“Whose execution do we seek, Chisolm?”

Emma Cullen was a firebrand, and that was for certain. She certainly wasn’t in any way responsive to the lightest conversational measures he was willing to try. Joshua could respect that in a lady. He certainly preferred that type to the shrinking wallflowers of the big cities. But for all that abruptness and barely hidden temper, there was too much grief, much of it very recent, for her to be of any appeal to him, even if he had any more of a leaning in that direction. Easier to move on along and try to coax some particulars out of Sam Chisolm.

“Bartholomew Bogue.”

Times like these, he figured that Chisolm had ice water running in his veins, to just toss out a dry comment like that like it didn’t even matter. It wasn’t the first time Chisolm had left him flat-footed before, but even he had to take a second to gather his thoughts up again.

“Bart Bogue? The robber baron?” he asked incredulous… before his mind took to considering all the possibilities. “Means there’s gold in the equation, but gold don’t do you much good when you’re buried with it.”

“You want out? Feel free to leave,” Chisolm returned, side-eyeing him. “Just leave my horse… ‘cause I paid for it.”

Definitely ice water in that man’s veins… And besides at this point, he was entirely too curious to point out that he could pay that money back with interest, as well as for the tack. Taking on a man like Bogue, it was suicidal and crazy, and he liked the sound of it.

Crazy and suicidal fit well into his plans quite nicely these days.

“Just speaking out loud,” he replied instead, all affable Faraday in his voice, not a hint of the slide coming. He actually wanted to stay on with this a bit, and letting the bounty hunter part of himself out would not be the way to go. Little Teddy Q might well turn tail and run, though he doubt Miss Emma would even consider it.

“Twenty miles east of here, Volcano Springs supply station. You look for a Cajun—”

He had heard men describe a feeling of their stomach sinking all the way to their feet. He had experienced it only once before, a little over eight years ago, but he had been too mad at the time to place note of the exact feeling. The sensation now was remarkably similar. Honestly, he wanted to throw up every ounce of Busthead he had managed to pack away today, and Chisolm hadn’t even finished speaking yet.

“—name of Robicheaux.”

“Goodnight Robicheaux?”

“That’s right.”

“The Angel of Death…”

This time Chisolm just continued talking as he had not spoken, giving them meeting instructions: outside of Junction City in three days. Chisolm even included an aside that was probably meant to be as funny as Chisolm ever got, about how if he wasn’t there, then he was probably dead and Joshua could keep ‘his’ horse.

Chisolm was already turning to speak to Miss Emma, his horse turned towards the hills to the north, when Joshua’s brain finally caught up to what was going on around him. “You’re going after that vaquero, right? Gabriel Vasquez?” Chisolm nodded once, carefully. “I’ll go get him. You find Robicheaux.”

“I reckon not, Faraday.” The use of that particular name seemed deliberate, maybe even too deliberate. “I imagine Mister Vasquez would be more likely to come along if there’s not too much danger of him getting shot dead for his troubles. Some of us don’t have a reputation of shooting first.”

“Tell that to Powder Dan,” he fired right back.

“Be that as it may, I figure you’re more likely to get Goodnight Robicheaux to commit to this crew than I am at the point, and I know I’m a good deal more likely to be able to find Gabriel Vasquez than you are. Miss Emma, you’re with me,” Chisolm concluded, the pair of them taking off.

In the back of his head, he was already cussing Sam Chisolm in every language he knew a swear word in: French, Spanish, English, even a few words here and there of Gaelic he remembered from his Ma. He imagined his face was a granite wall, though, since he had long since perfected his poker face. He felt like it might be slipping around the edges, though.

Hell, he could admit that it was a pretty good plan. Yeah, more of his bounties came back dead than they did alive, and if Vasquez knew who was hunting him, then his instinct did seem to be to hide far and deep, well away from the world. If Chisolm had some insight into finding him that Joshua didn’t, then that might not be the worst idea. Especially because they didn’t have the time to find him all over again, no matter what the purpose of detouring after a wanted man happened to be.

He didn’t much care for the idea of Sam Chisolm stealing another bounty out from under him, but maybe he had something in mind for that five hundred dollars that could make this whole thing a little less suicidal. What, he didn’t know, but he would never doubt that his fellow bounty hunter had tricks up his sleeve that he couldn’t guess at. You could buy a lot of rifles and ammo for five hundred dollars, and a lot more rifles and ammo on their side meant a better chance of them all surviving this to get their hands on that gold.

But he figured Chisolm was thinking wrong on one aspect: he was in no way the best to get Goodnight Robicheaux to join their little band. He hadn’t talked to his brother in eight years, after all, and they had parted ways under some… less than stellar conditions. Words had been exchanged that couldn’t be taken back. Also, there were certain punches that had been exchanged that stood in the way of a good reconciliation.

