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sarosefics2012-05-17 01:25 am
ramblin_rosie) wrote in sarosefics2012-05-17 01:25 am
Last of the Breed Chapter 1
Previous
Chapter 1
The Sunset Trail
Their names were Sam and Dean Winchester, and they were like a matched pair of .45s with antique ivory grips—truly something to behold. But they weren’t outlaws (at least, not here). Fact is, for a while, they were lawmen.
Long before I met the Winchesters, they were famous men in the hunting world. They were famous everywhere by the time I met them again. I guess their fame was why somebody or other was always after them. But hunting had taught them to survive. They lived their lives and hunted by themselves. They had a credo that went: “We won’t be wronged; we won’t be insulted; and we won’t be laid a hand on. We don’t do these things to other people, and we require the same from them.”
Samuel Colt came through Sunrise that night to check on Sam, return Sam’s Blackberry, and officially pass the gun and the demon-killing knife on to the Winchesters. Dean started to refuse, but Sam suggested the compromise of letting Elkins keep the weapons until they knew for sure that they were stuck. Yet no sooner did Dean accept than Bobby walked in, looking like a character from Deadwood. After an exchange of pleasantries and farewells, Colt left and Elkins made himself scarce, and Bobby gave the boys the bad news that Cas had indeed stranded them, apparently deliberately.
After a round of curses, Sam said, “But wait, how’d you....”
“Balthazar,” Bobby replied. “Cas had all but forbidden him from bringing you back, and he didn’t dare cross Cas. But there was no way I was leavin’ you idjits out here alone.”
Dean sighed. “Bobby....”
“Save it, son. You need me more than I need to spend my days mannin’ the phones and tryin’ not to count my losses. Balthazar gave me time to make arrangements—including calling in one last favor from Ellie Visyak.”
“Which was?”
“A microfilm camera and a portable microfilm viewer.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “You microfilmed your library?”
Bobby shrugged. “Not the stuff that’s in print now, but the rare stuff, yeah, and the Campbell journals. No way to charge the battery on a Kindle, or I’d’ve just scanned it all. And I brought as much of your arsenal and my arsenal as the pack mule could carry, plus John’s journal and mine—which also includes the secret of how to fix that,” he added, pointing to the Colt.
Dean grinned. “Bobby, you are awesome.”
“Pack mule,” Sam repeated. “Does—does that mean you brought horses?”
Bobby nodded. “Yup. And a special one for Dean.”
“You didn’t,” they chorused.
“No, I didn’t. That one was a favor Balthazar called in from Kali.”
Dean dashed outside, Sam hard on his heels, to see a big black mare with a silver blaze and four silver-white stockings looking at him expectantly. He walked up to her, and she whickered softly and pushed her nose into his hand.
“Dude,” Sam breathed.
“Baby?” Dean asked.
The horse nodded.
Dean looked back at Sam, grinning almost giddily. “Dude. My baby’s a horse.”
Grinning back, Sam shook his head in wonder. “Wow.”
“Guaranteed to live as long as you do, too,” Bobby added.
Dean rubbed the horse’s nose for a moment longer before sighing and turning back to the others as his smile faded. “So. What do we do now?”
It took a good deal of consideration and deliberation on the part of the three hunters, but eventually they concluded that no one else in town was willing or qualified to take over as sheriff. So they stayed, Bobby and Sam becoming Dean’s deputies, until the effects of the Civil War and an untimely Crow raid dealt a fatal blow to the town. Elkins married Darla and moved to Colorado, and Bobby, Dean, and Sam entrusted the phoenix ash to the Campbells and went back to hunting full time. The hunts they knew they could take care of in that century were knocked out within a decade, along with a number of others that came to their attention—and Azazel, when by chance (if chance it was) their paths crossed. And they quickly became legendary, not only as hunters but also as gunmen when outlaws were foolish enough to try to cross them.
Bobby died in his sleep in 1880, apparently of natural causes. Sam and Dean mourned his passing, but it was not nearly the crushing grief they would have felt had he died on a hunt, and there was no need to avenge him. And both brothers avoided giving into the urge to drown their pain in alcohol and hunting.
Age did eventually take its toll, and the Winchesters did have their share of health scares and serious injuries. The worst was when Sam was wounded in a gunfight in Carson City in 1886, but his life was saved by a doctor named E. W. Hostetler who knew about hunting and was willing to accept the idea that the wounds had been made by bullets cursed by a witch specifically to kill Sam. Hostetler thus earned the brothers’ trust and undying gratitude. But by the time they were both past retirement age for a white-collar job and were practically ancient for men in their line of work, they had not only slowed down but started feeling lousy more often than not.
Neither Sam nor Dean had ever been a particularly good patient, and both hated to admit to illness, but neither could hide his own ailments from the other. So when both of them started noticing signs of illness in each other as 1900 drew to a close, they agreed to spend Christmas with the Elkins family in Creede, Colorado, and to see a doctor while they were there. No sooner did they leave the doctor’s office, however, than they packed their gear, leaving most of the arsenal with the Elkinses, and headed to Carson City. They hadn’t been back there since the ’86 hunt, but they needed a good second opinion, and Hostetler was just about the only doctor west of Dodge they knew for sure they could trust.
The brothers arrived in Carson City on January 17, 1901. The city had grown and changed considerably in the last fifteen years, however, and they paused to try to navigate through a new part of town that they hadn’t seen before, totally unaware that they were blocking traffic until someone on a wagon hollered, “Hey, old timers, get out of the way!”
Dean looked around at the wagon—a dairy wagon, driven by an ill-favored blond guy whose passenger bore a striking resemblance to Ben. “You talkin’ to me?” he replied, dusting off his Robert De Niro voice for the first time in a couple of decades.
The kid who looked like Ben startled a little.
“Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Methuselah,” returned the driver. “I said get out of the way, or I’ll deliver you somethin’ to remember me by.”
Dean took his hat off. “Well, pardon me.” He looked at Sam and nodded over his shoulder, and they backed up in tandem. But then, as the delivery wagon started forward, he added, “Buster.”
The wagon driver stopped with a scowl and reached for his handgun. Dean just raised an eyebrow at him.
The kid who looked like Ben nudged the driver’s shoulder. “C’mon, Jay, the old men ain’t worth the bullets. They look all tuckered out,” he continued with a chuckle.
The driver considered this and laughed himself, then drove away. Dean replaced his hat and watched them go.
“Dean...” said Sam.
Dean nodded. “I know. But the kid’s right about one thing.”
Sam snorted, and they continued on their way to Hostetler’s house.
Hostetler looked a lot older than Dean remembered, but then, so did the Winchesters. Sam’s hair was as silver as the doc’s, and Dean’s was a steel grey, as were the mustache and triangle of beard he’d started wearing to hide the scars from where a rabid skinwalker had clawed him. But Hostetler’s eyes lit with recognition as soon as he opened the door.
