"Jack, you're supposed to be in bed." Lily scolded as Jack limped out onto the porch that evening. Allie scooted over on the porch swing and patted the space beside her and he sat down with a smile.

"There's no way I can stay in the bed and miss out on seeing you shoot that big old gun." Jack replied. Lily looked at the rifle Hawke was holding and shivered.

"Are you ready?" Hawke asked. Lily blew out a long breath and nodded quickly.

"Yeah." she said. Hawke laid the cold hunk of wood and metal in her arms and she tested the heavy weight. He held up a bullet and showed her how to load the gun. She did as he showed her and he pointed at the mountain lion fur he had wrapped around a chunk of log about thirty yards away.

"Put the gun to your shoulder and line up the metal sights. Squeeze the trigger slowly when you are ready to take your shot." Hawke said. Lily nodded and put the gun to her shoulder. She aimed the rifle at the target, though she wasn't sure what he had meant by sights and then she let out the breath she'd been holding and squeezed the trigger.

She felt nearly six years of fear melting away as the sound of the shot echoed in her ears. Why had she spent so long being afraid of these guns?

"Did ya hit it?" Jack asked from the porch.

"I'll check!" Sarah exclaimed and she ran down the yard with her dark curls bouncing. Lily chewed on her lip as she waited for Sarah to say whether or not there was a hole in the target and Hawke wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders. It filled him with pride and happiness to see Lily taking back the rest of what Nathan had taken from her.

Lily turned out to be a very good shot as she took her time getting used to shooting the rifle and the shotgun. Everything was going fine and Lily was feeling foolish for being so scared until Hawke pulled the revolver out of the waistband of his pants and Lily was taken back to six years ago and the feel of cold metal pressed against her temple.

She suddenly remembered the desperation and fear she had felt that day. She remembered Nathan's taunting voice as he told her she was going to die. She remembered the way he had pleasured himself with her body while sneering down at her and pressing his revolver so tight against her head she had bruised.

"I.. I can't." she said taking a step back with tears of fear in her eyes. Hawke's eyes narrowed and he wondered to himself if it would be wrong to go to the cemetery and dig up Nathan's rotting corpse just so he could pay him back with his own hands for what he had done to his wife.

"It is okay, naakiiwa. It is just a gun like the others." he said in his gentlest voice that was barely any softer than his angry voice.

"I don't think I can." Lily replied with a mixture of irritation, fear and desperation. Jack stood from the porch swing and limped down into the yard. He could tell that Hawke was too angry with Nathan to be much help with working through Lily's fear.

"You can do it, Lily. I'll show ya that it ain't hard." he said. He grabbed a tin cup off the edge of the porch and handed it to Sarah. "Go put that on top of the log your mommy's been shooting at." Sarah ran down into the yard and set down the cup before running back.

"Now look here, Lily, it's just a gun." Jack said pulling his own .45 Colt revolver from the holster. He unlocked the cylinder and spun it around and around. "Here you do it." he said. He held the gun in his hand and she reached out a shaking finger and gave the cylinder a spin.

"See nothing to be afraid of." he said giving Lily that good natured, boyish grin that always put anyone who saw it at ease. "The gun ain't the evil thing Lily, it's the man, or woman, that's holding the gun. And since you ain't evil, you ain't got nothing to worry about."

Jack locked the cylinder back in place as Lily smiled and some of the tension left her body. He holstered the gun and then before anyone had time to blink he pulled it again and fired a shot at the can, sending it flying into the air. While it was airborne, he emptied his last five shots into it and nothing but a hunk of twisted, hole filled metal clattered to the ground.

"Jack, that was amazing!" Allie gasped from the porch. Jack holstered his gun and closed his eyes for a second to fight back the horrible memories that always flashed through his mind when he fired his gun. Memories of men begging for their lives. Memories of women and children begging him not to kill their husbands and fathers. He had always killed them anyway of course because his life had quite literally been kill or be killed.

"I've had a lot of practice." he said, forcing that good natured grin back onto his face. Lily, Allie and Sarah were still looking at him as if he was some kind of superhero gunslinger. Only Hawke's green eyes narrowed and he seemed to understand that Jack had gotten that good with a gun by killing people.

"Your turn." Jack said to Lily and she nodded and took a deep breath before taking the revolver that Hawke was still holding and pointing it at the stump.

"Pull the hammer back, that's the metal piece on the back." Jack said. Lily did and then Jack smiled. "Just pull that trigger when you're ready." Lily forced her hands to stop shaking and squeezed the trigger. She hadn't been prepared for the kick the gun delivered to her wrists and her shot went high and hit a pine tree behind the target.

"I missed." she pouted as she stared at the target. Jack laughed and patted her on the back.

