Word Count: 2,605
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]
“Fire!”
The line of men fired on command, but if they were trying to hit the targets then they failed spectacularly. Goodnight was certain that the only thing in danger had been the grass.
“Jesus wept,” Joshua muttered from the wagon, and the elder Robicheaux barely kept from tensing up at the unwelcome commentary. Yes, he knew these men were piss poor shots, but his brother didn’t need to say it to their faces… yet.
“How many times do I gotta tell you to keep that leg under you?” he asked rhetorically as he walked down the line. “You, level up that arm. Schoolteacher, get that hat off your head. Keep your eye on the target and not the clouds. Our enemy isn’t a bird. Teddy,” and here he paused for a moment to fix the young man with a stern look even though he wasn’t looking. “I expect better outta you. The recoil is not to be shunned; it is to be absorbed.”
Honestly, it wasn’t a difficult concept. Shit, he and the rest of the Tigers had managed to teach Joshua to shoot in less time with less thorough instructions. If a twelve year old could manage this, how pathetic were these poor bastards?
“I ain’t shunning nothing, sir,” Teddy groused, and Goodnight just stopped.
He took a moment to draw in a steadying breath before asking, “Are you back-talking me, son? Do you believe you know better—”
For the second time since they arrived at the makeshift firing range, the man next to Teddy fired off his rifle at nothing but the sky above. It was enough to jar him out of the verbal lashing he’d been about to lay on the young widow Cullen’s associate, and he instead focused on the other poor son of a bitch.
“That’s the second time for you,” Goodnight said. “You’re done for today.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I just—”
“No! You’re done. Go make me some eggs.” He watched the man rise to his feet, no awareness of the rifle in his hand, and asked mockingly, “You gonna point that thing at me?”
The abashed man scurried off, and Goodnight turned his attention back to the line. “You don’t need to be afraid of the shot. Just squeeze the trigger: don’t pull it. It’s a gentle motion, so gentle you near ‘bout surprise yourself when you fire the weapon. Focus, steady your hand, and fire when ready.”
There was a resounding silence from the line, and Goodnight snapped out, “Fire!”
And… nothing. More grass cut down in the prime of its life from a hail of misfired bullets.
“I am in awe,” he said, absolutely no emotion in his voice, “that this many men could miss that many targets. Twice.” He shook his head and looked up to the sky. “I’m looking at a line of dead men. Do any of y’all even give a good goddamn that Bogue is coming in less than a week now and has plans to kill each and every one of you without batting an eye? Do you just not care ‘bout the land you bled for, that you sacrificed the comforts of all you knew before to make your own place? Do you just hate your wives, your children? You sad sons of bitches.”
“Why don’t you inspire them?”
This drew his gaze from the sky, and he shot a glare at Joshua even as he wondered when the hell his brother had moved so close. “We need the lead,” he drawled, and it was true. If these sorry sacks of shit couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside, then he and the rest of this group were gonna need all the ammunition they could keep their hands on.
“I’m sorry,” Joshua hissed, “but all I’m hearing is I don’t care enough to teach these people.”
Goodnight’s eyes narrowed. “You challenging me now, mon frère?”
The younger brother glared back. “I don’t know. You think you can out-shoot me?” With that, he shoved one of the rifles he was holding at the elder, and Goodnight noted absently that at some point his Winchester 1873 carbine had made it from his saddle holster to his brother’s hands.
Taking just a moment to check that his newest rifle was in ready condition, Goodnight turned from Joshua and took aim at the far left target. He focused his ire on the poor sandbag and let fire six shots, all in rapid succession, ejecting each spent cartridge without pausing. He could almost swear he heard an echo to every shot… or not an echo, but six shots fired in near unison with his own.
When he lowered the carbine, Goodnight was pleased to note that the head had fallen off the target he’d chosen. The target immediately to the right of his, however, had been destroyed in what would have been the chest as a result of Joshua’s own shots.
He turned to shoot a glare at his brother, but instead he was caught up short by just how… pleased Joshua looked. If he hadn’t had the conversation prior to their little competition, Goodnight would almost think that his little brother had been playing.