“Doc Hostetler,” said Dean by way of greeting.
“Sam and Dean Winchester,” Hostetler replied with a slight smile and a hand extended for shaking.
“You remembered.”
“The newspapers occasionally remind me. Wh-what was it, fifteen years ago?” The slight stammer reminded Dean of Jimmy Stewart.
“Only time I was ever hit by a human in the last forty years,” Sam said as they followed Hostetler into his office. “Right here in the Acme Saloon.”
“You killed two men.”
“Two wannabe warlocks, and I’m damn lucky you were around. That second one nearly did me in, comin’ out of nowhere like that.”
“You must have the constitution of an ox. You too, Dean.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Dean returned, setting out two cushions on the doctor’s couch. “That’s what we’re here for.”
“Oh?”
Sam sat down with a groan, and Dean sat down beside him before meeting Hostetler’s eyes. “About ten days ago, up in Creede, Colorado, Sam hadn’t been feelin’ up to snuff—”
“Neither had you, Dean,” Sam interrupted.
“So I took him to a doctor there.”
“And I made sure he looked at Dean, too.”
“He, uh... well, next day we headed here for a second opinion.”
Hostetler leaned back in his chair. “And what did my colleague in Creede say?”
“Examine us and we’ll tell you.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Oh, Doc, you saved Sammy’s life.”
“You don’t trust my profession.”
“In our profession, you trust too much, you don’t celebrate many birthdays.”
“We’re not in a hurry to die again,” Sam added.
Hostetler smiled in gentle amusement and stood. “All right, I’ll examine you both. Take your clothes off, down to your long johns.”
The brothers followed the doctor back to his examining room and started to comply.
“Now, I, uh... if I’m to examine you, you’ve got to tell me what... what’s ailin’ you.”
Sam sighed. “Well, I hurt, Doc, way down deep in my back. Not all the time, but now and then suddenly.”
“Pain in the lumbar vertebrae?”
Dean nodded. “Like sin.”
“You’re the same?”
“Yeah.”
Hostetler nodded and unfolded a chair into an examining table before going to wash his hands. “All right, whenever you get ready, just... bend over the table there, trap door down.”
Both brothers raised an eyebrow at that but did as they were told.
It was getting dark in the house by the time Hostetler finished his examination and consulted his medical books, and he switched on a lamp—one of the few electric lights the Winchesters had seen since they’d been stranded in Sunrise. They finished getting dressed and went back into the office and sat down.
“Well?” Dean asked.
Hostetler sighed. “Fellas, every few days, I have to tell a man or a woman something I don’t want to. I’ve... I’ve been practicing medicine for 29 years, and I still don’t know how to do it well.”
Sam and Dean exchanged a look. “Why don’t you just say it flat out?” Sam suggested.
“All right.” Hostetler took off his reading glasses. “You have a cancer—advanced. Both of you.”
Dean looked down at the floor and sighed.
Hostetler got up and put his book away. “Is that what that fella up in Creede told you?”
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t believe him.”
“Hell, Doc, it just didn’t make sense that both of us would come down with cancer at the same time. Thought it might have been a curse or something.”
Sam sighed. “We’ve chased enough monsters through mines, Dean. Maybe one of ’em had uranium in it.”
Hostetler came back to his desk. “Do you believe me?”
Dean sighed again. “Can you operate?”
Hostetler shook his head. “I’d have to gut you like a fish.”
“Well, what can you do?”
Hostetler kept shaking his head. “There’s... just, uh... very little I can do. Uh, if... when the pain gets too bad, I can give you something.”
Sam spoke when Dean didn’t seem able to. “What you’re trying to tell us is that we....”
Hostetler nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly.
“Dammit,” the brothers chorused.
“I’m sorry, Sam, Dean.”
Dean got up and started gathering his rifle, cushion, and hat. “You told Sammy he was as strong as an ox.”
“Well, even an ox dies.”
Sam stood and followed Dean’s lead. “How much time do we have?”
Hostetler shrugged a little. “Two months, six weeks, less. There’s no way to tell.”
“What will we be able to do?”
Hostetler stood up and headed toward the office door. “Oh, anything you want at first. Then, later on, you won’t want to.”
Dean frowned. “How much later?”
“You’ll know when.” Hostetler ushered them out of the office and toward the front door of the house. “Now, you’ll have to get off your feet and get some rest. Have you made any kind of arrangements for a room or anything?”
Dean shook his head. “No, Doc, we just got here.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you might try the Widow Braeden. She, she’s got a place down the street here a fair piece. She takes in lodgers. And she’s a nice woman; she could use the help.”
Dean nodded. “We’ll give it a try. Doc, do us a favor. Don’t tell anyone we’re in town.”
“Oh, no. But if I wanted to go unnoticed, I don’t think I’d walk around with this thing,” Hostetler added, pointing to the red velvet cushion with gold tassels that Dean had tucked under his arm. Sam’s looked exactly like it.
Dean leaned in close with a sly grin. “Stole ’em out of a whorehouse in Creede,” he lied. In truth, Darla Elkins had made the cushions for them when they’d mentioned how uncomfortable it was getting to ride anymore.
Hostetler snorted in amusement and said goodbye to both brothers.
“The Widow Braeden,” Sam mused as they positioned their cushions on their saddles and mounted up again. “What are the odds....”
Dean shook his head. “I dunno, Sam. Guess we’d better find out.”
With that, they rode down the street until they came to a big white house at the edge of town with a screened-in wrap-around porch and a sign reading “LODGING” nailed on a tree. The kid who looked like Ben was sweeping the front steps as they rode up.
“Hello,” Dean called. “This the Braeden place?”
The kid looked a little spooked when he looked up at them. “Uh, yeah. Mom?” he called into the house.
Dean got a really weird feeling about the boy. But he didn’t have to cover it; Sam added with a ghost of a smirk, “You can tell your mother that two tuckered-out old men need a room.”
The kid froze briefly, then returned an awkward smile and nodded.
Just then the woman of the house came to the door, and damn if she didn’t look exactly like Lisa, aside from the mauve dress, the tan apron, and the bun. She paused at the top of the steps, looking briefly surprised, but then she covered it with a pleasant, professional smile and came down the steps, drying her hands on a cup towel. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said.
“Afternoon,” Sam replied so Dean didn’t have to. “Doc Hostetler says you can help us.”
Mrs. Braeden smiled a little. “How kind of him. Yes, sir, I have one room available.”
“Good. We’re brothers. That’ll suit us fine.”
Dean nodded his agreement, and they both dismounted and gathered up their guns and cushions.
“Downstairs in the rear,” Mrs. Braeden continued. “Eight dollars by the week, $2 per day if you’re not permanent.”
