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Rating: PG
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I'm just borrowing
them. It would be a waste of time to sue. I have nothing but
things I've borrowed from others.
Author's Notes: I've been having so much fun reading these
fanfic digressions that I decided to join in. This little story takes
place after Maggie's "Mark of Death" but before her "The Accused". This
is my first attempt at writing Mag 7 fic, so consider yourself warned.
Comments welcomed.
Kxpossum@aol.com
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For a warm summer's night, the Four Corners saloon was sparsely populated. Excluding the two transient cowboys at the bar, members of the seven were the only patrons.
The batwing doors swung in, and Chris Larabee strode into the saloon. He gave the two men at the bar a cursory glance before he approached the table occupied by three of his friends.
"Would you care to partake in our friendly game of chance, Mr. Larabee?"
"I think I'll pass, Ezra. I've already contributed enough to your gambling fund for one week. It's Buck's and Josiah's turns."
"Pull up a chair and have a drink with us, Pard," Buck suggested as he threw his cards on the table. "Maybe you'll change my luck," he added, casting a disgruntled look Ezra's way.
"Not right now, Buck. I was lookin' for Vin. Any of you seen him?"
"I believe Brother Tanner is battling some personal demons and does not desire any company," Josiah answered and with a tilt of his head, indicated a solitary figure sitting in the shadows on the far side of the saloon.
The gunslinger peered across the room in the direction designated by the peacher and spied the form of his best friend slumped at a secluded table. Chris's expression turned puzzled as he noted two whiskey bottles on the tracker's table. One was half full and the other was lying on its side, empty. Larabee had rarely seen his friend have much more than a beer or a shot of whiskey. He knew something had to be very wrong for Tanner to be drinking himself into oblivion.
"How long's he been here?" the leader of the seven quickly asked the others.
"Well, it appears that our dear Mr. Tanner has taken up residence at that table ever since that fiasco at the livery this afternoon," the gambler replied as his fingers casually manipulated the deck of cards he held. "He was here when we arrived an hour ago, and appeared to have already been imbibing in the spirits for some time. We graciously invited him to join our little game, but he chose to ignore our solicitation of his company."
"He say anything?"
"Nope, at least not to us. He's just been sitting there, Chris, drinking one shot after another." Buck leaned over the table and lowered his voice as he continued, "There's definitely somethin' botherin' that boy. He's been mumbling to hisself off and on, but we can't quite make out what he's sayin'."
"Thanks, boys." With a nod of his head, Chris added, "Enjoy your game," and then turned toward the figure in the corner. He hesitated a moment as he stood watching his troubled friend throw down another shot of whiskey. Taking a deep breath, he slowly walked over to the tracker's table.
Standing in front of Tanner, Larabee was surprised to see that Vin had
made no attempt to clean himself up after the explosion at the livery stable
earlier that afternoon. His face and hands were heavily smudged with
black soot. Bits of singed straw and debris still clung to his hair.
The tracker had appeared to have escaped the incident without injury.
Assuring his
friends that he was fine, he had refused to let Nathan check him over.
Seeing him now, Chris wasn't so sure that was a wise decision.
"Hey, Cowboy, you okay?"
"Nope."
A look of concern immediately crossed the gunslinger's face. "You want me to get Nathan?"
"Nope."
It was obvious to the leader of the seven that his friend did not want to be disturbed, and normally Chris would respect that. But it was just as obvious that things were not normal. Chris had never seen Vin so despondent before. He knew he had to at least try and find out what had caused his best friend to turn to the bottle, so he pulled up a chair and sat down.
"You plannin' on drinkin' the rest of that by yourself?"
"Yep."
"Vin, this ain't like you." Receiving a disinterested silence,
Chris pressed on, hoping to draw more than a one word response from the
bounty hunter. "What's got you so down that you want to lose yourself
in a bottle of
whiskey?"
The tracker finally looked up from his drink and locked eyes with the gunslinger. Larabee was shocked by what he saw. Beyond the dull glazed stare of too much liquor was the dangerous look of defeat. It was as if all the fight and life had gone out of his best friend.
In a voice barely above a whisper, with words slightly slurred from the debilitating effects of the alcohol, Tanner replied, "It ain't no use, Chris. You'd best go before somethin' bad happens to you too."
Confused, the gunslinger scooted closer to his friend and laid a comforting hand on his arm. "What are ya talkin' about, Vin? What's gonna happen?"
"Bad things. Lately, bad things are always happenin' to me, Chris," the younger man complained. "I seem to attract them. I figure I'm kinda like the plague. You hang around me and it'll get you too."
"Vin, you ain't makin' sense. You sound like you think you're bad luck or something." Chris was really worried now. He never figured the bounty hunter to be the superstitious type. Yeah, sure he had spent some time with the Indians and had come to know and respect their ways, but he always seemed to tackle a problem head on, calmly and rationally. He couldn't think of any reason for this unexpected change in his friend.
