Josiah was effectively blocking the doorway so she couldn't enter.
Nathan eased him aside so he could talk to the girl. "Casey, JD is
real sick. I ain't gonna lie to you. But we can't let you in here."
He pointed to the yellow banner flapping in the breeze. "Once you
come inside, you'll be in quarantine with the rest of us."

"I don't care!" she wailed and tried to push past him.

"NO!" He grabbed her tiny shoulders. "Listen to me. If you want to
help, there are some things you can do for us. We need some
kettles... about so big." He indicated the size with his hand. "And I
need someone to take messages back and forth from the telegraph
office."

"I can do that!" she nodded eagerly. And then her face clouded. "But
JD... if he needs lookin' after..."

"Buck is with him," Nathan assured her. "We're takin' real good care
of him. But I'll tell him you came to see him. He'll like that."

Casey smiled. "I'll get those kettles if I have to steal 'em!"

"Might be easier if you just ask Inez, first," Nathan said. "Your
aunt, too..." he called to her.

Josiah smiled at the girl's enthusiasm, but then turned to Nathan
with a serious expression. "She might not get to see that boy alive
again."

Nathan nodded solemnly. The only consolation he could give Casey at
that point was that JD was still fighting to stay alive, while Vin
and Ezra seemed to have resigned themselves to letting nature take
its course.

He sat down at the table and let his head drop into his hands.

Josiah came up behind him and put a strong hand on his shoulders.
"You're doin' all you can, Nate."

Nathan slammed his hands down on the table. "I just don't know
enough, Josiah. If there were only ways to help them fight this....
If only I knew more about what the hell I was doing!" He berated
himself angrily.

Josiah pulled up a chair beside him. "Nathan, you can't do any more
than what you are doing."

Nathan sighed. "That ain't what I mean, Josiah.... I'm havin' to
starve Vin - that's what's makin' him too weak to fight. Ezra's lungs
ain't so bad he'd suffocate but he's so tired from tryin' to keep
breathin' that his body is gonna up and just quit from exhaustion.
There just ain't any way to help either of them."

"Have you asked that Dr. Quinn if he knows anything you can do?"

"I ain't a doctor, Josiah. I got no right to even be askin' him."

"Way I look at it," Josiah smiled, "You got no right *not* to ask
him." He pulled a pencil and paper from the pocket of his vest. "You
can't say you tried everything until you have."

Nathan shook his head. "What could he tell me? All that would help
Vin is to get some food into him, but that might kill him. And I
can't breathe for Ezra."

Josiah saw his point. "Maybe JD will make it," he said sadly.

Nathan couldn't look at him. "He had a fit a few minutes ago. He
came out of it okay, but it's a bad sign. Real bad."

Josiah tapped the paper he'd set on the table. "Ask for help,
Nathan. Then you can have the peace of sayin' you did all you could."

NINETEEN
(continued from part ONE)

Chris stared out the window, not planning to give the mob outside
the comfort of averting his gaze. He knew most of the faces in the
crowd. Three days before, most of them would have greeted him with a
smile or perhaps a friendly nod.

Now, all he saw on those same familiar faces was anger and fear, or
occasionally sadness.

Mary Travis didn't want to be part of the mob, but the irony was
that her newspaper articles had fueled the fire that the good folk of
Four Corners wanted to unleash on three helpless men. Men who had
been there for them when they'd had their backs to the wall.

What scared him as much as the crowd was that Larabee wasn't sure
that, were the circumstances reversed, he wouldn't be out there with
them. If he still had Sara and Adam, would he be so willing to defy
the very instincts that told him to protect them at all cost?

He had looked Mary Travis in the eye. She didn't hate him, or Vin or
JD or Ezra. But she loved Billy more than she cared about any of
them, and that was as it should be.

Nettie was the last person who would want any harm to come to any of
them, especially Vin. But Casey was blood, and while she wasn't out
there waving a torch, she was determined that Casey would not fall
before this silent killer. Her frail hands had a firm grip on her
Spencer carbine. The rifle looked like it weighed more than she did.
The sight would have been comical, were it not for the fact that
Nettie Wells was as dead a shot as Vin was, and if he made good on
his threat to turn his gun on the crowd, she might just take him out
if he didn't get her first.

He rested his gun on the window sill, and was trying to think of
what to say to the mob, not to quiet them but to at least gain them a
little more time. He'd meant what he said. If their time had come,
Vin and the others at least deserved the small comfort of a clean bed
and knowing they were safe to leave this earth in peace. He'd not see
them forced out. The only place for them then would be his sweltering
shack where they'd have to put two of them on the bare dirt floor.