“Well, we’re not permanent, ma’am,” Sam replied as they began to follow her inside, but then he paused and turned back to the Braeden kid. “Oh, boy, get our gear and saddlebags off of those horses and bring ’em into the house.”
The boy bristled, just like Ben used to, but Mrs. Braeden stated, “Ben will be happy to do that.”
The boy shot his mother an unhappy look but obeyed, and Dean’s heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be—but he’d been a hunter too long to believe in coincidences.
“The parlor is yours to use,” Mrs. Braeden continued as they followed her down the front hall, “and the telephone. My other lodgers have rooms upstairs, two railroad men and a schoolteacher. I’ll introduce them at supper.” She pointed out the kitchen and bathroom as they passed and assured Sam that the mattress on the queen-sized brass bed was clean and soft, and Dean noticed a few subtle wards here and there.
“This is very comfortable,” Dean managed as they surveyed the room, which was really pretty spacious by the standards of the day and had a writing desk that could serve as a table for the two of them. That thought reminded him briefly of their former life in cheap motels, countless greasy burgers eaten on rickety tables or beds. The furnishings were all much nicer than any they’d had growing up, however, and there were even a couple of leather easy chairs by the table.
“Oh, this’ll do fine,” Sam agreed, easing himself down into one of the leather chairs. “We’ll take our meals right here.”
“I serve in the dining room,” Mrs. Braeden stated as she lit the small wood-burning stove in the corner.
“We’ll pay you extra for the trouble.”
“Very well, since you’re not permanent.”
Sam looked down at himself and brushed at his sleeve. “This suit’s got a lot of countryside on it. I’d like to have it brushed before morning—my brother’s, too, if you don’t mind.”
Before Mrs. Braeden could reply, her Ben returned with the bags and gear.
“I’ll take those saddlebags,” said Dean, who was still standing near the door.
“Oh, those bedrolls you can leave outside,” Mrs. Braeden stated. “They won’t be needing them.”
“No, Mrs. Braeden, we have our other things wrapped in them. They’ll need some soap and water.”
Mrs. Braeden nodded.
“Have you a barn?” Sam asked.
“No, we don’t,” Mrs. Braeden replied.
Dean nodded once. “Well, boy, take our horses over to the—”
“My name’s Ben,” the boy interrupted testily. “It’s not ‘boy.’ It’s Ben Braeden, and I don’t like being ordered around.”
Sam and Dean both glanced at Mrs. Braeden, who glanced back at Dean warily.
“Well, that’s fair enough, Benjamin Isaac Braeden,” Dean returned without really thinking, and the boy blanched. “Would you be so kind as to take Impala and ol’ Dollar over to the livery stable and see that they get a double order of oats?”
The boy pulled himself together and nodded. “Okay.” Then he handed the bedrolls and saddlebags to Dean and left.
“You seem to be a man accustomed to giving orders,” Mrs. Braeden observed, almost as if she were testing Dean.
He shrugged and put the gear on the bed. “Well, I guess it is a bad habit of mine. Comes of being a big brother, y’know.”
“I didn’t get your names.”
“We didn’t give ’em. Is it so important?”
“For anyone living under my roof, it is.”
“Well, all right. It’s, uh, Ramone. I’m Joey, and this is Tommy.”
She gasped. “Oh my... Dean?”
Dean and Sam exchanged a startled glance. “Lisa?” Dean asked quietly.
She glanced at the door, then closed it quickly before throwing herself into Dean’s arms. “Oh, Dean, it’s so good to see you—I hardly recognized you.”
“Lis... how?!”
“Balthazar thought we’d be out of harm’s way here. We’ve been here a little over five years, waiting.”
He pulled her tighter. “Dammit, I wish I’d known. We’d have come sooner.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Um, I can....”
Lisa pulled back. “No, Sam, stay. We’re, um....”
“Not right now, anyway,” Dean agreed, leading her to a chair before sitting down on the bed. “Lisa, what happened? Bobby never breathed a word.”
She blinked. “Bobby was here?”
“Yeah, showed up, like, eight hours after Cas was supposed to bring us back. But he’s been gone twenty years now.”
“Must have left after we did, then. Balthazar was worried that someone would attack us to try to smoke you out, but he didn’t think Sunrise was safe for us, either.”
“It wouldn’t have been,” the brothers chorused.
“So I broke up with Matt, and Balthazar got us set up here. It’s been an adjustment,” she added with a chuckle, “and there are still a lot of shady characters around, but honestly, it’s been nicer here in terms of community than Battle Creek. I’m a little worried about Ben’s choice of friends and his idolizing of gunfighters, but... he’s done his best to get his hands on every news story and dime-store novel about you two.”
Dean sighed. “Has he forgiven me for not coming back?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s been more focused on seeing you again.”
“He hasn’t quite recognized us yet.”
“Probably not. I don’t think he’d really thought through the changes forty years would make.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Lisa... we should probably just tell you up front. We’ve got advanced cancer. Like, probably Stage IV—inoperable.”
She swallowed hard. “What kind?”
“Based on where Hostetler was examining, I’d guess prostate.”
Lisa cursed quietly. “How long do you have?”
“Two months, tops.”
Dean took her hand. “Lis, we don’t want to cause any trouble for you. Don’t tell anyone we’re here.”
Fighting tears, Lisa nodded. “You wanna... stick with the Ramones or switch to Van Halen?”
Sam snorted. “Last time we were Van Halen, we were undercover at a psych ward.”
“Ramones it is, then.” She stood and strode over to the door, composed herself, and opened it. “I’m glad you’re not staying long, Mr. Ramone,” she said louder, not looking at them. “I’m not sure I like you.”
“Not many do, Mrs. Braeden,” Sam returned.
She turned back with a look that combined amusement, joy, and sorrow all at once, and then she left.
At the livery stable, Moses Brown, the black stable owner, pulled the saddle off of Impala while Ben puttered around in the office, trying to decide whether or not to snitch a drink of Moses’ whiskey. He did drink every now and again because it seemed like the cool, grown-up thing to do, but the smell of whiskey still reminded him of the summer Dean had spent with them until he’d gotten through his grief well enough to stop drinking quite so much. He knew what alcoholism looked like, and he didn’t want to become like that.
Dean. The shorter of the two old men who’d turned up at the house reminded him an awful lot of Dean—the green eyes, the bowed legs, the voice. The fact that he knew Ben’s full name without being told. And it was 1901, finally. But... but it couldn’t be Dean, not for real. Dean was a hero. Dean could never get old.
“Benny,” Moses called suddenly, “fetch me my spectacles.”
Ben located the wire-rimmed glasses on the desk and brought them out to where Moses was peering at the underside of the saddle. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You watch your language, boy,” Moses returned and snatched the glasses from Ben. Then he struck a match and held it up to illuminate the underside of the saddle, which bore the initials DW and three unusual engravings: a devil’s trap, a stylized impala... and a pentangle in a sunburst.
