Archive of Our Own ^beta

After the nearly four days it has taken him to reach Henry’s side, in these first hours sitting watching him sleep, the thought that returns, over and over to Edward, is the disrepair he has fallen into.

(Such an incongruous thing, considering—considering. As if appearances and vanity have any place between one breath and the next.)

Four months since they saw each other last. Since they—parted. Four months, and more so than Henry’s shallow gasps, the stillness of him under laudanum, the waxy pallor of his face beneath the bruises, beneath the scabbed abrasions, it is that.

The disrepair.

Henry as he last saw him, ramrod straight and spitting fire, would not have tolerated his whiskers so overgrown, would never allow a beard to darken his chin. Eternally fastidious in his shaving, reprimanded Edward if he did not take similar care, complained about getting scratched with stubble.

His cheeks were hollow before. His illness, the fevers, too much whisky, not enough appetite even though he still deigned to nibble a biscuit whenever the opportunity presented. But now—

The new hollows beneath his eyes. As if he has sunken, somehow. Aged ten years, in these last four months.

When McCann sent those words, urgent presence, and had Edward been even a day later—

Luck, or providence? That the telegram found him as it did?

John Irving would have said providence. John Irving lies in Montana clay.

Edward never had his faith.

Instead, he squeezes Henry’s limp fingers, slips his free hand beneath the blanket that covers him, lays it over his heart. The slow thump against his palm, the slight rise and fall of that chest, all he needs.

Not dead.

Not yet.

Henry’s forehead is cold and damp beneath his own.

The telegram found Edward in a rocking chair, on the front porch of James Clark Ross.

How four days feel a lifetime ago now.

He had not intended to call on the Rosses, had simply been drifting north from Mexico. Not planning, not thinking, really, of much at all. Perhaps he had wondered, idly, where Henry was, considered sending a letter. (Knows he had, no perhaps about it.) Had thought too, in a slightly more defined way, about making his way up to Deadwood, finding George. Two years, now, since he saw George, hard to believe as that is.

Perhaps, had the thought had more time to take root, he might have pointed himself that way in the end. Sought him out. Tried to persuade him, somehow, out of his seclusion, little good as it would do.

Instead, before such a decision could be made, he found himself picking his way over familiar terrain, fifty miles from the Palo Duro, and close to the bounds of the JCR.

Time for himself and old Monte both to have a rest.

That was what Edward said, little knowing the reception he would receive. Little knowing what to expect at all.

There was a time when he was a frequent caller at the JCR, as frequent as any man can be who has resigned his commission and chiefly finds himself pursuing the gambling trail, when he is not taking odd positions as a scout, or breaking horses for the sake of feeling the strain in his bones. That time some four years in the past, not that his loyalties have changed. Simply—circumstance.

Still. Crozier and Ross both had assured him he would always be welcome, that he need never want for a bed for a night, or a week, or three months.

And so, the JCR. Ann Ross herself who came out to meet him, despite the at least two rifles he knew to be covering him, shading her eyes against the sun. The frown turning to a smile when she at last recognised him, and he wondered at how changed he might be, how much weight he might have lost, how much dust he might have accumulated, how badly he was in need of a shave, until she gestured for him to dismount.

“I’m afraid my husband is in town, Major. Frank is out with the men.”

So long since anyone called him Major it knocked the wind out of him. He almost didn’t hear it when she added, “Stay as long as you wish.”

“For a friend of Frank,” and that sweet smile. This the lady, always a lady, even in a simple cotton dress two thousand miles from what she’d call civilisation, who tamed the famous Colonel Ross. No doubt she, too, had a derringer or two up her sleeve.

And a knife in her boot.

The Ross children, most of them, had come out to see this stranger who had called. The older ones, a lad of about twelve with the glowing auburn hair of his father, and a girl a couple of years his junior with something of her mother in her face, shook his hand and curtsied respectively. The middle two lads that he remembers much smaller, now fighting and teasing in a way that reminded him, almost painfully, of his own brothers. Then smaller ones in turn, down to young Jasper maybe six, looking up at him with liquid dark eyes in contrast to his siblings, and little Abigail who, when he last saw her, was still a babe in arms, and now smiled shyly at him from behind her mother’s skirts.

Edward was, and he knows dear Mrs Ross will not hold it against him, poor company. Tired and saddle sore and longing for sleep, and the children were hustled away for to allow their guest some rest. Rest that came after a bath was drawn, two baths to cleanse away the trail dust, and a shave that left his face cold. How he luxuriated in the hot water, looked forward to the promise of a hot meal, only to pass out and sleep into the evening when he reached the room that had been made up for him. A clean set of clothes, too, laid out, his own taken to be soaked and scrubbed and dried.

When, at last, he made it out, supper was long over, cold cuts set aside for him, and his old Colonel was sitting deep in an armchair, smoking a pipe, while Mrs Ross crocheted on the sofa beside him.

Of course, Edward has long known about the arrangement between Crozier and the Rosses. Hardly a secret even if not spoken of. Would have suspected if only from Henry’s occasional remarks, what Jopson has deigned not to say, and the fact that the eldest girl looks nothing like her alleged father but does have something of Colonel Crozier about the jaw. Still, the domesticity of the scene was a minor surprise, though what caught him more off guard was Crozier himself pouring a whisky for him, a man who he knows has not drank since the winter of 1880.

Edward ate, and sipped his whisky, and they traded news of their different associates. The latest letter from George and the doings in Deadwood. Bridgens and Peglar back touring Arizona these days, performing Shakespeare anywhere they can for a night or a few weeks. Hartnell patrolling the border—how close Edward must have come to him in his crossing to and from Mexico. Old John Ross as cantankerous as ever when he elects to write. News from the Coninghams, their boy talking about the cavalry when he’s old enough, a sick feeling twisting in the pit of Edward’s stomach at the thought. The Blankys doing well, and a pang to hear that Tom Jopson is in Topeka these days.

He had hoped, without knowing he was hoping, to see Jopson. Hoped, maybe, he was on the range, or had gone with Ross.

Neither of them mentioned Henry. Neither Crozier to enquire, nor Edward to admit he had not seen the man since April.

When the name rose in his throat, he swallowed it down.

Several days before Ross himself was due back, much business to conduct in town, and Edward decided he would at least wait on to see him before going—wherever Monte would take him.

So he thought, twelve hours before the telegram.

He slept poorly that night. In hindsight, perhaps a sign, though at the time it was Fitzjames who came to him in his dreams. Fitzjames, being carried into the room where he, Edward, slept. Fitzjames being laid out on that very bed, the blood soaking through his shirt, the waxy pallor of his face.

Was that the room where Fitzjames had died? Bled white by the bullet that tore out beneath his collarbone? In the stillness of the night Edward felt so certain. In morning light could not find words to ask.

His policy, as much as possible, to never mention Fitzjames.

And still, sitting on the Ross front porch in that rocking chair, hat shading his eyes, that was the question he could not shake. Not as he half-dozed, not as he listened to the young Rosses playing, chasing each other, practicing their letters. Not as Mrs Ross filled him in on the latest happenings on the ranch, told him he would be more than welcome, if he wanted to stay on for an extended time.

Was the bed in which he slept last night the one in which Fitzjames had died? Where they carried him after Tom Hartnell found him, tied him into the saddle, took him to the house? Where they staunched his wounds, tried to rally him?

Where Ross left him, when he rode to find a doctor, rode to find Henry, and returned—

A vision in a dream, snapping him back to himself. The dust on the road, the shape of a rider. Beside him Ann Ross tensed, stood, and Edward, too, found himself on his feet, squinting against the light.

His hand fell to where his pistol should have been—should have been but was not, out of courtesy for the family whose home he had invaded. Panic flared inside him even as the sentry in the watchtower and the one on the bunkhouse roof swung their rifles up, and as the flash passed, Ann Ross gasped beside him, hitched her skirt and ran.

“James!”

James

A different voice, a different dream. A moment where the gate, the dust cloud, swam in his vision, then it cleared, the rider—riders—reining up, James Clark Ross swinging to the ground.

A smile for Ann, thin and tense, an exchanging of words that Edward could not catch, only he thought maybe his name, and then Ross’ eyes found his, sober and serious, that false smile fallen away, as his hand reached into his breast pocket, withdrew a paper.

“Little,” and Edward was beside him with no sense of having crossed the distance, the paper pressed into his hand. “It’s Le Vesconte.”

The sender a name unfamiliar. Doctor McCann of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The last time he saw Henry was Denver, where they fought and Edward left for Mexico. That was what his mind caught on before anything else. Not the wording, not this Doctor McCann, not even Major H.T.D. Le Vesconte, giving him his full title as if there could be any other Vesconte looking for Major Edward Little who had not been a major in more years than he cares to think, but—

Henry never mentioned Glenwood Springs.

“Edward—,” Crozier at his shoulder. Crozier who had been at the corral with the eldest Ross boy.