His words never had a chance to form, though. Casey jerked free of
her Aunt's restraining grasp and in the next instant snatched the
Spencer from her hands. She ran to the steps of the building where he
could no longer see her, only hear her voice...

Casey waved a piece of paper with one hand as she steadied her
Aunt's big rifle with the other.

"This here telegram is from a doctor!" she shouted. "Ain't nothin'
gonna happen to us so long as they stay inside."

"Says you," someone in the crowd mocked.

"Get outa the way, girl!" someone else shouted.

"Listen to her!" Chris recognized Inez's angry voice. Inez, for
reasons only she knew, had yet to turn her back on them.

"I ain't movin'!" Casey said, her voice cracking. She cocked the
Spencer and trained it on the crowd. "You leave them be!"

Two awestruck blue eyes stared at her in open admiration. The one
they belonged to had been afraid before. Afraid he was too little and
too young to do what he knew Chris would do. It wasn't right what
these grown-ups were doing. If he was sick, he would want to be at
home in his own bed. How come no one could see that it was wrong to
make sick people leave town?

He'd gotten his daddy's gun. He knew where it was, and he knew how
to use it. Chris had shown him. But he'd been afraid, not like Casey.

Well, he wasn't afraid any more!

"You can't stop all of us, little girl," Hank Conklin declared.
"This is absurd!" he continued, angry that his assumed authority had
been challenged. He carried a stick with an oiled rag wrapped around
it. He struck a match to ignite it.

"What are you doing!?" Inez screamed at him in horror. She
positioned herself in front of Conklin and tried to grab the torch,
but one of the men in the crowd grabbed her and shoved her aside so
roughly that she fell.

"I'll get them out of this town, mark my word!" Conklin hissed.

A few people in the crowd cheered him on, but several others gasped
in horror as the torch flared, the grim realization of what Conklin
intended to do suddenly dawning upon them.

Casey stood her ground. "You're gonna have to kill me to get by me,"
Casey said.

A tiny blond blur streaked to the front of the crowd. "Me too!"
Billy Travis declared.

"BILLY!" Mary Travis gasped, realizing her son was no longer safe at
her side.

*Aw HELL!* Chris thought when he heard Billy's voice.

Billy took his place alongside Casey, needing both hands to hold the
gun he had aimed at Conklin, who was momentarily dumbstruck.

His mouth dropped open when Ted Cole and Jim Ramage stepped in
behind Casey and Billy. The two didn't draw their guns, but their
hands hovered menacingly within reach of their pieces.

Conklin turned to the crowd. "This is ridiculous!!! Nettie! Mary!
Get those two brats out of my way or I swear..."

Mary was horror-stricken. She dared not move. Billy was a baby - he
had no idea what would happen if he fired. *She* had no idea. Would
this crowd gun a six-year-old down? "Billy..." her voice quavered.
"Put the gun down, baby...."

Billy squinted his eyes in determination. "I ain't a baby!"

Conklin reached for his sidearm with his free hand, but before he
could clear leather, Cole had his gun out and fired a shot into the
air. The cowboy spit on the sidewalk. "Seems to me it don't take a
very big set o' cojones to shoot a couple o' kids, Conklin, so you
like as not won't miss yours." He lowered his gun until it was level
with Conklin's crotch.

Conklin realized he was quickly losing control of the situation.
"This doesn't concern you, Cole."

"Vin Tanner saved my life," Cole said. "I figger I own him somethin'
for that."

"You don't owe him the lives of everyone in this town!" Jules Lahr
shouted.

"Ain't no one else sick!" Casey cried. "Can't you see that? It's
just them, and if we leave them be it ain't gonna get to us. Now you
put down that torch, you sorry ol' coot..." She trained her aunt's
Spencer square on Conklin's chest.

Nettie Wells was as much at a loss as Mary Travis. She had taught
her niece to stand up for herself, but if this got any uglier, she
didn't think that some of the men in the crowd would hesitate for one
minute to shoot the girl.

Conklin stared at the four people on the hotel porch defiantly. He
was determined to have his way, but he wasn't sure how many people
were backing him now.

"Give it a rest," Ramage told him, and then looked at the crowd.
"I'd say a town ain't got much to be proud of when the only ones that
will stand up to the likes of you are a couple of little kids and two
no-account drifters," he referred to Cole and himself.

Conklin stepped forward, his jaw set, his torch raised high, but he
hadn't gone two steps when a shot rang out from the crowd. The bullet
severed one of the ropes holding the big, yellow quarantine banner in
place. It fell, catching Conklin's torch as it went.