Ben said something his mother would definitely not have approved of.
Moses frowned. “DW? Wait, that don’t mean—”
“Dean Winchester.” Ben looked over at Impala—black and silver, big and gorgeous and strong, just like the car. And Dollar was just about the same color Sam’s hair used to be. He didn’t know whether to be overjoyed that Dean was finally back in their lives or bummed that he was an old man now.
Moses started chuckling, and that tipped the scales in favor of joy. Nobody in Battle Creek would have known the name Dean Winchester or why he and Sam were so awesome.
So Ben started chuckling, too. “The Winchesters are in my house.”
Moses took up a bowlegged stance and made a tough face. “My name is Winchester,” he said in a bad imitation of Dean. “Y’all get that?”
Ben pretended to shoot him multiple times, and Moses pretended to get hit and finally fell over backward into the hay and started laughing his head off.
“They’re in my house!” Ben repeated before running back home. “Mom?” he called as he came in. “Mom, I gotta tell you something.”
Lisa, who was brushing Sam’s suit in her room, shushed him. “Close the door.”
Ben came into the room and closed the door.
“What’s happened?”
He came closer. “Who do you think—”
“Oh, Ben, have you been drinking again?”
“Do you know who they are?!”
“Yes, Joey and Tommy Ramone,” she replied with a pointed look. “United States Marshals in Lawrence, Kansas. Remember that.”
Ben’s face fell. “But....”
“They’re no safer under their right names now than they were before,” she continued quietly. “And they don’t want anyone to know that they’re here. They can’t stay for more than two months.”
“But, Mom....”
“Ben, go to your room. Go on. Go to bed before you wake the house.”
Ben sighed. “Good night, Mom.”
Somehow, though, one of the upstairs lodgers overheard enough to begin gossiping with the other two over breakfast. So Lisa had to make a show of trying to throw Sam and Dean out before calling the city marshal when they wouldn’t leave. She and Dean had worked out a code the night before that allowed her to alert him to what was going on and to warn him that the marshal was a jerk, and he signaled that he understood and agreed with her plan. Then he set his revolver on top of the newspaper on the table—in plain sight, within reach but not in hand—and settled in with Sam to wait for the marshal.
Marshal Thibido, somewhat predictably, kept up a stern act until he made some comment about fame-seeking hard cases “who’d sell their souls to put your names on the wall” and both brothers snorted loudly. “What’s so funny?” Thibido asked.
“In the first place, Col. Potter,” Dean replied, “we’ve been Hell’s Most Wanted most of our lives. If crossroads deals could take us out, we’d have stayed dead a long time ago.”
“And in the second place,” Sam added, skipping the Dragnet joke that would go with Dean’s equally anachronistic M*A*S*H joke, “crossroads deals have standards, and no crossroads demon in his right mind is going to make a ten-year deal to help some two-bit gunman take out someone who’ll be dead of natural causes in two months.”
Thibido turned his head like he hadn’t quite heard properly. “Huh?”
“You heard me. We’re gonna die right here in this room.”
Thibido scoffed. “That’s too thin.”
“I wish it were,” Dean returned. “Would you believe Doc Hostetler? That’s his verdict.”
Thibido stared in disbelief for a moment, then let out a whoop and started gloating until Dean pulled the newspaper out from under his revolver and told him to scat in a growl that sounded rather too much like Bobby for comfort. Sam also made Thibido promise not to tell anyone they were dying, even if he couldn’t keep a lid on the news that the Winchesters were in town.
No sooner had Thibido left, however, than Dean sensed someone hanging around the open window to the porch. With Sam covering and his gun in his left hand, he reached out and flipped Ben through the window and onto the floor. It felt effortless—until he tried to stand and found himself out of breath.
“Dean?” Sam asked, concerned.
But Dean was focused on the boy he’d once thought might be his son. “You little sneak,” he growled breathlessly as he sank down on the bed. “How long were you out there?”
“I was just passing by,” Ben said, looking up at him in concern.
“You spy on us, and I’ll nail your slats to a tree.” Dean looked pointedly at the outside window to show Ben that he needed to keep up the act of their being strangers.
“Oh, no, sir. I’d never—”
“Oh, you’ve already told your mother. Who else have you blabbed to?”
Ben picked himself up. “Uh, Jay Cobb. Are you all right, D—Mr. Winchester?”
“We can’t abide skulkers,” Sam said as he came over to put a supporting hand on Dean’s back. “You want to see us, knock on our door like a man.”
Ben nodded and headed for said door. “I will. You sure you’re all right? If there’s anything I can do for you, you just let me know, sirs, because it’s an honor to have you in this house.”
“I’m afraid your mother doesn’t agree.”
“She doesn’t know how a man feels.”
Dean snorted quietly. “Idjit.”
Ben caught that and spared him a worried glance but kept babbling to Sam like a fanboy. “You’re the most famous people to ever come into this town, and when I was a boy and we first moved here, I heard all about your shootout at the Acme Saloon. I just never thought I’d get the chance to meet you.”
“There’s more to bein’ a man than handlin’ a gun,” Dean said louder and handed his revolver to Sam, who took it with his own back to their holsters in the gun belts hanging near the door. “Don’t you have something to do? Haven’t you got a job?”
“Oh, yes, sir.” Ben fumbled behind him for the doorknob. “I was just headed over to Cobb’s Creamery right now. I help Jay with deliveries sometimes,” he continued as Sam herded him out the door.
“That was the nice gentleman you were with yesterday?” Sam asked.
“Well, yeah, he’s....”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s in the kitchen, I think. Well, goodbye, sir. It was real nice meeting you.”
“Goodbye.”
Dean had caught his breath by then, and he and Sam converged on the kitchen, where Lisa was grinding flour into a bowl with a large wall-mounted mill. “It’s okay,” she said quietly as they came in and she walked over to the counter where several lumps of bread dough were awaiting their second kneading. “The others are out.”
“Had to put the fear of Sam into Ben, Lis,” Dean confessed. “I’m sorry.”
“And I’m sorry we can’t keep this under wraps. I really can’t afford to lose the other lodgers before May, though. Not that I’m really asking you to leave.”
“We couldn’t even if we wanted to,” Sam noted. “But Thibido was right about one thing—there’s a good chance something’s gonna come after us here.”
Dean swore. “I don’t want us to be a burden, Lis. We can look after each other; you just bring us our meals, keep pretending like you don’t know us when the others are around. We can pay $4 a day for the room....”
Lisa laughed, the kind of laugh that meant she was fighting off tears. “Dammit, Dean, do you think I’d be charging you at all if I had another source of income?” And to keep him from arguing further, she walked outside.
Sam sighed and nudged Dean. “C’mon. Let’s check the wards.”
