Word Count: 2,702
Archive: DarkMagick.net, Apollymi’s Grimoire, and Archive of Our Own. Anyone else wanting it, please ask first. I’ll probably say yes, but ask first…[endsection]
Writing in his journal, even as brief a lament as it had been, was apparently just what he’d needed in order to start functioning a bit better.
From his spot in the group just behind Chisolm, with Billy a half-step behind and Joshua five steps ahead, Goodnight huffed an amused breath. “What a band we are,” he mused aloud, still feeling a little mean but not viciously so. “Me a grey, Chisolm a blue. Billy a mysterious man of the Orient.” Here Billy shot him a look that he chose to ignore, even as he pondered something a bit more… polite to say next. “A half-Irish Creole, a Texican. A female and her gentleman caller. Oh, this is not going to end well.”
Ahead of him, he noticed Joshua turn about in the saddle as if to read his expression, but Goodnight had his face schooled into the same affable southern gentleman facade he’d been wearing since they rode out that morning. He wasn’t going to change it unless the situation called for it, and right now it was suiting him just fine.
“I’m Mexican, cabrón,” Vasquez insisted, pausing to spit on the ground as their horses trotted along. “No such thing as a Texican.”
“Well, go tell that to my granddaddy,” Goodnight retorted. “He died at the Alamo.” Up ahead, he could see Joshua’s shoulders slump a little, as he’d been born long after Grand-père Robicheaux had died in battle; even Goodnight was born afterward, and he’d wondered a time or two if maybe the man would have tempered Monsieur Robicheaux any had he lived.
“New Orleans Greys,” he continued, recalling the words from his bastard father, “long barons, bayonets, blood and teeth, mauled to death by a hoard of teeming brown devils.”
“My grandfather was one of those devils,” Vasquez replied. “Toluca battalion. Hey, maybe my grandfather killed your grandfather, huh?”
Goodnight looked over, and from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Joshua’s shoulders shaking with repressed laughter. Glad to have offered some amusement, T-Jo, he thought dryly even as he said, “What a charming thought.” To Billy, he added, “I sense we are bonding.”
“Goody,” his lover hissed quietly in warning, and the man just smiled back blithely. He could pretend to be cheerful all he wanted, but the Korean could see right through him and he damn well knew it. When they finally stopped for the night, he was going to be in for a tongue-lashing, but he didn’t rightly care.
It was about another hour to their destination, another supply station heading up into the mountains, where Chisolm finally revealed that they were looking to get Jack Horne to join their team.
Goodnight actually stared at his old acquaintance askance and could all but sense Billy’s displeasure at his back. Is Chisolm trying to find every sad sack of a bastard he can for this mission? he thought uncharitably, including himself in that number because he was nothing but honest about how broken he was.
He didn’t help much with the asking around, especially as it was proving to be useless, although when they asked the two brothers hanging around by the boarding house they were told that the younger was in possession of Horne’s rifle.
“We are talking about Jack Horne?” Goodnight asked incredulously from where he was leaning on the porch rail. “I mean, the Jack Horne, the legend Jack Horne?”
The brother not holding the rifle snorted. “Legend, my ass. He may have killed three hundred Crow, but he ain’t never met the Pigeon Brothers before.”
“And you say that’s Jack Horne’s rifle,” Joshua clarified from where he was sitting on the stairs. Goodnight had honestly been surprised when his brother had all but flung himself down in the spot, but he had quickly decided that the younger didn’t trust him any more and was doing his best to keep a covert eye on him. It would be touching if it wasn’t equally insulting.
The younger brother flipped the rifle over to show the initials JH carved into the stock. “It was Jack Horne’s rifle,” he said proudly. “There’s an army base, offering a thousand dollars for proof of death,” here his words jumped a bit, as his older brother shoved him for talking too much. “We figure the rifle ought’a do.”
“You don’t have the body?” Chisolm asked, picking up on what was unsaid. Goodnight could hear Billy huff in annoyance behind him and mentally agreed that this line of questioning wasn’t going to lead anywhere, not really.
“Well, no,” the elder Pigeon Brother replied. “Len here bashed him over the head from behind with a rock. Knocked him off a cliff, too.”
Chisolm didn’t look impressed. “So you snuck up behind him,” he stated.
“Yes!” the elder brother replied. “What exactly are you imply—”
He was cut off by the hatchet that appeared seemingly out of nowhere to make its home in his chest, and he fell to the ground dead.
Goodnight caught the others turning from the corner of his eye as he shifted to see where the damned thing had come from, and blinked at the gigantic bear of a man storming his way down the trail. There was a little blood on his left temple, and the beginnings of an impressive bruise to go with it.
“Here he comes,” he mused just under his breath, and as Jack Horne stalked over to Len Pigeon, added, “and there he goes.” Billy snorted softly in amusement, likely the only one to have heard Goodnight’s commentary.
