Chapter Text
It was a lazy morning where Josiah and Buck had gone out to buy mattresses to fi the beds that Chris had finished making. The blonde had to stay behind to watch the children as well as because of the news of the judge arriving in Four Corners. Another reason Buck and Josiah decided to ride out to another town to find what they were looking for.
Chris was finishing up cleaning the dishes when he heard riders coming in. He looked up and out the window to see five strange men on horses right outside. Drying off his hands quickly, Chris ran into his room and returned with his gun and belt. He slung it over his shoulder before turning to the children who had noticed something was wrong.
“I want you all to go into your room and lock the door behind you. Don’t open it unless you hear my voice. You understand?” He received six nods. “Go.”
The children all ran to follow the order. JD and Maddie seemed ready to cry which wouldn’t help it if they were to remain hidden.
Stepping outside the house, he looked over the men who were on his property.
“You’re on private property.” He growled.
“You Chris Larabee?” asked one of the men.
Chris could feel his heavy twitch, ready to pull his gun, “I am.”
“Judge request your presence in town.”
“Well you’re going to have to tell him no because I ain’t leaving.” Chris said with a smile.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Chris heard screams from inside the house and he spun around.
“No.” he breathed.
He ran inside and found that two men were pulling the children through the door.
Hell if this was the judge. It must be Ella! Chris growled as he stormed over to take on the man who was trying to pull JD back to his feet. He saw one of the men holding Ezra who looked like he was having a panic attack.
Before he reached them he felt a blow to the back of his head and everything went black.
Chris woke up to the sound of the children crying and calling out for him. He opened his eyes and found that he was outside now. The children had all bee corralled into the wagon with four men to make sure none of them gave them the slip. Chris was thrown up on a horse and had his hands tied to the saddle. His sides were hurting from probably kicks and punches dealt to him after he was out.
“Papa!” Vin cried out.
“Everything is going to be okay kids.” He called out to them. He was hoping his voice would calm them down.
They were taken back to Four Corners where townspeople who had known about Chris and his men taking in the six orphans looked in shock as the man was pulled roughly off the horse. The children were taken out of the wagon and the men struggled to keep them away from the blonde. Vin managed to slip around them and one of the men grabbed Vin by his right arm which was still pretty sore.
Vin screamed in pain and began to cry. Some of the others had already been crying. Chris, though sore and a little disoriented from his fall and head wound, was alert now. He did a running charge and slammed into the man how was hurting Vin. The man released his grip on the boy. For a minute. Chris was surrounded by the six children trying to seek refuge near him. His aching bruises were pressed upon by desperate hands trying to cling onto him for safety. Chris bit back the pain and began to check over all of his children.
“Get back here boy.” Growled one of the men. Chris felt himself ripped from his children and he immediately began to fight against the hold the man had on him. He only had his feet as weapons and began delivering hard blows to the man’s knees and shins.
“Enough!” called an older man’s voice as Chris was smacked sideways and onto the ground.
An older man came into Chris’s view and held out a hand to help Larabee up.
“My apologies for these men’s blatant disregard to my orders. I asked them to have you brought in. It seems they took liberties. They will be punished. For now though, I can’t have you try and run so I’m afraid you’ll have to rest in a cell.”
Chris glared at the man as two men grabbed him and escorted him to the jail.
Mary ran to her father-in-law once Chris disappeared inside the jail.
“Orrin? What are you doing with Mr. Larabee? I thought when I telegrammed you that you said you wouldn’t separate the men from the children without reason.”
“And I won’t. However, I need Mr. Larabee here in my area. Not his. I haven’t forgotten what you said he and his friends are doing for these children, but that doesn’t mean that the government will accept them as anything but kidnappers. Larabee has killed people, and some report; an angry drunk. Sanchez has also been reported an angry drunk and Wilmington is always trying to find his way into some woman’s bed. This also has to be taken into consideration.”
Chris sat in his cell not all that comfortable. His sides were protesting to any position he tried to lay in. Eventually he was able to lay down on his stomach on the cot and tried to rest his eyes.
He needed a plan to get out of here. He had to find out where they had taken the children.
The abusive men probably were scaring the living daylights out of Kate, Maddie and Ezra who apparently all came from homes with abusive father figures. Nathan was witnessing abuse which was probably something he had seen before but probably resurfaced horrible memories too. JD and Vin he wasn’t sure about, but Vin getting hurt didn’t make things better and any separation for JD was traumatic.
Chris let out a sigh. He shouldn’t have let Buck and Josiah go. What was he thinking? Now he had no idea where the children were or what was happening to them.
“Pa.” came a whisper and Chris opened his eyes to see Vin and the others outside of his cell.
Chris sat up, which earned him a shooting pain before he pushed that thought away to concentrate on the children.
“What are you all doing here?” he asked. Chris figured that they probably had escaped from whatever room they were supposed to be in.