With a last sad glance after Lisa, Dean followed Sam out of the kitchen.
Next
The Sunset Trail
Their names were Sam and Dean Winchester, and they were like a matched pair of .45s with antique ivory grips—truly something to behold. But they weren’t outlaws (at least, not here). Fact is, for a while, they were lawmen.
Long before I met the Winchesters, they were famous men in the hunting world. They were famous everywhere by the time I met them again. I guess their fame was why somebody or other was always after them. But hunting had taught them to survive. They lived their lives and hunted by themselves. They had a credo that went: “We won’t be wronged; we won’t be insulted; and we won’t be laid a hand on. We don’t do these things to other people, and we require the same from them.”
—from the journal of Ben Braeden
Samuel Colt came through Sunrise that night to check on Sam, return Sam’s Blackberry, and officially pass the gun and the demon-killing knife on to the Winchesters. Dean started to refuse, but Sam suggested the compromise of letting Elkins keep the weapons until they knew for sure that they were stuck. Yet no sooner did Dean accept than Bobby walked in, looking like a character from Deadwood. After an exchange of pleasantries and farewells, Colt left and Elkins made himself scarce, and Bobby gave the boys the bad news that Cas had indeed stranded them, apparently deliberately.
After a round of curses, Sam said, “But wait, how’d you....”
“Balthazar,” Bobby replied. “Cas had all but forbidden him from bringing you back, and he didn’t dare cross Cas. But there was no way I was leavin’ you idjits out here alone.”
Dean sighed. “Bobby....”
“Save it, son. You need me more than I need to spend my days mannin’ the phones and tryin’ not to count my losses. Balthazar gave me time to make arrangements—including calling in one last favor from Ellie Visyak.”
“Which was?”
“A microfilm camera and a portable microfilm viewer.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “You microfilmed your library?”
Bobby shrugged. “Not the stuff that’s in print now, but the rare stuff, yeah, and the Campbell journals. No way to charge the battery on a Kindle, or I’d’ve just scanned it all. And I brought as much of your arsenal and my arsenal as the pack mule could carry, plus John’s journal and mine—which also includes the secret of how to fix that,” he added, pointing to the Colt.
Dean grinned. “Bobby, you are awesome.”
“Pack mule,” Sam repeated. “Does—does that mean you brought horses?”
Bobby nodded. “Yup. And a special one for Dean.”
“You didn’t,” they chorused.
“No, I didn’t. That one was a favor Balthazar called in from Kali.”
Dean dashed outside, Sam hard on his heels, to see a big black mare with a silver blaze and four silver-white stockings looking at him expectantly. He walked up to her, and she whickered softly and pushed her nose into his hand.
“Dude,” Sam breathed.
“Baby?” Dean asked.
The horse nodded.
Dean looked back at Sam, grinning almost giddily. “Dude. My baby’s a horse.”
Grinning back, Sam shook his head in wonder. “Wow.”
“Guaranteed to live as long as you do, too,” Bobby added.
Dean rubbed the horse’s nose for a moment longer before sighing and turning back to the others as his smile faded. “So. What do we do now?”
It took a good deal of consideration and deliberation on the part of the three hunters, but eventually they concluded that no one else in town was willing or qualified to take over as sheriff. So they stayed, Bobby and Sam becoming Dean’s deputies, until the effects of the Civil War and an untimely Crow raid dealt a fatal blow to the town. Elkins married Darla and moved to Colorado, and Bobby, Dean, and Sam entrusted the phoenix ash to the Campbells and went back to hunting full time. The hunts they knew they could take care of in that century were knocked out within a decade, along with a number of others that came to their attention—and Azazel, when by chance (if chance it was) their paths crossed. And they quickly became legendary, not only as hunters but also as gunmen when outlaws were foolish enough to try to cross them.
Bobby died in his sleep in 1880, apparently of natural causes. Sam and Dean mourned his passing, but it was not nearly the crushing grief they would have felt had he died on a hunt, and there was no need to avenge him. And both brothers avoided giving into the urge to drown their pain in alcohol and hunting.
Age did eventually take its toll, and the Winchesters did have their share of health scares and serious injuries. The worst was when Sam was wounded in a gunfight in Carson City in 1886, but his life was saved by a doctor named E. W. Hostetler who knew about hunting and was willing to accept the idea that the wounds had been made by bullets cursed by a witch specifically to kill Sam. Hostetler thus earned the brothers’ trust and undying gratitude. But by the time they were both past retirement age for a white-collar job and were practically ancient for men in their line of work, they had not only slowed down but started feeling lousy more often than not.
Neither Sam nor Dean had ever been a particularly good patient, and both hated to admit to illness, but neither could hide his own ailments from the other. So when both of them started noticing signs of illness in each other as 1900 drew to a close, they agreed to spend Christmas with the Elkins family in Creede, Colorado, and to see a doctor while they were there. No sooner did they leave the doctor’s office, however, than they packed their gear, leaving most of the arsenal with the Elkinses, and headed to Carson City. They hadn’t been back there since the ’86 hunt, but they needed a good second opinion, and Hostetler was just about the only doctor west of Dodge they knew for sure they could trust.
The brothers arrived in Carson City on January 17, 1901. The city had grown and changed considerably in the last fifteen years, however, and they paused to try to navigate through a new part of town that they hadn’t seen before, totally unaware that they were blocking traffic until someone on a wagon hollered, “Hey, old timers, get out of the way!”
Dean looked around at the wagon—a dairy wagon, driven by an ill-favored blond guy whose passenger bore a striking resemblance to Ben. “You talkin’ to me?” he replied, dusting off his Robert De Niro voice for the first time in a couple of decades.
The kid who looked like Ben startled a little.
“Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Methuselah,” returned the driver. “I said get out of the way, or I’ll deliver you somethin’ to remember me by.”
Dean took his hat off. “Well, pardon me.” He looked at Sam and nodded over his shoulder, and they backed up in tandem. But then, as the delivery wagon started forward, he added, “Buster.”
The wagon driver stopped with a scowl and reached for his handgun. Dean just raised an eyebrow at him.
The kid who looked like Ben nudged the driver’s shoulder. “C’mon, Jay, the old men ain’t worth the bullets. They look all tuckered out,” he continued with a chuckle.
The driver considered this and laughed himself, then drove away. Dean replaced his hat and watched them go.
“Dean...” said Sam.
Dean nodded. “I know. But the kid’s right about one thing.”
Sam snorted, and they continued on their way to Hostetler’s house.
Hostetler looked a lot older than Dean remembered, but then, so did the Winchesters. Sam’s hair was as silver as the doc’s, and Dean’s was a steel grey, as were the mustache and triangle of beard he’d started wearing to hide the scars from where a rabid skinwalker had clawed him. But Hostetler’s eyes lit with recognition as soon as he opened the door.