"Revolvers are a bit harder to shoot than a rifle. Don't be too hard on yourself." He led Lily a little closer to the target, stopping about twenty-five yards from the target. Allie came off the porch and held her hand out for Jack's revolver. He handed it to her and she pulled some bullets from his gun belt and reloaded it.

"Watch this." she said proudly. She took aim and pulled the trigger, hitting the already destroyed tin cup.

"Well I'll be dipped in tar and rolled in feathers, doll. You're damn good." Sarah giggled loudly.

"If you did that then you would look like a chicken, uncle Jack." she said. Wolf walked out of the woods then and Sarah squealed happily and ran to him and he rolled over onto his stomach to allow the child to climb on top of him.

Jack stood there and watched everyone go back to talking and shooting. Hawke watching his wife with a mixture of pride and love with his arms crossed over his chest and the normal stern set to his jaw. Sarah wrestling with Wolf and Janna joining in. Lily looking extremely proud as she got closer and closer to hitting the target and Allie laughing happily, her brown eyes sparkling in the sunlight.

This was his family. It had taken him a lot of years and countless mistakes but he was finally home.

888

"We've only got about two more weeks 'til we get to Great Valley Pa. We've got Bearclaw to take care of that damn injun but there ain't a man among us that is quick enough to take Jack. We gotta find somebody." Brian said as the men sat around a morning campfire drinking bitter coffee and eating stale biscuits.

"I already took care of that." John said with a nod. "The boy should be here soon. I told him we'd be leaving shortly after dawn." Blue kicked at a rock and rubbed the back of his meaty neck with his plate sized hand.

"I still say we just forget about going after Jack. This whole thing just feels wrong and I don't think it'll end good."

"White men worry too much." Bearclaw said dryly as he slowly sharpened his knife blade on a rock.

"I don't know if you realized this Bearclaw but you're half white man." Paul, the fifth man of the gang spoke up as he poured out what was left of his coffee onto the dirt. Bearclaw simply shrugged but did not reply and Paul chuckled and looked over at John.

"So who is this new guy boss?"

"He's a young gun but he's damn fast." John replied. "I had him show me and I'll be damned if I didn't blink and miss him pulling iron."

"It's one thing to be fast but can he hit the broadside of a barn?" Brian asked skeptically. The words had no sooner left his mouth when a shot rang out and his tin cup when flying out of his hand. All the men, except Bearclaw, ducked to the ground and pulled their guns. Bearclaw didn't even look up as he continued sharpening his knife.

"I don't know about the broadside of a barn, sir, but it looks like I just relieved you of your coffe cup." A cocky young voice said. The men looked up to the top of the small hill behind them to see a boy no older than twenty sitting atop a big black stallion and holstering his pistol.

The men picked themselves up from the ground with shame and dusted the dirt off of their pants as they watched the boy approach.

"My names Douglas Kinkaid but most people just call me Kaid." he said as he closed the distance between them and jumped down to the ground. His big metal spurs shone in the sunlight and his fringed brown leather vest was covered in small metal discs and beads that clinked together with his movements. His face was smooth and pale and covered in freckles and when he pulled off his hat his thick hair was curly and orange.

"He don't look like much." Blue said as he looked down his nose at the boy who couldn't be much taller than five and a half feet.

"I might not look like much you overgrown bastard but I could blow your square head right off your thick neck." Rage contorted Blue's features as he reached for his gun but John grabbed his arm and stopped him.

"Don't be a fool, Blue. You are the brute strength of the operation but that boy would have you full of holes before you even managed to clear leather."

"So Kaid, you think you can take my brother?" Brian asked looking the short, skinny boy up and down. Kaid sat his white hat back on his head and nodded.

"Ain't no man alive I can't take."

"Foolish words spoken by a boy with no real idea of what it is like to kill someone." Bearclaw spoke up. Kaid shifted his feet and looked over at him with anger.

"I've killed plenty!" he exclaimed. "I've even killed my share of injuns like you."

"No you have not but it sounds good on the job application." Bearclaw replied calmly.

"What the hell pa! You got a boy that's never even killed nobody to join up with us? We done did that once with Jack and that didn't turn out real great." Brian demanded irritably

"Do you want to be the leader of the gang?" John asked his son and Brian shook his head sighed with defeat.

"Welcome to the gang, Kaid." he said.

"So where we headed to boss?" Kaid asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it slowly.

"Great Valley Montana." John replied. "Bout another two week ride. There's a man there that knows too damn much about us and he needs to be dealt with."

"And you want me to deal with him?" Kaid asked with a smile.

"That's right. He's damn fast but I'm thinking you might be faster."

"I can promise you right now I'm faster." Kaid replied as he pulled his revolver and spun it around his finger with a laugh.