A hand on his arm, his knees buckling. Their voices swimming to him as if through water. “I’ll have the cook prepare a lunch—” “Ride to Panhandle—”, “—my best horse—”

Hands guiding him into a chair, tilting his head between his knees. Loosening his collar, dabbing whisky on his lips, tightening on the back of his neck.

“Sip it.”

Obeyed that voice as he ever obeyed that voice. Obeyed it in the face of raids and mutineers and the fire that tore through the fort.

Sipped and felt the whisky burn his throat, burn his eyes.

Crozier’s face swimming before him, hands gripping his. “I’ll help you pack your things.”

Only after, did he realise that Crozier did not offer to come with him.

Ross did. The hours in the saddle a blur, only— they galloped until forced to walk. The alternating voice Henry and urgent pounding in his head, in his chest. But as long as he rode he had to focus on riding, the heat of the horse between his thighs, his own breathing.

Ross kept him company as far as the town. Insisted that Edward only had to invoke his name, if there should be anything he needed. For himself or for Henry.

“Tell him we’re thinking of him,” the grip of his hand strong, the crease of his mouth betraying the worry beneath.

And Edward, not sure of whether that would make things better or worse, lied, and said that he would.

Major H T D Le Vesconte gravely ill STOP requests urgent presence of Major E Little STOP

Doctor J McCann, Hotel Glenwood, Glenwood Springs

Addressed to Ross. Sent by this McCann. The telegram lived in Edward’s pocket through horse and train and changes of train and hotel rooms slept in a couple of hours at a time, read and folded and re-read again until almost illegible. Those words urgent presence

Three days. Three days, nearing four.

He had the presence of mind, before that first train, to send a response, a simple coming at once. Did not enquire what had happened. Did not await a response. For the assurance of this McCann. For Henry, if Henry—if he should—

The thought he swallowed down as he swallowed down acid bile and nausea and the blood of his own bitten tongue.

The names he recited a litany in his head, forcing his breath to remain steady.

Panhandle to Attica. Attica to Wellington. Wellington to Mulvane. Mulvane to Newton. Newton to Pueblo. Pueblo to Leadville. Leadville to—

Eighty miles, more, from Leadville to Glenwood. Knew it only because he and Henry had been in Leadville when Holliday died in the fall. Had wondered, idly, about making the journey over, paying their respects to a man both younger than them and more notorious, though Henry had thought little of the man when he was alive, hated to encounter him. For his amusement he had gone and consulted, decided the stagecoach would take far longer than was worth it and he hated the stage at the best of times.

The train, though, was new. Though by the time the news reached them the man was already buried and Edward did not think it was worth it, just for Henry to be able to sneer. Not when he was tired as it was, and the train would make him more so.

Talked him down from the notion, persuaded him to bed instead and found a way to keep him there, though it was one of the nights Henry could not rise to the occasion and he satisfied himself by provoking what reaction he could from Edward, which was more than was decent, when they had been talking about a funeral.

The memory of it the thing that kept Edward from despair, as he searched the train timetable Ann Ross had given him, and found no connection from Leadville to Glenwood. His heart pounding, the sweat cold on his skin, and he had to swallow the bile that burned up his throat, forced himself to take shallow breaths, squeeze his eyes shut.

Had begun debating the possibility of hiring a horse, pushing him all that way, when the memory of Henry came to him with the pencil pursed between his lips, brow furrowed studying the timetable, and the relief that overcame him made his head spin.

He squeezed his eyes shut against it, the tremor running through his limbs, and turned his head to the window, that the lady opposite would not see the tears that escaped.

(Almost missed the connection for Mulvane. Jumped on the moment before the doors closed and, shaking, sunk into a seat. Had he not made it, would not be here yet.)

(The twenty-one hours from Newton to Pueblo. Drank enough whisky to force himself to sleep. Woke and was almost sick and still they were in Kansas. The woman opposite shielded her children from looking at him. His fingers sought his watch, that Henry had stolen from him once to force him to speak to him, clung on.)

(Somewhere in the night, between two towns whose names slipped from him as soon as they were announced, he commenced to pray.)

(How many times in that journey did he give Henry up for dead? Every hour or close to it. Several times had almost resolved himself, that he would find but a coffin awaiting his arrival. Thought about wiring McCann, lying about an accident en route. Thought about a bullet in his brain, or jumping off the train rather than face it, but forced himself to sit, forced himself to be still and not to pass the length of the train, to close his eyes and not look at the passing landscape and breathe around the ache in his chest and wrap his arms around his saddlebags such that the other passengers with their fashionable valises must have thought him an outlaw on the run, but if he was too late, if Henry was—)

(How many days can a man hold on when the telegram that tells of his illness says urgent?)

The walk from the station to the hotel a blur. Only that someone jostled his arm, someone pointed the way. And all he could see was that gleaming white building when what he expected was a mountain of lumber, and all he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears, and it was all he could do to force down the pounding of his heart, the bile burning his throat, the urge to turn and run, as he pushed through the door and approached the desk. The queer sensation, his head spinning, of watching himself do it, as if he were someone else, anyone else. The clerk’s eyes raked over him, one brow quirked, but before he could make what would no doubt be a cutting remark about a cheap boarding house and a bath, Edward’s voice returned to him.

(No telling, until that moment, if Henry was even still alive. The last word he had had back in Pueblo the previous afternoon and it had simply said, continues grave. Edward knew as well as any man, how quickly things could change in a day.)

“Major Little,” and he cleared his throat. “I believe there is a Major Le Vesconte who requests my presence.” The name of Doctor McCann ready on his tongue lest he need to be invoked, fingers already fishing out the first telegram, but at his words a modicum of disdain left the clerk’s expression and the man nodded, gestured someone over.

“Room thirty-two, second floor. Billy will show you up.”

For a moment, that name Billy made his heart clench. A vision of a gaunt face, matted blond hair and beard, until it resolved into a boy no more than fifteen.

Not Gibson. Of course not Gibson.

“Billy, show this...gentleman to Major Le Vesconte’s room.”

Before he left, he checked in his guns. Courtesy and no more. Security, knowing Henry likely had at least two stashed in his room.

As long as Edward has known him, the man has never been entirely unarmed.

The boy, Billy, did not attempt conversation on the way up. For that Edward was grateful. Not sure he could have answered anyway, even had the attempt been made. Two flights of stairs. In a distant way, found himself wondering how Henry managed every day. The state of his leg and his toes and his lungs. Too stubborn to ask for a room on the ground, most likely.

The illusion of being well.

Only when they stopped in front of a door, the number thirty-two shining in the light, did the boy turn to him.

“Do you want anything brought up, sir? Coffee? Water?”

The lump in his throat made it impossible to speak, but Edward nodded. Let the boy take it however he wished.

(Within the hour, both coffee and warm water delivered to the room.)

What had he expected to find, when he opened that door? Henry as he has found him ten, twenty times before, propped on the bed with the pillows behind his back to help him breathe. Sweating out a fever, an infection, poultice smeared on his chest to ease the pain of his lungs, and how his eyes might roll, how his lip might twitch, how he might stretch out a hand and say—

“Thought you’d never make it.”

(“Like breathing...razorblades.” Boston or Denver or Cheyenne? Breastbone fluttering with the force of the heart pounding beneath such that Edward could see it, press his fingers to it, beneath his nipple. “Christ.”)

Not Henry as he found him, quiet and still and flat on his back, a single sheet pulled to his chin, face slack and grey, purple bruise stark above his eye.

A rattling inhale.

Edward’s head spun, saddlebags falling to the floor. The stench of sweat, of piss, of blood, sour on his tongue.

(Not dead.

For all he had been prepared— how little he knew that was what he had feared finding, until he didn’t.)

He did not, at first, see Doctor McCann. Strange, when the man’s presence obscured so much of Henry, shadow hiding the burst lip, the dark clots. Caught, instead, by the stillness of the hand on the bed, the closed eyes, the slack jaw.

Another thin gasp.

“Major Little?” A question, and Edward dragged his eyes away from the still form of Henry to the shadow beside the bed, nodded.

A shadow that resolved itself into a man, something older than him, salt and pepper hair. Shadows under the eyes, but a kindliness to the face, something reminiscent of Goodsir.

(Where is Goodsir now?)

“What happened?” His own voice barely a whisper. The whole long way—what had he thought? Those words, gravely ill, could cover so much. Pneumonia, perhaps. Simply—the decline that comes, the inevitable failure of eroded lungs.

But those bruises.

His blood running cold, the thought of someone laying a finger on Henry. God help him, but he would get his gun and—

The doctor was standing then, tall, mouth thin beneath a strong nose. Might have been handsome, the echo of Henry’s voice in his ear.

The room tilted, Edward’s knees weak.

Hazel eyes gentle in the light. “Perhaps it would be better to sit.”