“Doc Hostetler,” said Dean by way of greeting.
“Sam and Dean Winchester,” Hostetler replied with a slight smile and a hand extended for shaking.
“You remembered.”
“The newspapers occasionally remind me. Wh-what was it, fifteen years ago?” The slight stammer reminded Dean of Jimmy Stewart.
“Only time I was ever hit by a human in the last forty years,” Sam said as they followed Hostetler into his office. “Right here in the Acme Saloon.”
“You killed two men.”
“Two wannabe warlocks, and I’m damn lucky you were around. That second one nearly did me in, comin’ out of nowhere like that.”
“You must have the constitution of an ox. You too, Dean.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Dean returned, setting out two cushions on the doctor’s couch. “That’s what we’re here for.”
“Oh?”
Sam sat down with a groan, and Dean sat down beside him before meeting Hostetler’s eyes. “About ten days ago, up in Creede, Colorado, Sam hadn’t been feelin’ up to snuff—”
“Neither had you, Dean,” Sam interrupted.
“So I took him to a doctor there.”
“And I made sure he looked at Dean, too.”
“He, uh... well, next day we headed here for a second opinion.”
Hostetler leaned back in his chair. “And what did my colleague in Creede say?”
“Examine us and we’ll tell you.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Oh, Doc, you saved Sammy’s life.”
“You don’t trust my profession.”
“In our profession, you trust too much, you don’t celebrate many birthdays.”
“We’re not in a hurry to die again,” Sam added.
Hostetler smiled in gentle amusement and stood. “All right, I’ll examine you both. Take your clothes off, down to your long johns.”
The brothers followed the doctor back to his examining room and started to comply.
“Now, I, uh... if I’m to examine you, you’ve got to tell me what... what’s ailin’ you.”
Sam sighed. “Well, I hurt, Doc, way down deep in my back. Not all the time, but now and then suddenly.”
“Pain in the lumbar vertebrae?”
Dean nodded. “Like sin.”
“You’re the same?”
“Yeah.”
Hostetler nodded and unfolded a chair into an examining table before going to wash his hands. “All right, whenever you get ready, just... bend over the table there, trap door down.”
Both brothers raised an eyebrow at that but did as they were told.
It was getting dark in the house by the time Hostetler finished his examination and consulted his medical books, and he switched on a lamp—one of the few electric lights the Winchesters had seen since they’d been stranded in Sunrise. They finished getting dressed and went back into the office and sat down.
“Well?” Dean asked.
Hostetler sighed. “Fellas, every few days, I have to tell a man or a woman something I don’t want to. I’ve... I’ve been practicing medicine for 29 years, and I still don’t know how to do it well.”
Sam and Dean exchanged a look. “Why don’t you just say it flat out?” Sam suggested.
“All right.” Hostetler took off his reading glasses. “You have a cancer—advanced. Both of you.”
Dean looked down at the floor and sighed.
Hostetler got up and put his book away. “Is that what that fella up in Creede told you?”
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t believe him.”
“Hell, Doc, it just didn’t make sense that both of us would come down with cancer at the same time. Thought it might have been a curse or something.”
Sam sighed. “We’ve chased enough monsters through mines, Dean. Maybe one of ’em had uranium in it.”
Hostetler came back to his desk. “Do you believe me?”
Dean sighed again. “Can you operate?”
Hostetler shook his head. “I’d have to gut you like a fish.”
“Well, what can you do?”
Hostetler kept shaking his head. “There’s... just, uh... very little I can do. Uh, if... when the pain gets too bad, I can give you something.”
Sam spoke when Dean didn’t seem able to. “What you’re trying to tell us is that we....”
Hostetler nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly.
“Dammit,” the brothers chorused.
“I’m sorry, Sam, Dean.”
Dean got up and started gathering his rifle, cushion, and hat. “You told Sammy he was as strong as an ox.”
“Well, even an ox dies.”
Sam stood and followed Dean’s lead. “How much time do we have?”
Hostetler shrugged a little. “Two months, six weeks, less. There’s no way to tell.”
“What will we be able to do?”
Hostetler stood up and headed toward the office door. “Oh, anything you want at first. Then, later on, you won’t want to.”
Dean frowned. “How much later?”
“You’ll know when.” Hostetler ushered them out of the office and toward the front door of the house. “Now, you’ll have to get off your feet and get some rest. Have you made any kind of arrangements for a room or anything?”
Dean shook his head. “No, Doc, we just got here.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you might try the Widow Braeden. She, she’s got a place down the street here a fair piece. She takes in lodgers. And she’s a nice woman; she could use the help.”
Dean nodded. “We’ll give it a try. Doc, do us a favor. Don’t tell anyone we’re in town.”
“Oh, no. But if I wanted to go unnoticed, I don’t think I’d walk around with this thing,” Hostetler added, pointing to the red velvet cushion with gold tassels that Dean had tucked under his arm. Sam’s looked exactly like it.
Dean leaned in close with a sly grin. “Stole ’em out of a whorehouse in Creede,” he lied. In truth, Darla Elkins had made the cushions for them when they’d mentioned how uncomfortable it was getting to ride anymore.
Hostetler snorted in amusement and said goodbye to both brothers.
“The Widow Braeden,” Sam mused as they positioned their cushions on their saddles and mounted up again. “What are the odds....”
Dean shook his head. “I dunno, Sam. Guess we’d better find out.”
With that, they rode down the street until they came to a big white house at the edge of town with a screened-in wrap-around porch and a sign reading “LODGING” nailed on a tree. The kid who looked like Ben was sweeping the front steps as they rode up.
“Hello,” Dean called. “This the Braeden place?”
The kid looked a little spooked when he looked up at them. “Uh, yeah. Mom?” he called into the house.
Dean got a really weird feeling about the boy. But he didn’t have to cover it; Sam added with a ghost of a smirk, “You can tell your mother that two tuckered-out old men need a room.”
The kid froze briefly, then returned an awkward smile and nodded.
Just then the woman of the house came to the door, and damn if she didn’t look exactly like Lisa, aside from the mauve dress, the tan apron, and the bun. She paused at the top of the steps, looking briefly surprised, but then she covered it with a pleasant, professional smile and came down the steps, drying her hands on a cup towel. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said.
“Afternoon,” Sam replied so Dean didn’t have to. “Doc Hostetler says you can help us.”
Mrs. Braeden smiled a little. “How kind of him. Yes, sir, I have one room available.”
“Good. We’re brothers. That’ll suit us fine.”
Dean nodded his agreement, and they both dismounted and gathered up their guns and cushions.
“Downstairs in the rear,” Mrs. Braeden continued. “Eight dollars by the week, $2 per day if you’re not permanent.”
