Four years later.

The young man stepped out of the wagon and took a deep breath. He took his cap off of his head and felt the dry, cool breeze ruffle through his black hair. He'd never seen a sky like the one above him, the sun in New York City never seemed that bright, nor the heavens so blue. The clouds were so close it felt like he could touch them. The thin air rasped down into his lungs as he stared at the wide open prairie around him. Denver wasn't the cow town in the mountains that he'd imagined it would be, but the tiny town of Kiowa that the wagon he'd hired took him through was most certainly a cow town. Dirt streets, wooden sidewalks, it was straight out of one of Jack Kelly's cowboy books.

The sprawling ranch in front of him was beautiful in a rustic, austere kind of a way. The cold, golden brown prairie spread out around him, interrupted by split rail fences made from the tall thin lodgepole pines that grew in dense groves around the edges of the cleared land. It was February and the far away peaks of the Rockies were white. The bright sun and blue sky did nothing to take the chill out of the icy wind that swept through the grass. He pulled his coat tighter around himself as he knocked on the front door of the white clapboard farmhouse. The door slammed open and he stepped out of the way so as not to be knocked over by the duo of little boys to run out of it, screaming at the top of their lungs and chasing each other off into the tall grass. "That's right, get outta here, ya hooligans! Go run it off, or better yet, get to the barn and do your chores like I done asked you twelve other times today!" A tall blonde man sauntered out of the house after them with a lazy sort of smile his face, like that was just the way his face rested, in a half smile. He leaned against the doorframe and his deep brown eyes, surveyed his land before coming to rest on the younger man on his porch. "Can I help you?" The smile never faltered, even with a stranger on his porch so far out in the country. If it weren't for the different coloring and the intact teeth, he almost looked like Scatter. But then again he didn't. He just had that same charismatic, buddy-buddy charm that Scatter had. Scatter's charm and motherless little boys, the younger man thought, getting Marta to fall for him must have been like catching fish in a barrel.

With a deep breath and a shove down of the nervous butterflies in his stomach he quietly said, "I-I'm looking for Marta F-Fletcher and Spot Conlon." Instead of two syllables, Conlon came out a Con-a-lon. He spoke slowly, each word carefully curated and cautiously executed.

"She went to visit the neighbors, so she ain't here," the man said, squinting off into the distance. He felt himself deflate until a low chuckle rumbled out of the blonde man, "No need to fret, son, she ain't gone for good. She'll be back. Come on in, she and Darcy will be back soon…at least I hope they will, I'm not sure those youngins will take kindly to going back to their dear old dad's cooking after Marta and Darcy been spoiling them these past few years." A sudden look of mock horror crossed his face and the visitor understood how his old friend fell for the cowboy in front of him. He smiled softly, for what felt like the first time in ages. The blonde looked the dark haired kid on his porch up and down. "Winslow Fletcher, but everyone calls me Fletch." He held his hand out and the younger man shook it.

"Eli Cooper. She'd call me T-t…" He winced, he was tired from the long journey and his mouth was getting sticky.

"Trout. I knew you the second I saw you, its the eyes. They talk about you a lot, never thought I'd get to meet you though. Both her and Spot were pretty sure that you were never leaving New York." Eli blushed and nodded and Fletch waved him inside the house.

"Where's Spot?" Eli asked, following the cowboy into the house and looking around warily. While there were obviously parts of the house that were there before her, this was Marta's home. Her touches were everywhere. The way the little boys' shoes were lined up next to the door under a coat in a similar size, it was just like the bunkroom. He felt the eyes and the easy-going smile on him.

"Out fixing a fence, he'll be back when his stomach starts growling." Eli looked confused and Fletch chuckled again, "Damn if she wasn't right about your face! It says everything you need it to!" Again he blushed, not used to any sort of attention, he was used to making sure he blended in, didn't bring attention to himself. "He looked around like that the first time they came here too, like the walls were going to jump down and get him. I promise, you're safe here."

Another thing Fletch was like Scatter about, making him feel at home. It made him even more uneasy, so he changed the subject. "Spot doesn't get hungry."

