shallowz

Chapter Six

His hip was better, but Scott didn't think the current Lancers would send him to the staff quarters any time soon. Teary-eyed, William had opened the papers with shaky hands. They talked far into the evening and most of the night until the old man's head nodded to the side in a doze. Then Chris had carefully folded the documents and placed them in the secret drawer, locked it, and put the key in top of the desk. Much like Murdoch.

Knowing they were there safe yet out of his hands was a blend of regret and peace.

He eased out of the house leaving William and Chris, plates of toast and eggs pushed to the side, poring over strategy. Full morning now, his own belly full of Abigail's homemade waffles, so sweet two cups of coffee and a glass of milk weren't enough to cut it. He hoped a morning spent doing barn chores would set him right.

Once, he knew in his skin where he was and what he needed to do. The look Murdoch gave when sipping an excellent glass of scotch, Johnny rumpled and mumbly, not-quite-awake in the morning, when the wind would blow, when it would rain.

It itched, deep inside his gut. He existed between times, between generations, between Lancers. Just between and damnit if he didn't feel like riding all day, all the way to… just about said it again, swallowed it because he was already here. His teeth clenched until it hurt his jaw and he sensed someone at window—either William or Chris—watching him, wondering.

The clean, warm air of almost summer felt welcoming on the way to the barn. But it pinged him in a way he hadn't dared to think quite yet—what if he couldn't get back to his Lancer?

The disquiet drove him to move and he did, taking the comb and dandy brush from the bucket inside the tack room. He tied the first paint mare in her stall. His new hat, unlike the old one, felt stiff and constraining. He swept it from his head and hung it on a free nail, then reached for the comb.

He started rubbing in circles starting at the top of her neck, veering away from a sensitive spot on her shoulder when the skin rippled. Two voices were outside, one feminine and one masculine. The soprano belonged to Abigail, the deeper teasing one was Mech. The mare's tail swished against the side of the stall and Scott stepped back, leaned into the wall.

The voices became louder, sharper.

"Really, really, there's no need for you to help me take these pots into the shed."

Mech gave a hearty laugh. "Now Miss Lancer, my mother taught me to always help a girl in need."

"Well, Mama's not here. And I don't need your help."

"But it looks like you do."

Maybe it was the insistence, or the fact Mech's tone had gone cold. Scott threw down the comb and veered out of the stall at a jog.

Mech had caught her hand and swung her into his arms, clamping her hard against him.

Abigail brought her knee up between Mech's thighs. Even as he grunted, she swung and hit the man hard in the eye.

"Get off!" she shouted, shoving at him. Groaning, he fell against the car, curling up like a dried apple. Abigail's fist came up. "If you don't get out of here now, I'll hit you again. I mean it."

Scott grabbed Mech's wrist mid-air, wrenched it around his back. "You're fired. Leave and never come back." He gave him a shove and sent him stumbling down the drive.

"You got no right to fire me." Mech jabbed a finger in Scott's direction. "Especially you!"

"Maybe not, but I do." Gray had stepped up without anyone seeing. "Like the man said, you're fired; now get out."

"You're crazy, both of you." Mech scurried for his car.

The front door opened and Chris came running out, pulling up short at the three of them watching Mech drive away in a cloud of dust and noise.

"Abby, are you all right? I heard shouting."

"Mech was offering to help when I didn't need any." Chris's face darkened. "But I'm fine, Dad. Scott backed me up."

"She was already taking care of the situation by the time I arrived." He couldn't stop a grin. "I'd better see to the horses."

Gray spit out a chuckle. "Chris, I do love a mystery. He fired Mech, told him in no uncertain terms to leave and never come back. Think I'd better watch out or Scott'll be running the place soon."

Chris looked at Abby, eyebrows raised.

~o~o~o~

Restless even after hours of sweating in the barn and corral, Scott saddled up the paint and made his way past the crumbled remnants of the white arch.