“Well, we’re not permanent, ma’am,” Sam replied as they began to follow her inside, but then he paused and turned back to the Braeden kid. “Oh, boy, get our gear and saddlebags off of those horses and bring ’em into the house.”
The boy bristled, just like Ben used to, but Mrs. Braeden stated, “Ben will be happy to do that.”
The boy shot his mother an unhappy look but obeyed, and Dean’s heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be—but he’d been a hunter too long to believe in coincidences.
“The parlor is yours to use,” Mrs. Braeden continued as they followed her down the front hall, “and the telephone. My other lodgers have rooms upstairs, two railroad men and a schoolteacher. I’ll introduce them at supper.” She pointed out the kitchen and bathroom as they passed and assured Sam that the mattress on the queen-sized brass bed was clean and soft, and Dean noticed a few subtle wards here and there.
“This is very comfortable,” Dean managed as they surveyed the room, which was really pretty spacious by the standards of the day and had a writing desk that could serve as a table for the two of them. That thought reminded him briefly of their former life in cheap motels, countless greasy burgers eaten on rickety tables or beds. The furnishings were all much nicer than any they’d had growing up, however, and there were even a couple of leather easy chairs by the table.
“Oh, this’ll do fine,” Sam agreed, easing himself down into one of the leather chairs. “We’ll take our meals right here.”
“I serve in the dining room,” Mrs. Braeden stated as she lit the small wood-burning stove in the corner.
“We’ll pay you extra for the trouble.”
“Very well, since you’re not permanent.”
Sam looked down at himself and brushed at his sleeve. “This suit’s got a lot of countryside on it. I’d like to have it brushed before morning—my brother’s, too, if you don’t mind.”
Before Mrs. Braeden could reply, her Ben returned with the bags and gear.
“I’ll take those saddlebags,” said Dean, who was still standing near the door.
“Oh, those bedrolls you can leave outside,” Mrs. Braeden stated. “They won’t be needing them.”
“No, Mrs. Braeden, we have our other things wrapped in them. They’ll need some soap and water.”
Mrs. Braeden nodded.
“Have you a barn?” Sam asked.
“No, we don’t,” Mrs. Braeden replied.
Dean nodded once. “Well, boy, take our horses over to the—”
“My name’s Ben,” the boy interrupted testily. “It’s not ‘boy.’ It’s Ben Braeden, and I don’t like being ordered around.”
Sam and Dean both glanced at Mrs. Braeden, who glanced back at Dean warily.
“Well, that’s fair enough, Benjamin Isaac Braeden,” Dean returned without really thinking, and the boy blanched. “Would you be so kind as to take Impala and ol’ Dollar over to the livery stable and see that they get a double order of oats?”
The boy pulled himself together and nodded. “Okay.” Then he handed the bedrolls and saddlebags to Dean and left.
“You seem to be a man accustomed to giving orders,” Mrs. Braeden observed, almost as if she were testing Dean.
He shrugged and put the gear on the bed. “Well, I guess it is a bad habit of mine. Comes of being a big brother, y’know.”
“I didn’t get your names.”
“We didn’t give ’em. Is it so important?”
“For anyone living under my roof, it is.”
“Well, all right. It’s, uh, Ramone. I’m Joey, and this is Tommy.”
She gasped. “Oh my... Dean?”
Dean and Sam exchanged a startled glance. “Lisa?” Dean asked quietly.
She glanced at the door, then closed it quickly before throwing herself into Dean’s arms. “Oh, Dean, it’s so good to see you—I hardly recognized you.”
“Lis... how?!”
“Balthazar thought we’d be out of harm’s way here. We’ve been here a little over five years, waiting.”
He pulled her tighter. “Dammit, I wish I’d known. We’d have come sooner.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Um, I can....”
Lisa pulled back. “No, Sam, stay. We’re, um....”
“Not right now, anyway,” Dean agreed, leading her to a chair before sitting down on the bed. “Lisa, what happened? Bobby never breathed a word.”
She blinked. “Bobby was here?”
“Yeah, showed up, like, eight hours after Cas was supposed to bring us back. But he’s been gone twenty years now.”
“Must have left after we did, then. Balthazar was worried that someone would attack us to try to smoke you out, but he didn’t think Sunrise was safe for us, either.”
“It wouldn’t have been,” the brothers chorused.
“So I broke up with Matt, and Balthazar got us set up here. It’s been an adjustment,” she added with a chuckle, “and there are still a lot of shady characters around, but honestly, it’s been nicer here in terms of community than Battle Creek. I’m a little worried about Ben’s choice of friends and his idolizing of gunfighters, but... he’s done his best to get his hands on every news story and dime-store novel about you two.”
Dean sighed. “Has he forgiven me for not coming back?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s been more focused on seeing you again.”
“He hasn’t quite recognized us yet.”
“Probably not. I don’t think he’d really thought through the changes forty years would make.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Lisa... we should probably just tell you up front. We’ve got advanced cancer. Like, probably Stage IV—inoperable.”
She swallowed hard. “What kind?”
“Based on where Hostetler was examining, I’d guess prostate.”
Lisa cursed quietly. “How long do you have?”
“Two months, tops.”
Dean took her hand. “Lis, we don’t want to cause any trouble for you. Don’t tell anyone we’re here.”
Fighting tears, Lisa nodded. “You wanna... stick with the Ramones or switch to Van Halen?”
Sam snorted. “Last time we were Van Halen, we were undercover at a psych ward.”
“Ramones it is, then.” She stood and strode over to the door, composed herself, and opened it. “I’m glad you’re not staying long, Mr. Ramone,” she said louder, not looking at them. “I’m not sure I like you.”
“Not many do, Mrs. Braeden,” Sam returned.
She turned back with a look that combined amusement, joy, and sorrow all at once, and then she left.
At the livery stable, Moses Brown, the black stable owner, pulled the saddle off of Impala while Ben puttered around in the office, trying to decide whether or not to snitch a drink of Moses’ whiskey. He did drink every now and again because it seemed like the cool, grown-up thing to do, but the smell of whiskey still reminded him of the summer Dean had spent with them until he’d gotten through his grief well enough to stop drinking quite so much. He knew what alcoholism looked like, and he didn’t want to become like that.
Dean. The shorter of the two old men who’d turned up at the house reminded him an awful lot of Dean—the green eyes, the bowed legs, the voice. The fact that he knew Ben’s full name without being told. And it was 1901, finally. But... but it couldn’t be Dean, not for real. Dean was a hero. Dean could never get old.
“Benny,” Moses called suddenly, “fetch me my spectacles.”
Ben located the wire-rimmed glasses on the desk and brought them out to where Moses was peering at the underside of the saddle. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You watch your language, boy,” Moses returned and snatched the glasses from Ben. Then he struck a match and held it up to illuminate the underside of the saddle, which bore the initials DW and three unusual engravings: a devil’s trap, a stylized impala... and a pentangle in a sunburst.