Fletch laughed, loud and rolling, showing Eli to a couch in a big room. "I met that kid. Scrawny, mouthy, mean, never ate nothing. Yup, I remember him. He ain't here no more, I put that kid to work. I think you'll be very interested in meeting Spot Conlon, now. But you settle in here, I'll go make us some coffee while we wait for the girls to get back." The warm chenille of the sofa, the soft cushion and the general feeling of homeyness from Marta's little touches all over the place: a rocking chair on a rag rug by a fire place with a basket of mending within reach. Hairpins, single hairpins on every surface because sometimes she just couldn't deal with them stabbing her in the skull. It was all so comfortable, so right, so what he needed to feel that he let out a deep sigh and was asleep in mere moments.

He woke to a quiet giggle and someone prying his eyelid open with tiny fingers. He clamped them closed as his brain tried to figure out what was happening. "Hey!" A male voice rang out, much harsher than the cowboy's. "What did I tell you, huh? Quit that and get outta here before I tell your muddah what youse doing." Eli would know that voice anywhere and his lips smiled even though his eyes weren't open yet. The owner of the giggle ran away on quick, tiny feet. "You awake? Or smiling in ya dreams, sleeping beauty?"

"'M awake," he mumbled forcing his eyelids open.

"Holy shit!" Spot jumped back in surprise, tripping over his own feet and falling to the floor. To be honest, if he weren't sitting down, he would have too. The man before him was not his lanky, slight friend. If it weren't for the voice and the silvery grey-blue eyes, Eli wouldn't have recognized him at all. He was tanned, his hair bleached to an ashy blonde in the harsh mountain sun and the scar on his face from the tenement was jagged pink line across his forehead and down his cheek. While he wasn't broad, like he himself always had been (built like a brick shit house was Racetrack's favorite expression, which Eliot found about as charming as a brick shit house), he looked healthy, muscular and nothing like the skinny kid he grew up with. "Trout? That is you, right?" Spot asked in a small voice. He looked around a bit shiftily.

"It's me."

"Yeah, that don't help." Spot swallowed loudly, still sitting on the floor. Eliot scooted forward to sit on the edge of the couch cushion and grinned before throwing every curse word hand sign and dirty gesture they ever made up, ending with "asshole." Spot grinned, not just his signature smirk, but an honest-to-god grin, and jumped up from the floor, yanking his old friend to his feet. Eliot tensed as Spot pulled him close, he half expected to be put in a choke hold, but instead he was hugged. A low, throaty but decidedly female chuckle caught their attention.

"Hard work agrees with him, don't you think, Trout?" Marta asked. He spun and ran to her, squeezing her tightly. She easily hugged him back, and he felt everything that was making him miserable, everything he held in, every wall he built up inside get let go. Tears were in his eyes and he squeezed them shut trying to make them stop, but instead they flowed more freely. His chest and throat got tight and soon he was sobbing and didn't exactly understand why. Marta smiled, she only came up to his shoulder now. She guided his head down and stroked his hair, just like she did the first day she met him. He was always one to tuck his troubles away, and they always got too big and exploded. "It can't be that bad," she whispered in his ear, turning them so they could sit again on the couch.

When he was calm, he wiped his face and pulled away. "I'm sorry I didn't write." She grinned broadly and Spot did too, coming up and crouching on the floor in front of them. He felt himself smiling even through the tears that were still falling realizing that this was the first time either of them heard him say more than a few stuttered words. "Oh, yeah. You like that?"

Spot looked at the amazed look on Marta's face and said, "Crazy, right?" with a bemused smile on his scarred face. "He's the damned slowest talking New Yorker alive."

"How?" She asked, her hand never leaving the crook of his elbow, knowing how touch always soothed him.

"Practice," Eli sniffled. "Lots of p-p-practice." They looked at him like he walked on water. "I get stuck, still. Can't make the right word happen. And th-th-the…."

"Stutter," Marta and Spot said together. He nodded and sniffled again. Marta cleared her throat and pushed the hair back off of his brow, smiling as she took inventory of the boy she raised, all grown up. "You're like a real grown up, I can't believe it." His hair was neatly trimmed in the back, but longer on top and in front.

He smiled, that soft smile that was as far as most of his ever got, those brilliant grins of his still rare and beautiful. "You didn't expect me to be?"