The paint-soaked fabric ignited instantly, dropping a wall of fire
across the front of the porch, trapping the four people standing
there and sending flames licking up the front side of the building.

Mary screamed in terror as Billy backed away from the flames. It
would be only a matter of seconds before he and the other three were
engulfed.

Nettie was instantly galvanized into action. She grabbed a rifle
from a man in the crowd and quickly shot through the rope holding the
other corner of the banner. It fell to the ground where Inez began to
frantically kick dirt on it to extinguish the flames. Nettie quickly
joined her. "Don't just stand there!" she yelled at no one in
particular. Mary ran forward to help as Casey, Cole and Ramage
grabbed buckets and set to work trying to douse the flames that were
creeping up the porch.

In the room above, smoke curled through the open window, stinging
Chris's eyes. He pulled the sash down as quickly as he could, but
enough smoke had filled the room that he began to choke on it. He
hurried to the bed and lifted Vin into his arms.

Unaware of what was happening, Vin moaned in pain as he was moved.
"Lemme be, Chris," he pleaded.

"Damn them to all to hell!" Chris spat as he rushed from the room
with the sick man.

Buck had smelled the smoke and rushed out into the hallway, his
features frozen in panic.

"GET JD OUTA HERE!" Chris ordered. "I'll come back for Ezra!"

TWENTY

Halfway down the stairs, Chris almost ran into Nathan and Josiah who
were on their way up. He turned sideways with his burden to let them
pass. "Get Ezra!" he ordered. "Get them outa here!"

Maude was frantic when she saw flames licking at the windowsill in
the room across the hall, where Vin had been. She had raced into the
hallway when she had heard Chris shouting and saw Buck wrap JD in a
blanket and pick him up. The obvious horror hit her immediately: she
couldn't carry Ezra to safety.

There was no way she could leave him, either.

She went back into the room and cradled his head in her arms,
slapping him gently. "Baby, you have to wake up!" she said, her voice
filled with gentle urgency. "Come on, son... we need to get out of
here."

Ezra's pale green eyes opened and tried to focus. She shook him,
desperate to get him fully awake. "I'll help you.... You need to sit
up. COME ON, EZRA!" she shouted, her panic overcoming her concern for
her son's comfort.

Nathan and Josiah were suddenly - blessedly - at her side. "I got
him," Nathan said as he picked the gambler up effortlessly.

Maude grabbed Josiah's arm and pointed at the encroaching flames.
"Help me, Josiah!" she ordered.

At first, the big preacher thought she wanted him to help her get
out, but instead, she rushed into Vin's room and pulled the blanket
from the bed and began beating at the flames. Josiah took his cue. He
gathered the water basins and pitchers they had been using and soaked
down the windowsill.

Maude took the pitcher he was holding. "Get more water!"

He dashed out, to find Chris and Buck were already heading up the
stairs with a bucket in each hand.

Outside, several guilt-stricken townspeople, now realizing what they
had done, formed a bucket brigade and were successfully dousing the
fire from the outside. But just at the point where they finally
managed to contain it, the flames also succeeded in burning through
the support structures attaching the porch to the building. There was
an ominous groan of stressed timber and someone yelled "Everyone get
back!"

But it was too late, the support stanchions snapped and the entire
porch came down in a heap of rubble. When the dust cleared, it
appeared at first that everyone had gotten to safety - until Nettie
and Mary realized in simultaneous horror that Billy and Casey were
nowhere to be seen.

Futilely, Mary scanned the crowd before daring to turn her eyes
towards the smoking rubble. An anguished cry of despair and rage
escaped when she saw the tiny hand, still clutching an old Navy Colt,
protruding from beneath the rubble.

Instantly, dozens of hands were ripping away the charred timber only
to reveal the even more distressing sight of Casey Wells lying
unmoving on top of Billy, having used her own body to shield the
little boy from the falling debris.

With the porch gone, Chris could see the carnage in the street
below. The still forms of Casey and Billy were like a knife twisting
in his heart. He raced down the stairs. Nathan was already heading
towards the injured, and Chris drew his gun to cover him.

Several people in the crowd stepped back when they saw the crazed
look in his eye.

All fear of contamination apparently forgotten, neither Nettie nor
Mary made a move to stop Nathan. The blacksmith, Yosemite, had lifted
Casey off of Billy, who, much to everyone's relief, began to cry
loudly as Mary took him in her arms. It was quickly apparent that he
wasn't hurt, only scared.

Nonetheless, Mary looked accusingly at the townspeople. "GO HOME!
ALL OF YOU!" she shouted angrily. "This isn't what we want!"