He watched idly as the younger Pigeon Brother scrambled backward, accidentally shooting the rifle in the air as he fell over in his attempt to escape. Ol’ Jack Horne snatched his weapon back from the sad son of a bitch and bashed him in the face with the stock before lifting one large foot on Len Pigeon’s skull.
Everyone was silent for a moment, seeming to be shocked by what they’d just witnessed. Goodnight felt his lips twitching into an amused smirk, and schooled his voice before he said the thought that was going through his mind: “Pigeon Brothers weren’t famous for very long.”
On the stairs in front of him, Joshua made a sound like a laugh had been punched out of him. Goodnight blinked but smiled slightly as Vasquez chuckled beside him. Apparently he could still be funny when he wasn’t trying.
Watching the back of Jack Horne disappearing up the mountain, all Joshua could think to say was, “I believe that bear was wearing people’s clothes.” A couple of steps away from him, Vasquez chuckled loudly. The last day riding together had proven that the outlaw had one hell of a sense of humor, one that meshed well with his own. Joshua had even managed to set it off a few times now already.
What was interesting to him, though, was that Goodnight had just made a sound very much like the one he had made himself only a couple of minutes ago: like the laugh he let out had snuck up on him and surprised him on the way out, like it might have even hurt a little coming out, hard and unused in its realness. For him, it had been in response to Goodnight’s commentary as to the short-lived fame of the Pigeon brothers, because yeah, it had been funny.
But Goodnight laughing thanks to him… Well, that left him more than a bit torn: a vicious part of him was happy that it sounded like Goody wasn’t, a different vicious part of him want to beat Rocks for his brother not being a happy man, a third altogether wanted to rail at his brother for the audacity of laughing at what hadn’t really been that funny an observation…
And a part of him he hadn’t thought about in years, a part of him he had thought long buried in the years of the war and since, was just tickled pink to have made Goodnight laugh. It had always been a special pleasure of his as a child, and apparently even eight years apart hadn’t been enough to dim it. It made him feel like a kid all over again, and he damn sure didn’t like that idea, not with all the associated memories it threatened to bring up.
Or maybe it was all in his head thanks to that comment Goodnight had made on the trail up here. He had assessed the group this far in a deadpan drawl. Granted, it was more a summary than anything too in depth, but still… He had called Chisolm a blue, himself a grey, Rocks a mysterious man of the Orient—and he had had to drink long and hard from his little travel bottle to keep from snorting, rolling his eyes, or scoffing—before reaching his assessment of Joshua.
He had thought that he’d been all prepared for whatever Goodnight might say. He had even half been expecting something very much like what had been said during that fight that drove them apart: a drunk green Paddy. And while he couldn’t truthfully deny the drunk part, especially not right now, the other two had stung when they had been said eight years ago. They still stung in his nightmares these days.
Instead, Goodnight’s assessment of him had been as ‘a half-Irish Creole’, before swiftly moving on to call Vasquez a ‘Texican’, while Miss Emma and little Teddy Q were ‘a female and her gentleman caller’. But he hadn’t heard most of that. He had barely even heard Vasquez arguing about there not being such a thing as a ‘Texican’… or the discussion of the Alamo.
After all, he had instead been turned around in his saddle, far enough around that if he had been riding any horse other than ol’ Wild Jack, he probably would have fallen off, given the sheer amount of alcohol in his body by then; Vasquez had had something to say on that, forcing one of Miss Emma’s trail biscuits off on him and stealing the whiskey until he had eaten at least that much, but that had been in the earliest hours of the day, several long hours before Goodnight decided to share that particular bit of insight.
He had missed all of the resulting conversation about Texicans and the Alamo and anything else, because he had been turned around staring at his brother like he had never seen him before in his life. It’s not like he don’t know I don’t have a drop of Creole in me, he had thought to himself in sheer, utter confusion, sitting back down hard enough in his saddle that Jack huffed hard at him in displeasure; if they weren’t moving, he probably would have gotten a good hard nip wherever Jack could reach him for that maneuver. What I have in me is every drop of bad Cajun that fucking Monsieur Robicheaux had to spare. I don’t think Maman Arthémie was able to give me a single damn drop of Creole over the few years I—we—had her. Why the hell would Goody—Goodnight, damn it—call me half Creole then? It don’t make sense. What the hell is Goodnight running at?
While he was stewing on that, he in turn missed a lot of what Chisolm had to say on the matter of losing Jack Horne, catching up only as the others started stepping down off the porch. Rocks always already on the grass as well, rounding up his and Goodnight’s horses, and Vasquez had just stepped by him to do quickly check over that grey of his. Chisolm had already remounted that big black chestnut of his and had walked it a few steps beyond everyone else, clearly using the extra height to watch where Horne was heading.