That, when he did so, his fingers found Henry’s wrist, curled around it, McCann was decent enough not to say.

(Have not let go, in the hours since. The fingers that lie limp between his own. That spasm, each time his breath catches.)

(A hitching sigh and he waits, listens to the ticking of his watch, feels the throbbing of the heart beneath his palm. When, by his best guess, a minute has passed with no inhale, he grips Henry’s fingers tighter, digs his knuckles hard into the breastbone and rubs over and back, as hard as he can. The reminder works, earns him a thin gasp, a rattling cough, what almost might be a groan.)

(The flicker of eyelids, only a moment, that do not open. Edward leans in, kisses his cheek, and his dry lips, and each cold fingertip.)

It started as a collapse.

Stupid, almost, in its simplicity. An eighteen-hour poker game that, at one point, McCann, too, had sat in on. Drinking whisky steadily throughout, sipping mostly, in the habit consumptives develop, heat easing the eternal chest pain, and how often had Edward watched Henry do just that? Swearing that it helped, swearing it did not make it worse.

When, at last, the game broke up, Henry had merely broken even. Indeed, had no great amount of cash on him when McCann had to strip the clothes from him to get ice on his chest. That was only after the stairs, for having been almost up the first flight Henry stopped, swayed—

And dropped.

The bruised forehead, the burst lip. Not just his face, though Edward had to clench his fist to resist tracing those bruises in front of the doctor, bite his own lip to not kiss them.

Had it just been the face, bad enough—but his hip, too, where it caught the step, badly bruised McCann said, and his ribs—

His precious ribs, meant to protect those fragile lungs—

(Two, at least, cracked, and as for the rest—)

Edward did not need him to finish to see the only way it could have gone, his fingers tightening around Henry’s, that ache in his chest for to pull him close and keep him safe but he never could do that, could he? Never once succeeded.

Had he been there, not plodding his way slowly to the JCR but here in Glenwood, could he have stopped it?

The other gamblers who rushed to Henry’s side, revived him with whisky rubbed into his gums, into his throat. One of them with the presence of mind to seek out McCann who had left the game to attend a stabbing between drunks, and so was not there as Henry woke, and choked, and blood bubbled foaming up between his lips.

They carried him to his room, one of them fishing the key from his pocket to open the door, and by then he was choking in earnest. All they could do to hold him up and keep him conscious and hope he did not drown as the blood filled his lungs and he gagged and retched and swooned.

(Edward could see it, plain as day. As if he were there.)

By the time McCann arrived, he had already been bled white.

(Certain he would not survive the night.)

The decency of McCann not to go too much into what followed, only the morphine injected into his vein to make him sleep, to keep the cough at bay, the ice on his chest to freeze the haemorrhaging vessels into submission. Edward did not need him to, had seen it in Laramie, the night Henry shook him awake because he needed to throw up but instead of throwing up he choked blood into the basin, and Edward sent the woman of the house running for the surgeon while all he could do was brace Henry with his arm, try to keep him awake.

(That whole long night, as his breathing stopped and started and stopped again. Not a pulse in his wrist, the one in his throat so faint that—in the early morning, Edward had thought—)

But he only bled once then. Just once. The ice. Morphine and codeine, later laudanum. The surgeon tireless at rubbing brandy over his chest, into his wrists and throat, showed Edward how, and most of the night he spent with his palm pressed to Henry’s breastbone, feeling the faint flutter of his heart beneath.

This time—

“When he woke, he asked for you.”

asked for you

asked for you

In the pauses between Henry’s breaths, it is those words that echo.

And so—days, at the most. Unless any sudden change, any further haemorrhage. McCann has reminded him, multiple times, that when Henry wakes (when, not if, the relief of that word forcing Edward to swallow) he is not to be allowed to speak. If he is to have any hope of improvement he is to remain silent, reduce as far as possible the risk of any further bleed.

(Multiple small haemorrhages since that first, including one Edward was in Leadville, as close as Leadville, waiting for the train.)

(Multiple haemorrhages, despite McCann being with him near-constantly since that first, keeping him as still and as quiet as any man could hope to. Attempting, when he drifted to consciousness, to get him to take a little beef tea, a little broth.)

(Attempting, because Henry has closed his eyes, clamped his lips shut against it. Edward does not need to see, does not need to be told, to know that.)

To have any hope.

Though, McCann cautioned, his hand firm on Edward’s arm, with the strain of such blood loss, the shock of his fall down the stairs, more likely, in every way, for his heart to simply fail.

Well Edward remembers the same warning from Laramie, too, and yet—Weighs different, this time.

(Is it that Henry is greyer, gaunter? Is it the blue of his lips, the cold unresponsiveness of his fingers? Those bruises mottling the side of his face? The cut even below his left eye, across the bridge of his nose?)

The difference of three years.

Even in Laramie he took a little soup.

(The day he nibbled a bit of shortbread biscuit was the day Edward knew he would be well again.)

“It’s in the bones now,” that deceptive softness in McCann’s voice.

In the bones, and his cracked ribs—

Henry’s face blurring before Edward. The bruises, the pallor. How often he commented that he could feel those missing toes. Feel them as if they were there still.

McCann, gentleman that he is, left. Giving them the quiet, the privacy, they might want. Promising to have the boy, Billy, stationed outside the door, in case there be urgent need of him.

(Edward has heard the low murmur of the lad’s voice, is glad, simply, to have someone in reach.)

Left the laudanum, and the beef broth.

(Laudanum, now. The morphine stopped his breath too long. The same, too, in Laramie.)

And with the laudanum—a note, addressed to Edward himself. “He insisted on dictating it,” the tone gentle even as the words did not seem so, “even as I begged him to be quiet.”

And then McCann was gone. And Edward could not bear to reach for that note, could not bear to open it. Knows already that it is likely to contain instructions and little more. Nothing that he need trouble himself with, not as long as Henry continues to draw breath.

Without ever loosening his grip on Henry’s fingers, Edward leans in, presses a kiss to those closed eyes, to the bruised temple, the cut corner of his mouth. Swallows the salt-iron taste, traces his tongue over the grooves of those lips as familiar as his own, Henry’s breath hot and rancid in his mouth, and exhales between parted lips as if to say, I’m here.

I’m here, and I’ll not leave you now.

It was in Prescott that it happened, happened in truth. Six, seven? years ago. Hardly matters, only that Fitzjames was living because that’s who Henry was looking for when he turned up at Edward’s door, haggard and pale and gaunt.

Newly-discharged, medical grounds. His lungs unfit for an officer.

Little to tell from how he looked that he was as ill as he was even then. A little gaunter, perhaps, hollow around the face. He had cleaned up somewhere before coming to the little rented house on the road out of town, that much was obvious, hair curling damp and grey around his ears, whiskers trimmed, jaw shaved. Still that military bearing in his shoulders, in how he stood, a little out of place in his dove-grey suit. The diamond stickpin in his cravat.

How another man might look, going out to meet a lady. Not how one would dress to track down his old officer comrades, a thousand miles and more from where they had last seen him.

The shock Edward felt, to open his door and find Major Le Vesconte, that knocked the breath from his lungs, was nothing to the relief in Henry’s eyes.

“I apologise for the imposition,” more gravel to his voice than Edward remembered, suppressed a cough before he continued, “they told me in the Alhambra that Fitzjames—”

“Gone to Tucson.”

A tightening of his jaw, a slight nod. Already he was turning away.

What force of habit was it, what feeling lodged deep in his gut, what sense of can’t let him leave like this, that prompted Edward to reach out and grasp Henry’s arm?

Impossible to say. Only—reach out he did, grasped that arm, so familiar and so changed. Caught Henry by surprise, cane almost slipping from his grip, and a question crossed his face as he looked back, a quirk of one silver brow.

“Stay. If only a night, stay.”

There had been encounters before. Fumbles in the fort in Montana. Once when they had to share a tent on the Powder River. A handful of times on the ill-fated march into Idaho.

Before Henry lost two toes, and Edward the lobe of his left ear.

Before Fitzjames almost lost his life.

Still Edward sees how he slumped forward, slipped sideways in the saddle. And Edward was fast but Henry was faster, drawing in close beside him, taking the reins, bringing both horses to a stop. Edward had turned to stop the men, heard the faint, “It’s the heat—just the heat, Dundy,” half-slurred. The thud as Henry jumped from the saddle. Turned back in time to see Fitzjames straighten, in the moment before he swooned sideways into Henry’s waiting arms.

The wound in his side gone bad. Bridgens the only one left among them with doctoring experience, little though it was, Peddie buried somewhere behind them. From him Fitzjames had hidden it, thinking—what? That they would be back at the fort before it worsened? Instead, a hastily erected camp, the fire burned hot. Dosed him with whisky and a little laudanum, and Edward stood watch while Henry and Sergeant Tozer held him down for Bridgens to cut.