TWENTY-ONE

Ashamed to have taken part in the tragedy unfolding before them,
many people in the crowd turned away and the mob quickly began to
disperse. Hank Conklin continued to stare in stupefied silence, his
torch still burning in his hands, as Yosemite carried Casey into the
hotel.

The hotel's small lobby reminded Nathan of the field hospitals where
he had worked in during the Civil War. Vin, JD and Ezra had been
placed on the bare floor in the rush to get them away from the fire.
Ezra and JD had blankets, but Vin was already shaking with chills.

"Get them back to bed," Nathan said, partly out of concern for the
sick men, but also because he still had to be wary of the possibility
of contagion.

Unfortunately, JD was awake and alert enough to recognize the small
body in Yosemite's arms. He tried to get up from the floor. "Casey?"

Nathan knelt beside him and put a reassuring hand on the boy's
chest. "Don't you worry, JD, she's gonna be just fine." Buck looked
at the healer hopefully, but Nathan's clouded expression told him
Nathan was lying to spare the kid. "Take him back to bed, Buck,"
Nathan said softly, then followed Yosemite into the hotel dining room.

The big blacksmith laid Casey on the table. Nettie was silent as she
held and patted the girl's hand. Fearing the worst, Nathan put his
stethoscope to her chest, and then was unable to contain a broad grin
when he heard her heartbeat, strong and steady. He took her head in
his hands. "Casey?!" he commanded. "Casey, can you hear me? C'mon
now..."

Slowly, her brown eyes fluttered open. "Wha... huh?" She was
confused and disoriented, but aside from some minor burns on her arm
from the scorched wood that had fallen on her, she was miraculously
unscathed.

"Thank God," Nettie whispered and hugged her niece close. Then she
admonished Casey, "That was a dang fool thing you did, Casey. You
could have been killed."

Casey looked up at her, tears running down her dirt-streaked face.
"JD's dyin', Aunt Nettie. I couldn't let them put him out on the
street. It ain't right."

Nettie pulled her back into an embrace. "No, girl... It ain't," she
whispered. Then she looked at Nathan. "I reckon this means we're all
in quarantine with you."

Nathan suspected all the fight had gone out of the town when they'd
come close to actually burning them out. The citizens of Four Corners
weren't evil people. They were good people who were scared, and none
of them - well almost none of them - had actually wanted any harm to
come to Vin, Ezra and JD. They just hadn't realized it until they'd
almost done something most of them would have regretted forever.

Just the same, the quarantine never had been a bad idea. "I reckon
that would be safest for all concerned," Nathan said. "But I'll dress
them burns and then I think it's best you just take Casey on home so
she can rest up a bit."

The girl needed rest, that was certain, but mostly Nathan didn't
want her there when JD passed on. It was going to be hard enough on
the others, and they were all just too exhausted to have to deal with
her grief, too.

The two women were silent as Nathan spread a soothing salve over the
reddened skin on Casey's arms and then bandaged them. When he was
done, Nettie helped her up but the girl stopped her and looked at
Nathan. "Can I see him? Please? Just for a minute?"

If JD was contagious, Casey had already been exposed, so Nathan saw
no added danger in letting her see the boy, but what it would do to
her emotionally was another story. Still, she deserved a chance to
say good-bye. Nathan hated himself for thinking of it that way, but
his skills and resources and his own strength were almost used up,
and Vin, Ezra and JD just kept getting sicker and sicker. He couldn't
save them and he knew it.

"Okay, you can look in on him, but that's all." He still didn't want
her too close to the kid.

She left the kitchen and Nettie looked Nathan in the eye. "The boy
is dyin'?" she said sadly.

Nathan shook his head. "I don't know Nettie. I don't know how any of
them can hold on much longer."

"Vin?" she said softly.

Nathan knew the old woman had a soft spot in her heart for the
scruffy tracker, but his fatigue was taking its toll on his ability
to be tactful "He's given up."

+ + + + + + +

Casey trudged slowly up the stairs. The second floor still reeked of
smoke and charred wood, and they'd had to open the windows. Buck was
putting an extra blanket on JD when she got to the doorway. JD's
lovely dark hair was spread in limp strands across his pillow, which
was the only thing in the room whiter than he was. It looked to Casey
like all of the blood had been drained from him, except for the dark
circles around his eyes.

She wanted to go to him, to lay beside him and hold him in her arms
as if that would allow some of her strength to pass into his weakened
body. But Nathan wouldn't let her step into the room. "JD?" she spoke
softly.