Aside from that, he had a pocket in his saddlebags full of letters Billy Rocks had written to him. He had only burned the first one; the second one he almost had but he had quickly fished it back out of the flames, and the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind from then on. He had never once gotten a letter from Goody himself. And hell, for that matter, he had put a letter to post only three weeks ago, his fifteenth or so… and he had been determined that it would be his last one.

As of a month ago, Billy Rock and Goody were still together, out somewhere near the Nevada-California border. Per Rocks’ latest letter, they were even still doing quick-draw competitions, so really, not that much had changed with them over the last few years. He couldn’t even remember the last time he heard of Goody picking up a bounty, but it had probably been a year or so after they had parted ways. A vicious part of him thought that Goody probably couldn’t hunt bounties without him; he needed someone to be able to shoot up close, and bringing a bounty to hunt a bounty just seemed like a losing hand, so far as Joshua was concerned.

Little Teddy Q looked like he was considering speaking up, like he was confused as hell and wanted answers but didn’t know how to get them, like he was liable to kick up a fuss in the near future. In short, he looked like every rebellious youngster that he had ever had the displeasure and misfortune of knowing, It wasn’t particularly something that Joshua wanted to deal with, so he turned Jack and started southerly towards Volcano Springs.

This was not going to end well.

He was still stewing on his annoyance when he rode into Volcano Springs with Teddy Q the next morning. Teddy had spent much of the night inquiring as to the person they were meant to collect, until Joshua had given some serious thought to either finding a way to literally sew his mouth shut or possibly just shooting the little bastard. He didn’t doubt that he could easily do either one in order to get a decent night’s sleep. He had rolled over—again—facing away from little Teddy Q and gleefully dreamed of fishing out a needle to take to the young man’s face.

But it did mean that he was in a sour mood riding into the supply station, more so than he likely would have been otherwise. Because, really, this wasn’t going to end well for anyone.

It looked like two-thirds of the town was gathered around the corral. It was a fair bet that that was where they were holding the quick-draw contest. After tossing Jack’s reins across what passed for a hitching post around here and waiting a moment for Teddy Q to catch up to him, he nodded in the general direction of the crowd that was forming. “You’ll find Robicheaux over there. If you want, place a bet on the Rocks guy. I hear he’s good.”

“Where’re you heading, Mister Faraday?”

“I need a drink.” And wasn’t that the God’s honest truth? Between drying out on the trail here from Amador City and the stress of what was likely to come soon, he needed to find a bottle of whiskey to crawl into. The Busthead from Amador City was long since gone, and he needed more. He needed it, like a fish needed water.

Yesterday he had had misgivings about all of this, he mused to himself. Today, he flat-out wanted to get back up on Jack, start riding any direction but back towards Amador City or this little Rose Creek.

Teddy Q looked all set to argue, so he didn’t give him the chance, by turning away and walking to what passed for a saloon around here. Unless Goodnight had changed a lot, the barber’s that was also in here would be call lure enough for them to stop by sooner or later; he had never been able to resist getting gussied up whenever the chance presented itself. So he settled himself at the table closest to the barber chair with a bottle and a glass and got to drinking.

Half an hour and half a bottle of cheap ass whiskey later, sure enough, he could hear Goodnight and little Teddy Q coming in. He would assume that Rocks was in tow, trailing somewhere behind Goodnight, even if the man was silent; a quick glance in the mirror over the bar confirmed it. Rocks was, in fact, sitting in a low chair next to the barber chair that Goodnight had settled into, eating with his hands, some kind of food that Joshua cannot identify in the mirror’s reflection. Goodnight might have been in the barber’s chair getting soaped and lathered, but he was also holding court, entertaining little Teddy Q mightily in the way only someone with that famed Robicheaux charm could do.

“‘Duly-sworn warrant officer from Wichita, Kansas, and seven other states’?” Goody—Goodnight was saying. “Do we have the same man?”

Teddy must have made an affirmative sound of some kind that didn’t carry over to Joshua’s table. Teddy’s following question made it that far just fine though: “Should we talk someplace more private?”

“No, I like it right here. Billy, you like it here?” Goodnight was all loud expansiveness. It was his version of digging in his heels on a subject—or it had been years ago. It covered much of whatever Rocks was saying; Joshua could see his lips moving, just a little bit, a couple of times in the mirror, but that was it.

Instead what he got next was another question from Little Teddy Q, and there was no mistaking how disapproving the boy sounded, like someone’s old maiden aunt. “How did y’all meet?”

