Blood and Iron Ch. 03

His mouth briefly tugged to an arrogant grin, glancing over to James as he seemed to come to a decision. A taunting cheer rising in his tone. "Hell, maybe I ain't got to kill the both of you. 'Swhat I was thinkin', ridin' out...but I reckon I could probably let that slide, if your girl here treats me nice enough." His gaze flickered back to Alice with an exaggerated leer, before again addressing James. "What d'yuh think, 'pa?'"

He just stood, silent as a gravestone. Revulsed at the turn this had taken, the loathesome suggestion spoken. There was no answer, nothing to be said. If all were laid out straight and plain, perhaps it would be better for Alice to submit herself to this man's desires than that she should die - even if his skin crawled and a tide of helpless anger rose up in his gut, at the thought of her so used. But the brutal man before them could hardly be trusted to follow through, even on so cruel a bargain.

Jack's lip twitched, faint annoyance at the other man's silence; he turned to Alice, the gun held just casually threatening at his side. "Now," his voice smooth and sly. "How about you lose that shirt of yours? Proper lady ain't supposed to be wearin' a thing like that, anyhow."

But she, too, just glared back without response. Perhaps inspired by her father's example. Hostility in her gaze, baleful and threatening; it was a long few moments before Jack sighed in irritation. "You two are just.." A grunt, a mutter. The gun rose up again in his hand, aimed loosely at her heart. "Take it off."

"Go to blazes," she spat back almost instantly. No trace of fear in her expression, just scorn, hatred. Disdain.

Brief laughter forced itself from the man's throat, a chuckle startled and halfway to admiring. A murmur under his breath, "I'll be damned," as he glanced over to James. "Quite a hellcat you got here, 'pa.'"

But this shadow of humor was short-lived, the snarl descending again upon his lips as he shifted his hand. The revolver pointed roughly now at James, as he stared her down once more. Violence coldly deliberate in his tone, slow and close to taunting. "Little lady, I can kill'm fast, or I can kill'm slow. Or maybe not at all - if you start doin' what I say right now."

Alice still glared back at him, the breath coming forceful through her nose like the snorting of a bull. But she could not help a worried glance at her father...and as her eyes brushed with his, one could almost see the resolve in her expression crack and crumble down to earth. A quaver of surrender beneath, her hands rising reluctantly to her neck to undo the small wooden buttons of the slightly faded shirt.

"Don't give'm an inch." James tried to dissuade her, to warn her off from this. Weakly - even if his own death was little threat, it was hardly as though the man would leave her be after shooting him.

"I gotta," she mumbled back, shameful. Not looking now in his direction, her fingers working slowly through the buttons, unveiling an all-too-tempting swell of flesh at the top of her chest. So wrenchingly alike his dream, the spread of softly freckled shoulders and the simple, tightly-fastened cloth corset...

Hardly a moment later, too, that Jack cut in with loathesome cheer. "Don't you worry, Slim. She's gonna be takin' inches, not given'm." His grin spreading wide and slightly yellow, pleased at the innuendo - James just ground his teeth, fought with himself over whether he ought to just to turn away, not to see what promised to happen. A twist of sickness deep inside him at the thought of this beast touching her...and recognizing with faint disgust the note of jealousy in the pounding of his heart, envious of the other man's careless abandon, so readily to steal what he himself hesitated even to accept. This, alongside the saner outrage and despair, that his daughter was faced with such a fate. That he could do nothing to stop it, could only stand and watch and listen as Jack pawed at her with his eyes, and plotted offenses still graver.

"Them jeans, now." Their captor's voice came again, boisterous and strong. His gun waggling at James for emphasis. "Downright scandalous, woman thinkin' she's a man, dressin' up like one. I figure I'm doin' a real service, remindin' her of what she is." Her slender hands descending to the button fly only after a reluctant pause, a faint tremble in the movement of her fingers, fear or rage or shame...but she obeyed, and neither man could quite keep his eyes from the waist of her jeans as they gradually slackened, slipped downward to reveal the thin, tempting sliver of pale flesh about her midriff, beneath the bottom edge of her corset. Lower, the surprising whiteness of her drawers slipping into view, swaddling her most private places with loose and formless cloth, this slow, halfway unveiling appearing to James somehow even more alluring than his glimpse of the whole the day before. And her lithe, long legs, radiant in the morning light as she finally let her jeans to drop upon the ground - for just a moment, his gaze devoured her beauty, forgetting even the threat that stood so near.