It was her turn to blush, and he realized how much like herself, like Kisser, she looked. The sun bleached her hair back to it's cinnamon color and the dry air made her curls wild and fuzzy. Her freckles were darker and her skin more pink. "Of course I did. Its just that the last time I saw you, you weren't talking and you looked so….broken." Her eyes got distant and he knew she was realizing they were all three so broken then. She sniffed and looked back at him with a tight smile. "Your hair looks nice, thats how I always wanted to cut it, but you never would let me." He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, the short hair scratching against his knuckle, and nodded his thanks. He didn't trust his mouth to cooperate with all of the emotion that was rushing through his head so swiftly. "You haven't come to me like that and just let loose except for three times. What's wrong?" she asked. His eyes dropped immediately. He hated how well she knew him, that he was so predictable. The only other times he ever let her comfort him were the first day he met her, when she pulled him off of Spot while trying to beat him senseless, that last day at the lodging house and one time after the strike, when he thought he would die from being so sad.

Spot snickered and stood up, "She's still got it, my friend. Make no mistake about that. She's still got the faces that make you want to shit your pants too. Just ask the kiddies." Eli's eyebrows furrowed. "Oh, you ain't met everyone yet? Fletch! Whatsamattah with you?" Spot hollered.

Fletcher came to the door between the parlor and another room, one sandy eyebrow cocked up. "Boy, I married your sister," Trout looked at Marta questioningly and she shook her head slightly and used his old sign for later discretely, "not you. It might have escaped your notice over the past few years, but this is the Fletcher Ranch, not the Conlon ranch. You best watch who you talk to like that." Eliot felt his body tense, watching his old friend, waiting for the pounce, the attack, but Marta's hand tightened on his arm, pulling his attention back to her. She smiled and shook her head before nodding back to the two men, still talking in the middle of the room.

Spot didn't look ready to fight, he looked relaxed. "Sorry, I just thought you'd introduce the rugrats to my best friend."

His heart was pounding in his chest and he knew how Spot felt hearing him speak in full sentences. He stood quickly and backed away, not sure if this was all real or not. Maybe he was still asleep. Maybe he was still on the train, hell, maybe he was still in his apartment in New York. "Hey, hey, hey," Marta said, standing up, moving with him, "He's different. Its a big change but its for the better. You can see that right?" He nodded, unable to keep his eyes from moving wildly around the unfamiliar room. "Talk to me, Kid. Look at me. Tell me whats going on in that head of yours."

He tried, he opened his mouth and closed it over and over trying to get the words to come out. So he used what he knew. "He hugged me," he signed. "He apologized." Spot didn't do either of those things. Ever.

She laughed, "He apologized because he was being an ass, so that hasn't changed."

"And your Trouty mouth sure ain't changed. Ya still look like a fish outta wattah," Spot called over.

"Not helpful!" Marta called back, but Trout found himself laughing and began to breathe again. "Ok, maybe helpful." She gave him a moment to recover before touching his arm again, "Do you want to meet the little ones? And then we'll have some supper. I know Spot and Will won't be able to go much longer without food." Eli looked over at Spot and raised his dark eyebrows and Spot just grinned sheepishly. "Those two eat like the horses." He nodded and she took his hand to lead him back to the couch. "Fletcher, my friend, would you call in the troops?"

"Friend? Are we friends?" he asked with a goofy grin.

"I like to think I married my best friend," she answered with a charming smile.

"Yeah" Spot teased, standing up with a wicked look on his face, "but he likes to think he married a prize heifer!" but still yelped as she took off after him.

Eli looked at Fletcher, questioning with his face. Fletch snickered. "Now that is a funny story…"

"Winslow Fletcher, don't you dare tell him that story or I will knock your teeth in and bury you in the creek bed!" Marta shrieked from the other room where the sounds of some sort of scuffle rang out.

There was a clang and a clatter, and a higher pitched shriek. "Will you two get outta here before you destroy my kitchen?" Darcy yelled. "You's worse than the kids. Out! Damn street rats! You two need your own mother!" Spot and Marta raced back out of the kitchen and out the front door into the grass like children.