Goodnight laughed, and it almost even sounded like his old self. Almost. That was the point that Joshua turned back to his drink, trying his best to ignore the tale Goodnight was spinning about how he met Rocks while serving a warrant on him for the Northern Pacific Railroad. The bare bones of it was correct, excepting how it had been the two of them, it hadn’t precisely been bareknuckled as Rocks had involved his knives at one point, and that had been the beginning of the end for the Robicheaux boys as a bounty hunting team. They hadn’t brought in a bounty together since then, and it didn’t look too likely on them ever working together again.

Hell, it wasn’t exactly news to him that Goodnight was making money off Rocks’ quick-draw fights. It was news that they were going equal shares on it. “Between fights,” Rocks was explaining, “Goody helps me navigate the white man’s prejudices.”

And Joshua was seeing red. He had known from the letters that Goodnight let Rocks use the nickname that had previously been reserved only for Joshua himself. Hell, that had been the reason why he’d burned Rocks’ first letter. It was one thing to know it. It was another altogether to hear it said out loud like it was just another simple thing.

“Mm-hmm,” Goodnight agreed. “I keep him employed, and he keeps me… on the level.”

This time Joshua’s hands were shaking as he poured his next drink. It had been a long time since that had happened, that he had been so mad that his hands shook. He had known that him—and by extension, little Teddy Q—being sent after Goodnight was a bad idea and he had suspected that it would be a trial for him, but he hadn’t expected just how much it would hurt… or how much it would piss him off.

“Well,” Teddy began, and Joshua could have kissed him for the distraction, much less for his choice of words, “Mister  Chisolm sent us to come fetch you, but he didn’t say anything about your friend over there.”

“Wherever I go,” Goodnight stated, completely level, no trace of levity to be found in his voice, though at least he didn’t seem to have noticed Teddy’s slip in using ‘us’ in that little declaration, “Billy goes.”

Teddy folded like a house of cards in a stiff breeze with a muttered “Yes, sir.” There was a long pause, one where he was willing to bet that Goodnight was staring little Teddy Q down as he ascertained whether or not the boy was taking him seriously.

Finally, Goodnight commented, “We understand each other then. Now Billy and I—”

And that was the last thing that Joshua could stand. He shoved the now completely empty bottle away from himself as he pushed himself to his feet, even if he was none too steady on them. He half turned, mostly facing Teddy, though he could see Goodnight’s startled expression out of the corner of his eye as he shot up as well, Rocks a half beat ahead of him, and snapped out, “We’re leaving in an hour. Meet us by the corral then.” Because he needed to spend some time with Jack, cooling off before he did something he would really regret.

He managed to take off and get as far as the door before a hand wrapped around his arm. For a split second, the face he saw when he looked over his shoulder was Monsieur Robicheaux before it resolved into Goodnight. Even so, he could still see the similarities between his brother as he had aged and their shared bastard of a father. It was in the goatee, trimmed neatly but still greying. It was in the light brown hair, always closer to blond than his own reddish hair had ever been, hints of steel starting to streak through it. It was in the weathered eyes that still seemed centuries too old for his body. Hell, it was even in the clothes, just as fine-cut as Monsieur Robicheaux had ever favored, even if these were older, clearly mended, and trail worn, and the two fleur-de-lis pinned to either side of his vest collar. It wasn’t quite like looking directly at the old bastard all over again, since there was enough of Maman Arthémie there too: her blue eyes, a general softening of features that had been harsher on their shared father.

But it wasn’t too far away from him either, Joshua thought to himself in a moment of sheer desperation, yanking his arm to free it.

Whatever shock that had been on Goody’s—Goodnight, damn it—face had all but vanished during Joshua’s split second of horror, and it had been replaced with anger. And wasn’t that a too damned familiar expression on that damned face? “Thought you were done working with others,” he all but growled out, and at least the voice didn’t sound much like Monsieur Robicheaux. “Yet here you are playing babysitter to… well.” He gestured wildly at Teddy Q, and yeah, really, that was all there was to say on the matter of the boy.

“Your buddy Sam Chisolm bought my damn horse out from under me. This is me, being the honest citizen that I am, paying off a debt,” he hissed back.

Goodnight snorted and switched to French. “I’m surprised you didn’t just back-shoot him and take that damned wild animal back. I’ve heard how honest you are now. Word gets around.”

He narrowed his eyes and bit back on the growl that wanted to arise, before returning in kind, “At least I’m earning a living on my own merit and not someone else’s skills…” He paused, giving the words a second to sink in, before a smirk built on his face as he went for the one-two punch, “Ain’t that right, Monsieur Robicheaux?”

There was a long breath of stunned silence, like the entire world had fallen away, and then he realized that solely because his ears were ringing and the room was spinning around him. Goody—Goodnight—still hit like a train, after all, catching him hard in the left eye. For another stunned minute, all he could think was how glad he was that the actual Monsieur Robicheaux had never managed to hit anywhere near as hard as Goodnight did.