Then Jack whistled, crudely appreciative, and it all came crashing back. "Hell, you ain't bad at all. Oughtta be a crime, keepin' them gams all hidden away...figure I'm gonna enjoy this. You, Slim," he didn't even glance in James' direction, focused entirely on leering at Alice with unrestrained lust. "Sit down, enjoy the show. I got a feeling your girl here's going to."

She just stood there stiffly as he spoke the words. Little clothed against the faint chill of morning, arms clasped close around her chest, trying helplessly at protection - and such misery in her gaze, such pleading and almost apology as she looked just over to her father before once more burying her eyes in the dirt. The most absurd thing of all, that she was doing this for him, to protect him...

It seemed all at once that a scalding fury erupted in his heart. Hatred - for this brute, yes, but at least as much for himself. For the fact that he stood there so damned useless as this travesty unfolded. Whatever failings he'd had before, no man was a father who would submit to this, who would not fight to his own death before permitting his only daughter to prostitute herself for his life. Even if it was futile, even if he were shot dead in the first moment of resistance...better that than to give up, to consent.

Perhaps the odds were not even so dismal as that. Jack looked to be quite assured now of his control, entranced entirely in his ogling of Alice. The gun he loosely clutched no longer even aimed at anything in particular, just pointed vaguely downward to the dirt...James could not afford to let this moment pass, to permit one more offense to be committed. There was no more time to think or to consider. The fire of wrath was in his veins, lent strength to his old bones as he abruptly stirred, moved, charged across the short distance that separated him from his captor.

It was no precise or timed assault, no masterful destruction of his foe. Just an attack, wild and almost blind. In the last moments before contact, Jack heard the movement and looked over, his revolver rising up again...but it was too late for that. James slammed into the larger man, arms roughly crossed before him as a kind of battering ram. Trying to knock him over, even as he grunted out almost a command, "Alice, get your gun!"

One hope already dashed - Jack staggered back, but remained on his feet. Bless her, though, Alice dashed for her weapon as though the whole plan had been worked out ahead of time, slipping quickly past the desperate wrestling match which had begun before her.

Desperate on one side, anyway. Even in his youth, before his injury, James would not have been well-matched to this gorilla of a man. Now, as it was...there was no hope of victory, of actually overpowering his foe. Only of delay, distraction, trying to slow the hand that rose up irrepressible, wrapped around that short black revolver. Pointing now at his gut, as Jack muttered at him, disgusted. "You coulda got outta this alive, Slim." He could feel the cold barrel against his belly, and a familiar icy resignation crawling outward from his veins. "But I ain't gonna shed no tears it worked out this way." The faintest click, of a finger on a trigger.

An explosion reverberated across the plain, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Dying down to silence, as all the ugly blend of hatred and disdain in Jack's expression slowly slackened to an empty, stupefied flatness, and he collapsed graceless and undignified down to the dirt, bleeding freely from a fresh hole in the side of his head. Abruptly dead, the fire in his gaze extinguished, left blank...Alice stalked up beside, trembling with anger, looking now even more the avenging angel with just her gun and underthings. She held the revolver on his prone form, hovering over his chest, but did not fire. Only spat, a petite little gobbet landing to soak into the shoulder of his shirt. Growling, "I'd shoot the bastard again, but he ain't worth the lead."

Sudden disquiet shivered through her consciousness as there came a sound behind her, a soft impact with the dirt. She turned to see her father there, slumped down to his knees - a grimace pulling at his lips, and one hand clutched loose upon his abdomen. "Pa?" Slow, forboding worry in her voice.

"'Fraid he got me pretty good." The words came out slightly high, strained, tightened by the pain that pulsed whitely in his gut. And even as she looked, she could see the crimson stain swiftly spreading outward from beneath his hand.

"Get up, then." Flustered, shocked dismay beginning to tug at her - she briefly tried to holster her gun, forgetting that the belt still lay on the ground where it had been tossed. Her other hand extended down to help him up. "We got to get you to a doctor."

He didn't take it. Didn't move - just stayed kneeling there before her, a pose of bloody genuflection. "Don't figure I could make it." Two breaths hissing by, audibly pained. "I'm sorry, little rose. For so much...can't believe I ain't said it before. I shoulda never left. Shoulda been there for you. Shoulda been a better man, better father, not this thievin', murderin' louse you got..."