"Welp, now that she's not here being scary," Fletcher said waggling his sandy eyebrows with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, "I can tell you. Spot was teaching my boys to shoot with a slingshot when we were staying at the boarding house that Marta was running in Denver when I took some stock to auction. In return, Will wanted to show her to rope." His lazy, happy smile grew wide. "I came back early and saw them. Will ain't bad with a lasso, but Marta was just….terrible." His head tipped back and he laughed again, loud and rolling. Eli couldn't even picture Marta swinging a rope around like Jack used to do. "I snuck up behind her and roped her, drug her ten feet or so, kicking and screaming the whole way, and then I stole a kiss when I picked her up off her duff."

"She punch you?" Eli asked, already knowing the answer.

A deep crimson blush crawled up the cowboy's bronze neck, "Sure did! Split my lip, made Jesse cry." He smiled again, "Best damn thing I ever managed to rope. A wild woman is just what this old place needed to bring it back to life." He looked at the burly boy at his side, who looked in awe and lost all at the same time. "You know you're welcome to stay for as long as you like. We got plenty of space and plenty of work to go around. There are few problems that I've come across, that a man can't work through in his head, so long as his body keeps busy." Eli's brow furrowed and he shook his head slightly. "Its no bother, no imposition. The way I understand it, you're family and this family takes care of each other." Eli looked up at him through his eyelashes and nodded his thanks. He could talk now, but he still didn't if he could convey what he wanted without it. "Why don't you go see if Darcy needs any help while I go gather up the kids….the little and big ones." They both grinned and he made his way towards the room he heard Darcy shrieking from.

"Heya Darcy," he said from the doorway after watching the tiny but powerful blonde bustle around the kitchen for a few moments.

She turned with a brilliant smile and squealed. "Trout!" She put down the bowl she was stirring and ran to him, launching her small, but very round and pregnant body at him. He squeezed her gently. They were only around each other a few times, but their connection to Spot somehow made their friendship easy. She pulled away and smiled up at him. She was breathtaking now that she was happy, not the dusty, disused girl he first met in the streets. "You didn't stick around long enough at the train station for me to thank you. You saved me, you know that? I dunno what I would've done if I'd woken up that morning and he was gone. He was the only one who understood…"

He stopped her, pushing his hands out flat in between them. "He needed you. I couldn't be there anymore."

"Yeah, I could see that. I didn't understand what you said until later. That it was my turn." She smiled, "I think I've done a pretty good job during my turn."

"I didn't under…understood…understand what I said then," he said with a small smile. "I just knew I couldn't…couldn't…"

"Trust him," she finished for him. He nodded and she handed him a stack of plates. "Tables over there. No one blames you for not trusting him. It took Marta and I months to get him back to….functioning. And, honestly, I'm not sure normal and Spot will ever be friends." Eli set the table, not missing Darcy's raised eyebrow at his ability to do so properly.

"I cleared tables at a restaurant" he answered. He gestured at her swollen middle with a handful of forks, "Not normal doesn't bother you."

She laughed loudly, "It sure don't!"

"What don't what?" Spot asked, his face covered in dirt and his hair full of straw and debris.

"Your personality don't make me wanna kill you once an hour anymore," she answered dryly. He pinched her side, making her squeak and then bent down, kissing her neck a little longer than was proper.

"Ew," Marta said, equally covered in dirt and straw, "you two have your own house to do that in, don't do it in mine." Spot stood up and gave Marta a dirty look before going to the sink and starting to wash up.

Fletcher was in the other room, with what sounded like a herd of cattle. "Come on now, scrub up good. Your mamas want to see clean shiny faces and hands, not grubby little monsters. Jesse, soap, son. Soap is needed. Will, can you lift your cousin up please?"

"Cousin?" Eli asked. "What's going on?"

Marta stepped up to the sink, smiling back at him. "It was a decision we made on the train. So far as anyone knows, Spot is my little brother. I was Marta Conlon for two years before I met and married Fletch. We just decided it would look better for all of us if we were siblings and Darcy and Spot were already engaged before we stepped off the train in Denver," Eli looked at Spot incredulously.

"Don't give me that look. I know what all of your looks mean, and yes I was crazy. But, that is one crazy decision I stand by." He wrapped his arm back around Darcy and kissed the top of her head.

"Fletch?" Eli asked, jerking his thumb towards the other room.