“We’re here to get you and get back home.” JD said with bouncing enthusiasm which probably hid his agitation. “Ezra was able to steal the keys off those men.”
Ezra held up the said keys.
“No.” Chris said as the oldest boy went to open the door.
Six pairs of eyes looked up at him in confusion.
“But why?” asked Vin and Kate at the same time.
“It’s a felony to aid a criminal and release them and I don’t want that for you. I want you to get yourselves over to Mr. Potter at the general store. Go on.”
Vin bit his lip and looked ready to cry as Nathan pulled him towards the door.
Chris waited for Ezra to leave but the boy stayed in his spot.
“Ezra, you need to leave.”
“Not without you.” The boy gripped the key ring tighter till his knuckles went white, “I can’t lose anyone else in my life. I just— I just can’t.”
“You aren’t going to lose me. Now go.”
Ezra looked like he was about to start crying, but he nodded and ran out of the jail after throwing the keys on the desk.
“You lost the children.” Orrin said in surprise as he looked at the incompetent men who stood in front of the desk he sat behind. “Well they won’t go anywhere without Larabee if what Mary says is true. Look for them in the jail.”
“Sir.” Came another hired helps voice as they entered the room. “The keys to the jail have gone missing.”
“Can any of you men do a simple job without screwing it up.” Orrin growled as he stood up and began making his way over to the jail himself. He brought his sawed off coach gun with him. If Larabee was pissing angry and seeking revenge, then it was best not to go completely unarmed.
To his surprise, Travis found the blonde still sitting in the cell. He noted the keys lying on the desk.
“I apologize for the children’s light touch.” Chris said with a smile.
Travis set his gun down and pulled up a chair near the bars.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where they’re at now?”
“Depends on you judge.”
“Me?”
“The children have expressed their fears of being taken away.”
“Well I only want to see that they are taken care of and that the people who are in charge of them are seeing that that gets done.”
“They’re safe. I told them to go to the Potter’s store.”
Orrin nodded.
“Mr. Larabee, I’m aware of you and your men. Your track record is a little colorful then many parents seeking to adopt a child. Why should I let you continue to take care of these children?”
Chris thought about it for a minute. “Any sane individual probably wouldn’t. However, when Vin, Ezra and JD approached my friends and I, they saw us for who we were. Imperfect and rough. Yet they still wanted us to take care of them. I think my friends and I need them as much as they need us. I’ve never seen Buck this happy in years. Josiah has been searching for a purpose and I think in a way I was too. We take our roles as fathers seriously. Baths, meals, education, and chores. However, each of these children are coming from broken homes and have lost loved ones. Sometimes they just need us to stay up with them and hold them while they cry or comfort them when they had nightmares. I know what it’s like to be a father, and I know what it’s like to lose someone. These children have already lost so much, judge, wouldn’t you agree?”
Travis smiled.
“You make a fine point.”
Mrs. Potter tried to entertain the six worried children who had sought refuge in the shop. To have seen the way those men had dragged and beat the children’s daddy like that in front of them was just horrible. After seeing and hearing the hard work these men were putting in to take care of their charges warmed her heart. Having Mr. Wilmington help around the shop also allowed time for her to see her husband at home more often which was nice. Plus, she saw an increase of female customers which didn’t hurt things. Josiah had set up an area where he preached sermons on Sunday mornings with the children dutifully sitting with the other two men. Chris, though icy at first, was pretty warm and gentle when it came to his care for the sons who looked up to him. If the judge would try and separate the children from their fathers then she knew that her and several others would stand up for them.
For now, she would help them out by watching the children.
“This is my proposal Mr. Larabee. Sanctuary for you, your men and the children. In return, I will want you all to help maintain order in town. There will be others. Not the idiots from before, but others in your predicament.”
“What do you mean by sanctuary?”
“I’ve heard about your previous family and how they were killed in a fire. No publication will be made of your new situation. Your life shall be kept private within the town.”
Chris let the offer roll around in his head.
“I’ll be willing to pay.”
“How much?”
“Four dollars a day you work.”
Travis watched as the man calculated the numbers in his head. “I’m having a feeling I’m going to regret this.”
Mary looked up in relief when she saw Larabee exit the jail with her father-in-law. The two headed to the Potter’s store where she figured Mrs. Potter was secretly watching the children. Hopefully things had gone well.
Mrs. Potter looked up when she saw Chris and she smiled. She heard the children all get up and watched as they all ran to him and threw themselves at him. Chris checked Vin over first and then the rest, making sure they were all fine. Some of the children were especially clingy, Not letting go of his jacket as he stood, with a probably sore body, with Maddie and JD on a hip each.
“Are we going home?” Vin asked worriedly.
“Yes we are.” Chris smiled.
Kate sighed with relief and Nathan couldn’t stop grinning. There were tears in Ezra’s eyes, probably relieved as well from knowing he wasn’t about to lose Chris.
They walked out of the store. A family reunited. She prayed that the big family wouldn’t be seeing any trouble in the foreseeable future.