Ben said something his mother would definitely not have approved of.
Moses frowned. “DW? Wait, that don’t mean—”
“Dean Winchester.” Ben looked over at Impala—black and silver, big and gorgeous and strong, just like the car. And Dollar was just about the same color Sam’s hair used to be. He didn’t know whether to be overjoyed that Dean was finally back in their lives or bummed that he was an old man now.
Moses started chuckling, and that tipped the scales in favor of joy. Nobody in Battle Creek would have known the name Dean Winchester or why he and Sam were so awesome.
So Ben started chuckling, too. “The Winchesters are in my house.”
Moses took up a bowlegged stance and made a tough face. “My name is Winchester,” he said in a bad imitation of Dean. “Y’all get that?”
Ben pretended to shoot him multiple times, and Moses pretended to get hit and finally fell over backward into the hay and started laughing his head off.
“They’re in my house!” Ben repeated before running back home. “Mom?” he called as he came in. “Mom, I gotta tell you something.”
Lisa, who was brushing Sam’s suit in her room, shushed him. “Close the door.”
Ben came into the room and closed the door.
“What’s happened?”
He came closer. “Who do you think—”
“Oh, Ben, have you been drinking again?”
“Do you know who they are?!”
“Yes, Joey and Tommy Ramone,” she replied with a pointed look. “United States Marshals in Lawrence, Kansas. Remember that.”
Ben’s face fell. “But....”
“They’re no safer under their right names now than they were before,” she continued quietly. “And they don’t want anyone to know that they’re here. They can’t stay for more than two months.”
“But, Mom....”
“Ben, go to your room. Go on. Go to bed before you wake the house.”
Ben sighed. “Good night, Mom.”
Somehow, though, one of the upstairs lodgers overheard enough to begin gossiping with the other two over breakfast. So Lisa had to make a show of trying to throw Sam and Dean out before calling the city marshal when they wouldn’t leave. She and Dean had worked out a code the night before that allowed her to alert him to what was going on and to warn him that the marshal was a jerk, and he signaled that he understood and agreed with her plan. Then he set his revolver on top of the newspaper on the table—in plain sight, within reach but not in hand—and settled in with Sam to wait for the marshal.
Marshal Thibido, somewhat predictably, kept up a stern act until he made some comment about fame-seeking hard cases “who’d sell their souls to put your names on the wall” and both brothers snorted loudly. “What’s so funny?” Thibido asked.
“In the first place, Col. Potter,” Dean replied, “we’ve been Hell’s Most Wanted most of our lives. If crossroads deals could take us out, we’d have stayed dead a long time ago.”
“And in the second place,” Sam added, skipping the Dragnet joke that would go with Dean’s equally anachronistic M*A*S*H joke, “crossroads deals have standards, and no crossroads demon in his right mind is going to make a ten-year deal to help some two-bit gunman take out someone who’ll be dead of natural causes in two months.”
Thibido turned his head like he hadn’t quite heard properly. “Huh?”
“You heard me. We’re gonna die right here in this room.”
Thibido scoffed. “That’s too thin.”
“I wish it were,” Dean returned. “Would you believe Doc Hostetler? That’s his verdict.”
Thibido stared in disbelief for a moment, then let out a whoop and started gloating until Dean pulled the newspaper out from under his revolver and told him to scat in a growl that sounded rather too much like Bobby for comfort. Sam also made Thibido promise not to tell anyone they were dying, even if he couldn’t keep a lid on the news that the Winchesters were in town.
No sooner had Thibido left, however, than Dean sensed someone hanging around the open window to the porch. With Sam covering and his gun in his left hand, he reached out and flipped Ben through the window and onto the floor. It felt effortless—until he tried to stand and found himself out of breath.
“Dean?” Sam asked, concerned.
But Dean was focused on the boy he’d once thought might be his son. “You little sneak,” he growled breathlessly as he sank down on the bed. “How long were you out there?”
“I was just passing by,” Ben said, looking up at him in concern.
“You spy on us, and I’ll nail your slats to a tree.” Dean looked pointedly at the outside window to show Ben that he needed to keep up the act of their being strangers.
“Oh, no, sir. I’d never—”
“Oh, you’ve already told your mother. Who else have you blabbed to?”
Ben picked himself up. “Uh, Jay Cobb. Are you all right, D—Mr. Winchester?”
“We can’t abide skulkers,” Sam said as he came over to put a supporting hand on Dean’s back. “You want to see us, knock on our door like a man.”
Ben nodded and headed for said door. “I will. You sure you’re all right? If there’s anything I can do for you, you just let me know, sirs, because it’s an honor to have you in this house.”
“I’m afraid your mother doesn’t agree.”
“She doesn’t know how a man feels.”
Dean snorted quietly. “Idjit.”
Ben caught that and spared him a worried glance but kept babbling to Sam like a fanboy. “You’re the most famous people to ever come into this town, and when I was a boy and we first moved here, I heard all about your shootout at the Acme Saloon. I just never thought I’d get the chance to meet you.”
“There’s more to bein’ a man than handlin’ a gun,” Dean said louder and handed his revolver to Sam, who took it with his own back to their holsters in the gun belts hanging near the door. “Don’t you have something to do? Haven’t you got a job?”
“Oh, yes, sir.” Ben fumbled behind him for the doorknob. “I was just headed over to Cobb’s Creamery right now. I help Jay with deliveries sometimes,” he continued as Sam herded him out the door.
“That was the nice gentleman you were with yesterday?” Sam asked.
“Well, yeah, he’s....”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s in the kitchen, I think. Well, goodbye, sir. It was real nice meeting you.”
“Goodbye.”
Dean had caught his breath by then, and he and Sam converged on the kitchen, where Lisa was grinding flour into a bowl with a large wall-mounted mill. “It’s okay,” she said quietly as they came in and she walked over to the counter where several lumps of bread dough were awaiting their second kneading. “The others are out.”
“Had to put the fear of Sam into Ben, Lis,” Dean confessed. “I’m sorry.”
“And I’m sorry we can’t keep this under wraps. I really can’t afford to lose the other lodgers before May, though. Not that I’m really asking you to leave.”
“We couldn’t even if we wanted to,” Sam noted. “But Thibido was right about one thing—there’s a good chance something’s gonna come after us here.”
Dean swore. “I don’t want us to be a burden, Lis. We can look after each other; you just bring us our meals, keep pretending like you don’t know us when the others are around. We can pay $4 a day for the room....”
Lisa laughed, the kind of laugh that meant she was fighting off tears. “Dammit, Dean, do you think I’d be charging you at all if I had another source of income?” And to keep him from arguing further, she walked outside.
Sam sighed and nudged Dean. “C’mon. Let’s check the wards.”
With a last sad glance after Lisa, Dean followed Sam out of the kitchen.