To her surprise and relief, he opened his eyes. His voice was a
harsh whisper. "Case..?"

"You take care of yourself," she said, holding back a sob. "I love
you."

She'd never told him that before. Not even when that bitch had shot
him and hurt him so bad. But she had to say it now, because she
hadn't said it then.

JD's eyes closed again. He nodded and tried to smile, but he didn't
even have the strength for that.

Nettie stood quietly behind her niece. She could see into Vin's room
from where she stood, but had reluctantly heeded Nathan's warning
about getting too close to the sick men. Chris positioned Vin
comfortably on the bed, making certain he was warmly covered, but Vin
was pale and unresponsive.

"Is there anything we can do? For any of them?" she asked the healer.

"I wish I could say there was." He glanced at Casey, whom he could
tell was overwhelmed by JD's ghostly appearance. "I think it's time
you took Casey home."

TWENTY-TWO

Josiah had gone to fetch clean water for the basins and pitchers in
the sick rooms. He entered JD's room as Casey was leaving.

JD's eyes followed him for a moment, and then in a tiny voice he
said Josiah's name.

Josiah turned around. "What son?"

"Josiah, you were a priest, right?" JD asked.

Josiah sat down on the bed beside the boy. When JD had come to the
church after Annie had died, it was apparent from his behavior that
JD had been raised in the Roman Catholic faith, as he had been. He
suspected what the boy was thinking. "I was JD."

JD looked at him, his eyes full of misery and pain and, Josiah
thought, fear.

"Can you do it for me, then?" the kid whispered.

"JD, I'm not a priest anymore..."

"But you still know how to do it, right?"

Josiah nodded and then put his big hand gently on the boy's
shoulder. "Let me go get what I need," he said softly.

JD tried to smile again, but the brief conversation had cost him all
of his reserve strength.

Josiah rose to leave, but Buck stopped him with a hand around his
arm. "What's goin' on?" he asked, confused that whatever it was JD
wanted, he'd asked it of Josiah and not of him.

"Extreme Unction," Josiah said. "He wants the Last Rites."

Buck frowned. He'd heard of that, but he wasn't sure what the ritual
entailed. Josiah explained, "JD's a Catholic, Buck. Last Rites are
the final absolution before death."

"NO!" Buck said, his voice angry with denial. "That's crap!"

"JD doesn't see it that way, Buck."

"You can't do it," Buck shook his head. "I ain't gonna let you."

Josiah clamped his hands on Buck's shoulders. "It ain't right for
you to deny him this because you're afraid, Buck."

"But.... but you don't even believe in that stuff!" Buck protested.
"An' JD... JD don't even go to church!"

"It don't matter what you or I believe, Buck. It's between JD and
his God. If it'll help him go peacefully, I'm going to do it."

Buck was speechless for a moment, his lip just quivering slightly.
There was a catch in his throat when he finally spoke. "JD ain't
goin' nowhere."

Josiah nodded. "I hope you're right about that, but you still gotta
let me do this for him."

Buck shook his head. "Josiah, it's just too much like sayin' he
ain't got no hope left."

"Maybe he doesn't, Buck."

Buck knew what Josiah said was true. He looked down at JD. His
muscles were still taut from the wracking spasms, but he no longer
had the strength to cry out from the pain. He looked back at Josiah.
"Do what you gotta do," he said. "Do what you gotta do, then," he
whispered.

TWENTY-THREE

Chris had stretched out on the bed beside Vin, holding the tracker
in his arms to warm him. The heat of the day was stifling to him, but
Vin was chilled from having been moved from the warmth of his bed to
the comparatively cold floor during the fire.

Chris tried to put his anger at the townspeople aside, but goddamn
them, wasn't Vin suffering enough?

Eventually, Vin stopped shaking, and Chris released his hold on him.
Vin's back was pressed against his chest, so he couldn't see his
face, and he was alarmed when he unwrapped his arm and discovered his
hand was smeared with blood. "Damn, Vin," he cursed, not Vin but the
savage illness that was causing him so much pain. He sat up and
turned the other man over onto his back. There was blood smeared
under his nose and on the pillow beneath his head. At least he hadn't
puked.

Josiah had re-filled the washbasin and he dipped a washcloth in it
to clean the blood from his hand and Vin's face. He didn't get up
from the bed. He was too tired and it felt too good to be lying down.

As he wiped Vin's face with the cool water, the sick man opened his
eyes. Warily, he studied Chris lying beside him.

"Ain't this... a mite cozy?" he smiled weakly.

"You were shakin' like a cornered rabbit. Thought it'd warm you up."