(Still sees Henry as he was that night. Eyes cold and hard, even the moon burning red.)

A credit to the man, he worked fast. Cut through the track of the wound, found the offending piece of uniform dragged in by the bullet that had torn through Fitzjames’ arm a week earlier, and the man should not have been riding but he refused laudanum and insisted an easy pace would be manageable, and there was nowhere for him to rest besides.

In the three days it took to reach the fort and safety, once Fitzjames could be propped in the saddle again, Henry sat up behind him, held him steady as he listed sideways. Edward commanded, for all that there was commanding to be done, and refused to look back, never mind how he felt Henry’s gaze burning the back of his neck.

By silent agreement they never spoke of the night before Fitzjames’ collapse, when Henry had come to him and they had—and it had been—and if Edward remembered Henry’s hand gripping his hip, Henry’s breath hot on his throat, well—that was between him and God alone.

Until—Henry at his doorstep, turning away. The invocation, stay. Hardly a breath, the flicker of a dark eye. Then a swallow, a nod, and it felt the world he had been waiting for had rushed in at once.

(Henry came to him, the night Fitzjames’ fever broke. Edward was composing letters, the light of a single lamp, a blanket wrapped around himself. The rattle of the door, and he looked up to see Henry framed there. Gestured with his flask of whisky, received a nod and the click of the door closing.

And in a moment, Henry Le Vesconte was on his knees before him, head pillowed in his lap. Little Edward could do only smooth back a lock of that hair, and guide him, carefully, to bed.

Not a word spoken. Only gasped breaths, a shuddering exhale. Their bare thighs, warm bellies beneath the blanket. Henry spent over Edward’s fist, shuddered, and slept, and for an hour, more, Edward let him, watched the flicker of his face in the lamplight, kissed the tears that had dried on his cheeks, and thought, at last, that he looked peaceful.)

Not the first night in Prescott, nor the second, nor even the third, but the fourth night, stumbling back to the little house in the small hours of the morning. Stars strung out overhead still, pinpricks against the darkness and in the distance the first greying. Henry choking his way through a coughing fit, leaning heavy on his cane. Edward’s flask of whisky pressed to his lips as he got his breath, the flick of his tongue over the rim. A bead of it clinging to that lower lip, and Edward reached out, some impulse beyond himself, smoothed it away, sucked the taste from his thumb, Henry’s eyes boring into him and then—

A hand, gripping his own. The flutter of an eyelid, and there, in the stillness of the pre-dawn street, so fleeting he might have imagined it—Henry’s lips, pressed to his own.

Which of them was it moved first? Moved in—pulled back—even now he cannot say. Only the scraping of stubble. The hot breath against his jaw. The hand tightening on his arm.

The hot iron tang of blood.

Told himself it was the clashing of their teeth.

No memory of making it back to the little house, his head spinning, only the creaking of the door, Henry’s cane clattering on the floor.

Fumble of fingers on buttons. Gasped, “I’ll untie it” and “Wait, I’ll—” Sinking to his knees. The wheeze of Henry’s breath, the giddy aftermath and “not finished yet.”

Memory of a sacred night, cradled close. Little details repeated in his mind through years and miles.

And he might, almost, speak of it now. To fill the stillness punctuated only by Henry’s wheezing gasps. But those fingers are cold in his, and Prescott is a world and a lifetime away. They were different men then, and it would not be right to disturb Henry when he is sleeping so peacefully.

(Still he remembers Henry, the first time he laid eyes on him. A decade and more ago. Both mere lieutenants then. A chance encounter in the Dakota territory. Most of those days Edward has long forgotten, only that in the bend of one river or another the two companies crossed paths. Out of courtesy, Colonel Franklin asked Crozier and his officers to join him for a meal, and as the talk washed around him, it was the dark-haired lieutenant who stood tall and slim behind Captain Fitzjames that caught Edward’s eye, the sun catching on his buttons, a notebook clutched in his hand, even then his side whiskers neatly trimmed. After, when their commanding officers had retired to examine maps, it was Lieutenant Le Vesconte who produced a deck of playing cards from his inner pocket.

“Anyone fancy a hand?”

They all agreed, the lieutenants of both sides, except John Irving who coloured, excused himself, when he saw the naked women on them.

Already they were into their second round of smokes. Le Vesconte shuffled, as Gore poured a round of whisky. “What Franklin doesn’t see can’t hurt him,” was Le Vesconte’s comment, with a wink, as he dealt them in.

They played for slim cigars. At the end of the night, it was Le Vesconte himself with the biggest bundle.

“You know, I don’t know how he did it,” George said as they retreated to his tent. “I was studying him all night and I just can’t figure it.”

“Reckon he let the women distract us,” Edward murmured and could not say that what he had been watching was the flash of those long fingers, the dark hair curling the side of that night, and wondered, idly, what it would be like, to be had by a man such as that.)

(When the companies were united, after the ill-fated campaign into the Black Hills that saw Franklin and Gore killed and their numbers decimated, it was a question he had cause to ponder many times, as they settled into the fort on the Powder River. Wondered many times, until he wondered no more.)

(The deck of cards with naked women battered and much the worse for wear, but Henry still had it in the spring before they parted, never mind his dalliances with women have been few, and very far between.)

His gaze drifts, now, from Henry, the slow roll of his eyes beneath the lids, the faint glimmer of white, to the shadows gathering in the room. The sparseness of it, even with the rose-patterned wallpaper. He can, through squinted eyes, see Henry lying awake, studying that wallpaper night after night, sketching it into his little notebook as he did in other hotels they’ve stayed in, other boarding houses. Called it “doubling up” for appearances, the custom of the country, when they could have afforded separate rooms, separate beds, had they wanted. When really all they craved was the feeling of the other close.

No matter that Henry’s coughing, his fevers, his wheezing, disturbed Edward’s sleep most nights. Would have disturbed it more to be away from him. And all that they had to conceal—the floor as good a place as any, when Henry’s aches permitted, both of them skilled in the uses of handkerchiefs, of swallowing when need be.

Better swallow than stain the sheets, leave the unmistakable musk of spend hanging in the air.

Where is Henry’s little notebook now? The one he has carried for years? He would never be so foolish as to bring it to a card game, not when he was alone. Likely, then, that it is in a drawer beside the bed.

Top drawer, no doubt. With his derringer and his pencils, and his own supply of laudanum, and his tub of petroleum jelly, though that might be the one thing he no longer carries.

Edward pushes the thought of the notebook away. Best not look for it, lest the disturbance wake Henry. If he is to have any chance, then he must be undisturbed.

Yet how badly, how selfishly, Edward wants him to wake.

To see the dark ink wells of his eyes. To feel that mouth curve to a thin smile, those fingers tighten around his own in more than a spasm. The low gravel murmur of his voice.

The things Edwad would not give...The things he would not do...

(More than one way to be too late.)

Opened that notebook only once. An inclination, a need to just—see. Before, only ever what Henry had decided to show him, the account he scribbled of different adventures, encounters. Tallies of poker games won and lost, notes taken, cross-hatched across the page,. Never the sketches, though he knew he made them, had sat for him, had watched him.

Except—when he opened that notebook, it was Fitzjames’ face he found. Fitzjames as he, Edward, last saw him, or near enough. The sharp line of his nose, the set of his jaw stippled with stubble, those lines—not scars—dividing each cheek, a lock of hair falling into his eyes. Like something he had never been meant to see, rendered there on the page and yet—how the feeling clawed through his chest, to reach in and scrape his face along that jaw, to bite those lips, peel the skin from them in thin layers between his teeth.

Only a moment, and then he composed himself, turned the page, expecting to see more Fitzjames—

Only to find himself. His own face, rendered there and logically he knew it was him but it didn’t look like him, didn’t look like the man he sees in the mirror. Took him a moment to really, truly, recognise himself, the crinkled eyes, the head thrown back in a laugh. His own side whiskers, his own stubble. No idea, no memory, of when Henry might have done it, but he saw the shine in his own eyes, the line of his shoulder, curl of his hair, and the feeling that filled his chest was so hot, so soft, he could only close the notebook, and try to push the image away.

It was Crozier who started it, that spring of resigned commissions. And once he went, Fitzjames was always bound to follow.

(A letter from Ross, apparently, so Fitzjames said after. Told Edward one night in that little house in Prescott, where they had shared a bed and, briefly, a life. From Ross to Crozier, about the ranch and the wife and the child. Fitzjames saw it on Crozier’s desk, one night in his quarters, and knew.)

Edward was not long out of the infirmary, his head still throbbing from the rifle butt that cracked his skull in the chaos of the mutiny. Not that he remembers much, between the realisation that John was dead, the twenty-three holes punched into his chest with a knife, and waking to find that somewhere along the way he had lost three weeks.