The gunslinger debated on what to say next. Words were never his way and he liked to choose them carefully. As he silently watched his friend try to drown his demons with whiskey, it occurred to him that he just might know what was troubling the tracker after all. "It's that Maggie, isn't it? She's the one who's got you so down on yourself, right?"
Deciding that his burden was more than he cared to bear on his own,
Vin turned sorrowful eyes to his best friend and confessed, "Ahh, hell,
Chris, yeah it's that writer gal. She's really gettin' to me.
I've tried stayin' out of her way, I've tried distractin' her, I've tried
reasonin' with her, I tried makin' nice with her partner, that other writer
gal, Cassie, and I even
tried sweet talkin' her. I thought I'd finally made some progress,
but then she went and tried to blow me up and you right along with me."
Vin sighed and swallowed down another shot of whiskey. "I reckon
there ain't no way of avoidin' the trouble she's determined to throw at
me."
"Hey, cowboy, you're not alone in this." The gunslinger cast a look toward the men playing cards and when he caught Josiah's eye, he motioned for them to come over to the tracker's table. "We'll figure out somethin', all of us. Together."
As Josiah, Buck and Ezra made their way over to Vin's table, JD and Nathan entered the saloon.
"Pull up a chair, boys. We've got some ponderin' to do."
Larabee nodded at JD and Nathan as they joined the group. "There's
a new brand of evil in town, fellas, and we've got to come up with a plan
to get rid of it once and
for all."
Unable to contain his youthful exuberance, the kid jumped in with, "What's goin' on, Chris? We gonna ride?" Just the hint of the group riding out together had him itching for a new adventure.
Nathan smiled at the youth's impatience. "Hold on, JD. Give Chris a chance to tell us."
Ezra leaned back in his seat as he studied Tanner and Larabee, taking in the bounty hunter's depleted condition and the gunslinger's concern over his best friend's acquiescence. "Exactly what, might I inquire, kind of evil are you intimating that we will soon find ourselves up against? Are you, per chance, referring to sorcery?"
"Sorcery? That's got to do with witches and spells and stuff, don't it?" JD's eyes nervously darted across his partners, looking for some assurance that they were not going to battle witches.
"Easy, JD," Chris soothed. "The evil I'm talking about has nothing to do with witchcraft. It's worse."
"Worse?" JD gulped, his earlier excitement having vanished. "Buck, how can anything be worse than spells and potions? I almost died the last time we came across that kind of trouble. I...I don't think..."
"Calm down, JD. I ain't gonna let nothin' happen to ya," Buck reassured his young friend. "Just what are ya talkin' about, Chris? All this talk about evil is startin' to make me a little nervous too."
Larabee cast a cold gaze around the table. "Boys, the kind of evil I'm talkin' about is the low-down, despicable kind. The kind ya got no way of controllin'. The kind that leaves you helpless and totally at the mercy of another."
"Good Lord, Mr. Larabee, surely you aren't suggesting that our antagonist is that sagacious prevaricator of literary fabrication?"
"Huh?" Totally confused by the con man's knack for turning a simple statement into a mind-boggling journey through the English language, JD whispered to Buck, "What'd he say?"
Buck rolled his eyes and shrugged, indicating he was just as confused as the kid.
Having overheard the youngest member's question, Josiah explained, "I believe Brother Standish has concluded that Miss Maggie is the one responsible for Brother Tanner's state of despair."
"Oh, well then why didn't he say that?" JD asked in exasperation.
"Got any ideas, Chris, on how to handle this Maggie gal?" Buck asked the leader of the group.
Although Vin appeared to be indifferent to the presence of his friends and to their conversation, he had been listening in a detached sort of way. Before Larabee had a chance to respond to Buck's question, the tracker startled everyone with, "You guys can't help me with this. Nobody can. It's gonna happen no matter what anybody does, and if'n you guys are too close, it could happen to you too. Just like this afternoon at the livery."
Relieved to know that witchcraft wasn't involved, JD was feeling bold
again. "Vin, there's seven of us and only one of her. 'Sides
she's just a girl. We can handle her." Realizing his reasoning
made no difference to the buckskin clad man as the tracker started to pour
himself another drink, JD reached across the table and grabbed the bottle
of rot gut out of Tanner's hand.
"This certainly ain't gonna help you."
Fixing the youth with an icy glare, Vin said, "Give it back, Kid. I'd hate to have to shoot ya over a bottle of whiskey." With a deftness that belied the one and a half bottles of liquor the tracker had already consumed, his mare's leg was out of its holster and on the table before any of the remaining seven had a chance to react.
Buck nervously jumped back in his chair, and with hands raised defensively, he attempted to diffuse the situation before the tracker did something all of them would regret. "Whoa there. Take it easy, Pard. JD, give the man back his whiskey."
JD hesitated. He hated to see Vin this way and felt an obligation to help anyway he could, even if it meant risking the wrath of the normally easygoing tracker. "You ain't gonna shoot me, Vin, so you might as well put that gun away."
Buck wasn't as sure of the tracker as the kid was. "Have you lost your mind, boy?"