Vin nodded. "Helped. Thanks."

He closed his eyes again and tried to turn over on his side. Chris
stopped him. "Vin, you're bleedin' again. Stay lyin' on your back."

Vin shook his head. "Don't care," he wheezed. "Lyin' on my back
makes my belly feel bad."

Chris didn't see what harm it could do for Vin to be as comfortable
as possible. He helped him roll over and then tucked a clean towel
under his head to absorb any additional blood.

He smoothed Vin's dirty hair back from his face with the washcloth
and the tracker opened his eyes again.

"Chris? What I wanted to tell you... before..."

"Shhh... It can wait, Vin."

Vin shook his head. "No, Chris. There ain't... no more time."

"Don't say that, Vin."

"No... you gotta... hear me out this time."

Chris would have done anything to quiet Vin. He was so weak already
and his instincts told him that whatever Vin had to say wasn't going
to come easy. But he had to listen. He owed Vin that much.

"When I came here... it was because she paid me..."

"Who paid you, Vin?"

"Ella Gaines."

Chris felt his heart sink to the pit of his stomach.

"What're you sayin' Vin?"

"I didn't... know it was her. Not 'til I checked her out. But the
bank where I was 'sposed to pick up the pay-off.... after... same
one. Same account."

"I don't understand, Vin." Chris wasn't lying about that, and he
didn't like what he'd heard so far.

"Federal Marshall... nabbed me outside El Paso," Vin struggled with
the words. "Only he was on the take. Cut me a deal. I do a job for
someone he knew, and he'd ferget he ever saw me. He'd get paid...
more for gettin' me to do the job... than the bounty."

Chris felt his own features twist into a scowl. He thought he knew
Vin Tanner.

He was sure Vin could see his anger and disappointment. He didn't
try to hide it. But, Vin was no threat to him now, not like he was.
He kept his emotions in check, which seemed to give Vin the strength
to continue.

"I come here lookin' for you," he gasped out the words. "Waitin' for
you to show up. You were worth two thousand... alive."

"Vin, you were gonna *sell* me to her?"

Vin nodded. "I ain't proud of it, Chris. But I figgered you was some
two-bit gunfighter who'd prob'ly... kill me as soon as look at me, so
it didn't... make me no nevermind."

"So what changed your mind?" Chris tried to keep the sarcasm out of
his voice, because he really wanted an answer.

Vin tried to take a deep breath. "Nathan," was all he was able to
get out before a coughing fit seized him. Chris was not as quick to
comfort him this time, but finally he couldn't bear to see this man
he'd called a friend suffering so. He reached out and rubbed his back
gently until the coughing subsided.

Vin's blue eyes, bright with fever, looked up at him. "After what
happened with Nathan, it didn't seem important no more. I'd never
took no money and that Marshall had lived up to his part an' gotten
paid so he didn't care. Ain't no one was gonna see to it I got the
job done."

"Why didn't she recognize you?" Chris wanted to know.

"She never met me," Vin wheezed. "I don't think she knew. But it was
why I couldn't stay... out there... with her."

Chris was sure that was part of the reason Vin had almost run out on
them, but another part was that he hadn't trusted Vin when he'd tried
to warn him about Ella Gaines. When it turned out he'd taken a big
risk just coming back to tell him. For all Vin had known, Ella had
had time figure out who he was. The bitch would have had him killed
for crossing her. Even if Vin didn't know that, Chris did.

Vin reached out and put a hand on Chris's forearm. "For what it's
worth, Chris, I never coulda... made good on that deal. Not after I
knew ya."

Chris's feelings were in turmoil, knowing that this man whom he had
trusted with his life had a dark side to him that would let him put a
price on an innocent man's head....

*No!* a voice inside him shouted. Vin might have thought he could do
that, but when it came down to it, he hadn't. He hadn't and he never
would.

He returned Vin's handclasp. "For what it's worth, Vin," he said
softly.

Vin's eyes closed then, and Chris knew in his gut that they weren't
going to open again. The tracker had given up the fight, and now
there was only the waiting left to do.

TWENTY-FOUR

Across the hall, Nathan feared the wait was over for one of them.
After Casey had left, he'd gone to help Maude with Ezra. The woman
was exhausted, but even had she been at her best, she didn't have the
physical strength to lift her son and position him so he could
breathe easier, or turn him so that the congestion in his lungs
didn't pool up and drown him.

The gambler was a shocking sight, even to Nathan. He was beyond
pale, except for the distinctive bluish tinge to his lips and
fingertips. A sheen of sweat covered his skin and matted his fine
hair into unruly strands. He hated the thought of what it was like
for Maude to see her child struggling for air, his strength slowly
ebbing away with each gasping breath. Nathan knew what it meant when
a man's skin took on that blue color. When that happened, the end was
not far behind.