Jopson, he learned after, who had found him still breathing, carried him to Goodsir. Stanley and MacDonald already dead, the fire not six weeks earlier that started in their quarters, ripped through the fort, cost them half their supplies and almost their horses. From that to the mutiny to the letter from Ross—perhaps the only way it could have happened, that once the routes were clear to travel, Crozier would go.

Fitzjames, of course, the one who assumed command, newly-promoted to Colonel in the wake of it. An elevation for Edward, too, Captain to Major, in a fort where half the men had died over that long winter, one way or the other.

Ruling over the graveyard of their lives.

George was the second to decide to go. Intending, so he confessed to Edward and Henry in the confines they were reduced to, to trace Hickey where he had gone. Hickey and those who had gone with him, even Tozer, whom Henry had lunged for, manhandled to the ground at the cost of the bullet that buried itself in his thigh. George would have pursued then, had he not been one of the few officers left standing, had he not been afraid that Edward, too, would die.

(Did not say it in so many words, a rarity for him, but he did not need to. Edward took the meaning well enough.)

That night in their quarters, George laid it all out, as Edward listened with his eyes closed against the returned headache and Henry sat with his still-healing leg propped on a stool, nursing his whisky. Someone had to follow Hickey and his men, if only because of John. Edward sympathised with the feeling, knew George’s feelings ran deeper, always deeper with John, and did not question that it would leave them down yet another officer.

So George went. And when the Generals, in their wisdom, decided to combine the remaining force with that of a garrison down on the Platte, Fitzjames decided he had had more than enough.

Bridgens and Peglar, too, had left by then, the wounds to Peglar’s back enough to forever inhibit his ability to ride though he could still act. Jopson and Hartnell had followed Crozier, Blanky been invalided out. The men who were left would find their own way in the new company, but for Fitzjames there was little left to hold him.

Edward, with his headaches and the double vision that had plagued him for months, did not think it wise to remain on.

That he and Fitzjames left on the same day was merely coincidence. That, after the weeks and months of their separate ways, they ended up reuniting in Dallas, travelling to Prescott, a greater one. And Fitzjames never spoke of it, but it was Henry who told Edward, one night after it was all too late to change anything anyway, that they had fought, he and Fitzjames, fought over the resignation, fought that Henry refused to go.

Did not so much as write each other for eighteen months afterwards. And it was only after Edward and Henry followed Fitzjames to Tucson, that they spoke for the first time since.

Not Edward’s place to witness that reunion, though he was the one who had had and been had by the both of them. Retreated in pursuit of a hand of cards, lost a hundred dollars, and when he made his way back to the hotel to see what was left of the both of them, Henry was sleeping in a chair, a blanket thrown over him, and Fitzjames greeted him with an embrace.

“Thank you, Edward.”

The kiss planted to his cheek was chaste.

“Should’ve...been with him.” The murmur faint one night, years later, Henry’s breath rancid in the air. Caught somewhere on the edge of the laudanum, lungs healed as well as they ever would from that first haemorrhage. Edward, too, had taken a little laudanum, for the sake of being able to sleep. Heard, as if through a dream, “should’ve gone...with him.”

His own lips, his own bones, too heavy for words, but still his hand found Henry’s, squeezed.

That night, Henry did not pull away.

(Leaving had, for Edward’s own part, been in some way a sense that there was more to life than the cavalry. A little of Fitzjames’ own sentiment. But a restlessness had taken root in his bones that winter, a sense that he should—up and go. No more or less complex than the need to move. John was dead and George was gone and who was left of the men he might call friend but Henry, and Henry had turned cold, his hair silvered all the way through though they were not yet thirty-five.)

(Move on, the voice in his ear told him, and he did.)

What George did, where he went, in the time between the fort and fetching up in Deadwood two years later with a hollowed face and minus two fingers, he never did say. Henry who found him there, by chance. What passed between them—only it was months later when Henry told Edward, crawling into bed beside him one night down on the JCR, while Fitzjames was—presumably with Crozier. “Met an old friend of yours, when I was up there.”

Still plays cards, plays the piano, in the absence of those digits. But where once George would discourse eloquently, for hours, on any topic, now he rarely speaks. The sound of his voice—

What Edward would not give to hear one of those litanies again.

(And when he heard who it was that Henry had found up in Deadwood he smiled, drew him closer. Whatever about the fingers, but to know that he was safe, or as safe as any man could be—)

(Anything he might have said, lost in the heat of Henry’s mouth taking his nipple, in the finger that slipped between his cleft.)

(Thinking on it now, he’s not sure he ever did thank him for finding him.)

“Jas,” the faint gasp that breaks his thoughts, brings him back. For a moment, he thinks he has imagined it, a breath almost like any other, until it comes again. “Jas.”

His mouth too dry, throat too sore for words, but Edward forces himself to smile that Henry will hear it, even as tears prickle his eyes. “I’m here, Dundy.” The name strange on his tongue because that was only and ever what Fitzjames called him and no one else has ever done so. “Go back to sleep.”

For a moment his eyes flicker as if they will open, and Edward tightens his grip on that thin hand. A faint gasp, and he thinks—this is it. Any second now. Until Henry coughs, and moans, the half-open eyes slipping closed again, and with another faint cough he draws a stuttering breath, quietens.

Edward dabs the fresh blood clot from his mouth, settles his hand back over his heart. The faint thumping beneath his palm all the assurance he needs.

All he has heard of the death of Fitzjames—fragments. He was in Denver at the time, and when the news reached him in a telegram from Ross, the man was already dead, and Henry was en route to Boston with the remains. His own insistence, that Fitzjames should lie in reach of his family, not in a far-off remote place, and that he, Henry, should go alone.

A week later, the telegram from William Coningham that called Edward to Henry’s side.

His first collapse. Pneumonia. Had remained on his feet, had hidden the incipient signs behind a mask of whisky and grief and travel weariness, just long enough for the burial to take place. Succumbed, then, to the strain, and when he woke eighteen hours later, having been attended by the doctor in the meantime, with Elizabeth Coningham fussing over him, her husband lost in his own grief, it was Edward that he asked her to send for.

Not his sisters. Not the brother in Canada or the one in Tennessee or the girl he had, for a time, been involved with in Cheyenne.

But Edward.

And Edward went.

The Coninghams themselves, in their innocence, assumed it was friendship. In their innocence, only knew pieces of what had happened, what Henry had thought it best to tell them when he was still able to do so. That Fitzjames had been shot in the region of the Palo Duro. That he made it to help, but too late, and perhaps time would not have made a difference anyway. That he was not alone when the end came, though without the strength to give a last message.

All his years in the cavalry, and, in the end, the bullet of a rustler, though he did for them before he went down.

(This, too, a lie conjured by Henry. For when Fitzjames was found, he told that it had been the mutineer Hickey, that he could not get a shot in. And, almost five months later, it would be Edward and Tom Jopson who tracked Hickey to a border town, and there finished him.)

Edward did not wish to pry, William Coningham almost as pale and gaunt as Henry, his wife as ashen as if she had lost a brother in truth and not in law only, their little children shy of these strangers who had come, knowing only that the uncle who sent them letters and gifts and told exciting stories when he visited was gone.

Still, they made Edward welcome. Even as he felt himself an intruder on their private grief. Even as he would not have stayed, if not for Henry.

Henry, in the lulls of his fever, told him of Ross. Ross riding to Panhandle to find him, where he had waited to rendezvous with Fitzjames before heading for Colorado. Edward knew the research coming out of Switzerland, that rest and altitude could help Henry’s illness. Fitzjames had agreed to go with him. And, when he did not show, Henry had scraped together a poker game, decided to delay.

Only, in his place—James Clark Ross, dust-coated and haggard, blood staining his clothes, and the words, “There’s not much time.”

Of that race back to the ranch—nothing said.

Only, in the end, there was no time.

Crozier, who was there. Crozier all through it. Who carried Fitzjames in. Who, with Jopson and Ann Ross, doctored his wounds as well as they could, put him to bed, gave him laudanum. This Edward only knows because of what Jopson has told him, because he would never ask Ann Ross to speak of it, only what she wished to tell, and because Crozier said little one the subject, only that he had “said a service”.

(Jopson who told him the laudanum had stopped his breath, the same way it stops Henry’s.)

Blanky, when Edward asked, merely shook his head, drew on his pipe, and said, “not much that could be done.”

From Jopson, too, he heard of the ring. The blood-coated ring Fitzjames pressed into Crozier’s hand in one of his lucid moments, and whispered that it was, “for Dundy”. The ring that has lived, ever since he reached that bedside two hours too late, on Henry’s left hand.

(The same one he slipped from his ring finger, eyes bright with fever when he thought he was dying in Boston, and pressed into Edward’s palm.

Bury it…with Jas

Nothing that Edward could do but nod, and kiss that ringless finger, and tuck it safe against his heart.)