The dirt road he traveled on paralleled and crossed an old game trail Johnny and he had found one day. They had made a sizable dent in the deer population that season. As Lancer raised cattle, a little variance was always welcome. It had been good that winter. Scott looked to the hill in front of him. A cabin had stood there, and it bothered him more than he thought possible to see all that was left was a few decomposed logs on a broken rock foundation.

A cloud of vague forms and sounds descended. He wasn't conscious of any real thoughts, until he arrived at the cemetery, drawn to find the past.

The cemetery was filled with children and young mothers. Cowboys and vaqueros who worked the estancia. A simple Good Man read one tombstone. Some he had helped bury in the aftermath of Pardee.

But he needed to see. It was there in a small area, what once was sectioned off by a stone wall, but now ribboned with rubble. He dropped down to the first grave and brushed aside the overgrown grass. The script was of large letters to fit the man: Murdoch S. Lancer. His heart gave an ugly hitch. The date of death was two years after the day Scott had left the lawyer's office, as William had said.

He glanced to his left. John M. Lancer, Son, Brother, Husband. For a man who once counted his existence by hours, it was gratifying to see his brother had lived so long. Next to Johnny's marker were several other stones, all in too much faded disarray to read the inscriptions. He looked across the stretches of open grasslands that emptied into the horizon.

And was aware that someone else watched.

Chris reined his horse at the gate. His eyebrows were bunched together in concern, a look that leapt generations. "Murdoch Lancer, your father." He pointed to the other stone. "And that's my namesake, John Madrid. My folks thought the name was an affectation of the man."

"We call…called him Johnny." He had interrupted but it was somehow important Chris knew.

Tangled bloodlines. It didn't matter, and maybe he was looking for it, but despite a hundred plus years or so, Chris could pass for Johnny's son.

"The name did mean something. Johnny was a gunfighter. He took the surname of his mother when he started, and before you ask, he's excellent."

The open-jawed look was almost comical. "William hinted that Johnny had a black past. He killed people in showdowns?"

Scott stood and brushed off his pants. "A gun for hire." He struggled with the right words. "Protection? Mercenary?"

"How is it that he even got to Lancer?"

"Would it surprise you to learn Johnny was born at Lancer? Murdoch's second son and a brother I never knew until two years ago."

He could not believe Johnny was dead. The rich drawl in his ears, the tone rising and falling depending on what Johnny was doing at the time. In most men, you knew what was going to come next, but he was never sure what would come out of his brother's mouth.

Scott shivered, walked slowly past the riot of purple and yellow wildflowers dotting the green around the gravestones and out of the cemetery. The wind had come up with another promise of rain, but the heat had reinvigorated his sweat and he tried to ignore the wetness that soaked through his cotton shirt.

~o~o~o~

Memories. All those memories scattering around in his mind, shaken loose watching a man struggle to accept the here and now while looking at the gravestones of family not dead to him, but gone for decades. Chris swirled the scotch in his glass, appreciating the amber color in the setting sun. That it eased the stiff muscles from too much worry added to the allure.

He took another swallow.

"What are you so concerned about?"

Chris fought hard not to jump at the unexpected voice and turned at the belated scrape of a boot on the concrete as Scott came through the doorway.

"What makes you ask that?" He wasn't too old to try for a good stall or distraction. A soft laugh let him know it wouldn't work.

"You are very much like Johnny in a lot of ways."

He stilled at the comment. Scott sat in the chair beside him, long legs crossing at the ankles with a sense of relaxation, Chris could only find in the Scotch tonight. Damn him. Man out of time—and didn't that still send the hairs in the back of his neck to attention—but Scott was the one taking his ease out in the sunset tonight.

"Johnny is as confident and accomplished as any man, but when it comes to the larger of Lancer's issues, he still defers to Murdoch or myself since as he put it 'he doesn't have the same education'."

Is. Now. Not was. For Scott the past was very much the present.

"The trip to the cemetery got me to thinking about things. Good guy?" Stories passed down for generations weren't as good as the now.