Maude sat against the headboard of the bed, cradling her son in her
arms. She gently intertwined one of her hands with his, the darkened
tips of Ezra's fingers a shocking contrast to her own healthy pink
skin.

She kissed him and rocked him gently. "Mama loves you, baby," she
whispered. "You remember that, you hear me?"

The fact that Maude, who usually hid her feelings behind a poker
face and flamboyant demeanor, didn't seem to care that she was baring
her soul for him to witness, made Nathan feel hollow and empty
inside. Ezra was a grown man, and it should have been funny to see
Maude fussing over him that way, but it wasn't. It wasn't funny at
all. He was watching a mother say good-bye to the only child she'd
ever have, and there weren't many things more painful than that.

Nathan sat beside the bed and took the gambler's other hand. "Ezra?"
he said softly, hoping he'd get a response but not surprised when he
didn't. He looked at Maude and their eyes met.

"He's leaving me, isn't he?" she asked. Her voice was controlled -
Nathan doubted the woman knew how to be hysterical - but the pain was
there.

"Yes'm, I think so," Nathan said wearily.

"How long?" she asked.

Nathan shook his head. Ezra only had hours left, maybe only minutes.
With an aching heart, Nathan answered her, "I don't think he'll make
it through the night, ma'am."

She nodded that she understood, and Nathan knew she wanted to be
alone with her son. He put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll be back to
check on him," he said, and then left without looking back.

His feet felt like they were made of lead, his heart like a heavy
stone. When he came to JD's room, he was surprised to see Inez
Recillos there. She knelt at the foot of the boy's bed, Rosary beads
clutched in her hands, her head bowed in prayer. If Nathan had seen
her arrive, he would have stopped her from entering the room, but it
was too late for that now.

The night stand beside the bed had been cleared and covered with a
crisp white cloth. Two candles burned on either side of a Crucifix
and some smaller items were placed nearby.

Nathan knew what Josiah was doing, although he was surprised that
the big preacher had agreed to it. Josiah had said many times that he
no longer had any use for actual religion, although, Nathan supposed,
that didn't necessarily mean he had stopped being a man of God.

He entered the room quietly and stood at a respectful distance while
Josiah opened a small, worn book and began to read:

**"Is any among you sick? Let him call for the presbyters of the
Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the
name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and
the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be
forgiven."**


He closed the book and set it down, then carefully pushed JD's long
hair back behind his ears and lifted the blankets at the foot of the
bed so his feet were exposed. He picked up one of the small bowls on
the night stand and dipped his thumb into the contents. He gently
smudged the oily substance on JD's ears, lips, nose and closed
eyelids, then he did the same with both of his hands and feet,
reciting words that Nathan didn't understand but recognized as Latin.

JD was barely conscious, but Josiah patted his hand and spoke to
him, "You ready to pray with me now, JD?" he asked. JD nodded, but
didn't open his eyes. Buck took one of the boy's hands and Josiah the
other. Josiah leaned in close to JD and began to recite a prayer in a
voice that was almost too soft to hear. JD's lips moved along with
the words, but he was too weak to speak. Inez prayed along with them.
Her words were spoken in Spanish, but Nathan somehow knew it was the
same prayer. Tears ran freely down her face. Buck's too.

Nathan was overwhelmed by the finality of the scene unfolding before
him. JD was so young... too young to be accepting his own death.

He slipped out of the room as quietly as he had entered.


TWENTY-FIVE

Weary to the bone, Nathan made his way back down to the kitchen.
Yosemite was still there. The big blacksmith was bent over the stove
and offered him a steaming cup of coffee when he let his body drop
into a chair.

He handed Nathan a piece of paper. "Casey came running back with
this. Said to make sure I gave it to you."

It was a telegram, from Dr. Quinn. He almost tossed it aside unread.
He didn't need to be told there was nothing more he could do for his
friends. But the message, he could see, was quite long. It had taken
the good doctor time to write out the instructions it contained, and
had no doubt cost him a pretty penny to send. The least he could do
was read what the man had to say.

And as he read, the tiniest glimmer of hope began to take hold in
his mind that maybe, just maybe, if Dr. Quinn's idea worked, he could
save Vin. The doctor had emphasized it was a big risk, and he should
only attempt it if he had nothing to lose, but he knew he had to try.