The other man’s voice was like ice as he spoke again, still in French. “The way I hear it, I may have the old bastard’s look, but the temper and attitude are the bread and butter of the younger brother.” He didn’t call him ‘the bastard’, but it felt like his brother—no, not that, not anymore—had only just restrained himself from saying those words. “Sound about right, T-Jo?”

And you know what, he decided to himself, fuck this. He still harbored some fond memories from his childhood of his brother, so he wasn’t about to do anything permanent—such as draw his gun, even if there was no chance he could miss at this range, or even return the favor of aiming for an eye, when Chisolm likely wanted Goodnight to be a sharpshooter for him now—but he could always pay the insult back in kind. It was easy to swing hard, right from the hip, like he had learned all those years ago in muddy battlefields across Maryland and Pennsylvania. Yeah, he was a lot bigger now than he had ever been then, but when he was mad as hell, it was what he always fell back on.

And unlike Goodnight, he didn’t aim for an eye. Instead, he caught the other man right in the corner of his mouth and felt a visceral kind of cheerful rage to see Goodnight’s lip split and blood well up. A dark grin pulled at the corners of his own mouth, and it felt so damn good.

“You don’t get to call me that anymore. You gave up that right years ago, remember?”

“I almost feel sorry for you.” And almost immediately he could feel himself bristling. Where the hell did Goodnight Robicheaux get off talking to him like that? “But fine. We can finish this conversation later.” And yeah, apparently he was done, because he switched back to English before continuing, “Thirty minutes, then we should be set to ride. Get as far as we can before nightfall.”

And then Rocks was right there, always sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong, always oh so fucking willing to come between the two of them. “Get cleaned up, Goody,” he commented quietly. “You shouldn’t leave looking like this.”

He rolled his eyes, hard. “Yeah, go on and get ready, Goodnight. Your buddy Chisolm wants us in Junction City in a day and a half.”

Goody—God fucking damn it, it was Goodnight now, and his stupid mind needed to remember that—actually looked more struck by the use of his full name than he had by the punch, and that was saying something, he figured, since there was still a little blood mixing in with the brown and grey of Goodnight’s goatee. “Fine,” he commented dully, and it almost felt like victory. Or it might have, had he not switched back over to French to finish, “Was a time when you wouldn’t call me by that name, Joshua.”

Once again he narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t going to throw another punch, not if he could help it, but he always wasn’t going to lose at getting his fair share of the verbal battle in either. “And I figure it don’t much matter, since it seems everyone gets to call you ‘Goody’ now,” he fired back, sneering as the color rose up Goodnight’s neck and into his cheeks, just like it always had when he was mad as hell, before quickly chancing another verbal blow. “I certainly don’t remember you being quite so… free with that sort of stuff back then.”

And there was that damn freight train again. Honestly, it felt like Goody had pulled his punch a bit the first time, at least compared to the second, because hell, that really did feel like getting hit by a train, because he hit the ground and tasted blood this time. He certainly felt like he’d had his bell rung like it hadn’t been in a few forevers, and it took him a few painful minutes to pick himself up out of the dirt, pushing himself to his feet and dusting himself off with his hat.

Little Teddy Q looked like he had suddenly had the knowledge visited upon him that he was in over his head. His green eyes were wide enough to pop out of his head, darting back and forth between Joshua in the doorway and the closed door that Goodnight and Billy had disappeared behind like one of them was going to end up biting him, and he actually looked a little pale. Yeah, he definitely had no idea what he had gotten himself into, and a vicious part of Joshua wanted to grin savagely with bloody teeth at the image he presented.

Instead, though, he paid for one more shot of the cheapest stuff in the bar, using it to painfully rinse the blood from his mouth. He even managed to ring the spittoon with blood-tinted rotgut before finally wiping at his mouth and saying, “We need to get back to the horses. It’s a long ride to Junction City, and I’m sure your little Joan of Arc ain’t going to be too happy with any of this.”

Adora here again with another chapter of Wicked Ones. I’m still incredibly nervous posting this one, but all the lovely comments I received have gone a long way towards making me feel better about it. Thank you all so, so much for them all. I have turned it into a series, because I’m thinking some of the sections we have written would break up the narrative too much to be in the main story, but that’s subject to change. Katsuko will be starting to post Goodnight’s sections soon.

Also, I think I caught all the places the cat typed in the narrative, but if there is a random string of numbers and letters somewhere or something like that, please, let me know!

We’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but our posting schedule will be as follows:
Mondays – Trinity
Wednesdays – Monstrous/After Midnight
Saturdays – Wicked Ones

So yeah, I still hate the fact that the movie doesn’t give a first name for Vasquez. I’ve looked over all the supplemental material I could find, and nope, no first name there either. So we made one up.

~Adora[endsection]