"He knows the truth, but agrees that its for the best and also agrees that we act too much like it to change the story now," she answered drying her hands. Fletch came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, followed in by four kids. The older two were obviously Fletcher's, with their golden curls and deep brown eyes. Fletch whispered something in her ear and she nodded. "Will and Jesse, this is me and Spot's friend, Eli, from New York." The two older boys, who were ten and seven, shook his hand solemnly.

"Be real, Marta," Spot admonished. "Trout ain't a friend, Trout's family. We grow'd up as brothers, him and me."

Jesse's face screwed up with skepticism, "Your mama named you Trout?"

He smiled tiredly and sat down, he'd spoken more in the past hour than he normally did in a week, "M-my mother called me Eh-eh eliot. Spot called me T-t-tr-trout and I…didn't say different."

"You don't talk funny like Spot and Mama," the younger boy answered stretching a rare and beautiful grin onto Eli's face.

He looked up at Spot and Marta, gleefully happy. "I always thought they talked funny too." The comment earned him a giggle from Marta and Darcy and a scowl from Spot.

The older boy stared at the man he thought of as his uncle, "If Trout's name is really Eliot, does that mean you have two names too? Did your mama really call you Spot?"

He bit his cheeks to keep himself from laughing, "Nope, me muddah called me Ciarán." He looked over at Marta with a wink, "But me sistah called me Spot. She called me it so much that it stuck and I don't answer to nothing else."

"You don't look like brothers and sisters," Jesse said while Will looked at the ground and scuffed his boot back and forth.

"Youse very perceptive," Spot answered crouching down to Jesse's level, like they were sharing a deep secret, just between the two of them, even though everyone else could hear what they said, "but sometimes family ain't just about blood and the same colah eyes, and that goil theah and that big guy are the best family any boy could evah ask foah." The two newsboys grinned at each other as Marta turned around, trying to hide the tearful smile his words brought to her face. "You ain't gotta hide, Marta, me and Trout have know'd you was a big mush since we was little. A big sappy, softy when it comes to ya little lost boys."

But she stayed turned around with Fletcher whispering in her ear until she was calm, but changed the subject, "The big boys are Fletch's from his late wife, but they have graciously allowed me to mother them to death. And this," Marta said, scooping up a chubby curly headed toddler and planting a kiss on his soft cheek, "is Teddy, he's ours together."

Spot grabbed the last child, a young girl about three or four with eyes like ice and hair like cornsilk. "And this beautiful piece of woik is Clarice, Clarice Conlon, and yes, she's who was messing with you while you was sleeping. She's a pistol, just like her mama." Little Clarice glared up at her father with such an uncanny likeness to his own knifepoint glare, pointing her little tipped up nose into the air loftily.

"Just like her dad you mean," Darcy quipped, flicking his ear playfully. "Could the daughter of THE Spot Conlon be anything else?"

Long after supper was eaten and dishes were cleaned, once all of the kids were in bed, Spot, Marta and Eli sat on the farmhouse porch. "Out with it Trout," Marta ordered after a few moments of peaceful silence. "Something is not right with you and I've pussyfooted around it long enough." In the dim lamplight on the porch, she could still see him look up at her through his eyelashes at her as he sat sideways on the steps. "That doesn't work on me and you know it. You show up here after you don't answer my letters for almost a year, you look like hell, fall asleep on my sofa and cry in my arms. Are you sick? Are you dying? What is going on?"

"Marta, shut up for two seconds and let the man talk," Spot said quietly.

"I'm…I'm…not sick. Not d-d-d-dying," he answered. "I n-n-needed my family...and thats you." He was silent for another minute. He'd spent the whole train ride trying to figure out how he would answer this line of questioning. The truth was just too pathetic, but Marta would know if he made something up.

"You still living at the school and bumming around with Blink and Racetrack?" Spot asked. Eli nodded and let out a deep sigh. "That ain't good."

"Yup, thats the deep shit sigh," Marta agreed with a smile in her voice.

"That's the go stare at the island for hours sigh," Spot added and Trout winced. He did that for most of the night before he got on the train…after taking care of most of a bottle of whiskey by himself, but before sleeping outside the door of his parents' flat in Queens.

"You'd write and you're so happy," he mumbled. "Everyone's likes their life and something is m-m-m...not there for me. Race has a girl, a r-r-rich girl, named Clara. He tried to set me up, but they all want more than I got."