Rather than speak to anyone, the Cajun turned on his heel, shouldering his Winchester and stalking back towards the hotel. Right now, all he really wanted to do was forget that death was coming for every damned fool left in Rose Creek… and that the number included his T-Jo. Even if Joshua didn’t want to admit it anymore.
Well, that couldn’t have gone worse if Joshua had been deliberately trying to antagonize Goodnight. He had opened his mouth and promptly inserted his entire leg, never mind just his foot. Instead of the attempt at a friendly challenge he had intended, every single word that came out of his mouth was exactly what he had been trying not to say: all but daring his brother into a fight, one that he didn’t particularly want to win.
At least he could hope that no one had been able to hear what had been said. Oh, they could probably read a thousand things into the way the pair of them had been sizing each other up… or into the way his brother had all but snatched his rifle out of Joshua’s hands… or how much they had both been concentrating on their shots… or into the stiff way Goodnight had stalked off afterwards… But more than likely, they hadn’t heard anything, so that was a small victory.
But the look Sam Chisolm was giving him as he in turn watching his brother stalk away… He got the distinct feeling that Chisolm was filling in the blanks, connecting all the dots between what he had seen and what he hadn’t heard, and the man was coming up with an answer that Joshua didn’t want to know anything about. He couldn’t say he much liked the considering look in Chisolm’s eyes or the way he glanced between Goodnight and Joshua like he was sizing the pair of them up. There wasn’t a lot he could do about it, not right now, but he was going to keep all of it in mind.
“Go home and polish your rifles,” Joshua heard himself calling to the rifle line, completely without thought. “Maybe the glint’ll scare them off.”
He turned and strode away, tossing the borrowed gun back into the wagon he had pulled it from in the first place. He made a point of not even looking in Chisolm’s direction as he walked away, just like he made a point of not reacting to someone on the line asking if they weren’t going to be shooting anymore. If he tried hard enough, none of those things were important.
And he wasn’t going to be glancing around town to see if he could tell where his brother had gone when he’d left. It was a moot point: wherever Goodnight was, Rocks was there too. Goodnight wouldn’t be too keen to see him, and he wasn’t too keen on seeing Rocks. All in all, it was a point not worth belaboring. It wasn’t like he could say the things he wanted to say anyway.
Ever since that fight all those years ago, the one that had driven the Robicheaux brothers apart, he had tried to make a point of thinking before he started running his mouth. It didn’t always work. He was getting better about it, no doubt about that, but right now, it just wasn’t working. There was something about being right next to his brother that erased his ability to think before he spoke right out of his repertoire. He didn’t much care for it.
As it was, he was walking a thin line each and every moment he was in Rose Creek. Moment to moment, especially when anywhere near his brother, he didn’t know if he was going to react like Joshua Faraday or Joshua Robicheaux. The gambler or the bounty hunter…
Neither would put up with some of the shit going on around here, but where Faraday wanted to swear and stomp his feet in annoyance, Robicheaux wanted to either put his fist in people’s faces for the annoyance or put a couple of bullets into any asshole that annoyed him. Faraday wanted to scream his frustration to the heavens; Robicheaux still harbored some thoughts about sewing little Teddy Q’s mouth shut.
A couple of days ago, back in Volcano Springs, Goodnight had made a crack about him looking like their shared bastard of a father but Joshua acting like him. Those words had stayed with him these last few days, haunting him in his darkest moments. They had kept him awake last night, and he suspected that the only reason he had been able to get any damn sleep the night before that was Teddy Q’s quality whiskey in that box canyon. That was long gone now, of course, and so was sleep, at least for now.
Maybe Goodnight was right. When they had been younger, that had often been the case, often to Joshua’s chagrin: he himself was apt to run off at the mouth, and Goodnight was usually right. Not always, thank God, or he suspected his brother would have been insufferable to live with, but often enough. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to admit that Goodnight had probably been right about Billy Rocks too—Joshua, this is not a man to arrest; this is a man to befriend—but everything that he could remember of had happened thus far since they left Volcano Springs seemed to back up Goodnight’s assessment from eight years ago.
No, Goodnight was probably right. Joshua did have too much of Monsieur Robicheaux in him… and he had deliberately worked to bring as much of it to the surface as possible, all in order to do a job better. He had modeled his Joshua Robicheaux, Bounty Hunter, persona on their father, after all. He had cut some of the worst parts out—and he would gladly and cheerfully put a bullet in his own head before he let himself hurt a woman or a child—but that had been the extent of it.
