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TITLE: His Own Kind Of Freedom
SUMMARY: When John Sheppard rides into Atlantis town looking for his cousin Laura Cadman, he finds himself involved in an old grudge: the Genii are back in town.
CATEGORY: crackerrific AU, four queens, action
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: Not my characters, making no money from them.
NOTES: An AU that I 'finished' about three-four months ago, but which needed some polishing and putting together. A birthday gift for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greenconverses, since sjhw_tolerance doesn't read AUs (and she's already got a penguin, anyway)! Enjoy!
His Own Kind Of Freedom
John rode into Atlantis town just after midday, the hot sun at his back as he entered the city limits.
Beneath the awnings and roofs of the city's buildings, men and women turned to watch him ride in, their eyes taking in the dusty silver of his spurs, the hard-worn leather of his saddle. He looked back at them, meeting their gazes unflinchingly, and tipping his hat at the ladies with a faint, polite smile.
For the bustling metropolis Atlantis was rumoured to be, it seemed suspiciously quiet for the midafternoon. Yes, it was hot, but John had ridden through a dozen towns before Atlantis while on his search, many of them smaller than this city, and he'd never yet seen a town so deathly quiet at this time of day.
There was a tension in the air, like two men facing each other, weapons drawn and cocked, waiting for a reason to shoot.
It just lacked the men in the street, waiting to shoot.
John grimaced to himself but kept on riding up the long, empty street, his faithful 'Jumper stepping evenly along beneath him. "Nearly there, girl," he reassured her. "We'll get you shod and ready to ride real soon."
The smithy was near the centre of town, set along one of the six streets that radiated out from the somewhat dusty public gardens that sat roundly in the intersection of those six main streets. John caught a glimpse of a stone fountain between the hardy trees in their steel fences.
A town with money.
As John drew up alongside the smithy, a scent of burned leather and hot metal swirled out into the street, and he caught his breath at the pungency.
Within the smithy, men moved - the smith, bluff and red with the heat of his trade, a negro at the bellows, his skin betraying a heritage not entirely black, and several men waiting in and around the shop. They all shifted, uncomfortable as John swung down from 'Jumper and the edge of his long coat rode up to show the guns that rode on his hips.
John paid them no mind. He had business to transact.
"Good afternoon," the smith rumbled from where he was working short lengths of metal into nails.
"'Afternoon," John said, choosing to skip the niceties. "My horse threw a shoe some three miles out of town. How long before you can see to her?"
The smith glanced up, took in man and horse, saddlery and weaponry in a single look, then stared at the swift-shuffling horse before returning to his work. "In a rush to get out of town?"
"No. But I have business in town."
Beside the door, the men murmured, and one or two drifted away. John kept them in the corner of his eye, waiting to see if they were going to draw on him. There was an edgy tension to this town; sharp as a blade or a prickle-burr. He didn't like it.
"Business?"
"Business." That was all he was going to say on the matter - there wasn't anything else he felt it necessary to disclose.
"Five minutes to see her," said the smith, working another sliver of metal into a nail with expert blows. "Half hour to have her done, an hour if she's troublesome."
"She doesn't give trouble," John said. As though to prove him wrong, 'Jumper sidestepped, restless. He soothed her with a hand and a couple of soft clicks. She was cranky about being ridden on a thrown shoe, but there'd been no help for it. Smiths didn't grow by the wayside in these parts. Or back home, come to think on it.
"If you say so. Give me a minute to finish these and I'll see her." The smith tossed a nail into the cooling trough; the nail gave a brief hiss as it hit the water, swiftly extinguished. Hammer and tongs were laid down on the bench and the smith wiped his hands on his apron and indicated the Colt Peacemakers John wore as well as the rifle holstered on 'Jumper's saddle. "You know how to use those there guns?"
"Yes."
"I suggest you don't. We don't take kindly to having gunfights in town."
"I don't take well to being shot at," John replied evenly. "As long as no-one feels the need to shoot me, I won't shoot anyone. Your sheriff needn't worry about that."
At the bellows, the negro stopped pumping and took out the bar he'd been heating in the forge with tongs, taking it over to the secondary anvil and beginning to work it into shape. Each blow of the hammer struck like a bell as the smith snorted. "Our sheriff won't be worrying about much these days. He's gone to where worry don't touch him." Then, as though he felt he'd said too much, he huffed and asked, "Business in Atlantis town, you said?"
John let the observation about the sheriff pass and answered the question. "I'm looking for a woman."
Someone guffawed and the smith lifted a thick, peppery brow. "Women are your business?"
"Plenty of them in town!" Raucous laughter greeted this sally by a bushy-bearded man whose skin was like leather.
John figured he'd walked into that one. "I'm looking for a specific one. Blonde, dark eyes. A lady." John hoped she was still a lady. Out here, far from the cities and civilised society, a woman could fall a long way. "Would go by the name Laura Cadman."
He saw the assistant stiffen slightly, although there was no change in the rhythm of the bell-like tones; in the corner of his eye, men shifted and moved, restless.
Shrewd blue eyes studied him as the smith hung up his tongs and hammer with a crafter's care. "Husband?"
"No." John didn't vouch more.
The smith seemed content with this for the moment, and came out from behind his anvil to see to John's mare. "Well, she's a right beauty," he said, running a hand across her withers and stood aside to lift the unshod foot. "Shame to have ridden her to a loose shoe." He glanced up at John. "You planning to ride Miss Laura to a loose shoe, also?"
"Not if I can help it," John said, moving a little so the smith could get to the leg more easily.
The smith grunted and turned to his assistant. "Bates, you finished with the bar?"
"Just done, Mr. Edwards."
"Then get the gentleman's horse ready and I'll start on the forge."
"Yes, sir."
Harry Edwards turned to John. "I'll have her back to you in half an hour. If you're looking for somewhere to wet your whistle in the meantime, the Atlantis Hotel and Saloon is across the way." He indicated across the town square towards a large, fine-fronted building where a group of mounts were tied up out the front of the hotel.
John frowned as the assistant took the reins from him. Right now, he was less interested in a drink and more interested in the whereabouts of his cousin, and it didn't look like the smith wasn't minded to give out her whereabouts. Which made him wonder why.
Movement out in the street caught his eye. A woman in neat brown calico walked briskly past the smithy, a large, rectangular package tucked firmly beneath her arm. John caught a glimpse of the face beneath the elegant straw hat with its dark blue ribbon and was startled by the darkness of the skin beneath, the impression of strong bones.
That was all he glimpsed. She passed the smithy with never a look to right or left; a small, trim body stepping along in small, trim boots whose toes peeped out from beneath the hem of her dress.
"You're looking for Laura Cadman?" The murmur came soft from the blacksmith's assistant, swift words with a bite. The man gave a quick, wary glance at his master, before he jerked his head at the passing woman. "You'll want to ask madam there."
Madam. John's eye turned measuring as the slim figure encountered a gentleman who tipped his hat to her in a familiar and friendly way. He noted the way two other women walking down the street narrowed their eyes and tilted their noses up, and the set of his mouth turned grim.
He turned back to the blacksmith who was watching him watch the woman. "An hour, you said?"
"An hour," the smith confirmed, carefully neutral. "But if I were you, I'd tread careful, son. The lady's small, but she's got bite."
John smiled, somewhat grimly. "So do I."
With a quick pat of his 'Jumper, John strode across the street at an easy pace. The lady was just finishing up her conversation with the gentleman, her laugh bubbled out in the dusty afternoon, merry as the fountain that burbled its watery song in the gardens at the centre of the town.
He caught the edge of their conversation.
"I'm sure that Laura will be more than happy to see you this evening, Doctor."
The easy answer had a Scottish brogue attached. "I look forward to it, ma'am."
John's eyes narrowed, but he smiled briefly and harmlessly as the gentleman passed him. He made sure he got a good look at the face, though, before he passed on towards the woman.
"Excuse me, ma'am."
She turned, and John blinked. Skin the colour of milk coffee stretched fiercely over bones too strong for conventional prettiness, and her eyes were the colour of rich earth and unstintingly direct. Strangely, what would have been deplorable in a white woman - the boldness of features and gaze - somehow suited the mixed blood that shone through in unique, wild beauty.
"May I help you, sir?"
This close, John understood the smith's warning - the cool inquiry of her voice, with its careful, polite accents walloped him in the gut like a physical blow.
"I'm looking for a Miss Cadman," John said, noting the reserve that drew over her at the mention of Laura's name.
His pause lifted one brow as she surveyed him, crown to toe, and took her time answering. "And you would be an acquaintance of Miss Cadman's, Mr...?"
"A relative," he said.
Her eyes cooled further, growing distant as she looked out across the empty gardens of the town centre and adjusted her grip on her package. "Somehow, I doubt that Miss Cadman cares to see any of her relatives right now."
"That's too bad for her," John replied, just as cool. "Because she's going to see me."
"You seem certain of that."
"That would be because I am, ma'am." Given the woman's cool attitude towards him, John figured drastic measures were to be taken. In a single, swift move, he slipped the package out from under the woman's arm, tucking it under his own. "Mind if I carry that, miss?"
She made a grab for it, but couldn't quite get a grip on it before John had it in his possession. His smile was not quite nice, but then, he'd been tracking Laura down for the better part of the last six months, and he wasn't about to be thwarted by this woman, no matter how self-possessed she might be.
"Now, we can go quietly along, ma'am, or we can cause a scene." He met her baleful gaze with his most charming expression. "I'm sure a lady like you doesn't want a scene."
If the women back east had softened to his smile, none of the women had been like this one - sable and honey behind gunsteel and leather. The dark eyes studied him, reflected sunlight catching the heavy coil of dark hair beneath her bonnet, and adding a measuring glitter to her eyes.
He offered her his arm - sugar and flies. "Shall we, ma'am?"
She hesitated a moment before taking it, snugging her hand neatly in the crook of his elbow. She'd been offered the arm of a gentleman before, and her airs were instinctively genteel. If not for the colour of her skin and the comment by the smith's assistant, John would have assumed she was a lady.
Still, no lady of John's former acquaintance would have spoken with quite such acerbity as she noted, "If you are this high-handed with Miss Cadman, it can be no wonder she has no wish to see her relatives."
John's mouth twitched, holding back a smile. Bite, indeed! "You know, it might surprise you to discover that I'm the least high-handed of Miss Cadman's relatives."
"Surprise would be an understatement," she said dryly, "particularly since you have my parcel and have not even given me the courtesy of your name."
"John Sheppard, at your service, ma'am."
"I sincerely doubt that," she murmured as they circled the water fountain that bubbled gently away, but at least she gave her name. "Teyla Emmagan."