“Damn, Chisolm couldn’t have picked a more sorry bunch of sacks of shit if he tried,” he muttered aloud, eyeballing the assembled group and trying to judge their survival chances based on what he was seeing so far. It wasn’t looking too good.
“He has exceeded beyond his wildest expectations,” a familiar voice drawled behind him. He found himself smirking in response. The reaction was completely involuntary.
When his mind caught up with the rest of him, dragging him to a split second halt halfway onto Jack, he could have cursed aloud if he had been able to summon up the energy or anger. Apparently, he thought to himself as he finished settling himself in the saddle, being this close to his brother meant that he was going to keep slipping into thinking they were friends again. Given how stiff Goodnight looked climbing back on that horse of his, it didn’t look like friendship was in the cards.
Fine. Fine, he could live with that. There was no denying the blood between them—neither how they were related nor the sheer amount of bad blood that had built up over the years—but he only had the one brother. He would just have to do his best to get them both out of this mess alive… and Rocks too, he supposed, since the other man was gaining some begrudged respect from him and since he was apparently the most important thing in Goodnight Robicheaux’s life.
And then he was going to light out back to Missouri and stay there. Hell, he might even offer Vasquez the chance to come along with him. He liked the other man’s company and sardonic wit that meshed so well with his own… and those trousers that had to be designed to tempt a man to sin. And what the hell? He had bought off one bounty already. He might not be able to do that for one the size of Vasquez’s any time soon, especially not where killing a Ranger was concerned, but he could probably figure out another way out of that particular mess.
Joshua was going to have to find a way to deal with spending so much ‘quality’ time around his brother, especially when his brother obviously wanted nothing to do with him. No, instead, it seemed like all Goodnight wanted to do was stick close to Rocks and Chisolm, even now that they were bedding down for the night.
Traveling today had been… interesting. Leaving Junction City for the weigh station, then leaving it and Horne behind, it had then been a trip through a graveyard, one of the Comanche persuasion, and he couldn’t say he liked it over much. He didn’t mind graveyards all that much as a rule; generally speaking, you would be hard pressed to find a quieter place than one, especially if you needed to lay low. There was something about these Indian ones though: maybe the fact that the bodies were above ground, exposed to the elements, right there ready to be picked clean. He had had nightmares of ending up that way himself, forgotten and unmourned and left for the birds to devour.
He still was probably going to end up that way. Who the hell was going to miss someone like him? He didn’t have any friends. Hell, the closest he had to a friend right now was Gabriel Vasquez, followed by Miss Jane back in Missouri, neither of which were likely to miss him all that much once he was gone. He had a brother, but there was too much bad blood between them now. He knew that they were never going to be close again, and sometimes he wondered if he had dreamed up the closeness they had once shared. Hell, maybe he had gone mad, gotten too overheated during one too many rides through the desert, and dreamt up even being related to Goodnight Robicheaux.
Little Teddy Q’s whiskey of choice was of a considerably better quality than Joshua’s usual, and it might have been hitting him a bit harder than usual. Of course, thinking back, he wasn’t sure how much he had actually eaten since they had left Junction City… or before that. Vasquez had made him eat at least once during the day. If he had had more than that, he couldn’t recall.
And that was going to be his excuse for this kind of maudlin behavior. He had to have replaced at least half the fluids in his body with alcohol of varying qualities and quantities by this point, and it was affecting him a bit. Just a tad.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that he was one of two still awake. Miss Emma and little Teddy Q had bedded down next to each other like a pair of puppies, sound asleep and seemingly without a care in the world, and Goodnight was a few steps away from them. Chisolm wasn’t too far off from Goodnight, and damn, if those two hadn’t been thick as thieves earlier. He hadn’t realized Goodnight was so close to the other man. Vasquez had tucked himself into a crevice and long since fallen asleep, and personally speaking, Joshua was envying him a bit. It had to be nice to be able to trust people enough to sleep well with them around without resorting to a bottle first.
Rocks? Rocks was still awake, though, and watching him like a damn hawk. Maybe he could even see why. Where he had stopped, he was standing right next to his brother. Given the events of the last couple of days, it might happen that Rocks thought there was cause for concern. Situations were reversed, he wasn’t too sure he wouldn’t be having concerns himself.
Well, that was just stupid so far as he cared. If he hadn’t shot Goodnight for calling him a drunk green Paddy and if he hadn’t shot Goodnight for punching him, he wasn’t going to shoot Goodnight while he was sleeping. Especially not while they had been having a fairly good day.
And the ten year old in the back of his mind still thought that shit was funny. At least the twenty-nine year old he was now was able to keep from laughing aloud at it these days.
He had dropped his saddle down at the bottom of the horseshoe section of canyon that made up their campsite, and that was where he continued on to. There was enough of Teddy Q’s fine whiskey in his system to put him right to sleep only seconds after his head hit the saddle, using it as a pillow and covering his eyes with his hat.