"You got way more to offer than Racetrack Higgins," Spot guffawed.

"I don't want... I can't find... I want…"

"You want JoAnna," Spot answered. Eliot had him shoved against the house by his shoulders in moments. They glared at each other and Eliot found himself wishing for the old, volatile Spot. The one who would hit hit and keep on hitting, because the fight and physical pain would fill up the void he felt inside his chest. It would let him feel something besides jealousy and loneliness and sucking, devouring emptiness. But Spot's glare was steady and calm, searing him and watching his thoughts as they raced across his eyes. "Its true, you want that girl from after the strike that ran away. She's the only girl I ever seen turn your head at all. But she's gone, Trout. She's been gone for years. She was always gonna be gone. She was a runner, a flight risk, a traveler. She was never going to be pinned down! It wasn't about you! You've got to let that go!"

"Don't talk about her. She's dead."

"Eli," Marta said, her hand resting gently on Eliot's broad shoulder, "let him down." Her voice was soft, comforting and quiet as she waited, never moving her hand. When she spoke again there was more bite to her voice. "Put him down Trout. He's your friend. You don't want to hurt him. He's an asshole. He's always been an asshole." She shot Spot a dirty look over Trout's broad shoulder, "He always will be an asshole. Put. Him. Down." He turned his head to her, watching her calm, freckled face out of the corner of his bright blue eye. "You don't have to let go of her. You just have to keep watching for someone who makes you feel like she did." He dropped Spot roughly with a huff. Her arm slid down his bicep and snaked around his elbow, gently tugging him back to the steps where she sat down next to him. "You know I understand. You have to know that. You were there while I waited for Scat all those years, waiting for my first love to come back. But he wasn't coming back, and it's likely that JoAnna isn't either." She felt him slump a few inches and smiled sadly. He'd endured so many losses in his short life, rejected by his family and then the guy he thought of as a big brother, JoAnna and then (albeit, by choice) she and Spot, and so many never came back into his life. He felt each one of those losses so profoundly in that tender heart of his. "But you know, your first love is so often not your only love, or even your greatest love. You have plenty more chances for that great one. You're only just twenty one."

"Twenty one years old and you's had what, four or five people you really let in," Spot said, sitting down a few steps lower. "That woiks out to one person every 4-5 years. JoAnna was 6 years ago...so you's due. Stick around here. See if we can't find you a nice farm girl who gets whatever it is that you got going on."

"Who made the list?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow at him, her lips turned up in a curious smile .

Trout tapped Spot with his foot, giving him permission to speak for him. He was so tired, mentally and emotionally, he wasn't sure how long he could keep up conversing without falling into gibberish. "His oldah brothah Jonah, me, Scat, Racetrack and JoAnna."

"What about me?" she asked, unable to hide the hurt in her voice.

"You there," he muttered nudging into her with his shoulder gently.

"You just got there your own way, Marta," Spot answered, nodding a few times before brushing his blonde bangs from his face and staring up at the velvety black sky. "The others, they's like me. They didn't see nothing wrong with him not talking. You took awhile to warm up to him, didn't think he'd make it running with us. You two just wore each other down after awhile."

She smiled, "I never was one to do things any way but my own."

The opportunity arose to lighten the mood and take the focus off of himself and he ran with it. "So, you married a g-g-g-g…..man who roped you like a cow?" His bright blue eyes sparkled as Spot stifled a laugh.

Her hazel eyes flashed as they looked between him and the door before she erupted out of her seat, stamping her foot against the floorboards. "Fletcher! I told you to stop telling people that story about the lasso!" she yelled.

The two newsboys chuckled as she stormed into the house to chastise her husband. They enjoyed the quiet, companionable silence, the clean, sweet, spotless breeze and the cold night air. "We ok, Trout?" Spot asked quietly, as they stared up at the stars that were so bright and plentiful away from the lights of the city.

"Mmhmm. We're good."

A/N: There you have it, the final installment of Ants and Giants! This puppy is COMPLETE! I finished it! Happy dance! This epilogue is Trout centric because I've started a companion piece (both prequel and sequel) that is about him, because I love him and he needed a voice. Please tell me what you thought!