"Unusual name." Fitting for an unusual woman.
The gaze she turned on him was steady, "It is."
"So," he said as they approached the street, "how about we stop fencing with words and you take me to Laura?"
She stopped at the edge of the park, but not, as might have been expected, to look at John. He followed the line of her gaze to the Atlantis Saloon and Hotel and frowned. "Miss Emmagan?"
"Mr. Sheppard," she said, surveying the street, "Would you be so kind as to escort me to the sheriff's office?"
John looked at her, sharply. Her voice was carefully nonchalant, but the press of her fingers in his arm suggested that there was more going on. "What is it?"
"The Genii gang have returned to the Atlantis saloon," she said. "Don't look at the saloon!"
"You're going to explain all this of course?"
"On the way to the sheriff's office."
"Which is...?"
She indicated the direction with one slim finger in the crook of his arm. "That way."
They started off, striving to appear casual as a couple on a midday stroll. Not an easy thing when Miss Emmagan was tense as a fiddle's strings. "Try to relax," John said as they passed a couple who eyed him narrowly before the woman hustled the man away, her mouth set in prim lines.
Miss Emmagan didn't pay them any attention. "Tell me, Mr. Sheppard, how relaxed you are when I tell you that Laura Cadman is one of six people whom I left in the Atlantis saloon to go to the postmaster's office?"
John nearly stopped dead in the street as fear assailed him. "You could have told me this before!" He hissed in an undertone.
"I could," she agreed as she steered them towards a building halfway down the street which had the familiar five-point star of the sheriff's badge carved into the sign. John made for the porch of the office, only to be steered into the shadowed alleyway that ran along what he presumed were the lock-up cells - a solid wall, reinforced with hard iron girders and thick wooden posts.
A glimpse of the dusty office window reminded him of what the smith had said. "Wait a minute, does this town even have a sheriff?"
"Sheriff Sumner was shot last week during a cattle dispute," she said. "But we are not here to see the Sheriff." Her head jerked up as gunfire sounded out in the street and there was a woman's scream. John's hand jerked towards his gun, but her hand pulled at his arm. "Hurry!"
"Where are we going?"
"There is a passageway that runs from the sheriff's stables to the saloon cellar," she said, so low that he could barely hear her beneath the shouts and cries coming from the street behind them. More gunfire sounded, the noisy crack of bullets being fired in the open, and she glanced back with a slight frown, before pulling out a ring of keys from her pocket and opening the side door to the stable. "The Genii have at least six hostages within the saloon."
"Including my cousin." They were in the stables, the reek of horse clinging to the enclosed space, dark after the brightness of the outside.
"Including Laura." Miss Emmagan pointed to a lamp hanging by the door. "Please light the lamp."
John began obeying her imperious tone without thought, then caught himself. But she'd already started off into the back of the stables and was paying him no mind. John felt a momentary pique at her competence, before shrugging ruefully and doing as she'd commanded. After a moment, her voice drifted out of the darkness, a disembodied voice continuing the explanation she'd given before.
"The Genii gang owned the Atlantis Saloon before Sheriff Sumner had them arrested for questionable business practices. The saloon was bought by others and opened up again."
"You?" The lamp was tricky to light, the wick refusing to take.
"Among several others."
"Laura?" It wouldn't surprise him. His cousin had always wanted more than the life of a Baltimore socialite. In a way, her escape out west had come as a relief to John - a dozen hare-brained schemes had been dismissed for one that was merely crazy - or not, given that his cousin was doing well enough in Atlantis town.
There was a scrape of boots on wood, a rustle of straw, then the creak and thump of a wooden trapdoor being opened. "Laura is one of the owners."
John hissed to himself as the match burned nearly down to his fingers and he almost dropped it on the floor, managing to blow it out before he caused a fire in the stables. "So the Genii have a grudge against you guys for taking it over?"
"Among other things." She came back, and John saw that she'd removed her bonnet. The light creeping in around the edges of the door shone gold-brown off the sleek black knot of her hair as she knelt down beside the box he'd taken from her and began ripping off the wrapping. "Their last visit to town saw them thrown out by the Sheriff and his officers."
"And now the Sheriff's dead," John concluded. "Wonderful. What are you doing?"
Miss Emmagan lifted the lid on the box, angling it so John could see the gunsmith's mark: Smith and Wesson. In the straw packaging sat a pair of snub-nosed revolvers. "Arming myself," she said.
John frowned. "Ma'am, I've got weapons."
"And will you give one of them over to me for my use?"
She picked out one of the two revolvers and began loading it with the ammunition she took out of a small box that had been secreted in a hidden pocket of her dress.
John caught his mouth curving as she snapped the gun casing closed. It was his misfortune that Miss Emmagan looked up and caught his expression. A paler woman might have flushed, but her eyes only narrowed briefly as she rose to her feet, ignoring the hand he offered her. "I will lead the way."
Arguing would only take up time they didn't have. But John did voice one question that came to him, "How do you know the Genii don't know about this passage?"
"We only rediscovered the passage when we cleaned out the cellars after taking over the hotel."
"Not conclusive."
She rested the lamp on the floor, and her mouth twitched as she began descending the ladder in the hole. "That is what Rodney would say."
"Rodney?"
"Yes." She didn't elaborate. "And the Genii have not used this passage to enter the saloon."
John still wasn't comfortable about entering the narrow, cramped tunnel. But that was because of the oppressive sense of being enclosed by the earth as they eased down the tiny passageway towards the hotel cellar.
As they left the stables behind them, John found his breath growing shorter, and forced himself to breathe normally. He'd faced men in battle and in bars, killed more than his fair share of lawless men, picked his way along a copse of trees mere yards from the sentries of a Confederate camp, and done most of it without breaking a sweat.
The blood-heat of a gunfight didn't bother him; this cold silence was unnerving.
He kept his eye on the skirts of the woman who made her way along the passage - his only company in this confining journey. John deliberately distracted himself with the faint herbal scent of her hair, a briefly-smelled imprint in the air as she moved ahead of him, the way the lamplight limned wisps of dark hair into golden tendrils, the rustle of her dress and petticoats against the dirt walls...
He wondered what his hoydenish cousin had thought upon meeting Teyla Emmagan.
He wondered whether Laura was injured or hurt, or just angry at being ambushed by the Genii gang - probably angry, knowing Laura.
He wondered what he was doing, following a coloured woman who spoke and acted like lady into a situation that might have been better managed by a man with the experience of dangerous situations.
He nearly fell out of passageway into the cellar, and scraped his knuckles on the dirt trying to rebalance himself.
She glanced back at him, arching one brow, and the glow of the light gave a mischievous tint to her amusement. John felt his neck flush angrily.
"Right," he muttered, rubbing his scratched knuckles against his trousers and glancing around the cellar. Barrels and boxes rose high into the air, stacked as neatly as a merchant's storeroom, and on a far benchtop was what looked like the setup of a distillery. The light gleamed off glass tubing as, overhead, voices raised in argument and shrill protest, and footsteps rapped out across the floor. Gunfire could be heard, distant and floating - the firing retorts lost in open air.
John made for the stairs leading out of the cellar, drawing his weapon as he did so. Then he realised that she was sitting down and unlacing her boots. "What are you--?"
"I will be able to move more quietly in bare feet," she said, her voice no louder than his had been. "Our presence will be revealed if we are tramping around."
"Our presence will be revealed the instant we start shooting!" John hissed, averting his gaze from her newly-revealed ankles. Not that he minded a well-turned pair of ankles, which Miss Emmagan certainly had, but it wasn't decent. "And with the noise they're making up there, they won't notice an extra pair of feet!"
"Perhaps. I would prefer not to risk it." She paused a moment and her cheeks might have shown a pink tint beneath the café au lait of her skin. "Please turn around."
John smiled and did as she requested, listening to the light slither of silk. He let himself wonder if her legs were as trim as the rest of her, then murmured, "You're lucky I'm a gentleman."
"Fortunate, indeed," she murmured, wry irony in her voice. "The stairs come out opposite a door to the kitchen. The saloon is down the corridor, opposite another door that leads to the lounge and gaming rooms and out the back to the kitchen yard."
"I guess I'm taking the saloon, then?"
Her mouth tilted again, a twist of mischief beneath glittering dark eyes as she passed him on her bare, silent feet. "I imagine a man like you has plenty of experience of saloons, Mr. Sheppard."
He shot her a look that made her grin. "All right then," he said pointedly, following her up the stairs and realising that she'd made a very tactical decision in removing her shoes. He could move just as quietly, but only by going much slower. "I'll take the saloon."
They were nearly at the top of the stairs when John recalled something he hadn't asked about before.
Perhaps it was over-bold of him to set his lips to her ear, but in all reasonableness, it was the quietest way to speak to her. The fact that he got a good whiff of a light jasmine scent over a woman's warm skin was simply a bonus.
"Other than Laura, who in there are good guys?"
He felt her body tense a little, then relax. She turned her head towards him, neither leaning in, nor drawing away. "Two men, four women. But Rodney is no hand with a gun. Ronon..." She hesitated. "Ronon is good with a gun but he is also short of temper. He is...different. You will not mistake him."
The brush of her breath against his cheek tensed his belly, but the adrenaline that ran in his veins was for battle rather than bed - right now, anyway. John focused on what she'd just relayed to him.
"And the women? Other than Laura?"
"If there is a woman with them, it will be Sora - smaller than I and red-haired. But it is unlikely."
John nodded, then stared at the crack of light as she pushed the door slowly and smoothly open, without a creak to betray them.
The corridor beyond was empty, but they couldn't rely on it staying that way. The sharp retort of gunfire sounded from the open doorway in the corridor ahead. From the echo, John judged that someone was firing on people outside. He figured that as long as that meant no-one was firing on him inside, it was okay.
With a swift swirl of skirts, Miss Teyla stole down the corridor and into the next.
John shook his head, then crept quietly to the open doorway to the saloon. Between the occasional spats of gunfire, a woman was speaking to someone else, her voice cool and slightly sharp.
"...deeded to me and my women legally by the sheriff..."
"Legally deeded?" The sneer was plain in the rough rasp of the man's voice. "I very much doubt that, Miss Weir. I'm sure that Sheriff Sumner felt he'd been more than adequately paid--"
"You mistake the situation, Kolya."
"Do I?"
"The hotel wasn't his to give," she said, primly outraged. "My girls and I paid the township of Atlantis for this property, the licensing--"
"My property," said Kolya. Amusement seeped into his voice, "Just think of this as a down payment on the rent you owe me."
"You won't get away with this."
"Miss Weir, I ask you, who is there to stop me?"