Jopson, too, the one who told him how Henry, having fell from his horse more than dismounted, having choked blood and bile into the dirt and been given whisky to steady himself, stumbled into that room where Fitzjames still lay in the bed where he had died, the blanket that hid his bloodied bandages pulled to his chin. And there, having gained the bed, Henry’s strength failed him, and that was where he stayed, head pillowed on the unmoving chest, as the doctor arrived (too late) and left, until he arose with the first stars in the sky and whispered how he would take him east.

The Rosses, both, and Jopson, tried to guide him away to eat, to rest, James Ross almost as haggard as Henry, but he refused, and sat there, all night, holding Fitzjames’ cold hand in his own.

Edward might have thought Jopson had turned to exaggeration, had they not been tucked into the one bedroll as he told it, and had Ann Ross not also told him a similar version.

Ann Ross, who christened her youngest boy Jasper. Ann Ross, who Fitzjames one night, in an uncharacteristic fit of emotion brought on by too much rye, admitted to Edward he had on one occasion, shared a bed with, upon the good lady’s request, with the permission of her husband. That the dates might, to a certain extent, tally with the early arrival of a baby—

Well. Her husband had full knowledge. Her father had had dark hair too. The eyes—a quirk of nature.

(Henry confessed, for his own part, as he lay abed with a poultice on his chest, that he can never look at the boy, not even in the photos Ann Ross sends him, and he keeps carefully folded away.)

(He asked Edward, once, who the child most looked like. All Edward could say, an agreement that he is like neither of the men he might call father. The small smile the pronouncement earned him lives in his heart still.)

(How Edward wondered, by the sick bed in the Coningham house, smoothing his thumb over the ring that still seemed stained with blood, if Henry would expire from the grief of it. If the strain would simply be too much for his heart. Wondered, and knew, deep down, that that would not be the Henry he knew.)

(A merciful God might have taken him then. Taken him before the grief wormed its way through him. Taken him when he could, at least, be buried near Fitzjames, when he had still been a man who had strength to make the ride he did, before the disease ate through his lungs into his bones.)

(A merciful God would have taken him before Fitzjames, and Edward hates the part of himself that knows it to be true. Has always privately, bitterly, thought Fitzjames would have survived the loss, but Henry—)

That was what brought Edward and Jopson together. Not their shared history at the fort, not their time at the JCR.

Fitzjames’ bloodied ring, slipped onto Henry’s finger. Worn, for however short a time, against Edward’s heart until the morning, Henry sleeping peacefully, the doctor having declared he was likely to survive, he pressed it back onto that finger, and folded it, safe, that he might feel it.

Not for Fitzjames himself, that he and Jopson rode, through wind and dust and hail that tried to skin them. They each knew it, without saying it. Not for him they damn near ran their horses into ground, took it in turns to sleep. Whisky in one flask, cold coffee in another.

The sacred sanctity of solemn duty. Not an order given or a question raised, but Edward, appearing at the JCR, asking Ross what he knew. Seeking out Hartnell. Travelling alone, because Henry he had deposited at the hot springs in Las Vegas. Henry would not have been able for such a ride, though still would have tried, and so Edward did not tell him where he intended to go, only that he would be back when the time came.

There had been no sign of Hickey, in the days after Fitzjames died. No appearance of strangers on the range, no indication of where he might have gone or who was with him. Fitzjames had said little, had not had the breath, the strength to speak, had not been lucid long enough, and by then it mattered little what had happened, in the face of what was about to.

The best they had—the direction in which Hartnell had found him, which might not even indicate the direction he had come from, for the cattle had passed through, tracks obscured, and Fitzjames’ horse had galloped a long distance in the panic after his rider slid off.

How easily it might have been, then, that Fitzjames not been found until he was beyond speaking at all.

So—little sign of where to begin. Few clues to be had. Only the knowledge that Hickey had been in the area in the early days of June, likely had others with him, and may, perhaps, have been seen in one town or the other.

Hopeless in its futility to even try to search, especially when so long had already passed.

In the long days sat by Henry’s bedside, watching for troubling signs, his fever to rise, breathing become more laboured even than it was; seeing the grief in the faces of the Coninghams, and the health of William himself had buckled before Henry was well enough to be moved, it had come to Edward that he simply could do nothing but look for Hickey, fruitless as such a search may be.

What arrogance was it that made him assume he would succeed where George had not?

Little could he have known, that watching Crozier and the Rosses in the days and weeks afterwards, the same had come to Jopson.

And so, when Edward rode up on that day in mid-August, Henry safely oblivious and out of the way, Jopson was ready.

Edward had borrowed a horse from the livery to make it out there. Bought one from Ross that should stand up to the pursuit. Ann Ross embraced him when she heard what he intended to do, told him to be careful, even as Ross swore, anything Edward would need—

Crozier, a handshake, a nod, the firm set of his jaw. “No foolish risks, Edward,” the closest he would get to any form of approval from his old commander.

They rode out at dawn. Pointed their horses south. Jopson, dear Jopson, had been making discreet enquiries. Had lied, a thing against his nature, to Crozier, about his purpose for going to town. Had sent wires to contacts as far apart as Dodge and Leadville and Benson, Arizona. Had received an answer from, of all people, Bridgens—who had encountered Bily Gibson in Globe, but Hickey had not been with him. And as Edward reassured himself that Las Vegas, New Mexico was a long way from Globe, Jopson continued that Bridgens, too, had been making enquiries.

Enquiries that revealed a man matching the description of Cornelius Hickey but operating under the name Eugene Carson had escaped from the El Paso jail not a week before Edward returned to the JCR. Jopson had been working on a pretext for leaving when he revealed his plans.

“I did not wish to trouble the Colonel.”

A sentiment Edward could appreciate, if not regarding the same man.

El Paso, then, their aim as they set off, hoping it might reveal something.

All they turned up, in the end—the knowledge that the authorities in El Paso had been distracted by a fire. Carson and an unknown companion escaped with two nondescript horses. The unknown companion found shot two miles out of town. Carrying letters addressed to T. Armitage.

And so began the pursuit that was to last two months. Through border towns and cantinas. Staying on the hospitality of hacendados who had no sympathy for two gringos hunting a third, came close several times to handing them over to the federales only for the story they repeated that the man they hunted was a known cattle thief. Little sympathy they had for gringos, less so for cattle thieves, useless though a single man might be without the help of a gang.

Though such men attract gangs, in the end.

In the chill of late October, cold biting through their clothes, horses turned back for the border country and thoughts with them, they agreed to give it up. To winter on the ranch, though Edward intended to re-join Henry if he could, and wait for spring, any new sign that might send them one way or the other.

Would have, if not for a young vaquero, dying from a wound through his chest. A young vaquero who, with tequila dabbed on his lips to revive him, was shown a worn sketch of Hickey that Jopson had stolen somewhere along the way, and nodded. They left the boy in the care of his companions, and set off.

Two days later, turned up Hickey in a cantina fifteen miles south of the Rio Grande.

He did not recognise Edward, bearded and filthy as he was, who bought a bottle and identified his man and left.

Gave the nod to Jopson, equally filthy, but whose beard Edward had trimmed, whose hair Edward had clipped with Jopson’s head cradled close to him, so that he more closely resembled his cavalry self. Jopson, too, walked in, bought a bottle, made meaningless conversation with the bar keep, left.

Gave Hickey all the time in the world to recognise him.

Hickey played it slow. Did not make his move in the first half hour, or even the second, as they lay in wait, smoking cigarillos, horses already saddled. Each of them settled behind opposite buildings, watching.

All he could do—to keep his thoughts from turning. To stay watching that door. The old headache creeping back in. Breathing around the nauseating ache in his chest. The tinkling music that filtered out drilling into his brain.

Might almost have missed the shadow that slipped out. Recognised the line of shoulder, the slope of jaw. Saw him stand, there, in the middle of the street. Seemed to consider, a moment, before turning in the direction where Jopson was hiding.

A shaft of sunlight caught the pistol coming up.

Whose bullet reached him first they could not say and it did not matter. Only that when the dust cleared, as the boots ran from the cantina, Edward stood long enough to see that slim white hand twitching in the dirt, the pistol fallen away. For a moment tilted to run, to check, until he saw the spreading stain and knew their aim to have been true.

Jopson’s hand catching his arm and they ran. Mounted, spurred the horses to a gallop, cut out before any pursuit had time to follow.

If any would over one dead gringo.

Only when their horses stumbled did they rein up. By then night had fallen, they had gained the bank of the river. Pulled the saddles off for the horses to blow their steam and fell on each other, hands fumbling on buttons, Jopson sinking to his knees, taking the whole hot length of Edward in his mouth. The whole of a handful of minutes before Jopson swallowed him down and as Edward’s head spun he kissed the taste of himself from that mouth, his own hand easing Jopson’s length free.

A breathtaking, insane impulse.

