This story came about as the result of a challenge ... the 'Let's Hurt Josiah' challenge from the Josiah's Jezebelles mailing list. It has, however, taken on a life of its own and trundled onward under its own volition. Sorry ...

 

THE GREAT 'LET'S HURT JOSIAH' STORY CHALLENGE

To meet the "challenge" your story should include:

1. Major -and we do mean major - hurt. Don't hold your muses back. Josiah must be shot, stabbed, beaten to near death's door, or left for dead. Muses are welcome to choose from one of the above four. They can mix them up or just for the fun of it, use them all. There are just not enough H/C fics out there with Josiah as the main focus. Josiah has not been hurt enough! So don't hold your muses back. Think of Josiah as your way of relieving winter stress.

2. Where there is hurt there is comfort. Josiah must be comforted by your second favorite Mag 7 guy, or if the muses feel the need to create a OFC, then by all means let them create.

3. Setting must be in the desert and a day or two away from the other guys finding them and bringing them back home.

4. Plot will be left up to the muses.

Delancey Cowper Morgan is an invention of my own, but please don't make tea the way Del does it - that's downright heathenish. Buy a teapot and learn to make it properly.

Chaucer belongs to Kristen and Ezra, but Peso's name belongs to Peso and no-one else.

Blue-ticks, redbones and treeing walkers are all types of Coon Hound - as are Plott hounds. Wonderful, intelligent beasts indeed …

This is Josiah out loaded for bear and to hell with the consequences - for himself, that is. But, as always, the fellas wade in and try to save his sorry ass.

Finally, this thing about Josiah's gun. I know he uses a Schofield, but I've used some literary license here and given Josiah my favourite sidearm - a .44 calibre 3rd Model Colt Dragoon. It has the stopping power of a Missouri mule and twice the attitude - much like Josiah himself. A big gun for a big man - although in this story it's almost the finishin' of him.

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