The answer to his laughing question came in the sound of gunfire from the kitchen. John counted three shots, four. No screams, though, although someone yelled something and there was a sudden clatter of pots and pans.
"Idos." It was an order, not just a name. John's eyes narrowed as he took a step backwards and flattened himself against the wall. Kolya sounded like a man accustomed to command; the alacrity with which Idos moved to do his bidding suggested there was respect there - fear at the least.
John levelled his gun at chest height, and fired as the man stepped into the corridor.
The thunk of the bullet was a soft echo behind the loud retort of the gun. Idos stumbled back into the room, then dropped like a stone. There was a gasp, a grunt, a cracking sound with the tinkle of glass behind it, and the rattling thump of a body hitting the floor.
Then silence.
"I've got a gun to her head," Kolya said, steely cold. "I wouldn't advise any heroics."
"I'm not in this for heroics," John retorted, glancing quickly back in the direction where Teyla had vanished as more shots sounded. "And I'm not the law."
"So who are you?"
"John Sheppard," he said. "Just passing through Atlantis."
"Pity you stopped at all, then," Kolya said.
"Pity for you, maybe. I'm sure Miss Weir disagrees."
There was the shuffling sound of steps, then someone cried, "He's taking Elizabeth!" It was a woman's voice, higher and lighter than Miss Weir's. There was another shot from a gun, the sound of glass shattering, and a woman's yelp.
"You won't get out of here alive, you know," John said, gritting his teeth. The female yelp had sounded surprised, but not in any particular pain.
"I know nothing of the sort," said Kolya, his tone of voice nearly conversational over the slow tread of a man retreating with the graceless scramble of someone being dragged backwards as accompaniment. "Especially not since I have a hostage."
The noise Miss Weir made was less of a whimper and more of a muffled squeak.
Given any other option, John would have taken it rather than go blind into such a situation. But he had a feeling that if he waited any longer--
Behind John, there was a swish of skirts, and he turned to see Miss Teyla coming up softly behind him. "The kitchens and back rooms are accounted for," she murmured. "Three men." Her fingers pushed back stray wisps of hair that had escaped from from the knot at her nape and one curled forward again, refusing to stay put. She didn't seem harmed, her eyes bright and her movements unhindered. "What is happening? Elizabeth? Ronon? Kate?"
John jerked his head at the wall. "Kolya's got Miss Weir - he's using her to escape. I guess Kate's in there - there's another woman in there. Haven't heard from anyone else."
She nodded, adjusting her grip on her gun. "I am going in. I know the room," she said when he began to protest, "and I will draw his fire. You must deal with him - I have no bullets left."
"Wait, ma'am..." John stretched out an arm to block her. It went against the grain to let a lady risk herself, but the flashing look she gave him suggested he wouldn't be able to restrain her without a struggle, and she wasn't much like any lady he'd previously encountered. "Be careful."
Her mouth quirked but a moment later, she swung around the edge of the room. "Kolya!"
John heard the shots thunk into the other side of the wall against which he pressed himself, vibrating the plaster. The sound heartened him - at least she hadn't been hit - and he gritted his teeth as they moved along the wall, away from the door, and he plunged in.
His impressions of the room were brief. Cool dark rafters overhead, polished floorboards below, the brightness of the midday light through the lace curtains, and the outline of the man against the swinging saloon doors, the dark-haired woman struggling in his grasp.
One shot. Make it count.
John's Colt was cool in his hands, and Kolya's left side was wide open.
John aimed for the shoulder, lining up the shot to miss the woman Kolya held prisoner.
The shot took Kolya in the left shoulder, swinging him around. He stumbled back and the woman struggled forward. She tripped on the flounce of her dress and fell gracelessly to her knees. As John strode forward, intending to help her up, a spray of bullets made the saloon doors dance to Kolya's exit, and John flung himself to the side.
Outside, there was a clatter of boot-heels on the wooden porch, several shots echoed broadly beneath an open sky, and the whinny and clatter of a horse sharply spurred.
John scrambled to his feet and pushed through the swinging door. Kolya was already up and on the ride like a Pony Express rider with Indians on his tail. Blood stained his shoulder, but the man had gumption and could ride like the devil - even with an injury. No point in chasing, the man was well away.
He turned back to the interior of the saloon, where the woman who'd been Kolya's prisoner was panting on the floor. "Thank you," she said gratefully as John assisted her up. "I don't know what we'd have done without your help, Mr...?"
"Sheppard. John Sheppard. Miss Cadman's cousin. You're welcome, ma'am." He noted the way her eyes looked over him from top to toe, measuring him in much the same way the belles back east had eyed him.
She seemed to find him satisfactory, because her smile became warm and slightly flirtatious. "Elizabeth, Mr. Sheppard. Miss Elizabeth Weir."
He smiled briefly, uncomfortable with the attention, and saw that Teyla was climbing slowly to her feet and turned to help her.
She tried to shake him off, her gaze going past him to Miss Weir. "Ronon and Kate?"
"I'm alive, but I think I killed a man," 'Kate' sounded a little shaky behind the bar, but her voice steadied as she said. "Check Ronon."
Miss Weir ran across the room towards an overturned table, nearly stumbling on her hem flounce again and collapsed to her knees behind it. "Oh, Lord. He's badly hurt but he's still breathing. Get the doctor."
"I'll go," Miss Teyla murmured, starting across the floor.
Then she paused, her mouth stretching in a grimace, her hand pressing into her side. John caught her arm, alarmed and annoyed by her attempts at independance. "Miss Emmagan's been hurt," he said firmly. "She's not going anywhere. Who's in the back rooms...?" He trailed off.
A woman had just stepped out of the back hallway, over the dead man sprawled by the door. She took one look at John and grimaced.
Aunt Ellen would have deplored the loose knot of hair with the flyaway tendrils, the simple dress of brown, the rifle cradled familiarly in her daughter's arms. And she would have been horrified to hear Laura Annabelle Cadman's first words upon seeing her cousin in Atlantis town, "Oh, hell."
"And a good day to you, too, cousin," John retorted. He thought she looked well - certainly happier than he'd ever seen her before. As Miss Teyla tried to move away, he slid an arm around her back and addressed his cousin, "I don't suppose you know of any way to persuade her to sit down."
Laura started forward, alarmed. "Is she injured? Teyla, for heaven's sake, sit! Or I'll get John to sit you on his lap and hold you there."
"Dr. Beckett is needed for Ronon," Teyla said.
Miss Weir's voice came across the room. "Are Katie and Rodney--?"
"Alive. Rodney distracted one of the men and got shot in the shoulder. He'll live."
She sounded extremely callous about this Rodney's injury. And while John gaped, she went, her brisk steps clattering across the floorboards of the porch before she was out into the street, no bonnet, no shawl, no company.
John nearly started after her, then thought better of it, and pushed Miss Emmagan towards a chair that he picked up from its side on the floor. "Ma'am, you're going to sit down in that chair, if I have to hold you across my lap. Now you can have the chair, or you can have the lap. Pick one."
She rolled her eyes, but took the chair. John was quite disappointed. The woman might not be a sweet armful, but she'd be an armful worth having. He put that thought away.
"I guess you're going to fight me about taking a look at that injury, too," he said.
"It is merely a scratch."
"It's bleeding," he said, resisting the urge to drag her hand away from her side. It looked like the bullet had nicked her side since she wasn't bleeding that hard, although she looked rather pale beneath her skin.
Miss Teyla kept her hand protectively over her injury. "I can wait for the doctor, Mr. Sheppard."
He wanted to grin at the repressive tones in her voice, such a contrast from the woman who'd removed her boots and stockings in the cellar. "You know, I've seen your ankles already," he reminded her softly.
Her eyes flew to his, startled and bridling. A moment later she seemed to realise he was teasing her and relaxed a little. "That was different," she said, and her tone was cool, although her cheeks had a rosy tint to them. Her eyes drifted beyond him, and John turned to see an blonde in pale blue crossing the room towards them.
He guessed that this was 'Kate' - her voice sounded about right, even if she looked far too composed for a woman who'd just killed a man by smashing a bottle over his head.
"Mr. Sheppard." She set a bottle and two glasses which she set on the nearby table. "Kate Heightmeyer. Have a drink; it's on the house. Teyla--"
"I will have it seen to," Teyla said, somewhat wearily. "When the doctor comes, and after he has seen to Ronon. How bad is it?"
Miss Heightmeyer looked pained. "Bad enough, I think."
John poured Teyla and himself a glass, then, while she took a sip of whiskey, he pulled her hand away from her side. "Don't be a fool." He splashed the alcohol on the palm of her glove. "You can put your hand back, now."
Her mouth twitched for a moment, but she did as she was bid, wincing. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," John said as he set the bottle back. Bootsteps grated on the stairs outside and the Scotsman hurried in, carrying a large black bag and with Laura a step behind him. The doctor glanced around and started for Teyla before Laura pushed him towards the upturned table.
With a glance at Miss Teyla to ensure she stayed put, John rose to his feet and crossed over to his cousin. "Laura..."
"Not now, John," was her immediate reaction. "I've got to help Dr. Beckett."
"I think we're fine here, love," the doctor said, with a glance up. "You've got other things to do."
"I'll deal with this, Laura," Miss Weir confirmed, dismissing Laura.
Laura scowled as she turned to John. "Well, since you're here, you can help us with the dead men in the kitchen. Rodney's not going to be any use since he's shot. Well, he's not much use most of the time, but he's particularly useless when injured."
John glanced at Miss Teyla, seeking insight into his cousin's diatribes against the mysterious Rodney.
"Rodney and Laura do not get along."
"I can see that," he said dryly. "All right. Let's get the men you shot."
"Oh, Teyla didn't shoot all of them," Laura said with a laugh as she led the way out the back, "Katie hit one of them with a frypan after he shot Rodney." She grinned at John as he stopped in the doorway, shocked. "Don't faint, John. Sometimes a woman just has to use what's to hand."
As he dragged the dead men out of the kitchen to the side alley where a barrow was waiting to take them to the morgue, John reflected that the Genii hadn't had a chance.
Two of the men had neat holes in their chests, witness to Miss Emmagan's shooting skills; the third had a crushed skull, care of Miss Katie Brown's frypan. When he dumped Miss Brown's victim on the barrow, a young tow-headed man was piling another dead Genii into the barrow - this one had a major contusion across his forehead, and dried blood all over his face.
John remembered the cracking sound in the saloon, the tinkle of glass and the thump of a body hitting the floor. "I'm guessing it's not a good idea to make these ladies angry."
The young man grinned briefly. "We try to avoid it, sir."