Not a word spoken, not a need, for they had shared the one bedroll for weeks for warmth, had moved past the need for speech, as if by some silent agreement that only when—and by no other way, and as he spilled in Thomas’ mouth Edward could only think,

at last

at last

Parted on the bank of the river in morning light, one heading north, one heading west. And as Jopson brought the news to Crozier, so Edward delivered it to Henry, in a saloon in Las Vegas, New Mexico, over the bottle of mezcal that came all the way.

Henry stood, and turned his back, and left.

Edward finished his drink, and hunted a bed. In the morning, woke to Henry knocking on his door.

A fire blazing in his eyes. “Tell me again. Every detail.”

And Edward did.

After, the silhouette of Henry at the window. His hair in disarray, his eyes rimmed red. How sick he looked, how old, sitting back in that chair. His fingers clenched tight in his lap. How the light caught the tears on his cheeks, made them glisten, and with the lump in his throat Edward wanted to pull him close, to hold him through it, but so often Henry had pushed him away, so rarely had he seen him cry. Tears under laudanum and fever never count, and there had been enough of them, but this—

Only when Henry gasped, only he coughed and whispered, “Edward” did he go to him, dare to touch him. His own tears welling hot, the weight of that head against his chest.

(Anything he might tell him, lies. Any promises, any comforts. All meaningless words that could not re-wind the clock, that could not resurrect Fitzjames.)

How long they stayed like that, Edward could not say. Only that his arms were stiff with the shape of Henry enfolded within them, his shirt soaked, face raw, and when he could breathe again, could feel again, he held him all the tighter, as if he could take Henry’s grief and make it his own, take Henry’s grief and send it away. Take Henry’s grief and show it to Fitzjames and say, “this is what you did, the loss of you, the lack of you. This is all you were to him and you rejected him, pushed him away in favour of—” but Fitzjames was dead and it might have been his death that triggered the hunting of Hickey but it was not for him, and if it had not been for Henry weeping through his fever, fingers clenched so tight around that ring it was imprinted in his palm, then Hickey would be living still.

“Take me to bed,” Henry’s voice shattering hoarse, shattering the train of thoughts and Edward’s knees buckled but he held himself up, pressed his face into that silver hair. “Take me to bed and make me feel something good.”

Both of them too sick, too tired, to raise a stand, but Edward palmed Henry, held the weight and heat of him even as he failed to harden, kissed his face, the tracks of those tears, even as Henry tried to rub life into him. And what possessed Edward he could not say, but he told him of Jopson, that night by the Rio Grande, the scrape of teeth on soft flesh, the swirl of that tongue over his slit, and Henry snorted, almost a laugh, that loosened something in Edward’s chest.

“Trust Jopson to be good at the trade.” And they both laughed, then, a sound so strange, and that more than anything brought Edward’s own tears, but for once Henry held him, for once Henry kissed him, and it was not better for nothing could be better, but it was enough. Just enough.

Two days later, they took the bottle of mezcal, and Edward watched as Henry, meticulously, shot it to powder.

McCann comes, listens to Henry’s heart, feels his pulse, pulls open each eyelid one by one to peer beneath, and pronounces no change, but Edward could have told him that. Instead, he promises to remain vigilant, promises to send for him if there is a need, agrees to drink the cold beef tea when he thinks McCann is peering a little too closely into his face.

If only so the man will not try to insist he rest, too.

Not for half the world would he leave Henry now.

McCann appears satisfied for him to make that much effort, and takes his leave, again, promising to send up more of the tea.

Edward is not so self-deluded as to assume that McCann’s leaving is a positive sign. Knows it for what it is—the helplessness of modern medicine to do anything in the face of this. All that he might have done, done in those hours after each haemorrhage came, and until a definitive change one way or the other, only instructions to be given.

It is the questions, instead, that come to him. The recriminations in a voice sounding eerily like Fitzjames, if only in his own mind.

Why had he let Henry provoke that row? Why had he let Henry force him away? What was any of it for? The months he spent down south of the border, hiding and not hiding, tracing and re-tracing the ground he and Jopson covered all those years ago. The months he lost from Henry then.

The months he lost now.

“I can’t bear to see the pity in your face.” Henry’s eyes blazing with the whip-crack emphasis he still commanded in April. “If I’m slowly you down so much, then go. Just go, Edward.”

(Coward. Fool.)

What had started it? Something stupid, some poker game. Something he should not have let get the better of him but Henry was coughing and cursing and spoiling for a fight and shrugged off Edward’s hands, pulled away.

Damn your eyes, Edward

And he had not been at his best either. Had lain awake all morning, had not gone searching for him because he would have shown him up. Had not gone looking for him because he was afraid of where he would find him.

(Coward.)

If you don’t curb your nightlife and drinking—

You were the one who asked me to come with you

I never asked you to come anywhere. Following me like a fucking dog. Well I never asked you, Edward!

(never asked)

(never asked)

Lies because he did. Lies because he asked him to go with him to Tucson to Fitzjames. Asked him to go to Boston. Asked him to go back to Las Vegas and join him in Deadwood and lie down with him beneath the stars, beneath the clouds, to make him feel something good, to share his bedroll share his fire, share his bed, and Edward did, every time he did.

(The one Bible verse he ever knew, breathed into Edward’s skin. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women...men committed shameful acts with other men...)

That those might be the last words Henry ever had for him—those lies—

Should’ve been there

Should’ve gone with him

Holding those fragile knuckles to his lips, he gives way to tears.

If they had fought ten times, had fought a hundred. Always made up, always came back, except—

like a fucking dog

Years watching him. Years carrying him back to a room, to a bed. Dabbing sweat and blood and tears from that face, easing out his prick so he could piss with ease, cleaning him and sucking him and rubbing him and taking him, swallowing him down so he could breathe a little easier, sleep a little deeper, if only for an hour. Feeding him soup and laudanum and things easy on his stomach and curling around him that he would not be cold even as his flesh fell away and he shivered and sweated in Edward’s arms.

Watching him drink himself half to death before his illness could finish the job, and when his knees buckled, eyes rolled after another all-night all-day bender being there to keep him from getting robbed, getting stabbed, getting kicked for his own carelessness, his own reckless folly careening towards the thing he swore he was trying to stay away from as long as he could.

Years when the name he gasped, murmured, cried in his sleep was James, was Jas, was never—

Fuck you, Henry

Fuck you

(He’d meant to come back and that was half the trouble. Meant to come back and drag him out of whatever bar, whatever faro game, he’d gotten into, make it up as they had always made it up, except—

Once he started riding, he could not stop.)

“Knew you’d make it.” The murmur faint, and Edward jumps, because he has been listening, has been watching, but somehow he missed—must have drifted. Hears, now, the shallow breath, feels the grip that has tightened around his own. Henry’s eyes are closed, but there is a smile, faint, curving his lips.

Even as those fingers lace tight between his own, he cannot say which of it them it is Henry speaks to.

All he can do—swallow and gather himself and squeeze back. “Of course.”

The niggling voice in the back of his head, not supposed to let him speak, and he is about to say it, to shush Henry, to press a finger to his lips, when those eyes blink, slowly, and open.

“Edward—” a sigh more than a word.

God help him but the very sound of his name—your demeanour should be all cheer, gentlemen, the voice of Franklin across half a lifetime. All he can do to keep that smile. “Afraid you’ve let yourself go, old man. I’ve been tempted to shave your whiskers.”

A pathetic attempt at humour, but Henry huffs what might be a laugh, no more than a breath of air, and slowly, slowly, his eyes open. “Would have...sent...for Jopson...then.”

Hazy as they are, unfocused as they are, the sight of those eyes—suddenly Edward can’t see, the tears prickling, blurring his vision, but still he keeps the smile plastered, still he forces steadiness into his voice. “He’s in Topeka now. Much in demand I imagine.” He blinks hard against the tears that rise again, wills them to stay at bay, and Henry’s thumb is soft, stroking the side of his hand, something almost gentle in his face.

“I...know.” A swallow, his eyes slipping closed, blinking open again. “Had McCann...wire. Didn’t know...”

Didn’t know where to find you

Edward’s turn now to swallow, the ache in his chest, the nausea. Regret, guilt, both.

Should’ve been here

“I’m sorry—” and can say no more, the words all dying away with the shake of Henry’s head, his eyes closed again.

“So’m...I.” He sighs, and for a moment Edward thinks—this is it, all the time we’ll get, all we’re granted, he’ll go now he’s said that and there’ll be no more, and he slides his hand, the one that has rested this last hour in Henry’s hair, back under the blanket, to feel that heart when it—but instead he feels a shuddering breath and those eyes are open again, clear now, pinning him, mouth pursed tight, and this is the Henry he remembers, not the soft creature of a minute before, and his voice is clear, almost, as he says, “M’uniform. In the—wardrobe. Got—Ann Ross—to send. Dress me—after.”