He sat for a moment willing his over-tired brain to work. He'd need
to gather the supplies he required, and that could be a problem if
the town's doors were still bolted against the threat of sickness. He
looked at Yosemite. The blacksmith would be able to help, and he
asked him to follow him to the clinic, which was just over the
blacksmith shop.

Once there, he gathered the case that contained his only hypodermic
syringe, handling it with the utmost care, for it was expensive and
not easily replaced. From the drawer, he took two rubber hot water
bottles. The blacksmith started at him incredulously when he
explained what he wanted.

He examined the business end of the syringe, carefully holding it in
his big hands. "Nathan, I ain't sure I can make something this small.
I work with iron mostly... this would need something like silver or
steel..." He scratched his stubble thoughtfully.

Josiah tugged on the blacksmith's arm and pointed to one of the
veins that stood out on his strong forearms. "It only needs to be
small enough to fit in here," he traced his finger down the vein.

Yosemite looked at him and frowned. "That could kill a man" he said.

Nathan nodded. "I know, but Vin's going to die anyway." He sighed
deeply. Voicing his thoughts hurt, and the words didn't want to come.
"They all are."

Yosemite looked at the syringe again. "This might help Vin?"

Nathan nodded. "Dr. Quinn gave me a mixture to prepare. Just water
and sugar and salt. Has to be mixed just right and then put right
into him, into his blood. Might give him some strength. He's so weak
now because he can't keep nothin' down, not even water."

"What about the others?"

Nathan shrugged. "Might help JD, too, but Vin's the one needs this
the most... Ain't nothin' can be done for Ezra. I can't breathe for
him."

Yosemite nodded. "Give me twenty minutes or so. I'll see what I can
do."

+ + + + + + +

Nathan returned to the hotel and found Josiah sitting quietly in the
kitchen.

The look on his face was grim, and Nathan feared the worst, but when
he asked, Josiah shook his head. "I don't know how, or why, but
they're all still with us," he said.

Nathan handed him the telegram from Dr. Quinn and then pointed at
it. "We need to make that mixture," he held up the hot water bottles,
"and we need to rinse these with boiled water, get 'em as clean as we
can."

Josiah looked at him the same way Yosemite had. "Nathan, you can't
just go puttin' stuff into Vin like this. You ever seen what happens
when you try to give blood from one person to another? When it
doesn't work?"

Nathan shivered. He had indeed seen the immediate, catastrophic
results of bad transfusions. But, sometimes, they worked, and helped
the patient survive. Problem was, no one knew why it worked sometimes
and not others, and why a patient could take blood from one man and
seem to improve and then be killed by the blood of another man. And
this preparation Dr. Quinn had told him to make wasn't even blood.

He very well *could* kill Vin.

"I don't know what else I can do," Nathan said, defeated. "I'm
afraid he's going to die no matter what I do. I just don't know
enough...."

His voice cracked and he covered his face with one hand to hide the
tears of frustration that threatened to spill over.

Josiah stood up and embraced him. "God will guide our hands,
brother," he whispered to the healer. "His will be done."

TWENTY-SIX

Nathan meticulously measured out the preparation according to the
instructions in the telegram. Dr. Quinn was quite emphatic that the
mixture's proportions had to be exact. If they weren't, it could
poison Vin, and Nathan prayed that fatigue wouldn't cause him to make
an error. He didn't see how something so simple could help, but it
eased his mind some that there was nothing in it that would in itself
harm Vin,  either. Morphine was far more toxic, and that was injected
into people routinely.

Josiah cleaned the hot water bottles and while they waited for the
preparation to cool, Nathan went to see how Yosemite was coming along.

He'd given the blacksmith the metal stopper for the hot water
bottle, and asked him to fashion a hollow pointed tube that would fit
through it. He found the big man bent close to his forge,
unaccustomed to working in such minute detail.

But he smiled triumphantly as Nathan approached. Crudely welded to
the stopper was exactly what he'd had in mind.

Yosemite smiled and held his work up for inspection.

"Silver?" Nathan questioned.

"Yep."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Army scout traded me a conch belt awhile back for makin' him a new
wagon axle. Purty thing it was, too. Didn't have much use fer it,
though." He ran a rasp over the end, working it into a point. He put
it to the coals one last time to temper it, and as he did, he worked
the bellows with his left hand. Nathan watched curiously when the
coals lit up as the bellows forced air onto them.

And suddenly, the seed of an idea took root....

Nathan clasped Yosemite on the shoulder, taking him by surprise.
"How much more silver do you have?"

Yosemite blinked, confused. "Most of it. This here only took a
couple of links."

"Wait here!" Nathan said, and then ran up the sta