Certainly, Miss Katie Brown didn't look like the kind of woman who could kill with a frypan - all porcelain complexion, cornflower eyes, and strawberry blonde hair - but then, Miss Heightmeyer didn't look like a woman who usually used a bottle of 1842 French Port as a weapon, Miss Weir didn't look like a woman who'd go to her knees beside a bleeding man, and Miss Teyla Emmagan certainly didn't look like she could shoot two men in the chest.
No, the Genii certainly hadn't had any chance of taking back the Atlantis Saloon and Hotel at all.
After a rather tense couple of hours and some impromptu surgery, Dr. Beckett pronounced that Mr. Dex would probably survive, but that he needed rest and quiet. Mr. Rodney McKay - shot in the fleshy part of his arm - would also survive, although the complaints emanating from the gentleman in question suggested that he might have preferred death to the pain.
"Oh, he's going to be even more obnoxious than he usually is," Laura grumbled as Mr. McKay was coaxed upstairs by Miss Brown.
"Then it is fortunate that it is not your job to keep him calmed," said Miss Emmagan as she passed them on her way to the kitchen. Dr. Beckett had pronounced her fine, but advised against any strenuous activity for the next few days.
John noted that Laura saw the doctor out, and spend rather longer on the porch talking to him than he felt was warranted. But when he got to his feet to go out and demand what was taking Laura so long, Teyla slid another glass of whiskey in front of him with a warning look from dark eyes.
"I would not advise it."
Given his stubborn cousin, John thought it wise to take Teyla's advice. Still, when Laura returned with a high, excited flush on her cheeks, he knew he'd be watching the doc like a hawk when they met in future.
And they would be meeting in future.
Later that evening, with his reshod 'Jumper in the sheriff's stables, the secret passageway again covered up, and the saloon set to rights, John sat by the bar drinking and reflecting on his coming to Atlantis.
The blood had been scrubbed from the floor, the broken glass swept up and the bar rearranged, tables and chairs set back in their places, and the saloon was full of men and women mixing and mingling in cheerful abandon and high spirits. And if the company was rowdy, they seemed to be avoiding rough.
John wondered how much of it was due to the four women who mixed and mingled among the men and women; adding elegance and class to the establishment with their presence, even as they kept the spirits high - both in tone and in glass.
He wondered how much of it was due to the woman who took a tray and moved out through the saloon doors into the candlelit shadows of the porch where the negroes took her drinks and her sallies with smiling cheer.
You planning to ride Miss Laura to a loose shoe?
He hadn't come out west just to find Laura - although that had been a convenient excuse for his relatives. Like Laura, John just wanted somewhere out beneath the open sky, without his mother encouraging him to marry a nice girl, without his father expecting him to get involved with the family business.
Back east, John had been ridden to a loose shoe himself, and the only way to fix it had been to get out and away.
Laura sent Miss Heightmeyer off to the gamblers' corner, resting her hands on the counter beside John. He glanced at them, noting that if they weren't as smooth and refined as they'd been in Baltimore, she still kept good care of them. Maybe not such a fine lady anymore, but as much of a lady as a woman could be in a harsh, hard land.
"Are you content here, cousin?"
Her response was prompt. "More than I was in Baltimore."
There was a shout over in the gamblers' corner as someone won a round of money, turning heads. A moment later, the saloon doors swung open to allow Miss Emmagan to sail in, her skirts swinging around her, turning John's head.
She came up to the counter, an easy smile on her lips as she put the empty glasses back on the counter.
"They're all served outside?" Laura asked, taking them down and stashing them away.
"Served and happy. And getting more so." Her eyes gleamed with laughter as she turned to John. "Are you enjoying being the toast of the town, Mr. Sheppard?"
"I always enjoy being the toast of the town."
Laura smirked. "Probably because it happens so rarely."
Her mouth had a wicked tilt to it. "All the more reason to savour it," she said, glancing around the room. "Although I believe that you have earned it."
"I had help," he said, and tilted his whiskey glass in toast to her.
She might have flushed a little - it was hard to tell in the candlelight, but tossed her head and looked away. "I believe I will see if Katie needs help in the kitchen."
John watched wove her way through the tangle of chairs and tables, with only the slightest stiffness as she turned to make her way past a crowded table. And whatever comment she made to the men drinking at the table gained her a bevy of grins and an admiring looks or two.
"You know, John, I'm not the only one who came here to escape a life I didn't want," Laura said after a moment.
"Miss Emmagan?"
"Her people are Louisiana Creole - gens de coleur, they call it down there. They had a respectable marriage set out for her, and she decided she wanted adventure instead."
And had gotten a saloon and a Genii shoot-out for her pains.
"Long way to come for adventure."
"Well, we've all come a long way to get here," Laura said, musingly, "Elizabeth and Kate, too. Maybe that's why this place works - because we know how far we've come and we're going to fight rather than let anyone take it away from us." There was a militant note in her voice that went further than the stubbornness John had always associated with his younger cousin. "It's not an easy life, John, but it's my life. And I'm not going back."
The last was said flat-out truculently, her eyes hard as she stared at him.
John sucked on his cheroot - offered to him by one of the gamblers now dicing away in the far corner - and glanced around the room, before he realised his gaze had drifted to the door leading out to the kitchen. He dragged it back to look at his cousin. "You know, I didn't come all the way out here to drag you back east."
"Good," she said firmly. "Because I wouldn't go back. And you can tell mama when you see her."
"Actually, you should tell her yourself," he said, and grinned as she fixed him with a ferocious glare. "Write her a letter and send it back by post."
Laura held up a hand to pause the conversation as she poured another glass of something for one of the men who came up to the counter. Then she served a couple more customers, and set up a tray for Miss Weir to take out to one of the tables, while he extracted himself from a one-sided discussion of politics with a man whose clothing reeked of a little too much beer.
"You're not going back east?"
He shrugged and glanced around the room as she was called away to serve another customer. "I'm thinking about staying," he said as Miss Emmagan emerged from the back room carrying a plate of food, which she set in front of John with a flourish. It contained several slices from what appeared to be a pot roast, surrounded by root vegetables and smothered in liquid gravy. A hunk of bread perched on the side of the plate.
"Compliments of Miss Brown, who only just realised that you have not yet been fed after all you have done today."
John inhaled deeply and exhaled in a sigh. It had been weeks since he'd had much more than the bare basics for a meal. Stale bread and beef jerky weren't the most appetising of companions between towns, and this looked and smelled - and tasted - like a feast. "Ma'am, for this, I'd let Miss Brown hit me with a frypan anytime."
"I shall let her know." The liquid dark eyes tilted at their corners as she moved away, then paused and turned back to him. "I did not thank you for your assistance today, Mr. Sheppard."
He looked down at his plate, away from her, embarrassed. Half the town had come up to him to thank him. His glass hadn't been empty all evening, and he'd had offers of everything from employment to a willing woman in his bed. "You know, I didn't do that much. Killed one man, injured another..."
"Rescued Miss Weir."
"Well, that was only after this lady I met dragged me off the street..."
When he glanced up, she was staring at him with an expression that might have been amused and might have been puzzled. A wisp of hair curled against her cheek and she brushed another wisp from her forehead. "I was...precipitate," she admitted.
"You did well." Better than some men would have done. "You'd have found a way without me if I hadn't been there."
"I am relieved it was not necessary. And I am grateful for what you did. We all are." She indicated the plate before him. "If that was not already clear."
John regarded the roast. "Yeah, I think it's clear enough."
"Well, then." She turned away again, and John fought for something to say.
"Miss Emmagan?"
"Mr. Sheppard?"
"Thanks." It was important for him to say the word, even if he didn't quite know what he was thanking her for.
Her gaze was steady on him, an anchor and a challenge; then her lips twitched in withheld laughter. "You are a strange one, Mr. Sheppard."
And with that, she went to pour more drinks, taking over from Laura, who'd drifted away again, and pushing her towards John.
He let his eyes linger on the slim, capable figure in the creamy poplin who worked at the other end of the bar - a woman who would commandeer a hostile stranger for assistance, who would walk barefoot into a gunfight, who would risk her life to save a friend, and who hadn't let the colour of her skin define who she had to be.
He could admire a woman like that - could admire the women who'd carved out a place for themselves when conventional society confined them.
"So," Laura asked, interrupting his thoughts, "will you be staying in Atlantis?"
His cousin had found her own kind of freedom here - so had the women who worked the Atlantis Saloon with her. Maybe John could, too.
And, after all, wasn't that what the west was for?
John grinned at Laura, tilting his glass towards her, even as his eyes slid towards Miss Emmagan. "You know, I think I will."
- fin -
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Probably the most interesting and time-consuming part of writing this was learning about the history of the peoples of colour in the US during and after the Civil War. My reading encompassed the Louisiana Creoles and gens du coleur as well as historical black people in the west, the concept of 'passing', and the plaçage marriage system. It was an eye-opening and fascinating look at US society during a period of time that is often quite 'white-washed' in film and fiction.
SUMMARY: When John Sheppard rides into Atlantis town looking for his cousin Laura Cadman, he finds himself involved in an old grudge: the Genii are back in town.
CATEGORY: crackerrific AU, four queens, action
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: Not my characters, making no money from them.
NOTES: An AU that I 'finished' about three-four months ago, but which needed some polishing and putting together. A birthday gift for
greenconverses, since sjhw_tolerance doesn't read AUs (and she's already got a penguin, anyway)! Enjoy!His Own Kind Of Freedom
John rode into Atlantis town just after midday, the hot sun at his back as he entered the city limits.
Beneath the awnings and roofs of the city's buildings, men and women turned to watch him ride in, their eyes taking in the dusty silver of his spurs, the hard-worn leather of his saddle. He looked back at them, meeting their gazes unflinchingly, and tipping his hat at the ladies with a faint, polite smile.
For the bustling metropolis Atlantis was rumoured to be, it seemed suspiciously quiet for the midafternoon. Yes, it was hot, but John had ridden through a dozen towns before Atlantis while on his search, many of them smaller than this city, and he'd never yet seen a town so deathly quiet at this time of day.
There was a tension in the air, like two men facing each other, weapons drawn and cocked, waiting for a reason to shoot.
It just lacked the men in the street, waiting to shoot.
John grimaced to himself but kept on riding up the long, empty street, his faithful 'Jumper stepping evenly along beneath him. "Nearly there, girl," he reassured her. "We'll get you shod and ready to ride real soon."
The smithy was near the centre of town, set along one of the six streets that radiated out from the somewhat dusty public gardens that sat roundly in the intersection of those six main streets. John caught a glimpse of a stone fountain between the hardy trees in their steel fences.
A town with money.