Steadying, almost, to hear the words. This bit Edward can do, this bit he remembers, and something loosens in his chest that he had not known was wound so tight. No lies to tell, no promises of time, of again, of not now, only—

“I will. Will you—do you—want barbering?” Restore you to yourself, he means, and cannot say.

The smile, this time, is as he knows it. A little crooked, a little knowing. “No one else...I would—trust.”

Edward has to swallow around the new lump in his throat at those words, cannot speak.

Henry shakes his head, then his face stiffens and breath catches and Edward is about to call Billy to send for McCann, sees the blood spraying as he coughs, the rattling beneath his hand, only his vision clears and there is no spray of blood, only a dark clot, that slips between those lips.

He tries to shush Henry, reaches for the laudanum for to dose him now and keep it from happening, but Henry shakes his head and his voice is faint, whispering, “No no no...”

Edward settles, instead, for kissing the hand clenched around his own, waits, and wills sleep to come and take him that he will not lose what chance they have.

Instead, Henry breathes, slowly, twice, and murmurs. “My...notebook. Yours. As you...wish.” This bit is different, because before it was to burn it. Burn it and burn all letters, including those sent by Fitzjames, that live with Henry’s sword in a locked trunk at the Ross house. Burn it all, every scrap, not—

“The letters?” Edward’s voice distant, strange to his own ears.

“The—same. Yours. What—ever you—wish. And—” His hand twitches, pulling away, and Edward releases it, watches in a daze as Henry reaches, raises his left hand that has lain still beside him all these hours. The light catches his rings, and before Edward can move, before he can find words to speak, Henry is pulling, tugging, at that band of silver on his ring finger, the one he has seen with ancient bloodstains that used to belong to—

“Fitzjames.” Breathes the name against his own will, and the ring is off, Henry’s eyes open again.

“Give me—give me your hand.” His heart hammering beneath Edward’s palm, and he pulls it free from beneath the blanker, reaches—

But Henry shakes his head. “No. Th’other.”

The left, he means.

And now Edward can hardly breathe, as Henry takes his hand, his own trembling with the effort, and presses that precious silver band onto his ring finger.

Bury it with Jas

Words he has heard, has turned over, a hundred, a thousand times, but they do not come. Instead, the tears trickling down Henry’s cheeks and he tries to move to wipe them, can’t, as Henry draws that hand to his lips, kisses that ring, kisses the finger that wears it.

“Yours. Want you...to keep.”

No hope that Edward can speak, throat too tight, ache driving all space from his chest, but he nods, the tears spilling from his eyes, Henry’s grip tight on his hand, kisses that hand that holds his own, kisses those lips, kisses those tears that trickle and his own that fall, and kisses him kisses him kisses him.

When McCann comes again, it is to the sight of Henry, sleeping peaceful, for Edward managed to give him a little of the laudanum in the end, massaged it down his throat so he would not choke. (The beating of his pulse against his fingertips, the soft heat of his skin.) Edward himself, slumped in the chair, for he straightened up when he heard the door creak, pulled his face away from Henry’s own though feels, still, the impression of him against his cheek.

The impression of him, and the new ring, snug upon his finger.

(Another, instead, to bury with Fitzjames. One that has always been Henry’s own, since Fitzjames won it in a poker game in Dodge and gave it to him. The others, that he wears, that rest in the drawer with his notebook and the note from McCann, to do with as he wishes, dispose of as he sees fit.)

(“Lie...with me,” Henry whispered, his eyes shifting beneath the lids, fingers slack again. Edward swallowed, and kissed his knuckles, and thought of McCann finding them, curled together, of the lies he would have to tell, of how, settling on the bed, his weight would shift Henry, jar his broken ribs.

(“In a little while,” he lied, and kissed him again. “In a little while.”)

A cigarillo and a hip flask, the very first night. Edward the officer in command, taking a final circuit of the men before retreating to his tent. A raiding party of Sioux, vanished like ghosts on the horizon and so they had been sent in different directions, each with two scouts and a troop, to track them, bring them in. Except—there was no sign. And as Edward’s troop fanned out, came back, they rendezvoused with Le Vesconte and his men. Not quite prior arrangement but—maps to be consulted, arrangements to be made.

Edward a captain by then, Le Vesconte the bearing of one despite being still but a lieutenant. How Edward envied him. Envied him, and his height, and how he wore a uniform as if bred to carry it. The very picture of a cavalry officer, he and Fitzjames both, and where Fitzjames wore his hair long, tumbling in waves, Le Vesconte favoured side whiskers, a swoop on top. Greying already, even then, not yet thirty.

And yet, even that seemed to suit him.

Not quite as arrogant as Custer. Not far off.

The night. The first night. Le Vesconte met him, on the edge of camp. Both of them walking. Neither able to sleep. Met him, offered him a mouthful of whisky.

“Warms the blood.” That glimmer of a smile.

Edward took the proffered flask, closed his lips around the top. The whisky was smooth, rye, not cheap cavalry rotgut and for a moment he choked, caught by surprise, though with a name like Le Vesconte—

The second mouthful he swallowed. Offered the flask back, and watched as Le Vesconte ran his tongue over the rim, put it to his lips.

Drank slow and deep, passed it back to Edward who, already feeling the heat spreading through him, did the same.

This time, returning it, his fingers brushed Le Vesconte’s own. Both of them gloved, yet—

“Smoke?” Edward asked, fishing a cigarillo from his pocket. Remembered the stack Le Vesconte had won, in that poker game in the Dakota country. But this was Wyoming territory, and Le Vesconte nodded.

Could have given him his own, but—some impulse, some sense. Slipped the one he had found between his own lips, found a match and lit it. The first puff, and then he took it, passed it to Le Vesconte, who quirked one brow as he took, it, quick tongue darting over his lips, before the cigarillo took its place.

Might have kissed him then, for only the stars and the moon to see, but held himself in check, even as it spread through his chest, that growing longing thing. Wished, almost, that Le Vesconte would take the step, be the one to lean in and press his lips—

Instead, the cigarillo passed back, and in the end that was how they share it, over and back, until it had burned to a stub, and when Le Vesconte passed it back for the last time, Edward dropped it to earth and crushed it beneath the heel of his boot.

That night, in his tent alone at last, dreamt for the first time of hands searching, touching, taking. Of stubble scraping against his own, and breath hot in his mouth.

Woke as tired as if he had not slept at all, and when they parted in the morning, one heading north one heading east, it was with the knowledge that something had passed between them the night before.

Though what—neither could name.

(“Go well, Edward.” The low gravel in that voice, even then.)

(“You too, Henry.” Promised, and turned away.)

Despite himself, all best effort and will, he sleeps.

Sleeps without dreams, only the sense of not being alone, of fingers between his own. Wakes to the morning chill on his face, and for a moment it might be Prescott, or Dodge or a fort on the Powder River. Only a moment, until he feels those cold fingers twitch, hears the gasped breath, fainter than before.

The change come.

He straightens up, blinking his vision clear, looks down into Henry’s grey face, the gaping mouth,  dark clots clinging to his lips. Looks down, and for a moment is possessed by an urge to smother him, rising up from within. To ease the pillow from beneath his head, cover that nose and mouth, and press.

End it. Now.

A moment. And Henry coughs, a faint pathetic thing, and Edward sees, now, the shadows beneath his eyes, the blue of his lips, and cannot.

His fingers, pressed to the thin line of that wrist, but what pulse there is is almost too faint to feel.

After five days, that stalwart, stubborn heart failing.

For a moment, only a moment, he considers McCann. Sending the boy for him now at last, but—no.

What can McCann do now that would make a difference? Cannot heal Henry’s lungs, fill his veins with blood, restore him to how he was ten years ago, tall and proud and untouched.

No place, here, for a stranger anymore.

(“Gore visited…th’other night.” A soft murmur, shortly after dawn. If it were not for the change in his breathing, for the tightening of the fingers in his grasp, Edward would not have known he was awake. “Looks…well.” A thin smile, so brief Edward almost missed it. But that was Laramie, and Gore was long in his grave, and there was nothing Edward could say, but—

“I’m glad.”)

It was always, only over, coming to this.

What matters now the thoughts of man? What matters the place of any law, any God? The world reduced down to this room, this bed.

As Edward eases himself down, draws, carefully, gently, the frail form of Henry into his arms, he knows only this—that they are all that matters now, and as he tucks Henry’s face into the curve of his shoulder, he knows he should have done it sooner.

Should have done it when Henry asked.

Were he a braver man, should have taken Henry from here. Carried him to horse, carried him away. To a place where only they could lie, and there laid him down, and held him until—until no need to hold him anymore.

No such place that they could have gone. No such place that he could have taken him, and known he would have lasted to see it, lasted for them to be wholly, completely, alone. And so this bed, all there is. And with Henry’s breath faint against his neck, Henry’s fingers cold and still in his own, Edward closes his eyes, his lips against that forehead, and sighs.

The one and only thing he can do, ever could.

Only, ever, for this.