"Shut up, Buck," JD growled through clenched teeth, never taking his eyes from the gun on the table. He swallowed as he noticed the tracker's hand slide toward the gun's lever. "Okay, Vin, I'll give you back the bottle, but first answer me one question. What can this bottle do for you that we can't?"
"Make me numb." Tanner's voice was low and filled with despair.
"Numb? What do ya mean, Vin?" Nathan put into words the question that was hanging on everybody's lips.
The distraught tracker took a deep breath and sighed. As he gazed at his friends, his eyes reflected the hopelessness of one doomed to aimlessly endure life's horrendous tortures day after day. "Look, I know I can't run away from what that writer gal has in store for me. Hell, even if I was lucky enough to give her the slip, she'd just get me the next time. And if not her, then one of them other gals who follow her. I just thought if I drank enough, it wouldn't matter. I'd be too numb to feel anythin'."
Having heard the motivation behind Vin's behavior, the other members realized just how deeply troubled the tracker was over the unprovoked attacks against him by the fanfic writers. In complete sympathy with Tanner's plight, JD returned the bottle to his friend. "Here, Vin, go ahead and have another drink if you want. As a matter of fact, if ya don't mind, I'll join ya."
A sad smile crossed the bounty hunter's face. "Help yourself, JD. Them gals have picked on you some too." Vin looked at the rest of the group and asked, "Would you fellas care to join us?"
Josiah was the first to respond. "Don't mind if I do, Vin. Never been one to turn down drink."
"Well, thank you, Mr. Tanner. I'd be delighted." The gambler turned around and addressed the barmaid. "Inez, would you be so kind as to bring us some more glasses." After a quick glance at the remains of the bottle on the table, he added, "And I believe another bottle would be in order too."
Several bottles of whiskey later, the seven were still at the table,
though their condition had deteriorated considerably. JD was passed
out, his head resting on the table. Buck was slouched in his chair
with his eyes closed and a lecherous grin plastered on his face.
Josiah had a faraway look in his eye, muttering quotations from the bible.
While Nathan had not drunk enough
to be out of it, he was very mellow. For a change the leader
of the seven appeared content, at ease with his companions. Ezra
had a silly grin on his face but was still coherent enough to carry on
a conversation.
"My dear Mr. Tanner, while I must admit that your plan did have its merits, I'm afraid you made a glaring error in the execution of said plan."
"Ezra, what the hell are you talking' about?" The tracker's sullen mood had eased somewhat, but the dull headache he'd been experiencing since the incident at the livery was making him irritable.
"After observing our little gathering here, it has come to my attention that our indulgence in friendly libations has left most of us rather indisposed."
"That was the plan, Ezra." Vin was not in the mood for o ne of the gambler's drawn out explanations and his curt response reflected such.
"My good sir, don't you find it rather disconcerting that while you have had considerably more to drink than the rest of us, you have, inexplicably, remained sober?"
Now that the conman had pointed it out, Vin realized that aside from
a minor headache, the two plus bottles of whiskey he had downed had not
affected him at all. While he considered himself a man who could
handle his liquor, he knew there was no way he should still be conscious.
"Damn," the tracker cursed as he shifted in his seat and suspiciously scanned
the room for any
unwante d visitors lurking in the shadows.
Ezra chuckled. "I assume from your reaction, Mr. Tanner, that you know what's happening."
"Ahh hell, Ezra, those gals are at it agin." The bounty hunter massaged his temples as the throb of his headache suddenly became more pronounced. "They're using them damn 'writers' liberties' that Chris mentioned when they were after my coat a couple of weeks ago."
Ezra nodded in sympathy. "I'm afraid so, Mr. Tanner, and as much as I hate to be the purveyor of ill tidings, there's more."
Vin let his hands drop to the table, giving the gambler his undivided attention. "More?" the tracker groused. "How can anything be worse than to be at the mercy of them writer gals?"
"Unfortunately, my friend, with all of us incapacitated to one degree
or another, you have been left in a rather vulnerable position."
With a flourish of his hand, he indicated the remaining members of the
seven in various stages of consciousness. Before the confused tracker
had a chance to speak, the gambler continued, "You see, Mr. Tanner, you
have been left with
your back exposed and no one there to cover it. And once the
vixens are through having their way with you..." The man of chance
paused, staring blankly at the tracker. His mouth opened as if he
were about to speak again, but before he could do so, his body pitched
forward onto the table. He too had passed out.
Vin swallowed, trying to get a grip on the fear that was growing in
his gut. He pushed his chair back and went to stand by the window.
Surveying the street, he quickly noted Miss Maggie standing on the other
side gazing toward the saloon with a pad of paper and a pencil in her hands.
The tracker gulped nervously as he observed a devilish grin play across
the writer's face
as she scratched something down on her pad. "Damn," the
bounty hunter cursed. "Now what am I gonna do?" As he stood
deep in thought, a sly grin spread across his face. He took off his
hat and coat and muttered to himself, "Sometimes a man's gotta do what
a man's gotta do."
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Hmmmm...I wonder what the dear boy has in mind?
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