As John drew up alongside the smithy, a scent of burned leather and hot metal swirled out into the street, and he caught his breath at the pungency.
Within the smithy, men moved - the smith, bluff and red with the heat of his trade, a negro at the bellows, his skin betraying a heritage not entirely black, and several men waiting in and around the shop. They all shifted, uncomfortable as John swung down from 'Jumper and the edge of his long coat rode up to show the guns that rode on his hips.
John paid them no mind. He had business to transact.
"Good afternoon," the smith rumbled from where he was working short lengths of metal into nails.
"'Afternoon," John said, choosing to skip the niceties. "My horse threw a shoe some three miles out of town. How long before you can see to her?"
The smith glanced up, took in man and horse, saddlery and weaponry in a single look, then stared at the swift-shuffling horse before returning to his work. "In a rush to get out of town?"
"No. But I have business in town."
Beside the door, the men murmured, and one or two drifted away. John kept them in the corner of his eye, waiting to see if they were going to draw on him. There was an edgy tension to this town; sharp as a blade or a prickle-burr. He didn't like it.
"Business?"
"Business." That was all he was going to say on the matter - there wasn't anything else he felt it necessary to disclose.
"Five minutes to see her," said the smith, working another sliver of metal into a nail with expert blows. "Half hour to have her done, an hour if she's troublesome."
"She doesn't give trouble," John said. As though to prove him wrong, 'Jumper sidestepped, restless. He soothed her with a hand and a couple of soft clicks. She was cranky about being ridden on a thrown shoe, but there'd been no help for it. Smiths didn't grow by the wayside in these parts. Or back home, come to think on it.
"If you say so. Give me a minute to finish these and I'll see her." The smith tossed a nail into the cooling trough; the nail gave a brief hiss as it hit the water, swiftly extinguished. Hammer and tongs were laid down on the bench and the smith wiped his hands on his apron and indicated the Colt Peacemakers John wore as well as the rifle holstered on 'Jumper's saddle. "You know how to use those there guns?"
"Yes."
"I suggest you don't. We don't take kindly to having gunfights in town."
"I don't take well to being shot at," John replied evenly. "As long as no-one feels the need to shoot me, I won't shoot anyone. Your sheriff needn't worry about that."
At the bellows, the negro stopped pumping and took out the bar he'd been heating in the forge with tongs, taking it over to the secondary anvil and beginning to work it into shape. Each blow of the hammer struck like a bell as the smith snorted. "Our sheriff won't be worrying about much these days. He's gone to where worry don't touch him." Then, as though he felt he'd said too much, he huffed and asked, "Business in Atlantis town, you said?"
John let the observation about the sheriff pass and answered the question. "I'm looking for a woman."
Someone guffawed and the smith lifted a thick, peppery brow. "Women are your business?"
"Plenty of them in town!" Raucous laughter greeted this sally by a bushy-bearded man whose skin was like leather.
John figured he'd walked into that one. "I'm looking for a specific one. Blonde, dark eyes. A lady." John hoped she was still a lady. Out here, far from the cities and civilised society, a woman could fall a long way. "Would go by the name Laura Cadman."
He saw the assistant stiffen slightly, although there was no change in the rhythm of the bell-like tones; in the corner of his eye, men shifted and moved, restless.
Shrewd blue eyes studied him as the smith hung up his tongs and hammer with a crafter's care. "Husband?"
"No." John didn't vouch more.
The smith seemed content with this for the moment, and came out from behind his anvil to see to John's mare. "Well, she's a right beauty," he said, running a hand across her withers and stood aside to lift the unshod foot. "Shame to have ridden her to a loose shoe." He glanced up at John. "You planning to ride Miss Laura to a loose shoe, also?"
"Not if I can help it," John said, moving a little so the smith could get to the leg more easily.
The smith grunted and turned to his assistant. "Bates, you finished with the bar?"
"Just done, Mr. Edwards."
"Then get the gentleman's horse ready and I'll start on the forge."
"Yes, sir."
Harry Edwards turned to John. "I'll have her back to you in half an hour. If you're looking for somewhere to wet your whistle in the meantime, the Atlantis Hotel and Saloon is across the way." He indicated across the town square towards a large, fine-fronted building where a group of mounts were tied up out the front of the hotel.
John frowned as the assistant took the reins from him. Right now, he was less interested in a drink and more interested in the whereabouts of his cousin, and it didn't look like the smith wasn't minded to give out her whereabouts. Which made him wonder why.
Movement out in the street caught his eye. A woman in neat brown calico walked briskly past the smithy, a large, rectangular package tucked firmly beneath her arm. John caught a glimpse of the face beneath the elegant straw hat with its dark blue ribbon and was startled by the darkness of the skin beneath, the impression of strong bones.
That was all he glimpsed. She passed the smithy with never a look to right or left; a small, trim body stepping along in small, trim boots whose toes peeped out from beneath the hem of her dress.
"You're looking for Laura Cadman?" The murmur came soft from the blacksmith's assistant, swift words with a bite. The man gave a quick, wary glance at his master, before he jerked his head at the passing woman. "You'll want to ask madam there."
Madam. John's eye turned measuring as the slim figure encountered a gentleman who tipped his hat to her in a familiar and friendly way. He noted the way two other women walking down the street narrowed their eyes and tilted their noses up, and the set of his mouth turned grim.
He turned back to the blacksmith who was watching him watch the woman. "An hour, you said?"
"An hour," the smith confirmed, carefully neutral. "But if I were you, I'd tread careful, son. The lady's small, but she's got bite."
John smiled, somewhat grimly. "So do I."
With a quick pat of his 'Jumper, John strode across the street at an easy pace. The lady was just finishing up her conversation with the gentleman, her laugh bubbled out in the dusty afternoon, merry as the fountain that burbled its watery song in the gardens at the centre of the town.
He caught the edge of their conversation.
"I'm sure that Laura will be more than happy to see you this evening, Doctor."
The easy answer had a Scottish brogue attached. "I look forward to it, ma'am."
John's eyes narrowed, but he smiled briefly and harmlessly as the gentleman passed him. He made sure he got a good look at the face, though, before he passed on towards the woman.
"Excuse me, ma'am."
She turned, and John blinked. Skin the colour of milk coffee stretched fiercely over bones too strong for conventional prettiness, and her eyes were the colour of rich earth and unstintingly direct. Strangely, what would have been deplorable in a white woman - the boldness of features and gaze - somehow suited the mixed blood that shone through in unique, wild beauty.
"May I help you, sir?"
This close, John understood the smith's warning - the cool inquiry of her voice, with its careful, polite accents walloped him in the gut like a physical blow.
"I'm looking for a Miss Cadman," John said, noting the reserve that drew over her at the mention of Laura's name.
His pause lifted one brow as she surveyed him, crown to toe, and took her time answering. "And you would be an acquaintance of Miss Cadman's, Mr...?"
"A relative," he said.
Her eyes cooled further, growing distant as she looked out across the empty gardens of the town centre and adjusted her grip on her package. "Somehow, I doubt that Miss Cadman cares to see any of her relatives right now."
"That's too bad for her," John replied, just as cool. "Because she's going to see me."
"You seem certain of that."
"That would be because I am, ma'am." Given the woman's cool attitude towards him, John figured drastic measures were to be taken. In a single, swift move, he slipped the package out from under the woman's arm, tucking it under his own. "Mind if I carry that, miss?"
She made a grab for it, but couldn't quite get a grip on it before John had it in his possession. His smile was not quite nice, but then, he'd been tracking Laura down for the better part of the last six months, and he wasn't about to be thwarted by this woman, no matter how self-possessed she might be.
"Now, we can go quietly along, ma'am, or we can cause a scene." He met her baleful gaze with his most charming expression. "I'm sure a lady like you doesn't want a scene."
If the women back east had softened to his smile, none of the women had been like this one - sable and honey behind gunsteel and leather. The dark eyes studied him, reflected sunlight catching the heavy coil of dark hair beneath her bonnet, and adding a measuring glitter to her eyes.
He offered her his arm - sugar and flies. "Shall we, ma'am?"
She hesitated a moment before taking it, snugging her hand neatly in the crook of his elbow. She'd been offered the arm of a gentleman before, and her airs were instinctively genteel. If not for the colour of her skin and the comment by the smith's assistant, John would have assumed she was a lady.
Still, no lady of John's former acquaintance would have spoken with quite such acerbity as she noted, "If you are this high-handed with Miss Cadman, it can be no wonder she has no wish to see her relatives."
John's mouth twitched, holding back a smile. Bite, indeed! "You know, it might surprise you to discover that I'm the least high-handed of Miss Cadman's relatives."
"Surprise would be an understatement," she said dryly, "particularly since you have my parcel and have not even given me the courtesy of your name."
"John Sheppard, at your service, ma'am."
"I sincerely doubt that," she murmured as they circled the water fountain that bubbled gently away, but at least she gave her name. "Teyla Emmagan."
"Unusual name." Fitting for an unusual woman.
The gaze she turned on him was steady, "It is."
"So," he said as they approached the street, "how about we stop fencing with words and you take me to Laura?"
She stopped at the edge of the park, but not, as might have been expected, to look at John. He followed the line of her gaze to the Atlantis Saloon and Hotel and frowned. "Miss Emmagan?"
"Mr. Sheppard," she said, surveying the street, "Would you be so kind as to escort me to the sheriff's office?"
John looked at her, sharply. Her voice was carefully nonchalant, but the press of her fingers in his arm suggested that there was more going on. "What is it?"
"The Genii gang have returned to the Atlantis saloon," she said. "Don't look at the saloon!"
"You're going to explain all this of course?"
"On the way to the sheriff's office."
"Which is...?"
She indicated the direction with one slim finger in the crook of his arm. "That way."
They started off, striving to appear casual as a couple on a midday stroll. Not an easy thing when Miss Emmagan was tense as a fiddle's strings. "Try to relax," John said as they passed a couple who eyed him narrowly before the woman hustled the man away, her mouth set in prim lines.
Miss Emmagan didn't pay them any attention. "Tell me, Mr. Sheppard, how relaxed you are when I tell you that Laura Cadman is one of six people whom I left in the Atlantis saloon to go to the postmaster's office?"
John nearly stopped dead in the street as fear assailed him. "You could have told me this before!" He hissed in an undertone.
"I could," she agreed as she steered them towards a building halfway down the street which had the familiar five-point star of the sheriff's badge carved into the sign. John made for the porch of the office, only to be steered into the shadowed alleyway that ran along what he presumed were the lock-up cells - a solid wall, reinforced with hard iron girders and thick wooden posts.
A glimpse of the dusty office window reminded him of what the smith had said. "Wait a minute, does this town even have a sheriff?"