And he was just going to hope that he was so drunk that he didn’t dream tonight.
Billy decided to set up watch when the group stopped for the night, despite his misgivings at leaving Goody to settle in near the fire alone. He’d noted Joshua taking the other high post, but apparently that was only so he could better torment young Teddy Q.
Yes, the boy needed to learn — and very quickly — that it was just as bad to be hyper-focused as it was to be caught unawares, but he felt Goody’s brother could have been a little less confrontational with it. Still, it wasn’t his place to comment; his concern was how Goody was handling everything, and the answer to that was not very well.
The few times he apparently forgot that he was pissed off at his brother — which seemed to coincide with Joshua forgetting as well — his Goody was much happier than he’d been in a very long time. When he remembered, however… That was when he went quiet, distant, and threw up that goddamn Goodnight Robicheaux, Southern Gentleman mask that Billy so despised.
In all honesty? He’d much rather Goody drink himself into a drunken slumber than pull that damned poker face of his.
The sound of coyotes in the distance drew his attention momentarily, and when he glanced back into the center of camp, he saw that Goody had joined Chisolm. Their voices didn’t carry much, but he could hear his lover asking their erstwhile leader about young Missus Cullen. It almost seemed as if Goody was displeased at the widow’s age, but he didn’t appear to be talking about her at all. He did note that Chisolm’s expression closed off, and Billy reiterated his distrust of the man to himself.
As the hour grew later and the fire died down, the rest of their party began to settle down to sleep. Billy noticed Joshua slink down from his watch spot and move to the opposite of the fire from Goody, pausing briefly before continuing towards where he’d dropped his saddle.
The Korean frowned to himself. For a moment, it had almost seemed like the younger Robicheaux brother actually contemplated bedding down close to the elder before changing his mind.
He wondered to himself if the letter in his saddlebag, the one that had been awaiting them at the post the morning that they had left Volcano Springs, might have been a second missive from Joshua Robicheaux — and no, he didn’t give a shit what the younger was calling himself; Goody had always called him brother so as far as he cared then that’s what Billy’d think of him as — and decided that, once they were in Rose Creek, he would give it to Goody.
Billy took another long look around the area surrounding them, spotting nothing approaching in the desert, and settled back against a boulder to sleep.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d actually slept, but Billy came abruptly awake at the sound of a gun cocking. He sat upright in time to catch sight of Chisolm rising, gun in hand, and heard Goody ask if anyone else smelled what he did. Billy caught a whiff of blood right about the time Joshua answered Teddy’s question, and he glanced around to spot Jack Horne appear from the way they’d come.
“He’s been tracking us,” Goody mused even as Horne indicated the problem approaching with no words, only hand signals. Billy pulled his favorite blade and tucked it against his right side as he rose to his feet, eyes turning to the left as a young-looking Comanche warrior rode out of the morning mist.
He wasn’t the only one on immediate guard; Vasquez had one of his weapons drawn as he kept tucked behind the rock wall, Goody had his rifle trained on the man (and Billy knew damned well that he kept at least one round chambered at all times despite his misgivings about using it in close range), Emma Cullen was likewise aiming her rifle even as she crouched next to Teddy, and Joshua’s Colt was locked on the Indian.
“Tell me I am hallucinating,” his lover said sotto voice, likely not realizing he’d spoken aloud.
“You’re hallucinating,” Joshua replied instantly. “And so am I.”
Billy heard Goody say something about there likely being more, and it was a good assessment. However, he was more focused on the threat he could see and dearly hoped that his lover would take on the task of any others that might be approaching from the cliffs above.
Then goddamn Chisolm was speaking Comanche, with the Indian responding in like manner. Then Chisolm was speaking English again with the Comanche still replying in his native tongue. Obviously the newcomer at least understood English, but Billy wasn’t about to let down his guard again. This man had already approached with them being none the wiser; until proved otherwise, he would see this situation as potentially deadly and kill to protect those most important to him.
And right now, that number was limited to Goody and Joshua: Goody because of obvious reasons and Joshua because Goody still loved the little shit.
For a tense several minutes, he watched and listened as Chisolm and the newcomer talked. Then the other was giving what seemed to be his name in what might have been English — Red Harvest — and offering Chisolm some of the deer he’d been carrying’s liver. Even when Chisolm returned to the fire and said that this Red Harvest was with them, Billy kept his blade out and ready.
He didn’t trust Chisolm at all. He wasn’t entirely willing to believe his word on the Indian until the man himself proved himself as no threat.
[section=Footer Notes]04 February 2017As always, here’s your note of who wrote what: Katsuko did sections one and four, and I did two and three. I’ve tried to make the transitions seamless, so fingers crossed. In the meanwhile, I’m home with the crud, so I’m going to be trying to get these damn boys to cooperate with my sick self.
~Adora[endsection]