Scott smiled. "Yes. A good man. I've no doubt he will be a good father. I'd like to see it."

Would he? The question floated unasked between them. Chris glanced at his companion. Scott looked content for now. Chris watched his struggle with the modern day world. He did it silently. Only asking for help when he couldn't figure out how something worked. That Scott had a quick mind for grasping the unbelievable was evident in the first few days.

"Do you like this time?"

Scott smiled, keeping his eyes on the sunset. "There is much to recommend it, the conveniences, the apparent ease in which one lives in this time."

"But?"

Now Scott looked at him, smile softening. "I'm an old-fashioned man. Home is the people I've left behind, though it will be hard to leave you all."

"Scott—"

"No." Now Scott looked like the young man he was. "No. There is a way back. I can't leave Murdoch and Johnny wondering for the rest of their lives what happened to me."

"Lancer survived. Poor comfort, I know, but we don't know how you got here much less figure out how to get you back." Chris didn't want to be the voice of reason, but the idea of Scott relying on such a fragile hope—it would devastate him.

"Murdoch has done nothing but survive without his sons for years. We didn't know." Scott grimaced, continuing in a softer tone. "Our first meeting was contentious at best. He wasn't welcoming. Although, if he had been, I doubt we would have accepted that welcome. Given all our hopes and fears, it was perhaps the best approach. But we did learn he wanted us both. Desperately." His hands curled into fists on his thighs. "That picture you have, it was taken after I was gone. He didn't look like that—not after he realized we were there to stay."

"What made you stay?" Chris always wondered if Scott Lancer had enough of the West, and returned to the East without word to his family. Meeting Scott now, the very idea was preposterous.

"Murdoch and Johnny." Scott stood up, to lean against a pillar. "Lancer. This place soaks into you, gets a grip that won't let go and yet, I never felt as free as I did here. Life is immediate. No artifice."

Chris knew that feeling. Kept coming back here even when he felt shamed, not good enough. William never indicated he shared that belief. His eyes would flash with relief when Chris pulled into the driveway. A fierce bony hug awaited Chris every time, as soon as he got out of the car.

"What keeps you here?"

Chris's mouth twisted as the question turned back on him. Scott looked over his shoulder waiting on the answer.

"William, Abby." He laughed softly. "This place is home."

"Then why do you fight it?"

"My brother died not far from here." His stomach still clenched when he said those words. "The crossroads a mile down. I'd just told some stupid joke. Aidan was laughing hard and didn't see the car barreling through the stop sign. Hit his side. He died instantly."

"You blame yourself?"

"No."

Scott raised his brows.

"Yes."

Scott turned to face him, crossing his arms over his chest. "Surviving is one of the hardest things to not feel guilty about. I don't care what reasoning is given, it is difficult to accept that you live while others die."

A wealth of experience colored those words.

"I wasn't a good son after that. Went off the rails. Met Hannah a few years later and Abby was born. We married, but couldn't make it work. The divorce was apathetic at best."

"Knowing Abigail, you have no reason to feel you failed."

"No, while not something I claim total credit for, I've no regrets there."

"So then you fear failing now."

Chris felt the strike, froze, and absorbed it. You fear failing now.

His held breath released, and he relaxed deeper into the chair.

"Yes." How odd to have it come down to something so simple. And not. "William wants me to take over. I don't want to let him down."

To disappoint William—as he had done in the past.

Scott studied his hands before answering. "Couldn't a life be rebuilt around accepted truth?"

Chris started. "Isn't that a little too pat?"

Scott looked at him sharply. "Is it? From where I sit, it seems rather complicated." He stood, looked weary to the bone. "The truth for me is where Abigail found me. It has to be there." He looked like he was trying to convince himself.

Stopping at the doorway Scott turned, his voice softened. "Chris, I see you and William planning for a future beyond this one. You come from a line of stubborn people. You'll find your way."

Chapter Seven