"Sheriff Sumner was shot last week during a cattle dispute," she said. "But we are not here to see the Sheriff." Her head jerked up as gunfire sounded out in the street and there was a woman's scream. John's hand jerked towards his gun, but her hand pulled at his arm. "Hurry!"
"Where are we going?"
"There is a passageway that runs from the sheriff's stables to the saloon cellar," she said, so low that he could barely hear her beneath the shouts and cries coming from the street behind them. More gunfire sounded, the noisy crack of bullets being fired in the open, and she glanced back with a slight frown, before pulling out a ring of keys from her pocket and opening the side door to the stable. "The Genii have at least six hostages within the saloon."
"Including my cousin." They were in the stables, the reek of horse clinging to the enclosed space, dark after the brightness of the outside.
"Including Laura." Miss Emmagan pointed to a lamp hanging by the door. "Please light the lamp."
John began obeying her imperious tone without thought, then caught himself. But she'd already started off into the back of the stables and was paying him no mind. John felt a momentary pique at her competence, before shrugging ruefully and doing as she'd commanded. After a moment, her voice drifted out of the darkness, a disembodied voice continuing the explanation she'd given before.
"The Genii gang owned the Atlantis Saloon before Sheriff Sumner had them arrested for questionable business practices. The saloon was bought by others and opened up again."
"You?" The lamp was tricky to light, the wick refusing to take.
"Among several others."
"Laura?" It wouldn't surprise him. His cousin had always wanted more than the life of a Baltimore socialite. In a way, her escape out west had come as a relief to John - a dozen hare-brained schemes had been dismissed for one that was merely crazy - or not, given that his cousin was doing well enough in Atlantis town.
There was a scrape of boots on wood, a rustle of straw, then the creak and thump of a wooden trapdoor being opened. "Laura is one of the owners."
John hissed to himself as the match burned nearly down to his fingers and he almost dropped it on the floor, managing to blow it out before he caused a fire in the stables. "So the Genii have a grudge against you guys for taking it over?"
"Among other things." She came back, and John saw that she'd removed her bonnet. The light creeping in around the edges of the door shone gold-brown off the sleek black knot of her hair as she knelt down beside the box he'd taken from her and began ripping off the wrapping. "Their last visit to town saw them thrown out by the Sheriff and his officers."
"And now the Sheriff's dead," John concluded. "Wonderful. What are you doing?"
Miss Emmagan lifted the lid on the box, angling it so John could see the gunsmith's mark: Smith and Wesson. In the straw packaging sat a pair of snub-nosed revolvers. "Arming myself," she said.
John frowned. "Ma'am, I've got weapons."
"And will you give one of them over to me for my use?"
She picked out one of the two revolvers and began loading it with the ammunition she took out of a small box that had been secreted in a hidden pocket of her dress.
John caught his mouth curving as she snapped the gun casing closed. It was his misfortune that Miss Emmagan looked up and caught his expression. A paler woman might have flushed, but her eyes only narrowed briefly as she rose to her feet, ignoring the hand he offered her. "I will lead the way."
Arguing would only take up time they didn't have. But John did voice one question that came to him, "How do you know the Genii don't know about this passage?"
"We only rediscovered the passage when we cleaned out the cellars after taking over the hotel."
"Not conclusive."
She rested the lamp on the floor, and her mouth twitched as she began descending the ladder in the hole. "That is what Rodney would say."
"Rodney?"
"Yes." She didn't elaborate. "And the Genii have not used this passage to enter the saloon."
John still wasn't comfortable about entering the narrow, cramped tunnel. But that was because of the oppressive sense of being enclosed by the earth as they eased down the tiny passageway towards the hotel cellar.
As they left the stables behind them, John found his breath growing shorter, and forced himself to breathe normally. He'd faced men in battle and in bars, killed more than his fair share of lawless men, picked his way along a copse of trees mere yards from the sentries of a Confederate camp, and done most of it without breaking a sweat.
The blood-heat of a gunfight didn't bother him; this cold silence was unnerving.
He kept his eye on the skirts of the woman who made her way along the passage - his only company in this confining journey. John deliberately distracted himself with the faint herbal scent of her hair, a briefly-smelled imprint in the air as she moved ahead of him, the way the lamplight limned wisps of dark hair into golden tendrils, the rustle of her dress and petticoats against the dirt walls...
He wondered what his hoydenish cousin had thought upon meeting Teyla Emmagan.
He wondered whether Laura was injured or hurt, or just angry at being ambushed by the Genii gang - probably angry, knowing Laura.
He wondered what he was doing, following a coloured woman who spoke and acted like lady into a situation that might have been better managed by a man with the experience of dangerous situations.
He nearly fell out of passageway into the cellar, and scraped his knuckles on the dirt trying to rebalance himself.
She glanced back at him, arching one brow, and the glow of the light gave a mischievous tint to her amusement. John felt his neck flush angrily.
"Right," he muttered, rubbing his scratched knuckles against his trousers and glancing around the cellar. Barrels and boxes rose high into the air, stacked as neatly as a merchant's storeroom, and on a far benchtop was what looked like the setup of a distillery. The light gleamed off glass tubing as, overhead, voices raised in argument and shrill protest, and footsteps rapped out across the floor. Gunfire could be heard, distant and floating - the firing retorts lost in open air.
John made for the stairs leading out of the cellar, drawing his weapon as he did so. Then he realised that she was sitting down and unlacing her boots. "What are you--?"
"I will be able to move more quietly in bare feet," she said, her voice no louder than his had been. "Our presence will be revealed if we are tramping around."
"Our presence will be revealed the instant we start shooting!" John hissed, averting his gaze from her newly-revealed ankles. Not that he minded a well-turned pair of ankles, which Miss Emmagan certainly had, but it wasn't decent. "And with the noise they're making up there, they won't notice an extra pair of feet!"
"Perhaps. I would prefer not to risk it." She paused a moment and her cheeks might have shown a pink tint beneath the café au lait of her skin. "Please turn around."
John smiled and did as she requested, listening to the light slither of silk. He let himself wonder if her legs were as trim as the rest of her, then murmured, "You're lucky I'm a gentleman."
"Fortunate, indeed," she murmured, wry irony in her voice. "The stairs come out opposite a door to the kitchen. The saloon is down the corridor, opposite another door that leads to the lounge and gaming rooms and out the back to the kitchen yard."
"I guess I'm taking the saloon, then?"
Her mouth tilted again, a twist of mischief beneath glittering dark eyes as she passed him on her bare, silent feet. "I imagine a man like you has plenty of experience of saloons, Mr. Sheppard."
He shot her a look that made her grin. "All right then," he said pointedly, following her up the stairs and realising that she'd made a very tactical decision in removing her shoes. He could move just as quietly, but only by going much slower. "I'll take the saloon."
They were nearly at the top of the stairs when John recalled something he hadn't asked about before.
Perhaps it was over-bold of him to set his lips to her ear, but in all reasonableness, it was the quietest way to speak to her. The fact that he got a good whiff of a light jasmine scent over a woman's warm skin was simply a bonus.
"Other than Laura, who in there are good guys?"
He felt her body tense a little, then relax. She turned her head towards him, neither leaning in, nor drawing away. "Two men, four women. But Rodney is no hand with a gun. Ronon..." She hesitated. "Ronon is good with a gun but he is also short of temper. He is...different. You will not mistake him."
The brush of her breath against his cheek tensed his belly, but the adrenaline that ran in his veins was for battle rather than bed - right now, anyway. John focused on what she'd just relayed to him.
"And the women? Other than Laura?"
"If there is a woman with them, it will be Sora - smaller than I and red-haired. But it is unlikely."
John nodded, then stared at the crack of light as she pushed the door slowly and smoothly open, without a creak to betray them.
The corridor beyond was empty, but they couldn't rely on it staying that way. The sharp retort of gunfire sounded from the open doorway in the corridor ahead. From the echo, John judged that someone was firing on people outside. He figured that as long as that meant no-one was firing on him inside, it was okay.
With a swift swirl of skirts, Miss Teyla stole down the corridor and into the next.
John shook his head, then crept quietly to the open doorway to the saloon. Between the occasional spats of gunfire, a woman was speaking to someone else, her voice cool and slightly sharp.
"...deeded to me and my women legally by the sheriff..."
"Legally deeded?" The sneer was plain in the rough rasp of the man's voice. "I very much doubt that, Miss Weir. I'm sure that Sheriff Sumner felt he'd been more than adequately paid--"
"You mistake the situation, Kolya."
"Do I?"
"The hotel wasn't his to give," she said, primly outraged. "My girls and I paid the township of Atlantis for this property, the licensing--"
"My property," said Kolya. Amusement seeped into his voice, "Just think of this as a down payment on the rent you owe me."
"You won't get away with this."
"Miss Weir, I ask you, who is there to stop me?"
The answer to his laughing question came in the sound of gunfire from the kitchen. John counted three shots, four. No screams, though, although someone yelled something and there was a sudden clatter of pots and pans.
"Idos." It was an order, not just a name. John's eyes narrowed as he took a step backwards and flattened himself against the wall. Kolya sounded like a man accustomed to command; the alacrity with which Idos moved to do his bidding suggested there was respect there - fear at the least.
John levelled his gun at chest height, and fired as the man stepped into the corridor.
The thunk of the bullet was a soft echo behind the loud retort of the gun. Idos stumbled back into the room, then dropped like a stone. There was a gasp, a grunt, a cracking sound with the tinkle of glass behind it, and the rattling thump of a body hitting the floor.
Then silence.
"I've got a gun to her head," Kolya said, steely cold. "I wouldn't advise any heroics."
"I'm not in this for heroics," John retorted, glancing quickly back in the direction where Teyla had vanished as more shots sounded. "And I'm not the law."
"So who are you?"
"John Sheppard," he said. "Just passing through Atlantis."
"Pity you stopped at all, then," Kolya said.
"Pity for you, maybe. I'm sure Miss Weir disagrees."
There was the shuffling sound of steps, then someone cried, "He's taking Elizabeth!" It was a woman's voice, higher and lighter than Miss Weir's. There was another shot from a gun, the sound of glass shattering, and a woman's yelp.
"You won't get out of here alive, you know," John said, gritting his teeth. The female yelp had sounded surprised, but not in any particular pain.
"I know nothing of the sort," said Kolya, his tone of voice nearly conversational over the slow tread of a man retreating with the graceless scramble of someone being dragged backwards as accompaniment. "Especially not since I have a hostage."
The noise Miss Weir made was less of a whimper and more of a muffled squeak.