"Pa..." She murmured urgent, shaken. Dropped down to her knees as well, heedless of the dirt and tiny stones on her bare legs. Pleading, her hand grasping for his. "I forgive you." The words trembled through her throat, forced still raw and slightly uncertain in this moment of crisis. "All of it. I forgive you, but you gotta come see a doc, pa, you gotta be okay."

He shook his head now, ponderous and slow. His voice weaker, trending to a whisper. "Better this way." A slight smile, bittersweet, as much inside him as on his lips. Better to be gone, than that he face again his darkness. Better to die, than in some moment's weakness he take advantage of the wandering dreams she'd confessed to him the night before...even now, at such a time as this, he still felt so guilty an awareness of her body on display, of the long and well-toned muscle of her leg, the tempting, freckled swell of her breast above the rough corset. Even the curl of those fine pink lips, tragic and imploring, the softly miserable wrinkling at the bridge of her nose...

Facing her eyes was harder. Seeing the horror there, the mounting disbelief and pain. Hearing it in her whispered denial - it was alike the night before, when he'd held her gun upon himself. Save for the fact that he could not now retreat, could not hide again from that which had to be. A kind of blessing, that. It was on him already; a growing chill, a weary weight upon his bones as the blood flowed beneath his fingers and pain throbbed deep within. Her hand clutching at his, so warm, so small and tender. Comforting. Giving him the fortitude for this farewell. "You don't need me, little rose." Words firm, soothing, keeping the ache as far away as he was able. "You're a strong girl. Strong woman...about the finest one I seen."

"I ain't that strong." Fierce, desperate - she pushed in close, her gaze darting frantic between his eyes and the dark spread of red at his stomach. Tugging at his hand, her voice thick with pleading. "Pa, you got to get up. I do need you; ain't got no notion even what I'd do without.

His lips pulled weakly to a smile. "Talkin' nonsense, little rose." Tired. Cold inside, so cold... "You got by thirteen years without no help from me. Ain't gonna do no worse in the rest."

A shimmer in her red-rimmed eyes, and a quaver to her protest. "I spent them years trying to find you." Anguished reminder. "And I ain't..." She swallowed, and when she spoke again, her tone was firmer, fiercer, misery tempered with abrupt determination. "I ain't gonna let you run out on me again."

With that, she scurried swiftly to his side, lifted his arm up over her shoulders, behind her neck. His hand resting warm on bare, soft skin at the top of her chest...in the growing haze and weariness, he did not even entirely realize what she was planning until she pushed abruptly to her feet with a gently feminine grunt, and a wave of sudden agony swept outward from his belly as he was lifted up alongside.

"Come on, now," she hissed forceful there beside him, commanded. "We're goin' back to Las Cintas, find a doc that'll fix you up." Her tone as demanding as when she'd first discovered him, though a deaf man could have heard the pallor of fear that lay behind the words.

There was not the strength inside him to resist her, and hardly sufficient to obey. Just enough to shuffle along beside as she pressed forward to the horses, every step a fresh stabbing of pain inside his gut. The bullet that was lodged there feeling in alternate moments cold as ice and hot as a branding iron. Blood flowing freely, soaking through his clothes, trickling down his leg...so tired. His eyelids tugging down as though attached to heavy weights, lethargy grabbing at his legs until it became too great an effort even just to lift his foot for the next step. Vision fuzzing into darkness as the distance telescoped before him, the dozen feet he'd yet to cross feeling as a hundred miles...

But the hurt, as well, was fading, supplanted by a warm and pleasant numbness, a calm like that of sleep. He couldn't walk anymore, but that was all right. Everything was all right. He could feel Alice there beside him, under his arm. The way he'd held her sometimes in the time before, telling her stories before bed, when she was a little girl. Such a little swell of feeling in that, a stinging at the corners of his eyes, muddled tears he didn't try to push away. So fine a woman she'd turned out to be, so beautiful of body and of soul. So bright a blessing, to have her here before the end.

She was talking, now, saying something with that urgent look upon her face - he couldn't hear. Couldn't even stand up on his own, leaning on her entirely for support. Just smiled a tiny smile at the fervent fire in her eyes. It took all the energy he had to rouse once more his tongue, murmur a few brief words she had to strain her ears to catch. "Goodbye, little rose."

No more time. The smallest trace of sadness at the horror in her gaze - then consciousness was faded, and he knew nothing more.

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Don't worry! Despite immediate appearances, this is not, in fact, the end of the story. :)