When he and Goodnight had parted ways eight years ago, people had still considered him fairly young. Even though he had, at that point, lived through more in his twenty-one years than most people did in a full lifetime, both criminals and other bounty hunters had taken one look at him and seen only his age. He had needed a way to make them take him seriously, one that didn’t require him to use his brother’s name all the time, and being the meanest motherfucker in the game had been a good way to do just that.
He had half been making plans to head to Missouri if he accidentally happened to survive this week, maybe even bringing Vasquez along if the Mexican was amenable to the idea. Maybe if he did that, he could leave Joshua Robicheaux behind in the west. He liked Joshua Faraday much, much more.
Too damn bad he couldn’t seem to hold onto that part of himself too well these days.
Billy was already more than a little frustrated with how much the good men of Rose Creek seemed to not give a shit about defending their homes, and thus he was hiding out in his and Goody’s room with a bottle of Busthead that he’d gotten hold of before Joshua could spot it in the bar downstairs and a single glass that he’d drained twice over now. He had been expecting to have another hour or so before his lover returned from his own try at training the menfolk, and was a bit startled when the door was all but slammed open to allow Goody to stalk into the room.
He blinked to see the Winchester carbine in the other man’s hands, knowing better than most that Goody tended to keep it in the saddle holster when not actually using it, much like he did with the Mississippi. A quick glance to his right showed said second holster sitting empty, and he wondered how he had missed that earlier.
Rather than dwell on that thought, Billy turned his attention to where Goody was wiping down his rifle and cleared his throat. Once his lover glanced his way, he asked, “Rough session?”
Goody actually snorted. “We’d best hope that Bogue somehow figures out how to fly or decides to burrow his way into Rose Creek; that’s the only way any of these sons of bitches are gonna hit anything.”
“That bad?” Billy winced a bit at the harsh bark of laughter that received. It wasn’t often that Goody fell into and remained in a mean mood, but the past couple of days since arriving in town it seemed as if that were where he planned to stay. “Are any of them redeemable?”
The older man paused thoughtfully, head tilted to the side as he rested his rifle on his knee for a moment. “Well, one of ‘em is getting good at making me eggs.”
The Korean actually laughed at that, and he was pleased to see Goody relax at the sound. His Goody was especially vindictive towards people he expected better things out of, which was likely why he and Joshua were all but at each other’s throats whenever they crossed paths in town.
And that reminded him…
Billy stood up, setting down his glass and moving over to where he’d dropped his saddle bags when they claimed this particular room as theirs. He could sense Goody’s curious gaze, and he hoped that this wasn’t going to blow up in his face. He opened up the pocket and looked inside, only to frown darkly.
The letter was gone.
He knew where he had placed it, taking care to tuck it carefully between a small book of poems written in his native tongue — it had been a gift from his eomma and he’d never traveled anywhere without it — and the original copy of his bounty writ that Goody had given him the first night they’d made love rather than merely fuck. But while both the book and writ were tucked away safely in the soft linen cloth he kept them loosely wrapped in same as always, the letter was nowhere to be seen.
Either he had dreamed receiving it, or someone had rifled through his things.
“Billy?” Goody had stood from his seat and moved a few steps closer, concern in his lovely blue eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he replied simply, closing the pocket and setting the bags back on the chair. “Just misplaced something. I’m sure it’ll turn up.”
And if it turned up with whom he suspected? Even Goody’s friendship with the man might not save Chisolm from being stabbed in the face.
[section=Footer Notes]25 February 2017Finally! A story not related to one of our birthdays! I think I worked on Joshua’s bit of this over Christmas, but I’m not counting that. We’re catching up fast to where I’m at writing, but I think I’ll be able to avoid having to do a slowed posting schedule or hiatus.
Thank you so much to everyone who has left a comment! They’ve all been so lovely, and some of them have been so inspiring or self esteem-building… right when I needed that the most.
Anyway, thanks again for reading. If you comment, thank you so much for that as well. It means the world to me.
Cheers!
~Adora[endsection]