Given any other option, John would have taken it rather than go blind into such a situation. But he had a feeling that if he waited any longer--
Behind John, there was a swish of skirts, and he turned to see Miss Teyla coming up softly behind him. "The kitchens and back rooms are accounted for," she murmured. "Three men." Her fingers pushed back stray wisps of hair that had escaped from from the knot at her nape and one curled forward again, refusing to stay put. She didn't seem harmed, her eyes bright and her movements unhindered. "What is happening? Elizabeth? Ronon? Kate?"
John jerked his head at the wall. "Kolya's got Miss Weir - he's using her to escape. I guess Kate's in there - there's another woman in there. Haven't heard from anyone else."
She nodded, adjusting her grip on her gun. "I am going in. I know the room," she said when he began to protest, "and I will draw his fire. You must deal with him - I have no bullets left."
"Wait, ma'am..." John stretched out an arm to block her. It went against the grain to let a lady risk herself, but the flashing look she gave him suggested he wouldn't be able to restrain her without a struggle, and she wasn't much like any lady he'd previously encountered. "Be careful."
Her mouth quirked but a moment later, she swung around the edge of the room. "Kolya!"
John heard the shots thunk into the other side of the wall against which he pressed himself, vibrating the plaster. The sound heartened him - at least she hadn't been hit - and he gritted his teeth as they moved along the wall, away from the door, and he plunged in.
His impressions of the room were brief. Cool dark rafters overhead, polished floorboards below, the brightness of the midday light through the lace curtains, and the outline of the man against the swinging saloon doors, the dark-haired woman struggling in his grasp.
One shot. Make it count.
John's Colt was cool in his hands, and Kolya's left side was wide open.
John aimed for the shoulder, lining up the shot to miss the woman Kolya held prisoner.
The shot took Kolya in the left shoulder, swinging him around. He stumbled back and the woman struggled forward. She tripped on the flounce of her dress and fell gracelessly to her knees. As John strode forward, intending to help her up, a spray of bullets made the saloon doors dance to Kolya's exit, and John flung himself to the side.
Outside, there was a clatter of boot-heels on the wooden porch, several shots echoed broadly beneath an open sky, and the whinny and clatter of a horse sharply spurred.
John scrambled to his feet and pushed through the swinging door. Kolya was already up and on the ride like a Pony Express rider with Indians on his tail. Blood stained his shoulder, but the man had gumption and could ride like the devil - even with an injury. No point in chasing, the man was well away.
He turned back to the interior of the saloon, where the woman who'd been Kolya's prisoner was panting on the floor. "Thank you," she said gratefully as John assisted her up. "I don't know what we'd have done without your help, Mr...?"
"Sheppard. John Sheppard. Miss Cadman's cousin. You're welcome, ma'am." He noted the way her eyes looked over him from top to toe, measuring him in much the same way the belles back east had eyed him.
She seemed to find him satisfactory, because her smile became warm and slightly flirtatious. "Elizabeth, Mr. Sheppard. Miss Elizabeth Weir."
He smiled briefly, uncomfortable with the attention, and saw that Teyla was climbing slowly to her feet and turned to help her.
She tried to shake him off, her gaze going past him to Miss Weir. "Ronon and Kate?"
"I'm alive, but I think I killed a man," 'Kate' sounded a little shaky behind the bar, but her voice steadied as she said. "Check Ronon."
Miss Weir ran across the room towards an overturned table, nearly stumbling on her hem flounce again and collapsed to her knees behind it. "Oh, Lord. He's badly hurt but he's still breathing. Get the doctor."
"I'll go," Miss Teyla murmured, starting across the floor.
Then she paused, her mouth stretching in a grimace, her hand pressing into her side. John caught her arm, alarmed and annoyed by her attempts at independance. "Miss Emmagan's been hurt," he said firmly. "She's not going anywhere. Who's in the back rooms...?" He trailed off.
A woman had just stepped out of the back hallway, over the dead man sprawled by the door. She took one look at John and grimaced.
Aunt Ellen would have deplored the loose knot of hair with the flyaway tendrils, the simple dress of brown, the rifle cradled familiarly in her daughter's arms. And she would have been horrified to hear Laura Annabelle Cadman's first words upon seeing her cousin in Atlantis town, "Oh, hell."
"And a good day to you, too, cousin," John retorted. He thought she looked well - certainly happier than he'd ever seen her before. As Miss Teyla tried to move away, he slid an arm around her back and addressed his cousin, "I don't suppose you know of any way to persuade her to sit down."
Laura started forward, alarmed. "Is she injured? Teyla, for heaven's sake, sit! Or I'll get John to sit you on his lap and hold you there."
"Dr. Beckett is needed for Ronon," Teyla said.
Miss Weir's voice came across the room. "Are Katie and Rodney--?"
"Alive. Rodney distracted one of the men and got shot in the shoulder. He'll live."
She sounded extremely callous about this Rodney's injury. And while John gaped, she went, her brisk steps clattering across the floorboards of the porch before she was out into the street, no bonnet, no shawl, no company.
John nearly started after her, then thought better of it, and pushed Miss Emmagan towards a chair that he picked up from its side on the floor. "Ma'am, you're going to sit down in that chair, if I have to hold you across my lap. Now you can have the chair, or you can have the lap. Pick one."
She rolled her eyes, but took the chair. John was quite disappointed. The woman might not be a sweet armful, but she'd be an armful worth having. He put that thought away.
"I guess you're going to fight me about taking a look at that injury, too," he said.
"It is merely a scratch."
"It's bleeding," he said, resisting the urge to drag her hand away from her side. It looked like the bullet had nicked her side since she wasn't bleeding that hard, although she looked rather pale beneath her skin.
Miss Teyla kept her hand protectively over her injury. "I can wait for the doctor, Mr. Sheppard."
He wanted to grin at the repressive tones in her voice, such a contrast from the woman who'd removed her boots and stockings in the cellar. "You know, I've seen your ankles already," he reminded her softly.
Her eyes flew to his, startled and bridling. A moment later she seemed to realise he was teasing her and relaxed a little. "That was different," she said, and her tone was cool, although her cheeks had a rosy tint to them. Her eyes drifted beyond him, and John turned to see an blonde in pale blue crossing the room towards them.
He guessed that this was 'Kate' - her voice sounded about right, even if she looked far too composed for a woman who'd just killed a man by smashing a bottle over his head.
"Mr. Sheppard." She set a bottle and two glasses which she set on the nearby table. "Kate Heightmeyer. Have a drink; it's on the house. Teyla--"
"I will have it seen to," Teyla said, somewhat wearily. "When the doctor comes, and after he has seen to Ronon. How bad is it?"
Miss Heightmeyer looked pained. "Bad enough, I think."
John poured Teyla and himself a glass, then, while she took a sip of whiskey, he pulled her hand away from her side. "Don't be a fool." He splashed the alcohol on the palm of her glove. "You can put your hand back, now."
Her mouth twitched for a moment, but she did as she was bid, wincing. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," John said as he set the bottle back. Bootsteps grated on the stairs outside and the Scotsman hurried in, carrying a large black bag and with Laura a step behind him. The doctor glanced around and started for Teyla before Laura pushed him towards the upturned table.
With a glance at Miss Teyla to ensure she stayed put, John rose to his feet and crossed over to his cousin. "Laura..."
"Not now, John," was her immediate reaction. "I've got to help Dr. Beckett."
"I think we're fine here, love," the doctor said, with a glance up. "You've got other things to do."
"I'll deal with this, Laura," Miss Weir confirmed, dismissing Laura.
Laura scowled as she turned to John. "Well, since you're here, you can help us with the dead men in the kitchen. Rodney's not going to be any use since he's shot. Well, he's not much use most of the time, but he's particularly useless when injured."
John glanced at Miss Teyla, seeking insight into his cousin's diatribes against the mysterious Rodney.
"Rodney and Laura do not get along."
"I can see that," he said dryly. "All right. Let's get the men you shot."
"Oh, Teyla didn't shoot all of them," Laura said with a laugh as she led the way out the back, "Katie hit one of them with a frypan after he shot Rodney." She grinned at John as he stopped in the doorway, shocked. "Don't faint, John. Sometimes a woman just has to use what's to hand."
As he dragged the dead men out of the kitchen to the side alley where a barrow was waiting to take them to the morgue, John reflected that the Genii hadn't had a chance.
Two of the men had neat holes in their chests, witness to Miss Emmagan's shooting skills; the third had a crushed skull, care of Miss Katie Brown's frypan. When he dumped Miss Brown's victim on the barrow, a young tow-headed man was piling another dead Genii into the barrow - this one had a major contusion across his forehead, and dried blood all over his face.
John remembered the cracking sound in the saloon, the tinkle of glass and the thump of a body hitting the floor. "I'm guessing it's not a good idea to make these ladies angry."
The young man grinned briefly. "We try to avoid it, sir."
Certainly, Miss Katie Brown didn't look like the kind of woman who could kill with a frypan - all porcelain complexion, cornflower eyes, and strawberry blonde hair - but then, Miss Heightmeyer didn't look like a woman who usually used a bottle of 1842 French Port as a weapon, Miss Weir didn't look like a woman who'd go to her knees beside a bleeding man, and Miss Teyla Emmagan certainly didn't look like she could shoot two men in the chest.
No, the Genii certainly hadn't had any chance of taking back the Atlantis Saloon and Hotel at all.
After a rather tense couple of hours and some impromptu surgery, Dr. Beckett pronounced that Mr. Dex would probably survive, but that he needed rest and quiet. Mr. Rodney McKay - shot in the fleshy part of his arm - would also survive, although the complaints emanating from the gentleman in question suggested that he might have preferred death to the pain.
"Oh, he's going to be even more obnoxious than he usually is," Laura grumbled as Mr. McKay was coaxed upstairs by Miss Brown.
"Then it is fortunate that it is not your job to keep him calmed," said Miss Emmagan as she passed them on her way to the kitchen. Dr. Beckett had pronounced her fine, but advised against any strenuous activity for the next few days.
John noted that Laura saw the doctor out, and spend rather longer on the porch talking to him than he felt was warranted. But when he got to his feet to go out and demand what was taking Laura so long, Teyla slid another glass of whiskey in front of him with a warning look from dark eyes.
"I would not advise it."
Given his stubborn cousin, John thought it wise to take Teyla's advice. Still, when Laura returned with a high, excited flush on her cheeks, he knew he'd be watching the doc like a hawk when they met in future.
And they would be meeting in future.
Later that evening, with his reshod 'Jumper in the sheriff's stables, the secret passageway again covered up, and the saloon set to rights, John sat by the bar drinking and reflecting on his coming to Atlantis.
The blood had been scrubbed from the floor, the broken glass swept up and the bar rearranged, tables and chairs set back in their places, and the saloon was full of men and women mixing and mingling in cheerful abandon and high spirits. And if the company was rowdy, they seemed to be avoiding rough.
John wondered how much of it was due to the four women who mixed and mingled among the men and women; adding elegance and class to the establishment with their presence, even as they kept the spirits high - both in tone and in glass.
He wondered how much of it was due to the woman who took a tray and moved out through the saloon doors into the candlelit shadows of the porch where the negroes took her drinks and her sallies with smiling cheer.
You planning to ride Miss Laura to a loose shoe?
He hadn't come out west just to find Laura - although that had been a convenient excuse for his relatives. Like Laura, John just wanted somewhere out beneath the open sky, without his mother encouraging him to marry a nice girl, without his father expecting him to get involved with the family business.
Back east, John had been ridden to a loose shoe himself, and the only way to fix it had been to get out and away.
Laura sent Miss Heightmeyer off to the gamblers' corner, resting her hands on the counter beside John. He glanced at them, noting that if they weren't as smooth and refined as they'd been in Baltimore, she still kept good care of them. Maybe not such a fine lady anymore, but as much of a lady as a woman could be in a harsh, hard land.
"Are you content here, cousin?"
Her response was prompt. "More than I was in Baltimore."
There was a shout over in the gamblers' corner as someone won a round of money, turning heads. A moment later, the saloon doors swung open to allow Miss Emmagan to sail in, her skirts swinging around her, turning John's head.
She came up to the counter, an easy smile on her lips as she put the empty glasses back on the counter.
"They're all served outside?" Laura asked, taking them down and stashing them away.
"Served and happy. And getting more so." Her eyes gleamed with laughter as she turned to John. "Are you enjoying being the toast of the town, Mr. Sheppard?"
"I always enjoy being the toast of the town."
Laura smirked. "Probably because it happens so rarely."
Her mouth had a wicked tilt to it. "All the more reason to savour it," she said, glancing around the room. "Although I believe that you have earned it."
"I had help," he said, and tilted his whiskey glass in toast to her.
She might have flushed a little - it was hard to tell in the candlelight, but tossed her head and looked away. "I believe I will see if Katie needs help in the kitchen."
John watched wove her way through the tangle of chairs and tables, with only the slightest stiffness as she turned to make her way past a crowded table. And whatever comment she made to the men drinking at the table gained her a bevy of grins and an admiring looks or two.
"You know, John, I'm not the only one who came here to escape a life I didn't want," Laura said after a moment.
"Miss Emmagan?"
"Her people are Louisiana Creole - gens de coleur, they call it down there. They had a respectable marriage set out for her, and she decided she wanted adventure instead."
And had gotten a saloon and a Genii shoot-out for her pains.
"Long way to come for adventure."
"Well, we've all come a long way to get here," Laura said, musingly, "Elizabeth and Kate, too. Maybe that's why this place works - because we know how far we've come and we're going to fight rather than let anyone take it away from us." There was a militant note in her voice that went further than the stubbornness John had always associated with his younger cousin. "It's not an easy life, John, but it's my life. And I'm not going back."
The last was said flat-out truculently, her eyes hard as she stared at him.
John sucked on his cheroot - offered to him by one of the gamblers now dicing away in the far corner - and glanced around the room, before he realised his gaze had drifted to the door leading out to the kitchen. He dragged it back to look at his cousin. "You know, I didn't come all the way out here to drag you back east."
"Good," she said firmly. "Because I wouldn't go back. And you can tell mama when you see her."
"Actually, you should tell her yourself," he said, and grinned as she fixed him with a ferocious glare. "Write her a letter and send it back by post."
Laura held up a hand to pause the conversation as she poured another glass of something for one of the men who came up to the counter. Then she served a couple more customers, and set up a tray for Miss Weir to take out to one of the tables, while he extracted himself from a one-sided discussion of politics with a man whose clothing reeked of a little too much beer.
"You're not going back east?"
He shrugged and glanced around the room as she was called away to serve another customer. "I'm thinking about staying," he said as Miss Emmagan emerged from the back room carrying a plate of food, which she set in front of John with a flourish. It contained several slices from what appeared to be a pot roast, surrounded by root vegetables and smothered in liquid gravy. A hunk of bread perched on the side of the plate.
"Compliments of Miss Brown, who only just realised that you have not yet been fed after all you have done today."
John inhaled deeply and exhaled in a sigh. It had been weeks since he'd had much more than the bare basics for a meal. Stale bread and beef jerky weren't the most appetising of companions between towns, and this looked and smelled - and tasted - like a feast. "Ma'am, for this, I'd let Miss Brown hit me with a frypan anytime."
"I shall let her know." The liquid dark eyes tilted at their corners as she moved away, then paused and turned back to him. "I did not thank you for your assistance today, Mr. Sheppard."
He looked down at his plate, away from her, embarrassed. Half the town had come up to him to thank him. His glass hadn't been empty all evening, and he'd had offers of everything from employment to a willing woman in his bed. "You know, I didn't do that much. Killed one man, injured another..."
"Rescued Miss Weir."
"Well, that was only after this lady I met dragged me off the street..."
When he glanced up, she was staring at him with an expression that might have been amused and might have been puzzled. A wisp of hair curled against her cheek and she brushed another wisp from her forehead. "I was...precipitate," she admitted.
"You did well." Better than some men would have done. "You'd have found a way without me if I hadn't been there."
"I am relieved it was not necessary. And I am grateful for what you did. We all are." She indicated the plate before him. "If that was not already clear."
John regarded the roast. "Yeah, I think it's clear enough."
"Well, then." She turned away again, and John fought for something to say.
"Miss Emmagan?"
"Mr. Sheppard?"
"Thanks." It was important for him to say the word, even if he didn't quite know what he was thanking her for.
Her gaze was steady on him, an anchor and a challenge; then her lips twitched in withheld laughter. "You are a strange one, Mr. Sheppard."
And with that, she went to pour more drinks, taking over from Laura, who'd drifted away again, and pushing her towards John.
He let his eyes linger on the slim, capable figure in the creamy poplin who worked at the other end of the bar - a woman who would commandeer a hostile stranger for assistance, who would walk barefoot into a gunfight, who would risk her life to save a friend, and who hadn't let the colour of her skin define who she had to be.
He could admire a woman like that - could admire the women who'd carved out a place for themselves when conventional society confined them.
"So," Laura asked, interrupting his thoughts, "will you be staying in Atlantis?"
His cousin had found her own kind of freedom here - so had the women who worked the Atlantis Saloon with her. Maybe John could, too.
And, after all, wasn't that what the west was for?
John grinned at Laura, tilting his glass towards her, even as his eyes slid towards Miss Emmagan. "You know, I think I will."
- fin -
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Probably the most interesting and time-consuming part of writing this was learning about the history of the peoples of colour in the US during and after the Civil War. My reading encompassed the Louisiana Creoles and gens du coleur as well as historical black people in the west, the concept of 'passing', and the plaçage marriage system. It was an eye-opening and fascinating look at US society during a period of time that is often quite 'white-washed' in film and fiction.
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I seem to recall reading this one at some past point in time. ;-) And yes! Penguins! Thanks! :-D
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You're welcome, oh Penguin Queen!
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I'm glad it helped with the cranky!
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It is a rather odd thing to say. But I'm relieved that you like it!
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Yes, the concept of 'passing' is an interesting one. It's not strange to me though, because I was born and raised in the (South), and the concept is something quite familiar in regards to my ancestry.
But it was the little touches about your story that I loved. John's horse being referred to as a "Jumper"; Bates as the assistant in the blacksmith shop; Laura Cadman as John's cousin; John making Teyla blush and just their natural chemistry. Good stuff. :)
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I admit, most of what I understand of the South and the post-Civil War era of the Old West is largely from literary research and fiction.
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Regardless of what many may think women of color still have a need to do this...define *who* they are instead of letting society do it for them.
I hope you plan to continue this at some time. It would be an interestin read.
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It just seemed fitting to call John's horse 'Jumper. :D
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i love it the instant attraction, the respect for one another and the hope for something more.
i love any story where the ladies are strong and independent
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I seem to recall reading this one at some past point in time. ;-) And yes! Penguins! Thanks! :-D
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You're welcome, oh Penguin Queen!
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I'm glad it helped with the cranky!
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It is a rather odd thing to say. But I'm relieved that you like it!
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Yes, the concept of 'passing' is an interesting one. It's not strange to me though, because I was born and raised in the (South), and the concept is something quite familiar in regards to my ancestry.
But it was the little touches about your story that I loved. John's horse being referred to as a "Jumper"; Bates as the assistant in the blacksmith shop; Laura Cadman as John's cousin; John making Teyla blush and just their natural chemistry. Good stuff. :)
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I admit, most of what I understand of the South and the post-Civil War era of the Old West is largely from literary research and fiction.
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Regardless of what many may think women of color still have a need to do this...define *who* they are instead of letting society do it for them.
I hope you plan to continue this at some time. It would be an interestin read.
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It just seemed fitting to call John's horse 'Jumper. :D
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i love it the instant attraction, the respect for one another and the hope for something more.
i love any story where the ladies are strong and independent
This is fascinating!
Re: This is fascinating!
By "basis", do you mean you'd use my story as the setup for your story? Or do you mean you'd use the general template of the Atlantis characters living in the Wild West?
If you want to use my story as the setup for yours, then I'd love to see it - particularly if it explores Teyla's situation as a woman of colour in a white world.
Re: This is fascinating!
If the thought of writing didn't terrify me so much, I might even be a little bit excited.
This is fascinating!
Re: This is fascinating!
By "basis", do you mean you'd use my story as the setup for your story? Or do you mean you'd use the general template of the Atlantis characters living in the Wild West?
If you want to use my story as the setup for yours, then I'd love to see it - particularly if it explores Teyla's situation as a woman of colour in a white world.
Re: This is fascinating!
If the thought of writing didn't terrify me so much, I might even be a little bit excited.
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I'm wondering, what with your studies into gens du coleur and the whole lot, did you ever read Anne Rice's Feast Of All Saints? It's a rather fascinating historical novel looking into that (sans vampires and witches even, shocking, eh?) and I'd recommend it if you haven't. It made me cry lots, though, for the character's plights and injustices.
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I'm wondering, what with your studies into gens du coleur and the whole lot, did you ever read Anne Rice's Feast Of All Saints? It's a rather fascinating historical novel looking into that (sans vampires and witches even, shocking, eh?) and I'd recommend it if you haven't. It made me cry lots, though, for the character's plights and injustices.
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